Chapter 5 #2
The supplies Morgan brought yesterday were a start, bandages and suturing thread and basic dried herbs, but Indrie knows he will need far more than this if he is to serve an entire city.
He organizes what he has the way years of making do with too little have taught him: everything in its place, every jar within reach, every instrument cleaned and laid out in the order he will need it.
He labels the jars with tags written in both Kalkoan and his still-shaky Rengaran script, sounding out the letters under his breath as he writes them.
The work is absorbing. He loses himself in it the way he always loses himself in the work, hands busy, mind focused, the anxious chatter of his thoughts quieting beneath the rhythm of doing the thing he is good at.
He is arranging dried yarrow on a shelf, turning each bundle so the leaves face outward and the stems are accessible, when the front door opens and Morgan enters carrying a wooden box that he sets on the examination table with a satisfying thud.
"Supplies," Morgan says, lifting the lid.
Indrie crosses to the table and looks inside and his breath catches.
Bandages, real ones, rolls of clean white linen, not the scraps of torn cloth he made do with in Kalkoa.
Suturing thread in three different gauges, wound tight on spools.
Needles of a quality that makes his fingers itch to hold them.
An array of dried and preserved medicinal herbs, some of which he recognizes immediately, comfrey and valerian and witch hazel, and others he does not, bundled and labeled in Rengaran.
Salves in clay pots, sealed with wax. And at the bottom of the box, wrapped in soft leather, a set of instruments that makes Indrie go very still.
He lifts them out with both hands. Unwraps them slowly.
A scalpel. Forceps. A bone saw, small and fine, for work on fingers and toes.
A curved needle holder. Shears. All forged in dark steel, the edges honed keen enough to feel without touching, the handles wrapped in leather worn smooth by use.
They are beautiful. Better than anything he has ever had access to, better than the rusted, chipped instruments he worked with in Kalkoa, better than the improvised tools he fashioned from kitchen implements and sewing needles when the proper ones were taken from him as punishment.
He holds the scalpel up to the light and turns it. The blade gleams. His reflection stares back at him, tiny and distorted in the flat of the steel.
"These belonged to the previous physician," Morgan says. "They were in a trunk at the keep. I had them cleaned and sharpened."
Indrie runs his thumb along the leather handle. The groove of someone else's grip is worn into it, the physician who came before, who used this instrument to open wounds and drain infections and cut clean the things that needed cutting. Indrie slides his thumb into the groove and it fits.
"They're perfect," he says. He does not look up, because his eyes are stinging and he has already cried too many times in front of Morgan and the man has known him for two days.
Morgan has also brought books. A stack of them, tucked under his arm, which he deposits beside the supply box.
Language texts, which Indrie expected. Histories of Rengara, which he did not.
And, he picks this one up with reverent hands, a botanical guide to the native flora of the northern kingdoms, illustrated with detailed drawings of every plant and its medicinal properties.
The illustrations are exquisite, each leaf and petal rendered with care, the roots drawn in cross-section, the annotations written in a crisp hand Indrie will spend weeks learning to decipher.
"I thought you'd want to know what grows here," Morgan says. "The climate is nothing like Kalkoa. Most of the herbs you trained with won't survive this far north, but there are equivalents for nearly all of them. We can work through the translations together."
Indrie clutches the guide to his chest as though someone might try to take it from him.
The leather cover is cool against his collarbones and the weight of it in his arms is solid and real.
A book. His book. Given to him, not borrowed, not stolen, not something he must read in secret and return before its absence is noticed.
"Thank you, Morgan," he says, and the inadequacy of the words frustrates him, because thank you does not encompass the scope of what he is feeling and he does not have the vocabulary in either language for the rest of it.
Morgan seems to understand anyway. He nods once, briskly, and pushes his sleeves up. "Let's get everything put away."
***
They spend the afternoon distributing the supplies.
Morgan works alongside him without complaint, handing him jars and holding shelves steady while Indrie arranges them, reading out the Rengaran labels on the herb bundles so Indrie can match them to the illustrations in his guide.
It is painstaking work and deeply satisfying, and by the time the light through the windows has shifted from bright noon to the mellower gold of mid-afternoon, the clinic looks like a clinic.
The shelves are stocked. The instruments are laid out on a clean cloth beside the examination table.
The herbs hang from the ceiling hooks in bundles that fill the room with a green, medicinal scent that makes Indrie's chest expand.
The kettle sits over a small fire Morgan built in the hearth and the water inside it is warming for tea.
Indrie steps back and surveys the room and feels something settle in him, a click of rightness, a piece finding its place.