Chapter 13: Useful, Not Irreplaceable

Elis came back with a message from hydroponics and found Cerys still keeping yesterday’s corrected page beside her pillow.

“He said you’d want this before he tells anyone else what he’s done.”

“That’s a terrible way to begin a visit.”

“He also said you’d say that,” Elis said.

Elis placed the folded note on her blanket. Cerys reached for it before she remembered how much her shoulder disliked the movement. She managed to unfold it with her right hand, though she could feel Elis watching to see whether she needed help.

Her coworker had written only a few lines.

You were right to worry about that bed. Your notes helped us keep part of it. We made the call on the rest, and everyone’s happy with the space we got back. I know you’ll want to argue about which part.

Cerys read it twice. The team had listened to her where she’d been useful and changed course where she hadn’t been there to see the problem. Something they’d tended together would survive. The part she’d wanted to save was gone.

“That’s good,” she said.

Elis looked at the note, then at her. “You sound furious.”

“I’m delighted. I’m trying to decide which sentence I object to.”

“Is there one?”

“Not a sensible one,” Cerys said.

She set the new note beside yesterday’s page. Her coworker had told her exactly where she’d helped. She still wanted to argue.

Instead she was picturing the growing room with the disappointing bed gone from it. She wanted to be there to see what had taken its place. She wanted to ask whether everyone had agreed because it was the right choice or because she wasn’t standing beside them insisting on one more chance.

“Do you want me to take it away?” Elis asked.

“No. I want to answer it.”

He glanced at the pencil tucked into yesterday’s page. “A short answer?”

“You make it sound as though I’d send him a book.”

“Would you?”

“Only if he deserved it,” Cerys said.

Elis pulled his chair nearer, but left the paper where she could reach it herself. She could tell him to go, if the sight of him watching made the task harder. She didn’t. The room was quieter with someone in it who wasn’t waiting for her to be brave.

She turned the note over. For a moment all she could think to write was a question about the bed. She could ask what they’d kept, who had decided, whether they’d considered the alternative she would have argued for. By the time her coworker answered, the choice would be older still.

“Did you like your job before they needed you to leave instructions for Wolf Night?” Elis asked.

She looked up. “That’s a strange question.”

“I’ve heard a lot about what goes wrong when you aren’t there. I’m asking what you like when you are.”

The question left her looking at yesterday’s page. She’d been thinking of the growing rooms as a place she had to earn her way back into.

“I like being first to notice when something’s doing better than we expected,” she said. “I like telling the others and having them argue about whether I’m right.”

Elis smiled. “They argue with you?”

“Constantly. My coworker says I take it personally when a plant ignores me.”

“Does he have a point?”

“An irritating number of them. He also talks to the plants when he thinks no one can hear,” Cerys said.

“I won’t tell him you told me.”

“You should. I’ve been saving that for a difficult day.”

Elis’s smile stayed a little longer than she expected. He had seen her bloody, frightened, and too weak to raise a cup. Now he was listening as if a quarrel over a growing bed was worth his time because it belonged to her. Cerys looked down before he caught her enjoying it.

She put the pencil to the page.

You were right to make the call. Tell the others I’m glad they didn’t wait for me.

Her hand had begun to tremble. She could still add a line asking them to keep her informed, another reminding them of the section she’d worried about before the moon. Her coworker had already promised to come back when there was news. He didn’t need to be told how to do his job from her sickbed.

She put down the pencil.

“That’s all?” Elis asked.

“That’s all I’m writing today.”

He made no move to take the note. She had to decide what to do with it.

“Would you give it to him when you see him?”

“I will.”

“And don’t let him tell the others I’ve gone soft,” Cerys said.

“What should I tell them?”

“That I’m furious.”

“You’ve already told me that,” Elis said.

“I’m consistent.”

Elis laughed. It surprised her. Not because he never laughed, but because he hadn’t sounded like a man checking whether his patient was getting tired. For a little while she had been talking to someone about the work she loved, not defending her ability to go back to it.

Then the tiredness came anyway. Her hand lay open beside the pencil, and she knew she was finished even though she would have liked to keep talking. She asked Elis to set the pages together where they wouldn’t slide off the blanket. When he did, she leaned against the pillow and let her eyes close.

The crossed-out page stayed beside her pillow. She let Elis carry her answer downstairs without adding a single instruction.

Later, Cerys was awake when he returned to the doorway. He hadn’t brought her coworker’s reply. His expression told her what he was about to say before he opened his mouth.

“Rhys is here,” he said. “He asked if you’d see him. I told him I’d ask you first.”

Yesterday she had said no. She had meant it, and Elis had carried the answer without trying to change her mind. Cerys looked at the chair Rhys had stood beside during his last visit. She could refuse again. She could also let him in without giving him the right to decide how long he stayed.

“Where is he?”

“Outside. He hasn’t come into the room.”

She had stopped writing after two sentences. She wasn’t sure she could be as brief with Rhys.

“Five minutes,” she said. “And I want you to stay close enough that I can ask you to end the visit.”

Elis nodded. “I can do that.”

He stepped into the passage. Cerys heard him speak, too softly to make out the words. Rhys appeared a moment later and stopped at the threshold.

He waited.