Chapter Text
I. Brienne
The man seated across the desk from Dr. Brienne Tarth is not like most of her patients.
Those patients lean forward eagerly, hope and anxiety shining in their eyes. Jaime Lannister leans back in the chair, regarding Brienne with a mix of contempt and boredom. He’s seen a lot of doctors, but none were able to help him. The fat file in front of her testifies to that.
Brienne wonders if her patient has any idea how detailed his file is. From his expression, she thinks not. Surgical records, family history, physical therapy reports, and psychological evaluations. A thick stack of letters, one doctor writing to the next, each hopeful that the next doctor would have a solution for him.
Jaime Lannister sits across from her in a mockery of ease and openness, his leg crossed on the opposite knee, dressed casually in jeans, a polo shirt, and slip-on shoes. His posture is as casual as his clothes, but his body is taut as a bowstring, the muscles of his right arm twitching sporadically and his left hand unconsciously clenching into a fist. His right hand cannot clench because he no longer has one, but his brain has not yet accepted that.
Phantom limb syndrome, not uncommon among amputees and an area of special interest for Brienne. Some patients find that their symptoms fade with time. Jaime Lannister has been suffering for three years. Every day, his phantom right hand clenches into a fist, locked tight for hours, nails digging into his palm. It causes him excruciating pain.
Brienne shifts her gaze up to his face. Jaime Lannister is an extremely attractive man, though his arrogant smirk somewhat spoils the effect. He clearly doesn’t take Brienne particularly seriously. This is nothing new. Most of her patients are referred to her by other doctors, yet the moment patients see her, they doubt her. At 33, Brienne is young and not yet widely published, but her results speak for themselves.
Brienne flips open her notebook to a blank page and picks up her pen. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?” she begins.
He snorts and stands abruptly. “If you couldn’t be bothered to read my file, you’re wasting my time.”
“Sit down, Mr. Lannister,” Brienne orders, only her eyes following his movement. This voice she uses rarely, the one she learned from her drill-sergeant father. He never needed to raise his voice. The steel in his tone was enough. It’s enough now.
Jaime Lannister slowly sits, his arms folded protectively across his chest, the stocking-covered stump of his right wrist tucked under his left arm. At least the boredom has left his gaze.
II. Jaime
He can’t remember if Dr. Tarth is the nineteenth or twentieth doctor he’s consulted. It hardly matters. She will prove no different from the rest. Jaime knows this from bitter experience.
Dr. Tarth is by far the youngest doctor he’s seen since the wide-eyed interns who’d followed his surgeons around like ducklings. In theory, she should be familiar with the latest techniques, her training modern and cutting-edge. In practice, she is inexperienced. Awkward, as well. A big woman in an ill-fitting gray pantsuit and white lab coat, she is also no stranger to scars, the memory of some long-ago trauma branded into her twisted cheek.
Her eyes are promising, at least. Quick, perceptive, an arresting shade of blue. She looked him directly in the eye, her gaze never drifting down to his missing hand. And she offered her left hand to shake when he walked into her office. It’s amazing how many doctors forget that small detail.
Jaime will go through the motions, try whatever therapies she recommends (within reason), and remind himself that at least Evenfall is a welcome change of scenery. The quaint little island resort town is a far cry from the last clinic he visited. Dr. Qyburn worked in a ruined castle near a dull, grey lake. For Jaime it was like walking into a Gothic horror novel. He stayed at Harrenhal for three weeks, and every day he expected Dracula’s vampire brides to emerge from the shadows.
Dr. Tarth looks up from her notebook, flips his file shut. She rests one large hand lightly on the bulging manila folder. “I’ve read your file. Several times, in fact. What I asked, Mr. Lannister, is why are you here?” Her tone brooks no argument, but holds a note of exasperation Jaime remembers well from the headmasters of every prep school unfortunate enough to enroll him.
Jaime considers what to say. He wants his hand back, but Dr. Tarth can’t give him that. Magic left this world long ago, if it ever existed at all.
Jaime found her through an online support group for amputees. It was full of military veterans with whom he had little in common, so Jaime usually just read others’ conversations rather than contribute. Two of the men strongly recommended Evenfall, and Dr. Tarth in particular, both claiming that she gave them their lives back.
Sitting in her over air conditioned, aggressively neat office, Jaime doesn’t believe that this strapping young woman can work miracles. But the throbbing pain focused in his missing hand, radiating up his arm, has become too much to bear. Three years is long enough. Pain is grinding him away, and if he goes on like this much longer there won’t be anything left.
He looks directly into Dr. Tarth’s blue eyes and answers her question. “I’m here to stop living in pain.”
The slightest smile curves her wide mouth, and she nods. “Good,” Dr. Tarth says, a hint of relief in her tone he wasn’t expecting. “That’s a realistic goal.”
Jaime regards her more closely. “You’ve been asked to work miracles,” he guesses.
This time she really smiles, broad and toothy. Dr. Tarth is not pretty, wasn’t pretty even before the scar, but her smile lights up her eyes. “At least twice a month, a patient walks through that door carrying journal articles about stem cells and lizards regrowing their tails,” she confirms with a sigh.
Jaime shivers, remembering the lab full of lizards he once walked past at Harrenhal. Best not to tell her about that. He returns her smile, tries to lighten the mood. “I’ll settle for a cyborg hand. You can do that, right? Gold, of course. I’ve had enough silver. And bronze for that matter.”
The dusty display case in his apartment holds five Olympic medals. None of them are gold. The irony isn’t lost on him. All the gold in Casterly Rock couldn’t buy him a gold medal, and he was never quite good enough on his own.
