by Sam Starbuck
And then Socrates felt for himself, and said "When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end."
"Fool," I muttered. "Classics for why to kill yourself; botany for how."
"Kill yourself?" Marjorie asked, really alarmed now.
"Lucas – the history scholar, I ordered that werewolf book for him for Christmas? He tried to. Kill himself. I think," I said.
"Oh, dear me." Marjorie looked stricken.
"It's a little more violent than Plato thinks it is," I added, closing the book and turning to meet her eyes for the first time. "I had to make him throw up, hence..." I held up my hand.
"You..." she pointed a finger at her open mouth. I nodded. "That requires a certain amount of fortitude. Not that I thought you'd have anything less," she said. "Will he be all right?"
"According to the doctors. He might not be once I get through with him," I said grimly. Marjorie laid a hand on my arm.
"Christopher, let me buy you something to eat," she said. "Somewhere away from here."
"I should stay with Lucas, I'm the only one he knows. Besides, I have to find out what his name is," I said.
"His name?"
"His last name, I mean, I don't know it and they need it for..." I gestured at the clipboard. She waved dismissively.
"They just want to know what insurance to charge. I imagine he hasn't got any."
"God, I don't know..." I rested my face in one hand, the injured one still half-holding the book. I have never felt so at sea – not after my father died, not when I first came to Low Ferry, not during the long malaise that was my life in the city.
If Lucas, who could control the rain and snow, who could grow ice where he walked, who spent his whole life making beautiful things – if Nameless saw the world so darkly that death was preferable...
"Come along, Christopher," Marjorie said. "Just for a few minutes. You've done enough for him."
She took my arm and led me out of the hospital, across the wet early-evening street to the warm yellow circle of a street-lamp. I stopped for a minute and turned my head to look up, but I'd forgotten that the light of the city eclipses the stars. Marjorie threaded her fingers in mine and tugged me gently onward.
We ate in a cheap sandwich shop near the hospital, drinking acidic coffee and speaking very little. I don't know what she must have thought, but my own thoughts were taken up with an endless cycle – he was in a hospital bed and not a morgue drawer, and I was proud to be the one who'd saved him. But at the same time I wondered if he wouldn't hate me for it. And I believed – I still do – in allowing another person to make their own decisions. Always within reason, of course, but that night I was so confused and tired and hurt that I didn't know where suicide fell on the scale of "within reason" anymore.
There was no doubt he was chronically shy and awkward, but not as Nameless; no doubt he stammered and fumbled for words, but Nameless was never required to speak. And these things, you know, are not things to kill oneself over. But the other dogs avoided Nameless, and even the people...
No one had tried to put a collar on him. No one had tried to own him. Not even me. I'd tried not to, actually.
When we returned to the hospital, Marjorie gave me a hug at the entry door.
"Do you want me to stay with you?" she said. "I have a guest room you could – "
"No," I said. "Thanks, Marj. I'm staying here tonight."
"Are you sure?"
"I need to," I said.
"I'll come by tomorrow," she replied, and patted my cheek before she walked away.
Inside, I found a police officer outside Lucas's door, and another one inside rolling ink on his unresponsive fingers to take prints. They looked at me suspiciously as they left.
I settled onto a vinyl-upholstered bench in the hallway, curled up with the side of my head resting against the wall, and read Plato for hours.
***
I fell asleep while reading the Republic, and when I woke up it was to soft voices nearby. I opened my eyes and saw a new doctor, standing in front of Lucas's door and speaking to a middle-aged couple: a neat man in khakis and an oxford shirt, a tidy woman with fashionable hair and subtle makeup, even at whatever-time it was in the morning.
They were talking about money, I think – insurance, and how Lucas didn't have any, how they were perfectly able to pay his bills. I lifted my head a little, and the movement of my body dislodged the book of Plato where it was wedged between knee and wrist. It clattered to the floor and all three of them turned to look at me.
"Mr. Dusk," the doctor said. "Good to see you awake. How are you feeling?"
"Sore," I moaned, uncurling my legs from the bench and tilting my head to pop the bones in my neck.
"That's to be expected. I'll have a nurse bring you some painkillers. These are Lucas's parents, they'd like to speak with you," he added, sweeping a hand at the fashionable woman and the tidy man. "Ma'am, sir, this is Christopher Dusk, he's the one who brought your son to the hospital."
