Sweet Romance16 min read
I Ran Away, Opened a Clinic, and the County Magistrate Kept Showing Up
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I tied the little pack and slipped out through the back gate before anyone woke.
"Indie, where are you going?" Kaylie hissed in the dark.
"Far," I said. "Quiet. Away from peacocks and politics."
"You're leaving without telling your parents?" Kaylie's voice broke.
"I told them enough," I said. "They told the minister I was promised. I will not be handed to a palace as if my life were a gift ribbon."
"I'll come," she said. "You don't have to go alone."
We walked until the city roofs looked like a line of knives. The morning smelled of smoke and wet earth. I had a few coins and a head full of recipes and hard lessons my grandfather taught me. I had my paints and my little brush box too.
"Where will you go?" Kaylie asked again, softer.
"Not far," I said. "Just out of the city, where people know the land and not titles."
"Will you hide as a man?" she asked.
"I will hide as a doctor," I said. "Call me Dr. Gray if you must."
We hired a small room and changed our clothes. I tied my hair low, rolled my sleeves, and learned to hold my voice in the deep. I practiced a man’s stride until my shoulders felt wrong. Kaylie wrapped my hair in a cap and said, "You look like you could take on the emperor if you wanted."
"Just take on a fever for now," I said.
"Good," Kaylie said. "Then let's open our doors."
"Three days free," I told the sign maker. "Help the poor for three days."
"Lady or lord?" the sign maker asked.
"Call me Gray. Gray the doctor," I said.
The sign was two rough boards, one saying GRAY'S CLINIC, the other saying FREE TREATMENT FOR THE POOR THREE DAYS. We stuck it up and waited.
"Will anyone come?" Kaylie worried.
"They will," I said. "If you cure one, two will tell ten, and the town will tell its neighbors."
The first patient was a thin boy with a cough like a bell.
"How long?" I asked as I took his pulse.
"Three days," his mother said. "We used all the broth and the herbs are spent."
"Sit," I told her. "Help him drink. I will give you a simple soup and a tea for sweating."
"How did you learn?" the mother asked.
"My grandfather was a royal physician before he refused a palace life," I said, and I didn't say more. People believed the hands that worked.
He left the clinic with two bowls of soup and a cloth smelling of herbs. Word moved fast.
A week later the county magistrate came.
"Are you the doctor?" the messenger asked at the door.
"I am Gray, county doctor," Kaylie said.
"County magistrate sends his thanks. He asked me to fetch you if you are here," the messenger said, bowing.
"Tell him I am a poor doctor," I said. "I am not for fine houses."
"He insists," the messenger said.
I wore my rough coat. The magistrate's men bowed hard in the street.
"I am Jackson Alexander," a clear voice said when I entered the hall.
"Jackson Alexander," I repeated in my head like a foreign word. The man was younger than I expected. His clothes were plain but clean. His eyes were tired but steady.
"You are the doctor who treated Zhao village," he said. "They say you saved many there."
"I treated what I could," I said. "Zhao had a fever moving fast. We isolated, we fed, we bled, and we used the right herb at the right moment."
"You used the right herb," he said, and there was respect in his voice. "Everyone says that. Thank you."
"You are kind to come," I said, but my face tightened. "I accept no thanks to be spoken in halls. I accept no titles."
He surprised me.
"Neither do I," he said. "I came because I heard. Magistrates must know the people. I wanted to learn who saved the village."
"You are a magistrate," Kaylie said. "Do magistrates not stay in offices?"
"Offices do not stay in offices when people need them," Jackson said. "I have to walk where the roads lead."
"Then you walked correctly," I said.
He looked at my hands and then at my sleeves. He noticed the small patch on my coat where I had painted peonies when I was worried. His mouth softened.
"Why did you dress like a man?" he asked, gentle.
"I didn't," I lied. "I dress as Gray. Gray must not be a woman for people to listen."
He studied me like a reader studies a page.
"Does Gray prefer to be anonymous?" he asked.
"I prefer to be free," I said. "Free from being a thing chosen by others."
Jackson lean forward, elbows on his knees.
"Will you teach me one thing?" he said. "How do I tell the signs of the fever? I am a magistrate, not a doctor."
I almost laughed. "You want to learn medicine?"
"I want to learn how to see people," he said. "Teach me."
So I taught him the feel of a pulse, the way a cough changes with the weather, the sound in a chest that says danger. He listened like a man who read many books but never touched the ground.
