My Boss the Killer
Halfway there, siren screaming, the Head of Emergency Medicine told the driver to pull over. She wanted to take a picture.
I begged her to keep going. A child was bleeding out.
She gave me a look cold enough to freeze blood. “Don't think that fancy degree gives you the right to question me, Maya. In this department, my word is final.”
I couldn’t force her. All I could do was sit there, my own heart bleeding with every tick of the clock.
When she finally got back in, I thought we were leaving.
Then she told the driver to open the gas cap.
“Siphon some into the canister for me,” she said. “My personal car is running on fumes.”
01
“Lauren, the father’s called three times already. If we don’t get there soon, that little boy might…”
My voice trailed off. A cold sweat was starting to prickle my neck, but Lauren Pierce, my new boss, looked as relaxed as if she were on a Sunday drive, aiming her phone at a ridiculous, newly erected statue of a superhero.
“What’s the rush?” she snapped, her face tightening as she glanced at me. The phone, however, didn’t lower. “Maya, don't think because you waltzed in here from some Ivy League medical school that you can tell me how to do my job. Let’s get one thing straight: I run this ER.”
“Dr. Pierce, Lauren, that’s not what I meant at all,” I pleaded, my voice softer than I wanted. “It’s just… the kid can’t wait. The last call, the dad said he was unconscious. It has to be massive blood loss.”
She cut me off before I could finish.
“‘Massive blood loss’,” she mocked. “You have no idea. People like that always exaggerate. A tiny cut becomes a gaping wound.” She finally lowered her phone, but only to sneer at me. “It’s a manipulation tactic. They think if they sound hysterical, we’ll magically teleport there. They don’t get that we’re doctors, not gods.”
She shook her head, a world-weary sigh escaping her lips. “I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. You’re a rookie. You’ll learn.”
“But…”
I tried to interject, but she put up a hand, a final command. “One more word out of you, Maya, and you can find your own ride back to the hospital. You’re my subordinate on this call. Act like it.”
The words hit me like a slap. I bit my lip, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth, and slumped back into my seat in the ambulance.
Today was my first official day on the job. And this is how it was starting.
Lauren and I weren't just colleagues. We’d been in the same pre-med program years ago. My rival, she’d called herself. She competed with me over everything, from grades to lab placements.
She even competed for my husband, Alex. He was the one that got away for her; the guy she’d spent three years trying to win over in college.
After graduation, she’d used family connections to land a cushy residency at Providence General. I’d gone on to get my M.D.-Ph.D., and by a twist of fate, had been assigned to the same hospital for my fellowship. Her department.
As if on cue, my phone buzzed again. An unknown number.
“Doctor! Are you here yet? My son… Oh god, my son… I don’t think he’s breathing…”
The father’s frantic, choked sobs sent a fresh wave of ice through my veins.
From the first call, I knew the situation was dire. The boy had fallen from the Ferris wheel. Multiple lacerations, and the gushing blood suggested a major artery—likely the femoral. The park wasn’t far from the hospital, a ten-minute drive at most. But we’d been on the road for twenty-five minutes, twenty of which had been spent parked here so Lauren could get a snapshot of the new Marvel Universe exhibit for her own son.
My insides felt like a tangled knot of wires. I’d tried urging her along at least ten times, each attempt met with a glare of pure contempt.
I had no choice but to try and calm the father. “We’re almost there, sir. It’s the holiday traffic. In the meantime, find a piece of cloth—a shirt, a towel, anything—and press down hard on the bleeding point. As hard as you can. We’re coming.”
I clicked off the phone, my scrub top now damp with sweat. This child was going to die. He was going to die right here, on the phone, while we sat less than a mile away.
I didn’t think. I just moved. The side door of the ambulance slammed open as I jumped out and stalked over to Lauren, snatching the phone from her hand.
“Lauren, are you coming or not?” my voice was shaking, but it was loud. “Because if you don’t get in this vehicle right now, I swear to God I will report you for criminal negligence.”
02
I stood there, trembling, pointing a shaky finger at the ambulance. My shout had attracted attention. Passersby were starting to slow down, their curiosity piqued.
“Hey, isn’t that an ambulance?” someone muttered. “What’s a paramedic doing taking pictures?”
“Right? They blast their sirens for us to get out of the way, run red lights, and then they stop to admire the view? Talk about abusing their power.”
“Guess their emergency wasn’t so urgent after all. Next time I hear a siren, I’m not pulling over.”
