The clinic’s next delivery was scheduled to pass the tram depot.
Eli discovered that when he found Leah pinning a route beside the door. The supplier had agreed to bring dressings to the depot, where a volunteer would collect them and walk the remaining blocks. The arrangement saved a delivery charge the clinic could not yet afford.
He almost took the paper down.
In the life he remembered, a gate surge had damaged the depot’s east entrance. He did not know the exact date. He had read a report afterward, not witnessed the event, and the river fluctuation had already arrived earlier than he expected. Moving the collection point would be easy enough: he could call the supplier, say there was a change, and save everyone an argument.
The problem was that the route belonged to Leah’s plan, the supplier’s driver, and the volunteer who had agreed to make the trip. Tessa had asked him to disclose uncertain warnings before people committed to a decision. He left the paper where it was.
“Can we talk about this route?” he asked Leah.
She turned from the table. “Is the depot closed?”
“Not according to the notice I checked this morning. I have an uncertain warning about a possible gate surge there. I read about one in information I can’t independently verify, and I don’t know when it might happen.”
Leah’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a lot of uncertainty.”
“Yes. I don’t think it means the depot is unsafe today. I thought you should know before the volunteer goes.”
“Does Tessa know?”
“I told her yesterday. We agreed to monitor notices and keep another route available.”
Leah studied the map. “The driver offered the depot because he already stops there. If we ask him to come here, he charges more. If we choose another stop, I have to know he’ll actually be there.”
“I can call him,” Eli said.
“You can sit with me while I call. It’s my arrangement.”
He pulled out a chair. Leah dialed the supplier and asked whether the driver had another scheduled stop near the clinic. She explained that the depot route might be disrupted, without saying a surge was expected. The supplier checked and offered a stop two blocks farther west. The driver would be there within a half-hour window.
Leah wrote the location and time. “If that stop doesn’t happen, can he leave the package with the shop next door?”
“Only if the shop agrees,” the supplier said.
“I’ll ask them.”
She called the shop, confirmed that someone would be present, and wrote the name of the person who accepted. Then she called the volunteer to explain the change. The volunteer preferred the western stop because it was closer to her bus route.
Afterward, Leah crossed out the depot on the route sheet and added the new collection point. “That didn’t cost us anything but three calls,” she said. “Next time, tell me before I put the map up.”
“I will.”
“Was your warning the reason you offered to collect it yourself this morning?”
He had forgotten the offer. “Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me why.”
“No.”
“Then you were already trying to change the plan.”
He could argue that offering to help was not the same as secretly calling the supplier. It was still an attempt to control the route without giving Leah the information she needed. “You’re right.”
She handed him the revised sheet. “Put this up where the old one was. Make sure the volunteer sees it if she comes in before I do.”
Tessa arrived while he was fastening it to the wall. She read the new route and asked what had changed. Eli told her about the warning, his offer to collect the supplies, and Leah’s calls. He did not leave out the first part because the outcome had been good.
“You caught it before the delivery,” Tessa said. “You also tried to steer it before you told her. Both belong in the account.”
Leah returned to her ledger. “I’m satisfied with the route. I don’t need a meeting about my map.”
“We do need one about how we work together,” Tessa said to Eli. “After the morning appointments.”
The clinic stayed busy until noon. Eli carried a box of bottled water upstairs for Mrs. Ortega, then delivered a referral letter to a patient who had no working phone. He took the public notices with him and checked the depot bulletin on the way. There was no change in its status. He wrote the time he checked on a scrap of paper, so he would not later confuse a morning notice with an all-day assurance.
When he returned, Tessa had cleared the table. She placed two cups of tea beside a sheet of paper and a registry printout.
“I followed up on Aegis,” she said. “The public register lists an organization using that name, but the available entry doesn’t identify a raid commander. I asked the registry how to request an updated officer list.”
Eli read the entry. The name matched. The address did not match the terminal he remembered, though that building had been rented later. “This doesn’t tell us whether Rusk is involved.”
“That’s what the clerk said. She also said a name can be similar without identifying the same organization.” Tessa tapped the request number she had written at the bottom. “I asked to be notified if the public entry changes. We can check again without approaching anyone in the guild.”
He had expected to be the one supplying information. Instead she had taken his uncertain warning, found a source of her own, and left a trail he could check. He copied the request number rather than treating the familiar name as confirmation.
“This isn’t a contract,” she said.
“It looks like one.”
“That’s because we need to remember what we agreed. It won’t make either of us honest.”
She drew a line down the page. On one side she wrote Before a joint decision. On the other she wrote After a disagreement.
“Start with the depot,” she said. “What should you have told Leah?”
“That I remembered a report of a surge there, that I didn’t know when it happened, and that the present notices didn’t show a warning.”
“When?”
“Before she arranged the collection.”
“And if you remember something after the arrangement?”
“As soon as I can, before the volunteer leaves.”
Tessa wrote it down. “What if telling her means she chooses to use the depot anyway?”
“I can explain why I’m worried. I can’t make the choice for her.”
“If you see a current, immediate danger, such as a barrier moving or responders ordering people back, you can tell her to stop. We don’t need a committee meeting while a wall falls.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“It’s also a limit. You don’t get to call every memory an immediate danger.”
He thought of the bright lines in the dungeon wall and the uncertainty around them. “I should say what I can see and what I think it means.”
“Yes. And I’ll tell you what evidence would make me revise a plan. If I don’t know, I’ll say that too.”
She wrote an example beneath the rule: Depot: remembered report, no date; current notice clear; alternate stop confirmed. It was not a complete guarantee that the western route would remain safe. It was a record of why they had chosen it.
