Chapter 11
Grace found Rebecca already up when she came over with breakfast, moving around Karen's kitchen with a dish towel in one hand and color in her face that hadn't been there a week ago.
"You're supposed to be resting."
"I've been resting."
"Karen said rest."
"Karen isn't here."
Grace gave her a look. Rebecca winced.
"That sounded better in my head."
She'd washed her own clothes, from the look of the line strung behind the house, and straightened the kitchen enough that Grace almost didn't recognize the counter under it.
More than a week now since she'd come through the gate barely able to stand, and the woman in front of Grace this morning looked like somebody working out what came next rather than somebody just trying to survive the day.
Grace set the food down on the table anyway. "Eat while it's warm."
Rebecca sat, though she reached for the plate with the small hesitation of somebody who felt she ought to earn it first.
"How's the foot?" Grace asked.
"Better every day. Almost forget about it, until I forget about it and step wrong."
"That'll teach you."
"It has, twice already this week."
"How long can I stay here?" Rebecca asked, once they'd settled at the table.
"As long as you need to recover."
"That's not what I asked."
Grace set her cup down. "Then ask me the real one."
Rebecca turned the question over before she said it plainly — what happened when a stranger wanted to remain. Did the Hollow vote on it? Did Grace decide? Did David, once he came home? Did everybody own their own place, or did the Hollow work some other way entirely?
Grace almost smiled at the assumption buried under all of it, that somebody had to be in charge for any of this to function.
"You've really heard the mayor thing."
"I've heard it."
"Ignore it."
"Everybody else doesn't."
"That's their problem."
Grace decided Rebecca ought to hear the answer from somebody who'd walked in from outside rather than from her, and sent word for Walter.
He lived better than a mile off, and it took the better part of half an hour before he came through the door, wiping his hands on his pants like he'd left a job half-finished.
"What happened?"
"Nothing."
He looked between the two women, suspicious. "Then why'd you send for me?"
"I need you to tell Rebecca how we treated you when you showed up."
Walter's eyebrows went up. "You want the polite version?"
Rebecca smiled for the first time that morning.
"There isn't one," Grace said.
Walter pulled a chair around and sat, settling into the story the way a man settles into work he's done before and doesn't mind doing again.
Nobody had handed him a house and called him a resident.
People watched him. He worked without being told to.
He helped where help was needed without waiting for somebody to assign it.
He didn't demand anything, and in turn nobody demanded anything of him beyond the ordinary.
Slowly, without either side announcing it, they'd learned whether he could be trusted, and he'd learned the same about them.
"Main rule was don't be a problem," Walter said.
"That's your version," Grace said.
"It's the short version."
He filled in the rest without much prompting.
Contribute what you're able to. Don't steal.
Don't threaten your neighbors. Don't take what belongs to another family.
Help when somebody's in real trouble, whether that's sickness or a fence down or a roof leaking in a storm.
Everybody carries some part of security according to what they're able to carry.
Children stay protected no matter whose they are.
Disputes get worked out before they turn into something worse.
"And nobody gets to turn into Harlan," Walter added, "start ordering everybody else around like he owns the place."
"We don't have a rule about Harlan," Grace said.
"You should."
Rebecca laughed, the sound a little rusty from disuse.
Grace boiled the whole thing down once Walter had run through it. "People here take care of each other."
That didn't mean everybody owned everything together.
Families kept their own homes. Livestock belonged to whoever raised it.
Food belonged to whoever grew or stored it, unless somebody chose to share or trade it.
But when a person fell sick, or got trapped, or went hungry, or faced a threat too big to handle alone, the Hollow responded without anybody needing to call a meeting about it first.
"What happens if somebody refuses to contribute?" Rebecca asked.
Grace admitted that hadn't required much in the way of formal handling. A person who could help and kept refusing tended to find that nobody was eager to help them either, once it mattered. Nobody kept a ledger totaling hours worked against meals eaten.
"Nobody's counting how many fence posts I set against how much supper I ate," Walter said.
