NOVEL NEXT B3 - Lesson 22: "Doctor's Report."
Dr. Maria's sandals clicked steadily along Halirosa's bustling avenue, the city's air tinged with the scent of roasting chestnuts, wood smoke, and bitter tonic drifting from the apothecaries down the block. Ahead, her destination rose above the chaos like a palace of gentle light: the Silver Path Pavilion.
She slowed, gaze wandering up the pavilion's facade — a sweep of pearly stone, fluted columns carved with healing sigils, wide windows shimmering with protective arrays. Three stories tall, the place sprawled across an entire city block, its roof crowned by the stylized image of a snake devouring its tail: the eternal cycle, medicine's mark. The old doctor let herself smile, warmth blooming in her chest. This, she remembered, had not always been so grand.
In her earliest days here, before the Pavilion, the healers of western Halirosa were notorious for their jealousy — money-hungry, proud, squabbling over territory and clients. Spirit healers glared at herbalists, alchemists sneered at those who worked with their hands, and every last one of them guarded their secrets like dragons atop gold. It had taken Maria years of coaxing, cajoling, and outmaneuvering to gather them beneath a single roof. Some nights she had wept from frustration; other nights, she'd shared wine and hard-won laughter with those who would become her closest allies. She still remembered the day the Pavilion's doors opened for the first time—a motley gathering of healers arguing over signage as a hundred patients waited outside.
She had never forced anyone to join, not truly. Officially, each healer remained independent, free to leave if things grew sour. In practice, the Pavilion operated as its own force within the city: a tangle of rivalries, loyalties, and collaborations that looked more like a guild than a simple clinic. Maria had insisted, from the first, on two things: knowledge must be shared, and no one in need would ever be turned away.
She passed through the shade of an old oak, lips quirking as she recalled her earliest arguments with Spirit-Doctor Jinhai — how the man had huffed and sworn that "this place'll never last, not with that bleeding heart of yours, Maria." She'd only laughed, even as his fingers bled from patching the roof himself. Now, there were half a dozen such pavilions scattered across Halirosa, all built on her model by those racing to catch up. Some part of her remained fiercely proud.
But lately… She pressed a hand to her breast, recalling the memories of Alpha's simulation. The Federation's hospitals: bright, humming with clean lines and strange devices, filled with teams who worked like a single organism. She'd run through scenarios there that tested her mind and spirit — triage protocols, crowd surges, emergencies where the difference between life and death was measured in seconds, not minutes. Maria still wasn't sure which method she preferred: the Pavilion's flexible, sometimes-chaotic mess, or the Federation's calculated precision. There were virtues in both, she supposed.
Maybe, she mused, she could bring some of those new ideas home. She couldn't build half the machines she'd seen in Alpha's world — at least not yet — but what she'd learned could catapult them centuries ahead if only she found the right way to teach it. She stifled a smirk. If the city only knew what she was planning, the clans and sects would lose their minds.
Her reverie broke as she crossed the street. At first, everything looked as she'd left it: the crowd at the steps, healers in crisp coats hurrying past, patients drifting in and out of the doors. Then, something tugged at her senses — a wrongness, subtle but growing sharper as she drew near.
A rough knot of men and women, all muscled and hard-eyed, loitered at the corners and in the pavilion's shadow. She saw the telltale gleam of clan tattoos, a few battered breastplates, and more weapons than usual for a clinic. The Silver Path had always employed guards — every healer had their own, some more loyal than others — but this was different. There were too many of them, and their eyes swept the crowd with the cold appraisal of hired muscle, not protectors.
Worse, she watched as two guards at the front entrance stopped a gaunt woman in patched clothing, turning her away with a curt shake of the head. The woman protested, cradling a listless child, but the guard only gestured her off, voice low and unmoved.
Maria's smile faded in an instant, something dark and icy washing over her features. The Pavilion turned no one away, not for poverty or politics. Even if she had to pay out of her own pocket, for nearly two centuries this had been the law. It was the rule that set the Silver Path Pavilion apart from the city's other so-called healing pavilions. That rule, more than any other, had earned them the trust of Halirosa's poorest and proudest alike.
