"Jean Lorrah - Empire 03 - Captives of the Savage Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lorrah Jean)

"Yes, he found me."

"You must be very important to him if he left his patients to search for you," said Alethia. "You didn'tтАФ?"

"We didn't see each other."

"But he risked it," Alethia said in a peculiar tone, and tried to Read Melissa. But her poor powers could
not penetrate the barrier Melissa felt around her reactions to the meeting at the pierтАФa barrier hiding
something Melissa herself was not sure she understood.

The little boy could not stay out in the sun for long; soon his mother gathered up the protesting child, and
both women went up to the cottage. Melissa helped cut up vegetables for dinner, while she and Alethia
laughed over memories of hiding from the cook at the Academy when it was their turn to wash dishes,
and how they had cajoled extra sweets out of her. Melissa's sorrow dissipated. She never did get around
to crying on Alethia's shoulder.

Rodrigo arrived home smelling of salt air and fish, kissed his wife and son openly, and went apologetically
off to the public bath so as to be presentable for dinner. Melissa was hard-put to account for Alethia's
infatuation; her husband was quite ordinary in appearance, hardly taller than she was, slightly overweight,
hair faded from salt and sun, eyes disappearing into leathery wrinkles that marked the man of the sea.

But when he returned, clean and dressed in a fresh tunic, she Read the rapport between husband and
wifeтАФand the deep, abiding love beneath it. Physical appearance was nothing to them; their minds met
and twined in an endless dance. Their powers might be small, but they were beautifulтАФand for the first
time in her life, Melissa felt left out of a gathering of Readers.

She returned to the hospital that evening, her mind at ease. Spending hours in the presence of people
living life fully, caring for their child and awaiting the next with joyful anticipation, Melissa had lost her
gloom. She would work toward positive solutionsтАФand that meant first doing so well in her medical
training that she would be chosen to stay here at the hospital. She would complete her training, and then
devote her life to finding a way to prevent the infection that had killed her patient.

Before she could even begin, however, she was faced with another hopeless patientтАФand this time it was
Alethia's little tow-headed son. Now, as Melissa left the sickroom to find Alethia, she was still Reading
Primus. She had insisted Alethia lie down in her own room, promising to call her if anything happenedтАж
but she could not merely Read for the mother now. She would have to hold her friend as she told her the
truth. They had to attempt surgery.

Alethia, though, was sound asleep on Melissa's bed. The strain of her child's illness along with her
advancing pregnancy had finally exhausted her. Perhaps it would be best if-she didn't know when they
took her son into surgery. She certainly needed the rest. Melissa tiptoed away, and returned to Primus'
side, trying to judge the moment when she could have no more hope that the medicines would take hold,
but before there was danger of the appendix rupturing.

Jason was wrong. I wasn't born to be a healer. He should have known when I couldn't learn
advanced Reading.

After her earlier patient had died, Melissa had driven herself to perfect her surgical skills, becoming
fanatical about boiling everything in the sickroom, not just the surgical tools, attempting techniques to