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The Administrator of the Fortress of Meropide was being Difficult.
“I don’t care if you’re Head Nurse,” he was saying. “You can’t compel ex-cons to appear for a physical.”
“Why not?” Sigewinne put her hands on her hips and puffed her cheeks out in frustration. “If they’re a resident of Meropide, they’re under your jurisdiction. You can compel them to do anything!”
Wriothesley gave her a look that was not promising for her prospects of getting everyone in Meropide to get a physical. Wry? Exasperated? There was such a variety of human expressions and both too few and too many words to describe those expressions. “I don’t know what the Chief Justice told you about how I run things down here, but that’s … really not it.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m willing to make physicals mandatory for anyone still serving a sentence— within reason, ” he added sharply when Sigewinne’s rhinophores perked up. “But anyone here voluntarily can decide for themselves. We clear?”
Sigewinne decided she could fight that battle again later. “What’s ‘within reason’ mean?”
Wriothesley narrowed his eyes. “I said , are we clear?”
That was the trouble with the Administrator: he noticed when Sigewinne did things like not acknowledge stupid stuff he said. Sigewinne pouted at him, but Wriothesley was unmoved. “Fine. We’re clear.” His expression relaxed, so she added, “But what does ‘within reason’ mean?”
Wriothesley didn’t answer right away, looking at her with a blank expression and a slightly cocked head. Finally, he leaned back against the stair railing. “Not everyone can tolerate a physical. Could be for a lot of different reasons. Fear, trauma, uncertainty, physical discomfort …” he ticked them off on his fingers, then shrugged. “Who knows? But I won’t compel anyone to go through that if they say they can’t, whatever their status.”
“What if they’re lying?” Sigewinne asked, less because she thought it was likely and more because she was curious what he would say.
Wriothesley shrugged again. “So what?” She must have looked some kind of way - the Administrator was scary good at reading her expressions sometimes - because he offered an ameliorating smile. “I know you only want to make sure they’re safe and healthy. We can work on it, if someone’s reluctant - try to find out why, take steps to mitigate the obstacles. But if someone still says no, that’s that.”
“Fine,” Sigewinne sighed. She was not satisfied, but Wriothesley was very tetchy about free consent. Sigewinne understood its importance in theory, but it was so easy to sway human opinion! Where did persuasion end and compelling begin? She had no idea. No two books agreed about it. Sigewinne didn’t mind the gray areas it created, but she didn’t want to lose Wriothesley’s trust by accidentally coercing someone into something because of a misunderstanding on her part.
But—Sigewinne perked up. “You know what would help convince almost everyone in Meropide to get an exam?” She asked.
Wriothesley looked at her with the wariness of a dog unsure if he was about to be pounced by a cat. “… Sticker prizes?”
“No! Though do you think patients would like sticker rewards?”
“Sure, maybe? I’m constantly surprised by what adults will do for stickers.” Wriothesley scratched the back of his head. “What were you actually going to say?”
Sigewinne shook her head to clear away a daydream of all the nurse-themed stickers she could make. “If you got the first exam!”
For a split second, Wriothesley’s face did something that Sigewinne did not have a word for. Then his entire affect went blank. “No.”
“No, why not!? It worked for the barber shop!” Which was a thriving business now. One of Sigewinne’s daily duties was locking away the barber’s razors overnight and returning them in the morning so the inmates couldn’t do something silly with them to each other while the barber was away.
“I don’t need one.”
What a liar! She had seen his medical file: the last time he’d been in the infirmary for anything other than an injury or feeling sick was exactly never . Was this his real reason for saying he wouldn’t compel ex-convicts to get exams? “Is that your real reason for refusing to compel the ex-convicts to get exams? Because you’re one, too?”
Wriothesley blinked once, then cracked a grin. “You caught me.”
“Liar. You just think what I said is funny.” She scowled. “You’ve never had a physical, and you’ve been here for over a decade! And you grew up here, too. Please, Administrator—Monsieur Neuvillette told me to look out for the health and safety of everyone in the Fortress. That includes you!”
