“I should at that,” Jahir said, and handed him the data tablet.
“That was good,” Nieve said with a sigh. “I could listen to poetry all the time.”
“It is pretty,” Persy agreed. “I liked the one about the dryads by the creek, with their moss shawls. That’s good enough to dream to.”
“And speaking of dreaming,” Berquist said, her shadow falling over their bodies, “it’s time to go back.”
The children protested, but allowed themselves to be herded back to their rooms. Vasiht’h settled Kuriel and Amaranth, leaving Persy and Nieve to Jahir. He asked the former, “Shall I give you the dryads for your dreaming?”
“I think they’ll come no matter what!” Persy said drowsily, and cuddled into her blanket. Jahir smiled and wished her no more than a deep sleep, and a happy one, before seeing to Nieve.
“It must be a wonderful thing, to be a poet,” she said to him.
“I think it must be,” Jahir said, bringing the blanket up to her shoulders.
“You’re not one?” she wondered. “You act like a poet.”
“I fear such things are beyond me,” Jahir said, and then added because he could not deny her, “But music, that I know.”
“Oh!” She shivered. “Music is even nicer. You are so lucky!”
“Close your eyes,” he said gently. “And I will share my luck with you.”
She did, quickly, and he bent close. The Veil prevented him from divulging anything of his world and culture to outsiders, but she was young and frail, and not likely to remember the dream he sang to her in the privacy of her own mind: a lullaby his mother had sung him, remembered because it had been her voice and not his nursemaid’s, and carried with it the memory of safety, of growing beneath her heart.
“That was a good session,” Berquist said when they’d joined her outside the room. “I never thought to read them poetry. Books, yes, but not poems.” She glanced at him. “You read well.”
“You flatter me,” he said, polite. “But it is not my first language, and I am sure I made any number of errors.”
“No, she’s right,” Vasiht’h said, joining them. “There’s a knack to it.”
A knack he had acquired because reading aloud was one of the few entertainments a group might have in a long winter, trapped indoors, he thought. But he said only, “Thank you.”
Once they were outside, Vasiht’h looked up at the sky and sighed. “It’s good to have sun on my back again.” He grinned up at Jahir. “And you look much happier out of that coat.”
“I am happier outside the coat,” Jahir agreed, and did not question that Vasiht’h knew it. Perhaps that was what allowed him to accept the next comment so easily.
“Almost as happy as when you have a child in your lap.” Vasiht’h mantled the wings on his lower back. “If I didn’t know Eldritch didn’t touch, I would wonder if it wasn’t something you’d done before.”
“It is hard to resist children,” Jahir said. “You have a soft touch with them yourself. Will you have some of your own?”
“A personal question!” Vasiht’h chuckled. “You must be trying very hard to keep me from asking more of my own.” Before Jahir could start at this observation, the Glaseah said, “I definitely want a family.”
“You… have someone with whom to begin one, perhaps?” Jahir wondered. He had little notion of his roommate’s customs, or even his relative age.
“No, I’m not planning to marry,” Vasiht’h said. “I mean, I suppose it might happen, but… it’s not something I was ever interested in.”
They walked for some time while Jahir considered this from every conceivable angle, and found no purchase. When he glanced down at Vasiht’h he found the Glaseah looking up at him with a grin. “You left that unexplained just to perplex me.”
“Yes,” Vasiht’h said, laughing. “I’m sorry. You remember I told you we didn’t fall in love, not really, and that we mate only to make families?”
“Populocampi,” Jahir said, remembering the strange word.
“Yes. Well, since we don’t really have attractions like that, it can be hard for us to form attachments. Since we’re still obligated to help keep the species above replacement rate, we have priests and priestesses who provide us with children.”
“Not orphans, I suppose,” Jahir said, struggling with the notion. “Their own get, maybe? Offered to you to raise?”
“No, no.” Vasiht’h shook his head. “They mate with you, and then you keep the children. So I would go to a priestess, and she’d carry my children until they were born, and then I would take them to raise.”
