The clinician asked Eli where they were before he asked what he wanted to do.
Eli gave him the street, the facility entrance, and the ambulance whose engine was keeping the examination lamp alive. The clinician made him sit on the rear step. Through the open doors he could see a roll of spare blankets secured with a strap. The sight felt almost offensively familiar: another temporary edge between the work he could do with his hands and the work he wanted permission to risk.
“You said there would be a review after the native observation,” he said.
“There is. That doesn’t decide its result.”
Eli looked at the clinician. “I wasn’t asking you to.”
“You were watching the entrance while you said it.”
Tessa remained outside the ambulance, within hearing. Sera stood by the rear wheel with the timepiece the clinician had given her. Neither spoke for him.
The questions covered the observation, the overload before it, his sleep since, and the gaps he already knew about. Eli had brought the ledger. He opened it at a page softened by handling and read the neighbor’s name aloud because the clinician asked what the written aid could still do.