Mentioning Monsieur Neuvillette was maybe a bit of what the Administrator would have called a ‘low blow’. The effect on Wriothesley was palpable: the skin of his face warmed slightly, changing color. He scowled and looked down, crossing his arms and tapping one foot restlessly. He eventually sighed. “Okay, okay. You win.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and recrossed his arms. “When should I report loudly and publicly for my physical exam, Miss Head Nurse?”
Sigewinne beamed at him. “Tomorrow at 5:30 PM,” she decided. It was the time of day when most inmates were awake and hanging around, maximizing visibility.
“Okay.” Wriothesley’s face did the thing again, this time for a little bit longer. It looked like some kind of discomfort. But it was gone again, and then Wriothesley was going up the stairs to leave the infirmary. “See you then.”
“Thank you, Mr. Administrator,” Sigewinne replied. She tilted her head at his retreating back. That whole exchange was an excellent example, really, of the gray space between persuasion and coercion, wasn’t it? But she really wasn’t sure which side of that fuzzy line she had fallen on.
—
Five-thirty PM came and went.
It was a quiet day in the infirmary, so Sigewinne kept herself busy by rearranging her supplies again, trying to suppress her irritation. Was the Administrator just going to blow her off? It wasn’t like him to outright lie.
Just when Sigewinne started to worry that something had happened, Wriothesley appeared at the top of the ramp, slightly out of breath. “Lost track of time,” he said apologetically. “Might have compromised the advertising power a little. You want to reschedule?”
“Nope,” Sigewinne said, prim. “Since you’re here and I’m not busy, let’s go ahead.”
Wriothesley looked crestfallen, but only for a moment. His expression turned more wary. “You’re annoyed.”
“I was waiting for you. I got worried,” she told him, trying to stop her rhinophores from twitching and giving her mood away.
“Ah,” Wriothesley said, scrubbing a hand through the hair at the back of his head. He sucked in a breath and started down the stairs. “Sorry for worrying you. Where do you want me?”
“Back here.” She had partitioned off several beds behind curtains, and she led him to one and gestured him into the enclosure. “You’ll need to undre–Mr. Administrator?” She broke off, alarmed by the expression that had crossed Wriothesley’s face.
“I thought …” Wriothesley broke off, grimacing. He ran his hand over his face; when he dropped his palm, it was like he had erased his expression with his hand, turning his features into a blank slate. “Can’t Melusines see things humans can’t?”
“Yes, we can, but it’s not like I can see your skin through your clothes.” She clasped her hands behind her back, remembering what Wriothesley had said the day before about reluctant patients. “You don’t have to be naked - you can keep on your underclothes. And I can get a blanket so you can stay warm.”
Wriothesley stared at the wall. He did a lot of blank looks, but this was more … just More. The stillness of his face was unnatural, even for him. It had been a long time since she’d seen that kind of behavior, but she recognized it: it was the non-expression of a human who had learned to not show a certain emotion. He’s … afraid? And traumatized.
Sigewinne should have guessed that he was speaking from experience about why people would refuse exams.
She opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t have to undress - she would figure it out - but Wriothesley chose that moment to sigh. “Do you know how hard it is to get in and out of these stompers?” He waved at his leather boots; they strapped over his knees and were so new they still creaked. “But I’ll do it for you, Miss Head Nurse.” He sat on the edge of the exam table and bent down to start unbuckling his shoes.
Sigewinne hesitated, wanting to still offer that he stay dressed, but unsure if it would just wound his pride. Humans could be very touchy about having their bravado punctured. Her mind was made up for her when Wriothesley said “I’ll take that blanket, though,” without looking up.
“Of course. I’ll be right back.” She ducked out of the partition and took a steadying breath. If Wriothesley was going to push through his discomfort, she would be a consummate professional; she would be quick and efficient and get him in and out as fast as she could.
She passed him the blanket through the partition. “Let me know when you’re ready,” she said.
“Yeah. One sec.” There was a quiet sigh, then the sounds of a belt buckle and fabric. “I’m good.”
