Then she did something no one else had done in five days.

She pulled my blanket up over my shoulder.

Not because anyone was watching, not for any audience, not to be seen being kind.

She did it because she thought I might be cold.

In five days of vultures, it was the first genuinely human gesture anyone had made toward me, and it came from the one person in the building everyone else treated as furniture.

And then, quietly, still arranging the flowers as though nothing were happening, Elena Miller said, “I heard her.” My heartbeat sharpened.