"Why run away?" he asked once, after he had watched me work all day with no complaint.
"Because my father sold the idea of me," I said. "Because men with titles will carry me like a trophy. Because I like being a person."
He made a small sound, half laugh, half sadness. "My father sold me as well."
"You?" I said.
"I had a promise," he said. "Since I was a child a promise tied my name to another family. The promise was honest and old. I did not like that either. I thought of burning the promise. But fathers have pride. I obeyed."
"Then why are you here, Jackson?" I asked. "Do you come to make excuses?"
"No," he said. "I come because I wanted to see if the man promised to you can be a good man. I come because I wanted to know what kind of life you have chosen."
"My name is Indie Gray," I said. "And I chose medicine. I did not ask to be chosen like a horse."
"Indie," he repeated, tasting my name.
"You said you had a promise," I said. "Who is she?"
"No one you know," he said. "She was promised when we were children. I am Jackson Alexander. My father is Dirk Beltran."
"Dirk?" Kaylie snorted.
"He is a hard man," Jackson said. "But he keeps his word. He told me to go to the capital, to take an exam, and to see the family we promised to. I did not wish it, but he said this keeps honor. I took the exam. I... I ranked third." He flinched like the word embarrassed him.
"Third?" I said. "That's good."
"It means the capital wanted me to stay. I thought I might. The court offered a post, but I was sent here, to a small county. I am not here by my choosing."
"Then we are two who never chose our posts," I said.
"Maybe," he said. "But you chose the clinic."
We worked together for days. I showed him how to set up a quarantine and how to speak to frightened mothers. He learned fast and he kept returning long after the emergency passed. The town began to call him 'the scholar who answers with his hands'.
"You smile too rarely," Kaylie told him one evening. "You scare horses."
"I have enough worry to steal any smile," Jackson said. "But when I saw the villagers kneel and thank you, something in me burned. I wanted to be someone who could make them speak without fear."
"You could," I said. "You could be a man who keeps houses from burning."
"Then will you judge me?" he asked. "Be honest."
I looked at him. He waited with both hands empty.
"You are not a bad man," I said. "You are tied to many threads. You untie what you can."
"Do you forgive me for being tied?" he asked.
"I don't hold anyone the rope," I said.
He smiled, small and private. "I will keep learning medicine," he said. "From you."
That winter the markets grew thin. Money to buy medicine tightened in the magistrate's accounts. Jackson walked the market and wrote notes until his face looked worn.
"How will we buy more herbs?" he asked one night. "We need to stock for spring."
"We will ask the county," I said. "We will ask the wealthy to lend help."
"Borrowing from the rich is like borrowing storms," he said. "They come and bring thunder."
"Will you not ask the rich if it helps the poor?" I asked.
"I will," he said. "You taught me that saving one life helps many."
He sent for my patch of peony paper I had painted in the garden many months ago. He pinned the paper to his sleeve like a promise.
"Do you keep this?" I said.
"For a night," he said. "But I will put it in a safe place if you ask."
Days became small with talk and work. Jackson would come to the clinic in the afternoons and sit with a ledger, then look up as if surprised by each sound. He began to bring tea and warm bread. We argued about the best way to feed a fever. We laughed at how ill farmland could be when a magistrate was used to ink and not soil.
"How long will you stay in this county?" I asked once.
"As long as I am needed," he said. "Unless the capital says otherwise."
"Then you are a temporary fiasco," Kaylie joked.
"That is an insult," Jackson said, and Kaylie laughed. He laughed too, a bright sound that made the room feel like sun.
Weeks passed. The Li family in the market—one we had seen at the dye house—kept sending invitations. Their daughter, Chelsea Barbier, was beautiful and fine. Her father, Henri Camacho, wanted Jackson to be family. He sent suitors in gold thread and polite speech.
"Have you letters from Henri Camacho?" I asked Jackson once, folding bandages.
"The gentleman has been polite," he said. "He sent wine and lilies."
"And you?" I said.
"I answered him honestly," he said. "I said I had not the heart to enter a marriage if the girl did not know me."
"Why be honest? Men in your position could choose and keep quiet."
"Because I was taught to own my words," he said. "I won't promise what I cannot keep."
"Then we are both rebels," Kaylie said.
"You both are," Jackson said. "I am only slow to say it."