“I… cannot imagine it,” Jahir said. “And all this because it is… easier? And the children are raised without one of their natural parents?”
“Better one parent than none,” Vasiht’h said. And added, “I don’t think you really feel it in your bones. If we didn’t force ourselves to have children, Jahir, we wouldn’t, and there would be no Glaseah. We don’t feel those things. The priests and priestesses are trained in ways to help us perform, even, because otherwise we might not even manage that.” He shrugged, a strange motion of both shoulders and withers that reminded Jahir of a horse twitching away a fly. “I can love people. But I don’t want to have sex with them. And though I love my parents and I know they love me, they’re not in love with one another and you can tell. It’s comfortable, but the bonds are different.”
“And you do not want that for yourself,” Jahir said.
“You say that as if it’s something special to have,” Vasiht’h answered. “It’s not. It’s a friendship that happens to have involved making children, and at that point why make a good friendship awkward with sex?” He shrugged again. “But children, yes. I want at some point.” He glanced up. “And now we’ll get to the question you deflected, and I’ll ask: will you?”
Jahir thought it unlikely that he would have a choice, and contemplating the marriage that would be arranged for him, particularly given the state of his heart, was painful. “I cannot imagine otherwise,” he said in all candor.
“Mmm. I can tell that’s not a comfortable topic,” Vasiht’h said. “Tell me instead how you’re doing in Patient Assessment.”
Jahir looked down the path; they were approaching the small bridge, and there were ducks in the pond, with ducklings following in ragged rows. “Professor Sheldan has not called me out again.”
“I guess that’s all you can hope for,” Vasiht’h muttered.
“Indeed, that is all that I do.”
His comment to Vasiht’h was not a lie, strictly speaking: Sheldan had left him alone since that day. But the professor’s decision to exclude him from the practical exercises meant he no longer had the opportunity to practice on his classmates, and he suspected that in someone of lesser will that might have resulted in failure. But he refused to accept the disadvantage, and used the time the other students spent in their practical exercises studying them as they studied one another. It lacked the feedback the one-on-one sessions would have afforded him, but being alone also allowed him to consider the others at length, without their self-consciousness.
He did not confine his attention to them alone. He also watched the professor, and attempted to put the Seersa’s own principles to use in studying him. Only he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t projecting a sense of pomposity and self-inflation onto Sheldan as justification for his own feelings about the man. That his fellow students now thought him a pariah was clear enough; Vasiht’h acting as guard to him had kept them from showing their unease or contempt more obviously, but it was there, and Sheldan did not diffuse it.
That Vasiht’h was acting as a guard was unquestionable, and that he didn’t want it spoken of. Perhaps because he thought Jahir would object? But after three hours of the emotional pollution of his classmates’ feelings toward him, he needed his roommate’s steadying presence.
Nor was that his only trouble: the Clinical Management class was hectic. That it was intended that way didn
’t assuage his outraged nerves. The lecture portion of the class was brief, and then they were thrown into the simulation, each to rush for his assigned section to deal with whatever it was that awaited them. As Jahir had noted the first day, the simulations had no emotional presence; they cried out in pain, they had weight and volume, the medicines and antiseptics used on them had smells, they were in every other way convincing simulacra; but they weren’t real and he knew it, and he couldn’t help being affected by that knowledge.
His complacency left him wide open for the inevitable moment one of his classmates ran into him, bounced back and grasped his arm to apologize before running on—
—frustration, fear, anger, pride—
It overrode him so completely that he could no longer make sense of his limbs: they were on someone else’s body, sprinting in another direction. He fell, and couldn’t remember deciding to fall, and hit the ground and even that felt surreal, as if he were split between bodies.
And then there was yelling, and that made the confusion worse. The world started splitting into unrecognizable pieces. Someone touched his arm and he became another mask, blurring the two he’d been holding—
“Stop that! You’ll…”
…and then the words evanesced, and he lost his hold on everything.
