Page 1 of Alphas Like Us

PROLOGUE

4 Years Ago

FARROW KEENE

I headto the hospital’s break room in blood-splattered scrubs. As I pass the ER beds, a few patients side-eye me, but not because of the red stains. They scrutinize my dyed white hair and my visible tattoos: the inked symmetric wings on my neck, the writing on my fingers, and more. Basically, I’m far from looking like a poster boy forDoctor of theYear.

But I’m not about to slow down or glance back at these patients unless they’re coding or I’m called tohelp.

I knowbetter.

At Philadelphia General Hospital, I’m used to the constant gawking, and that shit bugs me about as much as water would ashark.

I just do my job. I save lives and watch some end. I go home, and unsurprisingly, it starts all overagain.

See, being a doctor shouldn’t feel mundane. It shouldn’t feel anything close to ordinary, but it’s all I’ve ever fucking known, and it’s getting tome.

Really getting tome.

I push through a door. 11:54 a.m.—medical interns and residents jam-pack the break room. Standing and sitting, talking loudly and eating. Pizza boxes overflow the few tables and counters where a pot works overtime to brewcoffee.

I don’t ask about the spontaneous pizza party. It’s always someone’s birthday in the hospital, and there’s alwayscake.

As hungry as I am, I need to change out of these scrubs. I’m about to reach the door to the men’s locker room but a voice stopsme.

“Keene, what’d you get?” Tristan asks from across the crowded breakroom.

I comb a hand through my bleach-white hair. Some of the residents quiet down, listening for theanswer.

Short and stocky Tristan MacNair leans on the windowsill, pepperoni pizza in hand. His sideburns touch his jaw as though he’s stuck in the 1970s, and his curious eyes flit to the bloodstains on myscrubs.

I wouldn’t say we’re close friends or even enemies, but he’s a Med-Peds intern likeme.

“Thirty-year-old male,” I tell him, “stab wound to the neck with a key and to the upper abdomen with a knife. Couldn’t intubate or ventilate, so he needed a cric. Morris did the chest tube.” Apparently this fucker attacked a female runner this morning, and she keyed his throat. He fell on his ownknife.

Karma is a beautifulbitch.

“Who did the cric?” Tristanasks.

My brows rise. “Me.”

Dr. Leah Young, a second-year resident, almost drops her pizza. “Morris let you do an emergencycricothyrotomy?”

“Yeah.” I made an incision between the cricoid and thyroid cartilage in the patient’s neck to obtain an airway. Normally my lips would upturn, but my excitement towards medicine has waned this whole month ofAugust.

I grab the doorknob, about toleave.

“Your shift ending?” Tristan asks, quickly straightening up and balling hisnapkin.

I nod. “Done for today.You?”

“Just starting.” He stuffs his mouth hurriedly with pizza. He wants in on thatpatient.

Too bad for him. “The guy was tachycardic and hypotensive,” I tell Tristan. “We just sent him to the OR forsurgery.”

“Dammit,” he groans, then slumps and swallows his food. “I always miss the goodones.”

I wouldn’t have minded trading places with Tristan, and that—that’sa fucking problem. For most of my life, I’ve wanted in on the action. Excited to learn new things, to do new things withmedicine.