Author's note: This is well-trod ground. I mean no disrespect to those who came before. Shout out to FiBeeN, for helping me work out what Jack's parents would be like. Thank you, again!
Recap: Phryne arrived in time to prevent Jack from getting stuffed in a meat grinder, then lost her temper and nearly killed Robert Culver. Most of us wouldn't have minded, but Jack didn't want Phryne to pull the trigger, and jolted her out of her rage by telling her he loved her. This had the intended effect, and though her reaction didn't initially encourage much hope, she told him she wasn't going anywhere. He kissed the back of her hand and fell unconscious, and we all went "awww".
Chapter 10:
Phryne paced the hospital hallway, buzzing with worry and residual anger. Mac had pushed her out of Jack's room as soon as they arrived, ordering Phryne to clean up and calm down. Phryne had resentfully obeyed at least the first mandate.
"You know I can handle myself around the injured, Mac…" she'd argued.
"This is different, Phryne, trust me," Mac had said as she shut the door in Phryne's face.
Phryne did another pass. Hugh made a valiant effort to tuck his feet even further under his chair. Phryne considered tripping over them just to have someone to scowl at, but restrained herself. The young constable looked as sick with concern as Phryne felt. Dot gave Hugh's arm a squeeze and the two sweethearts exchanged a look filled with mutual reassurance.
Mac rejoined them in the hallway, wiping her hands on a towel as she pulled the door shut behind her.
"Jack?" Phryne asked. It was hardly a coherent inquiry, but it was the only word Phryne could come up with at the moment. Her friend was staring down at the towel, scrubbing her already clean hands in an absentminded way that indicated she had forgotten what she was doing.
"Mac," Phryne said, with a note of warning in her voice.
"Well Phryne, he's in bad shape. You don't need me to tell you that," Mac finally said, meeting her eyes.
"How bad?" Phryne asked in clipped tones.
"He has a litany of injuries: cuts, bruises, scrapes, bruised ribs and some broken ones…"
"His hands?"
"They left him with a few nails," Mac said, with disgust in her voice, "You let the men who did this live?"
"Jack insisted," Phryne said. While she suspected she'd be glad for his intervention later, right now her mind was presenting her with a variety of creative and painful ways she could have killed Robert Culver.
"He would," Mac said with affectionate disapproval. She looked down again.
"What aren't you telling me Mac?" Phryne asked, sensing and dreading her friend's reticence.
"He's dehydrated, he hasn't had anything to eat, his wounds were filthy and he's feverish with infection," Mac said, "In all honesty, Phryne, I'm not sure…"
Phryne shook her head in a savage denial, not even letting Mac finish.
"He promised," Phryne said, her voice pitched higher as she spoke through threatening tears. She knew it was foolish, but it was all she had.
"Well, he is the sort who keeps his promises," Mac said, pushing open the door and escorting Phryne into Jack's room.
Jack seemed diminished somehow, lying on the bed. Incongruently, Phryne thought of his office, unchanged and yet subtly more empty. Phryne went to his side and stood there awkwardly. She wanted to hold his hand, to touch him somehow, but his hands were bandaged and she was afraid to cause him pain, or at least, any more pain than she'd already caused. Very lightly, she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. It radiated heat. Jack stirred at her touch, and she pulled away quickly.
Phryne's head jerked up as two strangers joined her and Mac at Jack's bedside. She knew them instantly, though they'd never met. The man had Jack's high cheekbones, downturned lips and strong chin while the woman had his sparkling eyes. They had to be Jack's parents.
"And you must be Phryne Fisher," the woman said, enveloping her in a hug. Phryne hugged her back, thankfully tossing aside decorum.
"You've heard of me?" Phryne asked. Lord, what would Jack have told his parents? She shuddered to think.
"Hasn't most of Melbourne?" Jack's mother replied, with a very familiar arch of one eyebrow. Jack had gotten his sense dry sense of humor from his mother, Phryne surmised.
"Probably," Mac said. Phryne shot her friend a dirty look.
"I'm Ida, and this is my husband Henry," Ida Robinson said. She had the slightest hint of an accent, though Phryne couldn't immediately place it. They were both well, if sensibly, dressed.
"Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, it's a pleasure to meet you," Phryne's eyes went back to Jack, and she watched him take another breath before she continued, "I wish the circumstances..."
"We all do," Mr. Robinson cut her off. His face had none of the warmth of his wife's, and Phryne could sense disapproval radiating off him in waves.
"Henry," Ida said gently, "Why don't you go to Jack's house and collect some of his things, pyjamas and so on?"
Henry continued to stare down at his son for a moment, and then excused himself with a silent tip of his hat.
