At 2 a.m., she stepped onto the small veranda outside the ward, drawn by the purity of the sweet mountain air and the rhythmic, percussive trill of crickets vibrating in the scrub.
In her hand was a steaming mug of tea.
Before her, the Lattaya canyon plummeted into an ink-black abyss, its precipices blunted by the velvet reach of the shadows.
Beyond that chasm, the Silent Desert stretched toward the eastern horizon, a pale and motionless expanse where the dunes retained the final, radiating pulse of the day’s heat.
Further still, the ocean fractured the moonlight into a thousand silver shards, appearing as a tempered band of glittering undulation at the very rim of the world.
Without warning, the hairs on the back of her neck stood, and she sensed a shift in the air, a presence ghosting in, a wraith-like trace over her skin.
She spun around and jumped.
A man stood on the porch, tall and broad, his outline starkly silhouetted in the dark.
Long hair hung loose over his shoulders, tangled by wind and exertion. Blood streaked his limbs, vest, open chest, and hands.
Idan.
‘Fokk,’ she muttered, setting her mug down on a nearby table, her heart kicking hard against her ribs. ‘You scared me.’
He lifted a brow, expression unreadable, then tipped his chin downward.
Only then did she see the young man cradled in his arms.
‘Oh my,’ she said, the word leaving her as breath. ‘Bring him in.’
She bustled forward, leading Idan into the clinic and then into the emergency ward.
‘Place him on the triage cot,’ she murmured, waving the long-haired man in.
Idan carefully placed the injured man onto a bed.
‘What’s he called?’
She got silence, and she raised a brow as she moved in at once.
Tugging a hover tray of instruments close to her, cutting fabric away, assessing angles and swelling.
‘I remember his name from the bar the other day, Lago, is it?’
Idan jerked his chin in assent.
‘It appears he’s broken his leg and I’ll need a doctor to help set it.’
She tapped her neural comm and summoned Toma from the medical sleep cubes.
The doctor appeared at her shoulder moments later, harried and half asleep, pulling on gloves.
Together they worked in silence, setting the ankle and fibula with practiced coordination.
They secured the injured limb in an open-lattice fiberglass cast filled with a fast-hardening compound.
It took shape as a structure both strong, light, and flexible, designed for movement and healing rather than confinement.
Toma grunted. ‘I’m happy with the set,santeNurse Munene. You got it from here?’
She nodded, and he strolled off, raising his chin at the ever-vigilant Idan, skirting the potent man with respect as he exited.
