Chapter 13: Narrative Continued By the Doctor—In Sickness and In Health

"Is the Captain asleep again?" Jim asked, very late at night, after she'd said nothing for quite some time. He was still standing near the door, and as he asked the question, he straightened from his lean upon the frame, stirring from sleep Silver's morph. I looked up at Jim and shook my head, after watching the Captain's eyes slowly open and blink at the sound of her name. She sighed heavily, as though she could feel Jim's and my feeling of defeat, and opened her mouth.

"I'm thinking, Mr. Hawkins," was her reply, and she closed her eyes again.

After a long pause, Jim commented derisively that she must have forgotten what she was thinking about under his breath. "Hush, Jim," I said sternly, and he sighed. "She'll speak when she's ready," for I had given up trying to keep her from talking as a lost cause.

After a little longer, I heard the Captain's voice slowly lift up from where she lay. "Gentlemen…"

I leapt to my knees to hear her better, and even Jim hurried a few steps and looked over my shoulder at her. She slowly continued. "Gentlemen… we must…" she took two quick breaths and choked a little at the evident pain in her side, "…stay together, and…and…" Her thoughts had again muddled themselves, it seemed, and she gave up. But I was much too excited to have her quit now, for she hadn't said anything in a long time, and so I cried out at her, the strain of the long night, the impending fear of Silver capturing us, and the weight of our own resignation to have it so, increasing my volume.

"What?" I encouraged loudly and desperately, ripping off my glasses, "What? We must stay together and what?"

She lifted her ears and looked at me, almost affectionately, her eyes a misty emerald. "Doctor…" she addressed me softly, with the greatest of ease, "You have… wonderful eyes."

Although later I realized that this was an exceptionally flattering compliment coming from her, it was not what I had hoped to hear her tell me at the time. With my glasses off, I could barely see more than a hazy blue blob of her, which made it odd to hear her say she thought I had wonderful eyes. It also was discouraging, because of its random, whimsical tone; this suggested she had not fully recovered. Panic-stricken, I turned to Jim and howled, "She's lost her mind!"

Jim, reacting to my panic, stammered hurriedly, "Well, y-you gotta help her!"

I lost all sense of control. What with the inevitable doom we were all facing, the dreadful conclusion I'd made, and the lack of sleep, I turned on Jim and shouted furiously, "Dang it, Jim, I'm an astronomer, not a doctor!" This made no sense to me whatsoever after I'd said it, hearing instantaneously afterwards the sound of the Captain's voice in my mind calling me 'Doctor', so I quickly repaired the statement. "I mean, I am a doctor, but I'm not that kind of doctor—I have a doctorate, but that's not the same thing, you can't help people with a doctorate—you just… sit there, and you're useless!"

I banged my fists against my temples, frustrated and desperate, and Jim hurried to tap my right shoulder consolingly, and murmur, "It's all right, Doc, it's… it's okay."

I released my head and relaxed, quietly looking back down at the Captain, who had once again closed her eyes and remained unspeaking, but this time smiling serenely, as though she had at last relieved herself of a tremendous secret.

B.E.N, who had been striking up meager conversations or comments but had been otherwise unimportant throughout most of the night, struck in again, and attempted to reassure me, "Yeah, Doc! Jimmy knows exactly how t'get outta this. It's just—it's just, Jimmy has this knowledge of things!" and moved to speak quietly with Jim by the door.

I gazed down at the Captain once again. Her smile had faded, and she was lying peacefully, propped lightly upon the metal rising in the floor and my coat, with her head tilted towards her right shoulder. Her breathing was steady, and she appeared as though she had fallen into a doze. Slowly I touched her face and smoothed a fallen lock of hair from her eyes, wondering at the fiery satin that slid along my fingers. I sighed softly, my worry for her maintaining its magnitude unwaveringly. I was wallowing in the misery of feeling so useless to her when suddenly Jim ran passed me, a magnificent emerald light flooding the entire room from a far corner of B.E.N's abode. I looked up quickly to see Jim and B.E.N looking down into a dome that had a wide and gaping hole at the top of it, through which came pouring from the interior the mystic light that invaded our room. Jim, awe-stricken, murmured an inquiry, "Whoa… what is all this stuff?"

"You mean the miles and miles of machinery that runs through the entire course of the inside of this planet?" B.E.N answered, carefree, "Not a clue!"

Jim looked up at me wildly and exclaimed, "Doc! Doc, I think I found a way outta here!"

"No!" I reached my hand out to stop him, glancing back at the Captain, "No, Jim, wait! The Captain ordered us to stay together—"

Jim mounted the dome and sliced the air dismissively with his hand. "I'll be back," he promised, and dropped into the dome's opening, followed by B.E.N and the morph, and leaving the Captain and me entirely alone.

