4
2 months, 18 days
So alive or dead, Lucas Everington will be remaining under our protection. Just in case anyone was wondering.
Margaret Verrall—blog post, ‘The Impatient Gardener’
His good mood already flagging, Bane stayed determinedly in bed the following morning. He’d be grumpy with nerves by the time I got back from Mass, but what could I do?
“How are things?” asked Jon, once we were in the lift.
“Oh, fine. What are you up to, today?”
“I’ll be going down to the library archives again, trying to find Braille books. The archive caretaker’s sure there must be some—the old records give some idea where to start, but it’s so long since they’ve had time to organize things properly, pretty much the only thing to do is hunt for them.”
Braille, like so many other inventions to help the disabled, had fallen into disuse after Sorting was brought in. With an end to Sorting in sight (please, Lord?) Jon felt it was time to bring such things back into the public eye. “But…you don’t know Braille, do you?” I couldn’t help saying.
He pulled a face. “Never had a chance to learn. But hopefully there’ll be a ‘learn Braille’ book. Or I’ll have to treat it as a code to be cracked.”
“Well, good luck,” I said, as we stepped into St. Peter’s.
“Has he woken up yet?” I asked Doctor Frederick, as I took a peep through the observation window at the sleeping figure after Mass.
“No, there’s a mild sedative in the drip to discourage it. The patient has no energy to spare on anything other than breathing and keeping his heart beating. He’s picking up a little now, so we may withdraw the sedation soon.”
“Uh-huh.” The feeding tube was clearly doing its work. Speaking of work…
I went back to the apartment.
“Where have you—” Bane broke off mid-sentence and chewed his lip.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to rephrase that? It would make it so much more pleasant to be around you.” I was insisting on a little more respect after my chat with Pope Cornelius.
“Sorry, Margo,” he muttered. Not sullenly. Just…guiltily. Or what would’ve been guiltily if there’d been even a spark of energy in it. He was down again. More down.
“Well, have you had breakfast?”
“No. Jon’s on breakfast duty in the cafeteria.”
“Right.” I headed for the kitchenette. “You know, I don’t know why you’re not on that rotation, come to think of it.”
His bitter bark of laughter followed me, though he didn’t. “Me? What would I do, Margo?”
“They seem to keep Jon busy enough. You could’ve gone along with him. At least you wouldn’t have had to wait to eat.”
“Well, pardon me for waiting until you got back so we could eat together.”
“That’s not why you’re here,” I said firmly around the doorframe. “You just didn’t want to go to the cafeteria.”
“And that’s illegal, is it?”
“It’s not that scary, y’know.”
“Oh? And what the heck do you know about it?”
I couldn’t argue with that one, and he knew it. I’d tried to join in a few of Jon’s lessons in independent living as a blind person, but even with a handkerchief tied over my eyes, I couldn’t even begin to do half the things. Which was in itself proof of how far Bane had already come, but try telling him that.
Two mugs of coffee, two bowls, two spoons, a box of cereals, and a jug of milk on a tray, and I went back into the living room, transferred it all to the table. “There’s cereal if you want it.”
When Bane dragged himself off the sofa and found his way to the table, sighing as though being forced to walk the plank, I added, “I said if you want it.”
“That’s what you said.” He groped for the cereal box. “But if I didn’t come and start eating, you’d be on at me fast enough, wouldn’t you?”
“Obviously if you didn’t eat anything I’d be worried,” I said stiffly.
I’d basically just conceded the point but he didn’t even smirk, gloomily guiding cereals into his bowl with a cupped hand. Smothering a sigh of my own, I poured milk onto mine. I’d just got a spoonful raised to my lips when there was a wild hammering on the door.
“Oh, now what?” I went to look through the peephole—Jon, beaming. I opened the door.
Jon found my hands at once. “Margo, you won’t believe it!”
“I expect I will, but come in and tell Bane too.”
“Right… Bane, you won’t believe it!”
Bane took the Lord’s name in vain and ignored the swipe I landed on the top of his head. “What? You found a Braille book or something?”
“Huh? Well, actually, yes, I did find one right before Eduardo popped down to see me—just the one… But it’s my parents—they’ve found them. They’re safe!”
2 months, 14 days
“[Married love] is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment.”