The Li father grew impatient. He arranged a public festival of poetry to bring Jackson to their doors. Jackson agreed to be a judge, partly to keep peace, partly because he liked books. The festival was crowded. Chelsea took the stage and performed like someone who had practiced poetry in a mirror until even her mirror bowed.
"You must go," Kaylie told me. "She will be in the crowd."
"I don't go to be seen," I said. "I go if the town needs a doctor on the procession."
"You will be seen," she said.
I did go. I watched from the edge. Chelsea's voice was smooth, but when it was my turn to speak she looked right at me as if she knew me by sight and not name. Jackson watched too.
When I stepped forward to speak to the crowd, the words that came from my mouth were small and plain. Someone called me brave. The crowd clapped. Chelsea's smile faded and she left with a quiet shadow.
"She thought you would be a man to marry," Kaylie whispered. "You took the prize from her."
"I took nothing," I said. "We gave the money to the poor."
"You are cruel in your generosity," Kaylie said.
"Or clever," I said.
Jackson looked at Chelsea's empty place and then at me. "She wanted me," he said softly.
"Did you refuse her?" I asked.
"I did," he said. "I refused any marriage not by my choice. I could never be a man who kept a woman for the name."
"Then you chose rightly," I said. "Or maybe you chose slowly."
He reached out and touched my hand as if testing a rope. "Will you ever be mine to choose?" he asked.
"I own myself now," I said. "If anything, I belong to my clinic and my patients."
"Then ask me to help," he said. "Not as a magistrate. As a friend."
"I did," I said.
He stayed. He came daily. We argued and we joked and sometimes he read aloud the poems he had loved when he was a child and forgot them in the city noise. Once he read me a page about a peony:
"It says the peony blooms when the heart is brave," he quoted. "Do you think that is true?"
"It might be," I said. "Peonies also ask for water."
He laughed. "Then I'll be your rain."
"You will drown me," I warned.
"You can teach me to swim," he said.
One evening the magistrate's caravan arrived early with a soldier and a stack of papers. Jackson's face had the kind of worry that makes a man's voice tight.
"What news?" I asked.
"Funds are cut," he said. "The road to the capital is closed for new appointments. They will not return us to court anytime soon."
"Then you are staying?" I said.
"I am staying," he said. "I will stay until I either leave by my choice or the king calls."
"Then are you a stay, Jackson?" Kaylie asked. "Or a bird with one wing clipped?"
"I am a man with a choice," he said. "That I keep."
People started to notice we were close. Not in the way of gossip that smolders and then goes, but in the quiet way people notice a sign on a door and then read it.
One morning Jackson came with a small box.
"I was thinking," he said. "You painted peonies, yes?"
"I paint many things," I said. "Mostly mistakes."
"Not enough," he said. "I brought you this." He opened the box. Inside was a small roll of silk and a pair of simple silver pins.
"Mr. Jackson?" Kaylie squealed.
"Pins for a coat," Jackson said. "For Gray."
"They are simple," I said.
"I thought you would like simple," he said. "May I pin one to your collar?"
I let him. His fingers were careful. When the pin touched fabric near my heart, my breath caught.
"This will not change me," I said.
"No," he said. "It will mark that I know you."
"Is that what men call ownership?" I asked, trying lightness.
"No," he said. "It is a memory."
Days became months. Our work stitched the county back together. Jackson learned to write prescriptions and I learned to read old law petitions. He grew better at listening. I grew better at trusting a man with a ledger.
One afternoon a messenger arrived with a letter from my father, Grant Solovyov.
"Indie," it read, "Your family is worried. The minister insists you were seen by his man. You must return to the city and answer. There is talk of dishonor, and I fear for our name."
I sat down. The letter was a net he had cast to hold me.
"You must go," Jackson said immediately. "They need you."
"Do they?" I asked. "Or do they need to place me where they can show me?"
"You left them without warning," he said.
"I left because they planned to give me to a palace," I said. "I left to save myself. My father lied to keep a position."
"It is your father," Jackson said softly. "People are allowed mistakes."
"It is not small," I said. "They told the minister I was promised. I may be accused of betrayal if I refuse to return."
"You should not be forced," he said.
"Then what will you do?" I asked.
"I will go with you," he said.
"Are you mad?" Kaylie reached for my hand. "Go to the capital? That means ink and houses and the minister."
"Then we will go together," Jackson said. "Not to bow, but to speak the truth. To state who you are."
I looked at him. The magistrate who had once said he could never keep a woman now offered to step into fire for my sake. My chest shuddered.
