SONS OF THE FATHERS

Chapter 13: Bus Stop

"Just a broken cup," he sighed. "Just an old cup."  

Himself looked at the General curiously, recognizing  the yearning and the pain lingering in his eyes.  He noted the way Maximus' hand pressed to the glass and read in the tension of the strong fingers their desire to break the dividing glass.  "Joimus?" he asked softly. Maximus gave one slight nod of assent. Himself walked over to Aubrey and Terry who were studying a blueprint of the house."She was here," he stated, "or...is...here."  He jerked his head toward Maximus.  "He's found a connection."  
***************************
Steve, hearing the exchange, came up to the case.  He thought it might help if he took a series of pictures of the various clues they gathered.  A guard seeing him unscrew the lens cap of his camera, walked over.  

 

"Sorry," he said, pointing to a "No Photography Permitted" sign posted near the door.  

 

Steve sighed, looking at Laura.  "Like the bridge," he commented with a wry smile. Maximus and Steve stood side by side, looking at the cup.  One wanted to break the glass, the other wanted to break the rules.  Neither did.  

Bud called them over to a wall where he'd found a panoramic view of Sydney in the second decade of the 1800's.  It was huge, stretching across the entire wall. They all stopped to study it.  There before them lay First Government House, vines climbing up the columns of its veranda, its own orchard and vegetable garden to one side.  They were used to the grandeur of the modern skyscraped  city.  In 1818 it was still sparse and low, a few church spires here and there as it had only in January celebrated its 30th year of existence.  Himself chewed his lip as he watched Maximus' quiet staring at the depiction of the house.  

After a few moments, they went upstairs, following the signs to level 3 where there was a viewing cubicle from which one could catch a slight bit of the view the residents once had of the harbor. It was also a vantage point to look down on the plaza, the white outlines of the Macquarie house clearly visible.  A posted diagram explained where each of the rooms were.  

 

Maximus' eyes sought out the place where he'd had his strange feeling. It was the parlor.  He felt drawn to go back there and without saying a word, slipped quickly down the stairs before anyone realized he'd gone. Getting his bearings again now that he was on the same level as the lines, he located the parlor and walked into its surrounding markings.  

"Come," Elizabeth said. "I'd like to show you the gardens. Do you like gardens?"  

 

Joimus smiled. She did, indeed.  Elizabeth handed the broken cup to the serving girl then led Joimus back toward the wide entry hall.  Joimus walked right through the entering General.  She gasped, clutching Elizabeth's arm tightly.  

 

"He's here!" she exclaimed softly.

 

"Here? In the house?"  

 

Joimus nodded.  Lachlan, who had risen to his feet when Joimus had stood, leaned forward, his grey eyes narrowing.  Had Mrs. Meridius said, "He's here" and if she had, WHO was here?   He began to walk toward them, questions rising to the tip of his tongue.  Elizabeth looked hurriedly over her shoulder.  

 

"If we move slowly toward the front door, do you think your General might sense it and follow?"  

 

"I don't know," Joimus whispered.  She didn't really want to move, didn't want to disconnect from that awareness of her husband around her.  But she didn't want to try to explain this to the Governor right now either, so she took some slow steps down the hallway, holding her breath, truly afraid she would step out of the small circle of his presence.  

 

"Ooooh," she gasped, sending up silent thanks as the presence moved with her.

 

"He's coming?" Elizabeth asked, almost under her breath.  

 

Joimus, her throat tight and full with emotion, couldn't reply so merely nodded her head with several quick motions.  

Lachlan's black boots clicked on the wood flooring. He was almost behind them when Mr. Campbell, his private secretary, dashed up to him with an envelope. "Excellency," he said breathlessly, "the documents have just arrived!" The Governor gave one last look at his wife and her strange new friend as the two women cleared the front door.  Sighing, he turned and took the envelope from Campbell's hand, heading for his office.

Side by side, the escapees went down the path around the side of the house toward the rose garden. Joimus stopped beside a yellow rose in full bloom, bending over, inhaling its aroma.

Jack pressed close to the glass of the cubicle, watching Maximus as he walked out the front door of the museum, took a moment to study the lines, then strode quickly to a particular area. The General was turned so that Aubrey had a clear view of his face and when his whole demeanor suddenly changed, the Captain narrowed his eyes, wondering what was going on.  

 

Almost in a daze, as though completely unaware of his surroundings, Maximus began to walk, his lips curved into a slight smile.  He headed slowly across the plaza then turned toward Bridge Street.

