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He’d come as soon as the note had arrived, clutched by a panting messenger, eyes wide and sweating profusely.
“I take it that you have this handled?” he said to Wayra, unfolding the note quickly. He could see the worry dancing around the messenger, the way it bubbled under their skin, threatening to explode outwards. The note came from the Wunsoc Teaching Hospital, which was the first sign of trouble with it, written by the night nurse on duty.
There were very few possibilities that he could be called in for, he knew. He only had the whereabouts of half of his Unit to hand, the other off in the wind or sleeping on a factory floor, or on another realm, completely unknowable to him. Before, he might, and had been, called in for Mr Smithereens. And what had Mog been on duty for tonight? It had been watching a Wunderground station, hadn’t it?
He read it quickly, then again, making sure he hadn’t misunderstood the words as his heart sunk in his chest. A few phrases clung to him as he folded it away, and began side stepping the people in the crowd, moving through them like stepping through waves and avoiding the currents. Unconscious now — stitches — expected to fully recover.
He cradled them like a balm to his chest, finding his way to the nearest Brolly Rail platform, and flinging himself at it the second it came around.
“Is there anything I can do?” he found himself asking for the thousandth time.
“You can be quiet,” Tim said. “Or, leave. Actually, can you just leave?”
“Oh, don’t be like that, Tim. I thought you liked my company? Why don’t you make yourself a cup of tea and we can relive some good old memories,” and I keep an eye on Mog.
She had never been big, but she was so much smaller, all wrapped up in one of Wunsoc’s ugly hospital beds, wearing those hideous pyjamas, than he’d been expecting her to be. Someone had brushed her hair back from her face, just so her skin could be highlighted in a pallor closer to Frank’s than any healthy, alive, human being.
“She’s had a rough night of it,” Tim said, voice half monotone, half the same one Jupiter had once noticed him using on all his hysterical patients when he’d snuck into his shadowing sessions, and also the time he’d broken his leg and been stuck on the ward for two days. “She just needs rest, her bandages cleaned, and she’ll be grand. No need for dramatics, or histrionics, alright?”
Jupiter just stared at his scholar, unmoving on the bed. Rough night wasn’t the half of it. How had she drowned in the middle of Nevermoor, nowhere close to the Juro? And what exactly had attacked her so badly that she was left with gash marks he would be less surprised to see on a prey animal in a taxidermy collection. “No, I’ve never had any histrionics ever in my life, I promise.” He tried to smile, but feared it came out flat instead.
“Aye, and you haven’t been banned from half the drag nights in Bohemia either.”
“You got banned with me!”
Tim was impassive, “Go get some rest. She doesn’t need an overtired wreck when she wakes up. She’s going to need her patron. Surely there’s something you can do. Maybe inform any family members?” He raised an eyebrow at Jupiter, who was just about calculating how obvious it was that two people named Crow, both sharing enough features, in the same organisation, were related.
He would have jabbed his finger at Tim, but he didn’t want to be written up or exiled. “As soon as she wakes up, you’ll—”
“I’ll call you,” he said, putting his hands on his shoulder. “Bed, now.”
“You used to say that in a vastly different tone,” he said, but left anyway. He had letters to write.
His note to Mallory Darling was bound to be ignored, much like almost all the others, but he put in hopefully enough details to pique her interest that she might just want to know, if only from sheer curiosity, since any duty or care towards her granddaughter hadn’t moved her much over the years.
But she wasn’t Morrigan’s only relative in Nevermoor. And despite their differences, and despite the fact that Birdie had said he didn’t want to know, he didn’t need to know, and didn’t care, Jupiter still settled down with a pen and some paper, and started to write.
Bird,
Jove here. You might want to know that your niece is currently in the Teaching Hospital, seemingly from having been mauled during Golders Night. Maybe you should come, visit family and all that. It would be great to see you, and Morrigan would love to meet more of her family. You know, since you are her uncle.
Bring flowers, and don’t be difficult.
- J.N.
It was unlikely to produce any such answer. Certainly not any that Jupiter wanted. He doubted that B.C. Smithereens would even deign to send flowers to his niece’s sickbed. It was certainly par for the course that he would ignore her now, just as much as he’d ignored her for— well the whole time entirely.
But Jupiter had always been a reckless optimist. And it was worth a shot, perhaps. He owed it to Morrigan, or perhaps to the memory or Meredith Darling Crow, or just his own battered and torn up dreams to try to reunite some family members.
And being angry was much easier than being scared. He could try to fix something here, bring someone to Morrigan’s side, to comfort and help her. He couldn’t do anything about why she was in the hospital bed in the first place. And he was going to have to wait till morning for any answers about that too.
He folded the letters and addressed them, pressing on the stamps as neatly as he could, even as his fingers trembled with more emotion than he could allow himself to express. Then they were handed off, and he was left again, in the waiting room of the Teaching Hospital, arms folded, head resting against the wall, eyes shut, but ears ready.
Tim had promised him that the second she was awake, he could be back in there, and Jupiter was going to hold him to that, come hell or high water.