"Do you know what my father will do?" I asked.
"He might be angry," Jackson said. "He might be proud. But he will see you."
We left at dawn, not to hide but to stand. I wore my plain coat and the silver pin he had given me. We took the road back to the city. It was longer going home this time. I felt like a traveler who returned to a house and then discovered the windows had changed place.
At the gate the minister Jensen Donaldson greeted us in the garden of peonies.
"Grant," Jensen said, bowing to my father. "So you still have a daughter who paints."
"Sir Jensen," my father said. "I brought her to say she will—"
"Grant," Jensen said, cutting him. "No need for more bows. Indie Gray, is it you?" He spoke my name as if rolling a stone in his mouth.
"I am Indie," I said.
"Where is your promise?" Jensen asked, and his eyes slid toward Jackson. "Who stands with you?"
"Jackson Alexander stands with me," I said.
Jensen's face was a sea that could change quickly.
"Jackson Alexander," he said, and then he laughed. "You were reading a wanted poster in a tavern? A county magistrate, a newly minted scholar, and a doctor who runs a clinic disguised as a man. What a comedy."
"It is not a comedy," my father said, voice thin.
"Indie," Jensen continued, "the palace must have women who are trained for court life. Many families give daughters for honor and protection. You may yet bring much light to the palace."
"No," I said. "I will not be a prize."
"You refuse the court?" Jensen's voice tightened.
"I refuse the court if it means my life is not mine," I said.
He stared a long time. People around us shifted. A servant spilt tea on the stone and none of us moved.
"Do you know the law?" Jensen asked finally. "The court's selection is its right."
"I know that law," I said. "I also know people can speak. If the court asks me to come, I will speak. I will not be silenced by a promise I never made."
"Your father lied to the minister to keep you from palace service," Jensen said to Grant.
"I only wished to protect my child," my father said, suddenly open in his shame. "I feared the palace life more than the honor. I have failed."
"You failed and yet you expected the court to keep quiet?" Jensen said. He paced by a peony, and his shadow bent over the petals.
"I will not have my daughter go to the palace," my father said, voice breaking. "If that is the law, then I choose the law to protect—"
Jensen stopped him with a look.
"You will answer for lying," Jensen said. "But the court's business is not to marry a child to an official. If she is promised, she will be expected to appear. I have come many times because the court trusts my choices. I will not be swayed by pity or ploys. The palace must be served."
The people who came with Jensen looked sharp like birds. My heart pounded. I felt very small under the minister's eyes.
"Indie Gray," Jensen said, turning to me, "I will do this properly. You will come to the palace for an inspection. The palace must be fair."
"I will come," I said. "I will only answer truth."
Jackson stepped forward.
"I will come with her," he said.
"No," Jensen said. "You will not."
"Then I will follow," Jackson said.
Jensen smiled thinly. "You may not be permitted in palace wards, magistrate. But you can follow the forms. The palace will consider you a man of your words and your loyalty. If you persist, you might lose the favor of office."
"I am not here for favor," Jackson said.
"Then know the cost," Jensen said. "To stand before the throne is to stand in storms."
I felt my father's hands on my shoulder.
"Do what you must, Indie," he whispered, shame mingled with a strange pride.
We went to the palace. I stood on cold stones and answered questions as if a court wanted a ledger and not a person. They asked about my family, my training, my habits.
"Why do you paint?" a lady-in-waiting asked.
"Because paint keeps my hands alive," I said.
"Do you know how to behave in court?" another asked.
"I know how to be honest," I said.
Jensen watched me like a man who had set a trap and then admired a bird who did not fall.
Days passed. The palace made its decisions slowly, like winter moving across a field. The courtiers looked for faults. The minister read reports, and on the third week a runner returned with a reply.
"Indie," Jensen said. "If the palace would rather not spare you, I will accept that. But one condition: the promise you gave years ago can be honored without harm if both families agree."
"What does that mean?" my father asked.
"It means the families may keep a promise on paper and not in person," Jensen said. "It means—if the promise can be turned into a formal friendship rather than a marriage—the palace will not force you."
I felt the rope unknotting a little. Jackson looked at me. He reached for my hand.
"Will you accept that?" he asked.
"If it keeps me free," I said. "I will accept peace."
"The court will record that you are spared," Jensen said, "but know this: any further refusal of a palace summon will be seen as defiance."
"I understand," I said. "I will live honestly."
