Friday, 2 December, 2011

2.53pm

There were ducks.

In the wind, the water on the lake made odd passing patterns, moving back and forth as the ducks passed, unheeding, across it.

The thin young man with greasy dark hair just brushing his collar stood at the window of his second-floor room, staring out past the flailing branches of the ash tree at the lake.

It wasn't a private room. At times it felt fairly quiet, even peaceful, with the patchy sunlight coming in through the window like the touch of god, and the other occupants of the ward silent or sleeping in their beds. But there were always the other noises - the endless footsteps of passing staff just outside, the distant hum of machinery, and just on the edge of hearing the cries of a patient in a neighbouring ward. Despairing cries. Animal cries. Wordless, sad, frightened, and quite horrible.

The thin young man was concentrating very hard on those ducks, and not on those sounds.

Thursday 24 November 2011

9.28am, hospital staffroom

"He's been here six weeks. You're not telling me that in all that time we've not had a working ultrasound scanner?"

"Oh no, it's been fixed plenty of times. It's just that it happens whenever we've got him scheduled in, it seems to be on a day when it breaks down. Really unlucky for the poor guy. No, I tell a lie - one time we actually got him in a chair and took him up to radiology, but six emergency referrals came in at a pop and we had to bump him."

"Is he showing signs of improvement?"

"Physically, yes. There's still that mystery abdominal pain we were talking about and his circulation is really poor, but his heart seems strong and his bloods are negative."

"You're going to start talking about mentally, aren't you."

"Well, he does have this habit of talking about himself in the third person…"

Friday, 2 December 2011

2.54pm

Ducks were squabbling loudly out on the lake. The young man smiled: his long, scalded fingers reached down and around and fiddled with the white plastic tag affixed to his wrist, which had inscribed upon it a name that wasn't his and a medical number, as well as a date of birth he'd made up.

Everything, but absolutely everything in this place was horribly real, except for a couple of things - one of which was him. The pervading stink of human fear, despair and various bodily functions saturated everything, from the cellular blankets to the pastel walls. You couldn't get realer than that. The man whose cries could be heard from down the corridor had been crying out like that for days now. Admittedly it was getting worse. Loki dearly wanted to know precisely what it was he was screaming about.

"Mr Lawson?"

"Perhaps he doesn't like ducks," said Loki, aloud. "I told him he shouldn't have come here."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

The thin young man turned from the window and smiled with polite cheerfulness at his visitor. "Is there something you need from me, doctor?"

"Only to know how you're feeling today, Luke."

"Interesting question. Luke is feeling fine."

"None of the usual symptoms?"

Loki smiled a little wider, more cheerfully. "Oh, there's absolutely nothing usual," he said, "about me."

"Of course, of course." The doctor seemed to consult the sheaf of notes stashed at the end of Luke Lawson's bed. "Well, we've managed to schedule another abdominal scan for you at last, you'll be glad to hear - but I thought perhaps today we could talk about last week. Now I was in Baltimore last week and I hear I missed a really big thunderstorm. Would you like to tell me about what happened?"

"Well, as I understand it," said Loki, "highly charged particles in the air react with -"

"Ah, no, no…not thunderstorms as a concept. I think I covered that in second grade. Could we perhaps talk about your reaction to it?"

Because from what the nurses had said, the reaction had been extreme to say the least.

"He was scared," the staff nurse had said, stripping off a set of bedding with a practiced sweep of his arm. "Probably the most scared I've ever seen anyone. We had to chase him all over the ward before we caught him. And hiding? He's great at hiding, you have to give him that. We dragged him out of the sluice room in the end. He was practically hyperventilating and shouting that he'd been found or caught or something."

"Found by whom?"

"No idea. He was barely lucid. We had to give him a sedative just to get him to let go of the hot water pipe. That's why he's got those scalds on his hands. Man, I hope we don't get sued by his family."

"I don't know that he even has any family."