It was a little weird to see the Administrator leaning on his elbows over his knees, shoulders draped in a blanket and only in his boxers and socks. Even in the pankration ring he wore a shirt and pants. He had folded his clothes into a surprisingly neat pile at the end of the exam table; he sat in the middle, legs dangling. At a glance, she could see his body fat content was low for a human, though not dangerously so. His hair growth patterns were typical of a post-adolescent human with more testosterone than estrogen. If his typically exposed skin was unnaturally pale from spending so much time away from the sun, the rest of him was paper-white. And there were a lot of scars - more than Sigewinne had expected, even knowing the kinds of fights he had participated in.
“Because you were late, I’ve decided that we can do your exam in two parts,” she told him. “I’m just going to check your skin and bone health and do palpations today. You can be fully dressed for everything else, anyway.”
Wriothesley had started to look alarmed again, but perked up when she explained that the second exam would not involve undressing. “Sounds good,” he said. “Tomorrow, same time?”
“Yes. But I won’t expect you until six,” she teased.
Wriothesley made a sound that Sigewinne interpreted as resigned, but a smile twitched across his face for just a moment. “My punctuality in the overworld may have been a little misleading. It’s hard to keep track of the hour down here.”
“It’s okay. I forgive you.” Ah, humans and their light-based circadian rhythms. “Let’s get started. Can you stand facing away from me and bend over? I’m going to have you stand up very slowly so I can see how your spine moves.”
He snorted. “Pft. That almost–never mind.” Wriothesley pulled the blanket off his shoulders and did as he was told.
She walked him through a few exercises, watching his face for signs of distress with each request, but he was working hard to control his expression and it was harder to read than usual. She could see the musculature and the way the skin moved over it; she saw he moved well, but also the places where the scars were much deeper than his skin. The muscles over his right hip were healthy now, but they would give out much faster than his left hip. His knees were stiff for his age. His shoulder muscles were stiff too, but the socket of his left arm was distressed, prone to dislocation. His fingers were crooked and lumpy from frequent breaks. He couldn’t turn his head as far to the left as to the right, and the three deep scars that ran over his collarbone and neck pulled so tight he had stretch marks around them.
Every human had bodies that told stories that she would probably never know in full, but Wriothesley’s scars made for a thicker tome than most. What had put that brutal burn scar around his left wrist? Had the Fortress administered canings before Wriothesley took over, or were those scars from his childhood? How sharp was the knife that had left a perfectly straight diagonal slash over the right side of his belly? Maybe she would know someday, but more likely they would remain untold.
“All right. Last part, some palpations of your abdomen.” She motioned for him to lay down.
Wriothesley nodded, sliding the blanket out of the way and swinging himself butt-first onto the exam table. She climbed onto the table, kneeling at his side, and draped the blanket over his legs and crotch as he laid down. “I will have to press down a little under your boxers, near your hips - no lower than here.” She pointed.
Wriothesley leaned on his elbows, looking down his body at her fingers. “Thanks for the warning.” He sighed and laid back; she watched him swallow and his face and next grow warmer as he blinked at the ceiling. “Will you … I’ve never actually had one of these. But, uh. Checking the prostate?”
“Oh, yes,” Sigewinne assured him. “Especially if you haven’t ever had that checked. But … you seem uncomfortable about that?”
Wriothesley’s discomfort came out in the form of a half-hearted chuckle. “I mean, full disclosure, you being my doc and all: I’ve had a lot of things up my ass. But context is everything, you know? I’ll be fine, you do what you have to do,” he hastened to add. “You just said this was the last thing, and you hadn’t done that yet, so I thought I should just. Ask.”
Understanding dawned on Sigewinne. “I don’t have to palpate your prostate directly! Is that how human doctors do it?”
Wriothesley sighed hard, his relief palpable. “Yeah, it is. Damn, I was bracing for nothing, huh? How do you check it?”
“Well–I’m doing the palpation to help me differentiate between your organs,” Sigewinne explained. “There’s a lot of them in your abdomen, so it helps to feel the shape of a few of them while I look.” She gently placed her gloved hands on his upper abdomen; he flinched away, stomach bowing, before he relaxed and allowed the contact. “When I’m touching your bladder, I’ll be able to see the prostate and how it looks.” She paused. “I guess I should take a quick peek at your genitals, just in case anything is on your skin. But I don’t need to touch to check your scrotal health. Don’t worry.”
