Page 75 of Claimed By the Condemned Alien

The growing respect worried her more.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Infirmary

By the third morning, the people of Ash Camp had mostly stopped staring at Kesta openly.

They had become much better at pretending not to.

A miner waiting for treatment found the ceiling extraordinarily interesting whenever Kesta looked up from his chart. Two Kharovian children who had followed her from the food hall spent nearly ten minutes arranging themselves behind a water barrel while whispering loudly about the strange human medic. An elderly woman with translucent skin asked Sera three questions about Kesta’s qualifications while Kesta was standing close enough to hear every word.

Sera answered the last question without looking up from the burn dressing she was cutting.

“She has not killed anyone yet.”

The elderly woman considered that. “How long has she worked here?”

“Two days.”

“That is not enough time.”

Kesta glanced over from the supply counter. “I appreciate the confidence.”

The woman gave her a solemn nod as though Kesta had confirmed something important, then shuffled out carrying her medication.

Sera’s mouth twitched.

Kesta pointed a sterilized forceps at her. “You could occasionally defend me.”

“I did. I said you had killed no one.”

“That is an extremely low standard.”

“This is Kharon-Veil.”

Kesta couldn't argue with that.

She had learned the rhythm of the infirmary more quickly than she had learned the rhythms of Ash Camp itself. Forge burns arrived near the end of the first work shift. Respiratory problems worsened whenever the eastern wind carried fine salt dust through the outer filters. Children appeared with cuts, fevers, minor fractures, and the apparently universal conviction that an injury ceased to matter if no responsible adult had witnessed the accident.

Sera ran the infirmary with a ruthless economy that offended nearly every standard Kesta had been trained to follow. Needles were sharpened and reused. Cloth was boiled until it became more repair than fabric. Antibiotics were reserved for infections already threatening to spread, while stronger pain medication went first to surgery, children and anyone Sera judged likely to become too disruptive without it.

Kesta hated half of the system.

She respected almost all of the woman running it.

By the end of the second day, they had stopped arguing about whether Kesta knew how to treat patients and started arguing about how much of Earth-derived medicine could be adapted safely to bodies with completely different metabolic systems. Sera refused to accept anything because an imperial medical guide claimed it was standard. Kesta refused to accept tradition as evidence merely because no one currently alive remembered anyone dying from it.

They were getting along remarkably well.

The work also gave Kesta something the claim never could have given her.

Access.

People who would not approach Dreven’s claimed human in the market would speak to a medic while she dressed a wound. Patients talked when frightened, exhausted, or in pain, and some talked even more freely when they believed the person listening had no authority to use what they said.

A miner with crystal burns along his forearms mentioned that the eastern condenser had been clicking for weeks before the pressure loss. A pregnant Veylan woman admitted she had traded half her iron ration to a Red Basin courier for prenatal supplements that Ash Camp could not provide. A young mechanic confessed that several replacement valves had arrived through unofficial trade routes because Pela’s procurement request had been denied twice by the southern camps.

Kesta listened.