Chapter 9: Old habits;
Prompts: Bleeding through bandages, tourniquet, "Oh, that's not good."
Primary Safe-house, Mid-town, January 2015
A few hours had passed since Finch had come up out of sleep. Hadn't gone so well. Startled awake, right out of what he remembered as a deep, float-y kind of black space.
A place he hadn't minded. All his thoughts and cares had dropped away in there. And for a while he'd felt a kind of peace he hadn't had in years. An absence of all the things that usually cluttered his mind. Maybe that's really what peace was? An absence?
And what had pulled the ripcord and yanked him out of it?
Thought had returned – thoughts of his Machine. Even now, he couldn't imagine how it hadn't been front of mind, before this.
Yes, there'd been the other things: the fire, the losses from his Library Office … his wounds, and whatever Miss Shaw had given him for the pain. But still, how could he have just blotted out the thought of his Machine?
He'd only spent the last fourteen years of his life in this singular pursuit; spent all that time – teaching, conversing, opening himself and every bit of his life to its ever-observing eye.
Perhaps, because it'd been so gradual. It hadn't seemed intrusive, or strange – to share so much of himself and his own way of seeing the world.
Who else would have so willingly allowed someone to eavesdrop that thoroughly on every aspect of his life – every minute of every day? He was being watched. Watched, recorded, measured, analyzed – and for so long now that he'd stopped noticing. It felt normal, like a friend or family, always there, an arm's length away.
Maybe it had all started with that "simple" game – chess. Checkers had been far too easy, and his Machine needed something more. The rules for chess weren't so simple, and its strategy more complex. False starts, at first. And then a win here and there, until the Machine's singular focus had become that, to win.
Hour after hour, they'd sat together. Sometimes, in good weather, at the park – where his Machine had watched the moves from a camera, overhead. Other times, in his office, dodging Nathan's snarky quips.
Nathan…
His chest tightened with the thought.
"Wish you were still here, my friend," he said, in a whisper.
The white light over his laptop screen watched, presumably heard, but made no attempt to respond.
A knock at his door. Startled, Finch looked up.
Miss Shaw had arrived. She'd said she'd look in on him.
"Yes, Miss Shaw. Come in."
She walked to the side of his bed and noticed his hands right away. He'd been letting his arms hang loose at his sides while he'd been up the last few hours. Hadn't noticed the change.
"How do they feel, Finch?" She stared at the bandaging. More staining on the layers of gauze, and the skin at the wrist above the tops of the wraps had started to swell.
That's not good, she thought. The more he walked around with his hands down like that, the more they'd swell and the tighter the windings of gauze would squeeze against them – like a tourniquet. More of that pink-tinged fluid would squeeze out of the burns. And pain from all the swelling would spike. Not good.
Worse than that, the gauze could even strangle the blood supply in and out of the hands. A disaster if not corrected. Lucky she'd found it now.
"As I said before, Miss Shaw, I'm familiar with pain." Shaw frowned.
He seems to minimize it, she thought. All for some crazy thought he had in his head, like he deserved it, somehow. His to bear. Why? What was the point?
"Finch, look at this." And she showed him how the skin above his wrists had ballooned above the edge of the wrap on his hands.
"Shouldn't be like that. It means you've been letting your hands stay too low. That swelling can compromise your circulation, Finch. Lose your hands… Lemme check something."
She reached in and tested a few of his fingertips. He winced, of course, from the burns. But if the worst case had already started to happen, they'd already be cool to touch, swollen like sausages, and pale or even dusky blue.
If anything, they were warm and only a little swollen under the gauze.
They had time.
"Gotta elevate your hands, Finch, like we did before." She had him lean back, so he was nearly flat in the bed, and elevate his hands on pillows she sat on top of his lower chest, so his hands ended up above his heart.
He balked.
"Miss Shaw, I really do appreciate your help," he said, softly, an edge in his voice. "But I've lost so much time. I need to work."
She looked at him with her cool, dark eyes. No emotion. And, after a moment or two, unnerving to him. He made a bird-like movement of his head, unwanted.
"Suit yourself, Finch. Lemme know if I need to cut these off your hands. I'll be around."
Shaw kept her eyes on his for another long moment. She knew it was her super-power. Many a tough-guy out in the field had crumbled from it.
She watched a shudder go through him and broke it off, then.
Time to go.
She'd made her point.
Found Reese in the living room. Hadn't looked for him. She'd been on her way to the cabinet to pour herself a drink and found him there. He'd watched her come in.
Shaw started for the cabinet, but then stopped and turned around to look at him. Reese started to tighten. Definitely had his attention. Couldn't tell what was on her mind. She walked up and stood in front of him. Cool, dark eyes.
Then she leaned down and grabbed his glass out of his hand.
"Just need a sip. On duty," she said, and tipped the glass for one long sip.
She swiped the back of her hand across her lips and dropped it back on the arm of the couch. Reese took it, wrapping his long fingers around the glass.
"Any time," he said, and then, "thought I was first shift."
"He's got some swelling in his hands now. Gonna have to keep a closer eye on him. Catch some sleep while you can."
Reese didn't say anything, and he didn't make a move to get up. So, Shaw turned around and headed for the chair on the other side of the room, opposite his couch. Plunked down into it and lifted her feet up on the edge of the coffee table.
Reese swirled the whiskey in his glass and downed another sip.
Back at the end of the hall, Finch stared at the white eye above his screen.
"You heard her," he said, softly.
"She means well," and thought he better leave it at that. He didn't want to say anything that might be misunderstood by his Machine. He needed to get some idea of where things were with it, before he ventured into the bigger issues.
"Why don't we run some diagnostics and see what we have." Clear eyes. Fatherly, if anything, looking into the eye at the top of his screen.
Even though he had a thousand questions buzzing around in his head, he'd need to take it one step at a time. If there were problems uncovered by the diagnostics, he wouldn't want to trust what came after, without correcting them. So, better to take the time now, than have to waste it and have to backtrack later on.
Finch took a deep breath and let it go, aware that his Machine could see it.
Old habits…