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“...and that’s all for tonight, folks. May the sunrise bring you comfort and a new day filled with adventures. This has been Thorin Thráinson on Dûrin’s Folk Radio, taking you through the night. Be excellent.”
As the deep voice clicked off the radio, Bilbo leaned on his mop and sighed. The way that voice rumbled made him forget what a pain it was to work as a night janitor at the psych ward, but once again the nightly Thorin Show had ended, leaving him with one final hour of vomit and E and random spills from random patients who may or may not be aware of even half the things they did to themselves and others.
He could hardly wait to finish his exams and join the ranks of General Physicians working on somewhat sane patients in all layers of society. No matter the rumours, it seemed it would at the very least be an upgrade from night time janitor mopping up E and other potentially radioactive fluids.
— — —
“Good evening, my late night listeners. My name is Thorin Thráinson and this is the first hour of the Thorin Show – your guiding voice through the deepest night unto the first glimpse of sunrise. Tonight,...”
Bilbo had been wrong. Not entirely wrong – most of his patients were more or less sane – but GPs did not get off work when other people did. It was a general rule which functioned more like a guideline than an actual rule and it was rarely upheld in a town full of teenagers jumping off of large things and often onto hard surfaces or into deep pools, pregnancies reaching their culminations while all the midwives were out of town or otherwise occupied, and bad family relations resulting in dramatic breaking points around the 1am mark.
As he clocked into his thirteenth hour of the day, Bilbo allowed the voice on the radio to transport him far, far away, while his physical body dealt with the hemorrhaging teenager beneath his hands with the clinical detachment necessary to do what could be done without shaking too much to see it done safely.
Luckily, he had EMTs around to keep the family separated while he attempted to save the life of yet another untreated, undiagnosed case for the psychology department, to the sounds of a song about happy families. If only more people took the family counceling advertisements seriously, he might be spared half of these cases, but everybody knew taking psychology was asking to have the soul sucked out of you.
Unfortunately, life as a GP was quickly sucking the soul out of Bilbo, too. He had applied for his specialisation courses and hoped for a way out through another two years of exams and studies, which might leave him a little bit happier by the end of the day.
— — —
“I remember when I was young, my father would tell me it was a lucky man who found their One early in their life. The world is wide and vast and your One could be born in any part of it and develop at their own rate to become a true match for yourself. My father finding my mother while they were both quite young was the apex of luck and they celebrated by having me and my two siblings at a good and mature time in their relationship. It was luck beyond luck, but may you, dear listener, be as lucky. This next song is for all those out there who might meet their One tonight.”
Bilbo had made a mistake.
He had known family medicine would be bad. Watching death up close was bad enough. Watching it around children tore him to pieces inside.
He had somehow convinced himself geriatrics would be better. It was not.
Instead of lamenting people dying too early, he found himself lamenting the lack of resources available to their care. He found himself noticing the one in ten patients who received a visitor more than once a month and the one in three who could still maintain full conversations for more than two minutes.
It was a department filled with the dead and dying, with a rare ray of sunshine known as hope – though hope in this department meant maybe five more years on the outside before they were brought back in.
Bilbo had already seen too many faces returned to him and too many times he could find no cure. It made him feel utterly useless as a doctor and he longed for something more, something fulfilling, something that would allow him some small victories in his days.
So he applied for a new specialisation.
It would have to be out-of-pocket this time, but his pockets had grown in size after years of overtime without the energy to spend much of his earnings on anything beyond maintaining his own health. He was in excellent shape and ate good meals more often than not, but he still lived in that shabby apartment he had first moved into after finding his first job and he could not for the life of him remember the last time he had gone to the movies to watch a new film or to a museum to learn something new or just admire the arts and sciences of the world.
When had he last gone to see a duckpond?
He used to eat his lunch at a duckpond every day as a GP. As a geriatric specialist, he never left the building unless he walked back home with the mindset of a ghost.
He wanted to eat lunch by duckponds again.
Maybe with the new specialty, he could find the excuses he needed to make that happen. Maybe at a new workplace, he might meet someone who made it worth trying.
— — —
“I never settled for a love of my own. It never seemed to be in the cards. While famous couples rolled across the screens in their red carpet glories – Mirabella and Merrigold, Beren and Lúthien, Faramir and Éowyn, Gandalf and Saruman – I could admire and respect their bonds to each other in plain view, but never did I find anyone who inspired equal admiration from me towards just them. It can be a difficult thing to do, deciding that no one you’ve met was truly meant for you, and even more challenging to hold on to, as friends and family create more and more opportunities for you to meet new people they found promising. It is tough, disappointing them by admitting that no, you have yet to truly fall for anyone. This next song is for all of you out there who, like myself, held out for the real thing even if it took its sweet time in the coming. May it bring rewards worth the waiting for us all.”
