ways_infirmary | Infirmary thread for Valjean

As the person who's not burdened with any share of physically carrying Monsieur Fauchelevent, it's Cosette who rushes over to him.

(Sorry, Marius. At any other time, Cosette would remember that Joly is his dead friend, and that she hasn't explained much of anything about Milliways yet, and consequently what a shock this is likely to be. But right now, she's too preoccupied.)

"Monsieur le docteur -- please, my father is very ill, he may be near death, you must help him."

And thank God it's M. Joly, thank God and his Son and Mother Mary and all the saints that someone is here, and that it's someone she knows is good and kind. She knows he'll help, but all the same, it's her father, and she's still terrified for him, and so she adds in an impulsive low-voiced rush, "Your friend, M. Bahorel, he told me once that for my dear husband's sake you'd all try to help us if I asked. Please, it's my father -- please make him well, if you can, it's all I could ask, monsieur."

Joly smiles, perhaps a little more warmly than he would with a stranger, but calm and optimistic. In this Infirmary, with all he knows it can do, it's easy to be as calm and sure as a doctor should be. "I promise, Madame. Here, if you'll stay right here while I make sure your father's comfortable--?"

He puts a hand on her elbow--polite, reassuring, just enough to guide her to stand next to one of the beds.

'He has already agreed.'

Javert does not sound any more accommodating than usual, even towards the girl. Perhaps even a little more short, as people flapping about being emotional irritate him. Also, he would like to be out of here as soon as possible.

It does not take long. He deposits the man as gently as he is capable of, helps pull him to a comfortable position, then steps back. A nod; to himself, or maybe Valjean, and then he turns to Joly and says, under his breath,

'Make him better.'

And then he leaves.

Marius, head bowed, dazed, helps Javert help Valjean to the bed. It takes some effort, and he has mostly been keeping his head down to avoid having to think about where on earth he is. But when Valjean is settled, he looks up at last-- and notices Joly at last.

"Oh--"

No, this is much too much. He spots a chair that seems well out of anyone's way and sinks into it b

--Marius!

The poor fellow looks utterly lost, and Joly certainly can't blame him-- but he doesn't have time to offer Marius more than a sympathetic smile and a nod, as he goes about helping his actual patient get set up on the bed.

"Hello, Monsieur Fauchelevent. I'm very glad you've come here. --Here, set your feet so, and I'm going to roll up your sleeves, and this is just a scanner. Try to hold still, Monsieur--here, Madame Pontmercy will hold your other hand, and you'll see, it will all be very comfortable. We'll soon have you set right."

In fact, M. Fauchelevent looks much worse even than Javert's description had led Joly to expect-- but he's up, he's talking and moving, and Joly's not having to force himself to confidence.

Edited 2016-01-08 20:48 (UTC)

Valjean is not responsive to this, not because he is incapable but because someone has told him he may take Cosette's hand, and it is all right, it is quite all right, it is allowed. He stretches his out to her, marvelling that it was only moments ago that he felt he would never lift his arm again, and how easy it seems now!

Scanners mean nothing to him, and he does not care what Joly does. He does not care if he dies, so long as she is here by his side when it happens.

Holding her father's hand while incomprehensible stuff happens around them! Yes, that Cosette can certainly do.

There's a chair nearby -- a remarkably weird and somewhat ugly chair, as with everything in this strange-looking clinic, but never mind, it's a chair, and that's what matters. She can pull it a little closer with one hand, since Marius is sunk in a reverie of entirely justified shock, and settle down to hold her father's thin hand in both of hers, and murmur to him that she's right here, everything will be well.

Often enough she sends worried, apologetic looks at Marius, too. But for now, she'll stay where she is. They both need her, and she aches to be in two places at once -- but her father needs her more, in this moment.

A cooperative patient and a helpful family with him-- Joly can handle that just fine.

He studies the data as the scanner does its work, nodding and making notes for the records on his own tablet as it does. After a few moments, he says "Monsieur, I'm going to give you an IV-- it'll be nothing much, you'll feel a sort of pinch, and we can start catching you up on some of those meals you've been missing." An alarming number of meals, from the scanner's report, but something easily handled.

What needs to be done is easily done-- hooking up the IV, setting up monitors, starting a more thorough blood and system analysis, all the small but wonderfully useful tools Joly can bring to work for such a situation. He explains it all simply and quietly, as he goes, but he's pretty sure neither the patient nor his visitors is paying him the least bit of attention. It's wonderfully easy to carry out his work.

