Take one
Okay
You say you want a revelation
Yeah, I know
You deserve to know the truth
You tell me you need information
Yeah, I know
I’m just scared of what you’ll do
But now you know I’m not the good guy
And I guess you’d rather shut me out (down)

Do you think it’s gonna be
Okay?
Don’t know if you’re gonna be (okay)
Gods, I hope you’re gonna be (okay)

You say you need an explanation
Gods, I know
I just don’t know what to say
You tell me it’s my obligation
Gods, I know
I’m just tryin’ to find a way
But since it’s too painful to listen and understand
I’ll say I’ll do right by you any way I can

Do you think it’s gonna be (okay)
Don’t know if you’re gonna be (okay)
Gods, I hope you’re gonna be (okay)

You say there’s no justification
Gods, I know
I won’t try to change your mind
I’m offerin’ some compensation
Gods, you know?
And maybe you’ll forgive in time
But if you can’t find your way past the bad thing I did
I gotta remind you, we’re gonna hurt this poor kid

Do you think it’s gonna be (okay)
Don’t know if you’re gonna be (okay)
Gods, I hope you’re gonna be (okay)
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh no
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, no no…

The problem — well, one of many problems — with doing a touch-know was, when you divided the body into seven sections and every single one of them was running off-kilter and screaming for attention, it was damn near impossible to differentiate them.

Miss Parish, her materials teacher back at the abandoned warehouse that passed for a medical training centre, had called this problem, “the bear in the room.” Some dysfunctions are mice, tiny and quiet and not making much difference to a body’s physical performance. And some dysfunctions are bears — loud, obvious and destructive. But when you have a bear, it’s very hard to detect a mouse, and mice can be extremely freaking important.

For example: I’m sorry, I can’t tell if the cancer is back because you have a severe dust allergy and your immune system is going haywire. Load up on these antihistamines, I’ll have the orderlies in with the vacuum cleaner and we’ll try again in an hour.

Hyacinth easily grasped the crux of the matter: Oh, it’s like when you’ve done a shitton of drugs and they need to turn down the music because you can’t taste your drink!

Her classmates had looked at her funny. But Miss Parish laughed at her and said that was pretty darn close.

She needed to lower the volume on Mordecai’s broken arm, and broken everything else, so she could see it well enough to put it back together before it started to freeze. She could detect the bones trying to sort themselves out, demanding attention, oxygen and blood flow like everything else, and she couldn’t tell them to cut it the hell out and wait for her.

Coloured people are basically getting substandard care no matter where they go, she thought, examining the ingredients of the cough syrup so she could work around them as safely as possible. Why can’t I go to the pharmacy and buy a bottle of Bone Waity or Freeze-Freeze or whatever they’d call it? Where’s the research on this irritating business?

She paused, and her gaze drifted to the middle distance. “Anti-Freeze,” she muttered. “Some comedian in marketing would decide to call it Anti-Freeze and people would die. Maybe that’s why we don’t have that…”

“Auntie Hyacinth?” Erik’s voice said softly.

She glanced up at him. He was sitting up in a chair with a blanket in his lap and looked reasonably unscathed. He was probably traumatized all to hell, but his hair was only a little mussed. “Hey, kiddo. Do you have an emergency?”

Frowning, he pointed at his uncle on the couch.

“I know. I’m working on that. But unless there’s something worse than that wrong with you, I really need you to hold it for right now, okay?”

Erik winced. I almost killed six people just now, Auntie Hyacinth. Is that something wrong with me?

But he guessed that wasn’t as important. He nodded quietly.

John knelt down next to him and took hold of his hand, “Hey, we’re almost done. The bad part’s over. We’re just cleaning it up. As soon as your uncle’s okay to go, I’ll take you home.”

“We’re taking a taxi, you sadist,” Hyacinth said, without looking up from her doctor bag.

“I’ll call you a taxi,” John amended.

“I… need… a… hug,” Erik said.

John picked Erik up and sat in the chair with the boy in his lap. The bundle of child was hot, damp and shivery, like he’d been having nightmares but didn’t want to go back to sleep yet. “Erik, do you want a glass of water?” Well, it seemed reasonable, even if he couldn’t tuck the kid in and turn on a nightlight.

