Morning arrived pale and unforgiving over the cathedral district.
Rain had finally stopped sometime before dawn, leaving the city washed clean in the kind of artificial purity that storms only pretended to provide. Stone streets gleamed beneath weak winter sunlight. Cathedral spires cut through low clouds like sharpened bones.
Cattleya Vermont had slept for exactly forty-three minutes.
Not enough to qualify as rest. Sufficient to continue functioning at the level her training demanded.
She moved through the hospital corridors with practiced precision, white coat immaculate despite the night she had endured, expression unreadable even as exhaustion pressed quietly behind her eyes. Around her, the morning shift unfolded in familiar, almost comforting rhythms—stretchers rolling across pol
