Lucas was awakened by a persistent sharpness in his backside, a throbbing pain that shot through his bottom and down his legs. He lay sprawled out on his stomach, his face squashed into a pillow, arms pinned under his chin. A haze lingered around his head like a cloud of thick smoke, giving him the impression of rising out of water. He was aware of movement around his cot, bodies filing past, and footsteps disappearing further into the ship. Grimacing, he blinked open his eyes.

He was in a closed-off section below decks, the only light coming from lanterns swaying from the beams with the ship's roll. The air was stale and stuffy. As Lucas' vision sharpened, he noticed a man standing over him. He was small and bony, with a pale face and even paler eyes. He looked at Lucas over a pair of spectacles perched at the end of his nose. His clothes were in disarray, and his scrawny appearance combined with his black coat made him the least seaman-like person Lucas had ever met.

He started and tried to sit up. Pain shot through his legs, and he choked back a startled cry.

"Try to limit unnecessary movement," the man said. Lucas widened his eyes. "You don't have any serious injuries, but I imagine you're quite bruised."

Lucas' throat constricted like he was being strangled. He understood. He understood the man's words. Whoever this man was, or however he got here, he spoke Lucas' language.

He stared in disbelief as his lip started to quiver. Tears blurred his vision, and he bowed his head, covering his face with his arms, and began to sob.

"¿Que pasó?" the man asked.

Lucas couldn't answer. He gasped for breath, shoulders shaking, his face soaked from crying. He sniffed and tried to get himself under control.

"You speak Spanish?" he managed, head still buried in his arms.

The man tilted his head, his forehead pinched in academic concern. "Yes. How long has it been since you've heard someone speak your own language?"

Lucas hiccupped and wiped his nose on his sleeve. There were still sobs in his chest aching to escape, but he forced them down, afraid to break down entirely in front of a stranger.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't remember." He looked up, barely able to see through his tears. "Who are you?"

"My name is Doctor Esteban Maturin, and I'm the physician on this ship. You've been flogged, and you were unconscious for about a minute and a half. You're in my sickbay. You're safe here."

Lucas moved to smear the tears away from his face, but a cough rose up in his throat and rattled in his lungs. He tensed, momentarily forgetting about his brand and pressing his forehead against his arm. He yelped, making him cough more. The fit soon passed, though his breathing still rasped somewhere deep in his chest. The doctor didn't move from his spot by his side.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

Lucas shifted his eyes up and scowled. "¿Qué?"

"Your arm. Does it hurt?"

Lucas glanced at his arm, a hand clasped over his brand. "No."

"You're lying."

He shot his head up. What was this, exactly? Not kindness, not really. Kindness was as much a stranger to him as solid land, but he'd know it immediately if he saw it. Even still, it was so dissimilar to the treatment he'd received so far on this ship, the treatment he'd grown used to. The doctor waited expectantly, not saying a word, and held out his hand. Lucas fought to keep his breath even, but it didn't do any good. He uncovered his brand and slowly gave his arm to the doctor. The man took it and pulled over a chair, unwrapping the days-old bandage and laying it aside.

"Did this happen right before you came aboard?"

The burn stung in the open air, looking red and inflamed, a raised letter P surrounded by a circle of raw, irritated skin. Lucas clamped his teeth over his lower lip and nodded. The doctor turned his wrist over, poking and prodding with measured carefulness.

"And no one's looked at this since?"
He shook his head. The doctor reached behind his chair and produced some sort of salve from his kit on the floor.

"It's started to fester. Nothing serious as yet, but it should have been attended to days ago. Hold still, this will sting."

He rubbed the salve on the brand, and Lucas inhaled sharply. His face crumpled, and he turned his head away, his hand curling into a fist. The back of his eyes burned, and he realized more tears had made their way down his cheeks. The doctor finished with the salve and began re-wrapping Lucas' arm with a clean bandage. Lucas blinked his eyes open and watched the doctor work. He was efficient, but surprisingly gentle.

"Why am I here?" Lucas asked.

"It is customary for sailors to be brought down to sickbay after being flogged. And after 3 days in the brig, you've developed quite a nasty cough."

A nasty cough? Lucas snorted; Kipling's was worse.

The doctor put a hand on Lucas' forehead to check his temperature, and the boy wrinkled his nose at the touch.

"I wish to keep you under close watch until after this fever passes."

He stood and walked over to his desk a few feet away, picking up one of the many bottles and pouring a small amount of the liquid inside into a cup. He walked back and held it out. "Here - roll onto your side and take this. It should help to calm your lungs."

Lucas glances skeptically from the doctor to the cup of alien medicine, but he did as he was told and shifted his weight off his stomach. His backside ached in protest, but he clenched his jaw and took the cup, holding the vile-smelling liquid to his lips. His stomach turned in revulsion, and made a face.
"Drink it."

Wincing and already regretting his decision, Lucas tipped his head back and tried to swallow the medicine in a single gulp. He gagged as it was halfway down and had to swallow a second time, pinching his face and shaking his head. It moved like tar down into his stomach. He stuck out his tongue and made exaggerated dry heaving noises.

"Thank you." The doctor took the cup back. "You may lie back down now."

He walked over to his desk and began putting things back in order, shuffling papers, replacing jars on their shelf, picking up some grotesque thing in a jar and examining it in the faint lantern light. Lucas settled back down on his stomach and watched in puzzlement. He'd never seen anything so strange before. The doctor himself, Don Esteban, Lucas supposed he should call him, was quite the mystery as well.

"They call you Wolf, you know," the doctor said after a few moments of silence. "You're in the muster books as a certain John Smith, but the men who saw you go after Kipling have taken to calling you Wolf. Some sort of warning to the others, I suppose."

Lucas frowned, his ignorance of the English language showing once again. "What's that mean?"

"What, wolf?" Esteban glanced up over his spectacles. "Lobo. You made quite the first impression, mi querido."

They'd given him an actual name? Lucas didn't care what they called him, or even the reasons for doing so, he was surprised they actually named him. He supposed it was better than what he was called on the last ship: Chien Espagnol.

"Not to worry," Esteban continued. "The man you stabbed recovered quickly. It was a small wound, mostly superficial, and he was out of sickbay the day before yesterday." He blinked, turning back to look at Lucas. "Why did you stab that man?"

Lucas frowned, remembering his first day aboard. The events in the mess hall had become blurred and confused to him, as if it were part of his imagination, and he still didn't quite believe he'd actually stabbed someone - with a fork, no less. But he did remembered all the chaos and noise, the scores of bodies crowded together, the dirty powder boy and the disgusting sailor with the rotten teeth. He narrowed his eyes.

"He touched me. And his teeth were crooked."

The doctor paused his rifling, taking a moment to consider Lucas' logic. He raised his eyebrows and nodded to the side, deeming it sound, and resumed his work. "I suppose I can't very well argue with that."