Chapter 101 – The Chair by the Window

Nia wanted the chair turned toward the gate.

Tomas had set it beside her bed so she could eat lunch sitting up again. She had lasted longer the previous day, but Sayegh still wanted her leg supported and the transfer supervised. Now she asked him to roll the chair across the ward, away from the repaired ceiling and toward the window at the other end.

"June isn't due for another hour," he said.

"I know. I want to see her coming."

He checked the route first. The floor was clear, the chair's footrest locked, and there was room to turn without clipping the next bed. Beck helped with the transfer. Nia gripped neither of them with her splinted hand, but she directed them all the way across.

From Kai's bed she looked almost like someone waiting in a station before a journey. The injured leg was raised on a padded board and she was pale from the effort. When she saw him looking, she tilted her head toward the window.

"I can tell you when they've reached the gate."

"You can tell me whether the guard has finally repaired the latch."

"That would be less interesting."

Rook had inspected the roof a third time after the rain. Sayegh sent word to June that a short visit could go ahead, subject to a fresh route check by the escorts. Nobody called the clinic safe forever. June had replied with a time, and Elise had drawn a crooked sun on the bottom of the message.

Kai was relieved that the girl wanted to return after hearing about the creatures. He was relieved for Nia more than for himself.

***

The garage answered before the visitors arrived.

The runner came with the regular water crew, carrying a folded letter and the empty crates they had returned the previous afternoon. The distributor would take a physical headcount signed by Sayegh and Rook. Its automatic inventory skill would not accept manual corrections, so a handwritten claim would be handled as a trade rather than a System allocation. The clinic could receive fewer supplies that way, but the garage would not require patient names.

Sayegh read the letter twice.

"That's an answer," she said. "At least it's one we can decide on."

The answer did not produce extra supplies in the treatment room. Sayegh opened the cupboard and had Tomas bring the stock book over. Two unopened boxes were on the upper shelf. A third had been opened that morning; its packets lay beside the clean scissors. The patient in the inner corridor needed a fresh dressing that evening, and Beck's stretcher crew had asked for a packet in case a splint rubbed through on the way back from the yard.

"Can we trade the opened one?" the runner asked.

"Not for a sealed item," Sayegh said. "And I can't send opened packets out of this room and pretend they're clean when they return."

She counted what could remain if the two sealed boxes went. It would cover the scheduled changes until the next water run, with no comfortable margin. Rook offered to ask Ruth for more from the yard, but Ruth had sent her own list of shortages the previous night.

"Don't take from her without asking," Sayegh said. "If the garage refuses our paper, I want those boxes back on this shelf tomorrow."

The runner agreed to bring any refusal home with the same boxes. He did not promise an antiseptic substitute from another source.

Rook asked the runner who would see the clinic's count. He knew the name of the woman at the garage desk and the guard who checked outgoing crates. He did not know whether either would keep a copy. Sayegh wrote those questions down to ask before the next exchange.

Kai had expected the garage to insist on a scan. He had also expected Rook to refuse without considering the cost. Instead the two women sat at the desk and counted the dressings they had left. The quantity they could afford to trade for was small but real.

"You'll have to sign for the count," Sayegh told Rook.

"I will. If we claim it, we're accountable for it."

"What about the people the skill might miss?" Kai asked.

"They stay on the paper count," Sayegh said. "No names go to the garage. I won't reduce the number so its skill can agree with us."

Nia heard that from her chair. She raised her voice without turning away from the window.

"If the paper gets there, please tell the people carrying it what it says. Not just how many boxes they're expected to bring back."

Rook looked at her, then at the runner. "That's fair."

They prepared a duplicate claim. One copy would travel with the water crew and one would stay at the clinic. The runner watched Sayegh and Rook sign both, then repeated the terms aloud: two unopened boxes of dressings for four sealed bottles of antiseptic. Sayegh checked the remaining dressing stock before she signed and set the boxes aside herself. He had carried medical supplies before; he knew why antiseptic mattered. He also knew he could return with a refusal rather than improvise a different bargain.

Rook wrote the seal numbers on both copies of the claim. Sayegh tucked a note under the string tying the two boxes together: if either seal broke on the road, the runner was to come back rather than leave the opened box at the garage. Tomas copied the evening dressing list onto a board by the cupboard. The trade had not yet gone anywhere, but it had already changed how much they could use before the crew returned.

The arrangement did not solve everything. It gave the clinic a way to ask for what it needed without pretending every patient would appear in a window.

