The woman recognized Mira by the scrape on her arm before she was certain of her face.
“You were beside the ambulance,” she said. “At the driver’s door.”
Mira had been carrying a box of blank route cards from the relief coordinator’s office. Her current assignment involved sorting equipment-return requests and passing verified transport questions to the local desk. It was authorized work at a documented location, with the same reporting conditions that applied before the hospital defense. She set the box on the table instead of trying to answer while balancing it.
“Yes.”
“My father was inside.”
The woman looked past her, toward a man seated beside the clinic doorway. A blanket covered his knees. An oxygen line lay against his cheek, and he was arguing mildly with a nurse about whether he could drink a second cup of tea. The woman smiled at the argument with an exhaustion so complete that Mira felt it in her own legs.
“They told me how you reached him,” she said. “Thank you.”
Mira could hear three unsuitable answers at once. It was nothing would erase the people who had protected her route. I was only doing my part would sound rehearsed. You don’t know what else I’ve done would force a stranger holding gratitude to carry Mira’s confession too.
