Between a sacred oath and four years of cruelty, one surgeon holds her tormentor’s life in her hands.
Writer’s Prompt
The sternal retractor clicked, ratcheting open the ribcage of Dr. Warren Stephens. Hanna stared into the cavern of his chest. For four years, she had half-believed she’d find cold stone where his pulse should be.
“Diversity hire,” he’d whispered into her ear at her welcome mixer, his breath reeking of bourbon and entitlement. “You only hold a scalpel here because of your skin.”
Every flawless bypass she performed, every board accolade she earned, the department celebrated. Stephens only sneered, burying reprimands in her personnel file for phantom infractions.
Now, karma was a ruptured ascending aorta, and Stephens was bleeding out beneath her sterile gloves.
The cardiac monitor wailed in erratic bursts. The circulating nurse looked up, eyes wide above her mask. “V-fib, Dr. Johnson. Perfusion is failing.”
Hanna gripped the suction tip. The thought had arrived unbidden, whispering through the surgical scrub: Stephens dies, and the clinic breathes again. No more humiliation. No other Black woman will have her brilliance reduced to a box-check under his thumb. Nature took its course. No one could ever prove otherwise.
“Paddles?” the tech asked, voice shaking.
Stephens’s heart quivered, a wounded, dying bird. Two millimeters of steel stood between Warren Stephens and eternity. If she delayed the cross-clamp by ninety seconds, his aortic wall would shred completely, rendering any rescue impossible. A tragic, textbook complication of an already catastrophic tear.
Her fingers tensed around the forceps. Her oath screamed against her rage. The monitor’s drone dropped into an agonizing, jagged flatline.
Hanna held his life between her thumb and forefinger. She drew a breath, steadying her trembling hands, and made her choice.
How does Hanna’s story end? Choose a path and write the final lines:
- Path A: The Unyielding Oath. Hanna refuses to let bigotry dictate her integrity. She places the clamp, shocks his heart back to rhythm, and saves his life—choosing to defeat him through undeniable, towering excellence.
- Path B: The Silent Judgment. Hanna waits five agonizing beats too long, letting nature finish the work his arrogance started. She calls time of death, walks out of the OR, and reclaims her peace.
Which choice does she make? Finish the scene.
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