Erik shook his head and curled closer.

“Okay, yeah. Dumb. Sorry,” John said.

Jenny wandered over and put arms around his neck. “Not dumb,” she said softly.

“Jenny, leave big brother alone,” Tommy said. “He’s busy.”

John disentangled a hand and pet her head. “I got room for hugs, Tom. I don’t have anywhere else to be.” He shifted awkwardly and smiled. “I’m stuck here. You can put funny things on me if you want, Jen.”

“Don’t make me waste my good stickers, Johnny,” Jenny muttered against him.

“Okay,” John said.

“Hey, Mordecai,” Hyacinth said. “I’m looking for a vein on you, so if you’re at home, do me a favour and hold still, yeah?”

The red man lurched to life like a horror movie monster, but instead of Brains! he said, “The cough syrup had heroin in it!” and then he fell back and shut his eyes. “Ow.”

“I am aware,” Hyacinth said. “Jennifer also informs me you will not be needing a ‘cathy-car,’ so thanks for employing your damaged intellect in a valiant attempt to arrange your healthcare to your liking before your physician even gets here, you goddamn control freak. I knew you’d be all right as soon as the children started giving me instructions.”

She held up the bottle, not that he was looking. Maybe it just made her feel more professional. Doctoring, she suspected, was just performative self-confidence in a white coat. “Heroin’s third on the ingredients list, and however much that is, it’s not enough for me to see what I’m doing, let alone start moving things around, so we are switching you over to morphia like a jaded aristocrat and hoping for the best. I am not asking your permission.”

“Diane always said your brain has the best drugs,” Mordecai said, eyes closed and still. “But you have to fool it.”

“It’s cute how you think I have both the time and the inclination to keep track of all your dead friends, Mordecai,” Hyacinth said, measuring against the glow of the lamp.

He blinked open his eyes and looked sad at her. Not irritated or sarcastic, just sad. Sad with multiple missing teeth.

Her sour expression positively curdled. “That’s no fair making me feel guilty. You have your maladaptive coping mechanisms and I have mine, you weird, stupid man. I hurt you because you deserve it for scaring the hell out of me like this all the time. Can you make a fist with this hand? I’m trying to fool your brain with pharmacology and a hypodermic needle.”

He didn’t even flinch.

◈◈◈

She did the arm first. He was out enough to keep still for her but not enough to keep quiet. She didn’t like to give him any more, due to the uncertain ratio of opiates in the cough syrup. Erik started to cry, and she didn’t like to quit to address him either. Reduction was damn complicated — especially when you weren’t technically an orthopaedist and were more of a hobbyist — and damn painful, and every instant she spent going “there, there” would make it go on longer.

Someone started to sing quietly. She noted it and discarded it as irrelevant. For the sake of speed, she gave in and nailed down a stubborn fragment with a piece of literal nail she had in her bag. More metal would hurt him, but not as much as healing crooked and either having another break or staying that way for the rest of his life. At least this way the arm would be straight — if a little bit weaker just there and maybe sore when it rained.

She wrapped him in gauze, and then plaster bandages up to the elbow. It hardened when she told it to, following the directions on the package (“2. Trace a legible pentagram as centrally as possible…” Seriously? Shall I wave a dead chicken over it while I’m at it?). Magic was handy that way. She had a linen triangular bandage that would serve as a sling.

She straightened his nose almost as an afterthought. She preferred its original configuration and it would heal faster with the bones lined up. He didn’t need any stitches and he’d already stopped bleeding. Coloured people were handy that way. The concussion was going to take a little more time, but it wasn’t as bad as whatever Milo had done to himself. He’d just be weird and stupid with a headache for a while.

When she was done with his head, she pulled off the first shirt he was wearing, cut off the second one, and tried to sort out what was annoying gears number three and four in his torso.

The ragged gold scar on his chest gleamed subtly in the light.

No hemorrhaging, no organ failure. A lot of bruising and some cracked ribs, but none that were jagged enough to require her attention. She decided against bandaging his middle, he had a hard enough time breathing. There was a broken bond in his left lung that she regarded with a sigh. It was one of the five she’d been unable to expand while Auntie Enora was helping her, and she couldn’t fix it nicely like that now.

