There was no excuse for my lack of reason and morals. Never would I thought that I'd be a homewrecker. I didn't like what I was becoming because of Zachary Goode. I was breaking every rule I set for myself, slowly forgetting who I was. It was as if he was poison to my system. Only I didn't die. He was poison that kept me alive.

. . . . .

I held my chin up high and my back straight as I strolled through the hallway of Gallagher Hospital with a stethoscope hung around my neck. My immaculate white coat shone brightly under the lights of the hallway. Suddenly, I was living the dream. I had the coat, the stethoscope and the MD after my name. After countless nights of sleeplessness and mental and emotional torment, I finally got what I'd always wanted ever since I was in Kindergarten.

"Dr. Morgan," Macey called out to me in her scrubs. "They need you at the E.R."

I nodded as I ran to the fire escape stairs. No, I wasn't that vital to the survival of the patients in the emergency room. I hauled my ass to the E.R. because my attending physician needed me. It was as urgent as when someone actually needed urgent medical attention. You could never be paged by an attending and just stroll your way to them. It was always urgent. We needed to drop whatever we were doing and run.

"Great, you're here." Dr. Dabney let out a sigh of relief when she saw me. "I need you to get the clear as many patients as you can. There's been a traffic collision and we'll be swamped in a few minutes. Triage, triage, triage. We'll need all the room we can get."

Getting patients' history was my breakfast, lunch and dinner. I loved listening to my patients narrate their backstory to their illnesses but since I needed all the time I could get, I couldn't keep the conversation going. I was straight to the point, got the basics and made sure I wasn't overdischarging patients.

"I keep on telling her to stop it with the sweets, she won't listen." A mother held her six year-old daughter's hand. The little girl held a huge lollipop in her hand as I listened to her lungs Her wheezing was audible even without a stethoscope.

"Is she currently taking any medications for her asthma?" I asked.

"Just her inhaler." Her mother replied, taking away the lollipop from her daughter. She frowned and held on to it even tighter.

"Her asthma is very poorly controlled. I will refer you to a pediatric pulmonologist but for now, we'll have to admit her." I said, smiling at the girl so she wouldn't feel scared. To my surprise, she didn't care at all.

The mother shook her head in frustration when the daughter started licking on the lollipop again. It looked like she hadn't gone to sleep for days judging from the bags under her eyes. Her hair was greasy and her clothes weren't ironed.

"Should we make her stop eating the candy now?" She asked.

"It's fine ma'am. The small lollipop won't really cause any more problems. If anything, I think it helps her calm down." I smiled. Judging by the difficulty of breathing her daughter was experiencing, I was surprised the little girl was still so calm. "Do you have anyone with you right now?"

She shook her head. "It's just me. I'll have to call my sister."

I bid goodbye to the little girl after her oxygen mask was given. She'd started gasping for air when her mother took away the lollipop. She was put on a wheelchair and sent to the pediatric ward. One patient down.

"Cammie, patient number seven wants you." Bex walked up to me with a blank chart.

It was odd because it was an E.R., not a massage spa where you could request for the one who would service you. Nevertheless, I grabbed the chart without looking and headed for E.R. Ward #7. I heard the sirens from the ambulance just outside the hospital and I felt a smile form in my face.

It was evil of me to be excited about the soon-to-be-swamped E.R. but it had been a long time since I last had that rush. I felt like the threshold of my adrenaline rush kept on going up over time, nothing excited me anymore. I remembered the high of performing my first intubation. The overwhelmingly satisfying feeling of delivering a baby into the world. That exhilarating first cry of a baby and the heartwarming smile of a mother after hearing it. I remembered all my firsts.

I pulled the drapes and there he was. "Hello, Doc."