‘There’s not a lot I can do if you didn’t bring the, um-and-a, finger with you.’
I remember it as one of those particularly cold mornings when the Port winds would whistle through cracks and creep coldly under doorframes–making not wearing socks particularly unbearable–when a pallid looking gentleman had wandered into my office and greeted me with the injured look of someone who was profoundly confused. His babble, unintelligible as babble usually is, was only helped along by his cradled hand and the slow trickle of falling blood that landed sullenly upon my study carpet. I greeted him curtly, as the morning was still new, and could only bemoan my familial vocal tick for dulling the edge of what I had hoped to be a cutting remark.
‘Up on the bench then, um-and-a, we’ll see what we can do for you.’
I’m terrible at cutting, well, that is to say that I’m terrible at appearing cutting in dramatic statements or in my hunched decorum; there’s yet to be a suture that can’t be unsown by the right scalpel and words are sadly a blade that I’m yet to have sharpened. It is the curse of a merry father and a jolly complexion that has left me with an agreeable bedside manner and my habit of smiling when being caught thinking has led most patients to believe that I’m mentally penning their get well soon card.
But I digress.
I am a doctor, um-and-a, and I enjoy the trade for the collection of its many parts. The learning, the solving of problems. It is only the occurrence of all too many pointless conversations that detracts from a career that I appear born to die doing.
Wise men are not found on a doctor’s table, the muses would say, and it is to my general annoyance that people tend to stick with small talk when I’m trying to work out what’s wrong with them.
‘Cloudy day today,’ A man once told me as I removed a cellar worth of glass from his nether regions, ‘certainly is a funny bit of weather.’
Benjamin, the clock maker, we saw eye to eye on some matters, um-and-a, and I tend to agree with his statement that some people can only hold a conversation if it is about nothing worth mentioning. He did mean this as an insult, but the profundity of the message still feels intentful to me as a regard.
This is to say more succinctly that my ability in words fantastical are dawn from the pages of a textbook not a place of whimsy, but I shall try to relate this story with the accuracy it deserves–although you’ll have to forgive me for lacking the typical colour of a sailor’s ramble.
The man before me, Martin I believe his name was, had found that he was missing a finger.
A doctor’s role is not that of a detective, um-and-a, and I was not about to go rifling through a muddy canal just because an individual had decided to eat an apple in a moment of innocent daydreaming. You make choices in life and life makes choices for you.
Um-and-a, one brief interlude to discuss the matter of the finger.
A city becomes “more urgent” when the cradle that created it elects to become a nation’s capital. And of that merit, a country that becomes compressed into a single city, ends up becoming quite busy indeed.
The Port of Nations–you must know of it–rests upon the border of two powerful armies and is itself quite cognisant of an infinitely colder landmass across an all too narrow sea. So, as if an ant climbing on to a sponge, the Port of Nations had to very quickly find itself a niche or find that it was about to be washed away.
Trade is the heartbeat of the port and for the sake of its continued existence, it is important that it maintains a certain degree of, um-and-a, neutrality.
I can’t imagine that you’ve read about the politics of a distant nation but suffice to say a government whose entire foundation exists on trade will become rather heavy handed when theft is brought up as a topic of conversation.
The Peacekeepers, as they are known, are a friendly bunch who have been employed by the guilds to, um-and-a, remove theft within the port, and are now the, let’s say, the arbiters of how many fingers you deserve to keep on a hand.
‘You don’t understand,’ my forlorn patient bellowed, ‘I’m a harpist.’ he managed to burble before his words were again overcome by the pain that he was experiencing. Disconsolate and crippled of will, Martin began to openly weep in my office.
Now, I’m not disempathic, if he had the displaced digit, I could have reattached it quite handily. Fingers were easy to reattach and my office’s proximity to the markets meant that would be thieves could pop in for a visit while they were on their way home.
But the morning felt strange. It may have been the wind, or it may have been the more contemplative nature of Autumn, but the advent of Martin’s misfortune, um-and-a, was unsettling. I realised that I lived in a place, in a nation, where a thoughtless moment could mean the halting of a life’s work. And as interesting as that was scientifically, I saw a future where I could fall victim of its eccentricity.
I don’t panic.
Panic is the wasted achievement of very little done rapidly. I sit down, I assess, and-um-a, I fix the problem.
‘Martin,’ I said, inspecting the wound and wondering if I had any disinfectant left, ‘the Dormic monks of the Gaaran Steep believe that true art can only be found by limiting oneself, um-and-a, and so this may be a blessing in the disguise of an axe.’
This of course was a lie, um-and-a, but I find that patients react better when I get them to think about something before I do something else that is rather painful.
Can we discuss wealth for a moment?
I am a follower of Aurelia, yes there are still some of us left, and to us wealth is not quite as clear cut as it is to the man who owns the most horses. Sprit is a free thing, um-and-a, and things should be given freely. My remonstrations of the city and its reaction to theft have come from an existence of not caring about possession; objects have stories, why lock them in a cupboard?
Somehow, I had obtained a moment of enlightenment from Martin’s injury and as I began to wrap a bandage around his wrist, I began to consider how many days I had before I was to suffer the same fate as my patient.
‘There we are, after the pain goes away it will feel a bit airy next to your thumb for a while, um-and-a, but don’t worry, we all learn new ways to click.’
Walking from my office as a vague matter of punctuation, I left Martin and looked out to the canaled streets of the Port of Nations.
It’s not entirely unpleasant, if you can forgive noise and smell. There are people, the creators of the noises and the smells, there are long walks that wind through hidden streets, and as the sun sets the whole city becomes entrapped in a story-like dream that no painter could truly capture. Brilliant orange that builds and fades, sloping hills with render awash in the afternoon sun, the hum of not just being present in a place but the knowledge that you are there, that you are alive.
It is the guilds that kept me from running. To have a job you must join a guild and on establishment of employment you obtain the dubious honour of being in debt for the first time. Apprentice to journeyman only entreats a larger debt and in my membership of the doctor’s guild I had, um-and-a, locked myself in a cage with a sleeping bear and an all too miniscule supply of honey.
I am, um-and-a, not the master of my own destiny. Men such as Ensign seem to be able to wrestle their future from the hands of fate, they can take the apple without losing a finger, they can befriend the bear and keep the honey for themselves. I am of a lonelier sort.
And-um-a, as I stepped into the street that morning, life was about to make a very adventurous choice for me.
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 