When Jahir woke next he was on one of the simulated beds; no, this was a real one. Kandara, his nursing instructor, was peering over the halo-arch at him, and when he opened his eyes, she made a noise and tapped a call button on the wall. He was still marveling that he could understand the shape of her face when KindlesFlame hove into view overhead. “Well, you’ve given the staff quite a scare.”
Could he speak? He could, and with his own voice. “Healer KindlesFlame. It’s good of you to come.”
Kandara guffawed. “Speaker-Singer. Not awake half a minute and going to offer you tea.”
KindlesFlame snorted, then sat on a stool. “How are you feeling?”
He considered himself, then said, “Vague.”
“Do you know what happened?” Kandara asked. “I saw Bonard bump into you, but it didn’t look hard enough to knock you out.”
“An accident, I’m sure,” KindlesFlame said when Jahir didn’t answer. “Lasa, will you excuse us a moment?”
“Sure,” she said, warily. “But if there’s some health problem I need to know about—”
“We’ll be sure to tell you,” KindlesFlame said, and waited for her to go before turning his gaze on Jahir and lifting a brow. “So?”
“You were right,” Jahir said. “It was an accident.”
“Someone touched you, I’m guessing.”
“It’s not… just touch,” Jahir said. “There is more to it. There are people I can touch.” He ignored the sight of the Tam-illee’s other brow going up. “There is some variable I don’t know yet.”
“But apparently in some people, just bumping you can knock you unconscious.”
“I would have gotten my bearings had someone else not compounded the error,” Jahir said, trying not to be frustrated. “But two personalities in one skull are hard enough to manage. A third is asking a bit much.”
“I don’t need to tell you what a liability this could prove to be,” the Tam-illee said at last. “If you can’t figure out what exactly it is that’s giving you problems, and how to work around it.”
“Healer,” Jahir said, feeling put-upon, “I am in class to discover these things. Pray give me the opportunity to learn before you put me to the test.”
“I would gladly give you all the time you need,” KindlesFlame said. “But I’m not the one in charge of giving you the test, and you may not have the luxury of learning before you get hurt.” He held up a finger. “No, don’t argue. This really hurt you. You had concussion symptoms without organic head trauma. We can tell Nurse Kandara that you smacked your head on the ground harder than it actually did, but between the two of us, no lies. Your body reflects it when someone disorders your mind with their touch. Iley knows what will happen if recurrent mental trauma can have cumulative effects, and I end up treating you for a coma.”
Jahir flinched, despite himself.
“What you need to do is find yourself an esper doctor, or failing that, another esper to give you advice,” KindlesFlame said. “You told me you have a Glaseahn roommate? Start with him.”
“All right,” Jahir said, subdued.
“Good.” The Tam-illee tapped the halo-arch, which withdrew, leaving him free to sit up.
“I feel better now.”
“You feel better now but you were out for forty minutes,” KindlesFlame said, and Jahir could see the worry in his eyes, just past the anger. “So don’t push it.”
“As you say.” He inclined his head. “May I go?”
“Yes, and Lasa’s waiting for you outside. I’d tell her the truth, but if you can’t, then she’ll accept the lie that you fell wrong.”
Research, Vasiht’h decided, was awkward. Or at least it was in studies that required his personal attention. Having received and examined over seventy forms from volunteers, he’d narrowed the initial study to twenty people; it had seemed too small a pool to him, but Palland assured him it would be sufficient as a proof of concept. Plus, it would be manageable for him while also working his normal course load.
Patients were not the only ones with mandatory naptimes at the hospital; apparently staff working shifts of over eight hours were required to sleep at least forty-five minutes in one of the rooms designed for that purpose. Those rooms were hidden behind the visitor centers, operating theaters and patient care rooms, one every two floors, and just walking into one made Vasiht’h’s fur smooth down. Low light, the trickle of water—real water, he discovered, from a fountain in the back that doubled as a drinking fountain—and within small sculpted cubbies, one bunk just large enough for the typical Pelted. There were nests in the back as well, and a few cubbies that were collections of pillows on a floor elevated in a shape he thought he’d love to nap on himself. The air was cool and dry and smelled faintly of lavender.
