Trading Post

you should carry on with it I would look forward to reading some more  

Hi  Are you around 

Personally, I prefer the silent delivery approach. I hate having the bell rung and jumping up and rushing to the door, just to find it's a pack of toothpicks from Amazon that could have waited to be grabbed later.

Thanks to @cl8hxhfpaj for donating $20! We've smashed past our goal, so wer're all set fot his month, thanks all!

Chapter 25 – The Island By the fourth morning, Aino had learned that hospitals had their own kind of time. The days were divided less by hours than by things that happened to her. Breakfast arrived, followed sooner or later by medication. Someone checked her blood pressure. Someone else asked about her headache. A doctor appeared with questions, lunch arrived beneath a plastic cover, and at intervals determined by her body rather than the clock, one of the nurses came to help change her diaper. Between these things were long stretches in which nothing seemed to happen at all. Aino was also beginning to learn which parts of the day she hated most. Mornings were high on the list. She had been staring at the yoghurt container on her breakfast tray for almost two minutes. Getting it closer had required trapping it awkwardly between the sides of her casts and dragging it towards herself without tipping it over. Opening it was proving considerably more difficult. Her fingers were free, but neither hand could grip properly, and every attempt to catch the little foil tab ended with the container sliding away from her. She tried again. The yoghurt moved three centimetres to the left. Aino stared at it, moved it back and tried from a slightly different angle. Nothing. “You know,” Oskari said from the other bed, “I've been watching this for quite a while.” “I know.” “I wasn't sure whether offering help would be insulting.” “It would.” “Good. That's what I thought.” Aino bent her head closer to the container. Oskari had been getting better. It was visible now, not only in the things the doctors said but in the way he occupied the room. He spent less time in bed and walked the corridor several times a day, sometimes dragging his IV pole beside him and complaining about it as though it were an incompetent employee. Most encouragingly, he had become bored. He complained about the food, criticised whatever happened to be on television and had begun finding increasingly unnecessary reasons to leave the room. After days of being too sick to care about much beyond the next few hours, Oskari once again seemed to expect the world to entertain him. Aino tried the yoghurt again. The foil remained firmly attached. “Would you like me to get Emma?” Oskari asked. “No.” “All right.” Aino continued fighting. Thirty seconds later, she looked across the room. “Oskari.” “Yes?” “Get Emma.” He smiled but, wisely, said nothing. Emma arrived a few minutes later and seemed to understand the entire situation before anyone explained it. Her gaze travelled from Aino to the unopened yoghurt, then to the spoon still imprisoned in its plastic wrapper and finally to Oskari, whose expression suggested that his morning had become considerably more entertaining than expected. “Help or no help?” she asked. Aino considered one final attempt. The yoghurt sat innocently in front of her. “Help.” Emma peeled back the foil and opened the spoon. That was all. She didn't feed Aino or rearrange the tray. She didn't decide that the yoghurt would be easier to reach five centimetres to the right or move the cup that Aino had already positioned exactly where she wanted it. She simply put the opened container back in its place. “Thank you.” “You're welcome.” Emma moved on to the things she had actually come to check, and Aino watched her for a moment before beginning her breakfast. She had discovered that she liked this about Emma. Most people saw the casts and immediately began doing things for her. They moved objects closer, picked things up, opened doors and adjusted blankets before Aino had even decided whether she needed help. None of it was malicious. Usually it was kindness, offered so automatically that the person offering it probably didn't even realise there had been a decision to make. But there had been. And every time somebody made one of those tiny decisions for her, Aino felt herself disappear a little behind the casts. Emma had learned to wait. Sometimes Aino struggled for several minutes before asking for help. Sometimes she succeeded. Sometimes she became angry enough with a toothpaste cap that asking for assistance felt like surrendering after a long and deeply personal military campaign. Emma treated all three outcomes exactly the same. It made a difference. The days began to collect around her, similar enough to blur at their edges. The doctors were pleased with her physical recovery. The damage from the cold was healing, and although her headache still returned whenever she tried to concentrate for too long, it came less often than before. The frightening gaps in her memory had not spread beyond those missing days. They hadn't filled in either. That bothered her more than she admitted. Sometimes something small caught her without warning. The weight of the blanket settling across her legs. A movement behind her. The click of a door closing when she hadn't been watching it. Her body always understood before her mind did: shoulders tightening, heart accelerating, breath suddenly too shallow. Once she woke from a dream she couldn't remember and found herself trembling beneath the covers. There was never an image attached to the fear. No storage building. No Juhani. No moment when her arms had broken. Nothing she could hold up and examine and place neatly into the sequence of events she already knew. Only fear without a story. Emma never asked her to invent one. If she noticed Aino becoming tense, she stopped whatever she was doing and waited. Sometimes Aino wanted her to continue. Sometimes she didn't. Emma accepted either answer with the same quiet nod. Even the diaper changes had become easier. The embarrassment hadn't disappeared, but something about them had changed. With Emma, they no longer felt like something Aino simply had to endure. They had begun to feel like care. Elisa