“John, do you have…” She paused. “No, I know you do, she had it remade, I saw her with it. John,” she continued, “if you can steal your mother’s sea turtle pin for me, I’d be much obliged. And if she lets me, I’ll come back and fix it for her myself, okay?”

John stopped singing to say, “Tommy, can you get it? I’m kind of nailed down. We won’t tell mom.”

She heard running feet on a staircase, up then down, and the object was placed in her hand. Ten karat, just like before. “Thanks. You kids are great. I’m going to buy you all ice cream or stickers or whatever you want. Assuming I have money. I might need to give you a rain cheque…”

She took as little as possible. More metal was more pain, and Mordecai didn’t need that now. And maybe Mrs. Green-Tara wouldn’t notice her turtle had become a partial amputee. Tommy took it from her and put it back in the jewellery box, mixing up the general disarray to hide it.

Hyacinth sat back and surveyed her handiwork. Her back hurt. Her hands hurt, and she flexed them with a dissatisfied groan. The palms were white and dusty with dry plaster.

He looked like an aerial view of San Rosille after the siege. Maybe three months after, when they were finished paving over the canal with the dead bodies but they hadn’t filled in all the craters yet. Both his eyes were bruised and swollen and there was a cut on his forehead with plenty of bruising around it but no fractures behind it. She knew she’d straightened out his nose, it was just hard to tell from the outside. He was going to need a couple days of ice before it looked like anything approaching functional.

They’d clearly gone after his face, they just weren’t bright enough to employ any rings or brass knuckles.

This is personal, she thought. You made it personal, didn’t you? You jackass. You weren’t happy just being kicked in the head by a street gang, you made some smart remark and made it personal. Idiot.

“John, I want to wait until he’s okay to walk down your stairs,” she said. “There’s no stretcher and we’re going to hurt him more if we try to carry him. We can help him, but I don’t want to pick him up and carry him. Is that going to be okay?”

“Do you want to stay the night?” he asked her.

“I don’t think your mom would be very happy with that.”

“She’s not happy now,” he said weakly. “She’s not really a happy person, Hyacinth.”

Erik picked up his head. His metal eye whirred and adjusted. He had the wrinkles of John’s shirt (really Milo’s shirt) engraved in his cheek. “I wanna go home,” he said. He sobbed once.

Hyacinth nodded. “We’re going home, hon. It’s just a little longer. Can I see you? I think I want to give you some pills.”

“I like the cough syrup,” Erik said. He looked away and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Is that what heroin is like?”

She had her hand on his forehead and was trying to decide if his pulse was too rapid or just irregular. “Like what, hon?”

“A hug and then you can sleep. Even if it’s really bad, it’s better enough so you can sleep.”

“It depends how you have it,” Hyacinth said.

Mordecai came up just enough to realize: Oh, gods, Hyacinth is talking to Erik about drugs…

Followed by: I can’t right now. I can’t. I can’t.

I’ll fix it later… he thought, fading. Unconsciousness piled up like drifts of soft snow.

“…and there are powders,” she said. “The needle is probably the most intense, but a lot of it depends on you too. A lot of people just don’t like it, they don’t like feeling numb. And if you’re in pain, you’ll like the part where there’s less pain, but you won’t have any fun with it. I think that’s about where you are, kid. Pain eats your high. It’s just relieved and then exhausted. People with chronic pain don’t even really get tired, they just get functional.”

“Is that how come Seth can teach the school and nobody notices?”

She removed her hand and pawed into her bag. “I think he probably has a tolerance too, but you might be right about that.”

Erik sobbed and pressed his hand over his eyes. “I… think… killing… people… hurt… him… and… it’s… like… that… forever…”

Hyacinth had filled a water glass and she gave him a sip right away, like he had hiccups. “That might be, hon, but please try not to think about it. They tell you more stuff like that when you think about it. Your uncle is going to heal and get better and when we finally get that cast off, we’re all going to the beach and eat hot dogs, okay? How many hot dogs you think you can eat?”

“Don’t… know…”

“Here, hon, take these…”

He frowned at the two pills in her hand and then looked pained at her. “Will… I… be… like… Seth?”

