“I’ll ride with them,” Ethan said before the thought had a chance to ask permission.

The paramedic looked up, assessing. A thousand stories could be true in a city like this. “You family?”

Ethan’s answer was a soft collision between reflex and revelation. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, and something in the medic’s face—professional wariness plus the math of the twins’ eyes—softened into a nod.

The ambulance’s back doors closed on the city and all its noise. Inside, the world became white plastic, blue uniforms, the beeping of a machine monitoring a heart that was tired but stubborn. The twins’ cries fell into hiccups. The boy’s small hand found Ethan’s sleeve and held on. The girl leaned against his knee, exhausted from crying.

Ethan stared at the children and then at the space beyond their heads where his mind projected a future without asking. He saw two high chairs side by side. He saw a pile of laundry the size of a small car. He saw, with a strange vertigo, the complete absence of any of that in the life he’d built.