Chapter 15

Jahir stepped off the Pad and onto Tsera Nova, and the mindline steadied in his breast, removing the queasy feeling he hadn’t realized he’d been nursing throughout their separation. He touched his palm to his heart, wishing he could reach through that connection to wherever his partner was, wishing that he found the mere persistence of the mindline reassuring, for surely it revealed that Vasiht’h was still alive. Instead, he found himself thinking of the many ways one could be alive but about to die in a natural disaster of this magnitude. He glanced at the windows, and the rain lashing them, and the wall of gray past them so dense he could barely see the silhouettes of the palms planted just outside the building’s front door. Could one call it a natural disaster when it had been created by man, even accidentally?

But he was here now, and there would be no going out in this to search for the Glaseah. The mindline’s quiescence suggested he would not find Vasiht’h among the patients in whatever triage center they’d set up, but he could at least put himself to use, and perhaps search among the new patients as they arrived.

He’d been directed not to the hotel, which is where he would have liked to go, but to a larger facility: the Tsera Nova Welcome Center, if the placard over the now abandoned front desk was to be believed. He followed the stream of people until one of them said, “Medical personnel?”

“Yes.”

The harried Asanii thrust an identification card on a lanyard at him. “Finger on the card, card around your neck, down the hall to the hospital.”

Surprised, Jahir did as directed. The card, when he pressed a finger to it, did not find any data to populate the display with… no surprise, given the censors. He put it around his neck anyway, and went in search of a place to work.

All the noise he’d been expecting on Pad-down he found in the hospital’s intake area, where clusters of people were talking or sitting or pacing or asking directions, all of a harassed staff too small for the crowd. When he walked in, a discomposed male in hospital scrubs stepped in front of him and said, “Where are you coming from and what’s wrong?”

“From Tsera Nova’s station, and I have done psychiatric intake in an acute care setting.” Jahir showed him the blank card. “The data does not seem to be showing. Perhaps a problem related to the storm?”

“Sun and stars alone know. Network’s been up, down, up, down ever since this hit. At least the local network’s fine.” The felid nodded toward the desk. “Go see what you can do.”

“I shall.”

The staff behind the desk didn’t even look at his card: that he had one on a hospital lanyard was sufficient for them, combined with his air of patient confidence. “Psychiatric healer-assist?” one of them said. “Oh, thank Iley. Maybe you can get the lot inside to calm down.”

“Not here?” he asked, glancing at the waiting room’s agitated occupants.

“This is cake.” She pointed at a door. “Through there, grab a spare set of clothes, keep going.” She squinted. “Use the cubbies at the top, that’s where all the tall spares are.”

Whatever awaited him, Jahir thought as he passed through the door, it could not be as perilous as Heliocentrus. Few experiences could surpass a wet epidemic, surely. But he felt a frisson of unease anyway as he dressed in the bathroom and braided back his hair, as he had so many times before his shift at Mercy. Finishing, he met his solemn amber eyes in the mirror and beheld again the medical professional. Which… was what he’d come to Tsera Nova to become, wasn’t it? To procure a license to be, once again, Jahir the healer, not just Jahir the therapist?

KindlesFlame had reminded him more than once that not all medical practices were hospital critical care rounds. And yet, had the Eldritch had such facilities, his father would still be alive, and any number of Eldritch children would not have died with their mothers in childbed, and the dueling ground would not kill its participants weeks after they left it on both feet, the victims of infections modern medicine could answer.

Could he truly be this again?

He was standing in a bathroom when he could be outside it, finding the answer, for weal or woe. Jahir exited, and as the woman at the front desk had directed, kept going.

Tsera Nova was no Heliocentrus during a fateful drug epidemic.

It was not much better, however. The hospital had been rated for a certain number of people, and this was not that number, which included not only the wounded but their families, from whom they refused to be parted with the storm still blowing. The critical care area was full, and had spilled its excesses into the rooms beyond it, crowding those halls with equipment carts. And there was a particular air of distress that Heliocentrus had lacked… perhaps because Mercy had been a city hospital, and cities were full of people going about the business of daily living which necessarily included dealing with illness and injury. No one came to Tsera Nova save to find pleasure and respite. Tourists did not expect to end up in hospitals during their vacations, much less in such numbers.