The murmurs grew, a chorus of judgment aimed directly at us. Lauren’s face flushed. She hadn’t expected me to push back this hard. She wanted to put me in my place, but the growing crowd of onlookers made that impossible. To save face, she swallowed whatever venomous retort was on her tongue.
Honestly, I didn’t want to cause a scene. But when I pictured that child, bleeding out on the pavement, I knew I had no other choice. It didn’t matter if this was some power play, some attempt by Lauren to sabotage my first day. A life couldn’t be the price of her pride.
Pressured by the stares, Lauren finally stowed her phone and climbed back into the ambulance. I checked my watch. We had wasted nearly thirty minutes. But we were moving. A few more minutes and we’d be there. The boy still had a chance.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
But my relief was short-lived. Lauren, her face a mask of resentment, barked a new order.
“Rick, pull over at the corner up ahead.”
My heart seized. I didn’t know what fresh hell she had planned now. The driver, a man I now recognized as her cousin, didn’t question it. He steered the ambulance to the curb.
I looked out the window. It was a fish market.
Before I could process it, Lauren spoke to the driver, her eyes deliberately avoiding mine. “Wait here. I need to pick up some shrimp. My son wants garlic shrimp pasta for dinner tonight.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. With a child’s life hanging by a thread, she was thinking about dinner. I thought the public shaming had gotten through to her, but I was wrong. Her connections ran deep; a complaint from a rookie fellow meant nothing.
As she started to get out, I grabbed her arm. “Lauren, the boy is unconscious. His blood pressure has probably bottomed out. We don't have any more time to waste.” My voice was raw with desperation.
I tried a different tactic, appealing to the one thing I thought we might share. “Lauren, you have a son. Imagine if it was your boy lying there. Wouldn’t you be frantic?”
It was the wrong thing to say. My attempt at empathy ignited her rage.
“Shut your mouth, Maya!” she shrieked, her face contorted with fury. “First you yell at me, then you threaten me, and now you’re cursing my son? Is that it?”
“Let me tell you something,” she spat, her voice low and dangerous. “My son is perfectly fine. My husband has him at the fun park right now, having a wonderful day.”
She leaned in closer. “And you? You just want to steal the spotlight, same as you always did in school. Well, not this time. Not a chance.”
With that, she wrenched her arm free and disappeared into the market.
As I watched her go, a cold dread settled deep in my stomach. After a few seconds of stunned silence, I made a decision.
I climbed into the back of the ambulance.
“Let’s go, Rick! Now!”
It was a long shot. I didn’t have years of field experience, but I’d graduated at the top of my class. I’d run dozens of trauma simulations during my residency. I could handle this. I had to get to that child, with or without her, because if I waited any longer, he would be gone.
But the driver didn’t move. He stretched, yawning, and didn’t even bother to look back at me as he picked up his phone to scroll through videos.
And then he said two words that sealed the child’s fate.
“Not moving.”
03
The two words echoed in the small space, each one a stone thrown at my hope. They landed with a thud, shattering what little composure I had left.
I stared at the back of his head in disbelief. “What did you say? Why won’t you go? Didn’t you hear me? That child is dying!” My voice cracked, rising to a desperate shriek.
He just kept scrolling, his thumb flicking across the screen. “I heard you,” he said, his tone flat and bored. “But the department head didn’t give the order. I’m not moving this vehicle.” He finally glanced at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes cold. “Something goes wrong, who’s responsible? Not me.”
A fragmented conversation I’d overheard in the breakroom earlier that morning clicked into place. Two nurses gossiping. The new driver, Rick? That’s Lauren’s cousin… Of course. He wasn’t just an employee; he was family. He would never defy her.
I wiped a bead of sweat from my temple. My chest felt tight, like it was packed with cotton, thick and suffocating.
My phone rang again.
“Doctor! He’s gone cold… My whole shirt is red, it’s all blood… We have ten minutes, maybe. Please…” The man’s voice dissolved into ragged, desperate sobs.
Each gasp was a knife twisting in my gut. I paced the small confines of the ambulance, a caged animal, wishing I could sprout wings and fly there myself. I tried to calm him down again, walking him through the basic steps of applying pressure, my own voice trembling.
After I hung up, my first instinct was to call the hospital dispatch, to beg them to send another ambulance. Maybe there was still time.
Just as I raised my phone, the side door slammed open.
Lauren was back.
For a split second, I saw a savior. I rushed toward her, the words spilling out of me in a torrent. “Lauren, the situation is critical, the father said…”
But she wasn’t listening. Her attention was on the plastic bag in her hand. A small, satisfied smile played on her lips as she passed the shrimp to Rick, watching intently as he placed it carefully on the passenger seat. Only when her precious cargo was secure did she deign to look at me.
