Comatose: The Book of Maladies

by D. K. Holmberg

  “He’ll be okay,” Beckah said.

  “I don’t know that he will.” Alec had done a brief examination of his father before going in search of Mrs. Rubbles and had found that Stefan and Andrew’s assessment was accurate. He was stable. His heart rate was regular. His breathing was steady. He didn’t have any localized findings. He simply was unresponsive.

  It was like the other woman.

  Alec had a good memory, and he traced through all of the things that had been attempted on the woman, thinking of what he might try on his father, but he couldn’t shake the idea that they had to be unrelated. It made no sense for the two of them to present with a similar type of illness.

  He would need to try some antidotes to various compounds his father had at the shop, but first, he would need to examine what his father might have been working with. Once he identified that, then he could try to figure out what might best counter those effects.

  They continued their sweep of the entrance to the university. It was early in the day, and there was a line of people waiting to be granted entrance, hoping to be healed. Alec had once been in that line—it seemed almost a lifetime ago. That was when he discovered there was a significant barrier to entry—and healing. Money. In order to be granted access, one needed to have coin on hand and be willing to pay whatever was asked. It was a barrier that essentially ensured that only those with money were allowed access to the healers. His father had railed against that belief system. Alec hoped that when—or if—he ever reached the level of master physicker, he could attempt to change it.

  Alec surveyed the people in line, but there was no sign of Mrs. Rubbles.

  He hurried across the bridge, Stefan and Beckah close behind. There were guards on the bridge, but their purpose was simply to prevent fighting, not to prevent access, especially at this time of day when many sought access to the university.

  “You can’t think to go and solve this yourself,” Beckah said.

  “Why not? I know my father better than anyone.” Alec looked around at the people they passed on the bridge. The line stretched across the entirety of the canal. It was surprising that there were so many people here and the ward was as empty as it was. Maybe it meant that most people were healed before they reached the ward, but if that were the case, why wouldn’t there have been a summons for assistance? “Besides, I want to find Mrs. Rubbles to see what she might know.”

  “She said she didn’t know anything,” Stefan said.

  He had been quiet for the most part since they had gone in search, and as they left the university section, he looked around. Alec hadn’t brought Stefan to his section of the city before, and as they crossed the second bridge, his friend began to stare around him. They were still in one of the inner sections—places that Sam would have referred to as highborn—so there shouldn’t have been any trigger related to the wealth available.

  “She might not have known what answers she actually knew,” Alec said. “It’s possible that she knows more than she realizes.”

  Stefan looked over at Alec and shrugged. “I’m just telling you what she told me,” he said.

  Alec glanced at Beckah, and she only shrugged. There had to be a way to reach Stefan, to get through the strangeness that was there between them, but if there was, he didn’t know how to do it.

  Instead, he stayed silent as they hurried through the city, crossing through one section after another. Alec had been this way often enough that he knew the shortest route. It wasn’t quite as quick as going with Sam, who simply jumped the canals when she needed to cross, rather than taking the bridges, but there was a fairly direct pathway to the Arrend section.

  When they reached it, Alec breathed out. There was something familiar and peaceful about being back in his section. It was home. Before heading to the university, it was the only place he’d ever lived, other than the short time when he had stayed with Sam to work on what their connection meant.

  “This is your section?” Stefan asked.

  “This is,” Alec said.

  “It’s so… nice.”

  Alec looked over. “Did you think that I lived in one of the outer sections?”

  There were many people in the central sections who believed the outer sections were for lowborns. There was a certain amount of poverty as well as crime present in those outer sections, but the people were good, much like the people anywhere were good. Even the criminals were often better people than some that Alec had met. He thought of Bastan, and the way that he had looked out for Sam over the years. Without someone like him, Alec wasn’t sure what would have happened to her. Sam certainly seemed to believe that without Bastan and his concern for her she would have ended up in a much different situation.

  “I knew you lived outside of the main part of the city,” he said.

  “This is still part of the city.” Beckah shot Stefan a strange look. “Wait… Have you never been this far into the city?”

  Stefan paled. “Most of my time has been spent in one of the inner sections. You know my grandmother…”

  “I think we’re quite well aware of Master Helen,” Beckah said. “And I thought she might be more favorable toward us because of you, but she hasn’t been.”

  “She wants me to make my own way.”

  “It’s because she made her own way,” Alec said. “She was the only one before me who demanded testing and was promoted.”

  “She what?” Stefan asked, stopping in the middle of the street.

  Alec glanced over at Beckah. He’d shared that detail with her, but suddenly realized that he probably hadn’t shared that with Stefan. Had they only spent more time together, he might have.

  “Your grandmother was the only person in the records of promotion who had ever demanded testing—until I did. The records weren’t clear whether that person had been successful or not, but when I was tested, she told me she had.”

