Bay four was exactly as she'd left it.
She'd expected this. Bettany ran things without deviation; if she said the ward would be there, the ward would be there. But knowing and standing in it were different, and she stood in the entrance for a moment before she moved.
Same bay windows. Same light. Pelton at the pharmaceutical station running his eight am check, which he'd been running at eight am every working day since she built the protocol. The reading station. The plant. The specific geography of a place she'd made hers for four years and had then made hers again by leaving and coming back.
Bettany was at the nurse's station.
She didn't look up.
"Bay four," she said. "Trauma intake. Your charts are in the usual place." A pause. "Welcome back."
Those two words in Bettany's register