After a few minutes--how few, with the aid of the Infirmary's machines, still amazes him-- he nods and steps back a little. "Monsieur, Madame, I'm going just over there--" he points to a desk on the other side of the room , one covered in monitors and machines "-- but I'll be right at hand, call if you need anything at all." If they barely notice his leaving any more than his being there, that's fine with him. All his patients should have such devoted families.

He pauses on his way to check on Marius, under the official excuse of bringing him a cup of water--which he does seem to need. "Marius? Here, are you well?" He presses Marius' shoulder and smiles, with the very smallest hint of teasing. "You look as if you've seen a ghost."

Marius takes the water, then clasps hold of Joly's hand upon his shoulder. It's solid, and real, and warm.

"I-- I do not know what to-- she said to think of it as a dream-- and I have dreamed of you all often enough, I know. I--" He shakes his head, and looks to Cosette and Valjean. "I should go to them."

"Of course you should." Joly's smile is all sympathy, now. He puts his own free hand over Marius' and returns the clasp for a moment. "You can. Be with your family; there's time for all the talk you want later. I promise. We're all real."

He lets go and gives Marius room to stand--and an arm for support, if he needs that. (He almost looks like he does.)

For his part, Valjean holds on to Cosette's hand as though it is life itself. It is not a hard grip for there is no strength left in him, but he will also not be letting go at any point soon.

'You have not been in here before. A dog doctor would have done, but I do not mind it if I may look on you again. Ah! I thought I should never see you again, I thought I had lost you, and it was all correct. Your husband is the best of men, he gave me his arm, did you see? He is very strong. Such a good young man.'

His eyelids falter and fall at this point, as a wave of fatigue sweeps over him. So strange, to go from tiredness from which he thought he would never rise, to feeling as alive as a boy, and now as if he could sleep forever. But it passes after a moment, and he opens his eyes again.

'Black jet comes from England, Cosette. White jet comes from Norway. You will tell him? I was going to write it all down so that you might see, and not forget it. Find me a pen and I will do it now, so you will be able to read it when I am gone. The money is really yours, I would not like you to forget. Oh! I can hardly believe you are here.'

He is unaware that Marius might overhear any of this, but it does not matter a bit if he does.

"I'll tell him. Anything you like, I promise, Papa."

She didn't retain half of what Joly said, even though he was carefully phrasing it to be understood. But she understood the important things: that he was warm and reassuring, and that her father will be well soon.

The relief is indescribable. For some reason, it's making her cry again. She feels as if all she's done for hours is weep to suffocation. She bows her head over her father's hand clasped in her own, even if tears fall on it.

"I know the money is mine -- I know it, I'll spend it on anything you like -- only stay here with your little Cosette, be my papa, that's all. Don't strain yourself. I'm right here, I'm listening. And you're quite right about my husband. You're perfectly right, papa, he's so very good."

She has so many questions -- what Marius kept from her, what he knew -- and she'll ask them, but she's telling the truth too, and in this moment she means it utterly.

Marius casts a last, bewildered look at Joly, but the renewal of Cosette's tears is at last enough to pull him out of himself and to her side.

"All shall be well now," he says, putting his arm around her shoulders. "Your father shall come to live with us as he should have done at the first."

Valjean smiles, that is all. Go and live with them? It is not possible.

'Monsieur le Baron. You will take care of my little Cosette, it is all that is needed. Live your lives together, you do not need my shadow at your hearth. It is well, I need nothing more.'

He moves his arm towards Marius, and only then notices there seems to be a tube of some kind in it. He had not noticed it being placed there, and stares at it for a moment before lowering the limb back to the sheets.

And then he sees that his sleeves are rolled up, and his breath catches in the back of his throat. He releases Cosette's hand and starts trying to pull them down. For the first time today, a tear makes it to the corner of his eye and quiet terror begins to make its way over his face.

'Monsieur,' he says to Marius, clearly pleading.

Marius reaches over to gently lay a hand on top of Valjean's. "Joly-- the doctor has done his work, you must not disturb it." But the other sleeve, without the strange tube? Surely that can be rolled back down, to give Valjean some comfort. As he turns the fabric down, Marius says, "But father, there is nothing more to hide from us. From either of us."

She catches his hand up again, and clasps it tightly between her own. She's been leaning gratefully into Marius's embrace, but now she bends over her father again.

"Papa -- papa, you mustn't distress yourself! Be easy. You are my dear father, I love you. Your poor hand! Be easy. You need not suffer anything more. I know, I know now, you hid away from me, but you needn't, truly you needn't. Not from your dear little Cosette. You must live with us and be happy."

