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Patience is perhaps not the first quality that one would attribute to Dref Wormood. That’s likely because there are a few others that jump much more easily to mind, like being creepy, or nervous, or picky about how to treat useless books. But when Travis feels the irritated exhale on his good shoulder, he knows that Dref’s rather generous reserve of patience is beginning to wear thin.
“T-Travis,” Dref says pointedly. His brows are knit and he is staring accusingly up from his (in Travis’ tasteful opinion) comically large spectacles. He certainly would have spent more energy mocking the physician’s expression, or sudden assertiveness, if obscuring the pain in his arm was not occupying so much of his composure.
“What?” Travis whines, as if he has no clue from where this bout of frustration is coming.
A deep inhale comes from across the table. “If you want this procedure to go-- mm a-a-anywhere, I will need you to sit still.”
“Well it’s not exactly my fault,” Travis huffs, casting his gaze across the medbay. “Aren’t spasms supposed to be some sort of symptom for this?”
This, in the context of their current conversation, is a disturbingly off-kilter shoulder Travis had acquired earlier this morning. The maelstrom had come on so suddenly that he hadn’t the chance to join those strapping themselves down. Rain had come down in sheets rather than drops. Great gusts of wind had tipped the Uhuru in all directions. Even the most hardened of sky-legs could not save Travis from a slippery descent backwards and a forceful collision with the center mast. He could certainly count the Luminaries’ blessings that his crew members saved him, or that a dislocated shoulder was the mildest injury needing Dref’s tending as the afternoon dwindled. But as Travis enviously casts his gaze over the unconscious corsairs who had received medical treatment before him, the sharp pain in his shoulder returns in force and he is hard-pressed to find any such blessings.
“Well, yes.” Dref concedes. “Spasms are rather common in terms of this particular dislocation. But I find it very p-peculiar that your spasms seem to happen every time I approach you intending to fix it.”
An astute observation, but also one that Travis resents. Mostly because Dref’s insinuation that his spasms are not just unconscious is correct. Sort of, anyway. The most recent one in particular had been due to Travis’ misgiving that looking around at Dref’s materials would ease the sense of malaise that swelled when the physician approached to touch him. There is normally a lot to see in Dref’s hidey hole, especially when it becomes filled with patients. What is normally carefully arranged as to not alarm anyone suddenly spills out in full force. Some of the more obscure bottles and tinctures Dref puts on high shelves come out to show off their colorful glass. Travis had watched one of his crewmates gag on one of the bottle’s contents. Perhaps that one was opaque for a reason. Over on the operating table, a shiny little row of metal tools had pleased his crow’s eyes for luster. Travis’ human eyes picked out a scalpel, several odd variations on scissors, and felt just a little bit queasy glancing at dried blood on the bone saw. He had not seen, but had heard the shouts when Dref had to use it once. It was in that moment that his senses felt the need to renew how overwhelming the stench of blood and antiseptics was. Travis had felt a growing knot in his stomach, similar to the feather he had touched a few days ago. However in the feather, the cosmic hypothetical predator of the feather was supposedly far away, it had only just noticed him. When Dref approached just a few moments ago, Travis’ fear grew stronger. It was stronger because the threat was real, right in front of him, holding him in place. It was so close Travis felt its shaky, barely controlled breathing, and vividly imagined so many medical scalpels as fangs closing on his throat.
(Of course that hadn’t happened. Hadn’t happened because he jerked from those bony hands right before they had tightened, is what his animal hearts sing to him. No guarantees that these instruments were truly here to help rather than hurt him. Travis’ human heart grumbles that Dref wouldn’t have the nerve.)