Without taking his eyes off Maximus, Aubrey said softly to Rose, "He's with her.  I don't understand how...but he's with her." He smiled, looking affectionately at the small woman at his side.  His smile faded abruptly when he turned his gaze back to the window .  

 

Maximus was walking out into Bridge Street, completely heedless of the traffic! Then he stopped, standing still where Joimus was smelling the yellow rose. Jack sucked in a sharp breath.  What was Maximus DOING?  Didn't he see the bus coming down the block?  

 

The Captain practically flew across the small room, then taking the stairs 4 and 5 at a time, flung himself down as rapidly as he could go. Rose pressed her face and hands against the glass, watching in disbelief as Aubrey dashed the length of the plaza, his blond ponytail flying.  

 

"What's up?" Himself said, noticing her intense gaze.  He'd been pointing out a nearby building to Phyllis and hadn't been aware of Maximus' departure. Instantly his seagreen eyes took in the General standing entranced in the street, the oncoming bus, the sprinting Captain.

"My God!" he exclaimed, heading for the stairs himself, er, Himself.

 

Everyone else followed him...everyone but Rose, who could not turn away from the glass, could not take her eyes off the form of her Captain as he leapt from the curb, tackling the General just as the bus roared up.  Both men disappeared from her sight as the bus braked to a shuddering stop.  Stunned, she pulled her hands back from the window, turning her head slowly from side to side, murmuring something softly in French.  

"OH!" Joimus exclaimed as Maximus' presence was abruptly wrenched away from her.

"A thorn?" Elizabeth asked.  

 

Joimus looked at the other woman, her lips parted in suprise. "Something...strange," she said.  "Something...different.  He's gone, but not in a gentle sliding away."  Putting her hand to her forehead, she continued. "It...it...was like a curtain falling...sudden and sharp."  She gripped Elizabeth's arm.  "Oh, Elizabeth! I'm worried."  She looked around her at the lovely, peaceful garden. "I fear something happened to him."  It didn't make sense! She was standing on lawn in front of a rose garden.  What could happen to him there?

"JACK! MAXIMUS!" Himself hollered as he ran across the plaza toward the street.

The driver and a few passengers were getting off, hurrying around the front of the bus. Himself and Terry scrambled past them, their hearts beating wildly at what they were afraid they would find.  Seconds later, Steve, Zack, Bud, and Nash arrived, the women close on their heels.  

Rose licked her lips, watching her friends dash around the bus.  She, too, needed to see what lay beyond its bulk.  Blinking rapidly, she looked at the top of the stairs.  Her feet did not want to move toward them.  She needed to see, but she did not...want...to see.  Slowly, painfully, she took one step  then another.  Once at the top step, her breath burst from her with a small cry and she began to run as fast as she could.

Maximus lay on his back, already beginning to sit up, though shaking his head a bit dazedly.  The breath had almost been completely knocked out of him and that, combined with the sudden shock of being snatched from his quiet pleasure in Joimus' presence, had served almost completely to disorient him for the moment.  

 

Terry knelt beside him. "Are you hurt?" he asked, helping the General to a full sitting position.  

 

Maximus looked at him blankly then shook his head sharply again, blowing out a long breath. "I...I...think not," he said, moving his legs experimentally.  

 

Terry assisted his rise to his feet, though continuing to hold onto his arm to steady him as Maximus swayed slightly.  "What happened?" the General asked, truly having no idea.  

 

Terry guided him into position so he could see Himself bending over the Captain. "Jack saw you standing in the street," Terry explained, his brow creased with worry.  

 

"In the...street?  I was in the street?" Maximus repeated, not comprehending.  

 

Terry nodded.  "You left the museum and just walked right out into Bridge Street and stood there."  

 

Maximus pressed the heels of both palms against his forehead, trying to remember. Jack's low moan reached his ears, though, and he moved quickly, dropping to his knees across from Himself.  He reached out his hand, placing it on the Captain's chest.

Jack turned his head toward him, blinking back a trickle of blood that dripped from a deep cut on his forehead.  "I was...I was...in time," Jack gasped through clenched teeth when he saw that Maximus was all right.  

 

Maximus nodded, his jaw muscles working as he realized, appalled, that Jack had been injured because of him.  

Himself looked down at the Captain, a strange mixture of worry and pride playing in his eyes as he whispered something under his breath.

 

"What was that?" Phyllis asked.  

 

He turned his head, looking up at her.  "Just an old quote from something that came to my mind." He looked back at Jack, smiling fondly and repeated, "This was the true measure of the man that when on Serengetti's plain a lion charged his friend, he grabbed his spear... but left his shield behind."  

