Chapter 92 – Someone Who Was There

Nia asked about leaving before the breakfast bowls had been cleared.

Dr. Sayegh pulled a stool between the beds. She had already looked at Nia's leg that morning, and she kept the record open on her knee.

"Where would you go?"

"The municipal pool. If the woman who wrote to me was right."

"How far?"

Nia looked toward the papers on the chair. The address at the bottom was for the laundry, not the pool.

"I don't know yet."

"Then that's something we need to find out. You can't walk there. You can't manage crutches with those hands. If you go soon, someone has to carry you, and we need to know what happens when you arrive."

Kai watched Nia listen. She had slept poorly, waking whenever footsteps approached their beds. Now she was making herself wait for the doctor to finish.

"You let them bring us here," she said.

"Because the treatment you needed was here. That was worth the risk. Looking for someone is different from knowing where she is."

Nia glanced at Kai. He didn't answer for her.

"What can we do today?" she asked.

"Keep treating the hand and leg. See how you tolerate being moved with proper support. Find out about the journey. I can't give you a date for walking, but walking isn't the only way to travel."

The doctor looked at Kai next.

"The same applies to you. Your dressings need checking, and your shoulder still needs support. You won't make either problem go away by standing up to prove you can."

He had been considering how far away the stretcher was. He looked back at her.

"I wasn't going to stand."

"Good. Tell Tomas if you want to change position."

She left the question of travel open in the record. Nia asked the desk worker to add it to their questions for Helen, then watched her carry the paper away.

Their reply went out with the first water delivery that morning. Kai saw the worker put it into the carrier's hand and tell him which entrance to use at the laundry. The man repeated the address before leaving.

Tomas helped Kai eat. Later he checked the dressing and the supported arm. Kai could identify a touch below the thumb more promptly than he had the day before, but the next touch was just as confused. Tomas marked both answers down.

Kai didn't try to force a better result by drawing on the warmth. He wanted to know what had changed without doing that.

The right wrist still pulled when the bed was adjusted. They settled it back near his stomach, leaving the blue mark clear. Then Tomas raised the bed enough for him to see Nia without turning his neck.

She was rehearsing what she wanted to ask Helen.

Halfway through, she stopped.

"I keep making it sound like she did something wrong."

"Write the questions down," Kai said. "You won't have to hold all of them in your head when she gets here."

Nia looked at her splint.

He caught himself. "I'll ask the desk."

***

Helen Voss arrived after the midday meal, carrying a folded apron in one hand.

The water carrier had found her at the kitchen. Another worker had taken over for a few hours, and Helen had come with two laundry volunteers bringing clean cloth to the clinic. The desk worker brought her to the beds while the volunteers unloaded their bundle by the cupboard.

Helen was short, with gray roots showing through the dark hair pinned at the back of her head. There was a blister across one knuckle and a damp patch on the apron where she had been twisting it during the walk.

She looked at Nia's splint, then at the papers on the chair.

"I'm Helen. I wrote the reply."

Nia's voice came out too quietly. "Did she look hurt?"

Helen set the apron on her lap before answering.

"I didn't see an injury. I didn't examine her. There was dust on her face and she'd been crying. She could walk."

"And you saw her go inside?"

"Into the pool building, yes."

"By herself? Who was with her? Did they make her put on anything?"

Helen looked from Nia to the desk worker, who had begun writing.

Kai waited for a gap.

"Could you tell us from when you first spoke to her?" he asked. "We can come back to anything you don't remember."

Nia pressed her lips together. Then she nodded.

Helen pulled the chair closer, leaving room between it and Kai's marked hand.

"It was at the bus stop on Ash Street. The roof was still standing. There were children under it and a man trying to get a bus door open. I had water from the shop where my husband works. I was taking it to him."

She paused to rub the blister on her knuckle.

"The little ones were asking for a drink. I stopped. That's when I spoke to your sister. Or the girl I think was your sister."

Nia did not correct her.

The girl had been helping a smaller child drink from a bottle cap. When Helen asked for her name, she had answered Elise Calder, then asked whether Helen could call someone. Helen's phone had no signal. Neither did the man's phone at the bus.

"She knew the number," Helen said. "She kept saying it while I tried. I can't remember it now. I'm sorry."

Nia began to give her number, then stopped before the second half.

"I won't ask you to guess."

Helen exhaled. "Thank you."

The man at the bus had wanted the children to follow the blue directions toward a larger relief point. Someone else said it was too far. They argued while the children stayed under the shelter, waiting for an adult to make a decision.

