The train swept through picturesque countryside. Rays of bright, untainted sunshine rippled and illuminated the glens and the valleys that Scotland was famed for. Snow glistened as it caught the light, becoming reflective, deepening the crisp colour of the cloudless sky. The further south one went the less rugged the land became, blurring from craggy mountain peaks coloured grey, to the luscious pastures of smooth hills and valleys. The world changed from vibrant shades of autumn to a sharp, distinct spring palette.
She remembered the last time she had made the long journey. She had not been as placated by the scenery as she was now – teenagers can be oblivious to the true beauty around them, too busy caring what everyone else thinks of them. She had been that age once and shuddered whenever she reminisced. To get to where she was going, she had to spend a lot of time on many different trains as she wound her way down the country to a small city that some of her extended family had taken great interest in. They were the reason she travelled the hundreds of miles down.
Alighting from the train at the bustling station she took a moment to acknowledge the change from her local town and her family’s country home. The city was a different world, one where kindness hid in the shadows in fear of its grotesque cousins – greed and selfishness. She had always found city folk to be very self-absorbed, always in a hurry to be nowhere, incapable of basic manners, and lacking the ability to apologise. Why her family had allowed some of its branches to set their own roots within one was a small mystery. The noise of the station was overwhelming, as was the smell that permeated the air so thickly she felt she could reach out and touch it. It was different in the city than it was to home, and it wasn’t only pollution that poisoned the atmosphere. The relentless ambition, questionable morals, and the desperation to succeed all mingled together to create a fog visible only to outsiders. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t comfortable. Everything was harsh, fast-paced, and abrupt, yet there was no pretence, no falsehoods meant to lure and deceive. Everything that was true about the city, and its people, was clear to see. This wasn’t a metropolis of fashion, culture or art, it was a city with hundreds of thousands of people clawing away at their lives to make something of it that was worthwhile telling.
The bus was considerably quieter, the passengers more inclined to keep to themselves, looking out the window or at the other vehicles on the road. Some buildings had changed, shops had disappeared to be replaced by cafés and eateries, and the same family businesses were still clinging onto their leases on a rapidly growing commercial street. After recognising a park, and a pub, she pressed the button and alighted the bus. It was surprisingly quiet but had an air of secret allure, a nucleus of fashion and modernity. Independent businesses still managed to survive here, on the outskirts of the city, where the national chains dared not go. Eccentric cafés, shops packed full of vintage clothing, and quaint, enchanting bistros and restaurants made up the modest metropolis.
Everything faded back, receded to the nooks of her mind as she felt her skin, her blood, and her bones resonate with the petite shop front a few doors down from the bus stop. It sang to her like a siren to a ship, enticing her to draw nearer, but it wasn’t death that awaited her, only familiarity and a home away from home.
Closing the distance, she paused in front of the window, casting her gaze over the real, and equally fake, relics that lay behind the spotless glass. Some sparkled, yet that did not mean they were valuable, and an odd piece lay gathering dust and the companionship of spiders, but it had the ability to protect its owner from anything this world, or the other ones, had to throw at them. The display had no order, jewellery mixed with helpful gems and stones, or an antique bracelet hanging onto a sprig of dried lavender sprouting like grass from a bed of mint leaves. It was a shop of many things, an antique jeweller, an unofficial therapist, and a local herbalist. It had been passed down through many of her ancestors’ hands over the centuries, always in the same spot despite the marching of time and the coming of modernity, but it still stood, as it no doubt always would. The blue of the façade was the same shade her family favoured, the emerald green under layer visible when the rays of sunshine settled upon it. The frames, and the door, had been painted many times through the generations, but only ever back and forth between scarlet, beryl, and lapis. She had been told that once it had been all three colours simultaneously.
Taking her eyes from the chaotic display she edged further towards the door, reading the sign that said it was closed with a wry half-smile. As soon as she came within touching distance, she heard the barrels of the lock click and clunk until the door swung open silently welcoming her in. Allowing the faint grin to rest on her face she crossed the threshold and revelled in the scent of gentle lavender mingled with sweet mint, of mellow lemongrass and pungent bergamot. There was an undertone of ginger, holding hands with a very faint juvenile garlic. All were fighting for dominance in the air, swirling their way around the shop and resting on everything they could, including the fibres of her clothes.
The first room was full of glass cabinets packed with old cigarette boxes, postcards that had never been written from various towns and seaside resorts across the country, combs and enamel brushes, and strings of pearls, both false and real, snaking around other various odd pieces of jewellery. One wall held shelves that supported glass jars filled with the herbs she smelled, and many that she didn’t, whilst there were paintings and sketches on the others with price tags as their companions. The walls were coated with a deep grape emulsion, whilst the floor was made of uneven, creaking mahogany. There was an archway leading through to the next room and she passed through it to the nostalgic green room, filled with herbs, ointments, and special earth talismans. So called the green room due to the faded emerald paint that adorned the walls. It was the nucleus of the entire shop, and the most frequented by customers looking for a natural remedy for their ills, whatever they may be.
There was a door near the back that led to the private room, and upstairs was a branch of the family archive. She had always thought of it more as a storage space for items that weren’t in need of as much protecting as the ones at home, but as she felt the power surround her like a security blanket to a child she began to think twice.
Her family had spent generations nurturing the shop to be a haven, a cocoon of protection against those who had unnatural abilities to hurt the innocent, which accumulated to more than one would think. In reality, the shop was more powerful than some of the artefacts her family kept in their home, and one that was much overlooked, none more so than her.