"Russ might," Grace said.
"Russ counts everything."
Grace let the humor settle before she turned serious again.
"Here's the difference for you," she said. "You're a doctor. That changes how valuable you are to this place more than almost anything else could. But it doesn't change what you're owed. If you want to stay here, you stay. That's the whole decision."
"Just like that?" Rebecca asked.
"Pretty much."
"Took me longer," Walter said.
"You're not a people doctor," Grace told him.
"I noticed."
Grace explained that Rebecca didn't owe the Hollow medical care in trade for being allowed to live there. Rebecca looked uncomfortable with that, the way people did when generosity arrived without a price attached.
"You fed me."
"Yes."
"Gave me a bed."
"Karen did."
"Sent three people toward Charlotte because of records my husband kept."
"David went because those supplies might keep people alive," Grace said. "That wasn't a debt. That was a decision."
"Exactly," Rebecca said, and something in her face said she understood the shape of the argument Grace was making even as she pushed back against it.
She wanted to help. Not because she had to.
Because sitting idle while people around her worked had never suited her, and it suited her even less now.
"I'm strong enough to work some," Rebecca said.
Grace raised an eyebrow. "You rode twenty miles yet?"
"No. Not ready for that today." Rebecca met her eyes. "But I can sit in Karen's kitchen. I can listen to lungs, check blood pressure, look at a cut, examine a child with a fever. I don't need a hospital to be useful."
Grace considered it a long moment.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
Grace decided it was time.
She didn't ring a bell or gather a crowd.
She told Luke on her way past the fence.
She told Russ, who was already halfway to knowing from the look on her face before she finished the sentence.
Walter already knew. Somebody riding toward the outer households carried the word along without being asked, and Billy Jean heard it from Russ before the morning was half over.
Neighbors told neighbors the way neighbors always had, long before the world stopped working the way it used to.
By afternoon, word had traveled further than Grace expected.
The first person showed up at Karen's door before noon. Then another. Then a third, trailing two children behind her.
Rebecca looked out the window. "How many people live here?"
"Depends how far out you count."
"How many did you tell?"
"Not this many," Grace said, and went to organize what she'd apparently started.
Karen's kitchen table turned into an examination space, and Grace turned into the person keeping the whole operation from collapsing into chaos.
She set chairs outside for people waiting their turn.
She kept children from running through the kitchen while Rebecca worked.
She made sure Rebecca ate something between patients instead of running straight through the day on nothing.
She stopped one family from bringing all six of them in at once, sending most back outside to wait.
An older man came in first, coughing hard enough that Grace heard it from the yard.
Rebecca listened to his lungs, asked how long it had gone on, whether he'd run a fever, what color anything he coughed up had been.
No magic in it. She gave him warning signs to watch for and told him plainly when to worry and when not to.
He thanked her twice on his way out, the second time almost embarrassed about it, like gratitude had gone rusty from disuse the same way everything else had this past year.
A woman with a painful wrist came next, worn down from months of chopping wood and hauling water without a break. Rebecca checked the movement, felt for swelling, and told her to rest it where she could and change how she carried her loads, nothing more dramatic than that.
A mother brought a child with a healing cut on his knee, worried it had gone bad. Rebecca checked for heat and redness and drainage, found none of it, and taught the mother what to watch for if it changed.
A man in his sixties came in complaining of headaches, and Rebecca checked his blood pressure by hand.
She asked what medication he'd taken before the EMP and wrote the name down.
Then she talked to him about cutting back on salt where he could and warned him about the symptoms she wanted reported immediately — chest pain, trouble breathing, sudden weakness, vision trouble, or a severe headache unlike his usual ones.
A younger man came in near the end of the afternoon, favoring one shoulder he'd wrenched hauling lumber for a fence repair.
Rebecca worked the joint through its range slowly, watching his face for the point where it started hurting rather than asking him to guess at it himself.
Nothing torn that she could tell. She showed him two exercises to keep it from stiffening and told him plainly that if it swelled or went numb down the arm, that changed things.