Chapter 93 – Written in Pencil

Nia reached the stretcher without putting either foot on the floor.

Tomas and two attendants moved her on the sheet beneath her, keeping the frames close and her injured leg supported. She stared at the ceiling throughout. When they stopped, she asked whether the splint had caught against the rail.

It hadn't. One attendant lifted the blanket so she could see for herself.

Kai watched from his bed. Nia had asked them not to tell her it would be easy. They had told her when they would move and when they would stop, and she had managed to wait for both.

Tomas checked her leg again before releasing the brakes.

They wheeled her along the clear aisle between the beds. At the turn near the cupboard, Nia asked them to slow down. Tomas did. She stayed on the stretcher while he checked the padding, then agreed to the return.

The whole trip had taken her no farther than the kitchen door.

She was pale when they brought her back, but she answered without gasping. The dressing hadn't shifted. She could tell Tomas exactly where the turn had hurt.

He wrote that down before they moved her onto the bed again.

"So I can go?" she asked.

"You can tolerate this much with help. That matters. It doesn't tell us about the street yet."

Nia looked past him toward the doors through which Helen had left.

"I know."

She sounded disappointed, but she had stopped trying to get a promise out of him.

They gave her time to settle before bringing the stretcher alongside Kai.

He had watched enough transfers to know the next instruction. Even so, when the attendants took his weight, his left shoulder tightened as if he could help them lift. Pain ran down the upper arm.

"Let us take it," Tomas said.

Kai stopped trying. The attendant at his shoulder adjusted her hands under the sheet, and they finished the move with his arm supported against his side.

The blue band tugged as his right forearm shifted. He warned them before the hand could reach across the rail. Tomas held the cushion steady while Kai used his elbow to draw the wrist close again. Then they waited.

The pull settled into something he could resist without holding his breath.

They did the same short circuit of the aisle. Kai watched the doorway approach, felt the slow turn, and told Tomas when the support at his waist began to press against a sore edge. The nurse stopped and adjusted it before returning him to bed.

Nobody had needed to drag him by an arm. The attendants had carried his weight, and he had stayed alert enough to tell them what was wrong.

That was what Tomas put in the record.

Dr. Sayegh came to look at the dressing afterward. There was no fresh blood showing through it. She asked Kai whether the shoulder pain had settled back to what it had been before the move.

"Nearly."

She waited beside him until he could give her a clearer answer.

"It's where it was before," he said at last. "I don't want to do it again yet."

"Then we won't."

He could still feel the warmth in his left wrist, faint beneath the pain. He left it alone. Trying to pull more through an arm that had just been moved would make it harder to tell what the movement had done.

Sayegh checked Nia next. When she finished, she spoke to both of them.

"You managed the transfers with the support we planned. Neither dressing has shifted, and I don't see new bleeding. You still need people and equipment. A clear floor in here isn't a road outside."

Nia nodded toward the window coverings. "We'll know about the road when they come back."

The doctor put the record down beside the older notes.

"Then we'll have more to work with. Rest now."

***

The carrier returned while the kitchen workers were setting out the evening bowls.

Kai saw him first. His jacket was open and he was carrying the guard's pouch rather than the water container he had taken that morning. The guard came through the doors behind him, speaking to the person on watch.

No Helen.

Kai made himself look at the two people who had actually come back. Helen was supposed to stay at the laundry. He knew that. He had helped arrange it.

Nia lifted her head before anyone called her name.

The carrier saw her and came straight across the room.

"We reached the pool," he said. "June's there. We spoke to the girl."

Nia's mouth opened. Nothing came out.

He held up the pouch.

"She wrote back."

The guard joined him at the beds. She had stopped long enough to put down her walking staff. Dust covered the lower half of her trousers, but she was not limping.

"Helen's back at the laundry," she said. "We left her with her husband. All three of us made the walk back there together."

Tomas came over when he saw Nia trying to rise. He raised the head of her bed instead and helped settle her splinted hand.

The carrier opened the pouch. Inside were the folded map, a separate note for the clinic, and a page torn from an exercise book.

