Read Chapter 5: A Debt Remembered

The smoke from the second-floor window had thinned to a gray trickle by the time Camille reached the landing, her medical bag thumping against her hip. Julien was already there, kneeling in the doorway of apartment 2B, his face smudged with soot, a fire extinguisher resting across his knees like a spent animal.

“Madame Faye,” he said, without looking up. “She tried to boil water on a camping stove. Overturned it. The curtains went up before she could scream.”

Camille crouched beside him. Inside, the walls were streaked with black, and the air smelled of burnt sugar and wet ash. An elderly woman sat on a plastic chair in the middle of the room, wrapped in a foil emergency blanket, staring at nothing.

“Is she burned?”

“No. Just scared. I got here in time.” Julien finally met her eyes. His were red-rimmed, tired. “She said the pilot light went out two days ago. She didn’t know how to relight it. Didn’t want to bother anyone.”

Camille’s jaw tightened. “She shouldn’t have to bother anyone. That’s what we’re for.”

She stood and crossed to Madame Faye, kneeling so her face was level with the woman’s. “Madame. I’m Camille. From the pharmacy. Do you remember me?”

The old woman blinked. Her hands were shaking. “The pharmacist. Yes. You gave me my heart pills.”

“That’s right. I’m going to check your pulse, and then Julien is going to help you move down to the courtyard. We have a cot set up under the awning. You’ll be safe there. Okay?”

Madame Faye nodded, but her eyes were wet. “My husband’s photograph. It was on the mantel. Is it…?”

Camille glanced at the mantel. It was a blackened slab. A melted frame lay among the debris.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

The woman’s shoulders sagged, and Camille felt something crack inside her. She had lost count of the small devastations. Every hour brought a new one. She took Madame Faye’s wrist, counting the pulse against her fingertips. Steady. Too fast, but steady.

“You’ll stay with us,” Camille said. “We’ll find you a new frame later. I promise.”

She didn’t know why she said it. She had no frames. She had no promises to give. But the old woman’s hand tightened around hers, and for a moment, that was enough.

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Julien carried Madame Faye down the stairs himself, cradling her like a child, while Camille followed with the woman’s bag of medications. In the courtyard, the triage tent had grown into something resembling a small village. The two bistro cooks, a wiry man named Sébastien and his partner Nadia, had rigged a long table from salvaged doors and were ladling out lukewarm soup from a cauldron over a charcoal brazier. The smell of thyme and onions mingled with the smoke from the upper floors. People sat in clusters, on chairs, on upturned crates, wrapped in coats and blankets. A child ran between the legs of adults, laughing at nothing.

Camille handed Madame Faye to Nadia, who took her with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had run a busy kitchen for twenty years. “Soup first, then bed. You’ll be fine, chérie.”

Camille turned away, scanning the crowd for Léa. She found her at the far edge of the courtyard, sitting cross-legged on the ground with her laptop open on her knees, a series of wires running from its charging port to a hand-cranked generator that Julien had scavenged from the building’s maintenance shed. Léa was cranking it slowly, rhythmically, like a woman spinning wool.

“You’re burning daylight,” Camille said, sitting beside her.

Léa didn’t look up. “I know what daylight looks like. It’s the power I need.” She paused her cranking to show Camille the screen. A progress bar inched toward completion. “Decryption thirty-seven percent. If I stop, it stalls. So I keep cranking.”

Camille watched the bar for a moment. “What will it tell us when it’s done?”

“That it’s a NATO frequency, for the hundredth time.” Léa resumed cranking. “The header’s already decoded. It’s dated yesterday. It originated from within four hundred meters of our roof. Whoever sent it, they were standing right here.”

Camille let that settle. A message sent from the building, minutes before the grid died. Waiting for them like a stone in a pond.

She was about to ask more when a shout came from the building’s entrance. A young man she recognized as Bastien from the ground floor was jogging toward her, holding a folded piece of paper above his head like a white flag.

“Camille! There’s a girl at the service gate. She said she has a message. From Sylvie.”

Camille’s blood went cold. She took the note, opened it, and read.