kept her promise. That was what Aino told herself whenever her eyes drifted towards the phone on the bedside table. There had been no message since Elisa walked out of the room. No apology arriving at midnight, no question about how Aino was feeling, no attempt to turn a long time into a few days or to find some technical loophole in leave me alone. Nothing. For the first day, the silence had been a relief. Aino had needed space around what Elisa had told her, somewhere large enough to be furious without also having to think about what Elisa wanted from her. By the second day, the silence had changed shape. She found herself looking at the phone when it lit up for completely unrelated reasons. Once it was a hospital notification. Another time her mother called, and Aino let the phone ring twice before answering because for one stupid fraction of a second she had thought— No. She had asked Elisa not to contact her. More than asked. She had told her. And Elisa, perhaps for the first time when it truly mattered, was accepting a boundary without negotiating with it. Aino should have been pleased. Instead, she sometimes caught herself wondering where Elisa was. At work, probably. Or at home. Perhaps sitting on the sofa where Aino had once curled against her with Bunny trapped between them. Perhaps going to therapy, as she had promised. Perhaps thinking about Aino. That last possibility hurt. The possibility that she wasn't thinking about Aino hurt too. It was deeply unreasonable. Aino knew this and found that knowing it made absolutely no difference. Eventually she turned the phone face down on the table. Across the room, Oskari glanced towards her. Their eyes met. He looked away again without asking. Aino was beginning to appreciate how often he didn't. By the end of the week, Oskari had become almost impossible to keep in bed. He walked the corridors in socks and hospital clothes, dragging his IV pole beside him whenever necessary, and had developed strong opinions about which parts of the ward were worth visiting. His favourite was a broad window near the far end of the corridor, where the buildings dropped away enough to give a view across the wet grey city. One afternoon he persuaded Aino to walk there with him. Aino's legs worked perfectly well. Her problem was that everyone seemed surprised by this. “You know my arms are broken, not my legs,” she told Oskari after the second nurse gave them a concerned look. “I was aware.” “People keep looking at me as if I might collapse.” “You were found unconscious and half frozen.” “That was days ago.” “Very unreasonable of them.” Aino looked at him. Oskari smiled. She decided not to dignify that with an answer. At the end of the corridor, they stopped beside the window. The city below looked cold and ordinary. Rain had darkened the streets, and cars moved through them with their headlights reflected in the wet asphalt. A tram disappeared behind a row of buildings. At a crossing below, half a dozen people waited beneath umbrellas for the light to change. Aino watched them. There was something strange about seeing people simply going somewhere. The hospital had shrunk her world into rooms and corridors, into meal trays and medication and the measured progress of her own body. The people below had coats and bags and destinations. One woman hurried across the street carrying flowers. A man in a dark coat ran the last few metres towards the tram and missed it anyway. Presumably some of them were going home. Aino wondered where she would go when someone finally told her she could leave. “First thing I'm doing when I get out,” Oskari said, “is taking a shower in my own bathroom.” Aino turned towards him. “That's your great ambition?” “You haven't been here as long as I have.” “Six days longer.” “Those are important days.” He rested his forearms against the windowsill. “My sister wants me to take her skating.” “Can you skate?” “Obviously.” “That wasn't obvious.” Oskari looked genuinely offended. Aino smiled. “When are they letting you out?” “Soon, apparently. They want to finish the antibiotics and make sure my blood tests behave themselves.” He said it carelessly, as though the hospital were merely being overly cautious about a minor inconvenience. Aino had heard enough from Emma to know how sick Oskari had been when he arrived, but it had become increasingly difficult to connect that person with the man standing beside her now, complaining about blood tests and making plans to take his little sister skating. “So you're actually getting better.” “That's the rumour.” “Good.” Oskari glanced at her. Aino returned her attention to the city. “What?” “Nothing.” “You're smiling.” “Am I not allowed?” “You're usually insulting me.” “I can do both.” “That feels more normal.” They stayed there a little longer. Below them, the traffic lights changed. The waiting people crossed the street and scattered in different directions, each disappearing into a life Aino knew nothing about. On the walk back, she found herself hoping Oskari wouldn't be discharged too soon. The thought was selfish enough that she immediately felt guilty for it. She let herself have it anyway. The island returned that evening. And then, without anyone deciding that this was what they were doing, it returned the evening after that too. Emma would find her way to the chair between their beds sometime near the end of her shift, sometimes for twenty minutes and sometimes for only five. Eventually Aino or Oskari would ask a question about the animals, and the hospital room would quietly give way to the island again. On the second evening, the animals finally reached the lighthouse. The door was locked. Oskari immediately decided they should break in. Aino pointed out that entering abandoned buildings without knowing whether they were structurally safe was exactly the sort of decision that caused unnecessary problems. Oskari stared at her. Aino stared back. Emma covered her smile with one hand. In the end, it was the smallest rabbit who discovered a narrow path around the back of the lighthouse, almost completely hidden beneath the grass. It led to a second door, warped by years of rain and salt but not locked. “So we didn't need to break anything,” Aino said. “Less exciting,” Oskari