He offered the page to Nia, stopped when he saw her hands, and laid it across the top of the blanket instead.

She couldn't bring it close enough to read.

"Hold it up," she said. "Please."

The desk worker took the page by its corners and held it where Nia could see. The lines were ruled blue, the writing in pencil. Kai could make out a deep crease down the center and a word crossed out so heavily that the paper had almost torn.

Nia stared at it.

"That's how she writes her E."

The worker waited. After a while, Nia asked her to read it aloud.

*Nia,*

*I'm at the pool. I thought you were at home. I kept asking June if somebody could go there.*

*The green mug with the broken handle has the bus money. You said you would fix it and you never did. I haven't touched it.*

Nia let out a breath that broke halfway through. She pressed the back of her head into the pillow and shut her eyes.

The desk worker lowered the page a little.

"Keep reading," Nia said.

*Where are you hurt? Can you walk? Is someone staying with you? Helen said she saw you but she wouldn't tell me everything.*

*I'm not going out by myself. June said we have to talk to the clinic first. I want to come. Please tell them I want to come.*

*Elise*

Below the name was one more line, squeezed into the space above the torn edge.

*I can bring your blue sweater. I had it in my bag.*

Nia began to cry without making much sound.

Kai looked toward the guard. He wanted to give Nia a few moments without everyone watching her, but he also needed to know how the paper had reached them.

"You watched her write it?"

"At the entrance table," the guard said. "June gave her the pencil. We stayed there while she read the letter and wrote that. Nobody told her what to put in it."

"Was Helen with you?"

"The whole time. She recognized the girl from the bus stop. The girl recognized her too. Asked whether she'd found her husband."

The carrier pointed to the page without touching it.

"She folded it herself and gave it to me. Asked me to keep it dry. I put it straight in the pouch."

Nia turned her head toward him.

"Did she look like she needed a doctor?"

"Not to me. She walked over from the room behind the desk. Talked to us. I didn't examine her."

The guard pulled up the empty chair.

"She was upset when she read that you were hurt. June sat with her. We didn't bring her out because that wasn't what you asked us to do. And we didn't have time to arrange it properly before coming back."

Nia nodded quickly, as if she were afraid the woman thought she was angry.

"You did what I asked. Thank you."

She asked to see the page again. The worker held it closer.

"The mug's on the top shelf, behind the flour," Nia said to Kai. "I didn't tell anyone what was in it. Just asked her about it."

He looked at the small writing crowded beneath the signature.

"And the sweater?"

"Mine. She keeps taking it because hers doesn't cover her hands."

Nia tried to laugh, but she was crying too hard. Tomas brought a clean cloth and asked before wiping her cheek.

Kai had heard a voice offer Nia answers in the station. He remembered how little there had been to check then, and how much they had risked for it. This time two people had walked to a building, spoken to someone, and brought back a page he could see on Nia's blanket.

He asked the guard whether the girl was still there when they left.

"With June, just inside the doors. Helen said goodbye to her. Then we came back the way we'd gone."

Nia kept looking at the page.

"She's there," she said.

Kai nodded. "They've seen her. We know where to ask for her now."

***

The bridge was still standing, but part of the road across it was gone.

The guard described it while the carrier opened the map on the chair. They had stopped on the laundry side and looked along the crossing before stepping onto it. A continuous strip of pavement remained along one edge. The rail was bent near the far end, and fallen masonry narrowed the approach.

"We could walk it," she said. "One behind the other, staying in sight. I wouldn't take either of those stretchers across. There's a place where you'd have to lift over the rubble, right beside the damaged rail."

Kai looked at Nia. She had stopped crying, but she was still watching the letter instead of the map.

"They couldn't bring us that way," he said.

"I heard."

The guard continued. Beyond the bridge, the remaining walk had been short. The pool entrance was where Helen remembered, and people were using it. They had asked from outside before being invited to the table. Nobody had been made to sign up for a party or accept a transfer to speak there.

They had not gone through the rest of the building. They had not checked the streets beyond it for a route suitable for wheels. The light had already begun to change, and Helen needed to get back.

"We left while there was still plenty to see by," the carrier said. "Helen was at the kitchen before they started serving."

