Qinghe turned an unused office beside the furnace into an examination room. She set a screen between the table and the door, boiled the jars, and asked the first workers to wait until she called their names.
They came expecting a quick note to send them back to duty. Jor described numbness that appeared after his second cycle. Lian admitted she had been hiding dizziness because her family needed her wage.
Yan carried water and kept the line moving. When the wind caught the screen, he held it in place while Qinghe examined a worker’s hands.
Lian looked up at him. “Don’t charge me for that.”
“I’ll put it on your tea account.”
“You can’t make tea.”
“That’s why the account is taking so long.”
Qinghe found soot irritation in several workers and signs of longer-term weakness in others. She separated the treatment plans and asked Sella to open the outer shutters whenever the wind allowed. The station master complained that the room would lose heat.
