“You don’t have to prove yourself to him, you know.” Nyasha tugged another strap, pulling the harness tight across Calea’s back.
“To whom?” Calea answered, for a moment absurdly thinking she was referring to Dr. Burdock. She had never given two coppers about Burdock’s opinion of her.
“To Bron,” the girl said. “He knows you’re strong. He knows you as well as ever my papa knew me.”
Calea’s cheeks heated at the implication. “We are not related. And I don’t care what Bron thinks of me.”
“Yes, you do,” Nyasha said, tugging another strap hard enough that Calea winced at the pressure. Fortunately the girl was behind her, so she couldn’t see. “You care what everyone thinks of you. You just don’t care if anyone likes you.”
Calea opened her mouth, then closed it, determined not to sputter. This was utterly ridiculous. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing.” More hard little tugs as Nyasha adjusted the straps. “I don’t care if you like me, either. But Bron knows you, and he likes you anyway. He knows you’re strong and smart, and he knows you’re an idiot sometimes, too. You don’t have to prove anything to him.”
“Of course not. I have no need to prove anything to a simple-witted bodyguard.” There was really nothing else to say about such idiotic statements.
“Right.” Nyasha finished her adjustments and moved in front of Calea, watching the arm prosthetic with a critical eye. “Try to roll your shoulders.”
Calea did so, feeling the give and sway of the heavy new limb. She would have to adjust the prosthetic hand’s grip and function with her flesh-and-blood hand, but it would give her many more options for dealing with daily objects. Nowhere near as good as her stolen powered limb, but better than nothing. Though she saw no need to try to refute nonsense, she was intrigued by the conversation itself. “Why are you saying this to me?”
Nyasha nodded absently at the way the limb moved, then crossed the room to fetch the leg prosthetic. “Because I like Bron, and I don’t like the way you treat him. He’s smarter than you think, or let yourself think, anyway.”
“I do not… What…” Oh, and now she was sputtering after all. Calea closed her mouth with a snap. “That’s preposterous.”
“You like knowing that any given moment, you’re cleverer and wiser than at least one other person in the room. So you let Bron be that person for you. But he’s not. He pulled me out of a collapsed house. Do you have any idea what kind of skill that takes, or at least intuition?” Nyasha looked Calea in the eyes for a moment, then bent down to attach the leg.
“He’s capable enough, for a guard…”
“He’s a good man,” Nyasha interjected, threading straps and pulling on them hard enough to make Calea wince. This time she didn’t try to hide it. “You should be smart enough to see that, but you hide it from yourself to spare your own feelings. And that’s why I don’t like you. You’re rude to me, and that’s all right; plenty of people have been rude to me. But Bron deserves better.”
Calea was speechless. Had a little village girl, a mere doctor’s assistant and not even a medical student, just told her that her own guard deserved someone better than she?
Nyasha stood back, looking Calea up and down. Perhaps she was just checking the fit of the prosthetics, but her gaze was simultaneously so piercing and so dismissive that if Calea had not been sitting rigidly, she might have shrunk from it. “All right. You can try to stand now, my lady.”
The honorific was sarcastic and not even correct, but Calea chose to ignore it. She seized her crutch and leveraged herself to her feet. She would still need the crutch to walk, at least at first, but already she felt more stable and in control. The socket of the leg prosthetic put new and uncomfortable pressure on her stump, which had been hanging loose and unencumbered for several days, and she would need to practice walking again. But already she was sure of success. “It feels good,” she said a bit grudgingly. She would not let her anger get in the way of finishing what she came here to do. “No spiking pressure or chafing yet.”
“Good. You should walk your route around the clinic a few times and let me know if that changes.” Nyasha gestured toward the door, and Calea moved to go.
“Oh,” Nyasha said behind her, cool and casual and just as commanding as if she were a full physician giving instructions to a fractious patient, “and the next time Bron comes to you with a smile on his face, try not to chase it away within a minute. Just as an experiment. To see if you can.”
Calea drew in a deep breath and refrained from answering, instead continuing out the door. Her face burned with anger for the entirety of her first trip about the clinic, though. Stupid girl.
What did she know, anyway? No more personal conversations. Calea would discuss only the prosthetics with her and ignore anything else she said.
For the rest of the day, she kept that resolution.
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