“Dr. Pierce, the child is in critical condition. Based on the father’s description, it’s almost certainly a femoral artery bleed. He’s likely in hypovolemic shock. We have ten minutes, tops.” I was on the verge of tears.
To my horror, Lauren just chuckled. A small, condescending puff of air.
“Maya, you haven’t changed a bit,” she said, patting my shoulder with mock sympathy. “Still so desperate to be the hero.”
She gave me a look a seasoned general might give a terrified new recruit. “I told you, people exaggerate. Especially parents.”
“No,” I said, my voice firm. “I don’t think this is an exaggeration. I think the reality is probably much worse.”
Lauren just shook her head, a placid, infuriating calm on her face. “Well, if it is, then that’s just fate, isn’t it?” she said breezily. “You know what they say: life and death are preordained. If he doesn’t make it, I guess it was just his time to go. Who are we to argue with that?”
I stared at her, my jaw slack with disbelief. The words, coming from the Head of Emergency Medicine, were so monstrous, so utterly devoid of humanity, that my blood ran cold. The sweat on my back felt like ice.
But this wasn't the time to argue philosophy. The ambulance engine finally roared to life. A tiny spark of hope rekindled within me.
We were close. Five minutes, maybe less. I watched the seconds tick by on my watch, each one a lifetime. The iconic silhouette of the MegaWorld Fun Park’s roller coasters appeared in the distance. My heart hammered against my ribs.
I closed my eyes, offering a silent prayer. Hang on, little boy. Please, just hang on. We’re here.
But just as hope began to bloom, the ambulance slowed.
And then, it stopped moving altogether.
04
“Rick, what’s going on? Why did we stop?”
“Are you blind?” he grunted. “It’s a traffic jam.”
I looked up and saw it. Of course. Memorial Day weekend. The main road to the amusement park was a parking lot. A solid, unmoving river of cars stretched out before us.
I threw the door open and peered ahead. We were so close. I could see the main gate.
Thinking of the child inside, waiting, bleeding, I turned to Lauren. “Dr. Pierce, he’s just up ahead. We can’t drive through this, but we can walk. Let’s get the gurney and…”
Before I could finish, Lauren ignored me completely and called Rick out of the driver’s seat.
And then, she said the words that shattered my entire understanding of medical ethics, of human decency itself.
“Rick, my car is on empty. Grab the canister. Since we’re stuck here anyway, let’s use the time to siphon some gas. I need to fill up when I get home.”
My hand, which had been gesturing toward the park, froze in mid-air. My whole body went rigid. I couldn’t process it. At this moment, with a child’s life extinguishing just a few hundred yards away, Lauren Pierce was worried about stealing gas from the hospital.
Her mind wasn’t on her patient. It was on herself. It had always been on herself. She didn’t see the small life hanging in the balance. She didn’t see the family on the verge of being destroyed.
A tremor of pure rage shot through me. I stood there, paralyzed by it.
Rick, ever the loyal cousin, obediently retrieved a plastic canister from a storage compartment. From the looks of it, this wasn't the first time it had been used for this purpose.
“Lauren! What the hell are you doing?” I finally found my voice. “We have wasted forty minutes! That child has no more time! If he dies, his parents… how will they go on?”
I was losing it, screaming at her, wanting to physically drag her toward the park entrance. But she stood her ground, immovable, a smirk playing on her lips as if she were enjoying my breakdown.
Finally, I gave up on her. I turned back to the ambulance, deciding to go alone. I grabbed the trauma kit and the oxygen tank.
The moment my fingers closed around the kit’s handle, a shadow fell over me. The world exploded in a flash of white-hot pain as something heavy slammed into my forehead. A warm, sticky liquid began to pour down my face.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Lauren’s voice was a venomous hiss. “Always have to be the star. The hero. You are the most pathetic, attention-seeking bitch I have ever met.”
Before I could react, another crushing blow landed on my back. The pain was sickening, my legs turned to water.
The world tilted, spinning into a dizzying vortex of black. As I fell, my fading vision caught a figure running toward us from the direction of the park.
He was shouting, his voice a distant, desperate cry. “Help! Doctor! Please, help my son!”
It was the father.
He was here.
And then, everything went dark.
…
When I came to, my head was throbbing with a dull, heavy ache. I was lying on the hot asphalt of the road. The dried blood on my face had formed a tight, cracking mask. A sharp pain radiated from my lower back.
