I turned the heavy brass handle and pushed the door open.
The smell in Room 904 was familiar: medical-grade rubbing alcohol, ozone from the air scrubbers, and the faint, sweet trace of cold tea.
Chloe didn’t jump.She didn’t cry.
For three years, this girl had called me every Sunday afternoon at two o’clock sharp.She would spend forty minutes describing the yellow aphids on her climbing roses, asking how much bone meal to mix into the soil for her hydrangeas, crying softly when Garrett forgot their anniversary to attend a private polo match in Middleburg.
She was gentle.
Fragile.
A girl who walked softly across hardwood floors because she was terrified of waking up a world that had never been kind to her.
Now, she sat in a standard olive-drab hospital smock, her bruised knuckles resting flat on her knees, her eyes fixed on my face with an unblinking, predatory calm.
