8. Rob
Rob
The council meeting was three days later.
Alaric ran it with his usual precision, facts, sequence, outcome.
The bridge failure, the rescue, the exposure.
He'd already spoken to Jessie independently, which was how Alaric operated: he gathered information before he judged it, a habit that had made him the most effective council head the Glacier Clan had seen in two generations.
His assessment was characteristically direct: She's a physician who treats information with the same discipline she applies to patients. The exposure is managed.
There were questions. I answered them. Jessie, present at her own request, she'd made that clear to Alaric before the meeting, which had visibly impressed him, answered a few of her own.
Not defensively. Not over-explaining. Just precise, direct, and slightly impatient with anything that felt like it was circling a point it could simply make.
By the end, the council had two decisions.
First: the exposure was contained. No further action required.
Second: the Havenwood clinic position would be formally offered to Dr. Jessie Walker at whatever pace suited her, given that they'd been short a senior physician for eight months and were apparently getting one whether they'd planned for it or not.
Alaric walked me out after.
"Forty-six years," he said.
"Yes."
"And a collapsing bridge."
"Apparently."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "She's good, Rob. For what it's worth."
"I know."
"The clan will adjust." He paused. "Faster than you think."
I believed him. Alaric was rarely wrong about the things that mattered.
The drive back to the northern corridor took forty minutes.
Jessie was at the trailhead when I arrived, she'd borrowed a car from Claire, the colleague who'd gotten her on the bus in the first place and who had, apparently, taken the entire situation in stride with the pragmatism of someone who'd been trying to get Jessie Walker out of her apartment for four months.
She was wearing proper trail gear, which was an improvement on the emergency-camp clothes she'd had at the cabin. Boots that actually fit the terrain. A jacket the color of storm cloud.
She looked like she belonged here.
"How'd it go?" she asked.
"Well."
"Alaric?"
"Pleased with himself."
"I noticed he has that quality." She tilted her head. "The clinic offer is real?"
"Starting whenever you're ready."
She looked at the trailhead, north, toward the corridor, toward the frozen lake I'd described in the dark while she fell asleep. Then back at me.
"Show me the lake," she said.
So I did.