Keeping to the edge of the street, she slid between two produce carts and slipped into a narrow, shaded alley. The air here smelled of bruised pears and sun-warmed stone. She pressed a hand to her chest and let her breath go slow and even, focusing inward. The familiar flow of her Fleshsculpting art responded at once, rippling beneath her skin. In seconds, her posture wilted and her height diminished, flesh drawing inward until she was little more than a bundle of bones wrapped in pale skin. Shadows hollowed her cheeks and threaded her hair into thin, knotted cords. With a subtle flush, she summoned the ghost of a fever across her nose and brow, letting her shoulders tremble with a frail, nervous cough.
Maria slipped a hand into her storage ring, drawing forth a set of modest but well-cut robes and simple jewelry — understated, but unmistakably expensive in detail. No clan badge, no sect signet, just the look of someone who had always been able to pay her way and expected the world to make room. She draped the robes over her thin frame, careful to let the sleeves fall long and loose, and slipped a slender silver chain around her neck, catching the sunlight as she adjusted it.
By the time she stepped back into the sunlight, the transformation was complete. She looked every inch the part: a sickly young woman of means, frightened and unsteady.
Drawing her silk shawl tighter, she joined the slow shuffle of the morning crowd. The guards at the door scanned each newcomer, and as Maria approached, she made herself smaller, shuffling in the shadow of a loud-talking merchant.
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An hour later, it was her turn to enter.
The guard at the front scanned her over, eyes narrowed with the practiced detachment of someone long since grown numb to suffering. When Maria drew near, her trembling frame and the sickly pallor of her cheeks prompted a visible grimace. The man's hand flew to cover his mouth with his sleeve, and he stepped back, eyes darting over her as if to divine whether whatever plagued her might jump the gap between them. Still, procedure won out. He jerked his chin at the doors, waving her through with as little contact as possible.
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Inside, the Silver Path Pavilion's waiting hall stretched before her, transformed from the haven she'd built into something far more chaotic. Where once the air had been fragrant with healing incense and the gentle hum of conversation, now it crackled with anxious energy — voices raised, children coughing, the dull rasp of desperate prayers. Every bench, every corner, every inch of floor seemed occupied: the poor and desperate pressed shoulder to shoulder with merchants in brocade and clan retainers boasting crested armor.
Maria moved quietly through the throng, the silk shawl around her shoulders hiding clenched fists. Her eyes flicked over the nurses weaving between patients. Too many unfamiliar faces, their crisp uniforms adorned with the Silver Path's sigil, but their movements sharp with impatience. She watched as one nurse swept past a family huddled on the floor, only to pause and fawn over a rotund merchant clutching a minor burn. Across the hall, two nurses nearly collided, voices dropping to a hissed squabble over who would claim the cluster of well-dressed traders waiting by the window.
The sight set Maria's teeth on edge. She counted four — no, five — nurses who should have been working the free clinic downstairs, now all but ignoring the poorest cases. A young woman coughed, stooped, and shivering, clutching a gaunt toddler. Her gaze met Maria's for a heartbeat, wide and pleading, before sliding away as another nurse brushed by, favoring a nobleman with a bandaged hand.
Maria pressed on, forcing herself not to break the fragile disguise, every muscle trembling with indignation. It was all she could do not to shout. Instead, she walked deeper, drawing slow breaths, letting the currents of conversation and complaint wash over her. She paused by the far wall, her gaze drawn upward by instinct.
There, above the heads of the waiting crowd, hung a familiar portrait. Herself, years younger, eyes direct and shoulders square, painted with an almost defiant confidence. Below, a plaque gleamed gold in the morning light:
In loving memory of Dr. Maria Corvane.
May her dedication to those she served be a guiding light to those who come after.
Maria stared. She had known — of course she had, some part of her had anticipated this. But to see it made so official, so permanent… A chill ran through her, deeper than any disguise. She felt the eyes of the painted woman upon her, demanding, judging.
A gentle touch at her elbow broke the spell. "Miss? Have you been seen yet?" The voice was thin, professional, and yet something in its cadence tugged at old memory. Maria glanced sideways, still gazing at the portrait, and shook her head.
"Do you know what brings you here today?" the nurse pressed, soft but insistent.
Maria finally turned. The woman beside her looked much changed from the one she remembered. Vallora — yes, there was no mistaking the set of the jaw, the arch of those dark brows, though her eyes were sunken, the sparkle Maria recalled dulled and strained. Her hair, once kept in an artful braid, was pulled tight, stray wisps sticking out at odd angles. Despite an effort to look presentable, exhaustion clung to her like a second skin.