The street was no longer clogged. Cars moved in an orderly flow, the earlier chaos vanished as if it had been a dream.
I struggled to my feet, my head swimming. A jolt, like an electric shock, shot through me. The boy. The child who needed me.
Was that man his father? Had they found him? Was the boy okay?
A thousand questions flooded my mind. My eyes darted around frantically, searching.
And then a horrifying realization dawned on me.
The ambulance, which should have been parked right beside me, was gone.
05
Had they left me here?
Panic seized me. I fumbled for my watch, my hands shaking. The display showed that I’d only been unconscious for three minutes.
Three minutes. For the child on the brink of death, each of those one hundred and eighty seconds was an eternity. If the father had found Lauren and they had gone to help, there was still hope. But if not…
My mind spiraled. I was a desperate, frantic mess, scanning the street for any sign of the vehicle. I ran to a man walking by, grabbing his arm. My voice trembled. “Please, did you see an ambulance? Where did it go? There’s a child, he’s badly hurt, we have to find him!”
The man recoiled, pulling his arm away as if I were diseased. “How should I know?” he snapped, glaring at me. “You’re the paramedic. You can’t even keep track of your own vehicle?”
Ignoring his scorn, I stumbled toward another pedestrian. “Ma’am, please, the ambulance… a little boy’s life is at stake!” She just gave me a wide-eyed look and hurried away.
Sweat poured down my face, mingling with the blood. My heart felt like a fist clenched tight in my chest. I weaved through the crowd, a ghost in a blood-stained uniform.
Finally, a street vendor pointed down a side road. “Saw it pull in there a minute ago.”
I ran. I ran with everything I had left, my only thought that the vehicle held the supplies, the equipment, the last chance that boy had.
I rounded the corner, gasping for breath, and saw it. The ambulance. Through the back window, I could see Lauren’s form, bent over a small figure.
A wave of relief washed over me, so powerful it almost buckled my knees. “Thank God,” I whispered. “They found him.”
But as I got closer, the relief curdled into confusion, then into cold, hard dread.
The boy Lauren was attending to… he had a few scrapes on his knees, maybe a bump on his head. He was crying, but he wasn’t dying. There wasn’t a drop of blood on him that wasn’t his own. This wasn’t the child from the fall.
Overhearing their conversation, the truth hit me with the force of a physical blow. This was the son of Dr. Coleman, the Deputy Chief of Medicine at our hospital.
I froze, the world narrowing to a single point of nauseating clarity. The hope that had flared just moments before was extinguished, leaving nothing but ash. Anger, despair, a profound sense of helplessness—it all crashed over me at once.
I stood there, my mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. I had thought, for a moment, that I had misjudged her. That her humanity had finally won out. But this… this was worse than anything I could have imagined.
Somewhere, not far from here, a little boy was dying, and she was putting a cartoon band-aid on a VIP’s son.
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I wrenched open the ambulance door.
“Lauren!” I yelled, my voice raw. “There is a child over there who is bleeding to death! We’ve been here for almost an hour! He’s not going to make it!”
Without looking up, she waved a dismissive hand. “Can’t you see I’m busy? This is Dr. Coleman’s son. If something happens to him, do you want to be the one to explain it?”
“His life is a life, too!” I screamed, my control shattering. “This is all because of you! He could have been saved by now!”
Lauren shot me a venomous glare. “Don’t interfere, Maya. If the Chief gets angry, we’ll both be out of a job.”
A woman who looked like the boy’s nanny chimed in. “Exactly. We need to take care of the child right in front of us.”
I looked from their faces to the scraped knee, and I wanted to tear my hair out. The crowd that had gathered, drawn by the commotion, began to murmur. They didn’t know the context; they just saw a hysterical doctor and a calm one.
“What’s wrong with her? She’s a doctor, she should be helping.”
“Look, she doesn’t want to treat the kid just because it’s not a big injury. What kind of person is that?”
“Someone should get her name. Report her to the hospital.”
Phones came out. Cameras were pointed at me. I was being judged, condemned by a jury of strangers who had no idea what was happening. I was dizzy with anger and helplessness, tears stinging my eyes. But I couldn’t back down. If I gave up now, the boy had no one.
“Lauren, I’m not asking you again,” I said, my voice low and shaking with fury. “Either we go to that child right now, or I’m calling the police. And when this blows up, we’re all going down with it.”
06
A flicker of panic crossed Lauren’s face. She knew I wasn’t bluffing. But just as she seemed to waver, a fresh wave of cars surged down the street, locking us in place. The holiday gridlock had returned with a vengeance. The ambulance was trapped.
