Hope and the Patient Man

by Mike Reeves-McMillan

  Like most of her sleeps recently, it lasted almost half a day. When she woke up, Briar had already left for work, leaving her clean breakfast dishes to drain by the sink. Hope picked them up to put them away and couldn’t, for a frustrating minute, remember where they kept the bowls.

  She tried to work on her article, but gave it up after half an hour and walked to the lab. Dignified and Rosie (the byname did suit her better than the stuffy name her parents had given her, though she seemed like a hard worker too) were surrounded by boards covered in mathematics. Listening to the taller woman, Hope could tell that she knew mathematics at least as well as Hope did herself, and her Dwarvish vocabulary was excellent, though she muddled her syntax occasionally. She tried to follow the point they were discussing, but it kept slipping away like a fish. She stood in a daze for a short while, looking at the two of them together, both thinner than they ought to be, awkward, and too intelligent to hold a normal conversation. Dignified, obviously, was more brilliant and far less socially adept. Rosie seemed a pleasant enough woman, though she was painfully unsure of herself. Hope assumed her family were to blame for that. She had some experience of familial discouragement.

  Realising that she wasn’t achieving anything and had tuned out of the mathematical conversation entirely, Hope drifted into the manufactory. A gnome whose name she couldn’t call to mind bustled up to her and reminded her to put on a safety helmet.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Don’t want another knock to the head.”

  Helmet in place, she wandered into the planning office, where Wheel was overseeing the latest changes to the farspeaker design. When she had asked the same question twice and forgotten the answer both times, she drifted out again.

  Her airhorse stood under a canopy in the yard, and she started it up and drove out onto the street.

  Her next awareness was of being surrounded by worried gnome faces. Light-coloured beards and big pale noses everywhere she looked.

  “What happened?” she said in Pektal, too confused to remember her Dwarvish.

  “You ran your airhorse into a wall,” said Wheel, one of the few fluent Pektal speakers. “Did you forget you aren’t supposed to drive it?”

  She grimaced, and a spike of pain pierced the crown of her head. “Yes,” she said.

  “Let’s get you to the healer,” said Wheel. “The rest of you, back to work,” he added in Dwarvish.

  Chapter Seven: Staying the Night

  Patient rode up on the ferry on Threeday evening after work. Rather to his relief, Hope was still forbidden from riding her airhorse, so she couldn’t come down to his village and fetch him. He did expect her to be at the ferry wharf, though.

  She wasn’t. He seated himself (at one time, he would have paced, but his war injury had put paid to that) on one of the hard wooden benches provided for travellers, where he could see the street entrance, and waited. After a few minutes, he pulled a small knife and a piece of wood out of his pockets and started whittling, glancing up occasionally.

  A small bird emerged from the wood, and he lost track of time. By the time he reached the point where he needed to use tools and equipment he didn’t have with him to finish the piece, and looked at his pocket watch, another ferry had come and gone. Hope had not.

  “Must have had another memory lapse,” he muttered to himself, and frowned.

  He knew her address by heart, having written it on many a letter, so he asked at the ticket office how to get there.

  “Certainly, sir, it’s about a half-hour walk,” began the young man. His eyes fell on the walking stick, and he amended hastily, “or you can take the horse bus opposite, the number 23. The driver will tell you where to get off. Should be along any moment now.”

  Patient nodded curtly, thanked the youth gruffly, and limped off to the bus stop.

  He reached the house without further incident as the light faded from the sky. He hadn’t been there before, and was impressed with the tidy exterior. An older house, but well cared for, and some nice jigsaw work on the bargeboards. The house rose two stories, and when he reached the door he saw that there were four letterboxes.

  Just as he approached and peered at them, a pair of eyes looked out through the slot of the one marked Flat 1. She started back for a moment, then the eyes crinkled at the corners. “Hello,” she said through the letterbox.

  “Good evening,” said Patient. “I’m looking for Flat 3.”