And she kisses his worn old hand, the one without a strange tube in it, and presses it to her soft wet cheek.

His gaze shifts from one to the other as he tries to comprehend this. Marius says there is nothing more to hide, but that cannot be the case, and Cosette says, you hid away from me which is true, but does not shed light on anything.

He looks down to the one covered wrist, his fingers fumbling to close the button, his face muddled and dazed.

'I am not suffering, because I have seen you now. It is nothing to die you know, nothing, but to die alone is a very bad thing. I thought you would not come but I was a fool, and here you are and we need not speak anymore, there is no need for it. I will be easy, I shall do as you say.'

He cannot close the thing, but the scar is hidden there and he tries to keep the other down by his side.

I know now she said, but what does that mean?

"Don't talk so!"

She starts out of her chair, just enough to move to sit beside him on his narrow bed with its strange soft Milliways mattress. Then she can rest her head on his shoulder, half sitting and half lying down like a child curled up against her father, to stop him fumbling at his arms and give them both comfort, and to spare herself the unbearable sight of his face so pained and dazed. All her life he's been the strong center, the anchor and the constant; she can't bear any longer to look at that expression on his face.

"You mustn't speak of dying. You're not going to leave your little Cosette. You're not! To think of it! You will never be alone again, Papa."

"No, indeed!" Marius agrees. He moves no closer, but sinks to his knees beside the bed. "You have had sorrow, it is true, but a man does not die of that! You shall not leave us again, we will not let you."

He wraps one arm around her on instinct, as if she were a tiny girl again, and he were still teaching her her letters. He closes his eyes, and remembers that first room of theirs, where he would sit and watch her play on the floor for hours and hours, unable to comprehend how this angel had fallen into his life. And she is still here, and his new son at his side, and it is like Heaven come to earth.

'I may stay, then?'

Tears again, and these make it as far as his cheeks.

'I am forgiven?'

"Oh, Father!" she sobs. "You have never been anything else."

He must be asking God. He can't be asking them directly; that would be absurd. He closed himself away from their lives, he shut himself away from her, that's all -- but for God, the question's always valid, because all humans are sinners, but the answer's also always true. God is forgiveness, for those who repent their sin, and her father is so good.

And didn't she ask God that same joyful disbelieving question in her heart just a little while ago, in spite of all her fear, when her father called her Cosette and tu and held out his hand to her once more?

"There is nothing to forgive," Marius agrees fervently. "You will come home with us, and all will be well."

Valjean has asked God that question a thousand, a hundred thousand times.

This time her answer, Marius's, are the only ones that matter.

'I will come home with you, and all will be well.'

He repeats it dumbly, but his face is sad now, his head shaking. How can he go home with them? Cosette is here, but what does it change?

'You say it, but you do not understand. My children; you are good, and you are happy. Love each other well.'

He does not let go of Cosette, because this all seems to a dream, where there are lights and people, and tubes and machines, and he would so much like to believe it could be this easy. But he is tired, and it has been a lifetime of knowing he can never be forgiven. For it to end this way...oh, he will try, and his heart will believe every word out of her mouth simply because he wants to. His heart is foolish, though. His head says these are not words meant for him.

She closes her mouth on the words she wants to say. She does, but they swell inside her, until she feels as if she's going to burst -- until she does burst out, "I don't understand?"

She pushes herself up -- not away, but enough to glare with teary fierceness down at him. "You have never told me! You hide yourself away, you never let me understand, then you tell me I don't! Father! Let me tell you something. I know some of your secrets now. I tell you I don't care. I don't care a bit about them, I tell you! You are a saint, you are a martyr, you are my dear father. If you--"

and her voice breaks here, against her will, and she has to catch in a sob before she can go on.

"--if you have forgiven me, if only you love me as your dear daughter again, I tell you nothing in your past means a fig to me."

'You know-?'

How can she know? He turns frightened eyes to Marius, swimming in confusion, lost in sudden terror.

He is no saint. He is no martyr. He only ever wanted her to love him, and now she says none of it matters but that, and he should be happy but he is only terrified. How can she know? The question rings in his ears, just like the one she asked of him, once. Father, are they still men?

Convicts do not become men. They do not have daughters who are angels, or if they do it is because they steal them.

Valjean releases her from his grasp. His hand unconsciously goes to his uncovered wrist, closing around it like a shackle. And then he groans, and brings both hands up to cover his face, so that she might not see him weep.

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