So sorry about the wait on this! School and work and such got in the way. Anyway, last time I updated it didn't seem to work quite right which is why I posted the chapter twice. Sorry about that. Here's the next one and I hope to have another posted tomorrow or Monday night. Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

Tris

I'm in the middle of processing an old man's information for the procedure he just completed, a one stop session to quickly eradicate the cluster of cancerous cells he'd developed, when the announcement goes off on the overhead.

"Critical gunshot wound to OR." The woman's voice spreads throughout every crevice of the hospital, even though only the OR needs to know anything about it. The announcement rattles me though. Reminds me of the stories I've been told. Wiped out by guns and fires and violence and nuclear weapons. No one left. No one but you. How are you here?

The old man is smiling kindly and I try my best to smile back. I was focusing on something. I need to enter what procedure he received. Skin graft for a burn? No, no, wrong. Was he beaten? I can see him on the ground, blood pouring from his nose as a younger man stands over him, kicking him relentlessly in the face. "He's going to die!" I yell out desperately as I jump from my seat to defend him. Someone so old should not be treated so cruelly.

But he's only sitting there, staring quizzically at me. "Are you alright, miss?" he asks, his voice strained like someone who has done too much talking in his lifetime.

I need to dial her number, the one for the lady with the cracked pink lips and annoying nicknames, but suddenly I can't remember my name let alone her phone number. So instead I look at the old man and shake my head slowly, "No."

He stands up, wobbly and weak and like he might just die at any moment. But he comes over to me and takes me by the shoulders and sits me down in my chair again. That's right, two chairs and a desk with a computer and printer hidden underneath. "I'm sorry," I breathe out as he releases my shoulders once I'm sitting firmly in my seat.

"Quite alright," he says kindly. "Same thing used to happen to my wife. She always just needed someone to anchor her back here on earth."

I nod because it seems right and then he sits back down and waits patiently for me. I ask him three times why he was here today before I can finally process it and enter it in right and by the time he's left Pink Lips has called me four times because she saw I was behind so she's taking my patients and why don't I go ahead home.

I say I will but instead I just shut my office door and lay on the ground. I don't remember where my home is.

Tobias

I'm no stranger to pain, but I hardly welcome it warmly. As such, waking up proves to be an unpleasant experience as I go to move my left arm only to be crippled with agony. Damn hospital, shouldn't they at least put me on pain medication.

Harsh lights greet me as I open my eyes. My room is hardly even that, more like a square enclosure of curtains with a bed. There are noises all around me, crying infants and chatting adults as well as clicking heels and the beeping of machines. It's all disorienting, more information than I can take in all at once.

A nurse walks into the room with seemingly little interest in me. "Am I free to leave?" I ask as I pull myself into a sitting position and swing my legs over the side of the bed, all with moving my left arm as little as possible. It still hurts like a bitch though. I don't have any shirt on but that's hardly a concern right now. I'd just like to find my way back to my hotel room although I'm not sure how I'll do that either.

"Calm down there," she says and pats my good shoulder. "We haven't even bandaged it properly yet."

I sigh but allow her to do as she pleases. I try not be as angry as I probably come across but it doesn't really work. For someone working in personal relations I really ought to be a bit friendlier. In her defence her work is quick and clean and she shoots a dose of something that nearly eradicates my pain in after she's finished. "Now?" I ask again.

She smiles slightly and shakes her head slowly back and forth to herself as she writes something on a clipboard. "Take these as needed for pain, no more than two a day and don't drive."

"Thanks," I say shoving my feet in my shoes on the other side of the room and putting on my blood stained sweatshirt.

"Sorry, had to cut your T-shirt but the zip up was saved at least." I nod in acknowledgement, ready to walk out.

"Hold on," she stops me again, now my irritation is climbing a bit. "Stop by the discharge office on the way out, we'll need your information."

"Got it," I answer and turn to leave before anymore can be said. I follow the halls of the hectic hospital, a little astounded by the amount of people in here. In Dauntless the injured were frequent and many. Yet our care wards never looked even remotely like this. People are crammed in every open space, young, old, and everywhere in between. Frantic looking teenagers and weakened elderly litter every hall I turn down. I wonder just what is going on in this city that so many of its citizens have turned to the safety of the hospital.

I soon regret not waiting for directions to this office. Everything looks the same after a few turns. Only thing that changes are the people. Soon they all blend from one face to the next as well. I'm about to leave without doing whatever I was meant to when I find myself directly in front of a very large sign that reads "Discharge Office."

Well, guess the aimless wandering worked. The door's shut so I knock three times, and wait…and wait. After at least a minute of waiting I'm about ready to turn and leave again, already turning to search for the exit, when I hear the door swing open.

"Yes?" I hear the voice behind me say. She sounds familiar, soft, but with an edge, and a hint of hesitancy.

I turn, almost knocking myself off balance and reaching out with my left arm without thinking to grab the door frame. I let out a grunt of pain in doing so and squeeze my eyes shut. "Shit," I say as I right myself and try to relax my muscle back to the near painless state it was in moments ago. "Sorry," I start. "I was just caught off…guard." I whisper as my eyes finally land on the girl's face. "Tris."