Calder is a river city built around East Weir, a diversion whose gates can save the central hospital only by sending the flood peak through the South Bank. Saint Agnes Hospice stands inside that floodway, warm and occupied on a night when its promised transport is reassigned and a false certification lets the city mark twelve living patients evacuated. Fifty years earlier, the old Saint Agnes faced the same river and the same institutional handoff failure. Its dead do not solve cases or steer boats. They can call only through six disconnected bells and one involuntary movement of Jonah's conscious hand; Jonah himself chooses the final letter. Every rescue, lie, choice, and repair belongs to the living.