 

Rose came round the front of the bus, her steps slowing when Jack's black boots came into view.  She stopped a second, pressing her hand to her mouth, then ran the last few yards.  Himself moved a bit to the side so that she could kneel in his place.  She saw the Captain was biting down hard on his lower lip and his eyes were screwed tightly shut.

 

"Oh...Aubrey, Aubrey!" she murmured, her fingers fluttering on his cheek.  

 

Slowly his lids opened.  "Rose," he said, the name followed by a sharp series of half-muffled "unh, unh" sounds as he tried not to cry out with the pain.  Gaining a bit of control, he managed to gasp, "My...Rose." He lifted his left hand slightly and she took it between both of hers, moving it to her lips.

"You risk too much," she said, kissing one of his knuckles after the other.  

 

He sucked in several short breaths then said, "I just needed to...stretch my legs."

A sparkle of humor showed briefly in his eyes.  She, of course, recognized his dialog and tried to reply in kind.  "Thank goodness you are so hard to eradicate, my dear, dear Captain."  

 

Then he gasped in pain and she turned worriedly to Himself.  "Where is he injured?"  

 

Himself nodded toward Jack's boots.  "I think the bus ran over his right leg."  

 

Maximus lowered his head, putting his hand over his eyes.  What had he done?

Sirens filled the air as an ambulance screeched to a halt just out a bit from where Jack lay.  The medical technicians asked everyone to step back, but Jack would not release his grip on Rose's hand and so they let her stay beside him. Whipping out a stethoscope, one of the techs leaned over  Aubrey, preparing to listen to his heart. The rows of white ruffles he encountered gave him a bit of pause.  He looked up just as Maximus took a few steps back and his eyes widened, going back and forth from one anachronistic outfit to the other.  Then his eyes passed over the man in full camo.  

 

Himself noticed, shrugged, and said, "Movie folk."  The tech had no idea the extraordinary degree to which this was true.  

 

Another tech was preparing to cut Jack's boot.  "NO!" Jack cried.  "Not my boot! Don't cut my boot!"  

 

Himself moved quickly into his range of vision.  "It's all right, Jack.  I have another pair of  your boots at home."  

 

The Captain's forehead and upper lip had become beaded with sweat, his skin clammy all over.  As the tech cut through the top length of his tall boot, Jack said blurrily, "As long as you don't need anything....I'll be right...," ...the tech slid the boot off Jack's leg, sending an exquisitely sharp slice of pain shooting everywhere..."outside," he gasped, then passed out.  

An IV was attached, an inflatable splint put in place, and then Jack was lifted carefully onto a backboard and put in the ambulance.  Rose stayed by his side as the vehicle screamed its way the less than four blocks to Sydney Hospital on Macquarie Street.  

 

When the others arrived there, they found her in a waiting room.  "He's in surgery," she said wearily.  

Laura had called Stephen, knowing he would want to be informed.  In a few more moments, Dr. Maturin stormed into the waiting room, accompanied by most of the cast who'd been back at Woolloomooloo.  

 

Stephen strode right up to Himself.  "Without me?" he bellowed.

"Without ME??"  

 

"Now, Doctor," Himself placated, "you would have had no choice but to remove his leg below the knee."  Rose paled considerably at those words.  "But here," he continued, using his hand to indicate the hospital, "with the technology available in 2005,  they can probably save it."  

 

"Probably?" Rose echoed, losing the last trace of color in her face.  

Maximus walked alone...back and forth down the long corridor.  He hated being in the hospital, hated the look of it, the sounds, the smells. Before long, he thought he was going to burst with it, so walked up to Himself, saying quietly.

"I am going to walk back toward the museum."

 

Himself saw the stress, the worry in the General's eyes.  "Please...will you send news to me?  I...I...can stay within these walls no longer."

 

Himself, understanding, nodded and watched Maximus, still uncomfortable with elevators, open the door to the stairs.  When the door closed behind him, Steve took Laura's arm and followed him. After what had just happened, he didn't think it a good idea for the General to be alone in the city.  

 

They stayed a good block behind him, trying to blend in with the other pedestrians, but, of course, he was aware of them.  He hadn't survived so far into his 30's without being aware...well, at least when Joimus was not in the same place 187 years ago.  He returned to the plaza, to the point he'd encountered her presence in the parlor, but the white lines were now only white lines, nothing more.  Thoughts of Jack filled his mind and for the moment he could think of nothing else, could concentrate on nothing but his friend in surgery.  He wandered toward the columned sculpture, looked at 2 or 3 of them, then turned, leaning his back against one, letting himself slide down it until he sat on the paving at its base.  

