Slice-of-life short. A doctor and a nurse discuss changing conditions.
1.6k. Ephraim Margolis, an obstetrician at the Caer Afon Magical Hospital, stops to speak with their nurse lead — Colleen Pike, the daughter of the infamous Lucien Pike. They talk about things that are, and things to come.
Colleen’s office was dark, but the door was slightly ajar, and Ephraim drummed his knuckles against the wood before he leaned his shoulder against it, and looked inside. Colleen’s shift had finished half an hour ago at ten, but she would only take the eleven or the midnight bus, didn’t like to catch any of the buses that didn’t go on the hour.
She was sitting in the dark, leaning back in the chair behind her desk. She sat with her feet flat on the floor, her body slouched back in her seat, one arm slung over her belly and the other holding a little rubber duck on a keyring.
Sitting in the dark staring into space was a Colleen Pike staple, something Ephraim had seen in her from the very beginning, when she’d first moved to Bristol and started at the Caer Afon.
Now, she was a lead nurse, ran the whole department — two departments, if you counted the GUM clinic separately from obstetrics, and really, Ephraim thought that perhaps they should. When he’d first met her, he’d not quite understood what drew Colleen to his department, but that was before he’d seen her in action.
She was the best nurse he’d ever seen, in a crisis, and that had been a thousand crises ago — she was even better than she was now.
She’d been younger, then, not as grey, and there’d been fewer lines around her eyes — she’d been more shut down, too. Stiffer and less certain of her surroundings, more prone to anger, less able to cope with stress.
Stressed or not, she’d go somewhere else entirely at times like these, go quiet and entirely internal, stare into the middle distance and think of what, Ephraim didn’t know. Many angels could feel the emotions of others, and he’d always felt glad to have been spared that.
But the little rubber duck — the little rubber duck, that was new.
She’d had that little rubber duck for a little less than a year, now. She’d drift into herself in moments of quiet with her eyes fixated on its little face, the orange curve of its beak, its yellow body resting in the palm of her hand, her thumb resting on its breast.
She didn’t make any sound to acknowledge him, but she turned her head to look at him — she did it in that silent, particular way she always had.
Ephraim was near enough seven hundred years old, and he had met a great many people like Colleen — women, men, others.
“How’s your boy?” she asked.
“I sent him home,” said Ephraim. “He’s had anxiety attacks before, when he was a medical student. He’ll be okay.”
Colleen nodded, her lips pressed loosely together, and swung the ring of her duck from her finger, turning in her seat to look up at him properly. She didn’t like Oliver personally — most of the nurses didn’t, and Ephraim was quietly working him to realise this was not a state of affairs that he could live with — but when he’d started to spiral earlier, it was her who’d taken him aside and made him take a moment.
Ollie hadn’t wanted to take a moment.
“He faint?” asked Colleen.
“No,” said Ephraim, shaking his head slowly. “He was light-headed after he was hyperventilating, but he didn’t lose consciousness. I told him to take tomorrow off, sick leave, and said I wouldn’t let him work if he came in. He wants to join my synagogue.”
“What’s wrong with his synagogue?”
“He doesn’t have a synagogue.”
“He isn’t Jewish?”
Ephraim shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know if he’s thought much about it. When he Fell, he went to a lodge house run by Jewish angels, but I don’t know how important it was to him then, if it’s important to him now. He keeps the kashrut, but his stomach is sensitive — it’s the diet he’s used to, could be that he just doesn’t want to change. I don’t know if he keeps other mitzvot.”
Colleen looked up at him, frowning slightly, her head tilting slightly to the side. “You’ve never asked?”
“I don’t like them to feel like I’m pushing it at them,” said Ephraim softly. “Some of them think I mention it to judge them, shame them — students, I mean. Faith should be a place of safety for them, or a call to duty, a community — if they want to come to me, I let them, but I don’t push it. He’ll talk more about it with me when he’s ready.”
Colleen nodded her head.
“He’s asking you now because his anxiety is worse,” said Colleen. “Now that he’s out of his placement, I mean — this is permanent, and he’s not just a student any more. He thinks faith will help.”
“It could,” said Ephraim. “Just because it didn’t help you doesn’t mean it won’t help him.”
