Chương 12: Chapter Twelve: Medicine, Trust, and Other Bitter Things

Hyde sat her in the chair beside the examination table, not on it, she noted, as the chair was easier to get into with one arm not working properly, and crouched to look at her arm first. He saw the haphazard bandaging she'd done in the marsh, and the dark line of blood dried into the cloth, and frowned.

"Shoulder first," she said.

"It's dislocated." He looked up at her.

"It'll keep getting worse while you look at the arm." Something passed across his expression. She wasn't certain what. Then he straightened and came around behind her without argument. His hands were careful and warm and she found a specific spot on the wallpaper to focus on, to be distracted by. A seam, slightly raised, third panel left of the window and… he set it. She did not make a sound. The pain arrived properly and her eyes watered and the world went white at the edges for a few seconds.

Alice breathed deeply. When he came back around and reached for his case, he paused very briefly beside the desk, where his journal sat open. He flipped it closed and looked at her.

"Your coat, Miss Darling," he said. She got it off with his help, which felt less like an indignity when in pain. The bite wound beneath was not pretty. She looked at it briefly before deciding to simply stare elsewhere. At Hyde, for example. Hyde looked at it longer than she expected. Not with alarm, either. With recognition. That was the thing about watching a person's face rather than their hands. Their hands told you what they were doing. Their face told you what they understood about what they were seeing.

He recognized these wounds. Not the same wounds she'd have expected a simple city doctor to know, although they were quite distinct. The shape of the damage was too deep, too irregular. It had a bruising pattern around the punctures that was not quite like a dog and not quite like anything she could easily explain. He looked at them with familiarity and frustration, as if surprised to see them where they were, not surprised by the damage itself. He's been out there, she thought. Or someone he knows has.

Alice let him work. The treatment was competent and thorough and unpleasant as medical care often was. The disinfection stung considerably, though he warned her before applying it. She appreciated that more than she let on. Alice felt pain just like anyone else, she had simply learned to not show any of it. People did not enjoy seeing someone in pain.

"Have you heard of the expression ' shy bairns get nowt'? He said all of a sudden.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"It means ' shy children get nothing,'" he explained, eyes unmoved from her wound, hands ever steady. Ah, the northern accent had thrown her off. She had been too quiet. Unfortunately, it was not in her nature to complain. Alice kept her eyes on his expression through all of it.

"I see." The silence continued even after he put down the disinfectant and bandages. She would have generally assumed she needed stitches, but he didn't seem in a hurry to bring out needle and thread. Instead, he passed her a small cup of something that smelled of aniseed and iron and a third thing she still hadn't identified but smelled familiar from the time she had spent in the surgery when she first woke up.

"Drink this." She did. It was still just as bitter as she remembered. He sat across from her with his own cup, tea, this time, not a tonic, and watched her with a conflicted look on his face, almost as if looking at her pained him in some way. Alice would have tried to figure out what it was but the warmth arrived faster than it should have and all of the light-headedness and nausea disappeared. She looked at the drink in her somewhat shocked.

This tonic was stronger than whatever she had felt the first time around. Vigour replenished. Acuity replenished.

Your attributes have leveled up. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. She almost turned to stare baffled at the system notification but she held back, for she couldn't do anything about it while being watched by another. Later. For now she sat in the chair and let the tonic do what tonics in this world apparently did and watched Hyde not-watch her and found it almost peaceful. The absence of imminent death was always, briefly, peaceful.

After a while spent in inner conflict, Hyde sighed and stood up. He went into his kitchenette and returned with a tray. He brought the food without asking. Cold meat, good bread, a hard-boiled egg. Alice ate without pretending not to be hungry, because she was beyond that point, whereas the ever polite Dr. Hyde pretended not to notice.

"Where," he said, eventually, "did you go, to end up like this?"

"The marsh," she answered.

"Yes." He turned his cup in both hands.

"But which part?"

"Reed beds. Northeastern section." It was not a lie. A small quiet. She waited it out.

"You went in deep," he said, as if tired of her amateurish subterfuge.

"Boggarts, at least, the higher leveled ones, do not appear in the areas close to the city.