And it’s not the dying that scares his human heart so much as the knowing. When Travis had gazed into that feather, it was as if all his hearts had been laid bare, that all of the lines and lies he had so carefully constructed were now forfeit. Animals have no need for deceit or secrets, but Travis Matagot is an intricate myriad of proxies and half-truths. Once they do get out, there is no controlling them. He had seen how Dref managed to sully out the truth of Gable’s angelic nature after they spent a single session under his knife. (Something Travis had certainly been interested to know, but would have been content to let rest. If he is allowed to hide things, so should Gable.) But Gable seemed to be accepting of their nature becoming known, and Travis is not eager to be so methodically divested of his secrets as though he were a subject of vivisection.
“--Travis! A-are you even listening?”
“No,” Travis replies, more of a knee-jerk reaction than a genuine response.
Another irritated exhale comes, this one accompanied by a more vocal expression of frustration.
“What I was saying is that you need to work with me.” Dref has the good sense to lower his voice as he continues. “Sunset is approaching and I am. I am both m-mm, unsure what the implications of a-a-a hmmm, dislocated shoulder are as your skeleton rearranges itself, and reluctant to find out.”
Oh, that is a good point. Travis isn’t sure such a situation has ever arisen. Sure he’s been bruised, lacerated, even punctured before the goopening before, and those injuries all turned out fine when his flesh found a new shape. But if a bone wasn’t in its right place to begin with… well.
“I’ll be fine,” he protests anyways. “If you just bring me a little dish of wine or something, I’m sure it will sort itself out by the morning.”
“We have no more wine,” Dref hisses through gritted teeth, “A-a-and perhaps you would have known that if you listened to any of your crewmates, o-or managed the ships log, li-like a quartermaster is intended to.”
Still touchy about using the history book as a table stand, then. Travis is about to offer some clever rebuttal before he is cut off by Dref, who is surprisingly verbose in his bookish rage.
“I-I mean it’s not difficult! It is a simple command, I have tended today to, to people with much less matter between their ears than you and somehow it. Is, impossible. I am running low on stamina and not eager to vomit again, so it would be a great help if you j-j-j-just. Told me what is preventing you from doing this. Is it the cot? Is it your posture? P-p-petty rage at being the last one treated, perhaps? Or do you not trust me?”
The last question hangs in the air for far too long. It is the extended silence of the medbay, rather than Travis himself, that gives Dref his answer. And why would there be any trust in this room? Dref so rarely allowed anyone to assist in anything other than fetching. To be here is to be entirely at the mercy of no guarantees. No guarantees that one’s secrets are kept, like Gable. No guarantees that one’s bodily integrity is preserved, like Wendell. No guarantees, even, that the boundary between persons are respected as the boundaries between life and death, which their own shambling captain makes light of.
Even as he thinks these thoughts, Travis is not fond of the sudden break in Dref’s rage, the dispirited slump of his shoulders, or the unpleasant feeling that begins to worm in his own human guts. It could be his conscience. It could also be the first signs of transformation.
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” Travis eventually mumbles. “I don’t really trust anybody.”
It does seem to be a little late for that sentiment. Travis sees how Dref’s eyes begin to flicker out of their intense medical focus, taking a sudden interest in the floorboards, or his gloves, or the other cots. Dref is a bad liar, maybe. But he is not deaf, nor a fool. Surely the physician can take a hint. Surely he hears at least a few of the whispers regarding his gory reputation.
Dref opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it again. His furrowed brow is back, belying how hard he is trying to think on his next few words.
“I suppose that’s all, all well and good.” Dref begins “Seeing as I cannot completely trust you as, as, as a person either.” Oh, he truly is not a fool! Travis can almost feel his chest bursting with pride, or perhaps the subtle rearrangement of bones.
“But I am not currently trusting you as a p-person.” Travis feels himself begin to frown at that, not entirely sure where Dref is going. “I am trusting that you, as a p-p-p-patient, would like to feel less pain than you are currently feeling. And are willing to do, some, small things in order to make that happen. Is that correct?”
“I suppose,” Travis huffs. He attempts to cross his arms, forgetting his injury in the moment before the attempt brings pain roaring back. He winces and hisses a little louder than he’d like.