Pope Paul VI, ‘Humanae Vitae’—quoted in a blog post on ‘The Impatient Gardener’
If only Jon’s parents had known a bit more. They’d written the letter the moment they got to African soil, from the Moroccan immigration hall, even breaking off in the middle when it was their turn to be processed. Jon had immediately asked Eduardo if they could come over here and Eduardo had used that really dry tone of his and said, “That’s really what you want? At the moment.” And of course Jon had thought better of it.
As ever, a cold prickle ran down my spine at the thought of the first of July. But Jon was still walking around with a spring in his step—his parents would be safe and sound in a Free Town by now. Perhaps they were even at Kanju with Jane and Sarah and the others. Their next letter would tell us—or they might be able to call.
I’d spoken to the others on the phone a few times since we got back to the Vatican, and they were still happy, loving adult life and their jobs. Jane had already left the weaving shed and joined the town police force, whilst Sarah had celebrated being promoted to weaving on the high quality looms by buying another ‘hamster,’ and was now running her own little business selling baby Desert Jerboas…
But, as it had constantly for the last few days, my mind returned to one particular paragraph of the letter: “We set off with George and Elizabeth Verrall, as planned, but we split up a week or two later. Four of us was just too great a strain on local Underground networks.”
In other words, they didn’t know anything. The EuroGov, or more specifically, Reginald Hill, the hard-faced, soft-voiced Minister for Internal Affairs, had tried to blackmail me back when we were on Gozo, even sending me a box supposedly containing the ashes of one of my parents, but all the evidence—or the lack thereof—suggested it had been a bluff…
Bane drew me from my thoughts by asking, “How’s Everington, by the way?” Trying to distract himself from the whole, going to the cafeteria for breakfast ordeal?
“Doctor Frederick was talking about trying to wake him up,” I said, “but I don’t know how it’s going. I didn’t go along yesterday, I was on cafeteria duty.”
“Oh, right. Don’t know what we’re going to do with him, if he does recover.”
“Not a lot, I imagine. He’s gaga, isn’t he?”
“True. S’pose we could walk him on the Vatican wall each day—y’know, nah, nah, na, nah, nah.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s the best idea you’ve ever had,” said Jon dryly. “Us being in a position of such military superiority and all that.”
Bane shrugged, trying to look nonchalant as we headed off the familiar route between apartment and basilica—he’d ventured out to Mass this morning, so I’d pressed my advantage and persuaded him to come along to breakfast.
No one in the cafeteria bothered him, and he was actually in quite a good mood when we arrived back home. But he’d have forgotten by tomorrow. Forgotten he always enjoyed it once he got there.
I opened my laptop and a metaphorical avalanche of earmarked comments and blog posts poured out and swallowed me…
“They should give you a pay raise.” A mutter from Bane. “Or at least that Divine Office book you want so much.”
“Huh?” I blinked and looked at the clock. Oh. I’d not said a word to him for three hours. I turned slightly to face him and answered jokingly, “Come on, we have a comfortable home, ample food, access to a store for whatever else we need, and great job satisfaction. How much better paid do we need to be?”
“We? And what’s my job description: official dead weight?” He spoke bitterly, but worse was the despair creeping into his voice.
I turned right away from the computer. “As far as I’m concerned, you have the most important job in this place.”
“Job? What job? How many blind commando teams have you seen lately? Even on the big screen! Mr. Useless, that’s all I am.”
I went to sit beside him. Didn’t hug him, that might’ve been coddling. Did venture to take his hands in mine. “The very most important job, Bane. More important than anyone else. You’re my husband.”
“Oh God…” He turned his head away in something so close to physical pain that I didn’t have the heart to cuff his tousled hair for taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Don’t say that. Anything but that.”
“Why anything but that?” I couldn’t keep the hurt from my voice.
“Because I’m making such a mess of it, aren’t I? And don’t try and tell me I’m not, ’cause I know I am. S’like Beauty and the flaming Beast. I don’t know how you put up with me.”
I did hug him now. “Because I love you, silly,” I whispered into his neck. His arms snaked around me in return and he sighed into my hair, remaining still in my arms. Was he convinced? Lord, if only we—
Ring-ring. Ring-ring.
Curses!
I eased reluctantly from the first out-of-bed cuddle we’d had for weeks and went to answer it. “Yes?”
“Margaret? It’s Eduardo.”
“Are we being invaded?” The sarcastic words escaped.
“No.” Unperturbed. If I was going to snap at an innocent party, I’d chosen the right one. “We could use your help at the hospital, that’s all.”
What the…? “I’m not that good a nurse!”