When he’d imagined doing this study, he’d thought of a room full of subjects, sleeping on beds, and he would go from one to the other either affecting their dreams or leaving them to act as controls. But thanks to the erratic schedules kept by the staff, his own limited time, and his need to act on each of them personally, he had to show up and do two or three of his subjects, then leave and come back the following day to do the next few, and so on until he’d managed them all.
Vasiht’h was grateful that the room they used for their naps was so relaxing. He didn’t want to imagine what he’d inflict on his subjects while suffering from an anxious mental state, and anxious he certainly was from trying to keep such an erratic schedule.
His latest subject, Kievan, was a perpetually tired Tam-illee whose coworkers had confided to Vasiht’h was ‘probably depressed.’ Having met him, Vasiht’h thought he was certainly depressed, and there was no ‘probably’ about it. The healer-assist was always glad to lie down, so much so that Vasiht’h felt bad for forcing him to undergo the study at all, except that he’d volunteered.
The Tam-illee settled in the cubby while Vasiht’h waited at its edge, checking his data tablet.
“I’m ready.”
“All right, Hea First,” Vasiht’h said. “Just relax, then.”
“I don’t think that’s my name anymore,” the Tam-illee said, and sighing, set his head on the pillow.
Vasiht’h peeked in. “Hea?”
“First,” Kievan said from the dark. “My FoundName. I chose it after the first ethical oath healers ever swore, and it says ‘First, do no harm.’ But I do. No matter how hard I try, how hard we all do. We fail, and we’re failing on the most vulnerable people imaginable.”
Vasiht’h set the tablet down and stepped into the cubby, sitting with his tail curled over his paws. “That sounds serious, alet.”
“It is!” he said. “It is.” He rubbed his eyes with the side of his f
orearm without lifting his head from the pillow. “I keep thinking… I should change my FoundName to something more accurate. But I can’t find anything.” He made a noise that might have been a strangled chuckle. “Kievan BurntOut, maybe. Kievan GaveItUpForGardening.”
“Do you garden?” Vasiht’h asked, guided by the Tam-illee’s willingness to find some humor in it.
“No, actually,” Kievan said, and looked at him wryly: two glints in the dark, the low light reflecting off his eyes. “But… I’m so tired. I signed up for your study because… because I was grasping for straws. I don’t want to give up my work. But I’m so tired of watching people suffer. Little children suffer.”
It had to be harsh, Vasiht’h thought: a Tam-illee doing work in a children’s hospital, given how difficult it was for Tam-illee to conceive. Of all the Pelted left, they remained the most raddled with reproductive issues; it was why Sehvi was studying on Tam-ley, because the cutting edge of technology on reproduction was there, where it was most needed. “You came here because you love children,” he said. “And you wanted to help them.”
“Helping them doesn’t always save them,” Kievan mumbled.
“Sometimes it does,” Vasiht’h said.
The Tam-illee was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Sometimes it does. But what if that’s not enough for me? What if I can’t bounce back from this?”
“What if you don’t?” Vasiht’h asked. “Would that be the end of the world?”
Again, quiet, but a more considering quiet. When the Tam-illee spoke, he sounded puzzled. “You know, I never let myself wonder. I just assumed… you know, you assume things. That if I turned my back on nursing, I was… I don’t know. A failure. Not good enough. And that I was failing the children, most of all. But that makes me a lot more important than I am, isn’t it? To think that the world stops turning if I make a different choice.”
“People make mistakes,” Vasiht’h said, remembering Sehvi and Palland’s skeptical looks over his own decisions. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t correct them, and make better choices later.”
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