She led him down a quiet corridor, away from the front desk and into one of the less busy wings of the hospital. The lights were a bit dimmer here, flickering slightly in some places, the air cooler and almost sterile against his skin, like the chill you felt before walking onto the pitch on a gray winter afternoon.
It was quiet. So quiet that even the soft hum of the air vents felt loud. No announcements rang over the speakers here. No rush of nurses with clipboards or the beep-beep-beep of heart monitors. Just the occasional low murmur from a nearby room, a doctor's voice behind a half-closed door, the shuffle of footsteps far away.
And the soft scuff of their shoes on the linoleum floor as they walked side by side, neither of them speaking.