"Pleasure to meet you," Lucas's father said, offering his hand. I shook it, wanting to tuck my bandaged left hand behind my back but not sure how to do it subtly. "Though not under the circumstances."
"No, of course not," I agreed, as his wife came forward and clasped my hand in both of hers, briefly, limply.
"We're so grateful to you for helping Lucas," she said. "Did they make you stay on that bench all night?"
"Hm?" I asked, looking down at it. "Oh, I wanted to...uh, in case he woke up. Is he?"
"Not yet," his father said. "He should soon."
His mother invited herself to sit on the bench next to me, though she carefully avoided touching my mud-spattered pants.
"I thought this might happen," she confided. "Goodness knows we've tried everything."
"Best psychiatrists, best schools," his father added. "Did everything right."
"We just don't know how he ended up so lost."
I glanced sidelong at her. She seemed to expect me to say something.
"But, well, I suppose you can't babysit them forever," she said, when she saw I wasn't going to reply. "People make their own choices, don't they?"
"Lucas certainly did," I said bitterly. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them, but his parents didn't look hurt; they didn't look anything, really. Mannequins, stiffly playing a role.
"I told him moving all the way out to the country like that – no offense – wouldn't be good for him," his mother continued, and continued, and continued in a monologue of parental remonstration and dissatisfaction for a good ten minutes, punctuated with interjections from his father. Oh, they expressed all the proper concerns and said all the things people are supposed to say, but with a disaffected air that spoke volumes about Lucas's childhood. That a passionate, creative man should be the product of two such lifeless, automated drones never fails to perplex me – but it tells me a lot about why he was so hesitant, so completely immobilized at the thought of interacting with others. He had grown up in a world where there was a single way of doing things, and every action had a proper response. Outside of their small sphere he was lost and confused: for every situation, a new code to decipher, for every person he met a new set of memorized ways of speaking and acting. No wonder he preferred masks.
I was just grateful they didn't offer to pay me for my services, to be honest.
"Has he ever tried this before?" I asked abruptly, and both of them shot me a sharp look.
"No," his father said.
"Though I always thought..." his mother tapped a finger against her lips. "I thought he was waiting for something. Maybe for the right time," she added with a shrug. "What do you do in your little town, if I can ask?"
"I sell books," I said. "I have a shop."
"Oh, he likes books," she said.
"Apparently not enough," I murmured. There was an uncomfortable silence.
"Well, we're looking into clinics," his father said. "For this kind of thing, you know. We'll get him into th
e best program possible."
I thought about Lucas being put in a clinic, in a program – no privacy, no way to avoid human interaction. I didn't really think it would do him much good, and on the off-chance it could it would kill him faster than it could help him.
Fortunately I was saved from replying by a doctor, who put his head in the doorway to Lucas's room and then leaned out again.
"He's awake, if you'd like to see him," he said.
"Mr. Dusk?" his mother asked.
"Oh – no, I don't think so, you go first," I said, because I saw someone coming down the corridor and knew I was about to be dragged out of the hospital anyway. "I'll see him a little later."
They didn't seem inclined to argue; they ducked inside the door and let it close behind them, though I could hear their voices distantly.
"Well," said Angie, putting her hands on her hips, Brent and Mara behind her, "your insane friend Marjorie wasn't kidding about you, was she?"
***
As it turned out, Marjorie had called the few of my friends she could get hold of and ordered them to take me out for breakfast. Most of them were cheerfully skipping work to do so, and had called the others in for backup – including my replacement, Derek. I told them that the poisoning had been accidental, playing up their already-formed impression of my village as a country-bumpkin town. They took me to a restaurant downtown, fussed over my bandaged hand until it was time to order the food, and then moved on to Low Ferry.
"It must be nice, though," said Steve, picking to pieces the trendy fusion breakfast sandwich he'd bought. "I mean, we can laugh about someone eating hemlock instead of parsley, but all your veggies must be really organic and stuff."
"Who cares about organic?" Mara asked. "I don't want bugs in my bananas and herbal death in my salad, thanks."
I studied the pancakes I'd ordered, pushing around a little pool of syrup with my fork. "We get a lot of stuff trucked in, anyway, especially in winter."
"Is it expensive to live there?" Angie inquired.
I thought about that for quite a while. "What we buy costs more sometimes, I guess. But we don't buy as much."