Chaos, contrary to appearances, cannot be subdued or tamed with sedatives. Let us say merely that it is distracted. Sedatives had played a fairly large part in the life of Luke Lawton for the past week. Loki found them interesting in much the same way as he found the ducks interesting. They formed a distraction for the mind, provided a platform for other thoughts. They made patterns for the brain just as the wind made patterns on the water.

Other than that, they had little merit and he wondered what mortals saw in them. Their effects on him were also unpredictable and fleeting, and could only really work properly if he let them - and Loki was all about control for himself and loss of control for other people.

Nevertheless, he had tried letting go a few times, just to experience it. That moment in the sluice room had been one of those times, albeit not of his own volition.

There were ducks again, and the patterns of wind on water, and the massive, ever-moving ash tree just outside the window. The wind was getting stronger all the time and the tree branches looked as if it was a constant battle for them not to be torn loose. Leaves flickered like dry paper. In the depths of the night it is impossible to sleep in a hospital unless one is deaf, blind or doped - preferably all three. There is constant light, despite their ostensibly having lowered the overheads for "night-time". There is also constant noise, both from the general workings of a busy hospital and from the patients. Loki was in a ward full of elderly men, and thus the noise and movement was almost constant. He lay wrapped in a single, thin blanket, pretending to sleep and listening to the sounds of organised chaos going on all around him.

"Help me," cried an elderly man, weakly, in the half light. "Help me. Help me, someone."

Loki lay immobile in the bed and listened as the plea was repeated. It took a long while for anyone to come - or perhaps time just seemed to stretch when measured by human misery.

A female nurse, this time, speaking in stage whispers so as not to disturb the putative sleepers around her. "What's wrong, my lovely?"

"I'm frightened."

"Now what are you frightened of?"

A long pause, with even Loki almost holding his breath so he wouldn't miss the answer.

"Everything," said the old man. "I'm frightened of everything."

It almost made Loki laugh out loud, but he was good at control. Wasn't that just the ultimate cry of humanity at its heart? All of them always so frightened. Of themselves, of each other, of their beautiful but exploited and unstable Midgard itself. It was such a glorious, circular trap. Too frightened to live because they were frightened of dying. It limited them so much it was a wonder they ever got anything done.

Now the old man was weeping, his voice cracking just slightly. "Don't leave me. Don't leave me."

"I have to, my lovely, I've got lots of work to do." Again that pause. "But I'll turn your lamp on, okay?"

Loki couldn't help it: he had to wriggle over onto his back and grin silently up at the ceiling. Oh if only, if only it were that simple…

Thor had been foolish, Loki thought, not to recognise the threat of old age when they'd encountered it years ago during a particular set of trials. (He'd been even more foolish to forbid Loki to advise him, but that was getting off the point somewhat). But then that was Thor all over. Not allowing even sensible fear to stop him rushing headlong into something stupid. Loki was quite categorically the youngest man in the ward, if one was rating apparent physical, mortal age. Here lived fear and here lived suffering, and here as a young man Loki felt isolated and even more like an outsider than usual. In Asgard it was commonplace to see great strength brought down by injury or fate, but here in Midgard there was a more terrible fate in age, and its inevitable mate, death. This was every mortal's future, and it was undignified, slow and painful. It was indeed a unenviable state, and one that should be treated with great respect. Loki examined the concept from every facet, exploring it in his head, throwing strains of his magic at it to see what could be done with it. When the old man who had been crying out in the night died unexpectedly the following day, Loki expended so much energy on examining the forms and processes around the body with his magic that he was quite exhausted.

Also, being here made Loki appreciate, perhaps for the first time, why Asgardian warriors seemed so desperate to die in battle. He imagined Allfather Odin lying in one of these beds, paraplegic and able to do nothing but watch the clock or the endless, mindless television. He imagined the look in the old man's eye if the nurses were approaching with a plastic bowl, stack of towels and determined, well-meaning expressions. He imagined the indignity of the catheter. Then he imagined a decrepit, threadbare Hugin and Munin perched above the bed on the ugly yellow anglepoise lamp, and he laughed and laughed until one of the bed bound elderly patients pressed the call button and a nurse came in to find out what all the fuss was about.

