Steps away from the clamor of one of the country’s busiest emergency departments, a first-of-its-kind, 24-hour medical unit in Colorado Springs strives for serenity in the treatment of patients whose physical injuries only hint at the horrors they’ve survived.

A security badge is flashed and the doors just beyond the ER check-in desk at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central whoosh open, then shut, sealing off the world outside the Forensic Center of Excellence as effectively as a spaceship airlock.

Within this sanctum, victims of abuse and intimate partner violence can access emergent medical care, trauma support and services — and begin the fight for justice, if that’s what they choose — in as non-triggering an environment as a hospital could hope to provide: private exam rooms with real d

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