Medicus by Ruth Downie

The orderly disappeared into a side corridor.
    Ruso flipped the latch and collided with the door, which had failed to open as expected. He rattled it to no avail, then realized there was a keyhole. When the orderly reappeared with an empty tray he said.
    "Where's the key?"
    "Officer Priscus will have it, sir."
    "He took the key to the linen closet?"
    "Officer Priscus is in charge of all the keys, sir."
    "That's ridiculous!"
    The orderly was too wise to comment. Ruso was wondering what to do next when he heard a familiar voice.
    Evidently Valens's social evening had been interrupted. He found him arguing about racing teams with a grizzled veteran whose leg was swathed in bandages from the hip down. Ruso said, "How do we get hold of clean linen when the administrative officer's not here?"
    Valens glanced up. "He usually leaves enough out to last till he gets back. There'll probably be some up from the laundry in the morning."
    "Surely he can't just disappear like this?"
    "Excuse me a minute," murmured Valens, and left the man's bedside.
    As they approached the door, Ruso heard a dog bark somewhere inside the hospital building. "Did you hear that?"
    "What?"
    Ruso wondered if he was starting to imagine things. "Never mind."
    "Priscus has a system," explained Valens. "Jupiter knows what it is, but nobody likes to interfere because as long he's left alone, everything turns up more or less when you need it."
    "I need it now. Why the hell isn't he here anyway?"
    "Apparently he went to Viroconium to negotiate a contract for delivery of hospital blankets."
    "Blankets? Gods above, surely any peasant with a couple of sheep and a wife can knock up a few blankets?"
    "Ah," agreed Valens, "you and I might think so. But they have to be the right specification to fit hospital beds."
    "Does anyone really believe that?" said Ruso.
    Valens shrugged. "You'll have to pinch what you want from someone else."
    Back in the corridor, Ruso contemplated the silent door of the linen closet. He had yet to meet Officer Priscus, but already he hated him. The man seemed to have turned hospital administration into an art form—something incomprehensible, overpriced, and useless. In the meantime, a sick girl was huddled in a corner of the changing room, facing a pile of wet towels.
    Ruso stood back, contemplated the latch for a moment, and moved. A splintering crash echoed down the deserted corridor. He helped himself before anyone could arrive to see who had just bypassed the hospital administration with a military boot.
    "Towels!" he announced, presenting them to her with a flourish.
    She seemed less impressed than he had hoped. He took her good arm and helped her up. As he opened the cold room door she tried to pull away. He tightened his grip. "You need to bathe," he insisted, walking her through into the warm room. He thought again how thin she was as he lifted her onto the edge of the massage couch. As he approached with the cleaned strigil and the two bottles of oil, her eyes widened. She raised herself up with her good arm and tried to sidle away down the couch.
    Ruso did the "sit" gesture again. "Stay still." He walked around to the other side of the couch, leaned across, and began to untie the sling that was knotted behind her slim neck. He felt her shoulders tighten and remembered how the pregnant Daphne had frozen at the touch of the doorman. "It's all right," he assured her. "You're safe here. Nobody is going to hurt you."
    He had carried this girl in through the east gate. He had put her to bed, and dressed her in the washed-out gray tunic she now wore. He had already seen the protruding ribs, the breasts shrunken by hunger, the yellowing bruises that shouldn't be there. He knew the sight of her body would arouse nothing in him but sympathy. Unable to explain that to her, he tapped the splint and said, "Don't get water on the bandages," then put the towels over her good arm and told her he would come back later.
    He had finished his records and