"No malls, huh?"
"No, no malls."
"Do you miss the city?" Brent asked. The others glared at him as if he'd made an indecent suggestion.
"Yes, of course I do," I answered automatically. "But I like the village too."
"I'd hope so, Chris. You pulled up stakes quick enough when you moved there. We figured you'd gotten someone pregnant and were trying to avoid them or something."
I laughed a little. "No. I – " I hesitated. I knew they weren't expecting much of me, which was why they were making the whole thing into a joke. Marjorie must have told them – they must have seen – how tired I was. So it probably wasn't fair, what I did, because they were being kind to me, and I didn't return their kindness with the distant vagueness they were expecting.
"Well, obviously, it was after your dad died," Angie prompted.
There was a murmur of sympathetic agreement.
"Dad had a heart condition," I said. "So did I. So do I."
"What, like – "
"I left because the doctors told me if I stayed in the city and kept going like I had, I'd be dead in six months." I folded my napkin and set it next to my plate. I still hadn't looked any of them in the eye. "The air's better in the village and it's quieter there, that's all."
They burst into speech but mostly to each other, asking who knew, who I'd told, if I'd told anyone, who hadn't told if they did know. The food was forgotten – and so, apparently, was I.
"I didn't tell anyone," I said, slightly more loudly than I really had to. They stopped talking, at least. "I didn't tell anyone. I just wanted to...go. And that didn't really work anyway, because when I was here last time it was because I'd passed out and had to go to the hospital, so everyone in Low Ferry knows anyway."
There was an expectant silence.
"So that's why I went there," I said. "It's not why I stayed, I stayed because I love it there, but that's why I went there. And yeah, I missed the city and the idea that I'd make a pile of money and meet someone and have kids here, but I don't miss it very much anymore. I have books and friends in the village and – I have a life there. More than I ever had here."
"I'm so sorry, Chris," Angie said, completely ignoring what I'd just told them. I'd known three years ago that she'd say that if I told her. I didn't want to hear it, but there was no escaping them now. I'd told Lucas as much. You can want to be something other than who you are, but you can't get there by running away.
"I think I should go back to the hospital," I said. They wanted to ask questions, they wanted to come with me, but what we had been in the city and what we were now were too different, and they didn't fight too hard. Angie drove me back to the hospital and left me with a careful, pitying hug I didn't want.
When I walked in, the doctor from the night before was looking for me. Someone had dug up my medical records, finally, and called one of my city doctors, and he'd shouted at them for probably longer than they deserved: I should have my heart examined immediately and be under constant care, the strain of travel to the city and my injury liable to kill me if someone wasn't watching over me.
"So," she said, a little breathlessly, as she explained the situation, "we want you in the hospital for at least another few hours. An electrocardiogram at least."
"What does my insurance say?" I asked sourly.
"I imagine your premiums are high enough," she replied, smiling. "Mr. Dusk, if you want to be certain you're not going to drop dead of heart failure tomorrow, you should have the tests done."
"And what if they tell me I'm going to drop dead of heart failure tomorrow?" I asked. She studied me, fingers twining up the stethoscope's tubing into loops.
"Well, we just won't let that happen," she said finally. "How's your hand feel?"
"My hand feels fine," I answered.
"Good. Come this way."
They put me through a few basic tests, and I was too experienced with them and too tired to worry much about the indignity of sitting in a waiting room in a hospital gown. When we were finally done another doctor wanted to examine my hand, so I had to sit still while he unwound the bandage, prodded at the ragged wound, and gave me a scrutinizing look.
"Looks like a dog bite," he said finally.
"Well, it's a person-bite," I answered. I may have been sharp, but I was more than ready to be done with hospitals for a while.
"See these canines here?" he asked, pointing to two especially deep punctures.
"Look, I got it when I shoved my fingers down someone's throat and they had a spasm," I snapped. "They gave me plenty of shots, so if you could wrap me up again I'd appreciate it."
"Hm. Don't shoot the messenger," he answered, but he bandaged the hand again quickly. "You need the name of a hand specialist?"
"No, thank you."
They left me alone after that, and I rubbed the throbbing heel of my hand against my hip as I made my way back to Lucas's room. The volume of Plato was sitting on the bench where I'd left it when Angie came to take me to breakfast. I picked up the book and stood at the door, hand resting on it at chest-height, then pushed it open.