Some villagers arrived at hospital, stunned. The nurse who had bullied them into washing their hands, who lectured them about queues and soap and "this is not a bazaar," now lay pale and bandaged, lips pressed tight, Dr. Evelyn standing beside her with one hand resting lightly on the stretcher rail.
Rumors, which had been galloping in a dozen directions since the first shout, began to change course mid-stride.
Maybe he is on our side.Maybe they came for him and hurt her instead.Maybe this place really is different.
They remembered how the car engine had coughed to life earlier, Evelyn climbed in beside the stretcher, already checking Mary's pulse again.
"If anyone tries to stop us on the road," Jinnah told farabi, "tell them their local doctor has threatened to amputate important parts of their anatomy."
"I will convey the message with accuracy," he said.
The car rattled away toward Montgomery in a cloud of dust and anxious prayers.
Montgomery hospital staff send villagers back as they don't want some bandits again not came as villagers.
Now three hours later, Mary lay on a narrow bed in the surgical ward, side swathed in clean bandages, skin pale but no longer frighteningly so. The ether had worn off enough for her most dangerous faculty to return: speech.
The duty surgeon was writing at the foot of the bed when Mary opened her eyes and fixed him with the same look she used on villagers who tried to cut the line.
"You," she croaked. "Wash your hands again. You just scratched your nose with that pen."
He blinked. "I… was merely—"
"Scratching your nose," she repeated. "Germs don't care if it's merely. Soap. Now."
He glanced helplessly at Evelyn, who was seated on a stool nearby.
"She's right," Evelyn said. "Go."
The man left, muttering. Mary relaxed by half an inch.
A young nurse approached to adjust the blanket.
"Don't put the tray on the bed," Mary ordered. "Bed is for patients. Table is for trays. Are you people savages?"
The nurse, who had survived two cholera seasons in this very hospital, looked as if she had been enrolled in a new and terrifying school.
"Mary," Evelyn said dryly, "you are the patient."
"And that man was about to lean on my stitches with his great clumsy fingers," Mary shot back. "If I die because someone was lazy with carbolic, I will haunt this ward and replace all your tea with castor oil."
Evelyn folded her arms.
"You are not going to die. You are going to lie still, nag everyone, and then heal. In that order."
Mary sniffed but settled a little deeper into the pillow.
"If we ran Sandalbar clinic like this," she muttered, "you'd have hanged me already."
For the next hour she continued in the same vein: demanding to know when the windows had last been opened, insisting that the dressing trolley be moved out of the draft, correcting how the screen was positioned.
By the time the evening shadows slid across the floor, half the staff were detouring around her bed with the caution reserved for infectious cases.
She's fine, Bilal commented in Jinnah's head, miles away. Anyone who can terrorise an entire ward from one pillow is not on death's door.
At last, the blood loss and the slow, warm pull of morphine began to win. Mary's accusations blurred. Her eyelids drooped.
"If you skip your medicine," she mumbled to Evelyn thinking she is Jinnah, "I will get up and check your bottle myself…"
"Sleep," Evelyn said, smoothing a stray strand of hair back under the bandage.
Mary did.
Night found the ward quiet, lit by low lamps and the occasional cough. Footsteps sounded at the door; the nurses straightened automatically.
Jinnah removed his hat as he entered, as if stepping into a courtroom.
"Doctor," he said softly.
Evelyn rose from her chair beside Mary's bed.
"She's stable," she reported. "No obvious gut perforation. We cleaned the wound properly, stitched what needed stitching. If infection stays away, she lives. She spent three hours ordering my staff about and accusing them of attempted murder by poor hygiene. Then she finally went to sleep mid-lecture."
A corner of his mouth moved.
"That, undeniably, is our Nurse Mary."
He stepped closer. In sleep, Mary's face looked younger, almost gentle. One hand had come to rest near the bandaged side, as if guarding it even unconscious.
"She hasn't stirred?" he asked.
"Only to mutter that if you skip your pills she will rise and correct the situation personally," Evelyn said. "I chose not to wake her to confirm."
He exhaled, a sound between a sigh and a laugh.
"It appears my most insubordinate subordinate intends to survive."
"That is also my professional opinion," Evelyn replied. "We'll keep her under observation a few days. If she behaves, I send her back. If she starts reorganizing the ward, I might keep her as punishment for the staff."
He watched the slow, even rise of Mary's chest.
You can breathe now, Bilal said quietly. Systems held. She's alive.
