Chapter 97

• Chapter 97
• The air in the teaching hospital smelled different from the classrooms. It wasn’t disinfectant and chalk dust anymore. It was sharper—antiseptic mixed with sweat, blood, and something heavier that clung to the corridors. Life and death lived here, side by side, and Selena felt it in her bones the moment she walked through the double doors with her group.
• Her heart pounded as her shoes clicked against the tiled floor. The corridor was filled with voices—nurses calling out numbers, patients groaning softly from stretchers, the hum of machines that seemed to whisper of battles she hadn’t yet learned how to fight.