The hallway outside OR 3 was a vacuum of white dust and the ringing, high-frequency scream of acoustic trauma. Christopher pushed through the lead-lined doors he'd staged, his vision blurred by the overpressure wave.
In the original canon, Dylan Young vanished in a cloud of pink mist. But because of Christopher's structural warning, Dylan had been five feet further down the hall, shielded by the reinforced lead barrier.
Christopher found him collapsed against the tiled wall. Dylan was alive, his EOD suit shredded like burnt paper. But as Christopher reached for his carotid pulse, his stomach dropped.
Dylan's left hand—the one that had been holding the bazooka round—was gone. It had been atomized by the initial detonation.
"Wright..." Dylan gasped, his eyes unfocused under the cracked visor. "You... you were right about the hallway."
"I'm usually right, Dylan. It's a character flaw," Christopher whispered, his hands moving with a surgical instinct that bypassed his own trembling. He whipped off his silk tie and applied a combat tourniquet to the shattered limb, his face a mask of cold, sharp efficiency.
"Grey! O'Malley! Get a stretcher and 10 units of O-negative!" Christopher roared, his voice cutting through the smoke.
Meredith emerged from OR 3, her face covered in dust, her eyes wide with a shock that suggested she'd just seen the afterlife. She stared at Dylan—maimed but breathing.
"He's alive," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Christopher... he's alive."
"He's a one-handed bomb tech now, Meredith. Try to keep the celebration to a minimum," Christopher snapped, his sarcasm finally returning like a warm, familiar poison.
He oversaw the transfer of Dylan to Trauma 1, his heart hammering with a terrifying reality. He had saved a man the script wanted dead. But the universe had taken a pound of flesh as payment.
As the ER descended into post-blast chaos, Christopher's phone vibrated. Jack.
"I'm at the hospital gate. They won't let me in. The news says the surgical floor is gone. Tell me you're intact. - J"
Christopher walked toward the shattered windows of the lobby, his hands slick with blood and soot. He saw Jack's black Mercedes idling at the checkpoint.
"I'm intact, Jack," he typed, his fingers trembling. "But the The Wright Way is getting bloodier by the minute. Come and get me."