  “Why is that, then?” It was a friendly question, but fair enough, he supposed. In the city, you had to be more careful who you let in.

  “I’m… a friend of Mage Hope’s.”

  “Good enough,” said the woman, and came and let him through the door. Her good-natured face matched her eyes, and kept partly disappearing behind tousled hair, which she had to scoop back. “I’m Leaf.”

  “Patient.”

  “Pleased to meet you. Go on up, it’s on the right.”

  He ascended the old-fashioned staircase — all dark-stained wood with some very decent banister carving, though it could do with a touch-up on the stain — turned right and knocked on the door. After a while, he knocked again, then tried the door, which opened.

  The well-lit room inside, a combination kitchen and living area, showed plenty of signs of occupation — scattered papers, the odd dirty mug — without currently being occupied. He listened carefully, and heard slumberous breathing from one of the bedrooms. Peeking in, he saw Hope, turned on her right side (away from her head injury), fast asleep in a nest of rumpled covers. A small smile found its way to his lips as he watched her chest rise and fall and listened to her breathing. Even with her magnificent eyes closed, her face was still beautiful, especially when it was relaxed and peaceful. He withdrew as silently as he could, made himself a cup of tea, and sat on the floor cushions that surrounded the room against the walls, watching the door.

  He had picked up the copy of Magical Research that had slipped between the cushions and was trying to read the few parts that weren’t in Elvish or Dwarvish when he heard feet hit the floor in the bedroom and pad towards the door. He stood.

  A bleary-looking Hope emerged, in a robe, nightdress and slippers, and gave a jump when she saw him. She pulled the robe more closely around her and tried to haul her hair into shape.

  “Patient, what… how long have you been here?” she asked, in the dull, toneless voice of someone who has just woken up and wishes she hadn’t.

  “Not long,” he said. “I got the horse bus from the wharf.”

  “Oh!” she said. “I was meant to meet you. Sorry, I fell asleep.”

  “So I see. It’s all right. Get yourself fixed up, take your time.”

  “I… you got yourself a cup of tea? Do you want anything to eat?”

  “I’m fine. Just do what you need to do.”

  She padded into the bathroom, and he heard water running and various ablution noises. He boiled the copper kettle on the range, and made a fresh pot of tea for them both, hoping he’d picked the right tea-herbs.

  She emerged, still in the robe, crossed to his side and sat down with him on the cushions. “Sorry,” she said.

  “No problem.” He handed her the cup of tea he’d made for her.

  “Oh. Thanks.” She sipped, and set it down on the floorboards.

  “Patient.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a terrible lady friend.”

  “No you aren’t.”

  “I am.” She leaned back on her hands. “The one time I’ve kissed you, I threw up on your new trousers. You come to see me and I forget to go and get you and fall asleep, and then come out looking like I grew up in a bush. I’m whiny and forgetful and I get headaches all the time and now I’m going to cry for no good reason.” A big tear tracked down from her doe eyes across her smooth cheek, finding its way through the downy fuzz that shone in the sunlight.

  He put his own cup down and wrapped his arms around her, gathering her in. Her head fitted onto his shoulder exactly, and she began to sob,
tears falling onto his shirt. She sniffed periodically.

  “I think you have every reason,” he said after a little, and held her more tightly. She clung more tightly back, and sobbed harder.

  “Sorry,” she said, when she had sobbed herself out. “I’m hard on your clothes, aren’t I?” She swiped ineffectually at the wet spot on his shirt.

  “Think nothing of it.” He held her silently for a while, and then her stomach rumbled. His answered immediately.

  “Is it dinnertime?” she asked.

  “Past,” he said. “I’ll make something.”

  “You’re the guest.”

  “Doesn’t matter. What would you like?”

  “I don’t think there’s much. We usually shop on Fourday. There’s bread in the bin, and some cheese in the chill cupboard.”

  “You have a chill cupboard?”

