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A glimpse inside
By the time the first call to prayer drifted through the half‑open ward windows, Lina’s arm already throbbed under the tape. The sound came thin from a far minaret, slipping over the flat roofs of Amman and through the hospital’s metal frames. It mixed with the hiss of the dialysis machine at her side and the faint rattle of a trolley down the corridor.
Lina watched the clear tubing that left her arm, looped over a hook, and disappeared into the humming machine. Her blood moved through it in slow, dark pulses, then returned a shade brighter. She kept her eyes on that loop, not on the end of the corridor.
The far cubicle waited there, curtain drawn halfway, a square of shadow beyond the last strip of fluorescent light. Even with the curtain closed, Lina saw it as if lit: the bed, the rail, the plastic cot that had stood beside it once.