  “I never knew,” Stefan said softly. “She doesn’t talk about her days as a student very much.”

  Beckah laughed. “Probably because she wasn’t a student for very long. If she demanded testing, think about our friend Alec. He had been a student for much less than a year, and now he’s a full physicker.”

  Stefan looked over at Alec, and something in his expression changed, softening. “Grandmother kept us together, and we lived near the university. I was never in the same section as the university, but I grew up with it in sight. I don’t think I had much of a choice about whether or not I would attempt to attend. If I hadn’t, I suspect my grandmother would have been angry.”

  “How many grandchildren does she have?”

  “Grandmother Helen only had a single son, and I’m his only son.”

  Alec’s breath caught. Having expectations like that might be even harder than what his father had demanded of him. His father had wanted Alec to learn what it was like to serve as an apothecary, and had trained him, but there had been no expectation that he would attend the university. Alec had thought that was beyond his grasp, and had wanted it for himself, but not because of any desire on his father’s part, at least not that he’d been aware of before now.

  “So, when you came to the university—”

  “It was the first time that I left my section,” Stefan said.

  “Gods,” Beckah said. “I didn’t realize you’d never been outside the inner portion of the city.”

  “And you had been?” Alec asked with a smirk.

  “More than what it seems Stefan has been. I at least have visited a few of the other sections, though not quite as many as you. I mean, I haven’t been to the edge of the city the same way that you have.” She watched him, the smirk on her face mirroring the one that he had given her.

  Alec suppressed a laugh. He hadn’t been outside of his section much before meeting Sam, either. When she had come into his life, all of a sudden, he was dragged all over the city, sneaking into sections that he never would have visited before, and had experienced places that he once would have considered
as dangerous as Stefan likely thought that Arrend was.

  It was all about perspective and experience. Before, Alec had had no experience. It was much like the way Sam had perceived what she called highborns. She had no experience with those who lived in some of the central sections, thinking them related to the royal family. And now—ironically—she was in a position where she was closer to the royal family than any of the so-called highborns.

  “Let me show you my section,” Alec said.

  He pointed to familiar shops as they wandered the streets. There was the baker—Ms. Smithson—a woman who had been very maternal to Alec. Many of the women in this section had been maternal to him. Likely, they felt bad for him, thinking that spending all of his time with his father had been detrimental. He pointed to a tailor and thought about his time going there for clothing, and the welcome that Mr. Jones would give him each time he entered his shop. He was a kind man and had an easy-going nature, quick to make jokes. At each shop, Alec pointed out who ran the shop, knowing everyone by name. It wasn’t anything he’d thought about before, but now he realized what a close community it was.

  They reached Mrs. Rubbles’ store, and he checked the door, half afraid that it might be locked. If it had been, would he turn away? He could always go to his father’s shop to see what he might have been working with prior to succumbing to whatever illness he had, and he would do that, anyway, but he wanted a chance to speak to Mrs. Rubbles, to see what she knew about his father.

  The door was unlocked.

  Alec entered. There was a certain odor to her store, and it was one that Alec always attributed to the parchment that she sold. That and the inks. Those all had a very particular smell. It wasn’t unpleasant, only distinctive.

  She had a bell over her door that was like the one over his father’s, and she emerged from the back room. Her hair was in a bun on top of her head, and she wore a black and white floral dress.

  “Alec, thank the gods,” she breathed when she saw him. She glanced at the others with him and nodded politely. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

  “I don’t, Mrs. Rubbles. What can you tell me about what happened?”

  She took another deep breath before answering. “I found him in his shop. He was slumped over the table. I assume you’ve gone there to see?”

  “I’m going there next,” Alec said. “I thought that I would come to you to hear what you knew.”

  “I should have stayed at the university, but I thought… I thought that you would know. Your father said that you had been promoted.” She glanced at him, taking in the thigh-length gray jacket that Alec now wore, a marker of his status as full physicker. Junior physickers had a shorter jacket, and student wore an even shorter jacket. “I can see that you have, but perhaps even more than I was led to believe. Not that I’m surprised. I’ve always said that you take after your father, and I’ve always said that he knows just as much as any of the physickers at the university.”

  Alec swallowed. He had always felt the same way, and it had taken him studying at the university to realize just how much his father had known. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” he said. “I… I want to do everything I can to help him, but I can only do that if I know a little bit more about what you saw when you came across him.”

  She nodded and leaned on the counter. She picked up one of the dozens of pens that lay there—all for sale—and started tapping it on the counter. “I thought he was asleep at first. He works so hard, your father, and I thought that perhaps he had drifted off there at the table. It wouldn’t have been the first time I found Aelus sleeping in a strange position. When I went to wake him, he didn’t come around. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I tried using some of his herbs,” she said with a flush. “He has shown me ones that can help with alertness, but they didn’t do anything. I figured it was time to take him to you.”

