I'm Fine
Only after the newspaper finally ran the story about the fire at Pier B and the smuggling ring did Flat Cap stop pacing outside the hospital room.
Tucked into a corner of the same paper was a brief notice that the boss, just as Helen had predicted, had come down with some half-forgotten disease and dropped dead while on the run.
He was still annoyed that the news had taken so long—thanks to some opaque reporting guidelines—but relief washed through him all the same.
“Ugh, it’s so bitter.”
“The stuff that’s good for you always is. Hold your breath, pinch your nose… ahem. Just try, all right? I need to go talk to the doctor for a minute.”
“Eeeeh.”
Flat Cap gave Helen’s hair a couple of rough pats while she tried to dilute the vile alkaloid medicine with spit, then shrugged into his coat and stepped out. She lay on a freshly sterilized bed in a stiffly starched hospital gown.
“When you come back, bring me some melo—”
Click. The light wooden door, nothing more than a thin sheet of plywood, cut off whatever frequency Helen had been about to emit with a rather flippant little sound.
“Hoo.”
Morning. The cool wind rolling down from the north was sweeping up the last of the dry leaves. Academically speaking it was the change of seasons; personally speaking it was the time of year when cigarette smoke tasted richer and he liked it better.
Statistically speaking it was the season when the most children came down with fevers. Unconsciously speaking it was the season when you checked the window frames. Right now it was simply a season full of worry.
“Tch.”
Still standing outside the room, Flat Cap ran a hand over the tightly shut window frame for no particular reason, scrubbed the back of his head, and lit a cigarette.
Nurses pushing steel carts loaded with red-and-blue-striped medicine bottles and rattling off technical jargon brushed past him. They only wrinkled their noses for a second and did nothing else. The hospital had thoughtfully placed ashtrays everywhere so that bored guardians would have somewhere to put their butts; all they asked was that he use them when he was finished.
So please refrain from criticizing Flat Cap’s heinous act of indoor smoking. This is an eighteenth-century romance fantasy, after all.
“Ahem.”
Suddenly and inexplicably embarrassed, Flat Cap disposed of the butt exactly as the nurses had suggested and set off down the corridor to find the attending physician.
The place was the most modern hospital in the district, but it was small, so the walk was short. He knocked lightly on a door whose elegant relief carvings of some nameless plant immediately announced the owner’s refined taste.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Flat Cap shoved the door open and strode straight into the office of Helen’s doctor—who also happened to be the hospital director.
“Who… ah.”
A room thick with the scent of peppermint. The director, so pale he looked half-Inuit, rose to greet him. Beside the desk stood a young man holding a catalog dense with drawings of canes. Flat Cap sincerely hoped the fellow had no business with him.
“How is she?”
“Straight to the point, I see. Not that I mind—I’ve just run out of tea leaves anyway.”
The director smiled faintly and began rummaging through a drawer for the chart. Far from finding the bluntness rude, he seemed rather fond of it.
“Now then… let’s see. Helen? Helen Stirling, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Hmm… even looking at it again, it’s truly remarkable. Everyone was shocked when you first brought her in. Hard not to be, when a man walks through the door carrying what looks like a corpse.”
The director was hopelessly nearsighted; he kept pushing and pulling Helen’s chart as if that would somehow bring the letters into focus. Flat Cap, knowing nothing of this, watched the man dither and decided he was simply stalling to pad the bill. The thought of how the old-timers used to slap the word “fever” on every symptom under the sun rose unbidden, and a sharper remark slipped out.
“If there’d been tea, it would be cold by now.”
“Tch. What a temper…”
The director clucked his tongue and finally began explaining Helen’s condition.
“At that age, with those injuries, the fact she’s alive at all is a miracle. Extensive contusions, cervical sprain from whiplash, pulmonary contusion, hairline fractures of the ribs…”
He reeled off a chart longer than most patients ever saw. Flat Cap had never cared about medicine, but every word clearly meant something terrible, and he felt as if he were sitting on a bed of nails the whole time.
“…and finally, intermittent symptoms of concussion. That’s Miss Stirling’s record. Of course most of it has improved by now, so don’t worry yourself overmuch.”
“The leg? How’s the leg?”
“The leg? I already explained it to the patient herself. You didn’t hear?”
“I didn’t. Tell me again.”
“Tch. This is why women…”
Like every other man of his class, the director let a habitual misogynistic remark slip out, clicked his tongue in irritation, and launched into the medical opinion once more.
“Listen carefully. She took a penetrating gunshot wound to the medial side of the right thigh, but the bullet missed the femoral artery by a hair’s breadth, so we avoided catastrophic arterial bleeding. The shockwave, however, caused extensive tissue laceration and contusion of the right adductor muscles, plus serious damage at the branching point of the femoral nerve…”
“Just the point. Will she be able to walk?”