She blew out a breath that was almost a laugh and covered it. “From liking a spoonful of cough syrup that knocked you out when you thought someone you loved might be dying? No, hon. That was medicine. If you ever get messed up enough that you start wanting to be numb recreationally, we’ll talk.”

She took his hand, turned it over, and pressed the pills into the palm, “In the meantime, this is aspirin for the tension headache, and this is a shitty herbal supplement with valerian and chamomile — because I’ll need to get you up in a little to go home, and your Auntie Hyacinth believes in the placebo effect.”

“What’s that?” he said.

“Something that works better when you don’t ask questions about it. Seriously.” She held up her hand as if swearing in court. “Trust me?”

He was too tired not to. He took the pills and drank all the water and tried to go back to sleep.

◈◈◈

He had been aware for some time that someone was singing. Something about heroes and ghosts. His brain was disorganized enough to supply the title of the song before giving him any information about where he was or what the hell was happening.

“Wish You Were Here.” Pink Floyd.

He opened his eyes and made out the blurry figure of a young man in a high-backed chair with his head bowed. There were two tired-looking children sitting in his lap, clinging to him, and a third on the floor, leaning against the chair.

“Who are you?” Mordecai said.

“Huh?” The young man brought his head up and the kids looked over. Mordecai identified Erik as one of the lap-sitters and experienced relief first, then puzzlement. Erik didn’t hang on strangers like that no matter how unhappy he was.

“I’m John,” the young man said.

“John, that is getting less and less useful every time you say it.” He tried to sit up and Hyacinth grabbed him and helped him. She had been sitting on the floor next to the couch. “Ah… Erik… Where did you find this person?”

“Called him,” Erik said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t mean don’t call a real human being. I’m glad you did.” He shook his head. “I’m just trying to think…”

“Please stop,” Hyacinth said. “It’s very amusing, but that’s not what we need from you right now.”

He turned and blinked at her from an uncomfortably near distance. He was scared if he tried to lean away he might fall over. She smelled like hot metal and stale coffee. “What do you need?”

“Consciousness and the ability to navigate stairs with assistance. I don’t care if you think it’s 1354 and you’re Queen of the May.”

“Well, I don’t know if I can give you that yet and I’m in no shape for a coronation so will you let me do the thinking while we wait?”

She released him against the back of the couch and flicked a dismissive hand in his face. “Whatever you want, just try to stay awake this time.”

Mordecai regarded John. “I have a vague recollection of you scraping me off the street, but where did you come from?”

“The store,” John said.

“Were you on a shelf in a box labelled ‘helpful person’ or what?”

John wasn’t sure whether this was a joke he didn’t get or an indication Erik’s uncle wasn’t ready for stairs yet. His borderline concern didn’t look any different from the usual confusion. “Uh, no…?”

“I know him,” Erik said. “We go to the movies and hang out. Auntie Hyacinth fixed him and he brought us paint for the house, and ice cream one time. He’s my friend. I have to call him before I come over or we have to go somewhere else because he has a dog.” He sat back. “John, what happened to Argos?”

“I traded him to Mr. Patel for the truck,” John said. He laughed weakly. “I guess he’s got a hostage if he wants me to pay him gas money or something.”

Mordecai dropped his head and shook it. “No, I… I’m sorry. I remember painting the house…” He looked up with a pained smile. It was thin, but the empty spaces were discernible, like dots in Morse code. “This is me, isn’t it? I still can’t remember what movie we saw this afternoon. I’m trying to logic my way out of a concussion and it doesn’t work that way.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever run into each other,” Hyacinth muttered, gazing aside. “How extremely funny and coincidental. Let’s talk about elephants or potato chips now. Did you know the peanut is actually a legume? John, why don’t you go call that taxi while we try to work out what movie Mordecai saw this afternoon? Did it have cowboys in it?”

Mordecai frowned at her. “Hyacinth, I’m pretty sure you’re being incoherent to mess with me and I want you to quit it. I’m just screwed up enough that I’m not sure and I don’t like that. I’m sorry I scared you, but you don’t have to lash out all the time.”

