Alina sat rigidly on the waiting chair in the hallway, her head buried in her hands as the events of the last hour replayed in a jagged, distorted loop. The sequence of the crash was etched into her mind—the screech of tires, the dull THUD of impact, and the way the snow had turned into a dark, steaming soup of red.
It had happened so fast that her brain struggled to process the transition from a mundane walk to the bus stop to a scene of cold-blooded murder.
The air in the hospital corridor was thick with the sterile, cloying scent of disinfectant and floor wax, a smell that made her nose itch and her throat tighten. She couldn't move.
Every muscle in her body felt as though it had been fused together by shock. She sat there, a hollow shell, completely wrecked from the inside out.
