He turned to the admissions nurse behind the glass partition.

“We’ve got legal clearance,” he said.

The nurse typed a code into her keyboard and printed out a strip of barcode labels.

“You’re in prep room three,” she said.

I followed a green line painted on the linoleum floor.

It ran past a row of empty stretchers to the surgical prep wing.

Hannah was sitting on the edge of a narrow hospital bed.

A clear plastic IV bag hung from a metal pole next to her, dripping fluid down a tube.