“Yes!” she cried. She threw up her hands like an explosion of party streamers. “Let’s psychoanalyze my many obvious faults!”

He mistook her desperation for sarcasm (perhaps understandably) and turned his head aside. “I’m sorry. It’s what I do. I’m on automatic.”

John deposited Erik on the couch on his way to order a taxi from the phone downstairs.

Erik shied away from his uncle’s broken arm, then curled up and carefully laid his head in his lap. “It was a double feature because it’s the weekend,” he said softly. “Rear Window and Harvey, with the invisible rabbit. The cartoon was Puff the Magic Dragon and the music reel was those two guys playing ’cello all weird. Iliodario put more tariffs on us and you had to explain what those are. I still don’t get it so I’m pretending it’s a kind of pancake. Are you gonna forget me?”

Mordecai felt dampness on the leg of his trousers… which did not appear to be his trousers. Okay, he’d sort that out later. He put his hand on Erik’s head and stroked gently. “No, dear one. It’s not like that. I’m a little mixed up, that’s all. It’s like when I fell in the kitchen and I couldn’t teach you how to do chopsticks. I remember the important stuff.” He leaned down with a smile — a careful one that did not involve teeth — and Erik turned to look up at him. “And I remembered the chopsticks eventually, didn’t I?”

Erik nodded.

“Hey, Mister, can we sign your cast?” the little girl said.

“Jenny!” said the boy — the other boy, probably her brother.

The girl planted her hands on her hips and said, “What? Johnny’s getting a taxi and we’re gonna miss our chance!”

“It’s all right,” Mordecai said. “You let me use your bathroom and ruin your couch, it’s the least I can do. Just don’t make me take it out of the sling.”

Jenny clapped her hands, declared, “I’ll get my crayons!” and ran up the stairs. “You were really nice and fun,” she called down. “I’m gonna give you one of my good stickers! Do you want a unicorn or an ice cream soda?”

“You pick!” Mordecai said. This didn’t sound like a sticker sheet that would have anything on it a fifty-eight-year-old man would find amusing. They didn’t make stickers for vicious sarcasm or brownies with drugs in them.

She brought the sheet back with her and she was peeling off the ice cream soda when he actually did see something on it that amused him. “Oh, wait. I like that one. Can I have that one?”

“The pink poodle?”

“Please.”

It was printed on shiny rainbow foil and had beady little black eyes and a sweater. Its smile was a white triangle that was probably supposed to make it look personable and came off as more of a determined grin. Jenny proudly affixed it to the white plaster just above the wrist and then went after her crayons.

“Do you know what a totem is — Jenny, was it?”

She nodded. “Jenny, and nope!”

“Hmm.” He leaned back slightly to examine the foil in the light. “Let’s just say we have similar interests.”

She snickered. “You’re weird. You should come visit us more.”

“If I can get past your mother, I might.”

“I’d like that,” Erik said, but with a melancholy his uncle found perplexing. “Jenny, can I have a sticker?”

“One,” she said sternly. “You pick.”

He picked the ice cream soda. She’d been taking it off anyway and now it wasn’t lined up with the edges like it was supposed to be. He felt sorry for it.

She put it on his nose. He removed it with a weak laugh and put it on his shirt pocket.

Erik wasn’t interested in decorating his uncle, which Mordecai thought was cause for concern but understandable. There was plenty of white space left under the sling if he felt like it later.

Tom was old enough to be uncomfortable with the situation and show some restraint, he apologetically did three letters in neat cursive and then wandered into the kitchen area. It sounded like he was doing dishes. Jenny was a student of the baroque school and felt empty spaces were crying out for embellishment. She wrote her name in large, scraggly capitals and then started doing flowers and panda bears.

Mordecai shut his eyes, leaned back against the couch, and allowed it without comment. It wasn’t like he was going to be running around playing violin like this anyway. As long as he was stuck in the house being irritable and bored, he might as well look interesting, like a decorative vase.

He felt a familiar heat that was not at all friendly, his abusive boyfriend who always showed up on the porch with flowers, no matter how many times he changed his address. The pain didn’t signify much, not yet, but he supposed it would outstrip the broken arm and the broken ribs at some point this evening. Opiates didn’t work on this pain.