***

Elise reached the gate behind June and a pool volunteer. A different clinic guard had met them at the underpass after checking the stairs. The four walked the rest of the way together. Nia saw them through the glass before the desk volunteer came to announce them.

"June's red jacket," she said.

"And Elise?" Kai asked.

"Right behind her."

Elise entered the ward trying to walk calmly. She made it three steps before she hurried to the chair. June caught the back of her sweater so she would not run into Nia's supported leg.

"I waited," Elise said.

"You did. I'm sorry it took so long."

"June said the roof was fixed."

"It is. Rook checks it more often than anyone wants to hear about."

Elise looked up at the patch across the far end of the ceiling, then back at Nia. Her sister was sitting at a window instead of lying behind a curtain. That seemed to matter more than the sheet of metal overhead.

"You can sit up now?"

"For part of the day. It makes me tired."

"I can help push."

"Not today. Tomas does the driving."

Nia's answer made Elise laugh. It was the first time Kai had heard them laugh together without stopping to check whether the other was about to cry.

June sat where Sayegh indicated, away from the patients' marked limbs. She brought a book Elise had found at the pool. It had pictures of city birds on every other page and a loose cover repaired with string. Elise wanted Nia to identify the one that kept stealing grain from the pool kitchen. Nia said the drawing looked too dignified for the bird Elise described.

"It pecks the other birds off the bowl," Elise said. "Then it drops the grain and chases them again."

"That sounds like the one with the white throat," Nia said.

"You haven't seen it."

"You gave me three clues. Let me have one guess."

Elise put her finger over the name beneath the picture so Nia could not read it. June watched the two of them instead of helping. When Nia guessed wrong, Elise made her turn back three pages and start over. Nia's chair was still at the window; Tomas had not asked her to return to bed just because the visit had begun. After another few pages he quietly moved the footrest higher.

For a while their disagreement filled the ward more effectively than any announcement of safety.

Kai listened. Tomas set his cup where he could reach the straw. He drank without asking anyone to lift it, then watched Elise turn a page for Nia, keeping the book on the chair arm rather than pressing it against her splint.

When Elise came over, she stopped at the end of Kai's bed.

"Did you see the roof creature?"

"One of them. Not for long."

"June says you told everyone to look up."

"I saw dust fall. Beck heard something first. The guards did the fighting."

"Nia said you got a piece of it."

Kai glanced at her. She was smiling faintly. He should have known she would not let the core remain a secret story of his own.

"They let me keep a core," he said. "It stays with Rook, where people won't touch it by accident."

Elise looked toward the watchroom. "Can it make you well?"

He considered telling her it might help. That was true only in a narrow sense, and she was young enough to hear it as a promise.

"It let me do one small thing for longer," he said. "It hasn't fixed my hand. The nurses are helping with that part."

"Oh."

She did not sound disappointed with him. She sounded as if she had been given an answer she could use.

June called her back to read a page aloud. Elise began with the bird's name, stumbled over the next line and asked Nia for help. Kai closed his eyes for a few minutes. When he opened them, she was still reading.

***

The visit ended before Nia's leg became too painful for the chair. Tomas moved her back to bed while June and Elise waited outside the ward doors. Elise wanted to watch every part of the transfer. Nia asked her to fetch the book instead and choose a page to bring next time.

The transfer was slower than it had been in the morning. Nia stopped Tomas once when the splinted hand caught the chair arm. He adjusted his hold and waited until she said to go on. Elise returned with the book open and saw Nia pale against the pillow, but she did not ask to stay indefinitely. She showed her the chosen picture and promised to find out the bird's real name from June.

The clinic guard would walk them to the underpass. The pool volunteer would continue with June and Elise to the pool, and the guard would return to the gate. Sayegh confirmed the route and the planned return time with all three adults. The roof had been checked, but nobody rushed the child out or held her for a longer visit to prove a point.

Before leaving, Elise gave Nia a folded scrap of paper. It showed the pool, the underpass and the clinic as three uneven squares joined by a line. Beside the line she had drawn a small roof over the steps.

"June says people keep following the blue arrows to the broken bridge," she told Nia. "We use this way."

"Did you draw it for me?"

"For you and Kai. So you know how I get here."

Nia held the scrap between the fingers that were not in the splint while Tomas supported her arm. She could not carry it across the room, so he set it beside the blue sweater after Elise left.

Kai asked to see it later. He recognized the underpass steps from Beck's description and asked Tomas to leave the drawing where Nia could see it when she woke.

At the desk Sayegh checked the two boxes once more. The water crew would take them with the signed claim in the morning. Until they returned, the shelves in the treatment room would hold fewer clean dressings than she liked.