Elena Rostova drove her thumb hard against the brass barrel bolt on the lower half of the First-Floor Infirmary Dutch Door.
The heavy metal clicked into the strike plate with a flat, solid clunk. The -24V DC electromagnetic latch was holding firm.
Outside in the dim first-floor corridor, five barefoot boys in flannel nightshirts stood in a rigid queue on the freezing linoleum. They did not shuffle or blink.
Their arms hung straight down at their sides, and thick grey sludge dripped from their raw fingertips onto the tiles. It was wet slate chalk, smelling of pond water and crushed limestone.
The first boy in line was Leo Park from Room 102. Elena had pulled the first-floor matriculation cards from the file drawer at eleven-fifteen.
Leo was eighteen, a freshman on a drafting scholarship with mild asthma. Right now his pale lips twitched in silent jerks, mouthing exam clauses he had never studied.
Behind the waist-high oak shelf of the Dutch Door, Elena planted her hands on the white enamel counter. She was thirty-one, with five years of night trauma triage at St. Jude’s before clipping Oakhaven’s Badge #N-07 to her lapel. She had handled arterial bleeds and Ward 4 orderlies. She did not panic over wet chalk.
