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Shaw was asleep—still, or again—when January made it home from the Cabildo, Rose and Hannibal alongside. Catherine had left them to go with old M’sieu Motet and check on Zandrine, though she’d tentatively accepted Rose’s invitation to dinner later, for herself and her daughter. January looked into the small bedroom that was nominatively his own, just long enough to determine that his friend was still and breathing, and then went to his own bed, that he shared with Rose, fell asleep almost instantly, and slept through dinner.
In fact he woke once, mid-afternoon, to use the privy and eat some leftovers—Zizi-Marie was just starting to cook the evening meal, at the time—and then went back to bed, intending to lie in for just another half hour or so. When he next woke, it was dark outside, and the mattress was dipped down towards Rose’s side of the bed; he could just make out the soft curve of her shoulder and side, in the darkness, and hear the faint regular sound of her breathing.
Having now slept more in one day than he had in probably the entire week previously, January was unfortunately and entirely awake. He lay still for a little while, as his mind churned over everything that he hadn’t yet had full time to process: Griff’s grief, and anger, and his face as the bullet had torn through his neck. Lottie’s quiet, attenuated unhappiness, and her equally quiet assistance to save her master’s life. Thinking of Lottie made January think of her help on the Duralde plantation, and his fear—only two days ago?—as he and the others had been ambushed at Aurore, that one of the Aubin brothers would escape back to town and kill Shaw where he lay.
He slipped out of bed after a little while lying awake, moving quietly so as not to disturb Rose or Xander, and padded across the parlor in his nightshirt, to look in at Shaw again. He brought a single candle with him, which he lit in between the bedrooms; to his surprise, Shaw turned his head towards the light immediately, when January slit the door open. His eyes were already open; they glinted bright as he squinted, each reflecting the flame.
“Maestro,” said Shaw, quiet and hoarse. “Did you—Melchior—?”
January set the candle on the table by the bed, and stooped to look in Shaw’s eyes, which seemed only normally dilated. “Melchior Aubin is dead,” he said, equally quietly. He’d told Shaw as much, the day before, when he’d returned from the Aurore plantation. He tried to keep his voice even, conversational, but Shaw either heard something in it, or had been already wondering if he’d been told, because he frowned and peered back into January’s face almost as intently as January had just examined his.
“You told me,” he said, “di’n’t you? I don’t—”
“It’s all right,” said January, not for the first time, ironically. “It’s to be expected, with concussion. You’re already remembering more—”
Shaw, who’d gathered just enough strength to prop himself up about a foot off the bed, on his elbows, shook his head as if to shake loose the memories that kept evading him. The movement was violent enough to alarm January, who sat on the edge of the bed quickly, and put his hand to the side of Shaw’s face—the side that hadn’t been shot—to stop him. “Shaw,” he said, almost reproving, and then added for good measure, “sir.”
Shaw’s forehead pinched up, as if in pain. “You don’t call me that less’n someone’s around,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said January, not sure if he was apologizing for formality or the lack of it.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Shaw. He turned his face away, which happened to mean turning it into January’s hand, still alongside it, but not before January realized that the reason he’d noticed the shine of Shaw’s eyes, earlier, was because they’d been particularly shiny, with the sheen of unshed tears.
“Shaw,” he said again, somewhat helplessly. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to console an injured man. As a surgeon, he’d done it often, with men he didn’t know. But this was infinitely more important; it was Shaw.
“Maestro,” said Shaw, with a choke in it. January slid around until he was sitting next to Shaw on the bed, and slipped an arm under his shoulders. Shaw’s own arms had started to tremble. January pulled him up gently until their torsos were flush, and Shaw’s head could rest on his closer shoulder, face tucked away a little. One of Shaw’s arms came across and lifted far enough to tangle in the front of January’s nightshirt, which seemed to be about as far as Shaw could move it for the time being.
After a little while, during which January felt the shoulder of his nightshirt grow steadily damper, Shaw shifted his head some, and whispered, “What if I don’t get no better?”