Jahir had expected the staff to put him to work on triage, but the Hinichi in charge of the floor had one look at him and said, “Go distract the miserable ones. The nervous breakdowns spread.”

So he found himself at the work for which he’d originally trained, and it wrenched his heart to be about it without Vasiht’h at his side. This was their clinical practice writ severe, all the small challenges fallen away before hearts stripped naked by panic and pain. How powerless he felt, listening gravely to the sobbing of a woman who’d seen her sister’s ribcage smashed while she watched, or the exhausted self-recriminations of a father who didn’t know where his wife and children were. The wordless wailing of the toddler, unable to understand why he hurt so badly, Jahir was at least able to assuage, with a touch and a whisper of the same magic he’d used for the girls in the hospital. All of it he shouldered without stutter… until he found the three young children sitting alone on a bench, their faces white and eyes staring, ears crumpled.

“Where are their parents?” he’d asked the first healer-assist he could hail.

“No one knows,” she’d answered, before hurrying on.

He knelt before them and took their hands, and it touched them not at all.

Would it be better, Jahir wondered as the hours went on, if he was among the healers at work on the merely physical injuries? Would he find it easier if he could use the power of the Alliance’s endless devices to whisk people from pain’s embrace? If he could see their injuries seal shut and their bones knit with his physical eyes? Or would it make the inevitable times he failed to save them worse, for the contrast?

Could he find joy here, as he did in studying it? Or would it be better to reserve himself from the practice of medicine, in any form, given the pain it brought? Because in this life there were no guarantees, save the one waiting for them all at the end.

He thought of Vasiht’h, and thought it fruitless to ask the question, when he’d already answered it, over and over. To be wholly present was forever worth the suffering for the gifts that came, like flowers after rain. Jahir glanced out the windows at the silence of the thrashing storm, and reached for the Glaseah. Received the certitude that Vasiht’h yet lived, and prayed that he was safe somewhere, waiting out the hurricane.

Once the storm’s strongest winds reached them, there were no more new admissions. Jahir used the lull to stop in the break room, hearing the ghost of voices from Mercy urging him on. There was no buttered coffee, for which he was grateful, but the memory of Paige’s impish expressions made him smile as he added cream to the normal, black variety available. The result might not approach the caloric load of the concoctions in Heliocentrus, but the taste reminded him powerfully of surviving his shifts there. He thought of Paga for the first time in far too long, and wondered if the Naysha’s invitation to experience the waters through a mindtouch still stood. Once he and Vasiht’h left Tsera Nova, he would find out, and take the Naysha up on it if so. He and Vasiht’h would leave Tsera Nova. No other future was possible.

Tsera Nova’s excellence in catering extended to the hospital, for even the abbreviated spread available for the staff looked superb, and had stasis plates to maintain its freshness. He took a warm croissant in the hopes of plying the three speechless children with it but found them sleeping in a pile on the bench, all too-large ears and too-small tails and too, too serious faces. Even dreaming, they found no surcease.

“Still no sign of the parents,” came a voice behind him. The same healer-assist… her low soprano with the softly furred timbre was unmistakable. He looked over his shoulder at her. “And they haven’t budged. Haven’t drunk or eaten either.” Her eyes caught on the bread in his hand. “You might as well eat that yourself, they’re not likely to be up anytime soon.”

Jahir folded the croissant up in the napkin he’d been holding it in and set it alongside the largest child’s hand. “Do we have their names?”

She nodded. “The database tagged them when they came in. They’ve got extended family back on Karaka’Ana. We’ll contact them as soon as all this passes.” She waved a hand. “Maybe a day or so.”

“So little time, to be so long,” Jahir murmured.

She nodded, studying him now. “Your name, though, I don’t know. The computer doesn’t recognize you.”

He suppressed the need to glance at his blank tag. “An error caused by the storm?”

“Possible, but not probable.” She sat on the bench beside the smallest of the children, leaned over and tucked some of the felid’s hair behind his neck. “Am I going to find out, when all this is over, that you were never here?”

“Possible,” he said. “Perhaps not probable.”

