A few days later, the new room no longer looked improvised.
The equipment had stayed.
There was no escaping that. Portable monitors still blinked in the corner. Infusion pumps still hummed. Emergency medication remained stocked in the locked cabinet. A physician's station had been set up in the adjoining room, and the nurses rotated through with the same precision they had used in the medical wing.
But the room itself no longer felt like something designed to erase a child.
The walls were warm cream instead of white. The curtains remained a muted green. The blanket had been replaced twice, not because it was necessary, but because Arion had declared the first replacement 'too official,' and Chris had apparently decided this was now a valid medical category.
A low screen near the far wall played Arion's favorite cartoons at barely-there volume.
