Chapter One: In the Moonlight

High heels clicked rapidly down a tiled hallway, a white jacket swaying with each step of its wearer. Her arms were moving her hair up into a bun as she hurried down the hall, her eyes focusing in the direction she was headed. Of course she was still tired, she had only been asleep for about three hours before the buzzer downstairs had been rung, and she had about four minutes to get ready as she heard an orderly approach her door. She was used to late night visits given her work field. She could hear the shouting down the hall, and she picked up her pace a bit more.

As she turned the corner, a few of her nurses were going to work getting vitals going on the patient. She could smell metal in the air, and she knew this was going to be a long night. She washed her hands meticulously in the basin before placing on sterile gloves. "What do we have?"

She approached the table as a man writhed about, his arms holding his abdomen. He was saying something or other about his mother and how he was sorry for what he had done in his life. An all too familiar voice spoke calmly over the shouting. "He got clipped by Maroni's men." Her bright green orbs looked up towards him. Falcone. She nodded at him, understanding.

"Do you know what type of gun? That way I know more about what I am looking for?" Falcone simply shrugged and she went straight to work. This man was in bad shape just from her initial observations. She medicated him to make him go to sleep before she began her work. She and her nurses moved as a single machine. This was a routine event in her practice. She worked carefully and managed to cease much of the bleeding, but she had some concerns for him. "He is going to be paralyzed from the waist down..." She muttered aloud to Falcone. He sat not far from the table, his eyes watching the work being done on his man.

Falcone clicked his tongue aloud a very heavy sigh escaped through his lips. "That's a damn shame. He's a good kid." Her eyes searched for some hope in his wounds, however she knew there wasn't much she could do. She stopped working and gave him another shot of medication. "What the hell are you doing?" He suddenly snapped as he rose to his feet.

The young doctor swallowed before looking up into the older man's eyes. "There's nothing more I can do. The damage he suffered is going to kill him, so I was making sure that he died in his sleep. Otherwise he would wake into pain and die slowly…" Her hands wrung in front of her "I doubt he'll last more than an hour." She removed her gloves and disposed of them before placing a comforting hand upon Falcone's shoulder. "There was nothing you could do either. Even the hospital wouldn't have been able to keep him alive."

Falcone was angry, yes, but not at her. However he looked into her eyes and growled. "You swear on YOUR life?"

"Sir, you know I would never bullshit you or any other patient I have. If there isn't anything I can do, then I am not going to waste mine nor your time trying." She removed her soiled jacket and placed it into one of the bins. "I have to report still."

Falcone nodded. He knew that she would have to do that as part of her job. He took his jacket from the chair he sat upon before reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a lump of money and handed it carefully to the young doctor. "Hestia, have a goodnight." He tipped his hat politely towards her before exiting.

Once she heard the car door shut outside she walked over to the phone upon the wall just outside of the room. She waited for someone to answer. "Hello? Yes, my name is Doctor Hestia Zaqar and I run the Rising Hearts Treatment Facility. Yes. I had a patient come in with gunshot wounds. He will die of his wounds, so I will need a homicide detective at your earliest convenience. Of course. I will leave him as he is. He is currently sedated. Thank you, you have a goodnight."

She hung up the phone and rested her head against the wall. Even though it only felt like ten minutes since she had started, the clock upon the wall corrected her. She had been in the operating wing for about three hours, and her eyes finally started burning from lack of sleep. She was going to be up a few more hours waiting for the GCPD to send out an officer, and she estimated that she would be able to go back to sleep about seven in the morning. She walked over to check her schedule to see what time she had to wake up for appointments. Luckily, she didn't have any appointments until three in the afternoon. She walked back into the operating wing. The man was going through labored breathing now. She moved to his side and gently checked his pulse. He was reaching the part she hated. She laced her fingers into his and held his hand as his breathing became more hallow.

She waited until the breathing ceased, and a few moments after that she checked his pulse. She declared his time of death and wrote it down in his chart. She walked back over to the basin and washed her hands again. It was so senseless for many of her patients to die, but she knew that her hometown would probably never outgrow these senseless acts of violence. Her heels clicked upon the tile as she headed towards the breakroom to make herself a cup of coffee. She some of her hair had become loose from the whole ordeal, so she twisted the ember strands back into a tighter bun while the coffee brewed slowly before her. As the coffee bubbled in the machine in front of her, her concentration drifted off.

She sat shivering in a corner, the blood soaking into her clothes as her hands wrung in her lap. Her eyes looked towards the three bodies before her. Of course there were more victims than just the three she focused on, but these three faces tore through her mind much like the bullets that had pierced through theirs. Her breathing was ragged as she crawled towards them, her knees scrapping through a mixture of blood, water, and mud. She had just returned to Gotham after graduating medical school, and while she knew crime rates were still high, she didn't realize exactly how deadly they had become.

She mumbled to herself as she began to assess bodies around her. She couldn't look at the three faces. Her father. Her mother. Her fiancé. Instead she focused on those that she knew still had a chance. She removed her half jacket and began a tourniquet on one of the men closest to her. She didn't understand how this happened, they were all just eating lunch outside a popular Gotham restaurant. She found a man cowering under a table not too far from her. He was crying and blubbering about something. She crawled towards him and began to inspect him, and she could tell he was wounded, but he was so distraught that she couldn't tell from where.

"Please, calm down. My name is Hestia, I am a doctor. What is your name?" She asked as she tried to calm him down. He shook in her grasp, but he made eye contact with her.

"Os—Oswald." He finally sputtered out. She gently touched his forehead.

She shushed him carefully as she began to compose herself and finally found the source of his pain. He had been grazed by two bullets, but he was going to be fine. "You are going to be fine Oswald, okay? They'll just give you a few stitches and you will be fine. But you need to calm down, okay?" He simply nodded as ambulances and police officers began to arrive.

"Dr. Zaqar?"