Young Writers Society

This is a part of The Wishing Gate 'verse.

A Greenstick Fracture

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

- from ‘Break, break, break’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It had been days since the funeral. Days since the cold had settled in Fred Maitland’s heart. The cold did not bother him now – oh, for the first few days the frozen grip that formed around his heart bothered him, and he rubbed at it in a feeble attempt to drive the cold away, though sometimes—absently—he would scratch his chest and remember that he had a heart once.

He spent his all of his conscious time sifting through files on his computer and looking through date books and transcripts for something he missed, something he had to have missed. This morning was not like any other, Fred was hunched over the computer, maple brown eyes bleary and blood-shot, his dark hair is furious disarray, sticking out at odd ends like the spines of a porcupine. There was a dull ache that started in his lower back and climbed up his spine like a creeping vine but he dismissed it like he did the frost. Starring at the screen, he scrolled down through the files until he found what he was looking for.

“Lucy, start sequence.”

A voice, computerized but definitely female answered. “Starting sequence, Doctor Maitland.”

Fred watched the scene unfold, a sequence that had been repeating in his consciousness mind as well as his nightmares. The holographic image shimmered with the image of a man and two disembodied hands that forced its victim to his knees before asphyxiation.

He remembered more than the familiar body, limp and lifeless.

He remember the perfectly imbedded bruises on pale flesh, he remembered bloodied knees, scraped and imbedded with shards of glass and gravel, he remembered the wrists, a rusty red color where the binding cut into the flesh. Most of all, which stuck to his brain like tar, was the lips, crooked in a soft smile.

It didn’t make sense. Fred had seen more than a few deaths in his time, but never had one looked so serenely pleased after his demise. It bothered him, that smile. It bothered him even more that it was he.

Fred hitched a breath as the sequence ended, that smile evident on the hologram’s lips as well. Oh, why didn’t you tell me something was wrong? I would have done anything, anything, if only I knew what to fix… That fierce anger, a lightning strike, caused his fists to tremble. What good was being a Doctor if you couldn’t fix things – couldn’t fix people? And, just like it came the viciousness forced itself out again. It was like being in the eye of a cyclone.

As he sat there, the sequence repeating again and again, though by now Fred was passed seeing the shimmering dots of color, a voice, more familiar than his own now filtered through the deafening silence that surrounded him: “Full many a thought uncalled and undetained, / And many idle flitting phantasies, / Traverse my indolent and passive brain”.

“Oh, shut up, you, I don’t have idle fantasies.” He spoke without even realizing he even had the capabilities even more.

His eyes were closed now, and with that silence of sight, his sleep deprived mind easily slid into the spaces between memory and dream.

There was that smile again, though more of a smirk, and hands that brushed against his, a warmth against him that curled around the cold, and the deep, rich tones of Coleridge: “Methinks, it should have been impossible / Not to love all things in a world so filled;”

Fred leaned into the touch, the voice, the warmth so giving, molding to the contours of his own. Please stay, you always said reality was overrated.

The squeal of the laboratory door being forced opened fractured the mirage and Fred blinked, twice, before he remembered where he was.

The cold, like an invisible marine limpet, latched onto his chest again.

“Maitland,” came the gruff voice, “We got a lead, Jim and me got us a witness, little lady says she seen Davy with some’un before—”

“Jim and I.” Fred cut in. When there was no response, he twisted towards the voice.

Malcolm Fisher was frowning. The day, which had started out odd, just got stranger: Fred muttering like that fool Davy always did.

“Jim and I.” Fred repeated.

“I know, I know,” Malcolm sighed, his large shoulders undulating as he did so, “is just that Davy was the one, always the one, trying to get me to speak proper. It feels damn weird coming from you, hoss.”

Fred felt his chest constrict the cold spreading out from his heart more.

“A lead you say…” Fred licked his lips in anticipation.

“Yes. ” Malcolm grunted.

With an extreme sense of longing to be finished with the whole business of seeking, Fred got to his feet and gestured mutely for Malcolm to continue. The big man titled his head to the side and extracted a crumpled bit of paper. After smoothing it with his large, calloused fingers, Malcolm relinquished it. Fred tapped his temple with his right index finger, before smoothing the soft pad across his eyebrow. Excitement blossomed within him. He had a name.

A voice, rich and full of strength and wonder lapped at the edges of his mind. Fred fought the urge twice to bat the irritant away: let me sleep, he chanted, just let me sleep. It did not let him sleep, but lulled him into listening. It was so familiar, yet just out of reach. He, like Odysseus, let the beautiful, comforting sounds entrance him. Slowly, recognition returned, and with it the joy of regaining a lost sense. The comforting feel of hands and arms securing themselves around him, warmth infused, and those tones in his ear, whispering, soothing, “and the world so hush'd! / The stilly murmur of the distant Sea / Tells us of silence."

END NOTES

1. The title - A greenstick fracture is when one side of the fracture has broken and the other side has bent. The name comes from the analogy of breaking a young, fresh tree branch. The broken branch snaps one side while the inner side is bent. This kind of fractures happens often with children because a child’s bones are much more pliable that an adult’s. Greenstick fractures can take a long time to heal because they tend to occur in the middle, slower growing parts of bone.

2. All the excerpts are from The Æolian Harp (The Eolian Harp) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.