“In that case.” Dref is beginning to extend his hand again, but this time it is with his palm to the side. A handshake. A gesture of cooperation. “I am asking that, f-for this moment, you trust me. Just as someone who-- your, your-- as a physician.”
As a physician. The phrase rattles around in Travis’ head like dice across a board. A physician comes with certain guarantees, unlike a person. A guarantee of privacy, a guarantee of not overstepping a role. A guarantee of at least trying to help, no strings attached. Travis glances into Dref’s giant spectacles again, relieved to find that he is not the only one feeling just a little bit vulnerable.
“Fine.” Travis huffs once more. “Oh, and also I’m not shaking. The bad arm is my shaking hand.”
Dref responds with a grunt and a curt nod. He takes what he can get. He has to, since Travis can see dusk looming from the medbay’s single porthole. The previous pressure of Dref’s hand returns to his shoulder.
“I need you to lie down.”
The whole process is over much more quickly than Travis expects. Dref’s clammy hands are surprisingly firm when he guides Travis’s arm into position. As expected, the small noise of his shoulder popping back into place is accompanied by a similarly low vocalisation of disgust from Dref. As Travis had to trust, the shooting pain does subside. The physician’s hold on Travis’ hand, which is not unlike that of a handshake, is gently dropped.
“H-How are you feeling?”
“Much better.” Even so, Travis uses his previously good hand to do most of the propping him back up. He pauses a moment, before adding, “Thank you.”
Even Dref seems surprised from this, looking up from the book he had crossed the bay to retrieve. A fleeting smile passes over the physician’s face, uncertain, but genuine. It is a welcome change of pace from the frowning or anxiety that so often occupies it, before Dref’s gaze returns to the book.
“Y-you will, of course, need to monitor it o-over the course of the evening, and perform a number of stretches in the days ahead--” Dref cuts off his own doctorly instructions when his jaw hangs agape, and Travis does not need to look behind him to know that the sun is beginning to set. The gruesome noises of rearranging flesh are beginning to fill the room, and they are both lucky that the other occupants are unconscious. “N-n-nevermind that, you need to get to your quarters.”
“You just noticed?”
Dref does not dignify Travis’ barb with a reply, instead doing something that makes Travis’ curated eyebrows raise in astonishment. He takes a page from one of his medical tomes and -- dear Luminaries -- rips it, handing a set of sketches to Travis.
“Use these. Return them by the end of the week. I-I trust you can make it to your hammock unnoticed?”
Travis would have offered a nod, but instead takes the page as delicately as he can manage in what is beginning to become a beak. Dref holds the door open for him, and Travis makes a mad, fervent dash for the deck. He has made it to his room countless times without incident, but for some reason this occasion is different. He is extra careful in the growing shadows cast by the ship’s deck, extra light on his feet between them, and gives an extra big sigh of relief when the heavy wooden door behind him falls shut, and Dref’s paper falls out of the way of his rearranging spine.
Tonight’s transformation is one like every other: painful, seasonal, and always a bit too long. When it finally concludes, Travis is resting on his Talons, low to the Uhuru’s warm wooden floorboards. His crow head tilts, a number of times, as is instinct. He hops over to and inspects the canvas paper, filled with illustrations and titled “Dislocation Recovery Stretches: Shoulder.” It is only mildly distorted by the rip and Travis’ beak. He finds himself relieved that this is the case. Dref would likely throw a fit if the paper was damaged too much. But he had done a good portion of the damage himself, hadn’t he? Perhaps he had damaged his own precious knowledge out of pure desperation to avoid a puke session. Perhaps it was because he knew Travis might not ask for it later, if left behind. Either way, there was a possibility Dref might not get the page back. Yet he had still passed it on anyway, for the hope that it might be helpful.
A small, conflicted sigh emerges from his crow’s beak, and the human’s heart is almost glad he cannot be seen smiling. Just in this moment, for just a little bit, Travis Matagot finds that he does not mind trust in small doses.