Colleen laughed. “Well, maybe if I’d been Jewish, it would’ve been different,” she said softly, and Ephraim smiled down at her. “You’re doing that thing again. Just standing there, so that I’ll talk to you.”
“You don’t have to talk to me,” said Ephraim immediately.
“Yeah, I know,” said Colleen slowly. “But it’s a thing you do, right? You just… stand there. You just listen. Let other people talk.”
“Isn’t that what you do?”
“No.” Colleen stared into space, slowly clipping her keyring onto her belt — she’d already changed out of her scrubs, but he normally saw it hanging at her waist, underneath them, always on her. “What you do is comforting. I’m not comforting.”
“I find you comforting,” said Ephraim, and Colleen, surprised, laughed, and she shifted in her seat, grinning.
“No, you don’t,” she said.
“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “But you’re my friend — I like you very much. You don’t need to be comforting to be a comfort to people. Comforting, the way you’ve phrased it, is a personality trait, I suppose, a part of one’s person — maybe you don’t have that, but you’re understanding, and you care.”
“You care more. Understand more.”
“Maybe,” said Ephraim. “But I’m a good deal older than you are — comes with the territory.”
Colleen inhaled slowly, her thin nostrils flaring. “Did you come here to tell me about Ollie?”
“No,” said Ephraim. “I came to ask if you’re alright.”
“I thought you’d seen,” said Colleen, drumming her fingers against her knee before moving in her chair again — she began to tilt it one way and then the other, swinging slightly in her place. “Did everyone else?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Ephraim, “and you really weren’t very obvious. One of your sisters?”
“My brother,” said Colleen softly. She looked tired — haggard was maybe the word, and Ephraim would suggest that she take time off like he had with Oliver, but it wasn’t work that made her tired, and he knew that she was worse, when she couldn’t work, when she couldn’t be busy. “Cosmo and Damien, the twins, I don’t know if you’ve met them. They’re not even thirty yet, they’re… My half-brothers, really. Cosmo texts me now and then, and he doesn’t normally call. My father has a new secretary.”
Ephraim frowned slightly, not sure exactly what this meant, what its significance was — he had never entirely understood the nature of Colleen’s relationship, or lack thereof, with her father. He’d heard people talk about him, and he’d heard his reputation, that he was quite the terror up in Lashton, but Colleen didn’t talk to him directly, from what Ephraim had heard.
“Is that important?” he asked.
“This one is,” said Colleen. “He can’t get this one pregnant, for one — he’s here to stay. Cosmo says he’s funny in the head. Cold, nasty, that’s all well and good, but he’s got a head for business — he’s bringing my dad in line. They’re expanding the business, fighting for more territory in the city. It’s fucking dangerous anyway, but it’s more now — and Cosmo says their operations have been interrupted a little. They don’t know what to make of him, the secretary.”
She was on her feet and packing up her things into her little rucksack, and Ephraim went to pick up her coat for her, holding it out so that she could slide her arms into the sleeves — he liked to walk with her to the bus, on nights like these, when they weren’t ships in the night, sailing past each other.
“Are you worried that the new secretary is going to do your father some harm?” asked Ephraim slowly, and Colleen laughed her bitter little laugh, and shook her head.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “But the business expanding means everyone doing more work — means more violence. More gang shit, overall. I don’t care what it means for my dad. He’ll never die, as far as I see it. But Cosmo, Damien — and any of the rest. They could. I think he’s scared — Cosmo. Not of the secretary, but of the change. It’s a prologue of things to come.”
“A prologue,” Ephraim repeated, nodding his head. “Is there anything I can do to help you? Comfort you?”
“No,” said Colleen. “Just walk me to the bus now and then, and bring me a breakfast pretzel when you get yours.”
Ephraim put out his arm, a silent invitation, and Colleen did what she didn’t do, nine times out of ten: she leaned forward and into the hug. He didn’t grip her tightly or even grip her at all, kept his arm outstretched instead of holding her with it — he knew she couldn’t stand that — but she leaned her weight into his for a moment, even wrapped one of her arms around his back, hugging him where he didn’t quite hug her.
“Thanks,” said Colleen.
“It’s nothing,” said Ephraim.
“You want to talk about Ollie?”
Ephraim sighed, considering it, and then he shook his head. “No. But thank you.”
They walked in silence down the hospital corridors, and he waited with her for the bus.
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