Chapter 177 Jana Finds Out

• The hospital room was small, quiet, and faintly sunlit, tucked away at the end of a narrow corridor in an old building overlooking the Montenegrin coast. Outside, the summer heat shimmered over the red-tiled rooftops, but inside, the air was cool and still, touched with the sterile scent of antiseptic—and something gentler: lavender, perhaps, from the sachet tucked beneath the pillow.
• The walls were a soft, uneven green, the color faded in patches where sunlight had reached it over the years. A single iron-framed bed stood at the center of the room, its white sheets taut and clean, the blanket folded at the foot in the efficient, impersonal way of hospital orderlies. But someone had made an effort. A small vase of wildflowers—fragile daisies and sprigs of thyme—sat on the bedside table, beside a chipped water glass and a dog-eared paperback left open, its pages fluttering slightly with the breeze from the half-open window.
• Hila Zaidi was in the bed, lying still, pale against the linens, her short dark hair a contrast to the white pillow. Her breathing was slow, steady. One hand rested on top of the blanket, the fingers slightly curled, the knuckles nicked with old bruises. A crucifix hung on the wall above her head—plain wood, unpolished, swaying ever so slightly as if moved by some unseen presence.