Exceptional What Did the Doctor Find Beneath the Bandage? THE TRINING Book Three : Could This Be Magic? by Jay Squires

The Final Paragraphs of Cha. 22:             As much as my reason raged against him, I experienced a sharp lance of isolation and loss the instant he lifted off my chest. Veering off to my right, he hovered about ten feet to the side of my bed. “Go,” I mouthed. He raised higher, banked back toward the bed and proceeded to make lazy circles around me, about midway from the ceiling. Trying to ignore him as he completed circuit after languorous circuit, I stared through his orbit at the mystery of the torchlight feathering the ridges and then getting swallowed up in the valleys of the carvings on the ceiling, creating the creatures’ subtle, macabre dance. Just now, the bullfrog’s glinting black eyes seem to slide slowly back and forth between the lids, but then ceased their movement the moment I focused directly on them.            I brought myself back to Percy’s orbit. Evidently, easy to forgive my outburst against him, this joyful aviator buzzed his rotation around my bed. Keeping my head still, I followed him with my eyes, one circuit, two circuits, three .... I lifted my head a little and blinked. It couldn’t be! It had to be my imagination. Extruded from somewhere behind his whirring wings was—could it be?— a contrail like a jet would leave behind, but thinner, like a thread.           He tightened up his revolutions over my bed, now, but their velocity was increasing, and the contrail didn’t dissipate as a jet’s would. The threads remained and he travelled at such a dizzying speed I couldn’t keep my eyes on him. I noticed, only from the configuration of the threads, that he had altered his odd circumgyration. The threads crisscrossed each other, forming a kind of webbing or a net.           I knew, now, what he was doing. It was his final act of aggression, and I was powerless to thwart it. I watched as he made one final circuit, performed a feat of aerial acrobatics, which I figured as his final coup de grace, and shot straight up toward the ceiling. As the net drifted toward me, but before it enwrapped me like a warm fog, I thought what I glimpsed through the tiny holes in the webbing was a pink lightning bolt of a tongue flick down from the ceiling and gather Percy to be with his brethren. BOOK III CHAPTER 23 (Part 1)   “Did you s-s-s-s-s—” A phosphorescent, liquid sizzle sloshed out to the margins and into the corners of everything ... and as quickly evaporated, leaving a scorching pain. “General Doctrex?”   I opened one eye a crack. A huge pair of eyes, an inch away, stared into it. I recognized them and opened the other.   “You—I didn’t ...”   “Didn’t hear me? I asked you if you slept well.”   “My head.” I closed my eyes again.   “The residual effect of the narcotic.”   “Given ... for the pain ...?” One half of my mouth stretched to an attempted grin. Out came a dry, “eh-eh ...”   The doctor chuckled. “Ironic, yes. The pain will pass. Good that you have your humor, sir.” He gave my shoulder a little squeeze as he rounded the back of the bed to my left side.   The sheet folded back off my chest and stomach.   “No, no, you can keep your eyes closed. I just need to remove the bandages from this side so I won’t reinjure your wound. Who’s Perthy?”   “Percy?” I was surprised, for just a moment, at how effortlessly the syllables slid through my lips, but that was eclipsed by his question’s content.   “Or maybe it was Percy. You were having a lively convers—well, your side of the conversation was lively anyway.” He chuckled again.   “Just before you woke me?” The pressure around the left side of my ribcage lessened as he snipped.   He stopped to ask, “Before I woke you? Oh, my, no. This was days ago.”   My eyes opened. He was looking up, touching each of four fingers of one hand with the tip of the closed scissors held in the other. “Three—four—no, five days ago. I forgot I had a day’s leave away from the palace. Five days. Yes.”   “How long have I been asleep?”   He was back snipping again. “Five days, sir,” he said, not looking up. “This was not long after I left you ... when you were ... well the narcotic was doing things to your eyes.”   “No, no, but that can’t—” I let out a series of staccato laughs that startled me. “That just can’t ...”   “Well, let me see ....” The doctor made the last clip, and I felt an immediate loosening around my ribs. I might have sighed from the relief of it because he smiled at me as he straightened up, tapping the scissors into his palm. “Five days. I remember the first—”   “No. I mean, it wasn’t right after you left me. I was awake then.”   He cleared his throat and smiled. He seemed not to want to rile me. “I remember, sir, I left the room because ... well, because I felt my presence might add too much stimulation with my explaining—you know, the carvings on the ceiling. So I left, figuring if you didn’t have the added stimulation, the narcotic would take over. I went to my office. I heated that morning’s coffee and drank it. That took about fifteen or twenty minutes. I returned to the door of your room, opened it a crack, and observed you for several minutes. Confident you were under, I came into the room and over to you.” He put the scissors in his pocket and glanced down at the separated ends of the bandage.   “And?”   “Well, you were under. Quite deeply under. I lifted your arm and dropped it. No response. I did it again. Nothing.”   “Except it started me talking.”   “Oh, Perthy—Percy. Yes. Seeing you were comfortable and resting well, I decided to leave. I believe I was almost to the door when I first heard you. I returned to the bed.”   I shook my head. I simply couldn’t have dreamed the whole thing. Why would my mind develop this elaborate life and death drama about staying awake if I was already asleep? It took a tremendous amount of energy to stave off sleep. Before Percy began his final flight, he sat on my chest. All I wanted to do was swat him, but I couldn’t even lift my ...   I smiled up at the doctor.   “You seemed angry at him—this Percy.” I knew it gnawed at his curiosity. “You told him to go.”   “Hmmm.”   “Twice. The first time, which was why I came back. And then the second time, when ...” He coughed, and beneath his cheekbones, twin patches pinkened.   I knew what he had trouble articulating, but my mind needed to hear its confirmation. “When what?”   “Well, sir, I—I think you called him a traitor. If I heard you right. Something about not needing him.”   I gave him a cursory nod, and smiled. “That’s interesting, doctor. A traitor.” I nodded some more. “But you know how dreams are.”   “Yes, they can be bizarre. And how is your head, sir?"   “The pain? Not as bad. Still there.”   “It will pass.”   I knew he still had questions. But I had no reason to give him answers. I found answers to my own questions. From the moment a fly first buzzed my nose and my ear before landing on the sheet, and during the entire time I befriended and dubbed him Percy ... counted him as my savior, and then my betrayer, and finally the most despised traitor who bound me over to the enemy general of eternal sleep, I discovered not much more time passed than what it took for the doctor to drink a cup of coffee.   Most importantly, I learned that in the final tally, none of it meant anything at all. I gained nothing by the twenty-minute matinee in my mind. It was all a monumental waste of my time. The narcotic was stronger than my will to resist it.   The doctor bunched together the top cut of the bandage and piled it on my chest, moved behind me again and stood on my right side facing the mound of gauze. “I’ll try to be gentle, sir, but your wound is quite large. You may feel some pain as I pull it back from where it’s adhered to the wound. Shall we give it a go?”   “I think I’m ready.”   He glanced down at the bandage still covering my ribs on that side. “Although ... there’s no indication it even seeped through. That’s odd.” He shot me a quick glance. “Here goes, sir ...”   I watched him keenly. If I had to brace for the pain, I wanted to know precisely when. He lifted the pile off my chest and set it on the bed by my hips, careful not to put any tension on the gauze that might tug against the wound. Before he could even turn to the bandage covering my ribs, it simply fell away. From my angle I couldn’t see my ribs, but I got a clear look at the doctor’s reaction.   He stumbled back a few steps and threw his hand to his mouth. “No! No, sir, I can’t ...” After that, he seemed struck dumb, simply shook his head, staring straight ahead at it. “Unless ...” he muttered.   I continued to study him, as a smile twitched one corner of his mouth, then vanished. “Unless?”   He blinked and stepped back to the bed. Bending close to my ribs, he stretched the skin between both hands. I knew he heard me. I knew he hoped I wouldn’t press for an answer.   “Unless it was magic, doctor?”   He appeared, or pretended, not to hear me. “I was going to apply more unguent and re-bandage and hope after another week with no infection—well ...” He looked at me with a kind of helpless expression.   “So, where’re the bandages and the unguent?”   The coloring on his cheeks went beyond pink to crimson. “Sir ... You don’t understand. You probably can’t see it, but there’s no wound to bandage. There’s not even a scar. The area’s not even pink.”   “But that’s impossible!” I said, feigning confusion. “Nothing can heal that fast. Can it, doctor?”   “Well ...”   “Un—less.” I drew it out into two syllables. “Magic could speed up the process a little, couldn’t it?”   He stood up straight. “The important thing is, general,” he said in a stiffly formal manner, and then, adjusting his demeanor, changed to a smiling, jaunty tone, “You are completely healed.”   I smiled at him.   “And there is someone who’s been quite anxious to visit with you.”   When he said this, the vision of my Axtilla so possessed my mind that the rest of his words seemed to come from another world.   “I shall let him know you are recovered.”                                   TO BE CONTINUED   Recognized

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