I almost chased after Jim, made him come back, sat him in front of the door and made him wish he'd never left. But I knew presently that I was in no way a disciplinarian to Jim, that I probably wouldn't be able to drag him back anyway, and that he might actually be able to bring the map, and our one true advantage, back into its rightful place with us. So I decided it might be better to let Jim go. I trusted him enough, and I didn't have the energy to contend with him.

Father Time seemed to drag his feet all through the while the Captain and I were there alone. I sat quietly, feeling somewhat isolated, since the Captain was asleep again, and I tried to find other ways of making myself useful.

First and foremost, I found the Captain's rifle (Jim had taken with him the flintlock the Captain had given him this afternoon) and reloaded it with the rest of the little ammunition we had, to better defend both the Captain and myself. With Jim gone, my awareness of the danger we were all in rose quite anew inside me, and I felt there was definite justification to finish off the last supply of laser pellets. Secondly, after a think, I scouted out the room to check and make sure no enemy had somehow gotten in and was waiting for the best moment to strike. No one was there, which I decided was the most obvious outcome, so I sat back down next to the Captain and prepared myself to wait until Jim returned.

When Jim did not return after several minutes of waiting I got up and patrolled the room again to make sure no one but the Captain was in the formation with me. Finding still no sign of any immediate danger, I slunk up to the door and peeked out. The fire at the pirate's camp was still going, and all seemed deadly quiet, and despite my assurances to myself that, still, 'no news is good news', I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.

But since there was seemingly nothing wrong regarding the threat of ambush, it occurred to me that either my intuition was unreliable or there was something the matter with the Captain.

So I hurried to her side and examined her. She was breathing steadily, and when I checked her pulse, it was quite normal. All seemed to be well at hand. "Maybe," I reprimanded myself in a whisper, "you should stop fretting over what your gut tells you and start depending on what your reason tells you: nothing is wrong!"

Convinced of my security, I sat back upon the growth raised from the metallic floor next to where the Captain was propped and sighed. "That's right," I thought aloud, quietly to myself, "nothing is wrong. You and Jim have everything under control. Silver won't be here until morning, and by that time Jim will have the map here with—"

But it suddenly occurred to me that I was not aware of the time. Morning might be only a few minutes away, and Jim would be on the ship and I would have to face the group of pirates alone, one man against a mob, one gun against many, and not only defending myself, but also defending someone who was in no condition to defend herself alone. I glanced at the Captain, worried again, and suddenly felt more afraid for her safety than for my own. She was much more important to me than I was.

I concentrated on the feeling, and slowly gained a little confidence as the realization crept over me. I was willing to put her before myself, and it occurred to me that, ever since we landed upon Treasure Planet, and even a little before then, I was and had always been her protector. I'd helped her with her wound, I'd stayed with her during her fever, and here I was ready to risk myself against an army of pirates to ensure her safety. I was her protector, and I felt convinced that as long as she was protected, as long as I kept safe, there was nothing for me to fear.

I slid the gun from my lap to the floor and turned to her, leaned close to her, and again touched the soft red hair along her forehead. As long as she was safe, I was safe, and for the first time all night I felt free from the burden of Silver and his crew, of the mutiny, and of the danger. I was there to keep her safe, and as long as she was safe, I was safe.

I fell asleep eventually, with my fingers touching the satin hair of Captain Amelia, and knowing very well how safe she truly was.

After a time, I don't know how long it was, I awoke with a start, and grabbed clumsily for the rifle. There was nothing wrong from what I could perceive, but I had felt the terrible agitation before I had awoken and now I sat rigidly beside the Captain and looked frantically around the room for Jim.

Jim still had not returned, and I quietly flew into horrible anxiety, fiddling with my glasses, checking on the Captain, keeping as still as possible, holding my breath to ensure silence, sitting, standing, until at last I found myself on my feet in the middle of the room, the rifle on the floor beside the Captain, and I wringing my hands and murmuring worriedly. I must have had a dream, or in my subconscious a thought had occurred to me, but I cannot remember exactly; I only know that I was now incredibly worried for Jim's welfare, and stood in the room wringing my hands and articulating my desire for him to return. "Jim…" I kept repeating quietly, "Jim, come back… You've been gone for quite a while, Jim… come back…"

There was a tormenting silence that seemed to last a lifetime, and then softly there was a clicking noise, and a whirring of mechanical parts, that echoed off the metal walls inside the dome Jim had used to exit through. I stood rigidly and silently in the room, listening so closely to the foreign sound that it was almost deafening, until at last a head appeared from the dome, silhouetted by the magnificent emerald light spilling into the room from the hole within it. With the face came a body, halved seamlessly in a fleshy and a mechanical side, entering with slow, unhurried confidence, until the intruder was firmly on his feet. Then from the mechanical arm came the click of a firearm.

"Who…?" I breathed, and trailed off. I knew who it was.

Silver chuckled ominously. "Not to worry, Doc. It's only John Silver and some of his friends, of whom you know and like real well. You like 'em real well, don't'cha, Doc?"

"You!" I choked. "You…!"