Surgery had become Bilbo’s new specialty and he was good. Very good.
With a success rate of 86% and rising, he could only hope it was due to his skill as much as it was pure luck, but he knew how it worked. He remembered the feeling of standing in geriatrics with no solutions without new problems. He knew he was lucky his patients had mostly been uncomplicated enough to be treated with some modicum of accuracy. Every day he hoped his next manila envelope would contain another uncomplicated trauma and every day it did he felt guilty with the knowledge that somewhere out there, a complicated case was abandoned for a lack of hope.
Bilbo Baggins was fifty years old when he quit his job at the largest hospital in Hobbiton. He had been a highly successful surgeon, with a very good recovery rate in his patients and an astonishingly low number of attempted law suits, and he retired with a good career, a deep wallet, and a whole lot of confused former colleagues.
It felt like the right time.
For years and years – actually decades – he had poured his attention and energy into saving lives and increasing general health, but it had cost him part of his soul. Every injury untreated, every life saved, every unexpected complication haunted him in their own little ways, and even good conversations with a good councelor could only help him so much.
Bilbo Baggins had set out for medical school with an intention to help people and he had helped a lot of people. Now the time had come for him to help himself and he chose to begin his new project by listening to his favourite radio show, while he travelled by night train to Rivendell – the center of public transportation to all of Middle Earth.
He had a good feeling about Rivendell.
He hoped the next part of his journey would become clear there.
— — —
“Good evening, listeners, and welcome to the Thorin Show. I am Thorin Thráinson and I will be your host this evening, from the fall of dusk until the break of dawn. No matter what keeps you up at night, I hope my voice might bring you comfort tonight and might lead you safely to the edge of dawn. With that in mind, here is our first song…”
Rivendell had proven to be a haven of peace.
There was no such thing as a duck pond in the mountain town, but there were cliffside apartments above a roaring river and plenty of terraced gardens along each side, with pagodas and plazas for dancing and conversations and every day seemed to hold another festival of some kind.
Bilbo Baggins had invested in a cliffside apartment of his own above the river Bruinen, with a marvelous view of a forest far below. On sweet summer days, the wind brought scents of pine trees and birchwood sap through his balcony doors, and every night he would turn on his favourite channel on the radio and begin writing.
At first, he was writing his memoirs.
It was cathartic, putting it all to the page. Anonymising the names and locations, he shared his stories of battles won and battles lost, through decades of work as a healthcare professional. Sometimes, he would add a snippet of a story from one of his colleagues or another, to offer a window into the connected reality that was life in a city full of interwoven lives.
He considered publishing it, then decided against it.
It felt too real to be shared, but the experience of writing it had been a revelation and he soon found himself writing other, far less true stories, and those he began to publish locally through a minor publishing house.
He did not expect the success that followed.
It was flattering, but Bilbo Baggins had to disappear.
He was far too private a person to live in a house surrounded by admirers.
— — —
“Dear listeners, do you read? Well, I do and tonight I have a recommendation for you. If you are the adventuring kind – and I believe quite a few of you are – then the newest fiction by author B. Baggins might be exactly what’s right for you. Three hundred and twenty pages of pure adventurous fun and intrigue, with hint of a romantic subplot elegantly hinted at on the side. I could not have found better had I commissioned it myself. To celebrate this amazing story, I bring to you a song of adventure and fun. This is Leonard Nimoy’s ‘The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins’. Enjoy.”
As Bilbo heard his own work mentioned on the radio with such enthusiasm by his favourite voice from nighttime radio, he felt his heart stop.
Just for a moment. Nothing too dangerous. It merely made his breath hitch for a moment, and then it was gone. A memory to be relived in a far off dream.
…and yet. Thorin Thráinson, radio host on the Thorin Show, knew his name.
The deep, rumbling voice with the perfect articulation and the most heartfelt, warm stories and such comforting music that had brought him through his every night of surgeries, death watches, teenagers bleeding out beneath his hands because of stupid dares or worse arguments, all the way back to when he first turned on the right channel while mopping the floors of the Bree General Hospice psych ward and realised what he truly needed to get through the night was a deep voice and some good music… that very voice had just recommended his, Bilbo Baggins’, newest book to all his listeners on live radio.
As Bilbo Baggins sat on the night train to Erebor, with everything he truly cared about packed away in two suitcases on the shelf above his head, he felt himself die and come back to life more alive than he had ever felt before.
This was a good sign.
This was a very good sign.