She chuffed a tired laugh. “Like some healing fairy, sent through the ward to lift everyone’s spirits? That sounds possible and probable, given how tired I am. An Eldritch healer-assist seems less likely.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“And yet.” She sighed, smiled a little. “At least tell me you’re licensed to practice.”

He glanced at the ceiling. “I have done my time in hospitals.”

“Just the kind of answer I expect from a visiting angel.” She put her elbows on her knees, leaning forward on them.

“I assure you, no visiting angel has ever been vomited on by middle-aged Seersan women who were relieved to discover their chest pains were a stomach virus, not a cardiac issue.”

The woman blinked, then barked a laugh. “I don’t know. If the angel was actually in a hospital, I’m sure there would be plenty of them with vomit stories.” She eyed him. “You haven’t done any harm.”

“That would be the beginning of our credo.”

She smirked. “And you’ve made a lot of people more comfortable. So… nameless Eldritch… thank you.” She started to offer her palm and drew it back. “Ah, sorry, I forget.”

He reached for her wrist and caught it in gentle fingers, tasting her fatigue, her worry, and her patient acceptance of all those things. Setting his other hand on her palm, he said, gently, “Jahir Seni Galare. Xenotherapist.”

The woman smiled. “Gwenivir Murphy. Chief Nurse.” She lifted her brows. “Now was that croissant your meal, selflessly donated to kits who aren’t awake to eat it? Because if so, you should get some real food into you, while we have some time.”

“You think things will get worse?” he asked, surprised. “Are we not now in the middle of the storm?”

“Sure,” she said, rising. “But if you really have worked in a hospital, you should know—”

“One takes respite where one finds it,” Jahir finished. Didn’t sigh, smiled instead. “Truly we are all alike, are we not.”

The nurse snorted. “In the medical profession? Close enough. That’s what the training’s for.” She nodded her chin toward the break room. “Go fuel up.”

As she was the Chief Nurse—“As you say, alet.”

Murphy chuckled as she left. “Wish all my assists were as biddable as you.”

The food remained beautiful in the break room. He chose another croissant for himself and found it buttery enough to need no condiment. By then, it was long after midnight, and he couldn’t remember when the day had sped. This afternoon he had been taking a test on the station, and yet it seemed so long ago, and not long enough to account for his exhaustion. He found a corner and sat with his back to the wall, and there he drowsed until the tattoo of running feet jerked him from uneasy dreams.

Had the hurricane passed? But as he rose and followed the runners, he saw the behemoth over them. Off the sea at least, and perhaps now it would break itself to pieces on the shore—the meteorologists were of two minds over whether it would dissipate, or if Tsera Nova’s land masses were too small for the task. Regardless, there should have been no more admissions, and yet when he arrived in triage there were dozens of new, very wet, very distraught patients. He glanced at the window and was shocked at the sunlight, wan and gray and strange.

“Storm’s eye,” someone said, in passing. “Can you check on that group there, they won’t stop hyperventilating.”

“Yes,” Jahir replied, and went.

When next he looked up, the windows had gone dark again, rain-fogged, and the storm on the overhead screens had visibly moved. He rolled his aching shoulders, cold beneath the thin fabric of the medical uniform, and looked through the crowd. One sole patient remained, a bedraggled tabby Asanii sitting on a lone chair. He’d been aware of her going back into a room for treatment and being released to the waiting room again, but not why.

“Alet?” he said. “Would you like a blanket, or something warm to drink?”

She looked up. Her pupils dilated in her eyes, visibly. “You…?”

Jahir hesitated. Did she recognize him? “Yes?”

“You’re… Vasiht’h’s Eldritch,” the Asanii said, ears trembling.

“You know him?”

“I… yes… he…” Her shoulders tightened, and she bared her teeth in a grimace. Watching her pack her fear and grief back under her skin was painful, but he did not interrupt. He would not have wanted his own fragile attempts at control shattered in her situation. “Kristyl made friends with him, the way she makes friends with everyone.”

“And you are Kristyl’s friend.”

She nodded, head lowered, and her voice was a hushed rasp. “She’s my very best friend. And I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

The Asanii glanced up, pushed her hair back from her eyes. “We were on a boat.”

Jahir sat across from her, leaning forward with his hands clasped over his knees.