“No, it’s Everington. They’ve had him awake a few times but he just goes crazy and pulls out the feeding tube. They can’t reason with him—he doesn’t even seem to know they’re speaking to him. Doctor Frederick tried to ditch the feeding tube and hand feed him—but he won’t touch a bite. Just cowers away like they’re going to eat him. They don’t know what to do. But Jack seems to think the man might listen to you, for some reason?” Eduardo made that a question.
I had told him to say ‘sanctuary’ and he had obeyed. I could see Unicorn’s reasoning, but…not convinced.
“Well…all right, I’m coming.” I put down the phone with something close to a huff and looked glumly at Bane. “I’m sorry, I have to go to the hospital. Mr. Everington is causing some crisis that for some reason I’m apparently supposed to be able to solve. You can wish me luck with that.”
“Good luck, then,” he said dully.
I hurried to the hospital, half my mind on Bane—who I’d clearly failed to convince in any way that he was not-useless—and half on the only-partly-excavated avalanche. An anxious huddle waited outside Everington’s room. Nurse Poppy, clutching a dinner tray, Doctor Frederick, Eduardo, Doctor Carol, and several other hospital staff. Unicorn stood by the room door, clearly on guard, but his blue eyes turned my way when I approached.
“Oh, Margo,” exclaimed Nurse Poppy, “won’t you make him eat?”
I couldn’t help a slight snort of disbelief. Did she think I was a super-nanny to the mentally disturbed or something? Looking through the observation window, there was no discernible difference in the unmoving figure, except for the absence of the feeding tube.
“He’s still awake?” I asked doubtfully.
“According to the monitor,” said Doctor Frederick. “He doesn’t let on, it’s true.”
“Have you tried simply leaving it on the bedside table? Would he be strong enough to eat it by himself?”
“He’s strong enough to swipe it across the room as soon as we’ve gone.”
“Oh.” How many meals had they got through? “Well, I’ll give it a go, but I don’t imagine I’ll have any better luck.” I took the tray from Poppy and slipped into the room, sat in the chair by the bed and put the meal on my knees. Tried to forget the audience.
“Mr. Everington? Mr. Everington?” Not a flicker. He could have been unconscious—or even dead. Tentatively, I tried, “Lucas…?” Did his eyelids twitch, just the tiniest bit? Strange to even think of him by his first name, like he was just someone else. “Lucas? It’s Margaret. Margaret Verrall.” Did he raise his eyelids just a fraction, to peep at me?
He didn’t seem frightened, anyway, so I pressed on. “I’ve brought you some nice cottage pie. You only get cottage pie here when the British cooks are on duty. D’you want some?”
Definitely peeping now, a thin, eyelash-shrouded gap visible between his lids. Hungry? I held out a spoonful of cottage pie invitingly—only to start and almost drop it as he recoiled violently. Maybe not.
“It’s perfectly safe. See?” No hardship to pop the spoonful in my own mouth; it was lunchtime and I was hungry. “Umm, lovely. Don’t you want some?” I advanced a spoonful determinedly towards his mouth, hoping to entice him with the smell—he almost fell out the other side of the bed, and I withdrew it again hastily. What could I do? It wasn’t me he was scared of, was it? It was the food.
Really? Could he just be scared of me reaching towards him? I put the plate on the bedside table, and he relaxed into a safer, more central position on the bed. Went back to peeping at me between his eyelashes and otherwise playing dead. When I reached out under the pretext of drawing the blanket back up over him, he didn’t move a muscle.
A food phobia? Perhaps he just didn’t like being offered stuff. Was there anything else to try? “Lucas Everington,” I said sternly, “eat your lunch at once.”
His eyes widened slightly, in…anguish? Then he closed them tight and turned his face away. So much for Unicorn’s theory. Any other bright ideas, Margo?
I ate the meal myself. Occasionally offering him some, but only verbally. Even that made him twitch, so I wasn’t too surprised when the food was gone and he’d accepted none of it—but at least I’d given him the clearest possible demonstration that there was nothing to be afraid of.
“Well, perhaps you’ll feel hungry later,” I said, by way of a goodbye. But I did look closely at his face before leaving.
“As you probably saw, no luck,” I said, as Poppy took the tray from me. “But it’s the food he’s scared of, not the people, in my opinion.”
“The food?” echoed Doctor Carol. “Why would he be scared of the food?”
“I’ve a nasty idea… Doctor Frederick, is there something wrong with his mouth?”
