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The River Camp, autumn, Third Age 2981
“My lady!”
“Sit down, Nóruinif, we’ve been friends too long for this silliness. I love your earrings! Did Máldor make those? How are you, dear, I’ve been meaning to stick my head in the door and say hi…”
“I suppose I am as well as any of us can—my lady, you are hurt!”
“No, sit down, sit down, I know how crazy it gets, don’t stop what you’re doing. Is Elrohir back there? If he’s busy I won’t bother him…”
“He is not with a patient. His office, maybe? My lady, I can take you to a room if…”
“No, no, no, don’t get up, I’ll slip back and find him, it isn’t anything serious. Can I come by sometime and bring you lunch? I know you don’t get long breaks but I’d love to catch up.”
“…that would be fun. Yes, I would love that, too.”
His door stood open and she craned her head around it. “Hi. Are you in the middle of something?”
He had papers scattered all over the desk, and his journal laid open, and a half-empty cup of coffee with spilltracks down the side, and six scrolls standing in a bucket, and a stethoscope dangling off the corner, and a transistor radio with its innards spilling out, and an overflowing filebox on the floor by his boot, which needed to be re-tied. He did not look up at her. “Nope, just in here painting my fingernails.”
“That seems like a judicious use of your time.”
“You know me, nothing if not judicious.”
“Ooh, are those the company reports…?”
She crossed to look over his shoulder, still holding the dripping dishtowel packed up under her arm.
“They’re old ones, not the—why are you all wet?”
“I’m not, it’s the towel. Halbarad had a collapsed lung?”
He looked up narrow-eyed.
“You aren’t exactly cleared to read these, you know.”
“He’s my cousin-in-law!”
“Not yet he isn’t. What did you do to yourself?”
“I fell onto the flat-top. You delivered a baby in a barn?”
He closed the folder over the reports and rotated his chair to face her. “You fell?”
“Mm-hmm. I was reading that…”
“I know you’ve chosen mortality but surely it isn’t making you clumsy already.”
“Mistress Delwen tripped first, what was I supposed to do, let her crash? But she’s… bountiful…” She curved out her free hand to demonstrate a girth greater than her own. “And we lost our balance, and the edge of the griddle was there… you know how these things go.”
“So you scraped yourself on the edge.”
“…I think maybe it’s more of a burn than a scrape.” She hiked the wet cloth a little higher.
“You think it is?”
“Well, Elrohir, I can’t see it, or I wouldn’t be here.”
He turned her by the arm and batted her hand away and lifted off the dripping dishrag.
“Arwen!”
“Don’t touch it, ow, Elrohir…”
“How long ago did you do this?”
“Well, we had to finish serving lunch to everyone…”
“I won’t touch it again, quit your squirming. Why did you come all the way down here? You could have just gone back up to the house.”
“Dad’s in a briefing, I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“You got yourself on the back of the arm, too.”
“Thank you, I hadn’t noticed.”
“It burned straight through your shirt. What did you do, lay there for a while?”
“I did, actually, it was nice. Do you know someone graffitied around the stovepipe vent in the kitchen pavilion? It’s very foul.”
“…This looks like it hurts.”
“Well, I’m glad you said it first…”
“You want a gown? There’s spot here that I’ll have to… why don’t you sit down, you’re swaying.”
“Silly little burn… thank you. No, I don’t want a gown. I’m not an actual patient or anything.”
“Well, turn your shirt around while I’m gone, then, so it buttons up the back and I can get to it.”
“Good thinking. Could I maybe get something, to make it… Elrohir, just… this is starting to smart.”
“I don’t doubt it. Sit tight.”
“Debride it? Is it…? Huh.”
“Let’s go, I’m not going to do it right here in the middle of my paperwork.”
“Yikes, you guys need a real building.”
“It’s not too bad if you go outside and hammer the stakes back in every so often.”
“I mean, even Elladan has his surgerymobile. At least it’s made out of wood. Is that a mousetrap?”
“I don’t think they’ve caught one for a few days, Nóruinif brought her cat in.”
“That’s what you were missing around here to round out the ambience…”
She sat for a minute.
“This seems a little excessive.”
“You came to me, pal, now we’re doing it my way. You want it in your hand or your arm.”
“Can’t I just, like, swallow something?”
He snugged the tourniquet above her elbow and flicked the crease of her arm a few times.
“Yuck, yuck. Doesn’t that make you… they just bulge. That is a gigantic needle.”
“Don’t look, then, you idiot, if it grosses you out that bad.”
“I can’t stop looking. Give me a second, hang on—no, wait, Elrohir! Ow ow ow… wow, you’re good at that.”
“Lucky for you, you wimp.”
“Seriously, it didn’t even hurt.”
“Glad to hear it.”
She watched him fiddle with the end of the line. “I’m not actually dehydrated, you know.”
“Why don’t you let the professionals do their jobs, hmm?”
Later as she leaned forward over the back of her chair and he sat behind her working carefully at her now-very numb shoulder blade she said, quietly, as whatever he had injected into the seal of her IV warmed her lips and fingertips, “He was okay, though, when you saw him last?”
“As okay as he can be, kiddo.”
“His hand was getting better?”
“Just about back to normal.”
“That’s good.”
He labored silently for a few minutes. Then, “Three more weeks, and he’s up for leave.”
She set her chin down on her arms. “Last time he didn’t take it.”
“This time he will. Glorfindel will make him.”
“You’re probably right. He made you.”
“I came back because my sister keeps falling on things.”
“You came back because your father-in-law—ouch! Elrohir!”
“Sorry, it’s not numb there?”
“Jerk.”