“I don’t remember how I ended up in the water.” She wrung her hands, noticed herself doing it, and wrapped her arms around herself instead. “I don’t remember getting out either. I don’t know how long I was in there, it was… I… they told me they found me hanging onto a piece of the hull.” She laughed. “Unconscious, I guess. I used to call myself clingy until Kristyl told me that was wrong. That I just liked to hold tightly to things that mattered. I guess surviving mattered.” She inhaled shakily. “It was a rescue ship. Coast guard. They were sweeping for survivors. We stayed out so long we weren’t sure we’d get back, but they asked us… they asked all of us aboard if we were all right with staying out until the last moment and we all said yes!” She looked up, eyes fierce, rimmed in red. “We all said yes.”

“I understand,” Jahir said, quietly. “So I would have said as well.”

She nodded once, a jerk of her head. “Then we came back, and it was scary. I asked once if we were going to make it back and the sailor told me ‘yes’ and I just… I decided to believe him because not believing him would have made my last moments worse, if I was going to die. Does… does that sound dramatic?”

“On the contrary,” Jahir replied. “It sounds like a clear-eyed choice.”

“Clear-eyed.” She sighed, shuddered. “She used to tell me I was that, too.” Wiping an eye with the side of her hand, she added, “I could use that drink now, please? Maybe… do they have hot chocolate?”

“I am certain they do. I shall fetch it for you.”

When he returned, the Asanii was sitting straighter, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue from a box that had appeared at her side: someone else had checked on her, he thought, and handed her a cup. She said, “Thank you,” and added, “I’m sorry. I feel like I already know you, because of Vasiht’h, so I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Gladiolus Ardune.”

“Jahir,” he said.

She studied him, her smile tired. “It’s strange to finally meet you. I half-believed you were…”

“Fictional?” he offered.

“Mythical?” She laughed. “No. I never thought he was lying. But I guess when I tried to imagine what it would look like, for a Glaseah to have an Eldritch friend, I… kept coming up blank. He was always so happy when he mentioned you. I thought… I’m not sure what I thought. That you wouldn’t be so real.”

“I admit,” he said, because he could find no way to engage with that save through humor, “that I was not entirely sure you and your human friend were more plausible.”

“Kristyl is completely implausible. That’s why I love her.” Gladiolus swallowed. “I hope… I can’t imagine that she’s alive. For both of us to survive this?”

“And yet you survived,” he reminded her. “Clinging unconscious to a shard of a hull.”

“With a broken leg,” Gladiolus said, ears sagging. “I guess that’s ridiculous.” She looked into her cup, huffed a little. “Knowing Kristyl, she rounded up an army of dolphins and rescued everyone else, and they’re even now sailing back, covered in rainbows.”

“Would that be typical?” Jahir asked.

“You have no idea.” The Asanii smiled, pained. “I hope you get to find out.” She glanced at the window. “Do you know how much longer we’ll be stuck here?”

“The rumors in the breakroom suggest another twelve hours or so. Perhaps less.”

The Asanii shuddered. “Is there something I can do to help? I can’t just sit here and do nothing for twelve hours.”

“You might attempt sleep?”

“No. There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep. I’ll lie down and close my eyes and think about all the ways things could go wrong.” She shook her head once, a twitch as if to toss the images out of it. “I’ll pour coffee or fold bedsheets or mop floors, just give me something to do.”

Jahir studied her, wondered. Went with his instincts. “Are you a good listener?”

“A good…” She trailed off and chuckled, wan. “All I do is listen, most of the time. I like listening.”

“Then perhaps you might accompany me. My work is the work of a counselor, and many here are in need yet.”

Gladiolus glanced at the room, then at him. “You and your partner are therapists, aren’t you? Vasiht’h said so? But I don’t have any special training…”

“You have something I don’t,” Jahir said. “You have survived the storm. That experience is something you share with those here that I cannot.”

“Oh,” she said softly. And then nodded, standing. “Yes. I can do that. Where do we start?”

“Where the injuries are worst.” He paused. “If you can? If it is too difficult, there is no shame in saying no. To take on the burdens of others when you are yourself worried…”

“You’re worried too, aren’t you?” She met his eyes. “I want to do this.” Softer. “I think it might help me too.”

“This way, then.”