 

Steve stopped on the far side of the plaza, quite struck by how Maximus, sitting against the pole like that, one knee bent, an utterly lost expression on his face, looked so much the same as he'd looked in the slave market in Zucchabar.  

 

He and Laura came a bit closer.  Maximus raised his gaze, looking at them with almost no spark of life, and said in a line strangely straight out of Lawrence of Arabia and having nothing to do with Gladiator, "Why don't you take a picture?" It was even meant in a similar context...that lying before the camera was only loss and ruin...only ugliness, defeat, and pain...nothing glorious, nothing... nothing...at all. He closed his eyes and turned his head away.

Sid, fascinated by the concept that Maximus had almost got run down by a Sydney city bus, had gone to the museum with Bunny rather than the hospital. They were on the first level, looking at the painted panorama.  

 

"What a pitiful backwater!" Sid frowned, muchly preferring the hum and bustle of the modern city.  "Enough of this," he added.  "Let's go see where our good General almost became a greasy spot."

Together, they walked out the front door and onto the plaza, stopping when they spied Maximus seated dejectedly against the pole.  A slight smile played around the corner of Sid's lips.  "Where's a good slave trader when you need one?"  

Maximus heard the comment and looked in their direction.  He hadn't seen Sid since he'd thrown him out the window.   Now, there he stood on the plaza, his arm going out to encircle Bunny possessively when he noticed the General had become aware of their presence.  One of Maximus' amazing morphs passed across his face, beginning with a flash of fierce anger in the eyes, a stiffening of the upper lip, a tight set to the jaw then flowing seamlessly on through regret as a brief memory of purple pierced his heart, going onward as his eyes centered in on Bunny's mounded middle to ancient losses in Spain, current losses in Sydney.  

 

"Oh, Sid!" Bunny murmured, clutching his sleeve.  "Look at him!"  

 

"I am," Sid replied, "and he's staring at my child."  He reached out, cupping his hand, fingers spread wide, over the ample curve in that way fathers have of announcing to the world, "This is MINE!"  

Maximus studied the proud and defiant tilt to Sid's chin, the way his hand formed a literal shield between the baby and the eyes of the man from whose seed it had come. He sat there, just breathing silently for long moments, then lowering his lids halfway, said firmly, coldly, "Leave this place."  

Steve, who with Laura, had moved away closer to the curb when Sid and Bunny had come out of the museum, let out a big sigh of relief.  He had feared the General would spring to his feet and attempt to throttle the Chipman.  Not that he was worried about Sid, but Maximus had been through more than enough of late.

As Sid guided Bunny toward the corner, Maximus had one last word to call after them, his tones measured, equally accented.

"Do not even think of going to the hospital, Sid."  

 

Sid turned, smiling brightly at the seated General, and deliberately headed off in that direction.  

 

"We...we're...not going...there, are we?" Bunny asked.  

 

"No," Sid smirked, "but it won't hurt him to think we are, now will it?"  

Maximus leaned his forehead onto his knee, closing his eyes, his mind filled with sons. One of them laughed, holding onto the training tether of a young pony.  "Remember to keep your heels down," he whispered into the unacknowledging air of the plaza.  Then his fingers curled...as though tangling themselves in Joimus' wet hair as the waves splashed around them on Matlock Island, Dess nestled against his belly.  The wet hair was replaced by gossamer, embedded into stone, and all that was left was Sid's hand shielding Bunny's womb.  

"MAXIMUS!" Jeffrey called.  He and Ute had come from the hospital to find him.  

The General lifted his head.  "Jack?" he asked, a sudden, different pain clutching his heart.  

 

"He's out of surgery," Jeffrey said.  "Himself wanted me to come and bring you back to the hospital."  

 

Maximus headed off at a dead run down the street, his cape flying, passersby gawking in amazement.  

 

"Movie," Jeffrey explained to an elderly gentlemen whose mouth had dropped open.  

 

Ute just shook her head.  Sometimes folks they encountered noticed the cast's attire, sometimes they didn't.  There seemed no hard and fast rule.  

 

"Did someone think 'hard and fast'?" asked Ando, who was looking for Hando near the entrance to the hospital.  

 

Ute frowned at the former Welshwoman.  "The General is suffering agonizing angst, the Captain has had a close encounter of the most unfortunate kind with a large bus, and YOU can only think 'hard and fast' thoughts??"

"Hey," defended the love of Arthur's life, "you were the one whose brain first introduced those pleasantly evocative words into the storyline, were you not?"  

 

Ute's eyes narrowed. Truly she was.  "But you took my innocently bethought words and changed their rating from G to R," she growled.

