The staff took their time with their quarters.
Half an hour passed before the first door opened and someone stepped back into the residential hallway. Then another door. Then three at once. They emerged at their own pace, some still carrying their bags, some having left everything inside, and they looked at each other with the expression of people who had just experienced the same thing independently and were recognizing it in each other's faces simultaneously.
Nobody needed to describe it. The recognition was enough.
The physical therapist from Toronto stepped out last. She had spent most of the half hour standing at the transparent wall watching the common space below, the green running along the lower level, the high ceiling of the base rising above it. She had moved away twice, unpacked a few things, come back to the wall each time.