For the first time since the knife fell, Jinnah's shoulders loosened.
"Thank you, Doctor," he said. "For taking charge without asking permission."
"I didn't take charge," she answered. "I simply assumed that anyone with sense would want the most competent hands on the knife."
"Then I am grateful for your assumption."
She gestured toward the corridor.
"Come. We'll go over the care schedule. Also, you will swallow your own medicine before you walk out. She will interrogate me when she wakes."
He almost protested, then thought of Mary's glare and decided against it.
"Very well."
They spoke a little apart from the bed—about dressings, fever, transport back to Sandalbar when the time came. When all was settled, he looked once more at the sleeping nurse.
"Rest, Nurse Mary," he murmured. "You have earned it."
Outside, on the hospital steps, the night air felt thinner, like the world had been held in suspension and now resumed.
First crisis, Bilal said. Clinic's been running a month without real damage. Now you know what breaks and what holds.
"Our systems," Jinnah replied under his breath, "must be stronger before the next test."
Good first stress-test, Bilal observed. System didn't crash. You just got your warning log.
"Yes," Jinnah said softly, more to himself than to anyone else. "Now we rewrite the laws."
Down in the courtyard of Sandalbar HQ, someone began boiling tea. The normal sounds of the estate gradually returned, layered over with a new, quiet certainty: the experiment would continue, and the man at its center was not going anywhere.
Old Harnam Singh, whose beard had turned the colour of dried wheat, came forward with his stick tapping the ground. Beside him walked Chaudhry Karim Din, turban tied tight, expression unusually grave. A few other white-beards joined them, men who rarely came to the HQ unless there was land to measure or a quarrel to settle.
Ahmed was talking in low tones with the havildar when they approached.
"Ahmed beta," Harnam called, voice rough. "Is she… will she live?"
Ahmed straightened. For a moment he looked much younger than his years.
"Doctor Evelyn says yes," he replied. "She took her to Montgomery herself. They reached before dark. They'll do everything there."
Karim Din shifted his weight.
"She scolded my grandson last week," he said, almost defensively. "Told him if he came again without washing hands she'd throw him out."He looked away, blinked hard."Since then, he washes like a pandit before puja."
A faint, strained chuckle passed through the small group.
"She scolds everyone," another elder added. "But… she gave my old woman drops for her cough and didn't take a paisa. Said, 'Your money is needed for ghee, not for our pocket.'"
"She shouted at my daughter-in-law for hiding fever," someone else muttered. "Said, 'If you die because of shyness, I will not fill out your death paper nicely.' Who talks like that?"
"Someone who wants us alive," Harnam said quietly.
One of the younger Farabis stood nearby, rifle slung, listening.
"Will Jinnah sahib keep the clinic open?" Karim asked Ahmed bluntly. "These men"—he jerked his chin toward the lockup, where the attackers were held—"they did not come for her. They came for him. Big people run when knives appear. We have seen this before."
Ahmed bristled a little, loyal on instinct.
"Sahib did not run," he said. "He stood in that room. He told us what to do. He sent her with the Doctor and stayed to keep order here. He has already said the clinic will not close."
The elders exchanged glances. That answer was not nothing.
D'Souza came out onto the veranda, wiping ink from his fingers, and descended the steps.
"Babus," he greeted them with a small nod. "We have sent word to Montgomery. When news comes, I'll announce it in the courtyard myself."
Harnam lifted his chin.
"You tell him," he said, "this nurse… she is like a daughter of the whole villages now. She shouts, yes. But she holds our children when they cough. "
D'Souza's eyebrows rose slightly at the directness.
"I will tell him exactly that," he said. "But from what I know of the barrister sahib, he is more likely to tighten rules than to pack his bags."
The elders grunted, faintly reassured.
Near the clinic, women clustered in small groups, whispering. A few kept looking at the door as if Mary might stride out any minute with her apron straight and tongue sharpened, demanding to know who had let the floor get dirty.
"She'll come back," one woman said stubbornly. "Who else will shout at us about washing hands?"
"Who else will chase our men away from the well when they spit?" another agreed.
Overhead, the evening lamps were lit one by one. The estate slowly resumed its work—water to fetch, fires to tend, milking to finish—but there was a new, taut silence under the ordinary sounds.
Sandalbar had been hit for the first time.The villagers had discovered, with a shock, how much the strange clinic women and the quiet barrister had already become part of their imagined future.