"He'll be better for something to do," Mrs. Robinson commented, "While we ladies decide how we're going to help our Jack. And call me Ida, please."
Phryne decided she adored Ida Robinson.
"He's feverish," Mac explained to Ida, "We've gotten some fluids in him, but he's weak and restless. I'm being generous with the painkillers, but he's not comfortable."
"Would you be?" Phryne asked. Hospital accommodations may be sterile, but they didn't meet her standards for comfort. The bed was barely wide enough for Jack's broad shoulders and the sheets were a threadbare cotton affair Phryne wouldn't have used for rags.
"We can't take him to his house," Ida said with a shudder. Phryne heartily agreed. She doubted if Jack was at ease there even when he was well. He seemed most contented in Phryne's parlor, really. Phryne thought of her house, with her books, and the gramophone, and Mr. Butler's cooking, and Dot's gentle kindness. Phryne wanted to share them with Jack. She refused to admit this might be her last chance.
"I want to take him home," Phryne said without thinking. She was glad Mr. Robinson had left, given the way Ida and Mac stared at her.
Jack twitched in his sleep, making a horrible little whimpering sound in the back of his throat, and Phryne's stomach twisted. Because she had to touch him, she reached out and cupped his cheek in one hand. She ran her thumb over the corner of his mouth, the right one, which she'd only ever seen tilted up once or twice in the years she'd known him. Jack quieted and some of the tension rippling through Phryne dissolved as well.
"Alright," Ida said. Phryne had forgotten what they were talking about. She frowned.
"You can take him home," Ida's brow was still wrinkled with worry, but a mischievous twinkle had crept into her eyes.
Phryne managed to keep herself very busy for a very long time. Jack's transfer was a complex undertaking involving all of her staff, both his parents and several unwillingly recruited nurses. Mr. Robinson (he hadn't offered Phryne the use of his first name) disapproved of moving Jack to her house, and was flat-out against putting him in her bed, but Ida took him aside for a few quiet words and convinced him not to object quite so loudly. Phryne made a note to inquire how, since she found herself persuading an uncooperative Robinson almost daily. Jack, liberally medicated by Mac, was blissfully unaware of all the fuss. Phryne thought it likely he'd be appalled at the small army she'd mobilized on his behalf, but that didn't stop her from doing it.
Smoothing the finely woven covers of her wide bed around him, Phryne nodded once in satisfaction. It certainly wasn't how she had intended Jack Robinson to end up in her bed, but he looked much more like himself here than lying in a hospital cot.
"Now what do we do? What do I do?" Phryne asked Mac.
"We wait," her friend replied as she checked his pulse.
"I've never been much good at that," Phryne said. Since Jack had disappeared, Phryne had always had something to do: investigate Jack's house, intimidate record clerks, find Jack, rescue Jack. But wait for Jack to live or die, watch passively as the man she...the man who loved her, struggled for each breath, Phryne wasn't sure she could do that.
With a kiss for Jack's uncomfortably hot brow, Phryne bustled off to supervise the household.
Phryne passed the rest of the day in a flurry of activity. She settled Jack's parents in a guest room, arranged for a nursing service, called the hospital to make excuses for Mac, talked with Mr. Butler about meals for Jack, thanked Bert and Cec for carefully transferring an enemy of the people to her home, gave her statement to DI Taylor and called the station to update the men on Jack's status. In between errands, she popped into her room to check on Jack, but he was seldom even semi-conscious. Phryne hated to admit it, but she was glad that he mostly slept, so she could leave him in the steadier hands of his mother and Dot while she focused on getting him the best possible care.
It was approaching midnight when Mac cornered her in the kitchen.
"What exactly do you think you are doing?" her best friend asked her.
"I should think it would be obvious," Phryne replied, affronted, "I'm seeing to it that Jack gets everything he could possibly need to recover."
"For heaven's sake Phryne. He doesn't need half a dozen nurses, or broth imported from France, or silk sheets, or…" Mac ran out of expensive amenities to list.
"Well, he'll have them. That's why we moved him here," Phryne argued.
"We, his mother and I, didn't allow you to move a badly injured man across the city and up a flight of stairs for better sheets. We moved him here for you, Phryne Fisher, because anyone with eyes can see he takes comfort from you. You're a right dolt if you can't see it."
The tears that had been threatening to overtake her all day welled up in Phryne's eyes. She had told Jack she wasn't going anywhere and she knew that she was failing him in this too, as she had failed to get to him before so much of his strength had been burned up. But Phryne felt like a wild animal in cage, and it scared her. It wasn't Jack's fault, or rather, it was entirely Jack's fault though he'd never even thought to trap her. It was a feeling she'd spent most of her life avoiding, and she hadn't entirely accepted its sudden, uninvited arrival. Few things really terrified her, but discovering that she had come to depend on Jack chilled her to the bone.