*Camille — I know you’re alive. I saw your name on a radio relay from the pharmacists’ union. You’re closer than anyone. I need you to listen before you answer.*

*We have two hundred patients here. A hundred and forty are diabetic. The back-up generator that runs the cold storage died this morning. Our ice supply is gone by tomorrow. The Ministry has no route to deliver at scale until the grid returns. The military is commandeering all fuel and priority transport.*

*You have stock. I know you do. You always planned for this.*

*I’m not asking as your director. I’m asking as someone who carried you through the worst year of your life. I know you remember.*

*If there is any way — any way at all — to get insulin to the Hôpital Saint-Vincent, please try. I don’t have the right to ask. But I am asking.*

*Sylvie.*

Camille stood very still. The paper rattled in her hand.

Julien appeared beside her, his head tilted, reading the note over her shoulder. He let out a low breath.

“Saint-Vincent,” he said. “That’s across the river.”

“I know.”

“A two-hour walk. If the bridges are clear. If the streets are safe. If no one else tries to take what you’re carrying.” He paused. “And you’d be taking stock from your pharmacy. The stock your own people need. Your Madame Rousseau.”

Camille folded the note carefully, precisely, into a small square. “I know.”

She walked to the edge of the courtyard, away from the sound of the soup ladle, away from the children. Julien followed. She didn’t turn around when she spoke.

“Sylvie was my supervisor at the hospital. Before the pharmacy. Do you know how I got this job?”

“No.”

“I made a mistake. Three years ago. I was on the night shift in the ICU, and I mislabeled a drug. A patient died. Not because of the dose — he was already gone — but it was my error. My name was on it. The hospital wanted to fire me. Sylvie fought for me. She testified on my behalf. She said my error was the system’s failure, not mine. She put her own career on the line.” Camille’s voice was thin, worn. “I owe her.”

“You don’t owe her with other people’s lives,” Julien said, quietly.

Camille turned. His face was serious, but not accusatory. He wasn’t telling her what to do. He was asking her to think.

“I know the math,” she said. “I know the supply. Fourteen vials that haven’t been compromised by the heat. Twelve of them are stable. Madame Rousseau needs one vial per week. Under the best circumstances, that gives her twelve weeks. Under the worst — the heat will spoil two more by the end of the month.”

“And Sylvie’s patients?”

“A hundred and forty. But her pharmacy is larger than ours. She may have cold storage strategies she hasn’t used yet. She may have other suppliers reaching her in a day, two days, a week.” Camille shook her head. “I don’t know. The only thing I know is that Sylvie wouldn’t ask unless she had exhausted every other option.”

Julien was silent for a long moment. Then he asked, “When would you go?”

“Tonight. Under cover of dark. The streets are dangerous in daylight — people see what you carry. At night, it’s riskier, but more private. If I leave within the hour, I can reach Saint-Vincent by midnight.” She paused. “If I leave at all.”

“And your building?”

“The triage is stable. Sébastien and Nadia have the food. Léa has her laptop, and you have your radio.” Camille hesitated. “And my inventory is in the pharmacy binder. If I don’t come back, you’ll know what to use and what to ration.”

Julien’s eyes searched hers. “You’re asking me whether it’s worth it.”

“I’m asking you whether I’m abandoning my people.”

“No,” Julien said, simply. “You’re asking whether you can survive abandoning Sylvie.”

The words hit her like cold water. She opened her mouth to reply, but no sound came.

Julien stepped closer. “I grew up with a debt like that,” he said. “My uncle saved my father’s life in a fire. When my uncle needed a place to stay, my father took him in. When my uncle needed money, my father gave it. The debt never really ends. It just changes shape.”

“And you think I should go?”

“I think you should decide what kind of debt you want to owe. And who you want to owe it to.”

Camille stared at him. In the dimming light, his face was full of unreadable things. She wanted to say something about courage, about loyalty, about how she had never expected to meet someone who understood the weight of what she carried. But she didn’t have the words.

“Stay with them,” she said finally. “Watch over my building. If I’m not back by tomorrow afternoon —”

“You’ll be back,” Julien said. “The building needs its pharmacist.”

She turned toward the courtyard, where Léa had stopped cranking and was standing, her laptop in her arms, her face lit with excitement. She was waving them over.

“It’s done,” Léa called. “The message decoded. You need to see this.”

Camille looked at Julien. He nodded. And together, they walked toward the girl with the dead city humming around them, and whatever the message said waiting in her hands.