The morning of his fourteenth birthday, Septimus was up before dawn. Quickly he cleaned and tidied the small house library - as he did every morning, even on his birthday. He found an unwrapped present from Marcia hidden under a pile of books to be filed. It was a small but very beautiful gold and silver magnifying glass. Attached to its ivory handle was a purple tag, which read: To Septimus. Happy Magical Fourteenth Birthday. With love from Marcia. Septimus put the glass in his pocket with a smile. It wasn't often that Marcia signed her name "with love."
Some minutes later the heavy door that guarded the entrance to their rooms swung open, and Septimus headed for the silver spiral escalator at the end of the landing, setting off on a visit he had made every day since he had returned from the Isles of Bermuda. Taking a chance that there were no people about so early, he put the escalator into emergency mode and whizzed down to the ground floor. Dizzy but exhilarated - there was nothing quite like an emergency run to wake one up - Septimus stepped off the stairs and walked a little unsteadily outside toward a building marked OSPITAL (the H having recently fallen off during a construction worker's experiment that had gone wrong).
The OSPITAL door opened quietly and Septimus stepped into a dimly lit, circular room with ten rooms visible down the hall like the books on a bookshelf. Only two of the rooms were occupied - one by a librarian who had fallen down the apartment steps and broken her toe, the other by an elderly man who had "felt a bit funny" the previous day. There was a floor plan on the wall, but Septimus already knew what it said. In the center was a circular desk, in the middle of which sat the night duty doctor and the new hospital resident, Rose. Rose, her long brown hair tucked behind her ears, was busy as ever, scribbling in her project book and devising new book ideas.
Septimus approached. Rose and the doctor gave him friendly smiles. They knew him well, for he visited every day - although usually not so early.
"No change," whispered Rose.
Septimus nodded. He had long given up expecting to hear anything different.
Rose got up from her chair. It was her job to escort visitors to the rooms. Septimus followed her over to the narrow elevator set in the wall. Its surface had a shifting quality to it, typical of the effect that things covered in holographic things produced. Rose placed her medical ID badge on the surface and quickly withdrew it. The doors swung open, then she and Septimus stepped into the elevator. The door closed behind them and Rose clicked the elevator button that read 3. The air conditioning was cool and smelled faintly of doors opened again, and it was strangely quiet, save for the muffled clicks of their shoes as they walked through the hallways until they reached room 396. Rose repeated the process with another door in front of them. It too swung open, and this time Septimus alone walked through. He entered a small room suffused with a whitish-blue light.
"I'll leave you now," whispered Rose. "Call me if there's anything you need or . . . well, if there's any change."
Septimus nodded.
There was a heady smell of antiseptic in the room. The air from the air conditioner circled counterclockwise, and Septimus could feel it warm upon his skin, tingling like drying salt water after a swim in the ocean. He stood still and breathed in deeply a few times to balance himself. For anyone who wasn't used to the hospital, all the medical equipment is a peculiar thing to be close to, and the first few times he had entered the hospital Septimus had become extremely dizzy. Now that he was used to it he merely felt wobbly for a few moments. However, something that he had never quite got used to was the eerie sight of the hospital beds - normal enough, but usually surrounded by strange equipment like heart monitors and ventilators and other things he didn't know the names of.
Feeling as if he were walking underwater, Septimus slowly approached the bed. Swathed in the blankets lay a figure so insubstantial that sometimes Septimus was afraid she might pass away at any moment. But so far Syrah Syara, the occupant of the bed, had resisted dying - although it was a known risk of an induced coma (the doctor had said it was necessary for her survival), and the longer the process went on, the greater the risk became.
Septimus looked at Syrah's bluish face, which reflected the light of the chamber and seemed almost transparent. Her brown hair had been neatly plaited, giving her a prim, doll-like appearance - so different from the wild, windblown Syrah he had first met on the Isle of Bermuda.
"Hello, Syrah," he said quietly. "It's me, Septimus." Syrah did not react, but Septimus knew that that did not necessarily mean she could not hear him. Many people who had successfully emerged from comas were able to recount conversations that had taken place in the room.
"I'm early today," Septimus continued. "The sun isn't even up yet. I want to tell you that I won't be able to come and see you for the next few days." He stopped to see if his words were having any effect. There was no reaction and Septimus felt a little upset - he had half hoped that a flicker of disappointment might cross Syrah's face.
"It's my exam week coming up," Septimus continued. "And . . . um . . . I want to tell you what I'm going to be doing. Because you've done it and you know how scary it feels before you go . . . and I can't tell anyone else. I mean, I can't tell anyone who's not completed an apprenticeship to a librarian. Which doesn't leave many people - well, only Marcia and you, in fact. Of course there would have been Alther before, well . . . you know what happened. Oh, I know he was a ghost and there are lots of injured librarians and apprentices around but Alther is - I mean was - different. He felt real, like he was still here. Oh, Syrah, I miss Alther. I really do. And . . . that's what I wanted to tell you - I'm going to get Alther back. I am. Marcia doesn't want me to, but it's my choice and she can't stop me. All apprentices have the right to choose what they do in their exam week and I've chosen. I'm going down to the old folk's home."
Septimus paused. He wondered whether he had told Syrah too much. If she really could hear him and understand every word he said, then all he had done was to leave her alone to worry about him. Septimus told himself not to be silly. Just because he had grown to care about what happened to Syrah, it didn't mean that she cared equally about him. In fact, he told himself, if she was aware of his visits she was more likely to feel relieved at the prospect of getting a rest from him. He grinned ruefully. Something Jenna had said to him more than once recently came back to him: "Not everything revolves around you, Sep."
Feeling a little awkward, he finished his visit. "So, er, good-bye then. I'll be fine and, um, I hope you will be too. I'll see you when I get back." Septimus would have liked to give Syrah a quick good-bye kiss but that was not possible. They didn't have that sort of relationship...right? He'll find out when she wakes up from her coma. If she woke up from her coma.
Septimus left the room, made his way through the elevator and stepped out into the front room. Rose gave him a friendly wave, which he returned briefly and, still feeling embarrassed, he left the hospital and walked back down the street, telling himself, "Not everything revolves around you, you dillop."
Let me know if you want more of these stories, and feel free to make some of your own. Peace!