I was packing my bag, ready to leave for the day. The sun was setting outside Ward 6's grimy windows, casting long shadows across empty beds. My first clinical day was over. I'd survived.

  Then I heard the shouting. It came from the direction of the Emergency Department. Someone was crying. No, not just crying. Wailing.

  I paused at the corridor entrance. Other students were leaving, pretending not to hear it, walking faster toward the exit. Nobody wanted to get involved. Nobody wanted to see whatever was making that sound.

  But my feet moved anyway. The Emergency Department corridor was chaos. Blood stains marked the floor in irregular patterns, still wet. Nurses were running. Doctors shouting orders and that crying—louder now, closer.

  I followed the blood. It led to a crowd gathered near the emergency exit, doctors, nurses, security guards, families of other patients. Everyone standing frozen, staring at something I couldn't see yet. I pushed through the crowd.

  A woman lay unconscious on the floor. Two nurses were kneeling beside her, checking her pulse, trying to revive her. Mental shock, probably. Beside her, a man knelt on the blood-stained tiles, clutching a small body to his chest.

  A boy, maybe four years old. His clothes were torn, his small face pale. Blood had dried in a dark line across his forehead. The man was rocking back and forth, keening like a wounded animal, pressing his face against the child's hair.

  "ALEX WAKE UP. WAKE UP. Please, for God's sake, please. PLEASE!! But the boy didn't move. His eyes were half-open, unfocused. His small hand dangled limply. The System flickered.

  The notification hovered in my vision, reducing this tragedy to a diagnosis. I looked away, but the father's cries followed me.

  A security guard stood nearby, his face grim. I approached him, my voice barely working. "What... what happened?"

  He glanced at me, just another medical student and sighed. "Accident. The boy was with his mother at the market across the street. She was talking to a vendor. The kid ran toward the road. You know how children are, before she could grab him, a private car hit him."

  "How long ago?"

  "Maybe twenty minutes. They brought him here immediately, but..." He shook his head. "Doctor declared him dead on arrival. Nothing they could do."

  DOA. Dead on arrival. Three letters that meant a family had been shattered in the time it took to buy vegetables.

  The father was still crying, still holding his son like he could will life back into him. A doctor, maybe an intern, stood nearby, hands hanging uselessly at his sides. He'd probably been the one to pronounce the death. His face was pale. This was likely his first pediatric death too.

  The mother started to stir. The nurses helped her sit up. For a moment, she looked confused, disoriented. Then her eyes found her husband and son.

  She screamed.

  It was worse than the father's crying. Worse than anything I'd heard in my life. She threw herself forward, crawling across the blood-stained floor toward her child, her hands reaching, grasping.

  "No! No! Look at my child! He's just sleeping! He'll wake up! ALEX. Look. Look at your mommy, please!”

  The nurses tried to hold her back gently, but she fought them with the strength of someone who'd lost everything. She grabbed her son's small hand, shaking it."Alex! My Son! Get up! Mummy is here!"

  The intern finally found his voice. "Madam, please. You need to stay calm—"

  "CALM?" She turned on him, "You're telling me to be calm? My son is lying here and you're telling me to be CALM? Aren't you a doctor? Do something! You’re supposed to do something. Give me my son back!"

  The intern stepped back, helpless. What do you say to that? What words exist that could matter? After all, Doctors aren’t God, they're human too.

  I stood frozen at the edge of the crowd, watching this family disintegrate in real time. Around me, other onlookers whispered, some crying, some filming with their phones. The world was ending for these two people, and everyone else was just watching.

  "Shut up," I whispered to the System. This wasn't a teaching moment. This wasn't XP.

  A senior doctor emerged from the trauma bay— Dr. Rowan Hayes, one of the Emergency Medicine attendings I'd seen during orientation. His face was haggard, his scrubs splattered with blood. He'd been the one trying to save the boy.

  He approached the parents slowly, kneeling beside them despite the blood soaking into his knees. "I'm so sorry," he said, his voice rough. "We did everything we could. But the injuries were too severe. His brain—"

  "NO!" The mother grabbed Dr. Hayes's collar. "Try again! Do CPR! Something! He's only four years old! He's supposed to start school next month!"

  Dr. Hayes gently removed her hands. "I'm sorry."

  The father's wailing intensified. The mother collapsed against him, and they held each other over their son's body, two people drowning in grief while the world continued around them.

  Security began moving the crowd back, creating space. Someone brought a stretcher. They'd have to move the body soon—protocols, procedures, paperwork. Death required documentation.

  I backed away slowly, my hands shaking. I didn't belong here. I was just a third-year student on my first day of clinical rotations. I had no experience, no wisdom to offer, nothing but useless observations and XP notifications.

  I made it to the stairwell before I had to stop, leaning against the wall, breathing hard. The crying echoed up from below, following me even here.

  "This isn't training," I said to the empty stairwell. "This is a child who died."

  I slid down the wall, sitting on the steps, my head in my hands. I thought about my mother, how she'd held my hand crossing streets when I was little. How she'd taught me to look both ways, to never run ahead. How many times had I almost run into traffic as a kid? How many times had luck or timing or her quick reflexes saved me from being that boy on the emergency room floor?

  Footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Dr. Hayes appeared, heading upward, probably to change his scrubs. He paused when he saw me sitting there. "First day?" he asked.

  I nodded. He sat down beside me, his bloody scrubs a stark reminder of what he'd just been through. "You never forget your first pediatric death. I still remember mine—seven years ago."

  I remained silent. He said simply, "But you have to learn how to separate yourself enough to keep working. Because if you don't, you'll break, and then you're useless to everyone. That's the profession you chosen, boy."

  "That seems..."

  "Cruel? Cold?" He smiled without humor. "It is but it's also necessary. You can grieve later. In the moment, you have to be the doctor. Be a coconut. Harder on the outside, softer inside."

  He stood up, groaning slightly. "Go home. Cry if you need to. Don't bottle it up." He continued up the stairs, leaving me alone again.

  I sat there for another ten minutes, listening to the hospital sounds. Life continuing despite death. Finally, I stood up and made my way out of the hospital. The evening air was cooler now, the sun fully set. Students were clustered outside the gates, laughing and talking about their first day. I walked past them without stopping.

  At the hostel, I found Murin sitting at his desk, writing notes. He looked up when I entered. "You look terrible. What happened?"

  I told him everything. He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he was quiet for a moment. Then: "My attending in Pediatrics told me something today. He said every doctor kills their first patient in their mind before they kill their first real one. We imagine the worst outcomes, play them out in our heads, try to prepare ourselves."

  "Did it help? Being prepared?"

  "No," he admitted. "Because you can't really prepare for watching someone's world end."

  Akki came in an hour later, carrying grease-stained bags from the restaurant down the street. "Food," he announced. "Because we're not surviving on cafeteria garbage tonight."

  We ate in relative silence. Akki could sense something was wrong but didn't push. Murin had probably sent him a message. We'd learned over two years of living together how to give each other space.

  That night, lying in bed, I stared at the ceiling. The System was quiet. Maybe it understood this wasn't a learning opportunity or maybe it was just software, incapable of understanding anything beyond medical data. But I couldn't stop thinking about that boy.

  And I thought about the intern who'd pronounced him dead. The way his hands had hung uselessly at his sides. In a few years, that would be me. I'd be the one telling parents their child was gone. I'd be the one signing death certificates. I'd be the one carrying that weight.

  I closed my eyes. Yeah, because that's what doctors did. They witnessed tragedy, carried it with them, and continued anyway. They had to. For all the Alexs who might still be saved.