On the day we left the palace, the peonies were in bloom. Jensen walked beside the beds and then paused.
"Doctor Gray," he said, "you healed a village. For that, I respect you. If you choose a life apart from court, do it with pride. The palace does not own all light."
Jackson squeezed my hand.
"Thank you," he said, soft.
Back in the city, my father sat with me and we spoke like two strangers who must learn each other again.
"I am sorry," he said. "I thought to protect you. I chose the wrong tool."
"You thought of me at all," I said. "That is something."
"Will you ever come home?" he asked.
"I will visit," I said. "When the clinic closes, I will go."
He cried, quick and surprised, and then hugged me as if he had letters to keep.
Jackson left for his county. He promised to write. He promised to come in the month when the peonies returned. He promised to be a friend when he could be more.
We both kept our promises.
He came again and again. Each visit was an extra day of learning. He taught at the clinic and I taught him the pulse. He read poems and I painted them into little scrolls he tucked in his coat.
"Will you marry me?" he asked quietly one evening, no crowd, just the small light over my desk.
"Will you ask me?" I said.
"Will you marry me if you can say yes?" he asked again.
"If you ask me on a day I want to," I said. "I will not be a prize to be given, Jackson. I choose."
"I know," he said. "Then I ask you now, in the only way I can. Indie Gray, will you be my partner?"
I looked at his eyes, the lines of worry, the tired smile. I saw the peony pin on his sleeve where I had given it. I saw the ledger he kept of the clinic's needs. I saw a man who would choose again and again.
"Yes," I said.
He laughed like a child and then cried like a man. He pulled me into a small, fierce hug. Kaylie squealed in the next room. The town thought it a small miracle.
We did not marry with fanfare. We signed a contract in the magistrate's office and then walked down to the clinic and sat with the patients and drank tea. We held a small feast in the market and then walked under the peonies.
"How do you feel?" Jackson asked as we walked.
"Like a person who can paint and be painted," I said.
He stopped and picked a peony petal from the path and tucked it inside my brush roll.
"This will be our paper," he said. "A fragile thing that knows the way we start."
I put my hand in his. The road ahead was still long. There were laws and ministers and sometimes hunger. There would be nights of rain and mornings of worry. But I had a man who learned how to listen, and I had a life where I could keep my hands busy.
"Do you ever regret it?" Jackson asked once, staring at a child he had helped with a fever.
"Sometimes for a second," I said. "But only to notice how brave I become after that second."
"Good," he said. "I need you brave."
"I will be brave," I promised. "And you must be honest."
"I will," he said.
We married in small ways and large ones. The town celebrated. Chelsea Barbier found a husband who liked long walks and good bread. My father painted a picture of a peony and hung it in his office. Jensen Donaldson came to the clinic once, to watch me teach villagers how to wash and care for a sick child. He bowed, briefly, like a man who had been proved wrong and then learned.
"You were right to choose your path," he said. "If the palace cannot hold a person’s heart, better to find another place where the heart can live."
I folded my hand into Jackson's.
"We will tend our own place," I said.
"Yes," he said. "We will tend it together."
I pinned a painted peony to his coat. He pinned one to mine. We walked past the market and the dye house and the small temple where we first slept under a roof and did not purr.
"One peony," Kaylie joked. "And a hundred promises."
"One peony," I said, "and a thousand small mornings."
We kept to our work—he, the magistrate who learned to listen; I, the doctor who would not be a choice on a ledger. We were better together because we chose each other every day.
The last thing I did before sleep that night was wet my brush and paint a single peony on a small scrap of silk. I tied it with string and slipped it into Jackson's pocket the next morning.
"Why keep that?" he asked, finding it.
"Because it's our first promise," I said.
He kissed my forehead.
"Then I will keep it like a law," he said.
"Not like a law then," I whispered. "Like a promise."
His fingers closed over mine.
We walked out into the day where people had chores and children and coughs and gifts and the small acts of mercy that make a life. We walked under the peonies and I painted while he counted the coins. The town fed us with gossip and bread. The clinic sent me home each night tired and full.
"Goodnight, Doctor Gray," he would say.
"Goodnight, Magistrate Jackson," I would reply.
We had traded the palace for a patch of land and a sign on a door that read GRAY'S CLINIC. We had kept our words. We had learned how to be brave.
I pressed my brush to paper and painted one more peony, slow and steady.
Then I slept with his hand in mine.
The End
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