Then a woman came down Ash Street wearing a red waterproof jacket over a pool staff shirt. She said the pool building was open. They could wait inside, out of the road, while people looked for their families.

"Did she have a class?" Kai asked.

"I didn't check. I wasn't checking anyone then. She had keys to the pool. I saw her use them when we got there."

She looked at Nia. "Her name was June. June Shah. She told me because I asked who I'd be leaving them with."

The desk worker wrote the name separately from the address.

Ash Street Municipal Pool. Main entrance, beside the bicycle stands. June Shah, red jacket, pool staff shirt.

For the first time since the letter arrived, Nia looked away from Helen long enough to read what was being written.

"How many children?"

"Six when we left the bus stop. Two more joined us on the way. There were parents bringing children to the pool too. I don't know how many were inside."

Helen had walked at the back. The girl who called herself Elise stayed beside the smaller child, who kept stopping to look for the man from the bus. Helen thought they knew each other until the girl asked him whether he remembered his mother's name.

Nia shut her eyes for a moment.

"She does that," she said. "Talks to little kids as if she's forty."

Helen's mouth moved in a brief, tired smile. "She told him he didn't have to finish the water if it made him feel sick. I was trying to make him drink more."

Kai let them talk. The desk worker's pencil slowed, then stopped until Helen began describing the entrance.

There had been a folding table just inside the doors. June asked names and wrote them on a pad. Another adult brought plastic cups out of a storage room. Helen waited until all eight children had crossed the entrance, then helped refill the cups from a container near the table.

"Water, not the swimming pool," she added. "There was a proper container. I wouldn't have given them pool water."

"No one thinks you did," Nia said quickly.

Helen nodded, but kept both hands closed around the apron.

"What happened with the key?" Nia asked.

Helen looked down at her lap.

"She checked her pockets when June asked whether there was an adult at home. Then she checked them again. I asked if she'd lost something."

The girl had said her house key was gone. Helen told her that her guardian would be more worried about finding her than about a key.

"That's when she said you were her sister. Nia. Not her guardian. She seemed very particular about that."

Nia made a short attempt at a laugh.

"She thinks it makes me sound old."

She took a breath before asking the next question.

"Did you tell her I wouldn't be angry?"

"I told her I'd be glad to see her if I were you."

Nia turned her face toward the pillow. The desk worker lowered the paper and waited.

Kai wanted to reach across the space between the beds. His left hand lay open on its support, and the marked wrist had begun to draw outward again. He used his elbow to bring it close and said Nia's name instead.

She nodded without looking up.

Helen waited until Nia had wiped her face against the edge of the pillow.

"I need to tell you the rest," she said. "It's not much, but I don't want you thinking I stayed all day."

June had asked Helen whether she could help with the children. Helen said she needed to find her husband. She had given June what water remained and asked whether the children would be kept there.

June said they would stay while the streets were dangerous. Anyone who came looking could leave a name at the table.

That was when Helen left.

"I haven't been back," she said. "I don't know what happened after that."

"Did you find him?" Nia asked.

Helen looked surprised by the question.

"Yes. He'd gone out the back of the shop. I kept going to the front. We missed each other twice."

She smoothed the apron across her knees.

"He's at the laundry with me now. He can't do much carrying, but he can sit and peel things. They let us both stay."

Nia looked toward the reply on the chair. "You didn't have to come here."

"You asked who took her in. I should have put June's name in the first letter. I was afraid I'd remembered it wrong. Then I spoke it aloud and remembered asking her to repeat the surname."

The desk worker read the name back. Helen confirmed it, then corrected the entrance description: the bicycle stands were to the right when facing the doors, not directly in front.

Kai asked about the route from the bus stop. Helen described a short walk along Ash Street, with one crossing. She had seen ordinary people at the pool, not a station intake counter. She hadn't heard anyone use the words *Center Intake*.

Nia looked sharply at him when he asked that.

He waited until Helen had finished.

"The records sent us somewhere else," he said to Nia. "We need to check this place ourselves."

"She might have left afterward."

"Yes. That's why we ask June what happened next."

Nia studied the new sheet. Then she told the worker to put the pool address at the top of the search request. Leave the station claims on their separate page.

***

Getting someone to go there took most of the afternoon.

The desk worker checked the delivery board near the kitchen. The pool was three streets beyond the laundry, farther than the water carrier's usual stop. He would not promise to walk there alone on a route he hadn't checked.

