Emily Carter had worked fourteen hours straight in the trauma wing of St. Mary’s Hospital in Chicago. Her scrubs were stained, her hands smelled of disinfectant, and the dull hum of monitors had become a second heartbeat in her ears. The night was quiet for once, a strange calm after weeks of chaos. She stood near the supply room door, half asleep, when the ground shook.

The first blast came from the power line outside. Then another, closer, shaking the lights from the ceiling. She ducked, shouting for the patients to stay down. The oxygen tanks in the corridor burst like thunder. The world turned white.

When she opened her eyes, there was no hospital, no sound of alarms, no sterile smell. Just the warmth of sunlight on her face and the whisper of wind through tall grass. She sat up, dazed. Around her stretched a meadow filled with wildflowers, a distant forest, and mountains that didn’t belong anywhere near Chicago.

Her uniform was torn, her badge half melted. “This is impossible,” she whispered. She checked her pulse, her vision, her senses. Everything was real. A sharp pain in her shoulder reminded her she was alive. She reached into her pocket and found her penlight, her scissors, a single roll of gauze. No phone, no ID, no one.

She walked toward the forest, trying to make sense of what she saw. Wooden carts moved along a dirt road. Men carried bundles of hay on their backs. Women in coarse dresses washed clothes by a stream. No engines, no power lines. When she called out, their eyes widened in fear.

A little boy fell near her, his forehead bleeding from a cut. Instinct took over. She tore her sleeve, cleaned the wound with water, and wrapped it with gauze. The boy stopped crying. His mother gasped, whispering words Emily didn’t recognize.

Soon more people gathered, staring. One old man pointed at her and muttered something about spirits. Emily shook her head. “I’m not a witch,” she said. “I’m a nurse.” But the word meant nothing to them.

By dusk, they led her into the village, cautious but curious. The houses were built of wood and clay, smoke rising from stone chimneys. A man in a leather coat questioned her, his tone wary. She explained she was from Chicago, a city far away. He frowned.

That night they gave her a place to sleep in a barn. The air smelled of hay and earth. Emily lay awake listening to the quiet, realizing that somehow she had crossed more than miles. She had crossed time.

In her hand she still held the boy’s bandaged head in memory. In a world without doctors, she had already become something else—something they didn’t understand but desperately needed.

When dawn came, she stood outside watching the sun rise over fields untouched by modern life. She didn’t know how or why she was here, but she knew what she could do. She could heal. That was the one thing that still made sense.