Cold, Cold Gramercy [Liar]

[Ezra Crenshaw]

41st of Winter There was nothing left to do but wait. After the week long camp out in front of the Palace of the Supplicants to cure his homelessness problem, a few hours in a small windowless room seemed simple. The patients had been filing in since he arrived in the early chimes of the morning, most nursing their wounded pride more than their injuries. The room’s shrine to the Alvinas had an offering of assorted fruit and freshly picked roses, struggling to mask the scent of the accumulating perspiration and blood. The waiting room of the Grand Infirmary inundated the bandaged man in a tide of hollow moans, the patience visibly wearing thin for most of the injured. People were assessed based on their needs and taken either to rooms beyond the burnished door or down a flight of stairs where he was certain he could hear screams. With each new arrival he would calculate the time before they were seen. Several gawkers paid him a curious glance, imagining that he was the most in need of medical attention. Ezra Crenshaw smiled. He hadn’t worn the bandages today, the scars were a testament to his achievements. Long bony arms fit together in his lap, cross stitched in long hash marks of blistering lashes from a wheat whip to polka dotted injuries from a fishing hook. Wiry legs crossed underneath riddled with long jagged lines likely from a wild animal sinking its teeth into his darkened flesh. He didn’t mind the stares. Somewhere in the building, the woman who so cheerily dressed those wounds was hard at work. It was vivid in his memory. When they pulled him from the stockade that final time, blood dripping from his brow over freshly laced wrappings. The brutal monk of Uphis gripping his salt and pepper hair, pushing his face into her lap as she calmly painted an ointment against the inside of the bandage. It became obvious that the best course of action was to cover his entire body and the two agreed wordlessly as she began the undertaking. The number of relentless wounds burned with each drop of sweat and painted his frail body and the wooden prison in rotting crimson. Each linen strip felt soaked in salt, sending a second wave of searing pain through his sullen frame. He sucked air through his teeth, wincing with each piece of gauze they applied. When she started on his face he learned to hate her. Curious sapphire eyes ignored his gaze, while they followed her tireless soft yet firm grip. Smooth pale skin caressed holes on his cheek and golden strands of hair peaked out from under a pure-white bonnet. She was beautiful, and she enjoyed his misery. Her tiny mouth and pouty lips fought self-consciously against a smile. But it was there. And Ezra hated it. In truth, he wasn’t fully aware of what he would say should he find her again. But there would be time for that. First, he had to find out what she knew about the Odessi family. “Mister Crenshaw? Are you ready?” The woman waiting the front desk called. “Aye ma’am,” Ezra said, working his way off the cramped wooden bench, “Been a long time comin’.”

[Liar]

There was no private room or office granted to him. Iron Touch herself was standing behind the nervous secretary that had called him, her fingers twitching irritably at her sides. She could have been anywhere else, doing what she loved and accidentally helping people in the process. But here she was, cold brown eyes train on the man who approached. The stiffness in her small frame, the curiosity on her face, her very presence... could mean only one thing. She remembered. Who wouldn’t? A man who believed he had spent his life in the Aperture, covered in scars that told the same story. He required weeks of recovery, this glorious specimen, and was unable to protest to uncountable experiments which she might never have the chance to perform again. The case study had been entertaining, but Thera had ultimately been forced to set him free, to live whatever life he could. Another success story, they said; their team had brought a man back from the dead. It seemed she was not so proud. To her, he was still the Bandaged One, the Silent One, More-Flesh-Than-Blood. Her eyes told him he was a ghost until the moment he stopped before them. “Patience is a virtue,” she recited, as if she know longer remembered the meaning of the words. Her arms folded; her gaze hardened. “Why have you returned, Crenshaw? You seem well enough.” The words were spoken in bitterness. Thera was probably the only one in the world who would say such a thing. “We treat the Wounded, not the Healed. There are potion shops for your aches.” A young man, in keeping with the aura of anxiety she seemed to inflict on those in her vicinity, reached a hesitant hand to her shoulder. She snapped around at him and said angrily, “What is it?” But she saw something on his face that almost made her smile. “Where?” He pointed down the hall , at a pair of men who were carrying a limp body just beyond the corner. Started after them, she did not look back as she said, “Walk with me, Crenshaw. Explain yourself. Don’t waste my time.”

[Ezra Crenshaw]

“And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you,

and cover you with skin, and put breath in you,

and ye shall live” -Ezekiel 37:6

The stern woman reproached Ezra like a parent taming an unruly child. She peered up at him with an inquisitive expression, her fingers dancing along her sides as she impatiently awaited his arrival. This seemed decisively out of the ordinary to Ezra. The secretary, who seemed so friendly just a moment ago, now fidgeted with visible panic. As the bandaged man slinked across the small waiting room, kept pristine to avoid contaminates to ongoing research, he saw the filaments in her eyes illuminate. She knew him. Like watching the visage of an abomination rise from an early grave and stalk towards her in broad daylight, the woman let out a single moment of emotion. Ezra was used to having people examine his scars, a feeling of momentary despair would settle in every hole in his cheek and pity would dance along the cut over the bridge of his nose. He had even desired that attention at this particular meeting, hoping it would somehow win him the position he sought. But he never would have expected someone to gloss over his wounds like they had seen worse. Or, to be accurate, like they had seen these cuts a thousand times before. For that moment, the emotion he received was surprise. And just as quick it was gone, tucked back away under tight lips and a terse accusation. The desire to find the blonde beauty vanished as she spoke, dissolved under the disapproval of this woman’s fierce, tawny eyes. Then, like a firefly who’s bulb has burnt out, she was off and he was dutifully behind her. “Beggin’ yer pardon, miss Vasta,” Ezra said. He paused as the words slipped from cracked lips, how did he know the woman’s name? When he was born it was in the little Crenshaw house, in the hands of the ships doctor. He only received care from the very same man who died when he was six. When Ezra was of age he began doling out his own medical care, he had never stepped foot in the Grand Infirmary yet everything seemed so damned familiar, “uh...See I was under th’ impression that ya needed a right pair o’ hands to fix folk. No less than six years of ship doctorin’ under belt, I have. And find myself in need of accord, fittin’ m’station, ye see.” The familiarity continued in her every forceful footstep. ‘Iron Touch’, as she was known, would gesture to the interns who peaked out from white washed rooms wearing pristine robes and wafting in a scent of fresh soap. It was deja vu the way she nodded directions to those in her wake, the way their eyes searched the floor where she walked. It was as if Ezra Crenshaw had always been here, slowly traipsing behind her purposeful stride. A puppet on a string, just another toy. The good doctor’s plaything. “Fittin’, my station ... why that reminds me of a tale. It’s the tale of the first Crenshaw man to catch a fish...” He started in on one of his stories, but when she would not slow down, he stopped. This story would fall on deaf ears, his story would sink to the trash bin of her heart, he would find no warmth, he would find no sustenance. There was a reason they called her ‘Iron Touch’. “Do...Do I know you?” Ezra asked in astonishment.