Helen could point out the building. She wouldn't go alone either.

Nia listened to the discussion from her bed. When the worker came back, she asked whether one of the clinic guards could accompany them.

"There are two on duty. We can't leave the gate empty."

"I'm not asking you to leave it empty. I'm asking when someone else takes over."

The worker went to find out.

Kai asked Helen to stay long enough to help mark the destination on the street map. She had started folding the apron again, preparing to leave.

"I can give you a little longer. They need me back for the evening food."

He thanked her, then asked the worker to bring the map where both patients could see it.

It came from the school office, with the school marked in one corner and a bus route printed across the middle. The pool was there. So was the laundry. Kai could see why the carrier didn't want to improvise the extra walk: the shortest line between them crossed a railway cutting.

"Do you know whether that bridge is still up?" he asked Helen.

She shook her head. Her walk with the children had approached from the other side.

The blue directions on the street had taken them toward the truck yesterday. Kai asked the desk worker not to mark the printed bus route as a checked path.

"Put the building on there. Let the people walking it choose how they get there."

The carrier came over while they were talking. He studied the map, then pointed out the road he had used between the clinic and the laundry.

"We brought water through here yesterday. I can take that as far as the laundry. After that, we look. If the bridge is gone, we find out whether there's a way around, or we come back."

He wanted another person who could watch the roofs while he checked the way ahead. The guard whose shift ended next had agreed to consider it after talking to him.

Kai asked the worker to find out whether the clinic needed anything from the pool besides a name. If it was still sheltering people, they might have their own medical requests, or know another place with supplies.

She returned with a short list from Tomas and permission to bring back requests. The clinic couldn't promise medicine it didn't have, but it could exchange information. It gave the visitors a reason to speak to whoever was managing the building even if June was gone.

The off-duty guard joined them after her replacement arrived. She listened to the carrier describe the road and asked Helen about the entrance. Then she agreed to go, but only to look and ask questions. If reaching the pool meant fighting through something, they would turn back together.

Nia was quiet until the woman asked what they should do if they found Elise.

"Bring her here."

The answer came so quickly that Kai almost let it stand.

"Nia. What if she's with people she trusts? People she barely knows turn up and say her sister sent them."

Nia stared at him. He could see the anger arrive before she understood what he meant.

The guard waited.

"You're right," Nia said at last. "She shouldn't have to believe that."

She asked for a clean sheet.

The desk worker sat beside her, pencil ready. Nia dictated slowly, stopping twice to change a word.

*Elise, it's Nia. I'm at the clinic in the school dining hall. I'm hurt, but they're treating me. Helen came and told me about the pool. You're not in trouble about the key.*

She stopped, looking at the ceiling.

"Don't put that I'm coming today," she said. "I don't know when I can."

The worker waited for the rest.

*Stay with the adults helping you. Ask them to help you send me an answer. Don't leave by yourself to look for me.*

Nia asked the worker to add a short question about something kept on the top shelf of their kitchen cupboard. She gave the question quietly, and asked her not to write the answer. Then she had the sheet folded with Elise's full name on the outside.

"Let June read it if she's there," she told the guard. "If Elise wants to come, ask the adults with her to help arrange it. Don't just take her out of there."

The woman put the letter inside a dry pouch beside the map.

"And if we can't reach the building?"

"Come back and tell me where you stopped."

Nia had to swallow before she could add, "Please don't disappear looking for her."

Helen rose when the carrier called from the doorway. If they could reach the pool, she would point out the entrance and stay with the others while they asked for June, checked whether Elise was there, and tried to deliver Nia's letter. Both escorts would take Helen back to the laundry before returning to the clinic. All three would turn back before the light failed.

She hesitated beside Nia's bed.

"I'll ask for her by name."

Nia thanked her. This time she managed to look at Helen while she said it.

Kai watched the three of them leave through the main doors. He couldn't see the street from his bed, only the patch of courtyard beyond the threshold. The guard stopped there to settle the pouch beneath her jacket. Helen pointed toward the gate, and the carrier went first.

Nia kept watching until they were gone.

Then she called Tomas over and asked about practicing the supported transfer the doctor had mentioned.

"After you've rested a little," he said. "I'll come back with someone to help."

She nodded and let him lower the head of her bed. On the chair between them, the earlier reply lay beneath the new account of the pool entrance.

Kai asked Tomas to include him when they came back. Before the carrier and guard returned with news, he wanted to find out how much help he would need to travel again.