 

Ando smiled.  It was so.  It was ever so.  There was never a time, no, not even in the midst of tiger-inundated train wrecks, that she did not think hard and fast thoughts about a certain young Melbourner.  

 

"And, moreover," Ute continued, "how come the word 'Melbourner' is the ONLY word in epis that is ALWAYS in possession of the Brit 'U", eh?"  

 

Ando shrugged.  It was just another of those things...things that had to be taken and dealt with as best as one might be able.  

 

"NO!" cried Marti, rising from her chair in the lobby.  "I refuse to deal with it...with any of it! It is all...all...unsupportable!"

Ando grinned positively wickedly as she thought how, indeed, "it" WAS very nearly unsupportable.  

 

"CHORTLE?" Marti gargled.  "Did I hear you CHORTLE?"  

 

"Me?" Ando said coquettishly, chortling again as she headed off, continuing her search.

Maximus arrived almost out of breath at the waiting room on the surgical floor. The orthopedic surgeon had just come in and begun to discuss the Jack's condition.

"Mr. Aubrey has...," he began, but was interrupted by Himself's, "Captain."  

 

"What?"

"Captain," Himself repeated, "Captain Aubrey."  

 

The surgeon nodded.  "Captain Aubrey has suffered a Type II compound fracture from without of the right leg."

"Meaning?" Johnny asked.  "A compound fracture results when the skin overlying it is broken," he explained.  "In a compound from within, the broken bone end pierces the skin, causing an open wound. Your Captain's injury came from the bus going over his leg, an external violence that resulted in laceration of the skin from without."

"And how bad is that?" Himself asked.  

 

"Well, his type is more open for contamination and infection, especially if there is any delay in medical treatment.  But since he was brought so quickly to the hospital, we were able to carry out a thorough surgical debridement, a realignment of the bone, and a small skin graft.  He should be in little danger of infection and recover quite well."  

 

Rose sank back in her chair, tears of relief on her cheeks.  

 

"Would you like to see him, Ma'am?" the surgeon asked her.  "He's still in recovery and just coming out of the anesthesia."  

 

"Very much!" she said, getting to her feet.  Maximus watched as she followed him down the hall.  He wanted to go, too, but knew it was more important for Rose to be with Jack now.  

Rose pulled a small chair up close to the bed.  Jack lay pale and quiet, a large white bandage on his forehead where the cut had been stitched, his leg immobilized in a padded plaster cast.  She lifted his right hand off the cover, holding it to her cheek.  For several moments she whispered to him in French, soft endearments from her heart, deep things that she had not yet spoken to him in English.  

 

He was wandering in that misty world  where the blank blackness of anesthesia begins to give way, following that path where the real still blends with the unreal, the past and the present flow all intermingled. His head turned on the pillow.  

 

"Put us in that fog!" he mumbled.  

 

"Hush," Rose soothed, "you're safe.  It's all right."

 

"Seven weeks sailing and he happens in darkness upon our exact position."  

 

"No, Aubrey, you are not on the Surprise.  This is Sydney, my dear. You are in a hospital bed."  

 

"Hospital?" Jack repeated, his eyes half opening.  "My God! Maximus!"

 

His whole body jerked, causing his cast to swing.  "Unh!" he cried, closing his eyes again, clamping his teeth together.

 

"He is fine," Rose said quickly.  "You were in time. You saved his life."  

 

Jack's head seem to sink back into the pillow, breathing, "God be praised" as he drifted away again for a moment.  Rose smoothed back his hair, leaning close to kiss his cheek.  

 

A few minutes later he woke with a start.  

 

"Where away?" he cried, disoriented.  

 

"The hospital," Rose repeated, "in Sydney."  

 

He blinked slowly, memory returning.  "This is dangerous for him, Rose," he said seriously.  

 

She nodded, understanding completely.  "The world of 1818, though in the same place, has different...configurations," she said.  

 

He nodded.  "Maximus would not have moved out of the path of the bus," he stated.  

 

"No," she agreed, "I don't think he was aware of it at all."  She looked at him. "I saw you running across the plaza...I couldn't...."  

 

He squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry," he sighed.  "But I had...."  

 

"I know," she said.  "I truly do know."  

 

He managed a small smile.  He knew she did.  

 

She also knew enough that she offered, "Would you like to see him?" in response to his unvocalized question.  

 

He nodded.  "Thank you," and as she opened the door, called softly after her, "I love you, Rose."  

 

She stopped, closed her eyes, letting the words wash over her almost like baptismal waters.