Kael
The examiner asked which answer I was hoping for.
I looked at the papers between us.
"A useful one."
"That wasn't my question."
"No."
She waited.
The comparison room was smaller than the usual examination room. No treatment bed, no basin beside my chair. Just a reading surface, the covered instruments and the authorized extracts I had requested earlier in the month.
Maelis had checked my current condition before leaving me here.
Nothing acute had changed.
That should have made the appointment easier.
"I want to know whether the old damage explains the difference in the records," I said.
"Which difference?"
"The earlier pattern and the circulation I have now."
The examiner turned the first sheet toward me.
"Then start there. Don't start with a cure."
I hadn't said cure.
I had been thinking something worse.
She placed the earlier tracing beside a recent one. Both had been copied at the same scale. The darker lines did not line up cleanly.