“It’s not damaged,” replied Doctor Frederick. “But there is a great deal of faint scarring on his lips and around his mouth, from repeated injuries of some kind. Perhaps minor burns or scalds.”
I bit my lip. “Then I dare say the Ministry for Internal Affairs could tell us why he’s scared of a harmless cottage pie!” And I called the Ministry a—appropriate—but less than polite name.
Nurse Poppy looked faintly shocked. She’d not been on Gozo with us and had no doubt bought into the whole ‘Saint Margaret’ reputation that I’d acquired through my online persona—and perhaps even more from the sort of photos Eduardo liked to send to the press. Well, she’d have to get used to the real me.
Then her face crumpled in horror as she took in what I meant. From the slight downturn at the corner of Eduardo’s mouth, he’d already reached the same conclusion. And been sparing the medical staff’s delicate sensibilities? Oops.
“So, uh, what will you do?” I asked the doctors.
Doctor Frederick pulled a face. “We’ll have to sedate him once a day and put the feeding tube in for a time. But it’s not good for him.”
“The tube or the sedation,” agreed Doctor Carol grimly.
“But,” I frowned, “can anyone go four months without food?”
“Certainly not whilst walking across Europe,” said Doctor Frederick. “He must have been eating something. We’d better figure out what as quickly as we can.”
“Well, good luck. But I’ve got to go.” The avalanche would be renewing itself as we spoke.
I’d kind of hoped after the success of the January protests that my blogging workload might ease off a bit, but if anything it only seemed to increase. Or perhaps, with Bane now so much better, at least physically, I just felt there was more and more of it I ought to do myself, rather than leave to my prayer team. With what was at stake…it was going to be a long two months until the first of July.
2 months, 12 days
Torture is one of those things people often secretly feel isn’t really so utterly terrible so long as it’s done to bad people for good reasons.
So tell me: who gets to decide who is bad, and what is a good reason?
Margaret Verrall—blog post, ‘The Impatient Gardener’
“All right, I’m here.” I hurried into the hospital and took the lunch tray from Nurse Poppy. They persisted in sending me in with the man’s meals, as though I had some magic touch.
“At least he looks at you,” Doctor Frederick had said.
“Just barely!”
“Well, he doesn’t give any sign the rest of us exist. So in you go.”
In I went, my stomach rumbling. Only one meal on the tray. Putting two out just meant one wasted.
Mr. Everington looked no better. Satisfied the patient was emptying the glasses of water left on the bedside table, Doctor Frederick had now removed the last couple of external drips but the regular insertion of the feeding tube, though keeping him alive, was also rubbing his throat raw, and just one feed a day wasn’t enough to put weight on him.
“Hello, Lucas.” That name drew a response, if only a slightly startled flicker of the eyelids. “Look, here’s a nice baked potato and salad. I’ll certainly be happy to eat it if you don’t want it.” I sat down, picked up my fork and bowed my head to say grace. Looked up to find a skeletal hand creeping towards the plate. When my eyes widened it was snatched away again.
“It’s all right.” I hid my surprise under a smile. “It’s your food. Here, do you want it?” I slid the plate onto the bed beside him, rather expecting it to go flying across the room. A panicked swipe sent the potato rolling right off the bed—I just managed to catch the squidgy handful—he was already grabbing a lettuce leaf. He peered, sniffed like a rabbit and finally nibbled…then he was grabbing handfuls of salad and it was all gone in about fifteen seconds.
“Au naturel!” Of course, no baked potatoes and cottage pie lying around in the forest! “Did you like that? I’ll get you some more.”
Doctor Frederick was in the hospital corridor when I returned from the kitchen storerooms, the baked potato transferred to my stomach and the plate piled high with raw fruit and vegetables. I’d brushed dirt from carrots but left the bushy green bits on top, and lightly cracked the shells of nuts but left them in place. All very natural and untouched.
“What on earth?”
“Watch this,” I invited them, including today’s guard—Bumblebee—in my look. “I hope it’ll be worth watching, anyway.”
It was. The man almost leapt from the bed when he saw the plate. Fortunately for the monitor cable, I managed to set it down in his lap before he’d freed himself from the blankets. He tucked in with none of his earlier suspicion, and I left him munching like the world’s largest and skinniest rabbit, albeit a happy one.
“Could he have got here just on plants?”
“No.” Doctor Frederick was categorical. “Short of a miracle, he has to have had some better source of protein than that, at least now and then.”
