Good Work, More Work! [Grayson]

[nineofswords]

Everyone in the infirmary was busier than usual. While they'd figured out the source of the poisonings, it hadn't cut down on cases or symptoms, and there was still plenty of work chasing after symptoms. They needed to get ahead of this, but Y'ang had so many other things to juggle, and she couldn't contribute as much time as she wanted to doing that. Which meant she had to delegate. Luckily, she had the perfect person in mind.

Given how busy they were, Y'ang tried to schedule meetings with fellow healers in the infirmary. After all, she was eating in there for most meals, and occasionally passing out on a spare cot when she was too tired to drag herself back to her weyr. What was a meeting in the middle of the hustle and bustle compared to that? Plus, it was way easier to talk to her wingsecond Morticia in passing ("I want to have a chat with you when you have a moment.") than it was to send a message and have a whole back and forth about schedules.

Y'ang was taking a breather after helping with a patient who'd had a particularly violent seizure, trying to stick to simple things with only one or two ingredients that were more likely to be free of the contaminants. She couldn't afford to get sick and send the infirmary into further chaos. Because she didn't have moments to spare, she was also getting caught up on reports and wing business while she ate. No good deed went unpunished, and Y'ang had been doing a lot of them of late.

[Grayson]

"Wingleader." Morticia brought in a plate of halved redfruit, and set it down in an empty space on Y'ang's desk. "You wanted to talk?"

Even Morticia was showing the effects of the prolonged busyness in the Infirmary. Her gown was as dressy as ever, but she wasn't wearing any cosmetics with it, making her look more human and less ethereal than usual. The need to tend patients and investigate the poisonings had left her without time for the stillroom, meaning that as her lotions and potions ran out she'd had to do without. It wasn't a state she was happy with, but it was the state she was in.

And now here she was, taking advantage of a few moments when neither she nor Y'ang were needed for anything in particular, to find out what the Wingleader wanted.

[nineofswords]

Y'ang nodded to Morticia as she came into her office, no longer phased by the lack of makeup on the other woman. They were all looking more haggard than usual, and no one needed to ask why. "I did. That was an excellent catch, figuring out about the berries. It gets us that much closer to getting to the root of this problem." She ran a hand through her hair. "I need someone from the wing to head up looking into actually curing all these poison victims, developing antidotes instead of just treating the symptoms. I'd like you to do that, if you're willing. It'll mean spending a lot of time with the records and consulting with whatever masterhealers you can get in touch with, but you can pick who you want to tap from the wing to help you with that."

She leaned back. "You can say no," Y'ang added. "But I believe in giving credit where it's due, and since you figured out the why, I wanted to give you the chance to be the one getting the credit for how to stop it. But we're all running ourselves ragged here, so I'm not going to force anyone to take on more responsibilities right now if they don't want it. It's your call."

Y'ang hoped Morticia would take the offer, though, both for the sake of her wingsecond's career and because Y'ang did not have the patience anymore to butter up the egos of the masterhealers and then sit for candlemarks on end reading up on antidotes and cross-referencing them against the plants in that damn remote area Morticia had found. And Y'ang would have to head up that task force if Morticia didn't want to.