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  They withdrew to the doorway, and he caught snatches of her voice, and of Harry responding, in a low bass rumble. He couldn’t make all of it out, but she appeared to be asking about the routine, the process for his bathing, other schedules for the day. Harry seemed cordial enough, but distant. Not smiling, or teasing, like he did with some of the other nurses. It must have been a dozen exchanges, back and forth, before she said, a little more loudly, “Thank you. We’ll see you at two, then.”

  She waited for Harry to leave, then closed the door again. The others hadn’t done that, they’d always wanted to have the door open. In case - in case he did something. He didn’t know if she hadn’t been warned or if she didn’t care. Maybe she was like him, and she didn’t care much about anything, anymore, here in this exile.

  “Would you like me to read, while you eat?”

  He’d like her to read a newspaper, but he had learned quickly not to ask for one. He gestured slightly, with his empty fork. “Top shelf. Any book.” They were all much of a muchness, the sort of adventure story that wouldn’t cause any comment by anyone who glanced at his bookshelf. He’d learned a long time ago not to give the sort of people who wanted to pry anything to pry into. Here in the hospital, that was only more true.

  She drew out one he’d read and had read to him before, about finding lost temples in the Egyptian desert, but that was fine. He knew how it went, it would give him a chance to get a sense of her voice without dealing with prattle.

  Chapter 4

  Roland’s room, the same day

  When he was done eating, Nurse Morris stopped reading aloud long enough to clear his tray, and leave it and the dishes on the cart outside. Her voice turned out to be pleasant enough to listen to that he’d managed to be distracted from his food. She didn’t attempt to chatter again, or to ask him more questions.

  As it drew on for two, he said, “You are reporting to Sister’s office?”

  Nurse Morris glanced up, startled, looking rather more like a doe than something human. “Yes, Major.” Then she inhaled, and said, “Did you have a request?”

  He waved his hand. Having a request would mean wanting things, and wanting things was complicated. He mostly didn’t. He considered if he had any real interest in asking about her background. He thought about asking her to find out about when Healer Cole would come by, but every other time he’d asked that, it had come to nothing. This would be no different.

  Besides, chances were she’d be on duty with him for perhaps a week, and then something would happen. She would disappear, to be replaced with a combination of orderlies and overworked nurses, never the same one two days in a row. Then they’d find someone else willing to be stuck with him. The previous nurse would never be talked about again.

  Before he could make a firm decision, there was a knock on the door, and a “Harry, sir.”

  She gathered up her bag, and said, “Come in.”

  “We’ll be half an hour, sister.” Harry was being unusually deferential, which was curious enough to make Roland pay a little attention. “Do you know how to get to Matron’s office?”

  “Yes, thank you. Half an hour, then.” She nodded, then set off briskly.

  “Sir, can you sit up for me?” The obligatory intimacies, and the cajoling required, the dance of someone of less status and rank, making him do things he did not care about, but was obliged to do. It had the bones of a comic opera, somewhere, lost underneath the muck and mud and awfulness.

  Harry went to start the bath in the next room, and Roland pushed himself fully upright, then swung his legs over the edge of the bed. They felt particularly sodden today. When he tried to stand, he immediately lost his balance, and sat down with a thump on the bed. There were days when he could make it to the loo or the bath and back on his own, and days when it was like this.

  Harry sighed, softly. “Let me get Walter, sir.” The other orderly on this ward. Harry went out, coming back a minute later with Walter, an older man, but sturdy.

  “Heard you had a new one. What’s she like then?” Oh, they were going to gossip. He usually hated it, they talked over him like he wasn’t there, but this time it might be useful, if there was anything different about this one.

  Harry grunted, going off to check the bath, then coming back, and taking up his place on Roland’s right side, as Walter did on his left. With his arms over their shoulders, and their arms around his back, he could manage well enough. First to the toilet, while they retreated to the bedroom, and he could overhear. His ears still worked quite well, at least.

  “Gather she got sent back from the front.”

  “Disgrace, or something else?” They sounded like they were doing the sort of rudimentary tidying up that put everything out of place.

  “Dunno. Not going to serve there again. Maybe she’s not brave enough.” Roland thought that not being at the front was entirely sensible. Orderlies working in the safe and ordered hallways of the Temple of Healing didn’t have any room to throw stones. At least Nurse Morris had made the effort.

  “So no idea why she got sent here?”

  “My Allie’s best friend, May, she said Nurse Morris saw the Archiater.” Walter sounded like that wasn’t a usual sort of thing. Some sort of administrator, Roland believed, not someone he’d ever met.

  “Huh.” Harry was quiet for a moment, leaving Roland to listen to the sounds. “And assigned here?”

  “Guess she did something, one of the other places? Sanitaria or somewhat. Before.”

  “Anyone know her?” Harry sounded slightly intrigued. “She got anyone?”

  “Don’t know anything about her, yeah? Though she wasn’t wearing a ring, I guess. Just the uniform.”

  “Strict, then.” Many of the nurses here had more personal touches than were technically permitted, a brooch or ring or some other decoration.

  Walter passed by the crack in the door, and Roland could see him shrug. “What was she like, then?”