Mac could see the fear in her eyes, and understood. She put both hands on Phryne's shoulders and gave her a little shake.
"You never let anything but your own heart decide how you live your life, Phryne. Don't let fear pick your course for you now," Mac said.
Phryne knew she was right. She squeezed Mac's elbows, drawing strength from her friend, and climbed the stairs to her room.
Ida Robinson was sitting in a chair next the bed, knitting. The clack of her needles and Jack's shallow breathing were the only sounds. She smiled in welcome and relief when she saw Phryne at the door, and Phryne bit her lip remorsefully. Tip toeing into the room, she glanced at the other chair and then tentatively settled on the edge of the bed. Phryne considered the man laying it.
Phryne forced herself to acknowledge that Jack's condition had worsened. He'd always been lean, but fever and malnourishment had pushed him towards skeletal. His wrists seemed even knobbier than usual, his skin drawn tightly over the bones, where they lay limply on top of the covers.
"Thank you, for all you've done for my son," Ida said softly. Phryne winced and changed the subject.
"How is Mr. Robinson?" Phryne asked. The man had spent much of the day sitting silently in the parlor, watching the activity in the household with unseeing eyes.
"Parents aren't supposed to outlive their children," Ida said, "And we have buried too many of ours."
Phryne nodded, but didn't inquire further. The war, childbirth, influenza…the ways one could lose a child were numerous.
"How long have you been married?" she asked instead.
"Almost four decades now." A smile crinkled up the wrinkles around Ida's eyes.
"Jack would have liked to have a marriage like that," Phryne said. It made her sad, that he had lived so much of his life without a partner.
"I would prefer him to be happy," Ida said firmly. Phryne blinked at the woman and Ida smiled at her. It had sounded like permission, or acceptance.
"If you will sit with him, I think I'll find Henry and our bed," Ida said, standing and pressing her hands to the small of her back. She leaned in to kiss Jack's forehead, squeezed Phryne's shoulder, and left.
Phryne kicked off her shoes and crossed her legs on the bed, so one knee just touched Jack's chest. After glancing around guiltily, Phryne ran her fingers through his chestnut hair, brushing a stray curl back from his forehead. Phryne realized she had begun to cry again as the room blurred.
"You love me, and it scares me," she told the sleeping man, choking on the words. She hadn't been wholly surprised, Jack had as much as said he loved her, standing in her hallway with tears in his eyes after the car race case. But it still scared Phryne.
"And that's not even the worst part," Phryne said, wiping her cheeks with her hands.
What was truly terrifying, Phryne finally forced herself to acknowledge, was that she loved Jack back. Loved him in such a fundamental way, it had become part of who she was without her noticing.
In Phryne's experience, the people who could hurt you most were the ones you loved. They could die, leaving behind unfillable holes in your heart. And worse, they had power over you; they could change you. Because when you loved someone, you believed them just a little when they told you were weak, or ugly, or stupid. If they told you often enough, you became it. It was a hard-won lesson, but not a course she intended to repeat.
Jack began to fidget in his sleep, and his breathing grew more shallow and uneven. His whole body tensed in the throes of a nightmare, and he made that terrible whimper again. Unable to hold his bandaged hands, Phryne pressed her hands to his cheeks, willing him to calm. Slowly, he did.
Without moving her hands, Phryne shut her eyes, hating to see Jack so helpless. Unbidden, the image of Jack holding his ruined hands out entreatingly, begging her not to kill the man who'd maimed him, rose in her mind.
"Why didn't you let me kill him?" Phryne asked Jack angrily, opening her eyes to glare through her tears at the man she loved.
"I know you, and I love you. And I know you are not going to kill this man."
Jack had said he'd never ask her to change. Phryne hadn't really believed him then, it ran so contrary to her experience. But she had to believe him now; he'd saved her from changing herself. She would have destroyed herself on his behalf, but Jack had stopped her, at an immeasurable risk to his own heart.
"I love you, Jack Robinson," Phryne finally told him, wishing for the first time that he was awake to hear her. She felt calm and strangely light, but thoroughly exhausted.
Carefully, Phryne stretched out beside Jack. Checking his shoulder for bruises and finding none, Phryne wrapped her arms around Jack's left arm, and pillowed her cheek on his shoulder.
"I love you," Phryne repeated, listening to his heartbeat beneath her ear, "I haven't the slightest idea what we're going to do about it, but I love you."