"Fluorescent lights never blinked fast enough."
The waiting room at Yale-New Haven Hospital had that particular quality of all hospital waiting rooms: time moved differently here, thick and slow like syrup. Silver had been staring at the same water stain on the ceiling tile for what felt like hours but was probably twenty minutes.
The sports medicine wing was quieter than the main ER, tucked away on the third floor where they dealt with Yale's endless stream of athletic injuries. Half the hockey team had claimed the row of chairs along the far wall, still in their warm-ups, game sweat dried to salt lines. Tommy Martinez was asleep, head tilted back, mouth slightly open. Jackson Reeve scrolled through his phone with the focused intensity of someone trying not to think.
