[JANET FRAISER]
The medical wall timer in the supply closet adjacent to OR 3 read nine minutes fourteen seconds when Janet finally turned the cold tap on at the small steel sink.
She had not turned the timer off when she had come in at 1908. She had not noticed the timer when she had come in. She had come in because the corridor between OR 3 and the recovery bay had had three people in it who knew her face and she had needed thirty seconds without a face in front of her and she had taken the door handle of the supply closet at 1908:02 and she had not come out yet.
She washed her face. The water was cold. The cold did the work cold water did at the end of a triage shift, which was that it gave her face back to her.
The PA system, faint through the closet wall, was not Drew's voice. The PA was Hammond. He was reading the original seventeen names from Drew's hand-written column from the wall in the SRD office. Janet knew the names. She had attended four of the funerals.
She had said yes to Reka of the joint engineering corps at 1841 because the answer was yes and because Reka had asked a question whose answer mattered and because Reka had earned the truth more than Janet had earned the comfort of lying. Reka had nodded the way Tok'ra-trained Serrakin nodded when an honor-protocol answer landed clean. Janet had finished the suture at 1838 and lied to herself for three minutes about whether she could keep working through the second debridement and then she had handed off to her senior resident at 1903 and walked the corridor to the closet.
The timer's red digits at the back of the closet read 09:14 when she finally noticed it.
She let it run.
She stood at the sink and let the cold water run on her wrists for another forty seconds. She straightened her scrubs. She put her hand on the door at 1920. She walked back to triage at 1921 and relieved the resident she had handed off to and ran two intake assessments in the next nine minutes. She did not tell anyone where she had been.
At 1942 she handed off her shift to the night triage lead who had been scheduled to relieve her at 2041 regardless. The lead — Dr. Tafari, three years on the SGC roster, the kind of doctor who took a handoff and did not ask questions — nodded and went to the chart. Janet was through the corridor and at the elevator at 1944. She rode up to Level 21 and stood at the rear of the commissary at 1945.
The wall took up the whole far end of the room.
It was three walls now. Drew's original wall with the seventeen Apophis names in his careful even printing. Walter's second wall, which Walter had started silently three days ago and which Janet had not known about until she came up the elevator. The names on the second wall were Walter's handwriting in the small even register he used at the gate-room console — alphabetical, one hundred and forty-seven of them, with the twenty-three unrecovered listed beneath in a separate column under the title Walter had hand-lettered: Unrecovered. Held in Memory.
At the foot of the wall, on a small low shelf Walter had set out at 1647, sat a Tok'ra mourning crystal in matte-grey. Jacob had placed it there. Janet recognized the crystal from a Tok'ra funeral she had attended three years ago. The carved end faced inward toward the wall.
Drew was at the wall already. Jacob was beside him.
The clock on the back wall read 2003 when Drew started to read.
He read at a fourteen-second cadence.
Janet did not move from the rear of the room until name eighty-nine.
[DREW RAMSEY]
I had pre-briefed the pronunciation with Martouf for the Tok'ra names, with Thor by transmission at 1430 for the Asgard, with Siler for Vesh. The Serrakin name was the one I had asked Siler to read after me at 2031, his clean coveralls and his deeper register — the request had been the only word I had said to Siler since the Sokar-coalition brief on day one hundred ten.
I started at 2003:00.
The cadence was mine. AURORA-7 had not suggested it. ATHENA-3 had not suggested it. The cadence was a number I had picked the way you picked a number for a long walk — a count that let the body carry the work without the body having to count.
Name twenty-three was Cordesh.
I read it at the cadence. I did not modulate. I did not let the soft-amber pen-mark inside the coat I had hung in the back-office at 1958 surface in my pronunciation. The mark had been on his name since day eighty-six. The mark was load-bearing. The reading of the name without modulation was the cost the mark required.
Jacob's hand on the small lectern beside me was still.
Hammond, at name forty-one, stepped to the wall. He put his right hand flat against the wall at the column where three of his hand-picked officers from his 1974 first command sat. He held the hand there for forty-seven seconds. He did not look at the names while he held it. He looked at the wall above them. AURORA-7 catalogued the contact at the back of my skull at the same register she had catalogued Janet's two-finger touch on day one hundred and nine. Hammond's hand came down at name forty-three.
Name sixty-seven was Aldwin.
I read it at the cadence.
Jacob's hand on the lectern went still the way his hand on the HYPATIA copilot console had gone still at 0552:14 two days ago. He did not move it for the next eleven names.
At name eighty-nine I felt the body beside me before I saw it.
Janet was at my left, in scrubs, the lanyard with the infirmary clip still around her neck. Her hand found the small of my back at name ninety-two. The touch did not press. The touch did not move. The touch said the thing the touch on my elbow had said at the reception on day one hundred and nine, which was I am here, and I am not going to ask you about it now.
I finished name one hundred and forty-seven at 2037:18.
The room did not move for six seconds.
Then Jacob, beside me, said the line he and Selmak had worked out between them across the two days since the officer's mess crystal.
"I know what this is."
I nodded.
Thor's hologram at the back of the room — he had been holographic for the duration, unmoving in the Asgard observation posture they had built for war-grade memorials — resolved one shade brighter and spoke at 2039.
"These names will be carried in Asgard memory."
The third honorific. The collective register. AURORA-7's translation of the second tier landed at the back of my skull at the same temperature as the first two.
Walter, at the side of the room, started the third wall.
He started it in silence at 2014 — twenty-three minutes before I had finished reading — when the second wall's column had still had eight names remaining. He had carried the blank column and the ink and the small hammer for the bracket since 1647. He set the bracket. He drew the first vertical line of the new column with the ink-line ruler. He capped the ink. He stepped back.
I did not stop him.
Janet's hand was still on my back at 2041 when she had to leave for triage handoff. She moved the hand to my elbow for half a second. She turned and walked the long aisle to the door. She did not look back.
I stayed at the wall until 2147.
I came home at 2347.
Janet was at the kitchen table, still in scrubs. The lanyard was still around her neck. The mug was on the table in front of her — the World's Okayest Consultant mug, the second one, the chip on the rim. Walter had brought it back from HYPATIA at 1430 in clean wrapping and set it on the kitchen counter without a note and Janet had moved it to the table at 2330.
We did not speak.
The kitchen wall clock at the corner read 2348 when I sat. The tick was the only sound. The kettle was off. The under-cabinet light was on at the low setting Janet used at midnight when she did not want to wake Cassandra.
Twelve minutes.
At 2358 Janet stood up. She walked to the counter. She put the kettle on.
Cassandra came down the stairs at 2359 in pajamas.
She did not speak. She came around the table. She hugged Janet at the counter — a sixteen-year-old hug, both arms, her face against Janet's shoulder for nine seconds. Janet did not let go first. Cassandra let go at 2400.
Cassandra came to me at 2400:14. She hugged me the same way — both arms, her face against my collar for nine seconds. She did not speak. I did not speak. She let go.
She went back upstairs at 0003.
The kettle clicked at 0003:47.
At 0004 I stood up. I walked to the counter. I lifted the kettle. I refilled the mug.
Janet's hand found my wrist as I tilted the kettle.
The touch did not press. The touch did not move.
I poured.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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