Season of Summer, Day 82, 513 AV
Fifth Bell
For the last season, Jorin had become accustomed to rising at 5th Bell. He went to sleep the night before at 22nd Bell, as usual, but something felt
off somehow. He'd not seen Rinya since his debut. He didn't expect her to be there; she'd told him she had work and promised to be there for other performances. Jorin didn't mind, he knew how important her work was to her. That wasn't what bothered him.
Why didn't she contact me? Jorin wondered. It had been two days. Two days since he'd woken with a cold sweat in the night,
certain that something had happened. Something terrible. But it was like there was a big blue wall preventing him from finding any information. When cajoling didn't work, Jorin decided to turn on his supposedly legendary charm.
Approaching the front desk of the Gilia Medical Center, Jorin's eyes scanned the nurses and doctors filtering through. It seemed to be fairly busy, even at this hour, and Jorin knew that if he
did have any charm, he'd need every ounce of it today. Visiting period would not be for several Bells, so he'd have to make an excellent argument.
Jorin had never done anything quite like this before. Certainly on stage, he'd give a performance, but he'd never had to use his ability to perform to convince an actual person before.
Confidence, Jorin thought.
All it takes is confidence. As he'd learned a long time ago, half of
any performance is confidence.
But he also needed the right audience. Someone who'd
want to believe his performance. The dour-looking doctors were not really an option. They were skeptical by nature, and Jorin was not sure he could come up with a story that would change their minds, at least not in the time he was wiling to devote to coming up with one. Nurses then.
One of the nurses passed by. Fresh-faced, with a clean white apron, pushing a small hand cart. Jorin considered her but rejected her almost immediately. Too young, which meant too new. If Rinya got in so much trouble that the Akalaks would block her bondmate from getting information about her, then he'd need more than just a junior nurse.
Another passed, with a lined face and a grim set to her lips. She walked with authority and strode across the lobby, Jorin immediately rejected her as well. She had the authoritative look of head-nurse. There was no way the head nurse would want to let a stranger in, no matter how charming. So he needed a nurse that had just made it - ah!
There was a nurse who looked to be in her early twenties. Long brown hair, brown eyes, pale complexion, carrying a large quantity of paper. Jorin realized this was his chance. She wasn't so young to be brand new with absolutely no access, yet not senior enough to reject him off-hand. Perfect.
Jorin strode purposefully at an angle to the nurse, relying on her stack of papers to hide his approach. At the last possible moment, he collided with her, sending papers scattering everywhere.
"Oh!" she cried, and Jorin winced. That had been a mean trick on his part. She probably took Bells sorting those papers.
"Oh gods, I'm so sorry!" Jorin apologized, as he hurried to catch the scattered documents. The nurse scurried to do the same, her face a mask of panic.
"The doctor is going to have my head!" she moaned unhappily, as she tried to reorganize the papers in a logical manner. Jorin really felt for the poor girl; he didn't realize she was in that much trouble.
"Well, maybe I can help," Jorin offered. The nurse gave him a harried look.
"Are you a doctor?" she asked dubiously. Jorin shook his head.
"No," he replied truthfully,
"But I might still be able to help." Jorin gave her his most comforting smile, as he extended his hand to lift her up. She tentatively took it, letting him lift her to her feet.
"These documents were supposed to be sorted, and now they're all out of order," she moaned. Jorin didn't really see how that was a problem. There were only about fifty or so documents that actually needed sorting, the majority were, fortunately, inside a wooden box and remained in order.
"What order are the documents in?" Jorin asked. The woman gave him a curious glance.
"Why does that matter?" she asked, bewildered. Jorin smiled.
"Because it determines how I am going to sort them," he replied. Ah, the old sorting algorithms. Jorin could not forget his father drilling those into his head. The woman just looked at him helplessly.
"They're alphabetical..." she replied finally. Jorin shrugged.
"Then alphabetical they shall be!" he cried. Taking the fifty or so documents he randomly picked one, chose that as the pivot. He then organized two piles, one for alphabetically before the pivot, one for alphabetically after the pivot. He continued to do this, subdividing each of the piles, and thus using a technique known as the pivot sort to quickly sort the entire pile of documents in under twenty chimes.
"And we're done!" Jorin grinned triumphantly as he sorted the final pivot. It was an easy task. By constantly subdividing, he'd reduced the problem to sorting many piles of two or three, rather than sorting a big pile of a fifty or so. With a dramatic sweep of his hand, Jorin "rolled up" each of the subdivisions, until the entire pile was neatly stacked, and completely sorted.
"Oh, you're a lifesaver!" the nurse cried, overjoyed. Jorin just shrugged.
"It was nothing," he replied. Then his face lit up, as though he'd just thought of something.
"Say, would you know if a Kelvic woman was brought in recently? She'd be around five-foot-four, chocolate-brown hair, golden eyes?"The nurse looked thoughtful.
"Yes, she was brought in a few days ago, I believe. I wasn't on duty that day, but I think the Akalak who brought her in has been there the whole time. Why?" Jorin just shook his head, as he placed the stack of sorted papers back in the nurse's box.
"I just need to see her. Do you think you can let me in to do that?""I'm sorry, that's against policy..." the nurse objected. Jorin sighed.
"I guess you're right," he said, face full of melancholy. At this point, Jorin was extremely glad for having practiced emoting. He'd always believed it to be useless, as the audience was too far from the stage to see, but he supposed a true artist did things for the art, not necessarily for the audience. In any case, that practice was coming in handy today. The nurse seemed to be struggling with herself.
"Look, I'm not supposed to be telling you this," she whispered conspiratorially as she picked up her box of papers.
"The Kelvic you're looking for is down that hallway, past the wall," the nurse indicated said hallway with her head.
"It will be the fourth door on your right. Please don't tell anyone I told you that!" Jorin gave her a reassuring smile.
"I promise I won't get you in trouble," he said, and headed off in the direction that the nurse indicated. He strode past the main hall, exuding confidence, as though he had every right to be there. And it seemed to work; the nurses just flowed around him like water around a rock. No one seemed to question his presence.
Jorin mentally ticked off the doors. One. Two. Three. At the fourth door, Jorin hesitated a moment. Would Rinya even want him to be here? When he'd woken up that night, when he'd
felt it, he should have been there
then. Would Rinya be angry that he wasn't? Jorin sighed. It didn't matter. He was here now. And if she was angry with him, she'd be even angrier if he never came at all. He took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.