  “Polite enough. Didn’t make me do all the set-up, like that Margaret Smith, upstairs.” Margaret was, he gathered, snobbish and rather nasty, from the comments both Harry and Walter had made over the past few months. Also, apparently, with friends in high places, because she kept a position with a light caseload.

  “Out of your class, man. Alethorpe, Allie thought. Her friend got a glimpse of the pendant, yeah?” Then there was a sound, like Walter clapping Harry on the back. “Come out with me Friday night, yeah? Allie’s got a friend.”

  “Allie’s always got a friend.” That was good-natured grumbling, and at that point, Roland shifted to flush, and then called out “Ready.”

  It took a few moments to get him settled in the bath. “There you are, sir. We’ll be making up the bed now, you give a shout if you need us.”

  Roland nodded. “Ta,” he said. “Don’t mind a bit of a soak.” The water was restorative, the bathtub was charmed to keep it warm - it was part of his therapy, that, though not every day. And if they took the chance for a bit of a break and maybe a smoke while he was in the bath, he didn’t mind.

  He leaned his head back against the cooler cast iron and enamel, letting his eyes close again. Alethorpe, he knew a number of the healers went there. His mind seemed to want to wander down this thread of information, and he had no particular reason to stop it. He’d be here for fifteen minutes or so, then scrubbed, then popped back into bed.

  He wondered if she’d wanted to be a healer, or if that was something people made a decision about. There were female healers, he’d met some of them, though most of them were rather terrifyingly devoted to their particular healing deities and arts.

  He’d not had much experience of healers before this, male or female, other than a few bumps and minor injuries at school and in Army training. It wasn’t something his family ran to. It wasn’t the hard work and commitment - they were good at that. But it was a different way of life, a sameness, that he thought his parents would never tolerate.

  He’d known a bookbinder who’d
gone to Alethorpe. A few other crafters, including the gunsmith he preferred for work and repair before the shooting season began.

  He supposed he was going to have to think about some sort of new occupation for his time, since the thought of the guns going off made him shiver. Rather worse if he dwelled on it. Books, perhaps. Maybe working on regimental histories, or military history. His father would approve of that, perhaps.

  He wasn’t sure what to expect from his father now, he’d not heard anything from his family since he’d ended up here. Just that one fleeting visit from his former fiancee, early enough in his stay he’d have thought it a fever dream except for the letter she’d sent afterwards. He had no idea what to make of that, and it made his head hurt to think about it. His head and his heart.

  He yanked his train of thought back to something else. Books, he’d been thinking about books. Of course, the book idea would only work if his eyes wouldn’t start blurring after only twenty minutes. It had been ten, last month, so at least that was some progress.

  He heard the orderlies again; perhaps they had popped out to the courtyard for a smoke, on the side no one would spot. They weren’t supposed to leave him entirely alone, out of earshot, in the bath. He’d heard their orders. Well, he wasn’t supposed to be left alone, period. If a nurse wasn’t with him, his door was open, and there was a charmed device that alerted them to anything unusual.

  Or, well. Or he’d taken his evening potion, been made to take it, and the next ten hours, he suspected he barely moved at all, the way he ached in the morning. More like a dozen hours. The blasted thing took a while to wear off, and whenever the healers did come round, he always felt muzzy-headed and unable to make the words come out to ask questions.

  It was always one of the junior healers. They would inspect him, asking him a series of precisely defined questions as sharp as an interrogation. They talked about the senior healer, Healer Cole, but Roland couldn’t remember ever meeting him. The juniors never listened to Roland, never gave him space to talk about anything that he was feeling that he hadn’t been asked about. He wasn’t sure he could tell them - or would - but never to have the chance made him want to retreat into a dark hole and never come out.

  No one told him anything. Not how long he might be here, or when he could go somewhere else. Or even what was wrong with him. He’d heard murmurs, on and off, he gathered what was broken in him wasn’t something they were terribly familiar with, even here. But they wouldn’t explain to him what they knew, or what the potions did.

  Sometimes he woke, and something had been shattered, a pitcher or a glass. Once, terrifyingly, it had been the rocking chair beside the bed, like something had cleaved it in two. That nurse, he’d never seen again, and the orderlies had only talked about her in hushed voices, glancing around to make sure no one overheard.

  They started talking again, picking up a conversation. “You see the notice, about the, the aus...”

  “Austerity.” Harry had, he gathered, a larger vocabulary than Walter. “Yeah. Them wanting to save money.”

  “Well, there is a war on. But we work plenty long, and plenty hard, why should we pay for it that way too?”

  “Dunno.” They were making the bed now, the snap of clean sheets and the cedar from the storage closet filtering through into the bathroom. “Dunno how we can argue, though. And it’s better than a mine, or the front, or a farm.” Harry had clung to this job, saw it as a step up for his family.

  “Farm’s not so bad. Bloody hard work, but some rewards.” They had this argument on and off. “And people always need food. Get yourself a bit of a specialty, cheese, cider, jams, somewhat, you can make a bit beyond the usual.”

