She set her own fork down and pushed her plate away. She realized then she had to pay attention to this conversation, that it seemed to be about one thing and was really about another.
“Are you worried about what’ll happen to you after the ceremonies?” she asked.
He shook his head, but he still didn’t look up. He was developing a bald spot near his crown, and he hadn’t paid for enhancements. The small circle of skin made him seem vulnerable in a way she’d never noticed before.
“This isn’t about me,” he said, but she didn’t believe him.
“You can stay in the military,” she said. “They need planners. Even in peacetime, they’ll need a standing army. Governments always do.”
“Seriously, Nola,” he said with some irritation. “It’s not about me.”
“What is it about then?” she asked.
He shook his head again. The movement was small, almost involuntary, as if he were speaking to himself instead of her.
“Your units? The people under your command?”
He kept shaking his head.
“Your injured?”
“The dead,” he said softly.
She was silent for a long time, hoping he would elaborate. But he didn’t. So she struggled to understand.
“We can’t help them,” she said. “Even now with the technology that we have, the knowledge that we have, we can’t help them. We just try to prevent death.”
“And how do you do that?” he asked, raising his head. “How do you know who’s worthy?”
She frowned. She was a doctor. She had been all her adult life. “I don’t choose the worthy ones. That’s not my decision.”
“I’ve seen triage,” he said. “You pick. You always pick.”
Her breath caught.
“I don’t choose by worthiness,” she said softly. “I choose by my skill level. I choose by time. Who will survive the intervention? Who will take the least amount of time so that I can get to other injured? Who will be the least amount of work?”
That last made her face flush. She’d never admitted it to someone else before—at least not to someone who wasn’t a doctor, someone who wasn’t really faced with those decisions.
“That’s how you pick who’s worthy,” he said.
His words made her flush deepen.
“Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you look at the ones you didn’t even try to save, the ones you sacrificed for the others, and wonder about them? Don’t you sometimes think you made the wrong choice?”
Her face was so warm now that it actually hurt.
“No.” She wanted to say that with confidence, but her voice was small, smaller than she’d ever heard it around him. “If I thought I always made the wrong choice, I couldn’t do my job.”
“But in the wee hours, when you’re alone … ?”
She was staring at him. He hadn’t looked up once.
After a moment, he shook his head a third time, as if he were arguing with himself.
“Never mind,” he said. “I’m just tired.”
Which gave her an excuse to leave.
She had no idea it would be the last time she’d see him. The next day, he had left the outpost.
And she never heard from him again.
“I’m sorry,” I say after giving her a moment to return from the memory. “I don’t see how all of that meant he didn’t plan to go to the ceremony. I don’t see how this relates to the Room of Lost Souls.”
She raises her eyebrows in surprise. I get the distinct feeling she has just decided I’m dumb.
“He wasn’t thinking about the future,” she says. “He was thinking about the past.”
“I got that,” I say, and hope the words aren’t too defensive. “But he makes no mention of the ceremonies or of the Room. So I’m not sure how you made the connection all these years later.”
A slight frown creases the bridge of her nose. “The Room,” she says, “is a pilgrimage. Some say it’s a sacred place. Others believe only the damned can visit it.”
My breath catches. I haven’t heard any of that before. Or maybe I have. I used to make it a practice of not listening to stories about the Room because I believed no one could understand that place if they hadn’t been there.
“All right,” I say, “let’s assume he knew that. How do you know he went there next?”
“His crew says so.” She crosses her arms.
“I know that,” I say. “But you found this interchange important. Enlighten me. Why?”
“Because I was stupid,” she snaps. “He wasn’t talking about me. He was talking about himself. His choices. His way of doing things. His losses. I’m sure he was reflecting on them because everyone expected him to celebrate the end of the Wars.”
“He should have celebrated,” I say.
She smiles faintly, then nods. For a moment she looks away. I can see her make a decision. She takes a deep breath and uncrosses her arms.
“I agreed with you back then. I figured he should have been at his happiest. But he wasn’t so wrong about our jobs. I spent a lot of years as the chief surgeon on a military ship, and mostly I handled minor injuries and not-so-serious illness. But when we were in the middle of a battle, and the wounded kept pouring in, I just reacted.”
I nod, not wanting her to stop.
“I worked my ass off,” she says. “And people died.”
She leans back, and rests her wrist on the side of the table. “I never, ever counted how many people I saved. I still don’t. But I know to the person how many have died under my watch,” she says softly. “I’ll wager Ewing knew too. And each one of those deaths, they take something from you.”
A little piece of yourself, I almost add. But I don’t want her to think I’m sympathizing falsely, and I’m not willing to reveal as much of myself to her as she has revealed of herself to me.
“He wouldn’t have been talking about death if he was going to go to those ceremonies,” she says. “He wouldn’t have been looking at the past. He would have been looking toward the future, at what we could build.”
She sounds so confident. Yet they were just lovers, in passing, on a military outpost. How well did she really know him, after all?
And how can I ask her that without insulting her further?
So I try a different tack, partly to take my mind off those irritating questions and partly because I want to know.
“You said it’s a pilgrimage. You said only the damned can get in.”
Her frown grows. “Have you never heard of the Room?”
“I know it,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I just don’t know the legends.”
And I should. I have learned that the legends are more important than “facts” or histories or stories they can verify. Because legends hold a bit of truth.
“Do the damned go to get cleansed?” I ask.
Her mouth closes. She takes a breath, sighs, then gives me that faint smile all over again.
“Some say the Room bestows forgiveness on those who deserve it.” That faraway look appears in her eyes.
“And those who don’t?” I ask.
Tears well. She doesn’t brush at them, doesn’t even seem to notice them.
“They never come back,” she says. Then she frowns at me. “You think he went for forgiveness, not to disappear.”
I shrug. “The timing works. If he completed his pilgrimage to the Room, he could have gone to the treaty-signing ceremonies.”
“With a pure heart,” she whispers.
“He was a hero,” I say without a trace of irony. “Didn’t he have a pure heart already?”
And for the first time, she has no answer for me.
She has led me in a whole new direction. I’m not looking for the remains of a man. I’m looking for something unusual, something special.