The first shot cracked through the morning like a snapped bone. No warning, no buildup. One second the hospital courtyard was quiet — nurses walking in with coffee, security waving cars through, the usual shuffle of another long shift. The next second, panic detonated across the campus.
Inside the glass doors of Hawthorne Regional Medical Center, laughter from the night-shift nurses’ station vanished mid-sentence. Someone screamed. Someone dropped a tray. Chairs scraped. Radios blared. The sterile, controlled world of medicine flipped into chaos as staff scattered for cover. A hospital is where people go to survive. But that morning, it became a place where survival suddenly felt uncertain.
In the parking lot, a young man lay on the pavement, his arm slick with blood. Two bullets had torn through him before he even had the chance to react. He’d been walking toward the entrance, backpack slung over one shoulder, when a figure in dark clothing stepped from between two parked cars, raised a gun, and fired without hesitation.
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