The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer #1)(19)
“Hmm,” Kiva said noncommittally.
“I’ve had a concussion before,” Jaren defended as she began removing the sutures. “Twice, actually. I know what to watch out for.”
Given their close proximity, Kiva found it less awkward to have him talking rather than just staring at her, so she prompted, “What happened?”
Jaren shifted slightly, and Kiva sent him a warning look. She was working dangerously close to his eye.
“The first was a riding accident. My horse spooked when I was out hunting, and I fell headfirst into a ditch.”
Kiva considered what he’d inadvertently given away. He must come from a wealthy family to have been on a hunting expedition. Usually the sport was reserved for those in or close to the upper social circles. Sometimes merchants and scholars were invited if they had ties to the aristocracy, but only the most successful ones. If Jaren came from a high-standing family, it made sense that they’d be unwilling to visit him in Zalindov. They’d likely disowned him the moment of his sentencing.
“And the second time?” she asked.
“I was teaching my brother how to climb trees, and I slipped.” He winced. “Not my finest moment.”
“You have a brother?”
“Yeah. He’s around Tipp’s age. A bit of a surprise for my mother.” He paused, then added, “I have a sister, too, but she’s older.”
“So you’re the middle child,” Kiva observed. “That explains a lot.”
“A joke? From the prison healer?” Jaren squinted at her. “Are you sure I’m not dying?”
Kiva didn’t deign to respond as she snipped the last stitch, smeared on some sap, and retreated to a safe distance, indicating for him to pull his tunic back on.
“How much longer do you have to stay here tonight?” Jaren asked, his gaze wandering around the infirmary. She tried to see it from his perspective: the metal benches, the wooden worktable covered with supplies, the thin-blanketed pallets with even thinner privacy curtains for patients who needed longer care. At the back of the room was a closed door leading into the quarantine room, currently occupied by a few cases of a stomach virus that was going around.
“A couple more hours,” Kiva answered. “Olisha and Nergal will come and take over when it’s time for me to sleep.”
Unlike many of the other prisoners, Kiva’s hours were extensive. Most laborers worked for twelve hours, sometimes fourteen. But as the prison healer, it wasn’t unheard of for her to work eighteen hours a day, especially when there were wagonloads of new arrivals. Olisha and Nergal, the two others who were allocated to the infirmary, shared the skeleton shift each night, but the rest of the time they were shuffled among different administrative tasks depending on where they were needed. Unless Kiva was desperate for added support during the day, the three of them rarely worked together, which was perhaps another reason why the two older prisoners were so incompetent. They had no one to teach them how to treat the more complicated health concerns.
“Here,” Kiva said, retrieving a small jar of aloeweed gel from her supplies and handing it to Jaren.
He turned it between his fingers. “What’s this?”
“It’s for your hands,” she said. “You should’ve come to see me about them sooner.”
Jaren cocked his head to the side. “Is that your way of saying you missed me?”
Kiva felt her eye twitch. “It’s my way of saying they’ll only get worse if you don’t look after them.”
“Fair point,” Jaren said with the hint of a smile. “And I guess we don’t know each other well enough for you to miss me yet.”
Another eye twitch. “There’s no need to add yet to the end of that. We’ll never know each other that well.”
Jaren’s mouth hitched up into a crooked grin. He jumped down from the bench, the move bringing him much closer to Kiva. Her instinct was to step back, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, so she remained in place.
“Maybe if you—”
Whatever Jaren had been about to say was interrupted when Tipp bounded through the unguarded door and into the infirmary.
“Kiva! D-D-Did you hear?”
“Hear what?” she asked, spinning toward him.
“There’s a n-new arrival!”
“What? Now?” Kiva said, frowning. Not only was it still the dead of winter, but it was also nighttime. Never in Kiva’s ten years of imprisonment had a new inmate been delivered so late.
“Yes! And you w-won’t believe who they’re s-s-saying she is!”
Before Kiva could ask, Naari appeared at the entrance to the infirmary, her face tight. Close behind her came two other guards, both male, carrying a stretcher upon which was what looked like a bundle of oddly shaped rags in the vague outline of a human.
“Out of the way, boy,” one of the guards snarled at Tipp, who quickly scampered toward where Kiva and Jaren stood.
“You, healer,” the second guard barked at Kiva as they unceremoniously dragged the limp weight of the ragged-clothed human off the stretcher and onto the metal bench Jaren had vacated. “You have a week before she’s to face her first Trial. We want a good show, so do what you can to fix her before then.”
And then the two male guards took off into the night, one of them giving Tipp a forceful shove as he walked by, prompting Kiva to dig her fingernails into Jaren’s forearm to keep him from lunging after the man. She shook her head firmly at him, and the stormy look on his face darkened before he let out a sigh and moved to ruffle Tipp’s hair. The young boy was nowhere near as upset as Jaren—a shove was the least of what the guard could have done, and Tipp knew it.