Dr. Michael Chen's hands don't shake during surgery.
Not when he's threading a catheter through a blocked coronary artery. Not when the monitor starts beeping that irregular rhythm. Not when one wrong move could end a life on the table.
Steady. Precise. Calm.
But at 3 AM, lying in bed, his hands ball into fists.
The sheet wrinkles in his grip. His jaw clenches so hard his teeth ache.
Twenty-three years. Over 4,000 cardiac catheterizations.
The cases that wake him aren't the emergencies. Not the ones wheeled in unconscious. Code blue. Cardiac arrest. Those, he can handle.
It's the other ones.
The men who walked out of his office six months ago. Blood pressure 145/92. Early 50s. Late 50s. Family history typed in neat rows on their charts.
The color drains from their cheeks when Chen mentions medication. Their pupils dilate. Hands stop halfway to their mouths. Frozen.
Then the voice. Always flat. Emotionless. The kind of dead tone that means they've already given up.
"My father was on those for fifteen years."
Chen's patient—Thomas, age 57—stares at the wall behind Chen's head. Not making eye contact. Hands folded tight in his lap.
"Dizzy all the time. Couldn't walk to the mailbox without his legs giving out. That cough—Jesus, that cough. Every night. For years."
Thomas's throat works. He swallows hard.
"He still died of a heart attack at 62."
Chen knows that look.
He's seen it in mirrors.
His own father. Age 64. Massive coronary. Chen got the call at 2:34 PM. Made the twenty-minute drive in twelve. Burst through the emergency room doors.
Too late.
His father was already gone.
Fifteen years of Lisinopril. Fifteen years watching the man who taught Chen to play baseball become someone who couldn't stand up without the room spinning.
The cough that woke the house every night. The exhaustion so deep his father would fall asleep in his chair at 6 PM. The swollen ankles that made his feet look like balloons.
His father pushing food around his plate, too tired to eat. Stopping halfway up the stairs to catch his breath. Sitting in his workshop staring at tools he no longer had energy to use.
The medication controlled the numbers. The blood pressure readings looked good on paper.
Fifteen years of perfect numbers. Then dead at 64.