  “Pah. You can keep a farm. Too many bloody animals.” Then a grunt, and the sounds of the blankets being tucked under, hospital corners that pinned him down. “Besides. There’s a war on. And not like to end too quick, despite what everyone said. Home by Christmas, they said.”

  Roland thought that whatever else, neither of these men had been touched too directly by it. They hadn’t gone to fight, and he didn’t think they had brothers or sons who had. Maybe he was wrong.

  He knew the people making the decisions expected the war to go on. That’s why they dragged him out, and propped him up. Why they wound him up like a clockwork toy, to encourage other men to go and fight. They weren’t the ones who’d been down in the trenches, and seeing their men blown to bits, or killed by a sniper. Roland had taken shelter in the trenches here and there, in the course of his own duties. He’d seen the way the officers - the good ones - had taken that blow again and again.

  He wasn’t out there with the guns and the mud and the blood, not any more, but at least he’d done his bit. Maybe he could find some small favour in that.

  Chapter 5

  Roland’s room, the same day

  Elen halted, once she cleared the doorway from the central ward where Sister Almeda had her office. There were four long-term wards, all on the ground floor, and Sister had taken a large room facing the Temple gardens in one of the middle buildings as her office. It enabled her to keep an eye on much of the coming and going, certainly anyone of particular note.

  The side door, however, was not in her direct line of sight. Elen stopped, checked the angles of the windows, and then stepped onto one of the stone paths. There was a smaller garden here, a courtyard with plants at least, between the buildings. She took a deep breath, wanting to gather her thoughts before going back to her duties.

  Some of the meeting had been a help, at least. She had finally been presented with a daily schedule, to be modified as required by others. She had been warned she would likely need to stay late after the Major had a recruiting event. The next one was in three weeks, barely enough time for her to begin to establish a proper understanding of his usual routine and condition and make a start on improving it.

  Sister Almeda had not explained the actual events themselves, or their particular demands, and Elen wondered if she even knew. Elen was to accompany him there, wait outside, and accompany him back, without drawing attention to herself or to his needs. From what Sister Almeda hadn’t said, she gathered these were a particular challenge, but Elen could not tell why. No one gave her a chance to ask. Perhaps Major Gospatrick would choose to tell her, given a little time.

  The schedule itself was more or less what she’d expected. A half-day off a week. She’d expected that, though she had been strongly encouraged not to take one for a few weeks, to align herself with his schedule and treatments. The implication had been that there was a day in the cycle of treatment where her services were needed a great deal less than the others. And of course she would bend to that. It wasn’t as if Elen had much choice.

  Sister Almeda, despite being responsible for oversight of at least a few dozen nurses, had made it clear she’d be observing closely. Elen couldn’t tell the reason for that. Elen was an unknown, of course. Major Gospatrick was an important patient, so they kept saying. Or perhaps Sister Almeda was just like that with everyone.

  Mind, questioning the omniscience of a ward sister never ended well. At least not if they got the suspicion you’d so much as thought they were anything less than fully perfect. Or less than entirely in charge of even the tiniest detail of their wards. Elen was quite clear about the hierarchy here.

  Elen couldn’t shake a nagging thought that something was not quite right. It was impossible to tell exactly what. She had been too long away to know how things were normally done. It might just be the expected difficulties of taking in many more with injuries, or different kinds of injuries, of not yet having sorted out the best practices.

  What Elen knew was that Sister Almeda seemed both curiously interested in Elen’s work, and entirely distanced from it. She’d been pleasant enough when answering a few practical questions about how this item or that was handled now, but she made no suggestions about treatments or approaches. Except she seemed, in glimpses, fragments, to be glad Elen was suggesting a few new things
.

  She had picked up all the small tidbits she could. Sister Almeda had been here quite a long time, and she intended to stay even longer. There had been the twenty and thirty year plaques. The latter had the slight veneer of tarnish that made it clear that the forty year clock was right around the corner.

  That did not help her patient. Nor did it help Elen herself. Whatever was peculiar here was more odd than the usual disarray of standards and common procedures that the War had caused. Sister Almeda had been particularly unforthcoming about her patient. He had a set regimen of potions, he would take them as ordered. She was to observe, and to report any concerns immediately.

  When she had inquired what sort of concerns, whether it was fever or tremors or infection, Sister Almeda said, “You claim to be an experienced nurse. Anything unexpected. We trust you will not report the usual run of minor needs.”

  That placed her firmly on the horns of a dilemma. If she did not report something and it was determined later that it should have been reported, she would be out on her ear.

  At best, she would be hired on as a private duty nurse to fuss over some older man or woman who needed minimal care. Or sent off to be the visiting nurse on a gruelling set of rounds, seeing all the worst bits of humanity in between the tedium of ear aches, colds, and minor injuries. And at worst, she’d have to take up a position with someone who pinched bottoms or groped or leered, or the sort of elderly woman who thought the nurse was there to fetch and carry every other second.

  On the other hand, if she reported trivial things, she would also be out on her ear, and nearly as promptly. She would have to make those decisions without being given proper access to his file, so she could determine what his symptoms were, what the diagnosis was, or what the side effects of his potion regimen were. It was forcing her into shoddy nursing work, and for no reason that she could see.