  “To me? Not the university?”

  “I figured taking him to the university would essentially get him to you,” she said.

  “How did you carry him all that way?”

  Mrs. Rubbles twisted her hands together. “I’m not the only one in this section who owes your father for what he’s done for us over the years. Jerad helped me.”

  Jerad was a tailor whose shop was at the end of the street. Alec and his father had helped see him through a particularly bad injury when he’d cut into his thigh a few years ago. “I’ll have to thank him too.”

  “We care for your father, Alec. All of us do.”

  Alec smiled at her. “You did well, Mrs. Rubbles.”

  “Do you think you can figure out what happened?” she asked.

  “I will do everything I can. If you think of anything that might be helpful, let me know.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Such as anyone he might have been working with, anything that might have seemed off, anything that might explain where—or who—my father might’ve been working with. Really, anything would be helpful.”

  She nodded. “I will try to think of anything. I don’t recall anyone unusual around. If there had been, your father would have kept them away.”

  Alec smiled to himself. His father would likely not have kept anyone away. If there was someone who was needing help, his father would’ve invited them in and done whatever he could to help them. That was just the way of his father.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Rubbles.”

  He motioned to his friends, and they headed out.

  When they were back out in the street, Beckah looked around. “It’s strange,” she said.

  “Mrs. Rubbles means well,” Alec said.

  “That’s not it. I can tell that she means well. I think she cares about your father.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Just the way she talks about him.”

  “She has known him a long time. I think they respect each other.”

  Then again, Alec had thought the same. He had noticed that there seemed to be a connection between his father and Mrs. Rubbles, and though his father would never admit it, he thought Mrs. Rubbles probably helped keep his father from being as lonely as he had been.

  “Let’s go see if we can figure anything out from his shop.”

  Alec was quieter as they made their way along the street. It was familiar here, the distance between Mrs. Rubbles’ store and the apothecary were only a short distance. When he reached the apothecary, he found the door unlocked. He frowned at that. Mrs. Rubbles should have locked it, though it was likely that she was too agitated to have done so. If she was worried about his father, she might have not taken the time, thinking that she would come back to it later.

  Once inside, Alec looked around. It was dark, and very little light drifted through the windows in the front of the shop. He hurried to the pair of lanterns and lit them.

  When he did, Stefan gasped. “All of this is your father’s shop?”

  Alec looked around. The rows of shelves were so familiar to him that he barely noticed them anymore. On each shelf, there were jars upon jars of various leaves and roots and oils, all of which his father had painstakingly collected, or had found a place to purchase. It wasn’t only his father’s knowledge that was impressive, it was his ability to find sources for medicines, sources that rivaled even what the university was able to acquire.

  “All of this is his shop,” Alec said.

  “He’s not just a simple apothecary,” Stefan said.

  “He’s never been a simple anything,” Alec said. He decided not to share with Stefan that his father was a master physicker. Beckah knew, but then Beckah knew much more about him than Stefan did. Until he had a better handle on Stefan, and what type of reaction he might have, Alec wasn’t about to share too much with him.

  “I knew he had supplies. I remember you talking about what you could find, but I was thinking there would be just a few cabinets. This is more than what you can get in certain parts of the university.”

  “The university has a w
ell-stocked supply cabinet,” Alec said. “Now that I’ve been promoted, I have visited it more than once.”

  “The university keeps quantity. But this is such an extensive breadth of various compounds, I don’t know that even the university would have everything here, Alec.”

  He smiled to himself, at least pleased that Stefan was referring to him by first name again. He was tired of the Physicker Stross comments, at least from those he had known as a fellow student.

  “I’m going to see if I can figure out if there’s anything here that would explain what happened to my father.”

  Alec made his way to the back of the shop to the table where Mrs. Rubbles had found his father. The chair was against the wall, likely pulled back when Mrs. Rubbles and Jerad had managed to get him from here. He pulled himself up to the table, searching for evidence of what his father might have been working on, but found nothing. The table was empty except for a stack of papers.

  Pulling the papers toward him, he began scanning them. Beckah watched him, but she said nothing. They were his father’s records, the notes that he made about each person that he healed, the same sort of notes that he had trained Alec to make. There was nothing unusual, and in fact, they were fairly straightforward illnesses that his father had been treating. The medicines that he had used were also quite common, nothing that would lead to any sort of complication from his own exposure.

  “Do you see anything?” Beckah asked.

  “I don’t see anything that would explain what happened to him. He was busy. I can see that from the pages here. There had to have been multiple people who came through here over the last few days, and most of them appeared to have been from the Arrend section.”