Crossing Boundaries

Chapter 35

Arrowan

My office and the exam room off it were easily the cleanest, most organized rooms in the whole building.

They were also the only rooms that remotely deserved either descriptor.

Luin was a cleaning fiend around the hospital. He seemed to be everywhere. I'd go downstairs for lunch and inevitably run into him in the hall or pass a room where he was tirelessly unpacking boxes and keeping careful ledgers of our supplies. When we first introduced ourselves here, everyone was visibly impressed with me because of my healing affinity. It only took a couple of days for them to realize the person they should actually be grateful for was Luin, since there was no way this place could be ready in time without him.

He had started with my office and exam room, which was why they were so put-together. Now he was working his way methodically through each room, cleaning and sorting as he went. They gave him an assistant, Uraia, who had the muscle power Luin lacked and who didn't seem to mind being part of Luin's frenzy. A few other people were a part of the effort, though they were nowhere near as efficient as my bond mate was. The rest of us were in meetings for a lot of the day.

I had to sit through hour after hour of the planning committee's sessions, since I had landed the position of head healer by default. It didn't matter whether I had a mind for strategy; I was the person with the highest healing affinity, so I would be in charge of the hospital. It made a kind of sense, unfortunately; otherwise, I would have argued my way out of it. As patients came in, they would be sent to one of the lesser healers or medics if it was obvious they would suffice. Anytime our office workers weren't sure who to send a patient to, I would make the call since I could quickly evaluate the severity of their wounds. All patients would be checked in through my office for this reason – and because that was the only way to ensure the critically injured reached me as quickly as possible.

So yes, I understood why they had me running the hospital. Especially since Luin could whiz through the organizational side of things. He was exactly the right person to track our supply usage and our staffing levels to make sure we were adequately prepared. What I did not understand was why that meant I had to sit in on the higher-up meetings.

I tapped my pen against my thigh while Elaina and Helin, who were the Seelie and Unseelie battle leaders, debated which camp to attack first. They both seemed to have gone into this believing we should target the Unseelie first, but were debating the pros and cons anyway. It was boring.

I caught the eye of the Unseelie to my left. He was another healer, and he would be in charge of the hospital whenever I was away. He had an eerily blank stare, and the effect of it with his extreme pallor and almost white eyes was enough to send a shiver down my spine, even though I had grown up surrounded by Unseelie fae. There was no denying some of us looked plain creepy. His name was Jaron, which was the same as my father – another admittedly unfair strike against him.

"- Arrowan?" someone said.

Shoot. I hadn't been paying attention at all. "Um... what?"

Elaine raised a brow slightly and said, "I asked how many people you think we should allocate for transporting the injured to you."

Oh, so they did need something from me at this meeting. It would have been a relief to know this wasn't a complete waste of my time if I hadn't been caught zoning out so hard. I had absolutely no answer ready, so I looked to Jaron.

"That will vary depending on how many people will be fighting and how risky the venture is," he said. "A stealth mission would require fewer than a head-on attack."

Elaine pursed her lips and looked to Helin. They seemed to communicate wordlessly, then she nodded. "Give me a ratio, then. For a head-on attack, how many transporters per hundred fae?"