Chapter 71: Under Glass

Ruth kept Jonah’s hand in the window light after Carrick finished examining the pale seam.

"Hold still."

"I’ve heard that a lot this week."

"And you keep ignoring it."

As Jonah let her turn the palm toward the light, the cut still looked wrong to Severin. One half remained red and slightly open. The section inside the numb area had closed beneath the narrow pale line that began almost exactly where yesterday’s ink marks crossed the skin.

Ruth wet a square of cloth and cleaned around it. Near the center of the sealed section, something lifted.

"Hold on."

Carrick bent closer as Ruth touched the edge with forceps. A piece no larger than a shaving of skin rose from the seam without opening the cut beneath it.

Jonah watched her. "What is that?"

"That’s what I’d like to know," Ruth said.

Carrick took the forceps and examined the loose edge without pulling. "We can take this much. Nothing deeper."

Rafael looked up from his notebook. "Would a larger sample help?"

"Probably. Not enough to justify cutting healthy tissue."

Jonah looked from Carrick to Ruth. "So you want the bit that’s already coming off?"

"Yes," Carrick said. "And something to compare it with. A thread from the dressing, then a little from the other side if Ruth can lift it without opening the cut."

"And then?"

"Under the microscope."

Jonah studied his palm for a moment, then held it out again. "Fine. Just tell me before the whole island hears about it."

"You will," Leo said.

Ruth laid three small glass dishes on the table. She clipped a single thread from the clean edge of the dressing and placed it in the first. From the red side of the cut she lifted a speck of dried material that had already separated from the skin. The pale sliver came last.

Rafael numbered three scraps of paper and set one beside each dish. He wrote the time, the source, which side of Ruth’s sensory line it had come from, and how she had taken it.

Severin watched him finish. "You numbering all three?"

"Unless you want to guess later."

"Fair enough."

Carrick crossed to a narrow cabinet against the wall and unlocked it. He brought out a wooden case darkened at the corners from use. Inside sat a brass microscope, glass slides wrapped in paper, two fine needles, and a small box of lenses.

Severin had seen microscopes at Kronvaal, though never closely enough to learn much about them. Carrick’s looked old and well used, the brass worn where fingers had adjusted it for years. He set a strong lamp near the window but left it unlit while the daylight held.

Ruth prepared the dressing thread while Carrick positioned the mirror beneath the stage and caught the window light. He changed the focus twice, then straightened.

"Cloth."

Ruth looked next. "Twisted fibers. Frayed at the end."

She replaced the slide with the pale sliver. Carrick took longer over that one, moving the glass a fraction at a time while Jonah watched from the chair.

"Well?"

"Give me a minute."

Carrick checked it once more. "It isn’t from the dressing."

Ruth leaned over the microscope and moved the slide beneath the lens. "No. Doesn’t look anything like it."

Rafael wrote it down while Carrick prepared the dried material from the normal side of the cut. Carrick looked through the microscope. "Dried blood. Bits of tissue. Nothing unusual for a shallow cut."

He returned the pale sample to the stage and changed lenses.

Leo asked, "So what are we looking at?"

"I don’t know yet. Could be scar tissue or fibrin. Maybe connective tissue, or salt carried in from the skin. Could even be something changed by what happened when he drowned." Carrick checked the slide again. "The dressing doesn’t explain it, and it doesn’t look like the normal side. Anything past that is a guess."

Ruth held out her hand. "Let me."

Carrick shifted aside. Ruth stayed at the eyepiece long enough for Jonah to stop watching her face and look down at the wrapped edge of his palm.

"There are lines in it," she said after adjusting the slide.

"Fibers?" Carrick asked.

"Maybe. Fine ones." Ruth moved the stage a fraction. "They branch."

Rafael stopped writing.

Ruth looked again. "Some of them come back together."

When Ruth shifted aside, Severin took her place at the microscope. Through the eyepiece he saw a bright field crossed by pale lines he could not make sense of. The first sample had at least come with a simple answer: cloth. This looked like nothing he knew. He moved aside and gave Ruth the stool back.

