She called me a janitor in scrubs. Then the Chief of Trauma walked in

I took one step back, kept my voice flat, and said, “Ma’am, your father is in a posterior wall MI. If he doesn’t get to a cath lab in the next twelve minutes, he dies in that chair.” Vivienne laughed. Actually laughed. She told me to “stop cosplaying a doctor” and shoved my shoulder hard enough that my badge clattered to the tile. That was when her father’s head tipped forward and he stopped breathing. I was on him before the sound finished. Scrubs on the floor, knees on the recliner, heel of my hand on his sternum. “Code Blue, room 7008, activate cath team, page trauma command,” I barked at the ceiling mic. Vivienne was still screaming that I wasn’t allowed to touch him when the doors blew open. Six people in white coats. Then eight. Then the Chief of Trauma, Dr. Halvorsen himself, silver-haired, sixty years old, the man whose name was on the wing. He took one look at me straddling the Senator, doing compressions, and snapped to attention like a cadet. “Colonel. What do you need.” The room went silent except for the ribs cracking under my hands. Vivienne’s mouth opened and closed. Colonel. Every nurse in the doorway straightened. My real badge, the one that had fallen off, was face-up on the tile between Vivienne’s Louboutins. Lt. Col. Elena Vance, MD. Director of Combat Cardiothoracic Surgery, on loan from Walter Reed. The woman she’d called a maid had airlifted three presidents and rebuilt a prime minister’s aorta in a tent in Kandahar. I didn’t look up. I just said, “Prep OR 2. I’m opening his chest in eight minutes. And someone please escort his daughter out of my trauma bay before she contaminates my field.” Vivienne finally bent down, trembling, and picked up the badge. Her father’s blood was already on it. She read the name three times before her knees gave.