Embers.

The Doctor was saving lives again.
His research had led him down several very favorable roads, and he now stood on the threshold of medical genius.
Each straight scalpel slice brought more knowledge, more experience, and another step danced in the direction of progress; his assistant knew it as well as he did.
However, as quickly as success had presented itself, it left, taking with it the occasional upsurge of the verdantly green line on the rusted monitor. The patient jerked beneath the Doctor's hands and her white covering sheet, and he calmly slipped alongside this tragedy.
"Nurse, the injection, if you please."
The white-clad figure directly to his right moved with reassuring pace, burying a long needle into the fading patient's collarbone.
Breathe. The Doctor prompted internally, I know you can, darling, I put those lungs in your chest.
One final, triumphant leap erupted across the monitor, and the figure surged upwards with the lights, sending the sheet flying, angelically, from her silhouette, before crashing back onto the table and seizing into oblivion.
The Doctor rested his hands against the edge of the table and sighed. "So close, yet again, Nurse."
The Nurse nodded, somewhat sadly, causing the bandages that spanned her neck and lower face to wrinkle with the motion.
Wistfully, Dr. Iris pulled the sheet away from the Patient's face and gazed down at the staples and stitches that held the poor dear together; the empty eyes glistened with moisture, almost as if the darling had begun to weep over her denial of re-entry into life.
"Pandora, darling," Iris allowed the sheet to drop over the specimen's face as he calmly addressed the Nurse, "I'll need you to run down and tell the Boys we've need for another few lost ones. Preferably fresh, for the sake of progress."
Nurse Pandora nodded, and moved to the door of the operating room, pressing against it with a flesh-contraption that sported three large, shrapnel-tipped talons that had long ago replaced her left hand.
"Oh, and Nurse," Shyam Iris turned to her, smiling pleasantly. "If you find the townspeople have been burning their leftovers again, do give them a reminder from me that I prefer my patients still bleeding, as it is." Pandora nodded again, and found her way out of the room, as Shyam stared over his patient and once again mourned the loss of such a capital fighting cadaver.

{Confused? Check out my counterpart, Ashes.]}