Lauren’s confidence instantly returned. “Well, look at that,” she said with a triumphant sneer. “Even if I wanted to go, I couldn’t. Now will you please shut up? Your whining is giving me a headache.”
I stared through the windshield at the park entrance, less than five hundred yards away. It felt like it was on another planet. I could almost feel the boy’s life slipping away, and a wave of despair and guilt washed over me.
Just then, a car door slammed nearby. Dr. Coleman, the Deputy Chief himself, had arrived. His eyes scanned the scene and landed on me, on the blood caked on my forehead.
“Warren,” he said, his brow furrowed. “What happened to your head?”
I instinctively touched the tender wound, my throat tight. “I… I fell, sir. But Dr. Coleman, I have an urgent situation to report…”
Before I could continue, Lauren’s voice cut through the air, sharp and false. “That’s right! Dr. Coleman, you won’t believe it. She insisted on stopping to buy groceries on the way here, said she needed to make soup for her mother in the hospital. Then she tripped and cracked her head open. Utterly unprofessional!”
She jabbed a finger into my back, her nail digging into my skin through my uniform. I spun around, met by the triumphant malice in her eyes.
People in the crowd started whispering again.
“So selfish. Thinking about her own family at a time like this…”
“Totally irresponsible.”
I gripped the handle of the trauma kit, my knuckles turning white. “Dr. Pierce, you were the one who insisted we treat your son’s scraped knee first, while the other child has been waiting for forty-five minutes!”
“And what if he has?” Lauren suddenly snatched the clipboard with the dispatch report from my hands and slapped it against my chest. She leaned in, her voice a venomous whisper. “Dr. Coleman could have us both fired with one phone call. Is that what you want?” She lowered her voice even more. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing, trying to climb the ladder by impressing the brass. It’s pathetic.”
“That’s enough!” Dr. Coleman’s voice boomed. He looked at me, his expression stern. “Warren, where is this other injured child you mentioned?”
I fumbled for my phone. “He’s inside the park, sir, near the Ferris wheel. His father called, he said he fell and now he’s…”
“He’s fine now!” Lauren snatched my phone out of my hand.
“That’s not true!” I tried to grab it back, but she shoved me away.
“Sir,” Lauren said, her voice a model of calm professionalism. “I already checked on that child myself. The parents took him home. It was a false alarm.”
She said it with such conviction, but I knew she was lying through her teeth, desperate to cover her tracks.
Suddenly, a voice cut through the crowd. “I saw him! I saw the kid! His insides were… they were coming out!”
It was the delivery guy from earlier, the one who had pointed me toward the ambulance. He was clutching his helmet, his hand shaking.
Lauren scoffed. “Oh, and who’s this? Some random busybody?” She raised an eyebrow, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “What’s your connection to Maya here? Is this some kind of scam to shake us down for money?”
That was it. To be slandered, to be publicly humiliated while a child was dying… I snapped. I lunged forward and grabbed the front of her white coat. “Lauren! We are going over there. Now. It will take two minutes!” I turned to the Deputy Chief. “Sir, once we’re there, you’ll see the truth!”
I grabbed the trauma kit and tried to pull her with me.
The slap was so hard my ears rang. I tasted blood in my mouth. “A thief who steals medical supplies has some nerve,” she hissed.
The next thing I knew, she had stomped on the latch of the trauma kit I’d dropped, popping it open. “You see, Dr. Coleman? She’s lying about everything. Her real goal was to steal these imported hemostats!”
“You… you are insane!” A hot, coppery rage filled my throat.
“You tried to steal medication earlier, Maya,” she said loudly for the benefit of the crowd. “I stopped you then, but I guess you just can’t help yourself.”
As the onlookers gasped, I felt the buttons of my uniform pop as she yanked on my coat. At that exact moment, my phone, still in my pocket, began to vibrate violently. It was the father.
With trembling hands, I answered it. The man’s scream, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony, tore through the speaker.
“Doctor! Help my son! He… he’s not moving! His body… it’s getting cold!”
Lauren’s eyes widened. She snatched the phone from my hand. “Sir, please calm down…”
She spoke only a few words before her own voice died in her throat. Her pupils dilated, her face draining of all color. The hand holding the phone began to tremble violently.
She was listening to the faint, gasping sounds from the other end, and a flicker of something incomprehensible crossed her face.
“That voice…” she muttered to herself, her own voice barely a whisper. “It sounds so much like my husband…”
She shook her head, as if to clear it. “No, it couldn’t be…”
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