Wriothesley flapped a hand, waving from the wrist. “Do what you gotta do.”
So Sigewinne did. She worked as fast as she could, starting from his ribs and down to his hips. Through the thin gloves, she could feel that his skin was a little clammy from nervous sweat. His heart was beating a little too fast. They both wanted this to be done. Happily, everything felt very normal: despite a vicious scar scoring his left side, his organs seemed to be safe and in good health … except for one.
She felt his right side by his bellybutton a second time. The emptiness was more jarring now that she was concentrating on it. Her rhinophores twitched.
“Everything okay?” Wriothesley asked, noticing her pause.
“Yes,” Sigewinne said slowly. Everything was fine, apart from that empty space. She pulled back, fingers sliding over that straight, diagonal scar. Was that scar the explanation? “Mostly. How about you get dressed while I tell you my assessment?”
“Sure,” Wriothesley said, pushing himself upright. He grabbed the blanket and held it against his waist as he swung his legs over the side of the table again. Sigewinne twisted around and sat heavily next to him.
“Your health is fairly good for someone who drinks way too much caffeine.” She injected her disapproval into her voice. “Your nutrition could be better, and you’re very, very hard on your body. You need to be nicer to your knees. And you should probably switch your dominant side when you box more often to improve your hip strength on your weak side.”
Wriothesley nodded. He was already so much more comfortable just knowing he could dress again, or that the exam was over. She hadn’t entirely realized how oppressive the exam was until his natural confidence once again bloomed to life. He folded the blanket into thirds in his lap. “So what’s the bad news?” He flashed a half-smile at her look. “I can sense a ‘but’ when it’s coming.”
Sigewinne couldn’t fault his instincts. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, “But you’re missing a kidney.”
Wriothesley was very still for a moment. Then he laughed. “Oh, that? It’s okay. I know.” He finished rolling the folded blanket, then put it aside, a neat bedroll for taking to the laundry.
“How did you lose it?” Sigewinne asked, relieved that this was not a surprise to the Administrator. “Did you get an infection? Was it a battle wound?”
“I didn’t lose it. It was … what’s the word? Oh yeah— stolen .” He snapped his fingers in dramatic recollection.
Sigewinne stared at him. “Stolen?” she repeated. How had she missed this in his file? “Was - was organ harvesting something the previous Administrator did a lot?” She asked, gaping in horror.
“What?” Wriothesley gave her a perplexed look before understanding dawned. “Ah. No, that didn’t happen here. My parents stole my kidney.” He shrugged into his shirt and started buttoning it up. “Though now that you mention it, I’m a tad surprised my predecessor didn’t do a little harvesting of his own. I understand it’s a pretty lucrative business.”
Sigewinne collected herself. She knew Wriothesley’s parents had sold and murdered their own foster children, but it hadn’t occurred to her that they might have sold parts of their children as well. “How did it happen?”
Wriothesley did the bark-laugh that meant he was surprised, not amused. “Why does that matter? I hadn’t sold in one piece, so they tried to sell me in pieces. Unfortunately for them, I woke up in the middle of it.” He stared into the middle distance for a few seconds, then made a scoffing noise. “When I woke up again, they tried to tell me I’d had to get my appendix removed. I ran away before they could get a second chance.” He resumed dressing, standing up from the exam table to pull on his pants.
Sigewinne listened in silence. There was a lot of a human that could be harvested if the surgeon was skilled enough and you didn’t intend for the victim to survive. It begged horrible questions about Wriothesley’s dead siblings. Maybe she should have read one of their autopsy reports.
But anesthesia was a delicate business: too much could kill, and too little … would lead to something like what happened to Wriothesley. In his case, the incompetence of the anesthesiologist had probably saved his life. Nonetheless, she found herself recontextualizing the entire physical in light of the sort of medical trauma that waking up on an operating table would cause. Was it possible such an experience left Wriothesley anything other than irrevocably — understandably — wary of an examination room?
Sigewinne wilted. The Administrator looked up from buttoning his pants. “... Miss Sigewinne?” His tone was gentle.
She said, “I’m afraid I coerced you into this exam.”
