Father Jim Mallahan (extremeunction) wrote in zenithrp, @ 2016-01-08 12:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | #day 016, jim |
Who: Jim [narrative]
When: Morning
Where: His room
There had to be a reasonable explanation.
That was Jim's first coherent thought when he woke up. He didn't recognise the room: it looked only vaguely like the kind of place where he'd usually be, and was actually a little too nice. Maybe it was some retreat house where things were cushier than normal, a place designed according to an aesthetic other than "university dorm" or "grandma's guest room" or "Russian monastery." Nothing wrong with any of those things, of course. But this wasn't his actual room at the Galilee Centre (which was home, for now), and it wasn't any of the other random places where he sometimes woke up. Which sounded more tawdry and exciting than it was. Sometimes plans changed at the last minute, or in winter the roads got too icy for anyone to want to drive home from a fellow Oblate's anniversary or retirement party, or sometimes (to be perfectly frank) everyone was a little drunk and decided it was best to just pack it in for the night. The rectories in these old city parishes were built big, meant to hold half a dozen priests who now didn't exist, and there was always a spare bed or a spare couch. Oblate hospitality.
The IV was the part that made no sense. Jim didn't do much work in hospitals—not on purpose, anyway—but the work always drew you out there sooner or later. Dying friends, dying strangers. He'd sat at the bedside of a great theologian last week, someone who wasn't famous but who was Thomas Aquinas as far as he was concerned, an old teacher from St. Paul's. Cancer, but no dementia, something to be grateful for. The dying theologian had told Jim a different story about waiting at another deathbed.
—She was only sixteen and her parents were divorced, they hated each other. They argued over who could have saved her. You could have saved her, if you'd tried harder, one would say to the other. You could have made her life better. You could have made her happier. But you didn't, you didn't.
—What did you do, did you make one of them leave the room or something?
—No. They were both supposed to be there. No one could take that from them.
—So what did you say?
—I said her life was perfect as it was.
And Jim had sat there thinking about it, looking at the numbers on the IV pump because you couldn't meet dying people's eyes all the time, sometimes they had to turn away and gaze out at nothing that was visible, and sometimes it was just too hard for the living. Sometimes it felt like an intrusion. He hadn't noticed anything useful about IVs in that moment, just wondering if he was supposed to say your life was perfect as it was or if that was anything he had the authority to say at all. He didn't think he could add in any way to the man's confidence in what awaited him. Maybe that wasn't even the point of saying it. He waited too long, of course, and felt the moment start to blur as the dying priest began to lose his clarity. The IV pump kept up its steady seashell rush, in and out, while the great theologian's breath became louder and louder. Pneuma. Spirit loosening itself from matter.
Jim was still young and hunting-dog healthy, of course, and he'd never even had surgery. Nobody should have been pumping anything into his veins, and definitely not like this. This IV looked like something out of an old movie—not well-used or beaten-up, just old. He was taking things in now with more clarity: hospital gown, ID bracelet. Camera. Retreat houses definitely didn't have cameras. And a box on the floor.
So something was wrong, for sure, but there still had to be a reasonable explanation. At this point he would have accepted just about anything as reasonable. Professor X had to wipe your memory when he saved you from Galactus—fine, okay, thanks and where's the exit?
The ancient IV's tubing wasn't long, and the tree didn't have casters to roll on the floor, so after the whole apparatus tilted dangerously Jim decided to just handle one problem at a time. If a nurse wanted to show up later and yell at him for pulling out the needle, he was good at acting penitent. He peeled the tape off and on the second, messy attempt, he got the needle out. Not neatly, but out.
The room had three doors. One door (probably the useful one) was locked; one led to a generous but empty closet; one led to an even-more-generous bathroom. Window with a nice view of somebody's swimming pool, and mountains. Jim hadn't had his own bathroom in twelve years, and Ottawa hadn't had mountains since the Precambrian. No phone, just a computer at a desk.
The box wouldn't have seemed ominous at all without that Open Me label, but after he nudged it carefully he figured that there couldn't be anything that upsetting in there. Nothing that was heavy, or alive, or moving. And yup, it was just clothes. His own, even. He was so relieved to have something familiar that he started getting dressed before he finished thinking things through—wearing the collar got reactions from people, not always positive ones, and he had no idea who else might be in this place or what this was about.
But it was the only shirt he had, unless he wanted to go toga party and just wear a sheet, so he clipped the collar in as usual. The back of his neck hurt. The camera was watching him, swivelling with an almost-silent hum of servos to track his movements.
It was seeming more and more like the reasonable explanation was going to end up being something like "kidnapped for a sex dungeon" but Jim was trying to keep an open mind. It wasn't necessarily a sex thing but the "experimental" elements didn't really pass the smell test. They seemed like they were meant to look scientific without actually being functional, like a prostitute giving an enema, and that made it all seem fetishistic.
Anyway, it wasn't like he had money, or anything else that might interest a kidnapper.
He turned his attention to the locked door. Back in the novitiate, an older priest had first taught him how to get past a basic lock: The old chapterhouse had lousy doors that would lock just when you didn't want 'em to, and I had to break into my own office some mornings—here, watch, you'll be glad one day to know this... But that wasn't exactly an apprenticeship with a cat burglar, and the lock on this door looked kind of serious. He listened at the door for awhile, not hearing much, but enough to tell that the place wasn't empty. Faint creaks and rustles from other rooms.
He tried the computer last, which was probably dumb of him. Should have been the first thing he looked at. Sure enough, there was a message there that explained quite a lot by not explaining anything at all. If you are compliant, you will be rewarded. If you make things difficult, you will be punished.
Right, Jim thought, what else is new?