Tell me about it. Bane, Jon and I had barely kept mobile after a month of limited protein, let alone none at all.
Doctor Frederick was thinking out loud. “But we tried plain steak the other day and plain chicken the day before that.”
“Acted like it was poison,” I agreed. “He must be craving protein, though.”
“Quite. We can’t stop the tube feeding until he’ll eat it by himself. Oh…Poppy, Carol, come and look at this…”
Soon everyone clustered around, watching the man eat—I slipped off back to my computer.
But it niggled at me all day. He wouldn’t touch meat, and he wouldn’t have had access to lentils or beans or anything like that. But he’d been eating something.
I made sure to have a cup of tea with Bane mid-afternoon, since I’d be leaving him to eat with Jon again, and tried to pick his brains. But he just said “I don’t know” over and over, until I switched to worrying about him instead.
2 months, 11 days
Feeding the birds is also a form of prayer.
Pope Pius XII—quoted on ‘The Impatient Gardener’
Coo, coo. Tap, tap. Coo, coo.
Looking up from my screen, I tried to feel pleased rather than irritated. “Bane, you’ve got visitors.”
“Is there anything for them?” Bane asked apathetically. At least he asked.
“Crusts in the usual place.”
“Right.”
I let Bane fetch the crusts himself and open the window before going to join him. Time for a little break. The doves hopped straight onto his arm to take the bread, cooing gently. Some of the tension drained out of him as their blunt beaks tickled at his palms. “Don’t know how they can still fly,” he said, not for the first time. “I mean, they just go round all the best windows all day, don’t they?”
“There’s quite a lot of them, though…watch it, that’s a pigeon…” But Bane had shaken the bold interloper off. I made an impressed noise
“They sound different.” He looked slightly pleased with himself.
“Your ears are really getting good.” I stroked a dove’s soft white feathers with a finger. So nice to be able to enjoy animals’ company again. Right after our trek they hadn’t looked like anything other than—
I started, making the dove flutter over to Bane. “That’s it! I’ll be back in a bit, Bane.”
“What…?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Be back soon.”
I headed for the Vatican Gardens. Once large and wholly ornamental, judging from the old photographs, what was left of the ornamental part now doubled as a graveyard and the other half was a small farm. Antonio, a young lay Franciscan, managed it and did much of the work, but he was nowhere in sight—perhaps fortunately.
The hen coops were easy enough to locate, and I was soon hurrying down the main hospital corridor with a plump hen under my arm.
“Margo!” exclaimed Nurse Poppy. “You can’t bring that in here!”
Snail muttered, “Pourquoi?” and tried not to stare, as Doctor Frederick came over to see what had made Poppy yelp.
“It’s okay, Doctor Frederick; it’s just a little experiment,” I assured him. “It won’t be around for long.”
I went to Mr. Everington’s room and checked the external monitor screen. I’d learned to interpret the readings enough to know the man was indeed awake. Though playing as dead as usual. Could he be aware the ‘mirror’ was a one-way window?
Opening the door a crack, I pushed the bird through the gap and shut it again. Moved to the window to see if anything happened or if I was about to have a very red face. Looking perplexed, the two medical staff joined me and Snail’s head turned several degrees before he managed to overcome the distraction.
The chicken’s questioning clucks came over the little speaker as it stalked slowly forward, head stretched up as it peered around. But I wasn’t really watching the chicken. The thin figure in the bed had become motionless. The green eyes opened, fixed on the intruder. One skeletal hand slid under the pillow. Came out holding something long and silver.
“How the heck did he get a knife!” said Doctor Frederick, as Mr. Everington hefted the thing as though to get the weight.
Snail was suddenly peering in as well. “Qu'est-ce que…? Oh, a table knife.”
Table knife or not, a flick of the man’s hand and it flashed across the room…a thud and a strangled glurk attested to its adequacy as a weapon.
“Oh my God!” gasped Nurse Poppy, in a tone of shocked appeal.
“Eduardo’s not going to like this,” muttered Snail, mind clearly still on the knife.
Mr. Everington scrambled along the bed on hands and knees, yanked the monitor band from his wrist, tumbled to the floor and crawled the last few feet to where his catch lay twitching. Grabbing it, he ripped several handfuls of feathers from its breast and raised it to his mouth…
“See,” I said triumphantly. “I said he must be craving protein!”
Poppy made a weak, deflating sound and crumpled.