  “Energy mage, remember? Not that I can work magic right now, but a chill cupboard isn’t hard. You just open a gate into one of the spaces that has less heat than ours, and stabilise it with a few crystals.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, assembling bread and cheese on a couple of plates. He went to sit back down on the cushions, but she gestured him to the table, a plain, rustic piece with matching chairs.

  “Let’s eat like civilised people, at least,” she said.

  They chatted over dinner, once the first couple of bites had pushed away the hunger pangs. Patient described a commissioned piece he was carving, and Hope told him about the adding machine and how Rosie was fitting in. “It’s a good thing she’s there, really,” she said. “I’m not there much, and oddly enough for a man who has essentially no social skills, Dignified works best when he has a collaborator. It helps him focus, I think.”

  “I’m just the opposite,” he said. “I do my best work when I can get lost in my carving.”

  “I’m very distractible at the moment,” said Hope. “And my memory is like leaves in harvest-time. I don’t know how long that will last. The healer says not forever.”

  “Was that a real possibility?”

  “It was something I worried about. What if I could never do magic again, or concentrate enough to work? I’ve spent my whole life from the time I was eight years old working on becoming a mage. If I can’t do that, I don’t know who I am.”

  “Eight?” he said, not knowing what to say and looking for a way to distract her from that line of thinking. “That’s young.”

  “Yes, my father found me bending sunlight in the window-seat and called the mage. Sincerity was her name. She didn’t like children, but she was a good teacher despite that.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  Her story wound about and backtracked. She lost the thread sometimes. She repeated herself, forgetting what she’d already said. He tried to keep his worry behind his eyes, but it must have leaked out, because she stopped in the middle of a story about an old Elvish book and said, “I’m not making much sense, am I.”

  “I’m following it. It’s probably good practice for you, telling stories.”

  “Patient, I feel like I’ve lost myself. I… my brain is who I am. When it’s not working right…”

  “Shhh,” he said. “It’s all right. The healer said it will get better, right?”

  “How do you know that?” She looked puzzled.

  “You told me.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember.”

  “Come and sit on the cushions,” he said, “and tell me some more stories.”

  She grew tired after about half an hour, and her voice slowly dropped into a mumble.

  “Come on,” he said, “time for you to go back to bed, I think.” He helped her to her feet and supported her into her bedroom.

  “Will you stay with me tonight?” she said fuzzily.

  “That’s what I came here to do. Where are your spare blankets?” He didn’t want to sleep in Briar’s room, even though Hope had said she wouldn’t be home tonight, and wouldn’t mind. It seemed an invasion; he hardly knew Briar, having met her exactly once, at the demonstration airhorse race last year, and exchanged no more than a greeting. But the floor cushions felt comfortable enough, better than an army camp by a good way.

  “No, what I mean… will you sleep in here with me?” She looked at him with those big dark eyes, and he froze, his diaphragm fluttering with an emotion that had so many elements he couldn’t separate them.

  “Hope, I…”

  “I’m sad, and afraid,” she said. “And I think if you’re here I won’t feel that so much.” Her voice was high, uncertain.

  “Hope…”

  “I’m not asking you to sleep with me in that sense,” she said, blushing.

  “I know. It’s just… taking me a minute to get used to the idea.”

  “Will it be too difficult for you? I mean, just because I can’t feel… desire, I know you do, and if it makes it too awkward…”

  “No, I’ll be all right. Here, let me help you into bed first, then I’ll go and get ready.”

  He went into the bathroom, took off his boots and washed his feet, then changed into his nightshirt. He had brought a small bag, part of his military issue, with a spare shirt and socks and things for the next day. He cleaned his teeth thoroughly, not concentrating on what he was doing, but thinking about the woman in the next room.