Hyacinth had put more metal in him. Damn it, this was what happened when your personal physician got her training in an abandoned warehouse and only knew how to do one thing. Chlorine gas? Metal! Double pneumonia? Metal! Broken arm? Hmm, maybe not metal…? Nah, that’s crazy talk! Metal, metal, metal! Woo!

She was like an enormous toddler who wouldn’t eat anything without ketchup on it.

The enormous toddler nudged him and said, “Don’t go back to sleep, damn it. I don’t want to carry you down those stairs. Your ribs will thank you.”

“If you want me coherent enough for stairs, we better go soon,” he muttered, wary of Erik’s proximity. “I don’t know if we’re going to make it home with my brain working.”

“I don’t care about incoherent, I can drive you when you’re incoherent,” she replied, not softly enough. “I just want conscious. After we get you in the taxi, I don’t even need conscious. I got people at home who can tuck you into bed with their arcane powers.”

Mordecai pictured the General declining to assist and telling Maggie to practice levitation spells instead, followed in short order by his unconscious body being slammed repeatedly into a wall. “Please try to wake me up first,” he said. “Give me a chance. I’ve had enough damage today.”

Hyacinth snickered. “I won’t let Maggie do it.”

John cleared his throat a couple steps from the top of the stairs. “They said ten minutes. Let me get out of Milo’s shirt and you can give it back to him…”

“I’m not done with my unicorn!” Jenny cried, scribbling frantically.

◈◈◈

In Hyacinth’s medical opinion, the unicorn was finished when John came out of his bedroom with Milo’s folded shirt. (“He’ll be fine. Unicorns don’t need four legs, they know magic.”) Mordecai was starting to fade again, and while she could drive him while he was incoherent, she didn’t like to do that in front of Erik. It was embarrassing for both of them.

Personally, she’d given up on being embarrassed a long time ago. It just got in the way. Maintenancing and operating your own body was a life-long study in humiliation, let alone other people’s. She’d seen some shit. Often literal shit.

She thought Mordecai could handle it, but Erik was eight and he’d just been through hell. She let him help, he liked having something to do, and she told Tommy and Jenny to go back to bed before their mother got suspicious.

Then it was time to negotiate a broken man with an ever-increasing fever down a flight of stairs that were barely wide enough for two people to stand next to each other, let alone four. Hyacinth went in front, John squeezed next to him with an arm around him, and Erik had to do his helping from behind, where there was the least danger of anyone falling on him.

“I’m dizzy,” Mordecai said, regarding the steep incline before him. “I’m really sorry. Do I have to have this blanket?”

“Yes,” said Hyacinth. She went down another step without looking back. She didn’t want to mess around with his arm to get him into a shirt, so he had to have a blanket. She didn’t care how hot he was, it was cold outside.

“I think I’m developing a phobia of people wrapping me in blankets, but I’m not sure. I’ll take it under consideration.” He gave a weak laugh which turned into a groan. “I’m really sorry. I think I said that. You’ve been very kind. Your whole family. Please don’t drop me.”

Hyacinth did not reply. She knew he wasn’t talking to her the instant he said, very kind.

“It’s okay,” John said. “I’m better at hauling things around than… um… I don’t know. Stuff.”

“I’m not good at stuff right now either. I’m babbling. This hurts and I’m scared. Do you like Pink Floyd, John?”

“Is that a dessert or a person?”

Mordecai stopped walking and Hyacinth sighed. “That, uh, that is a band,” he said. “I think. You were singing ‘Wish You Were Here.’”

“He remembers music but not that we’re trying to get downstairs,” Hyacinth muttered. “The mind is a monkey. Keep going, Mordecai!”

“No, it’s for toothbrushes,” Mordecai replied. He shakily hazarded another step.

“My dad used to sing that,” John said. “I don’t know what I like.”

“He likes epic poetry!” Hyacinth volunteered.

Mordecai abandoned an attempt to line up the generations as too complicated for right now. “Is your dad, uh,” he said. “Not here…?” There were four toothbrushes in the monkey. He didn’t have a whole lot of context for that, but there was definitely a monkey with four toothbrushes. Two thrift-store-painting children, plus one nice person who gave me his pants, plus one woman who’s pissed about the couch equals no dad. Right…?

