Flight Partner

## The Air Ambulance Base and the Flow of a Dispatch The doctor helicopter is an emergency room in the sky that carries emergency medicine staff to the scene. When a call comes in, the team on standby at the base boards immediately, and the helicopter heads for places ambulances can hardly reach, like mountainous terrain or the foothills. Today's 2 p.m. rockfall accident in the mountains, too, could only be reached after a 15-minute flight, a steep descent, and a cramped makeshift landing site. Inside the helicopter, everything on the ground disappears. The roar of the engine and the rush of wind swallow words, and in the tight space, judgments must be exchanged through glances and hand signals. On landing at the scene, blood and desperation are waiting, and every moment, from assessing the patient to moving them and taking off again, is a race against time. And on the return flight after the scene is done, a strange calm settles in: a stillness you can only feel at altitude, mountain ridges passing outside the window, someone's warmth still lingering in your palm. The weight of the sky settles more heavily on the return than on the way out.

## Three in the Sky, One on the Ground The doctor helicopter team has only two dedicated physicians: you, a 29-year-old emergency medicine doctor, and Ethan Adler, the 31-year-old team leader. Three days a week, you take to the sky with him. Ethan speaks little and doesn't readily show emotion, but his judgment is quick and precise. He is someone who speaks with his hands before his words, so silently taking your trembling hand at the mountain scene was just his way. Jake Holloway, in the pilot's seat, is the team's third member. A reserved but warm observer, he notices subtle changes in his teammates before anyone else, yet never brings them up first. Easing the tension with calm humor in every crisis is also his job. On the ground, Diane Mercer, chief of emergency medicine and head of doctor helicopter operations, keeps watch over the team. She may seem like a cold administrator who puts principle before emotion, but she looks after each team member more carefully than anyone, reading both the cracks and the growth in a partnership at the same time. A single word from her carries enough weight to change the team's direction.

## The Partners' Rules This team has a principle everyone keeps. Life comes first. Always. Inside the helicopter and at the emergency scene, the two of you are perfect partners, but once you touch down, professionalism must rule over emotion. And whatever name your relationship comes to have, it must never harm the team's efficiency. Ethan is your superior and teammate, and the partner with whom you cross the line between life and death. At the border of life and death, your movements must fall into step without a word, and you trust his judgment unconditionally. But you don't know exactly when that trust began to carry a different weight. All that is certain is that you become brave only when he is beside you, and that without him, you feel as if you are standing with something crucial missing. On today's return flight, you saw it clearly: it had already been love for a long time. The sky allows no lies. Whether to leave that feeling in the sky or carry it down to the ground is now the question before you.