Lin felt old. Ten, twenty years ago, she would have shrugged off an injury like this and been back to work within a day or two like nothing had happened. Instead she was here, in hospital, obediently nodding while a bored looking nurse read off some doctor's instructions about not using her arm or tiring herself out.
She certainly felt tired. She lay tucked tightly under stiff starched sheets and cheap blankets and wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and sleep until somehow everything was better. The department had never suffered a blow like this, it was rare enough to lose one officer in combat, let alone five at once. And on her watch, while she was right in the room watching! Nothing like this ever happened when her mother was in charge.
Thinking of her mother made Lin wince, and she sat up, thoughts of sleep pushed from her mind. No, Toph Bei Fong never let anyone mess with her cops. She never let age or injury slow her down either. Lin was reminded of those last few years in the hospice, her mother cheerfully bossing around the other residents and figuring out how to keep enough contact with the dirt to see despite a stroke and increasing illness steadily chipping away at her mobility and circulation. She'd kept earthbending until the end, too, even when all she could do was wiggle the fingers on her left hand to make the cutlery dance.
Lin could almost hear her mother now, telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself and start doing something. But right now there wasn't anything she could do to find the Equalists that wasn't already being done, and her arm really did need time to heal. You've gotten so tied up in those metal apron strings of mine you've forgotten how to bend replied the voice of her mother, still strong in her head though she had been dead for years. Did Tenzin have this problem? Of course he did: if nothing else, Korra quite literally spoke with his father's voice, even if she wasn't much like Aang. There was no escaping the voices of either of their more famous parents. Especially when those parents were right.
Lin sighed and lay back down. She reached up with her good arm until she had a strong grip on the metal bar at the head of the bed. The floor was tile on concrete, lots of nice clays and impure metal girders, and she was able to see all the way to the ground floor. She spent a while watching people walk in and out of the building, trying to figure out who was nurse or doctor or patient, learning to distinguish the muffled shape of rubber tired wheelchairs and the strange asymmetry of people with prosthetics. At least it filled in the time.
Korra poked at the fuzzy brown-green skin of the lumps at the top of the basket Pema had prepared for Lin. "Are these...fruit?" she asked Tenzin.
"Yes," he said. "Actually, they're the national fruit of the earth kingdom, it's said that..."
Korra prodded at the basket some more, dislodging a lychee so that it bounced up and onto the floor before disappearing down a flight of stairs. "Wait, this is all fruit! Lin needs meat, maybe some curdled milk. What kind of person brings fruit to a..."
Tenzin frowned.
"Right...vegetarian. Well, I'm sure she'll love all this...fruit," said Korra, with a strained smile. She silently made a mental note to bring some seal jerky the next time she came to visit Lin. Seal jerky always made her feel stronger when she was healing from an injury, and she owed Lin.
"Fruit is traditional," said Tenzin. "Anyway, this should be her room. We should knock quietly, it's possible she's asleep. Lin doesn't like to admit to weakness, but she was quite badly injured. She needs her rest."
When there was no response to his knock Tenzin carefully started to open the door, trying to move it slowly so that the hinges didn't creak. He had just started to poke his head into the room when he staggered back with a loud cry. Korra tensed and shifted into a fighting pose. Had Equalists infiltrated the hospital and decided to take out Lin while she was weakened? That...that would suck.
"What are you doing?" shouted Tenzin, his face turning a now familiar shade of yelling-at-Meelo/Lin/Korra red.
"Training," replied Lin's voice calmly from behind the door. "Need to see what I can do with one arm until the other one heals."
Korra let out a relieved breath and stepped forward, only to barely avoid colliding with a long thin white shape stuck into the door at...roughly Tenzin's eye height. Uh huh.
Tenzin straightened himself up with a hmmph and walked in behind her. The room was pretty nice, much bigger then the crowded wards they'd passed on the way up. Lin was sitting up in a small bed wearing some remarkably drab pajamas. Korra wondered if the healers had had to pry her uniform off her by force.
Lin regarded them both impassively then made a gesture with one hand, her feet shifting a little under the blankets, and the white dart in the door flew back towards her, wobbling slightly before reshaping itself into a ceramic spoon, which she carefully placed beside her bed next to a bowl containing what looked like the remains of lunch.
"Is that fruit?" she said, looking at the basket in Korra's arms.
"Um. Yes," said Korra. "We thought we'd...visit you and see how you're doing."
"How thoughtful," said Lin. "But don't stay too long. You have important work you need to be doing." She gave Tenzin a small thin smile. "And don't forget, I need my rest."