Arrest my heart
**Arrest My Heart**
**Prologue**
Bellevue Hospital Center, Manhattan
June 30, 2025 – 23:47
The city is already sweating when the new interns arrive.
They come in ones and twos through the ambulance bay doors, white coats still creased from the package, eyes too bright for what’s coming. Some carry Starbucks like it will save them. Some clutch family photos they’ll never have time to look at again. One has vomit on his shoes from the subway ride over; he doesn’t know it yet, but that smell will become home.
Up on the eighth floor, in the surgical lounge that smells of burnt coffee and old blood, the chiefs and attendings watch the security feed like it’s pay-per-view.
“Look at them,” Dr. Matteo Rossi mutters, arms folded, leaning against the window. “Fresh meat. They still think sleep is a human right.”
Beside him, Dr. Sebastian Wolfe doesn’t even glance at the screen. He’s reading a head CT on his tablet, the glow turning his cheekbones sharp enough to cut. “They’ll learn,” he says, voice clipped British and cold. “Or they won’t. Darwin works overtime here.”
Across the room, Dr. Jamal Carter just laughs, low and rough. “Y’all are dramatic. They’re babies. Give ’em twelve hours.”
“Twelve?” Matteo snorts. “I give the pretty Korean one six before he cries.”
Sebastian finally looks up. “You’re taking bets already?”
“Always.”
They don’t know the pretty Korean one is standing right outside the door, listening.
Leo Kang presses his spine to the wall, heart hammering so hard he swears the attendings can hear it through the concrete. He’s still wearing the same clothes he wore to graduation twenty-four hours ago. His mother cried when she pinned the short white coat on him. His father told him not to come home if he washed out.
He closes his eyes, breathes through the panic, and steps inside.
Conversation dies.
Three predators in human skin turn to look at him at once.
Matteo’s gaze drags down Leo’s body like he’s already cataloguing weaknesses. Sebastian’s is clinical, dissecting. Jamal’s is the only one that feels almost kind (almost).
Leo lifts his chin. “Dr. Rossi? I’m Dr. Kang. PGY-1. Reporting for trauma call at midnight.”
Matteo’s smile is slow, sharp, beautiful. “Right on time, intern. Tell me something, Kang. You ever held a retractor while someone bled out on your shoes?”
“No, sir.”
“You will tonight.”
Somewhere downstairs, the trauma pager explodes to life:
ETA 4 minutes. GSW × 3 to chest and abdomen. Hypotensive. Crashing.
Jamal claps once, huge hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Welcome to Bellevue, baby doc. Try not to faint until after we crack the chest.”
Leo swallows. The lounge lights feel too bright, the air too thin.
He thinks: This is the last night I’ll ever be innocent.
Then the doors slam open and the war begins.
July 1st is twelve minutes away.
And none of them (interns, residents, or gods) will make it out unchanged.
NOTE:
This is a hospital bl romance filled with educative surgeries
The struggle resident face before they become surgeries