Read Chapter 15: The Hospital's Plea

The hospital smelled of bleach and something worse underneath—old blood, sweat, the sweet rot of neglect. Camille pressed the back of her hand to her nose as they pushed through the service entrance, Julien's flashlight cutting a nervous beam across the corridor. The emergency lights had died days ago here, and what remained was a dim, sickly orange from a single chemical lantern hooked to the nurses' station.

A woman stood behind it, gaunt-faced, in scrubs that had once been white. Her name badge read S. ROUX, HEAD NURSE. She looked up when they entered, and her eyes went straight past Julien to Camille.

"You came." The words came out flat, no relief in them. "About fucking time."

"Sylvie." Camille stepped forward, her bag heavy on her shoulder. She'd packed light—bandages, saline, the last of the morphine—but even that felt like treasure here. "We saw the flares. What's the situation?"

Sylvie laughed, a dry, broken sound. "What's the situation. She wants to know the situation." She gestured around her. The corridor was lined with patients on stretchers, on the floor, propped against walls. A man with a tourniquet around his thigh moaned in a low, rhythmic chant. A nurse moved between them with a bucket, the water already pink. "We've got forty-three patients, two doctors, and one of them hasn't slept in three days. Dialysis patients are dying. Insulin-dependent patients are dying. And you waltz in here—" She stopped, her gaze sharpening. "Where is it?"

Camille felt Julien shift beside her. She kept her voice even. "Where's what?"

"The insulin. The stash you promised. The cold-chain delivery you swore you'd guard with your life when the grid went down." Sylvie's hands were shaking now, the lantern throwing jagged shadows across her face. "We've had four DKA cases in the last twenty-four hours. Four. I've been telling them help is coming, that I know a pharmacist who'll bring supplies. So where the fuck is it?"

Camille opened her mouth. Closed it. The truth sat in her throat like a stone.

"I left it," she said. "The building. It's not safe to transport—the insulin needs cold storage, we only had partial cooling until yesterday, and there's a group there who—"

"You left it." Sylvie's voice dropped to a whisper. "You left it in the building. While people here are dying for it."

"I came to help," Camille said, hating how weak it sounded. "I brought other supplies. Morphine. Saline. I thought if I could see the situation, I could—"

"You thought you'd come look at us first." Sylvie took a step closer. The lantern light caught the hollows under her eyes, the sharp lines of her clavicle. "Camille, I held a dialysis slot for your father. Private. Priority. When the grid started failing, I made sure he stayed on the list. And now you're telling me you walked across Paris to *look at us*?"

The words hit like a slap. Camille's father. The dialysis. Of course. Of course Sylvie had been the one holding the string, the unspoken debt that had made Camille promise the insulin in the first place—a promise made in the first desperate days, when she thought the blackout would last a week, not a month.

"The slot," Camille said slowly. "Is it still—"

"It's gone." Sylvie's voice cracked. "The cardiac unit went down yesterday. We lost the generator. The patients we could move, we moved. Your father's slot—" She shook her head. "There's no electricity for the machines. No clean water for the lines. I can't run dialysis with a goddamn flashlight."

Julien stepped between them, not quite touching either woman. "How many insulin patients do you have right now?"

Sylvie blinked, as if seeing him for the first time. "Five. Critical. We need basal doses within twelve hours or we start losing them."

Julien reached into his jacket and pulled out the small vial Camille had given him—Marc's partial dose, meant for emergencies. He held it up. The liquid caught the lantern light, pale and precious.

"One dose," he said. "Not enough. But it's a start."

Sylvie stared at the vial. Then at Camille. The accusation in her eyes didn't soften, but something else flickered there—calculation, maybe, or just exhaustion.

"When the grid comes back," Camille said quietly, "when we reach Marc's cache, I'll bring you everything. Every unit. I give you my word."

"Your word." Sylvie took the vial from Julien and pocketed it. "Your word was worth something once. Now it's worth about as much as the electricity in this building."

She turned and walked back to the patients without another word. Camille stood in the dark corridor, surrounded by the sounds of the dying, and felt the weight of every promise she'd ever made settling onto her shoulders like a shroud.