One last time

In the real world, time flowed differently now as well. But the surroundings were still rotten. The sterile stench of medicine. Air too sharp, scratching at the nose and throat. The dull grey light of day blending with the parchment-yellow glow of electric lamps. Rustles. Shufflings. Conversations the mind refused to perceive and process for a long time. Medical coats, greyed with age. A kaleidoscope of dim gloom. All of it — these images and sounds — surrounded Thomas every day, and routine swallowed time, threw off the count of hours. The scratch of a pen against paper. That was the only thing Tommy listened to, as if deliberately pushing the steady voice of the writer out of his awareness. Talking without end. He had already memorised that voice after waking from the lonely nothingness. To be honest, he missed that loneliness and its cold silence. “Mr. Shelby, you can stop pretending to be mute at any moment.” The scratch of the pen stopped, as if not to interfere with the voice reaching his ears. The doctor’s voice was smoke-rough, too real for a ghost, too earthly for a bright angel. An angel, it would seem, should be a guide to the other side. It would seem that to see an angel meant to die. Fucking angels. The scratching resumed. The steady, smoke-rough voice fell silent, as if the attempt to reach the interlocutor held no importance for the doctor at all. Thomas raised his gaze to him. He sat hunched in a chair in a dark office, before an elegant lacquered desk, more suited to a businessman than a doctor. He looked into nothing — somewhere down, somewhere into a lower nothing, somewhere into hell. And now he raised his gaze, and it was harder than holding up an unstable beam under a collapsing tunnel wall. The doctor’s face, lined with wrinkles, was dull and stone-like. Faded grey hair fell in thin strands onto his forehead. He was old, older than Tommy himself. Nasolabial folds cut through his face like deep trenches. The glasses reflected light, and those reflections jealously protected the eyes, shielding them from curious looks, making the man behind the desk seem partly like a machine with glass embedded in his sockets. But Tommy had seen those eyes before. Grey — darker, perhaps, only than the whites of their owner. There was as much life in them as there was in Tom himself. “Found something interesting, Mr. Shelby?” the doctor asked in the same even voice, without looking up from his writing. “You’re interesting,” Tommy said simply, without elaborating. “So are you,” the doctor replied calmly. “Is that why you pulled me back from the grave?” The doctor’s lips twitched slightly. Either a smile or a grimace. “The last time I answered that question, you didn’t believe me.” “And you said you wouldn’t answer it again until I got to know you better,” Tommy reminded him in turn. “And what have you learned about me, Thomas?” The doctor set the pen aside and folded his fingers together in front of him, demonstrating his attention. “That you’re interesting, Dr. Waters,” Tommy answered simply, his eyes seeming to look both at the doctor and past him — into reality and beyond it. That look seemed absent to the doctor — he frowned slightly. But most likely, he took Tommy’s words as mockery, because he said: “And you are a miracle, Mr. Shelby. A true miracle — because, believe me as a physician, it played no smaller role in your survival than I did.” A muscle tightened in Tommy’s jaw. He swallowed dryly. “Yeah. A fucking miracle, no less.” Tommy turned his gaze toward the window. It reflected as much as the doctor’s glasses; it seemed there was only bright white emptiness beyond it, as if this office sat on the sun rather than on the Earth. The doctor lowered his gaze, moving his fingers slightly. “The bullets followed a fortunate trajectory. All of them. I managed to resuscitate you. But you slept for a long time. The fact that you survived, woke up so many years later without turning into a vegetable — to me, that is… something rewarding, considering how much blood and sweat I spent fighting for your life. Not to mention how positively your rehabilitation is progressing.” A brief note of a scientist’s amazement clearly slipped through his even voice. “Well then, congratulations.” Tommy replied flatly. The doctor slightly tightened his clasped fingers. “I do not expect gratitude from you.” Waters’ voice dimmed slightly, contradicting his words. “And I do not expect you to begin appreciating this miracle right away, given your disposition…” Tommy shot him a sharp look, more like the flick of a razor, but Waters remained unmoved, as if he hadn’t felt the figurative cut on his dull eyes. “But think about it. Perhaps the Universe itself decided to give you a chance to try and find a decent life. At least one last time.” Tommy did not respond, holding his gaze and the heavy silence for a few more seconds. “How the hell did you pull me out of a burning wagon in front of everyone, eh? A hatch in the bottom of the vardo? Were you hiding under bushes or something?” Tom’s tone rose, more challenging now, though still within calm volume. Wherever the doctor and his people had been hiding, they pulled him out at the very last moment — the burns on the body told a story Tom had slept through. The only thing that was clear — Duke hadn’t managed. He still had much to learn. Should’ve kept shooting and shooting to be sure… Waters’ lips now curved into something more recognisably as a smile. “Let’s not discuss that — I wouldn’t want to disturb your paranoia. You are still being examined, and the psyche is a delicate matter,” he said elegantly, as if deliberately avoiding any accusation of fragility. Out in the open field, among familiar faces and friends… “Then what do we talk about, eh?” Thomas asked sharply, glancing around the office just to keep from rolling his eyes. “Maybe some fucking explanations? Or is it still too early? I know I’m not in a hospital — I’m in some damn mansion. Not even in bloody Birmingham, but in fucking Portsmouth!” The doctor smiled. A strained, unpleasant smile. His body remained still, tense as stone. “The sea air is good for you.” “Fuck.” Thomas couldn’t take it anymore and jumped to his feet. He threw a glance at the window, seeing only fog and ghostly outlines. “Is our session over?” Waters asked after him, but instead of an answer he got only the slam of a door. Many rooms in this strange house were locked, and Tom had long since stopped trying to open them. Only one room was open to him — his own — and that was exactly where he was heading. He passed servants and another man in a white coat without greeting them. There were no others in this mansion, and they treated him like a typical invisible ghost. As he did them. A gun — there had to be a gun in this house. Surely there was a gun somewhere in this bloody cage. Bursting into the room, he slammed his hand against the bedside table. Anger flared through his skin, making the world around him feel sharper, more real. “Fuck!” He didn’t fully understand his own emotions. He didn’t know what had changed in him during that near-death sleep and after it, but he felt different — and it made the strings of fear inside him tremble, reminding him of fragility and weakness. The bullet scars on his stomach and chest flared with a phantom ache. “Just one gun. Just one bullet…” And he could finally end all this shit. Without any fucking guardian angels and “interesting” lunatics in white coats waiting at the door of oblivion. “Fucking gun!!” It won’t be a bullet that kill Tommy Shelby. Another strike against the bedside table merged with the crack of a sudden gunshot outside the window.