The bell inside the skin-wrapped telephone clanged with vicious intensity.
Elena Rostova kept her boots rooted to the wet quarry tile. She didn’t reach for the receiver. Her fingers hovered near the heavy shears at her duty belt.
“Second ring,” Elena said. Her voice was flat, calm, and clinical.
“Let it ring,” Julian answered beside her.
He kept his ultraviolet pen pointed at the yellow brass plaque bolted above the scrub sink.
The plaque was thirty inches wide and cast from solid institutional bronze. Its bevels were sharp, polished clean of grime, and secured to the glazed subway tile by four hexagonal brass lag bolts.
Across the top of the metal plate, deep engraved block lettering caught the harsh fluorescent glare:
ST. JUDE’S MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL -- SUB-BASEMENT B3 (PATHOLOGY & COLD STORAGE).
