Who Dies First In 'The Night Shift'?

I just finished binge-reading 'The Night Shift' last weekend, and the death that kicks off the chaos is definitely Officer Marco Reyes. He's the rookie cop assigned to guard the hospital's blood bank during the vampire outbreak. The poor guy doesn't even last two chapters - gets his throat torn out by what he thinks is a junkie, but turns out to be Patient Zero. The scene's brutal because it shows how unprepared humans are. His death triggers the lockdown protocol that traps the main characters together. What makes it impactful is how ordinary Marco is - no dramatic backstory, just a guy doing his job when monsters show up. The book lingers on his empty chair in the break room afterward, which hits harder than any gory description.

In 'The Night Shift', the first casualty is Nurse Jenny's optimism. Kidding aside, it's actually Officer Reyes, but his death serves as this brilliant narrative device. The author uses his abrupt demise to establish three crucial things immediately: vampires here aren't sparkling romantic leads, the hospital setting becomes a cage rather than a sanctuary, and no character has plot armor.

Marco's death scene is visceral - described through the security monitor footage the other characters watch in horror. The way his flashlight rolls across the floor, illuminating just enough to show something dragging his body into the shadows, is nightmare fuel. It's interesting how the book then cuts to his widow getting the news, reminding us every death has ripple effects.

What's clever is how Marco's name keeps coming up. His locker becomes a makeshift shrine, his unfinished coffee haunts the break room, and later we learn he was the only one who'd noticed the strange patient admissions before everything went south. The story makes his absence as impactful as his presence. For a character who dies early, he casts a long shadow over the entire novel.

That would be poor Marco Reyes, whose death scene made me drop my taco when I first read it. The guy's basically vampire chow within pages, but what sells it is the mundane details - he's complaining about cafeteria food one second, then there's this wet crunch sound, and suddenly the night shift crew are watching his corpse get paraded past security cameras like some macabre puppet show.

What I love is how his death isn't wasted. The survivors use his radio to hear the outside world collapsing, his bloodstained notepad later reveals patient zero's location, and his unused vacation days become this running joke that keeps the mood from getting too dark. The book makes you mourn someone you barely knew by showing how deeply his absence affects the living - the way Dr. Carter keeps dialing Marco's number by reflex hits harder than any melodramatic death speech could.