said. Inside, the lighthouse smelled of dust, old wood and the sea. A spiral staircase wound upwards through the centre of it, its steps worn smooth in the middle by feet that had climbed them long before any of the animals were born. There was a kitchen with mismatched cups still hanging from hooks, a tiny bedroom beneath the stairs and, to the bear's considerable delight, a fireplace. “Does the chimney still work?” Aino asked. Emma paused. “Yes.” “How do you know?” “Because this is my lighthouse.” “That's not how structural integrity works.” “The chimney works.” Oskari pointed at Aino. “Stop ruining the fireplace.” So the fireplace stayed. At the top of the lighthouse they found the lantern room and a narrow balcony from which, according to Emma, almost the entire island could be seen. Aino insisted that almost mattered. To the north lay the forest they had travelled through. Beyond it were the rocks where the old turtle lived and, farther still, the beach where their journey had begun. To the east, a river shone between the trees before disappearing into a part of the island none of them had visited. But to the west there was only mist. The otter leaned over the railing. “What's there?” “Nobody knows,” Emma said. “The turtle knows,” Oskari said. “The turtle claims to know many things.” “Does he?” “Usually after they happen.” Aino smiled. They explored the rest of the lighthouse before dark. The bear found firewood. One of the rabbits discovered a cupboard containing three jars of strawberry jam that were, according to Aino, almost certainly no longer safe to eat. Oskari decided magical island jam did not expire. Aino demanded evidence. Emma sided with Oskari, which Aino considered irresponsible. The otter found the map. It hung on the wall of a small room halfway up the tower, faded almost white at the edges. Most of the island was drawn in surprising detail: the forest, the river, the rocky shore and even the little bridge the animals had crossed on their way to the lighthouse. But the western side of the map was blank. Not unfinished. Blank. Someone had drawn a thin line around the empty space, and in one corner there was a symbol none of the animals recognised. Except, perhaps, the turtle. “He knows what it means,” Oskari said immediately. “You don't know that,” Aino said. “He's being suspicious.” “He's a turtle.” “Those things aren't mutually exclusive.” Emma laughed. That was where the story ended that night. On the next evening, the otter tried to question the turtle about the map. The turtle answered every question with another question until the otter became so annoyed that she announced she would investigate the western side of the island herself. The bear said she shouldn't go alone. The otter said she hadn't asked anyone to come. The smallest rabbit quietly began packing sandwiches anyway. By then Emma had already stayed almost ten minutes longer than she had intended. “Tomorrow,” she said. Oskari protested. Aino did too, although she tried to make hers sound more dignified. “You can't stop there.” “Apparently I can.” And so the mist remained unexplored for another night. Slowly, the island grew. It accumulated places and rules and bits of history none of them had planned. There were wild strawberries near the river, a bridge that creaked even when nobody was standing on it, and a flock of birds that always seemed to know when the weather was about to change. Aino could no longer remember who had invented half of it. She wasn't even certain the map had originally been Emma's idea. She liked that. The story didn't belong to any one of them anymore. Neither, in a strange way, did the little world that had formed around their two hospital beds. The curtain between them remained open most of the time. Oskari's belongings had spread untidily across his side of the room, while Aino's had arranged themselves into the opposite: a charger, Bunny, a book she couldn't comfortably hold and several smaller things positioned with increasing precision inside the limited territory her hands could reach. People came and went. Doctors, nurses, cleaners, meals. Emma came and went too. But somehow she had begun to belong to the rhythm of the room in a way the others didn't. Aino learned to recognise her footsteps in the corridor. She tried not to think too much about that.   One afternoon, Emma found Aino sitting by the window with Bunny on her lap and a book balanced awkwardly against one of her casts. “How long have you been on the same page?” Aino looked up. “I don't know what you mean.” Emma glanced at the book. “You've been staring at that page since I came in ten minutes ago.” “Perhaps it's a complicated page.” “Is it?” Aino looked down at it. “No.” Emma smiled and began checking the things she had come to check. Aino watched her move around the room. By now Emma knew where Aino wanted things. She knew not to move Bunny when she cleared the table, that the water glass belonged on the left and the phone on the right, and that an offer of help should remain an offer until Aino actually accepted it. It occurred to Aino that this was probably quite a lot to remember about one patient. “Emma?” “Mm?” “Do you think I'm difficult?” “Yes.” Aino stared at her. “That was very quick.” “You asked.” “You were supposed to think about it.” “Would that have changed the answer?” Aino considered this. “Probably not.” Emma smiled. Aino looked down at Bunny and straightened one of his ears. “You're quite difficult too.” “I know.” “Good.” Emma finished what she was doing and headed for the door. “Anything else?” Aino thought about it. “No.” “All right. I'll see you later.” “Okay.” Emma left. Aino listened to her footsteps fade into the corridor. The room was quiet again. Oskari was asleep in the other bed, one arm hanging over the edge of the mattress. Aino's phone lay silent on the table beside her. Her hands were still trapped in plaster, several days of her life were still missing, and somewhere outside the hospital Elisa was keeping the distance Aino had asked for. None of those things had changed. But the hospital no longer felt quite as much like a place where Aino was waiting for her life to begin again. Somehow, without her noticing, a little bit of life had begun happening here too.