Chapter 17 - Not a Favor
Ward passed her reassessment with evaluators who had not participated in the original dispute.
Nia learned afterward, when Ward appeared at her office holding a sealed envelope.
“My mother already booked her ticket for the completion ceremony,” she said. “I told her to wait until the final schedule came out.”
“Did she listen?”
“Absolutely not.”
It was the first time Nia had heard her sound amused.
The revised record distinguished the justified equipment stoppage from the skills that still needed ordinary assessment. Ward had demonstrated those skills herself.
Nia hadn’t handed her a qualification to compensate for guilt.
“What’s in the envelope?” she asked.
“A copy of the final correction. You said you’d help get it fixed. Now it is.”
Nia took it.
“Thank you.”
Ward considered her for a moment.
“I’m still going to ask questions when something looks wrong.”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
“Don’t make it sentimental.”
Nia smiled. “Fair.”
When Ward left, Nia placed the envelope beside a new course application. It had taken another cycle, updated prerequisites, and an endorsement from a supervisor familiar with her actual work. Her acceptance had arrived that morning.
The lost months weren’t returned. Neither were the evenings she had spent frightened at her kitchen table.
But she would be going.
Later, Eli stopped by with Caroline before an appointment. His revised training plan followed the medical limits his clinicians had established. He was continuing, more slowly and without his father directing the program around him.
“Dad asked me to have lunch,” he told Nia.
She waited.
“I said yes. Mom says I don’t have to explain it to anybody, but I wanted you to know.”
“You don’t owe me distance from your father.”
He let out a breath.
“I told him no talking about my statement. He agreed.”
“Then I hope lunch is decent.”
Eli smiled.
Nia didn’t ask him to deliver an apology or a message.
Hale’s written correction had already reached the personnel who witnessed his accusation. It acknowledged that her refusal had been justified and that his public attack on her competence had been wrong.
She had filed it.
It belonged with the record, not above her desk like a prize.
From the doorway, she watched Eli and Caroline cross the parking lot.
May you like
He carried his own bag.
When his mother slowed to answer her phone, he slowed too, without anyone ordering him to wait.