“…Suturing is complete, but the sciatic nerve is damaged. She may develop semi-permanent foot drop, so absolute rest and intensive disinfection are required for the time being. That is my professional opinion.”
“Is it serious?”
“Have the young man over there sell you a cane. They’re a partner company—cheapest price you’ll find right now.”
.
.
.
.
.
When Flat Cap walked out the front doors of the hospital with Helen on his back, he was covered in scrapes and bruises.
The reason he looked like he’d been through a meat grinder was simple: he had punched the young man who had proudly shown him a catalog of canes for polio children and hunchbacks.
“Uncle, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then why’d you go and cause a scene like that? We’re lucky they didn’t call the watch.”
“….”
Helen chattered away from his back while he walked. After beating the salesman he’d gone on to threaten the director, and the hospital guards who came running had delivered a thoroughly equal and opposite reaction. His face was a mess.
“You’re really not bothered?”
“About what?”
“Everything.”
“What kind of question is that?”
Helen tilted her head, made a show of thinking hard for a moment, then answered.
“I’m fine.”
“That so.”
After the short exchange Helen shrugged with studied nonchalance, then looked down at the bandaged hand resting on her own thigh.
“Then how’s your hand, Uncle?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
That was the end of the conversation for a while.
When the silence stretched too long, Helen tried to shake off the awkwardness by pointing at a triangular sculpture left illegally on the roadside and chattering as if she were imparting vital intelligence. Flat Cap listened to the nonsense and had no idea what she was thinking. Whenever the girl on his back began to slide downward he simply gave a little bounce and resettled her higher.
Each time she floated up for a second and settled gently against his back again, the warm, bittersweet scent of her skin came rolling forward.
“…so you have to watch out for the Illuminati, especially the Reptilians. They’re actually reptilian aliens who turn into humans and do all this stuff, you know? Like, this and that.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Flat Cap treated the absurd monologue coming from behind him as some fad or game popular among kids her age and kept walking.
Eventually he had no choice but to stop. Gravity, as previously established, is fair to everyone.
When his heart and breathing began to show signs of roughening, Helen spun her little head this way and that, hunting for a place to rest. Then, as if white-winged fate itself had decided to be uncommonly kind, she spotted the familiar outer wall of a certain building and gave a little chin-jerk, smiling.
“Shall we rest over there for a bit?”
“Hoo… all right.”
There may have been some terrible misunderstanding buried in that exchange, but let’s not dwell on it. In any case Helen and Flat Cap wobbled their way toward the very café from which they had once fled in the most undignified fashion imaginable.
The atmosphere inside was identical to last time. Scholars were still building ivory towers over tables of drinks; thinkers were still exchanging conversations that sounded worryingly radical.
“What can I get you?”
“One iced americano… and you?”
“Jetti.”
“Understood.”
The café worker, radiating the purest possible reluctance to work, took one look at the little girl stuck to Flat Cap’s back and the man’s blood-scabbed, sweat-soaked face, said nothing, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Last time he had carried her dangling from his side; this time she was plastered to his back. Flat Cap set her carefully in a seat and asked to be excused for a moment so he could scrub the dried blood off his face.
“Gonna hit the washroom real quick.”
“Mm. I’m fine.”
Receiving a soft smile and a little wave, Flat Cap strode off toward the toilet. He seemed to have other business as well.
Left alone at the table, Helen stared blankly into space for a while, then—exactly the way people with unfinished business always do—repeated the last words she had spoken.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.”
The hand resting on her thigh began to tremble. She clenched it into a fist, as if she could simply cut the sensation off.
“I’m fine. I’m really fine. I’ll be fine.”
The fabric under her palm crumpled into a fist-sized ball. Even so, every time she tried to straighten her knee a sharp pain flashed through it and the strength drained away, leaving that unnerving, collapsing sensation that showed no sign of leaving.
She had never imagined a life without crises, but she had never imagined one arriving like this either. The feeling that every future hope and plan had suddenly gone opaque scrambled every sense, not just her eyesight.
The heart of a sprinter who has lost a leg is far more vicious than any movie or imagination can convey.
“I’m… fine…”
She sat alone, kneading her thigh, until she heard the distant rush of water that quickly fell quiet again. Out of habit Helen forced a crooked little smile, roughly wiped the wetness from her face, and looked up as Flat Cap approached.
“Tch, that bathroom’s a mess… kept you waiting, huh?”
“Mm-hehe… I’m fine.”
Helen wiped her face with the back of her hand and greeted the returning Flat Cap with determined brightness.