"The foraging's better past the first waterway," she watched his face.

"Apparently."

"It is," he agreed, in the same way, making no comment on the fact that she came to him with a barely filled basket of dirty and squashed strawberries, most of which had fallen on the way here. Alice couldn't quite explain it, but she felt like his was the tone of someone who had given that exact answer before, from the other side of a very similar conversation.

"Miss Darling, you have all the time in the world. You do not have to push yourself so," he started gently.

"Did that work with you?" she interrupted him. Hyde looked at her for a long moment and took a sip of his tea.

"No, never."

"It is not bad advice," she admitted.

"Will you heed it?" he asked, an eyebrow raised in mock-surprise. Alice shook her head. He did not push further. She did not volunteer. The fire settled in the grate. The gas lamp was kept low, as usual; she had noticed this on her first visit. And outside, the street was quiet as it could only be in this timeline, no carts, no voices, only rain returning against the window and the distant double-beat of a night-watchman's bell.

"I always had difficulty asking for help when I was young," Hyde confessed out of nowhere. Alice tried not to give anything away, but the words felt harsh to hear.

"Is there anything," Hyde said, studying her, "I should actually know about." It was not quite a question. Alice looked at him, and he met her gaze for but a moment, before looking away as if giving her privacy to think her answer carefully.

"I don't know yet," she said a few minutes later. Which was true, and she watched his expression to see if it had made sense to him, and something settled in his face that said: yes, it did.

She left two hours later in a dry dress Hyde had produced from somewhere she hadn't asked about. Too long by two inches, fitted awkwardly at the waist, clearly not his and also clearly not recently purchased, which meant it had been here before she arrived and for purposes he wasn't going to explain unprompted. Her arm was dressed and splinted along the forearm. Her shoulder worked.

"Thank you again."

"It will be difficult to forage again until your wounds fully heal," he said and pushed a bag onto her good arm. She peeked into it and there were books inside. The top one read The Flora and Fauna of Britannian Marshland. Alice smiled, "I will see you next week, doctor."

The streets were quiet enough that her own footsteps were clear. No fog, for the rain had pressed it down, and the gas lamps threw clean yellow circles on the wet cobblestones. She walked with her good arm at her side and her bandaged arm held slightly across her body, keeping it still. She had borrowed a lantern from the old doctor, as she didn't want to fall prey to some demon in her condition.

On the way, she thought about the [Intimidation] skill she'd apparently created by standing next to a dead Marsh Boggart and telling a lesser one to go away. She had merely been extremely tired and extremely irritated, and the System had somehow decided to reward that utterly reckless response. She couldn't help but think that this whole thing… the System, the interface, the quests… did not just spontaneously form from the ether. Something created it.

And whatever did, they had their own biases, their own intentions and agendas. She couldn't help but read too much into the System as a result. Alice took the long way back. Not for any reason she'd have been able to name to anyone who asked. The long way took her down Greybell Lane before it turned onto Pell Street, which added perhaps four minutes and involved walking past the chandler's shop with its shutters drawn and the lantern above the door unlit. She was thinking about the first night. The alley.

The lamp post. The cold that had left her fingers all at once when the Flicker dispersed, and the warmth that hadn't quite come back before she heard them… footsteps, retreating and unhurried. Sweet dreams, dear girl. She had been one step from unconscious at the time, which was her excuse for putting it aside for so long. Should she have shared that with the doctor? Or with the Inspector from back then? Alice wasn't quite sure she had made the right choice, but she would not regret it.

However kind Hyde was, however gentle Mrs. Hatch, open-minded Nell, or helpful the police… Alice's trust wasn't won by kindness or cups of tea. With that thought, she arrived at the lodging house. The lamp above Mrs. Hatch's door was still lit. Alice had been very disciplined about not thinking about the attribute notification for the past two hours. She had kept it folded at the back of her attention through the treatment and the tonic and the walk and all of it. Later was now.

Alice stopped under the lamp, placed the book bag next to the steps, and finally looked. Attributes Vigour Lv. 4 (7/40) Acuity Lv. 7 (19/70) She stood there for a moment in the rain. Then she picked up the book bag and went inside.