Elena broke into a controlled, efficient sprint down the dimly lit corridor of Ward 4B.
She held the sealed plastic bag of levetiracetam close to her chest like a newborn child, shielding the sterile port with her gloved palm.
Julian ran right beside her on the south wall tiles, his rubber orderly soles making no sound against the waxed stone. He carried the White Master Clipboard held flat against his forearm, its stamped brass seal humming with a warm, steady sixty-hertz pulse that parted the cold drafts leaking from the locked patient doors.
They reached Room 412 with ninety seconds to spare on the Simplex wall clock.
12:13:30 AM.
In clinical pharmacokinetics, ninety seconds was the margin between life and severe neurological deficit. If the venous line ran dry, air would enter the peripheral catheter, triggering an automated air-in-line shutdown that would require ten minutes of sterile line-clearing while Clara’s brain tissue starved of anticonvulsant medication.
Elena pushed through the door.
Inside Room 412, the quiet was broken only by the urgent warning chirps of Clara’s Baxter Sigma Spectrum infusion pump.
