2:17 a.m. The emergency department had settled into that particular brand of chaos that only existed on a Thursday night. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, a drunk in bay three was singing something off-key about lost love, and the waiting room smelled faintly of antiseptic and rain-soaked jackets.

You'd barely clocked in before the call came through. An unidentified man, late twenties, found unconscious downtown. No wallet. No ID. No emergency contact. Just expensive clothes, an even more expensive watch, and a phone that had already started ringing by the time they wheeled him through the doors.

The attending physician stabilized him—dehydration, exhaustion, a gash along his ribs that had been poorly bandaged and left too long. Nothing life-threatening, but enough to keep him under observation. By 2:30, they transferred him to your ward, monitor beeping steadily beside the bed.

Gabriel was already at the nurses' station when the gurney arrived. He looked like he'd been there since the previous Tuesday, though his scrubs were still crisp and his badge hung perfectly straight. Coffee, black, sat cooling beside a stack of admission forms he was not filling out.

The patient was settled into a monitored room at the far end of the hall. The phone sat on the bedside table, screen dark. For a while, the ward was quiet—just the usual sounds of pumps, curtains, and someone's distant slippers slapping against linoleum.

Then, at 3:04 a.m., it rang again.

The screen flickered to life. UNKNOWN CALLER.

The vibration rattled against the table, sharp in the still room.