It was the sort of question that could only be asked in a silent house in the small hours of the morning, with no more than a single candle for light. “You will,” said January, not quite whispering, but not much louder. “It hasn’t been that many days. You won’t feel this weak forever.”
“It ain’t—or ain’t just—the weakness,” said Shaw. “It’s—I can’t even be certain sure I’m gonna remember this, come morning.”
“That’s normal—” January started to say, for what felt the hundredth time.
“I know it c’n happen, and get better, folks get hit in the head,” said Shaw. “I know you know what you’s doin’, Maestro.” January hadn’t taken any of Shaw’s fears as doubts of his professional ability, but he was still gratified. “But I have seen folks get hit enough times—it changes ‘em, messes with, well. Their memories, for one.”
Very secretly, deep enough that he hadn’t exactly put it in words even in his mind, January had also wondered what could happen. He knew that Shaw’s concussion had been severe, and that his recovery would take some time, and he was pretty certain that it would be complete. But he, too, had seen people who’d been hit in the head—usually more than once, though it wasn’t as if Shaw hadn’t taken more minor hits in the past—who felt the effects of it long after a normal concussion would heal. Headaches and dizziness that would come on; memory issues, even personality changes, though Shaw’s personality had evidently been exactly the same since his first muzzy awakening. He shifted a little as he thought through his answer, hitching Shaw up next to him so that they could both relax against the headboard of the bed, some, without sliding apart. Shaw tightened his own one-handed hold.
“I truly don’t think that will happen to you,” January said eventually, slowly. “But if it does…” He understood why Shaw would worry. His job—which was a large part of who he was—relied on him remembering things and putting them together. January thought of the painstaking notes on Shaw’s desk when he’d first arrested Catherine Clisson—and writing wasn’t easy for him even without the head injury—the careful questions he’d asked, the way he’d continued to cling to the important clues even after being shot. Still, “If it does,” said January again, “you won’t exactly end up cast into the outer darkness. Even if—if—you had no way to work, well, I don’t exactly think Maggie Valentine would throw you out, for one thing.”
“She’s a good kid,” murmured Shaw, which was not the descriptor January would have expected, from what he thought he’d figured out about their relationship. He reconfigured in his mind, hurriedly.
“And there are people,” he went on; “I mean, we wouldn’t let you go hungry—and I don’t just mean myself and Rose.” He thought again of Griff Paige, of the way the other musicians and their families had closed ranks around him during his bout of fever, and felt one of his first, belated real pangs of grief for the young man. It wouldn’t be the exact same people closing ranks around Shaw, but he knew that, in his understated way, the policeman had made true friends all over the city in the eleven years he’d lived there.
“Hmm,” said Shaw in response. He seemed most of the way asleep again, still leaning on January’s shoulder. January started to ease him back down, and he roused some at the movement. “Maestro,” he said, a breath of a whisper. “I been so tired.”
“I know,” said January, and managed to get him lying back on his pillows again. In his attempt not to jostle Shaw’s head too much, he’d kept his arm under his back, meaning that he was now kneeling beside the bed, arm pinned, face still very close to Shaw’s. “Sleep. It’s healing.”
“I don’t want t’ forget,” said Shaw, eyes fluttering closed. “Ben. Stay?”
Since the Kaintuck’s eyes really did close after that, and his breathing settle into the unmistakable rhythm of sleep, January likely could have disentangled himself and slipped away without Shaw noticing or, indeed, remembering his request whenever he next woke. But that would have felt cruel. So instead, though he did disentangle his arm, he sat back on the edge of the bed by Shaw’s head again. He still felt very awake, but he could sit with Shaw for a while…and though there were chairs next door in his study, the bed was closer…there was just enough space for him to sit fully on the mattress if he arranged Shaw’s head and shoulders—and the pillow on which they were resting—across his lap carefully…Shaw shifted some, still asleep, but fretful, and January shushed him with one hand on his chest and then left it there…he rested his head against the wall behind him…
In the morning Rose came in, carrying Xander with her, to find where he’d gone, and woke him up.