This year's winter came especially early. It was only late December, yet Gunma Prefecture had already seen two heavy snowfalls.
Maebashi City, Gunma Bridge.
A vital traffic artery connecting the downtown business district with the residential area, it sustained an unbroken flow of vehicles even in the dead of night.
The blizzard that had raged all night had finally ceased, leaving only scattered snowflakes drifting through the air.
A medium-sized Toyota Coaster bus carrying twenty-five passengers was crawling across the bridge with difficulty.
Most of the passengers were groups returning from year-end parties or trips. The cabin was warm, and most had already grown drowsy under the influence of alcohol and exhaustion.
When the bus reached the midpoint of the bridge, a sedan ahead of it fishtailed slightly on the slippery road.
The bus driver instinctively tapped the brakes.
Just that.
The tires instantly lost all traction.
Carried by inertia, no longer responding to the steering wheel, the bus slid straight sideways toward the guardrail at the bridge's edge.
Bang—!!!
The massive impact instantly tore through the howling wind and snow.
The nearly ten-ton vehicle slammed into the metal guardrail. Though the railing barely prevented the bus from plunging into the icy Tone River, the tremendous reactive force caused the body to roll onto its side.
Glass exploded, shards flying like shrapnel.
The laughter inside the cabin cut off abruptly, replaced by the crisp sound of breaking bones and piercing screams.
Then.
The private cars following behind had no time to react, rear-ending one another in a chain collision and slamming hard into the overturned bus's chassis.
...
Gunma University Hospital.
The Emergency and Critical Care Center was the hospital's heart at night—and the place least willing to beat.
Ichikawa Akio, a resident in the First Surgical Department, sat at the desk.
He held a copy of *Standard Surgery* but could not absorb a single word.
Ah, his colleague Tanaka Kenji—that guy was probably cuddling up to a geisha right now, spouting nonsense like "a fated encounter," wasn't he?
So enviable. He wished he could go too.
Sitting across from him was his senior in the same department, Attending Physician Yamazaki Hiroki.
In other words, tonight's shift leader.
Yamazaki Hiroki was in his early thirties, tall, with slightly curly hair, his feet propped on the desk as he thumbed through a pornographic magazine.
Huddled in the corner of the room was another figure: Yoshimura Hideki, a resident from the Second Department of Internal Medicine.
He wore thick glasses and looked every bit the bookworm; he was currently muttering toward the wall, probably reciting some internal medicine prescription.
Ring ring ring—!!!
Without warning, the red emergency line on the desk suddenly shrieked.
Ichikawa Akio, being the closest, fumbled to grab the receiver.
"Th-this is Gunma University Emergency Center!"
"What, an accident on Gunma Bridge?"
"How many?"
"Over fifteen, with many severe injuries?"
"Arriving in twenty minutes?"
"Yes, we'll be ready!"
Then he placed the handset back on the cradle.
Attending Physician Yamazaki Hiroki had already tossed his magazine into a nearby pile of clutter and lowered his legs from the desk.
"Oi, Ichikawa, what's the situation?"
He was looking over even as he put on his shoes.
Though he usually looked carefree, as the highest-ranking doctor currently in the duty room, he had an instinctive sensitivity to the phrase "many severe injuries."
"Gunma Bridge, multi-vehicle collision."
Ichikawa Akio felt his throat go dry. He quickly relayed the information he'd just scribbled on a scrap of paper.
"The scene is extremely bad. Twenty-five confirmed casualties, twelve of them severe trauma cases."
"First ambulance expected in twenty minutes."
That might sound like ample time, but in the face of a mass casualty incident, it was the blink of an eye.
"Tsk... Perfect timing."
The relaxed expression vanished from Yamazaki Hiroki's face.
He stood, the hem of his white coat swinging with the motion.
Today was the last business day of the year; most of the hospital's doctors had already gone home or started their all-night celebrations. Only the essential on-call staff remained.
Anesthesiology, the operating rooms, radiology, the blood bank...
These critical departments were all operating at minimum capacity.
Activating all of them within twenty minutes, plus gathering enough surgeons to handle so many severe trauma patients...
Yamazaki Hiroki exhaled.
He strode to the wall and stood before the hospital-wide emergency broadcast control panel.
Without hesitation, he flipped open the red protective cover and slammed the red button.
Woooo—
A low, urgent alarm blared throughout the emergency building.
"This is Yamazaki from the First Surgical Department!"
"Hospital-wide emergency announcement! Hospital-wide emergency announcement!"
"Code Blue (mass casualty incident), Code Blue."
"Large numbers of trauma patients expected in twenty minutes."
"All doctors and nurses in the hospital, proceed immediately to the Emergency and Critical Care Center."
"This is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill!"
The broadcast instantly reached every corner of the hospital—wards, cafeteria, restrooms, everywhere.
Twelve severe trauma patients meant at least four to five complete surgical teams. It required anesthesiology to run at full tilt and the blood bank to haul out its entire stock.
They needed to call in everyone.
Every breathing doctor had to be recalled.
After the broadcast, Yamazaki Hiroki was about to pick up the landline to notify the professor when he noticed Ichikawa Akio standing frozen.
"Ichikawa, what are you spacing out for?"
"Huh?"
Ichikawa Akio flinched, though his expression remained somewhat vacant.
"Why aren't you hurrying to the nurses' station to find the pager numbers for every surgeon in the First Surgical Department, Second Surgical Department—every surgical department?"
"Whether they're sleeping at home or drinking at an izakaya, page them all!"
"Code 333! All of them!"
333—that is, every doctor who could still breathe, regardless of what they were doing or how much they'd had to drink, had to get to the hospital as fast as possible.
Otherwise, the professors would skin them alive!
"Yes sir!"
Ichikawa Akio quickly acknowledged and immediately turned and ran out of the duty room.
Yamazaki Hiroki turned his gaze to Yoshimura Hideki, the internal medicine resident trembling in the corner.
"You too, stop playing dead!"
"Get the IV stands out and hang every bag of Lactated Ringer's solution!"
"Hang all of them!"
"Then notify the blood bank to have all type-O blood ready!"
"If I catch you slacking, I'll throw you outside and bury you in the snow!"
Yoshimura Hideki nodded frantically and scrambled out.
Now the duty room was empty except for Yamazaki Hiroki.
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
The white overhead lights shone down on the cold, hard floor, looking especially bleak.
Twenty minutes.
That was all the preparation time they had left.