  It was true that he desired her. Difficult not to. She was beautiful, and, when not struck on the head, competent, highly intelligent, and self-assured. But he also liked her, and felt affection for her, and wanted to make up for the fact that when she’d been in danger, falling on a hard surface, he hadn’t been capable of saving her from injury. He took a long breath, calmed himself, thought chilly thoughts towards his midsection and returned to the bedroom.

  She had moved over from her earlier position, offering him the left side of the bed. He shook his head as she looked up at him sleepily. “I have to sleep on my right side,” he said, “because of the leg. I can’t hold you if I’m there.”

  She smiled, a beaming, beautiful smile like the sun breaking through a bank of clouds, and shuffled over.

  “I have to sleep on my right side too, at the moment,” she said, “because of my face. But that’s probably good. I want you to hold me, but we really shouldn’t face each other.”

  “No,” he agreed. He walked around the bed and climbed in behind her. Hesitantly, he reached out his left hand and laid it on her hip.

  She shuffled backwards until her back contacted his front. She was shorter than he by enough that he could tuck his head over her shoulder and be able to breathe while not grinding his crotch into her buttocks, for which he was grateful. They were, he couldn’t help noticing, soft and well-rounded buttocks.

  “Ow,” she said, “you’re on my hair. Just a moment,” and she sat up, picked up a kind of cap from the bedside table and tucked her long dark hair into it. “That’s better.” She snuggled down again and took his hand in both of hers, moving it round in front of her so that his arm tucked under her arm. She stroked his fingers briefly, and then clutched his hand in front of her stomach.

  “All right?” she said.

  “Fine. You?”

  “Lovely. You’re nice and warm and… solid.”

  “You’re nice and warm and soft.”

  “Are you calling me fat?” she muttered sleepily.

  “Not at all,” he said, smiling at the fact that she could joke more than at the joke itself. “You’re a beautiful shape.”

  “Good,” she said, and squeezed his hand again.

  She fell silent, and her breathing gradually deepened and slowed. Patient lay awake for longer, enjoying the sensation of being close to her, smelling the herbal soap she used, drifting eventually into sleep as well.

  He woke at dawn, as usual, still cuddled up to her back. Her arms were loosely wrapped around his, and somehow or other his left hand was resting between her breasts. She was still sleeping peacefully, and he stayed still as long as he could, but event
ually had to unwrap himself carefully and slide towards the edge of the bed. As he stood, the bed moved and she woke with a jerk and an incoherent noise.

  “Wha?” she said, blinking, and turned over. He sat down and, as casually as possible, pulled a blanket across his lap.

  “Oh, Patient,” she said in a vague, sleepy voice.

  “Just heading…” he said, jerking his head towards the bathroom.

  “Right,” she said, turned over again and almost immediately fell asleep again.

  Patient dressed and set about preparing breakfast for two. When it was ready, he entered Hope’s bedroom again and said her name in a voice that hesitated between trying to wake her and trying not to wake her. He repeated it more loudly.

  She started awake again, sat up, stretched (a diverting sight), and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?” she said.

  “Breakfast time. Here, I brought it on a tray.”

  He climbed back into bed with her and they shared the food, which she exclaimed over. “I’m a terrible cook,” she said. “My father wasn’t much good, and my mother just refused to do it. And Briar isn’t very good either.”

  “It’s not hard,” he said. “I’ll teach you sometime.” That won him one of her brilliant smiles.

  “Thanks for staying over,” she said. “I didn’t hear you get up?”

  He decided not to mention that she’d woken up and gone back to sleep. It probably wasn’t anything to do with her memory problems, and if it was she didn’t need the reminder. “I tried to be quiet,” he said instead.

  “I’ve never spent the night with someone before,” she said, blushing.

  “You and Faithful…”

  “Our relationship wasn’t like that,” she said, in a brisk tone that told him to discuss it no further. She had told him about having a lover before, and the circumstances, but she didn’t like to talk about it.

  “How did you find it?” he asked.

  “It was nice having you here,” she said, looking at her plate and speaking in a low voice. “I felt safe. Slept better, I think.”