Vital Signs

Alexandra "Lex" Evans has spent her whole life being Dana Evans's difficult daughter.
Her older sister was the easy one. The steady one. The one Dana never had to worry about.
Lex was the reckless one. The brilliant one. The one who could pass every test and still find a way to ruin her own life before morning.

Now, at twenty-three, Lex has done the one thing even Dana was afraid to hope for.
She got into medical school.

Starting her first year should feel like proof that she made it. Instead, Lex finds herself walking straight into Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, the emergency department where her mother runs the floor with a charge nurse's voice, a battlefield stare, and years of fear she has never quite learned how to put down.

Lex wants to be seen as capable.

Not fragile.

Not reckless.

Not Dana Evans's youngest daughter with a history everyone is too polite to say out loud.

The Pitt does not care about clean starts.

Under the pressure of trauma rooms, brutal shifts, impossible patients, and the watchful eyes of Dr. Cassie McKay, Lex starts to learn that being smart is not the same thing as being ready.

Cassie is sharp, controlled, impossible to impress, and far too good at noticing the things Lex tries to hide.

Dana knows exactly what Lex looks like when she is pretending.

Cassie is starting to notice too.

And the more Lex tries to prove she belongs in the emergency department, the harder it becomes to ignore the doctor who sees through every wall she has left.