“A fever, a broken arm and a staircase, and he still thinks he can do tact,” Hyacinth muttered.

“No. It was the war,” John said. “This is his store. Well, I mean, now it’s my store… Technically.”

“I’m sure it’s very nice. I can’t remember the store part. Your bathroom was extremely sparkly. I’m sorry I threw up on your newspapers.”

“It’s okay, we get new ones in the morning.”

“That sounds familiar, I think I must’ve said that before. John, I…” He had stopped again. “I must be really annoying right now, but I honestly can’t remember. How did you say you know Erik?”

“I kicked him, Mr. Eidel,” John said.

Hyacinth made a noise like the transmission falling out of that truck when you braked without popping the clutch, and froze up at the bottom of the stairs.

“He needed help and I didn’t help him. I hurt him,” John said. “I thought we should say we didn’t know you when the police brought us in. I thought you’d been through enough. Ed didn’t like it, but he went along, then we weren’t friends anymore and I kind of lost track of him.

“But Miss Hyacinth needed paint, so I brought that, and then she needed a violin. The gods told Erik about what happened and for some reason he decided to forgive me about it so now we go to the movies sometimes. I don’t understand it myself, but he called me and he needed help again so… I guess I screwed up a little less this time.”

“What?” Mordecai said faintly.

It had to be… a mistake. He didn’t hear that right. Or he was back asleep on the couch and having a nightmare about how hard it would be to get down those stairs. One that didn’t even make any sense. Hyacinth was going to nudge him awake any second now and it’d all snap back to normal. He wouldn’t even remember this.

That guy with the matches who said he wanted to kill me… I’m trying to remember and I got it mixed up. John didn’t hurt Erik. That guy, Eddie…

Ed.

Ed didn’t like it.

Mom likes Rob better than Ed.

Johnny doesn’t have a moustache because his face is messed up, it would look weird.

Oh, my gods, that other guy I hit with the ’cello wasn’t there beating me up at all. He was stealing a truck so he could come save me.

He sat down on the stairs, slid down and collapsed on them, and choked out a sob. “This is real, isn’t it? This is happening and you’re not making it up to hurt me. This is a real thing.”

“Yes,” John said. He winced at the distant sound of Hyacinth dealing with his mom. (“Shut up you stupid woman! I want him out of this place as much as you do! Your idiot son has just punched him in the gut on the way to the goddamn taxi, so how about you give them a minute to sort it out?”) “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Mordecai said. His mouth did seem to be forming actual words at a reasonable volume, not just screaming. “If it really happened, why would you tell me it now?”

“I’m really bad at making things up. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I have to go get my mom before Hyacinth flattens her.”

John went down the stairs and Erik popped up in his place as if he were the next item in the dispenser. He crawled into his uncle’s lap and put both arms around his neck.

Mordecai felt tears in excess of his own, but he couldn’t even work out how to give a hug. His arm didn’t work. Nothing worked. He didn’t even have an aspic salad anymore. There was just pain. A ball of pain curled up in a narrow stairway with only the vaguest idea why.

Erik… That man hurt Erik. No.

He figured out which one of his arms worked and curled around Erik.

That man kept a person with a switchblade from killing me. He remembered the sound of the knife and shuddered. That man hurt Erik. No. No, no.

“Please… be… okay.” Erik’s voice. Very soft. And hurt, oh, gods, would he ever stop being hurt? “Please… Please…”

I need to… I have to…

I’m doing this wrong. I can’t, and I’m doing this wrong.

He was the person who knew what to do. Even if he didn’t, he could always come up with something. That was his job. Now Erik was crying and needing him and he had nothing to give. Nothing at all.

This is forever. This is going to hurt forever.

Oh, gods, I want to wake up now. This is too hard. Please.

“Mr. Eidel, the…”

“Get away from him, don’t touch him!” Mordecai shrieked.

Hyacinth swatted the shocked young gentleman on the shoulder and shoved him aside. “What in the hell did you expect him to do, you fool?”