Wriothesley’s brow wrinkled. “Why’s that?”
Sigewinne had never felt so embarrassed in front of a human. “I used your sense of responsibility to the Fortress, Monsieur Neuvillette, and myself to get you to say yes. And I didn’t retract or back off even when I realized you were uncomfortable.” She wanted to look at her shoes or even hide under the exam table, but she kept her chin up instead. “I apologize. It wasn’t very professional of me.”
Wriothesley looked confused through most of this speech. Then he smiled. His real smiles - the soft ones - only just tugged a few muscles around his mouth back. They were private things, like he didn’t want to let anyone else know about them. “Apology accepted.” He started pulling on his gloves.. “Maybe mentioning the Chief Justice was a little bit of a low blow.” She had known he would call it that! “But I do need to set an example, gods help us all.” He shook his head, that tiny, private smile growing a little as he scoffed. “What a world.”
“Is setting an example funny?”
“Kinda, yeah.” Wriothesley sat down to put on his boots. “Isn’t a double murderer ex-con running a prison and setting an example for good behavior the definition of irony? It should be. Somebody write the dictionary people.” He paused, contemplating his boot buckles, then shrugged and resumed strapping them on. “Whoever they are.”
“I think it makes perfect sense,” Sigewinne told him. “Doesn’t that make you especially well equipped to understand the inmates’ needs?”
“Hah. You would think, but I have no idea.” Wriothesley stood and stamped his feet deeper into the boots. “It didn’t seem to help the previous Administrator, or the one before him, or the one before her.”
“That’s different! They didn’t care about the needs of anyone but themselves.” When Wriothesley just shook his head, she scowled. “The difference is you’re a good person who cares about other people. Obviously.”
“That’s just basic decency.” Wriothesley threw his coat over his shoulders and looked at her. “But I’ll grant you that’s more rare than we might hope for.”
Sigewinne hummed. There was something terribly sad about the Administrator’s eyes. If he was a Melusine, his rhinophores would have been drooping. He expected a lot of himself, though he tried to pretend he didn’t. His high standards for himself was one of the things Monsieur Neuvillette liked about the Administrator. But what was that saying humans had? ‘Hope for the best, expect the worst.’ That was Administrator Wriothesley, wasn’t it, when it came to the behavior of other humans. What could she do except thank him for his hard work?
“Thank you for coming to your exam, Mr. Administrator,” she said. “Would you like a sticker for your bravery?”
Wriothesley laughed. It was his real, funny-surprise laugh. “My first voluntary sticker, huh? Sure. You have any of those shark ones?”
“I do!” Sigewinne beamed. She pulled one out of her pocket and held it out.
Wriothesley took it, carefully peeled away the backing, and applied the sticker to his shirt over his right breast. “There. Now if anyone has the nerve to ask about it, I’ll point them your way for a physical.”
“Oh, advertising! How clever,” Sigewinne enthused.
That brought out his Administrator smirk. As much as he valued free consent, Wriothesley did like being shrewd about getting his people to take care of themselves. “I’m hungry. Wanna join me for dinner?”
“Yes, absolutely!” Sigewinne grabbed her clipboard off the table. She could probably sign up some patients for physicals while there. “By the way … you should really have a physical every two years. But if you don’t want to, I understand.”
Wriothesley’s smirk faded. “I’ll think about it.” He motioned for her to go up the stairs first. “It wasn’t so bad–no, really.” He had seen her rhinophores vibrate and he knew what it meant. “You’ve got great bedside manners. Very tolerable.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment,” she complained.
“Did I or did I not say ‘great bedside manners’?” Wriothesley huffed. “If I couldn’t stand it anymore, I would have gotten up and left. I’m not that scrupulous about being polite.”
Sigewinne relaxed. “Okay.”
Wriothesley hummed. After a moment of companionable silence, he said, “Good thing you told me about my kidney.”
“Hey!”
“Can you imagine? What if I promised to donate a kidney only to find out I only had one? I was in real danger there.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“No, of course not. I’m just relieved to know why I’ve always felt a little bit asymmetrical. I thought it was the weak side of my hips.”
“Stop!”
But he had her giggling all the way to the coupon cafeteria.