Flora gently touched the hard plastic attached to her wrist. A timer that was counting down. Its black numbers were a constant reminder that she would eventually meet her soulmate. The law required her to have it put on her skin when she turned 16, and it's been there ever since, counting down the seconds until a fateful encounter with someone she was legally supposed to marry.

5 months, 1 week, 4 days, 2 hours, 36 seconds.

Sighing, Flora dropped her hand and looked at her computer screen. On it, she saw a message notification from Santiago, the man she knew to be her soulmate.

I can't wait to video chat tonight! Have fun at work! I love you!

Flora smiled softly, but she didn't respond. They'd had a fight again last night, and this was his attempt at fixing it. Soulmates fight, she reminded herself as she changed from her sweats into her scrubs. They aren't meant to fit perfectly together.

However, even though she'd been saying this for months to anyone who asked, she knew deep down it wasn't true.

A few hours later, Flora sat in the nurse's break room in her pale green scrubs, flipping through Florist Weekly and sipping green tea. She was immersed in a very interesting article about crawling ivy when the intercom blared on.

Attention all available nurses. A two vehicle crash has occurred and two survivors are being airlifted. Please be on standby and have surgical supplies ready.

Flora hurriedly stood and rushed to Operation Room C with two other nurses. Her heart was pounding and she felt an electricity in the air. Something either very good or very bad was going to happen in that operating room, but either way, Flora felt nothing would be the same after this.

An hour earlier:

"Ugh, again?" Sky grunted from the backseat, glaring at the road in front of him. Up ahead, he could see that traffic was at a standstill.

Brandon, driving, laughed at his friend. "It's not that bad. We have all day to finish the road trip and get home. What's the rush?"

From the passenger seat, Helia teased, "To see Bloom, of course." The two men laughed while Sky sulked. Helia, seeing the annoyance in his friend's gesture, quickly continued. "But we're happy for you, Sky. When do you two have to move in together?"

"Well, we met a month ago, so we have to move in together and get married within two weeks," Sky stated.

Brandon shook his head. "That's something I'll never understand. Why do you have to marry your soulmate within six weeks after meeting them? That seems like an awkward beginning." Brandon had met his soulmate before they were 18 (the age when you were considered an adult), meaning that they had much longer to get to know each other.

Helia nodded. "I've always thought that, too, but this is the world we live in."

Brandon and Sky both nodded. "I heard they're moving up the marriage and move in requirement. It's six weeks now, but I read they're making it two weeks for all couples who meet after the bill is passed," Brandon confessed. He and his soulmate had mutually decided to get married, no government laws breathing down their necks.

"And when did it pass?" Helia questioned, a little panicked. His timer was set for a little over 5 months, so he hoped it would be a long process.

Sky spoke up. "According to the headlines today, the courts ruled in favor of it this morning."

"Great," Helia muttered, a bit deflated. It looks as though he would be married in six months. To a woman he hasn't even met yet.

Brandon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for traffic to clear out. Once they were through, Helia was back to drawing and Sky was reminding Brandon of which exit to take off the seven lane highway.

"Take exit 152B," he stated. "It's not the next one, but the next."

Brandon got into the farthest right lane, a bit nervous. Although the traffic was at a regular speed, there were still cars all around, meaning Brandon was on high alert.

But it was too fast. Brandon saw a car veer in front of him. He tried to break and swerve, but it was too late. The cars collided.

Flora's hands were shaking as she helped the surgeon prep for emergency surgery. One of the men in the accident, a man named Brandon, had glass stuck in his arm and neck and a broken collarbone. She hadn't seen him yet, but she knew it was gruesome if he required surgery.

With a mask, hair and body cover, and gloves on, Flora followed the doctor into the operating room.

"What happened?" the doctor asked, speaking to one of the other nurses as they began carefully pulling the easier pieces of glass out of the man's right arm with tweezers.

"A car swerved in front of the one he was driving. They collided and his car flipped into that ravine beside the highway just outside the city. There were two others in the car. One sustained a concussion and some bruising while the other only has a fractured wrist and some scratches, thankfully. The other car didn't go into the ravine. A witness said they saw it drive away."

The doctor cursed bad driving, pulling a particularly nasty piece of glass out. The man's shirt was blood soaked on his right side, clinging to his muscular chest. The nurse who spoke quickly cut his shirt off, peeling it away so that they could check for any other injuries.

Flora stood there, holding the metal container the doctor was dropping glass into and staring at the man. Something in her stomach told her she knew him. Something about his dark hair seemed familiar, and yet she couldn't place it. It wasn't until she got a good look at his face that she recognized him.

It was Brandon! Her old friend Stella's soulmate. Seeing him on the table caused a pit to form in her stomach. If Brandon was here, did that mean Stella had been in the accident, as well? She hadn't seen them in over two years, and this is how their reunion goes?

She quickly glanced down at her timer, an anxious habit that had started ever since she and Santiago got together. Too sick with worry, Flora's mind didn't register the fact that her timer was now counting down from a little over three hours.