Leah came back from the phone before Tessa could begin the next example.
“The driver is late. Twenty minutes, he says. Our volunteer has to leave for work in ten.”
“Can the shop hold the package?” Tessa asked.
“The owner agreed. The driver won’t leave medical supplies with someone whose name isn’t on his sheet.” Leah set the invoice between the tea cups. “The supplier says we can authorize it, but the dispatch desk has to put the change through.”
Eli reached for his coat. “I can collect it.”
Leah kept hold of the invoice. “At the western stop?”
“Yes.”
“Then say that. I don’t want to discover you’ve gone to the depot because you think the driver might change his mind.”
He stopped with one arm in his sleeve. That had been part of his calculation: if the driver returned to the original stop, Eli would be there to catch him. He had been about to turn the uncertain warning into a reason only he could take the risk.
“I’d wait at the western stop,” he said. “If he doesn’t arrive there, I call. I don’t chase the van.”
“Do you have time?” Tessa asked.
He looked at the clock. He had promised a warehouse supervisor he would return for a paid delivery shift that afternoon. The fee had already become food in his mind, though he had not earned it.
“Not if the delay gets longer.”
“Tell him before he counts on you,” Leah said.
Eli called. The supervisor had another worker waiting and could not hold the shift. Eli asked for five minutes to find out whether dispatch would authorize the shop. The answer was no: take the shift now or give it up. He put the phone down without accepting.
Tessa turned the invoice over and wrote the two choices. “If the shop can accept it, you can still work. If it can’t, we need another collector. We don’t need you volunteering for both.”
The door opened. Their next patient had arrived early, holding a folded work shirt against her wrist. Tessa recognized her and rose at once.
“I thought you had the new dressings,” the woman said. “I can’t spend another afternoon at the hospital.”
“The delivery is delayed. Let me see what you need before I promise a time.”
Behind the screen, Tessa asked her to unwrap the cloth. Eli stayed at the table. He could hear the woman explaining that her employer would not let her handle stock if the wound soaked through again. Tessa asked permission to look more closely, then called Marisol.
Leah reached dispatch while the examination continued. The clerk wanted the patient’s name to locate the order.
“It’s the clinic’s supply order,” Leah said. “There isn’t a patient’s name on it.”
She read the invoice number instead. Eli watched her move the appointment book away from the telephone. A name might have made the caller stop asking, but it would not have identified the package any better.
Dispatch authorized the shop. Leah gave the volunteer the contact’s name and told her she could leave for work. Eli called the warehouse again. The other worker had accepted the shift.
He put the phone away. The clinic would get its supplies; he had lost the fee anyway. No one at the table had made him choose that loss, and no promise could turn the minutes back.
Tessa emerged with Marisol. “The wound needs another assessment. A different dressing won’t solve it.”
The woman stayed by the screen. “Then what was I waiting for?”
“You shouldn’t wait for the delivery,” Tessa said. “I can write the treatment note now. Marisol is checking which entrance can see you.”
The woman looked at Eli’s coat, then at the invoice. “You’re all very good at sending people somewhere else.”
Tessa accepted the anger without offering the supplies as an answer. She explained what concerned her, what she could do here, and why she wanted the wound assessed today. The woman took the note when it was ready. She did not thank them.
After she left, Tessa sat down again. Eli wanted to tell her she had done the right thing. Instead he asked, “Do you need anything moved before the next appointment?”
“Not yet.” She drew the agreement back toward her. “That is what I mean by my medical decision. I have to make it even when she hates the answer. If you see a danger in the route I’m recommending, tell me before she leaves.”
“I didn’t have one.”
“Then don’t invent one to make the referral easier.”
He nodded. She wrote that clinical priorities remained hers, with teammates entitled to the information they needed to act safely.
They added the rule for Darius’s memories: warn of a danger without sharing private family details where possible; ask before sharing those details unless an immediate threat made delay unsafe. If a fragment affected Eli’s judgment, he would report the circumstances without treating its feelings as his authority over her.
“And after a mistake?” he asked.
“We say what was missing and what we chose. If you conceal it, I may stop working with you. You can make that choice about me.”
She signed the agreement and pushed the pen toward him. He signed beneath her name. The lost shift still hurt. He wrote its cancellation time beside his own delivery notes, rather than letting it become another debt he imagined the clinic owed him.
Tessa set the agreement aside and reached for the inventory. The conversation moved on to practical work: how many dressings remained, which referral had been confirmed, and whether the portable washing station needed more water. Eli helped fill the container from upstairs, taking two trips so he would not strain his shoulders again.
On the second trip he found Mrs. Ortega at the top of the stairs with a stack of folded fabric. She moved aside to let him pass.
“You and Tessa have been talking a long time,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Did you solve everything?”
“No.”
“Good. I would have had to ask your method.”
He laughed despite himself. She handed him a cloth to put beneath the water container so it would not leave a ring on the table. The small instruction was easier to follow than most of the rules he had agreed to downstairs.
Once the shop confirmed the package had arrived, Eli went to collect it. When he returned, Leah checked it against the invoice. One box contained a different size of dressing. She called the supplier while the driver was still nearby; he exchanged it at the western stop without an extra charge. The correction took fifteen minutes and delayed the next appointment only slightly.
Tessa added the delivered supplies to the inventory. Eli watched the number on the shelf change from an estimate to something they could count.
The agreement lay folded beneath the tea cups. It would not stop him from being frightened, and it would not prevent Tessa from making a decision he disliked. But when the next uncertain warning arrived, they had a place to begin: what he knew, what he did not, and who needed the information before choosing.