Chapter 91: Ten Minutes and No Promises

Chapter 91: Ten Minutes and No Promises

Kerr’s reply was waiting when Silas woke.

Late morning, before the midday rounds. You’ll have your ten minutes. If it turns into twenty, it will be because I’m interested. — A. Kerr

He spent breakfast drafting things to say and deleting them. My mother is a former mana medic of great experience sounded like a reference letter. She’s been stuck in that house for seventeen years sounded like a rescue. He didn’t know how to talk about her to a stranger without either begging or bragging.

Privately, he wanted to walk in with a problem and walk out with it solved: a post, a date, a room with her name on the door. He’d promised Mara he wouldn’t arrange her life before she’d decided what she wanted, and he had meant it. Wanting to anyway sat in his stomach all the way across the grounds.

The infirmary smelled the way it always did, of boiled linen and something bitter steeping on a back burner. A medic in a stained apron was counting rolled bandages into a basket and losing her place every time the door opened. On a bench by the window, a Silver Class boy with a swollen wrist was explaining to nobody in particular that he hadn’t been showing off, the practice wall had simply been closer than it looked.

Silas had come through this door gray and short of breath more times than he wanted to count. This time he had walked up the hill without noticing it, and he stood by the bench like a visitor.

Dr Aline Kerr came out drying her hands. The compact, gray-haired physician looked him over as thoroughly as she would a chart.

"You look like someone else’s patient," she said. "Come in."

Her office was barely larger than a cupboard. She moved a stack of files off the spare chair so he could sit.

"Someone in your family," Kerr said, sitting opposite. "A medic."

"My mother. Mara Bell," Silas said. "She was a mana medic before I was born."

"Before you were born," Kerr said. "So, what, seventeen years?"

"About that. Maybe longer," Silas said. He wished he’d asked her for dates. "She trained at a clinic, under a woman instructor. She worked there. And she treated people at a gate incident once. She’s good. I’ve watched her look at me on a screen and know exactly what was wrong."

Kerr let that pass. "What did she actually do? Day to day. Was she in a ward? Field work? Surgery support? Channel work?"

Silas started with what Mara had told him on their last call: the patients she used to see, the burns and fevers, the work she missed. Kerr listened, then asked how much of it she had handled independently.

That stopped him. He remembered Mara getting brisk when he’d misunderstood something about the clinic, and the pleasure of keeping her talking. He hadn’t thought to ask who supervised her or which cases she referred onward.

"I don’t know that part," he admitted. "We were talking about the people. I didn’t ask her for her duties."

"That’s honest, at least." Kerr folded her hands. "Does she want to come back to it?"

"She said she misses being useful with her hands," Silas said. "Being somewhere people come because they need something she knows how to do." He hesitated. "We talked about it the other night. I don’t know if she meant it as a plan or just as a wish."

"What rank is she?" Kerr asked.

"Peak Rank Two," Silas said.

Kerr nodded, but he could see the number hadn’t moved her much.

"That should help with the demands of a long shift," Kerr said. "It tells me nothing about whether she knows how we treat a Talent burn now, or what she’d do with a patient who says he’s fine and isn’t. Medicine has changed a good deal in seventeen years. Some of what she learned will still be right. Some of it will get someone hurt."

"Is the gap too long?" Silas asked.

"I don’t know yet," Kerr said. "Here’s what would normally happen with someone coming back after a long gap. First, a conversation. Her and me, about what she actually did and what she thinks she’s forgotten. If that goes well, an assessment, here, in person. If the assessment shows she’s sound but out of date, supervised work for a while until she catches up." She shrugged. "Some people come through that in a season. Some find out they don’t want it anymore."

"She was good," Silas said.

"Then she’ll be able to tell me so herself." Kerr’s tone wasn’t unkind. "I can’t take her on because her son says she’s good, Rooke. I’d be a poor doctor if I did. I need to hear it from her."

Silas sat back. He’d expected to explain how much Mara needed this. Kerr wanted to know what she could do for the people in those beds outside.

He understood that. He’d sat through enough interviews on Earth to know affection wasn’t a qualification, but it was different with his mother in question. He wanted Kerr to know her already.

Let her hear you talk about the clinic, he thought. You’ll do this better than I can.

"All right," Silas said. "Then she should talk to you. If she wants to."

"I’d like that," Kerr said.

There was one other thing. He’d told himself on the walk over that he wouldn’t ask it.

"If she worked here," Silas asked, "would that settle things with her household? My father’s household. Crownless is neutral. If the academy employed her—"

Kerr held up a hand.

"Stop there," she said. "I know what I can answer, and that isn’t it. Whether your mother is fit to treat patients is my question. Whether she’s free to leave wherever she is and come here is a different question. I don’t know the law in Ormont, and I don’t know what your father can and can’t require of her. I’m not going to guess about it in my office."

"The treaty—" Silas began.

"May be relevant," Kerr said. "But I can’t tell you how it applies to her. I’d want someone who understood her circumstances to explain that before she traveled. Don’t build a plan on what you hope neutrality means."

He disliked hearing his best argument reduced to a question. Still, she hadn’t said Edmund was entitled to keep Mara there. She hadn’t said he wasn’t. Silas would have to find out.

Kerr reached for a pad and wrote something on it.

"My direct contact," she said, tearing off the sheet. "Give it to your mother. If she wants to talk, she can write to me herself, and we’ll find a time. A call is fine to start. I’m not asking her to cross a border for a conversation." She held out the paper. "I haven’t a vacancy to offer her. But I’d like to hear from her."

Silas took it, relieved despite himself. "You mean that?"

"I don’t give out this contact to be polite," Kerr said. "Have her include where she trained. It will help me decide what to ask."

He looked at the number. Whatever else he still needed to learn, this was something he could bring back to Mara.

He folded it into his breast pocket and stood. At the door he stopped.

"Thank you," Silas said. "I’ll tell her."

Kerr was already pulling the next file toward her. "Your color’s very good," she said, without looking up. "Keep looking after yourself."

He wrote the message to Mara on a bench outside the infirmary, with the bandage medic counting aloud through the open window behind him.

The first version was an argument for saying yes. He deleted it.

I spoke to Dr Kerr this morning. She’d like to talk to you about your work and what you’d need to relearn. An assessment could follow if that goes well. There isn’t a job on offer, but she gave me her direct contact. She wants to hear about your work from you, not from me. I told her about our conversation, then got stuck when she asked about your responsibilities at the clinic.

She can’t answer the question about leaving the house. We would need to find someone who understands your circumstances.

Do you want to talk to her? I’ll send the contact. She asked where you trained, too.

He read it once, then sent it. The bandage count behind him stopped at nineteen. Someone had opened the infirmary door again, and the medic started over with a weary sigh.

Silas sat in the sun a little longer. He wanted to call Mara now, hear her voice when she read it. Instead, he put the communicator in his pocket and gave her time.