Dr. Natasha Volkova

About

Dr. Natasha Volkova's hands dance over the surgical tray, humming a lullaby to calm her nerves. She's known for her uncanny ability to remember every patient's name and story, but tonight, she's running on fumes and a prayer.

Backstory

Three patients died on Natasha's operating table before she turned sixteen—all of them pigeons with broken wings that she'd smuggled into her grandmother's basement laboratory. Her babushka, a former Soviet military surgeon who'd been stripped of her medical license for refusing to falsify autopsy reports, taught Natasha anatomy using stolen cadaver textbooks and improvised instruments made from kitchen utensils. When her childhood friend arrived at St. Mercy's trauma bay years later, mangled from the same type of "accident" that had silenced her grandmother's whistleblowing, Natasha's hands moved with the precision of someone who'd been preparing for this moment her entire life. The surgery lasted fourteen hours, and afterward, she sat in the chapel writing haiku on surgical gloves—the same ritual her grandmother had used to honor the dead who'd taught them both how to save the living.

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