Chapter 1: Awakening
Dr. Vaughn woke up with a start. Squinting his eyes, he looked out the bedroom window to find that the sun had not yet risen. As usual, he had awoken ahead of his alarm clock. The faint pink glow of a new morning gently illuminated the room as he searched his side table for the alarm. Again the one thing he needed most had eluded him – sleep. However, his sleep deprivation was not caused by his old mattress this time. He had had that dream again, the one he could never quite rid himself of. After finding the alarm clock, he sat at the side of his bed to think things over. Markus wasn't a credulous fellow, though he did hold several superstitions. One of which he had devoted much thought to when he had been transferred to Alaska, years ago. He believed that dreams had premonitory power and that if not heeded, could spell misfortune and disaster. He hoped to God that wasn't true.
The dream always started the same way – he was standing over an operating table with a patient in front of him. He was back at Concordia, where he had worked for many years. Elena would hand him the bottle of iodophor antiseptic to sterilize the incision area, and he would wipe the area down as he always did. However, when he picked up the scalpel to make an incision, he stopped. His whole being seemed to tremble. His body filled with fear, which was something a man like Markus was not accustomed to. Elena frowned under her sterile mask and asked if he was alright, but he'd just shake his head, as if to dissipate the curtain of fear that had been pulled around the operating table. As he lowered the scalpel to meet with the flesh of his patient, he froze again, as if gripped by the claws of fear itself. Suddenly, the patient flat-lined, and Elena yelled to him to retrieve the paddles. But he just stood there. With great pain he watched as a life slipped away before his eyes, as if there was nothing he could do. As he began to tear, a voice whispered to him, "Markus, is this really all you're capable of?" He closed his eyes and lifted his hand. With the vision of a five pointed start in his head, he quickly traced it in mid air. Everything stopped as the world faded to gray.
Elena blinks, and Dr. Vaughn collapses. Elena looks down at the patient as she prepares to defibrillate her. To her surprise, her eyes meet with stitches across a small incision along the woman's side. The operation had already been completed. Elena smiles and begins to cry, for she knew that the patient would pull through. Just as all seems well, the patient groans as her head goes limp. Elena lurches back with a shrill gasp. The patient's eyes glaze over as blood pours from her mouth.
Dr. Vaughn opens his eyes to a pool of blood next to him. The woman had died. Even though he had done everything he could, he hadn't been able to save the person that meant most to him…
Dr. Vaughn looked at his alarm clock. It was 5:30 in the morning. Work didn't start until seven, so he had a fair amount of time to kill. He got up and tossed his alarm clock back on his table. It was just a dream after all, wasn't it? He walked over to his dresser and removed his regular clothes from a deep drawer – a white and brown stripped button-down shirt, a brown tie, a black pair of formal pants, and a black leather belt. As he got dressed, he looked thoughtfully out the window at the rising sun. It was going to be a busy week, he could feel it.