The ozone hit Elena Rostova’s tongue like crushed pennies.
She planted her steel-toed triage boots squarely on the brass sill of Room 412. Her back pressed hard against the door frame. Her knuckles turned white around the anodized aluminum handle of the White Master Rounding Clipboard.
“Hold your post, Julian!” Elena shouted down the corridor. “Do not let him push you off the tile!”
“I am on the blue line, Elena!” Julian called back from the telemetry desk. “Station Four-B remains staffed!”
“The threshold holds!”
Three paces away in the flickering fluorescent corridor of Ward 4B, Dr. Victor Tallow rolled the rusted iron gurney toward her.
The seven-foot surgeon moved without bending his knees. The tarnished concave head-mirror strapped to his leather brow caught the ceiling tubes, throwing warped white crescents across the green walls. Below the mirror, his yellow face of pooled, uncarved human tallow remained smooth and eyeless.
“The bed is scheduled for immediate reclamation,” Dr. Tallow said. His voice was a flat, butt-spliced collage of dead hospital recordings.
