“You know what everyone.” She crumples up her speech using one hand and drops it on the podium beside her. There’s a small ripple of confused amusement in the room. A few heads tilt.
“I’m going to try that again,” she says, and her voice has changed. It’s lower and warmer. “I’m going to be honest with you. Believe it or not, but public speaking isn’t my forte.”
There are a few laughs through the audience and a whole lot of smiles.
“I was very nervous about tonight. What am I saying? I’m still nervous.”
More people laugh.
“I am very comfortable in scrubs at three in the morning with my hands inside a dragon’s chest cavity, covered in blood. Up here in front of you, I’m a mess.”
The room laughs.
She smiles, a little surprised herself.
“A friend told me to speak from the heart instead of reading a stuffy speech,” she says. “So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell you what it actually looks like in our department, and why every single one of you matters more than you know.”
She pauses as she looks out at them.
“Every person who works in our hospital gives heart and soul to that building. Our nurses pull double shifts. Our doctors live on bad coffee and worse canteen food. Our attendings work hours that no reasonable employer would permit, and they do it because it matters. We make a difference on this island. We save lives. We do it because at three in the morning, when a hangar door rolls back, and a critical case is wheeled in, there is no one else. We are it. We are that patient’s last chance.”
The hall has gone quiet. Every eye is on Robyn.
“We work as a team, because we have to. There is no surgeon in our department who is the hero of any particular case.”
She looks down at her feet for a second.
“And when we lose one,” she goes on, and her voice goes a fraction lower, “we feel it. The hours, the missed dinners, the lousy food, the time on our feet, the lack of sleep, all of that turnsinto something heavier in those moments. It’s the cost of the work. We pay it because we love what we do. Because we cannot imagine doing anything else or being anywhere else.”
She lifts her chin.
“When the Council asked me to take on overseeing shifter medicine on this island, I told them I would only accept on one condition. That I be allowed to keep operating. To keep my place in our surgery rotation. They agreed. I am not in the surgical theater as much as I would like to be. I am not at as many bedsides as I want to be. But I will keep showing up there for as long as I am able to, because that is where the work is. And we will keep doing the work, for as long as it takes, with whatever we have. We just need you, the people in this room, to keep doing what you do, too. This is particularly true during times of uncertainty where we all need to stand together in support of one another. We have no idea what the future will hold. All I know is that without your support, without your funding, without your belief in what we are building, the lights stay off in the rooms that need them most. Thank you for all you do for us. Thank you from my team and from every life that has been saved and all the lives that will be saved in the future.”
She steps back from the podium.
At first, there is a lengthy silence, and I hold my damned breath. The room comes apart, and I sigh.
The applause starts at the front and rolls back, and three or four people stand at the closest tables, and then more, and within a few seconds, half the room is on its feet. Robyn’s hand goes briefly to her mouth, then she lowers it, and she gives a small nod that takes them all in.
This female.
Fuck!
I watch her up there, flushed and a little teary. She’s brighter than every light in this room, and I cannot make the picture fit.
This female can’t be feeding intel to the Mainland. She can’t be. Robyn saves lives. It’s her passion. The way she lit up speaking about it…
Every instinct tells me she’s the real thing.
Then again, I can’t be sure because I’ve been compromised. She could be playing the hell out of me. Is she trying to cloud my judgment? Is she using her body to do it? Does she want to get me taken off the case?
Hell, what I just did in that corridor is exactly what a handler would tell her to do.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
She’s wrapping up at the podium. The applause swells again.