John backed off and sat down on one of the stools at the counter. “I guess that,” he said softly. He put his elbows on the counter and his head in his hands.

Erik was outright bawling now and he refused to be removed from his uncle’s lap. Hyacinth sat on the stairs, slightly lower than them, and put a hand on Mordecai’s head to turn it. He was burning up, damp with sweat and tears. She wasn’t sure if she had a human being here or a kicked puppy she was trying to coax out from behind a trash can so she could fix it. “Mordecai, are you with me?” she said. “Look at me. Look. Focus. Where are you?”

“Hurt,” he said faintly. He gazed through her. “Wanna go home.”

Hyacinth leaned in and spoke evenly, “There is a taxi here and all I need to do is get you into it, then you can go home. I need you to get up and walk with me. Nothing else matters. This is really simple. Tiny children can do this. I know you can.”

He wanted it to be that simple and he wanted something to do so badly… something other than pain. But he recoiled from her touch and pulled Erik tighter against him. “No. Erik. Safe.”

Hyacinth changed tactics and laid her hand on Erik’s shoulder. He was all wet too. They were going to be damn lucky if they both didn’t catch colds. “Erik, honey, I really need you to help me with this. I know talking and singing are probably off the table, but can you walk with me and help me get your uncle into the taxi? I want us to go home.”

“My… fault!” Erik choked. “All…”

“Oh, gods, honey, please don’t do this now. I can’t knock you out, I need you functional or your uncle is going to flip out…”

John pulled back the beaded curtain and said, “Erik, it’s not your fault…”

Hyacinth drew back her arm with a snarling expression to punch him.

Erik pulled away from his uncle’s embrace, squeezed past Hyacinth and wrapped both arms around John’s waist. He wanted to say, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go because my uncle will never let me come back. And that’s my fault. That’s my fault for calling you instead of fixing it myself. I could’ve killed six bad people but I didn’t, and now my uncle is broken and I can’t have my friend anymore. “My… friend…” he managed stuffily.

John knelt down and hugged him. “I know. I know. I want to be friends too, but it’s not your fault if we can’t. I messed up. You’ve been really nice about it, but you can’t make what happened go away. That’s my fault and I’m really sorry, but we need to get you home now. That’s what’s important now. We can’t make your uncle deal with me right now. You guys both need to go home. Okay?”

Erik nodded against him.

“John…?” Mordecai was standing, leaning heavily against the wall with Hyacinth on the other side of him. He shut his eyes and looked away. “You’re right. I can’t deal with you right now. Erik, I… I need you not to come back here. I need you not to go to movies with someone who hurt you… And, and hide it so I don’t know.”

He shuddered and Hyacinth tightened her arm around his shoulders.

“But I won’t say forever. I can’t promise it won’t be because I can’t do this right now, but I won’t say it is.” He sobbed. “I know it’s not enough, but it’s all I can give you right now. Please don’t be hurt anymore. I can’t do all this and do that too.” He shook his head. “I’m not being fair. I’m not being fair to you. I don’t know how…”

Erik ran to him and put arms around him. Tight, too tight. He gasped but he didn’t cry out. It didn’t hurt as badly as scaring Erik would.

“Erik, come here,” Hyacinth said. “Hold his hand. Help him walk.” She didn’t say, You’re hurting him. Every once in a while she could manage some tact of her own.

John picked up her doctor bag and her purse and Milo’s folded shirt and followed after them. (The violin case was in the truck. He’d have to grab the violin case out of the truck while Hyacinth was getting Mr. Eidel in the taxi. He didn’t think any of these people were going to want to see him again after this.)

“My son is not an idiot,” Mrs. Green-Tara said coldly.

“He has terrible timing and so do you,” Hyacinth said, limping past.

◈◈◈

“We’re not supposed to let people ride in the front like that,” the taxi driver said.

“I’m not supposed to kick taxi drivers in the testicles,” Hyacinth growled. “Wanna try me and find out which one of us has less self-control?”

Mordecai turned slowly and lifted each leg into the taxi, and Erik crawled into his lap again.

Hyacinth slammed the door on them and got into the back with the violin. “217 Violena Street with as few bumps as possible, please. Do your best to ignore the nice gentleman if he screams.”