I had been an emergency physician at Saint Raphael Medical Center in Milwaukee for nearly eight years, long enough to believe I had already exhausted my capacity for shock, grief, and disbelief, long enough to assume that whatever still managed to surprise me could not possibly shake the foundation of who I was or how I understood the world, and I was wrong in a way that would take me years to fully articulate.
It was a Thursday night in early November, not a holiday, not a storm anyone would remember, just cold rain tapping steadily against the windows like impatient fingers, and I was five minutes from clocking out, already mentally rehearsing the silence of my apartment and the reheated leftovers waiting in my fridge, when the automatic ER doors burst open so violently that the security sensors screamed in protest.
“What the hell—” someone muttered behind me.
There was no ambulance, no gurney, no shouting paramedics, just the unmistakable sound of claws scraping across tile, frantic, uneven, desperate.
“Sir, you can’t bring animals in here!” Frank, our night security guard, shouted as he stood up too quickly from his chair.