Here, behind closed doors with the sick and the feeble, had been the perfect place to hide from Thor, until a week ago.

Friday, 24 November, 2011

8.02am

The ducks hadn't cared for the thunderstorm, and in the aftermath of that turbulent night the lake had been empty and still. Loki lay subdued in the hospital bed, curled around his knees and facing away from the window. His bandaged hands were tucked protectively into the curve of his body.

They'd removed the safety restraints at about five in the morning, once he'd recovered enough to be able to speak sensibly. It had been a bad shock, looking up into the fine fork lightning and seeing between the blue-white lines the unmistakable colours of Bifrost dappling the roiling sky. Thor had found him. Thor was coming after him.

Loki, unlike many Asgardians, knew the value of a suitable dose of fear. A little fear kept you sharp. It kept you careful. It kept you alive. Claiming you feared nothing was, to his mind, the height of stupidity.

But the sheer levels of fear he'd experienced during the thunderstorm had ruined him, made him almost as stupid as those who claimed they feared nothing. It had been quite a long time and he had stayed successfully hidden here in Midgard. He had started to feel safe. Almost as dangerous. He hadn't realised he could be that frightened, and it made him almost angry to think how he must have appeared to the mortals.

"Good morning, Mr Lawson."

It was the night shift doctor, evidently checking in just before going home. Loki made the effort. He'd worked very hard during his stay here not to be sent to the psychotherapy ward, and after his little slip last night he was going to have to make up a lot of ground. He smiled. Charm flooded his voice.

"Good morning, doctor."

And then the human doctor had stepped back and around him (how had he managed to conceal such a bulk behind a slender mortal form?) stepped a massive young blond man, his expression of gentle bearded amiability belied by the flint-like look in those blue eyes. "This is Doctor Blake," the night shift doctor had said, although Loki was barely listening to him at this point. "He's come down specifically to take a look at your case."

Thor nodded and smiled (to Loki's eye, smugly) and said nothing. He was wearing a white coat and a badge, and altogether looked very official, apart from the sheer size of him. The white coat seemed strained at the shoulders, as if about to split. He could never have orchestrated even this minor subterfuge himself. Somebody must have helped him.

"How…thoughtful," whispered Loki.

Thor came around the bed as the mortal doctor departed, and managed to squeeze himself into the chair set up for visitors. Loki never had visitors.

They sat in silence for a moment. At times like this the ward felt fairly quiet, even peaceful, with the patchy sunlight coming in through the window like the touch of god, and the other occupants silent or sleeping in their beds.

"Hiding amongst the sick and the dying of Midgard," said Thor at last, conversationally. "I would never have thought it of you, brother."

"It's surprising the things you learn," said Loki, a little alarmed at how much his voice was cracking, "from the dying. You shouldn't have come here."

Thor shook his big head, sadly. "Loki…there are many people looking for you, including our father. You have done great wrong and there have been calls for your return and punishment. "

"You shouldn't have come," repeated Loki, softly, perhaps almost as sadly, and he swiftly reached down into the newly enlightened part of his mind, bundled up a brand new sorcery and threw it at Thor in less time than it took to blink.

Let there be light…

Loki stood over the now collapsed figure on the floor, who was shivering, shrunken and making soft sounds of distress that sounded very familiar after six weeks' worth of hospital nights.

"I'll turn the lamp on for you, shall I?" he whispered, and pressed his call button for the nurse.

Friday, 2 December, 2011

2.53pm

There were ducks.

In the wind, the water on the lake made odd passing patterns, moving back and forth as the ducks passed, unheeding, across it. The cries of the elderly, bearded blond patient in the neighbouring ward grew louder. Despairing cries. Animal cries. Wordless, sad, frightened, and quite horrible.

Sometimes he would manage to cry out "Help me. Help me, please."

Loki was concentrating very hard on the ducks, and not on those sounds.