She didn’t have time to linger and admire a beauty she had not seen before in her youthful ignorance because she had somewhere else to be of equal importance. Opening the door to the private rooms she left her suitcase standing solitary amongst enchantments and objects of wonder whilst she made her way outside, back onto the swarm filled street, keeping a modest smile on her lips as she heard the satisfying clunk of the door locking behind her.
***
In the north hospitals were modest. The biggest one was in a city, the only large city so far up. Everything else was conducted in local clinics that had been passed down from one pair of hands to another like a precious family heirloom. She had been born at home, the hospital being too far away and difficult to get to. They were something else entirely in the city.
Large edifices dedicated to health, like the temples in Rome or Athens, holding a strange kind of beauty, a fragility that reflected those stuck inside. As it was beautiful it was also garish, large and sprawling, it took up many acres of land, a colony of many buildings housing departments she couldn’t pronounce, much like a high security prison with separate wards depending on inmate behaviour. Also, like a prison, some people went in for months, even years, and some never left alive at all.
No matter where, how large, or how many falsely cheery nurses prowled the hallways with their hollow smiles and practised manners, all hospitals smelled the same, of bleach and cleanliness, as if it were trying so hard not to have a smell that it created an entirely new breed. The walls were painted in a narrow array of colours, never white though – that was deemed garish. Any pastel colour, usually of the mint variety, was smeared across the walls to elicit reassurance and solidity, although depending on the ward depended on the colour.
The one she wanted was baby blue, but not due to the inhabitants. It held different names in different hospitals, and no doubt had many unsavoury nicknames from staff, but it was the floor, or the wing, where people who weren’t coming out were kept. A hospice of kinds, or a precursor to a graveyard, very few people were awake. The doors opened for her, and she passed through them into silence.
There was a low hum in a hospital, either of loved ones talking, reassuring each other, an underlying buzz of boredom and waiting, staff members running corridors they could navigate in their sleep, and the clunk, whine, and clatter of machinery. As soon as the doors closed behind her with a deep exhale, all of it remained on the other side, in the land of the fully living. She received a glance and nod of acknowledgement from the nurse at the station, hiding a questioning look, she moved past quietly, giving him a well-mannered smile. Walking silently so as not to disturb the atmosphere of the ward she glanced at the room numbers, searching for the one she wanted.
It was on the corner, flanked by two other rooms, one empty, the other occupied by an elderly man who needed a machine to help him breathe. He was surrounded by family who had fully grey hair, and others who looked as though they were not far behind. The room she wanted was empty except for the person she had come to see.
There were no monitors, no rhythmic electronic beep to signify a pump of the heart. If possible, the room was more silent than the ward itself. Lying on the bed, far too young to be condemned to more than a few days there, was a man. He had light auburn hair, spread wildly on the pillow beneath his head like an unkempt array of flowers and weeds. A peaceful crease glanced across his face, and for a moment it felt like she could reach out to graze her finger along his skin and he would wake.
The moment passed fleetingly.
The silence around her elicited memories she had long forgotten, left to be buried in a mind full of experiences and lessons, gathering dust as a discarded child’s toy. Despite the flurry and flashes of the past she couldn’t remember when she’d last seen him, or even what words had been exchanged. All she knew for certain was that it had been a few years, if not more. She didn’t know how long it would be before he awoke.
The peace was disturbed momentarily by a pair of rubber shoes squeaking on the polished floor. Briefly turning around to acknowledge the new entrance, she could smell the cleanliness before she saw the navy-blue uniform and simple nametag. A female nurse shuffled in dazedly until she set her eyes upon the unusual visitor. Immediately a practised smile slid onto her face, the eyes surrendered the glimpses of hopelessness and dissatisfaction that lingered beneath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think he had family,” the nurse began.
“Everyone has family,” she reasoned, “It just depends how close they are.”
The nurse hid her disapproval well, clinging to the friendly façade that kept her job. She came further into the room, bent down beside the bed and began to rustle the thick plastic of the catheter.
“I can go and find the Doctor,” the nurse offered when she had finished.
“I’d prefer if you tell me.”
She looked taken aback, feeling exposed now that she had been placed in a spot of knowledge. Nurses were notoriously overlooked, and often they knew information far more valuable than that of the doctors. Every day, perhaps more than once, they visited the patients in the ward, spoke with them, asked questions, kept their spirits up, and if it were genuine or not hardly mattered.
“He’s in a coma,” she announced gingerly, “but we can’t find the cause.”
They never would. Despite the bounds of progress science had made, there were still gaps in the widely accepted knowledge, areas of grey that they could never fully explain.
“He collapsed in the street a few weeks ago and he’s been like this ever since. We contacted you then,” the nurse continued, a careless piece of disapprobation colliding with her tone.
She never said anything in reply but simply looked over at the face that had once been so familiar, like a brother. Still, she couldn’t recall their last meeting or their last conversation, and she began to feel the building of regret squirming at the back of her mind like a kettle about to boil.
“Thank you for taking care of him,” she stated politely before she left the room.
There was no point in lingering for there was nothing she could do to help him. A visit was all that had been permitted, a minute or two confirming what had happened to him before she was to leave. He served as a reminder, a warning, of what happened when orders weren’t obeyed. It made her uneasy the longer she looked at him, knowing that there was no mercy to blood who strayed too far away from the intended path.
Unfortunately, the easiest part of her task was complete. However discomforting it had been, now the real work began.
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