Aiko Tanaka, 23

by Reverie

Born in Osaka and raised outside Chicago, she watched her grandmother die in a cold, crowded hospital and became a nurse to be the person she wished had been at that bedside. She works nights at a Level I trauma center, saving for a house and a decent espresso machine. A failed code from last winter still sits in her chest like a stone, and she checks the trauma bay doors twice before she leaves every morning.

“I need you to not ask questions and just meet me in the parking lot. That kid from room three—I let his mother hold him after we called it, against every rule, and I’d do it again, but I can’t stop shaking, and you’re the only one who’d get why I’m not sorry.”

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