Carrick used one of the needles to separate another fragment on a clean slide, added a drop from a small bottle, and covered it with a second piece of glass.

Severin gave them room. Leo stayed close enough to watch without crowding the table.

"What did you add?" Leo asked.

"A simple stain. It may make the edges easier to see."

Carrick bent over the microscope again, adjusted the lens, and worked the slide back and forth before giving Ruth another look.

"I know the usual signs of scar tissue and damaged nerves. Connective tissue can vary, but I still can’t name this."

"Is it alive?" Jonah asked.

Carrick answered at once. "I don’t know."

"Is it part of me?"

"I don’t know that either."

Jonah rubbed his thumb against the side of his index finger without touching the seam. "Can I see it?"

Carrick shifted the stool toward him. "Of course."

Jonah bent over the microscope while Ruth showed him how to focus without touching the slide. He stayed there for several seconds.

"That’s from my hand?"

"Yes," Carrick said.

Jonah looked once more before sitting back. He flexed the affected fingers and watched them close. "Can it spread?"

"We don’t know."

"Can I give it to Sarah? The children?"

"Nothing we’ve seen says it passes from one person to another," Carrick said.

"That’s not the same as no."

"No. But don’t start staying away from your family over this. If anything changes, come back."

"And cutting it out?"

"Not today. I won’t dig into your hand when I don’t know what I’m removing or what damage I might cause."

Jonah nodded. "Sarah’s going to hate that answer."

"She can come hate it here," Ruth said, and Jonah gave her a brief laugh.

Leo waited until Jonah had moved his chair back from the table. "The refuge."

Carrick answered without asking him to explain. "I’m not saying we keep using it for everything."

"Good. Emergencies only, then. If you can treat them outside, do it. If they need the refuge, get them in and out as quickly as you safely can."

Rafael turned to a clean page.

"Write down when they go in, when they come out, where they’re kept, and where you treat them," Leo continued. "Anyone who spends long enough in there gets checked afterward."

Carrick paused. "As long as you’re not asking me to keep a dying patient out because a ledger isn’t ready."

Leo glanced at Jonah’s hand. "If they need it to live, use it. Otherwise, treat them outside."

"Then I can work with that."

Ruth kept her notebook beside the microscope and copied the branching pattern she had seen. Severin’s attention kept returning to the split lines.

He leaned over the page. "That looks familiar."

Ruth looked up. "From where?"

The refuge came back to him as wet dark stone and pale deposits crossing the inner section. He remembered Rafael crouched over his field book while Leo tested one patch after another.

"Those drawings you made in the refuge," Severin said to Rafael. "The pale lines farther in."

Rafael reached for his field book and flipped past the temperature notes and the marks from Leo’s tests. He found the pages from the inner shelf and set them beside Ruth’s notebook.

Severin saw the resemblance once the two drawings sat together. Both patterns divided repeatedly, with finer lines moving away before disappearing into the larger shape.

Ruth pointed between them. "That’s close."

"Close doesn’t make it the same thing," Carrick said.

Rafael looked up. "No one said it was."

"Good, because lots of things branch. You see it in blood vessels, roots, cracks in stone, mineral veins, connective tissue. If we start treating every branching shape as the same thing, we’ll talk ourselves into whatever answer we want."

Leo leaned over the pages. "Then we don’t."

Severin stayed bent over the drawings. One section near the lower edge of Ruth’s sketch had been drawn twice.

"What happened there?"

"I thought I’d copied it wrong." Ruth returned to the microscope and found the place again. "No. It does that."

Rafael bent closer to her sketch.

A fine strand divided into two narrow branches. They curved apart, enclosed a small empty space, then joined again into one line.

Rafael turned back several pages in his field book. His pencil stopped over his sketch of a pale formation on the refuge wall.

Two branches curved around an empty patch of stone and rejoined on the other side.