She raises an eyebrow and shakes her head. “Gold? Wouldn’t that be a bit conspicuous?”
Jaime laughs. “They used to say that my father shit gold. They were wrong, of course. But if a gold hand is all the gold I can have, I’ll take it.”
Dr. Tarth’s gaze falls briefly on his right arm. The pain flares as if she touched him.
There are no recent photos of his stump in her file. Jaime knows that because he hasn’t allowed any photos since it healed. There were skin grafts and it is brutal and ugly. That Jaime must see it every day is bad enough. He wears a sock over the stump all the time, even when he’s not wearing a prosthesis. It protects the tender skin and allows him to avoid questions he tired of answering long ago.
Is she weary of questions too? Jaime allows his gaze to settle on the twisted scarring of her cheek. It has faded, but that side of her face is still somewhat stiff, and even at a distance he would have noticed something was wrong. The rest of her face is lightly bronzed from the sun, densely splattered with freckles, but that cheek is silvery pale. Jaime loathes that he now knows enough about scarring to tell that this wound was inflicted years ago.
Her unmarked cheek flushes a dull rose that spreads down her throat and pools in the slight dip of her open collar. She knows exactly what he is looking at, and her gaze drops to her notebook, pen tapping against the paper as if to distract herself from his scrutiny.
The brief moment of rapport between them evaporates, and Jaime decides he has nothing to lose by pushing Dr. Tarth a bit.
“You know what happened to me. Tell me, what happened to you?”
III. Brienne
Brienne’s eyes snap up to meet his. She expects mocking; she expects pity. That Jaime Lannister’s green eyes hold only curiosity throws her briefly off balance.
Brienne clears her throat. “My personal life is out of bounds, Mr. Lannister. It’s not relevant to your treatment,” she says firmly. He’s certainly not the first patient to ask.
His eyes narrow, and he leans forward, his fingers tapping the desk in front of his file. “Is my personal life out of bounds?” he challenges.
Maybe he does know what’s in his file. He has seen three psychiatrists in the last three years, and their notes paint a bleak picture. Depression, anxiety, dysfunctional family of origin, inadequate coping skills, addictive personality. “Your personal life is relevant to your treatment. Mine is not.”
Jaime Lannister frowns. He’s used to people being cowed by his father’s reputation and wealth, and his own fame. He is not often denied what he wants. “You probably know more about me than some of my family members, Doc. I asked you one question.”
One question. One question about the worst day of her life, the five minutes that replayed in her nightmares for years. Brienne looks down at her notes, writes Suggest cognitive-behavioral therapy. She does not look up when she hears him moving. If he tries to leave again, she won’t stop him. He is a prickly puzzle of a man, but only one of many. Brienne has a waiting list for new patients. She doesn’t need Jaime Lannister.
The thump on her desk startles her.
Her patient’s bare stump is resting on her desk. The skin is mottled and rubbed raw in places, a thick, dark line of scar tissue running along the inside of his wrist where grafted skin doesn’t quite match its surroundings.
Brienne meets Jaime’s eyes, sees the challenge there. If he’s waiting for her to recoil, he will be disappointed. She was a surgeon once. Nothing he could show Brienne would shock her. “You wear a prosthesis?” she asks.
Jaime seems disappointed in her lack of response. He nods. “I have a few.”
“One of them doesn’t fit properly. That pain is aggravating your issues,” Brienne tells him.
Jaime removes his forearm from the desk. “I’ll get them re-fitted when I get home,” he concedes, working a beige stocking up over his stump to hide it. She assumed that he removed his prosthesis for their appointment, but now she wonders if he always covers his stump. That’s unusual this long after amputation.
Brienne notes his behavior, pulls out her prescription pad, and starts writing. “Give this to my receptionist on your way out. Pod will make appointments with the prosthetist and a psychiatrist.”
“I said I’d deal with it when I got home,” Jaime argues. “And I don’t need another bloody shrink.”
Brienne keeps writing. She expects push-back. Most patients want results with little or no effort on their parts. Jaime Lannister is no different. “An excellent prosthetist from Storm’s End visits Evenfall Hospital on Mondays. I can’t begin treatment until we can isolate phantom pain from physical pain. As for the shrink, Sam is an expert on pain management strategies. You will see him or we are done here.”
Brienne rips out the orders for Pod and pushes them across the desk.
Jaime doesn’t move.
Brienne goes to the door, holds it open for him. She’s running about twenty minutes late this morning, and she’ll have to work through lunch if she falls much further behind. Brienne refuses to be one of those doctors who keep patients waiting for hours past their appointment time. One of Hyle’s nurses bustles past, and a patient sitting in the hallway looks up hopefully.
Jaime still hasn’t moved.
Brienne grits her teeth. “Mr. Lannister, I have other patients,” she prompts.
“Then answer me.” His back is to her. He won’t even turn his head to look at her.
Brienne sighs. She understands why he’s pushing this, trying to put them on even footing. But he can find out on the Internet, if he really wants to. If his stubbornness right now is any indication, he will.
“A patient bit me,” Brienne says simply. Her face tingles. (Her cheek burned, blood ran into her ear, soaked her hair. His face loomed above her, blood coating his pointed teeth, dripping from his chin.)
She pushes away the memory, anchors herself with the scent of flowers at the nurses’ station, the distant chatter of the office staff, the bright sun pouring through the window at the end of the hall.
Jaime rises from his chair, picks up the orders she’s written. His gaze slides from Brienne’s cheek to her eyes as he finally leaves her office.