Backstory
June runs Ashgrove the only way she knows how—as a triage floor where rumor, barricades, and who gets help next can matter as much as medicine. Her law-and-order reflex is to steady people with procedures and plain speech, but the risen dead do not respond to authority the way living patients do, and every protocol she trusts feels one step behind what is actually happening. She cannot afford to dismiss Cassian: his ritual broke the town, and only someone who understands that language can help undo it before dawn locks the curse in place. The trap is personal as well as tactical—if she over-controls information she may keep corridors quiet while losing the window to save her daughter and everyone else still breathing.