For a moment, Maria's heart stuttered, caught between memory and reality. Vallora, who had once been a fixture of the children's ward, was the sort of nurse who could coax laughter from a fevered child with a few deft twists of a paper crane or distract a worried parent with a silly story whispered behind a cupped hand. Just a few months ago, she'd seemed almost immune to the stresses of the job, buoyed by some bottomless well of optimism and the pride of training under the Pavilion's best pediatric mage-healer. Now, the woman before her moved with the hesitant caution of someone picking their way through a battlefield. The wide, infectious smile Maria remembered was gone, replaced by lips pressed in a thin, anxious line; the bright eyes that once sparkled with mischief were shadowed, rimmed by dark circles and edged with wariness.
Maria frowned, a wave of confusion and worry rising beneath her disguise. Why was Vallora here, working triage? The woman had always dreamed of moving into specialized pediatric care, and as far as Maria knew, had been on the cusp of an apprenticeship with one of the senior mage-healers. The job she now held — sifting the endless flow of desperate faces, fielding angry complaints, and rationing dwindling resources — was grueling even for the most hardened staff, let alone someone so young and hopeful.
Something had gone terribly wrong in her absence, it seemed.
Maria summoned a cough, and when she spoke her voice was weak and thready. "I was at the East Market Pavilion. They said it was reddust lung. But their doctor couldn't treat me. Sent me here. Told me to ask for Dr. Maria Corvane."
Vallora's brow creased, confusion blooming. "Dr. Corvane?" Her gaze flicked up to the portrait, then back to Maria. "I… I'm not sure why they'd send you here for her." She hesitated, voice dropping. "You do know, don't you? Dr. Maria passed, months ago now. Joined one of those doomed expeditions into the Deep. The city hasn't widely circulated it, but… all the clinics should know. Why would the East Market Pavilion send you here?"
Vallora shook her head, lowering her voice. "Or maybe it's to be expected. It seems everyone's slipping with the Doctor gone," she muttered, then caught herself, eyes darting to the nearest nurse. "Never mind. I shouldn't have said that. Ignore me." She straightened, composing herself.
"Though, that does beg the question why they thought they couldn't treat you," she continued.
Maria feigned confusion, her fingers gripping the edge of her shawl. "They said she was the only one who could help. I… I'm sorry, I—" She let the sentence drift, her eyes meeting Vallora's, searching for any trace of the warmth she remembered.
Maria kept her gaze steady, voice trembling just so. "They said they ran out of Bluewell flowers. Sent me here instead."
At that, Vallora's mask cracked again for the briefest instant, confusion flashing across her features. "Bluewell? That's not… We don't use Bluewell for reddust lung in someone your age. Only for—" She stopped abruptly, eyes narrowing. There was a flicker of calculation, and Maria caught the faintest shiver of recognition in the nurse's gaze.
They stood in silence, the clamor of the waiting hall swirling around them. Vallora's eyes searched Maria's face, searching, sifting, as if hunting for the truth beneath the shawl and sickness.
Maria allowed herself the smallest, knowing smirk.
Vallora inhaled sharply, the spark of her old self flickering for a heartbeat, then just as quickly vanishing. Her features settled into absolute neutrality, professional to the point of sterility.
"And can I have your name?" she asked.
Dr. Maria smiled. "Raven, will do."
"…Understood," she said softly. "Wait here, please. I'll fetch the right doctor for you." She slipped a black tablet into Maria's hand, her gaze never leaving the disguised doctor's face.
Maria nodded once, pressing the tablet tight to her chest. Vallora spun and strode away, her shoulders tense, weaving through the crowd with a speed that belied her earlier exhaustion.
Maria stood rooted amid the waiting, her eyes drawn again to the portrait overhead, the echo of her legacy staring back at her. For a moment, she was just another ghost among the living, both present and absent in her own house, a witness to what she had built and what it was becoming.
The crowd pressed in, a living tide. But Maria held her ground, waiting, feeling the weight of every eye, every whispered complaint, every hope that this place still might heal.
And for the first time in a very long while, she felt the urge to fight for it all over again.