The desk worker marked the damaged crossing on the map. This time she wrote what the travelers had actually used it for: passage on foot, today. No stretcher route checked.

Sayegh came over to hear the report. The guard gave her June's separate note.

It listed requests from the pool and the people who needed medical attention there. June had also asked whether the clinic could receive a child visiting an injured relative, and what help the adults would need to arrange the journey.

"They've got people staying with the children," the guard said. "June couldn't leave this afternoon. She said she could ask about cover for tomorrow, if you said a visit was possible."

Nia looked up immediately.

"It is, isn't it? She could come here?"

Sayegh sat on the edge of the empty chair after the carrier moved the map.

"Possibly. We'd need to talk to June about who's bringing her, and about both of you."

Her glance passed over Kai's wrist and returned to Nia.

Nia looked down at the splint. "The marks."

"What we know, and what we don't. I won't promise someone it's an ordinary family visit without explaining that."

Kai shifted his marked wrist away from the side of the bed nearest Nia. The pull had not changed when the letter arrived. He hadn't expected it to, but he had stopped thinking about it for a few minutes.

"June didn't ask about that," the guard said. "We didn't know how much to tell her. We said you were being treated here."

Sayegh nodded. "Then it needs to be part of the next conversation. Before anyone sets out with the girl."

Nia was silent for a while. Kai waited for her to say she would go to the pool instead.

She looked at the line drawn across the damaged bridge, then at her hand.

"Taking me there wouldn't get rid of it," she said. "I'd just be bringing it where the other children are."

"And we'd be taking you away from this," Kai said, nodding toward the bed and the people around it.

Nia asked the desk worker to bring another clean sheet.

"Tell June I'd like to arrange a visit. Not tonight. Tomorrow, if we can make it work. The doctor needs to speak to her first."

Sayegh offered to write her own note rather than make Nia explain the medical details. It would include the uncertain risks around the marks, the precautions the clinic was already using, and a request to discuss them before bringing Elise.

Nia agreed, then asked for a separate page for her sister.

The desk worker moved the map to the foot of Kai's bed so she could sit closer.

"Tell her I can't walk yet," Nia said. "But I can be moved with help. Someone's looking after me. And tell her to keep the sweater until I see her."

She stopped and looked at Kai.

"Can I say your name?"

"Yes."

"Kai's here with me. He helped me get out."

She asked the worker to read it back, then added that she was not going to try to reach the pool that night. She wanted Elise to hear it from her, not mistake the lack of a visit for another disappearance.

The carrier would take the replies to the laundry with the first morning delivery and ask Helen to pass them to June. The guard needed rest first, but offered to help plan an escort once June and Sayegh had agreed on a visit.

There was still a journey to arrange. For tonight, the letter stayed at Nia's bed.

***

After supper, Kai asked Tomas to move the lamp nearer the chair.

Nia wanted to read the page again without making the desk worker stand there. Tomas propped it against a book and adjusted it until she could see the lines. He kept it away from the wet cloth and the bowl at her bedside.

She read in silence. Sometimes her lips moved at the words about the sweater.

Kai lay back with his left arm supported. The transfer had tired him, and the medicine hadn't taken away all the pain. He could still follow a conversation. He could ask for a change before a bad position hurt him more. Those were things he would need if he was going to learn to use the arm again.

He looked at the dark path above his wrist, then at the older notes on the chair. When Mara came next, he wanted her to see what Sayegh and Tomas had recorded, not just hear him describe it.

He asked Tomas to keep the observations together for her.

"They're all here," the nurse said, tapping the folder. "Your side needs checking again in the morning. We'll do that first."

Kai agreed. He did not try to draw the warmth farther up his arm that night.

Beside him, Nia asked for the letter to be laid flat on her blanket for a moment.

Tomas placed it clear of the splint. She lowered the back of her other hand onto the blank margin, careful not to rub the pencil marks.

"She took that sweater before all this," she said. "I thought she'd left it at home."

Kai turned his head toward her.

Nia was looking at the small line beneath the signature again. She asked Tomas to put the page back where she could read it.