All the Time in the World (English)

Chapter 14 - The Bird in a Golden Cage

Jack Robinson thought that he needed a coffee. That morning, his shift had been harder than usual, due to a serious road accident involving many cars. The helicopter had continued flying back and forth to carry the persons who were more severely wounded.
Now his work was over, and the fate of the patients was in the hands of ER doctors and surgeons.
"Are you going home, Jack?" Asked one of the nurses sitting at the reception desk.
"Yes, shortly. I'll go to eat something, and then I leave."
The girl winced.
"Oh!"
"What's up, Jenny?"
"Dr. Little had called, and asked me to give a message to Guy, but then one of the patients had an emergency and I forgot about it. How can I do? I can't get away from here now!"
"I can tell him."
"Would you really do that?! Thanks, Jack!"
"Did he go on the roof, as usual?"
"I think so." The girl rummaged through the papers on the counter and handed him a note. "I wrote it here."

Guy approached the parapet and rested his arms on it, looking at the city. He could see the cars running along the asphalt ribbons of the roads, the white trails left in the sky by the airplanes, and the modern buildings, so different from those of the Nottingham of his age.
He wondered how he could live out of the hospital, if they should send him away.
It seemed logical to him that sooner or later they would do it: they had saved his life, they had healed him, and, for a month, they had given him everything he needed, from food to clothes. He couldn't expect to depend on their charity for a long time, and he didn't even want to, but he didn't know what he could do once he was on his own.
Everything that in his time could have made it easier for him to find a new job and the means to survive, in the present was completely useless if not harmful. Alicia had told him that in modern society, killing an enemy was inadmissible, except in exceptional circumstances, and that even resorting to force was to be avoided at all cost.
Vaisey had taught him mainly how to fight, he had trained him to kill at his orders, and Guy didn't know how to do many other things. Nothing that could be useful in the twenty-first century, for sure.
He told himself that he had survived as a kid in a much more dangerous world, with the responsibility of caring for a younger sister. Somehow he would manage, even now.
"Guy!"
Gisborne turned, hearing somebody calling his name, and saw Jack Robinson who was coming to meet him.
The doctor was still wearing the orange suit he used when he was on duty, and he looked tired, but he had given him a sincere smile, as if he really enjoyed talking to Guy.
Even after a month, that was an aspect of the modern world he wasn't yet used to: people seemed to be genuinely happy to have to deal with him. They didn't hate him, and they didn't run away in fear when he passed, and, when they talked to him, they saw just Guy, not the henchman of the sheriff.
"You've been flying often today, didn't you?" Guy asked, glancing at the helicopter, standing on the other terrace.
Jack leaned his back on the parapet, and sighed.
"Unfortunately. There was a major automobile accident with many wounded people. Some didn't survive."
Guy shuddered thinking about the speed at which a car could go. In his time, when a wagon pulled by galloping horses capsized, often the accident ended in tragedy, so he could only imagine how much a car crash at such high speeds could be lethal.
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Were you waiting for Dr. Little?"
"Yes, she said that she would come to get me to have lunch together."
"Lunch time was hours ago, I'm afraid. Alicia is still helping the wounded and I think that she will have to do it for quite a while. She told the nurse to warn you, but the girl has forgotten to give you her message."
"It seemed to me that it had been a long time, actually," Guy said, glancing at the position of the sun in the sky.
"Didn't you notice that it was so late?"
Guy blushed slightly.
"That's one of the things I still have to get used to. You have a different way of dividing the time of the day."
"Did you have lunch?"
"No, I was waiting for Alicia."
"Come on, let's go eat something together, I didn't even have time to eat as well."
Guy took a last look at the landscape of Nottingham before following the doctor, and Jack waited for him, looking at him thoughtfully.
They did not speak until they sat at the table with the trays of food in front of them, then Guy looked at Jack Robinson in his eyes.
"Alicia said that she had to talk about something important about my future. Did she already discuss it with you?"
"It's not us individual doctors the ones who make decisions about patients."
"I can imagine what you are going to tell me: now that I'm cured I have to go away. I understand that, really, but maybe you could give me some advice on what to do once I get out of here. Certainly I can't think of doing the job I did in the past, but I'm not afraid to work hard and sooner or later I'll be as strong as I used to be."
"Guy, wait," Jack interrupted him. "Do you think that once your wounds are cured, we will send you out of the hospital?"
"There would be nothing strange. You have already been even too generous to me."
The doctor looked at him, hesitating.
"This won't happen, quite the opposite, in fact."
"What?"
"You have no documents, there is no family to welcome you, you have suffered an aggression without the attacker being identified, you have the knowledge of a twelfth-century knight and no experience of the modern world... You can't just leave. You will be assigned to a social worker and you will have to undergo various tests to see if you have a brain injury and to evaluate what your mental abilities are, and only after that we can decide how to move in the future."
Guy looked at him. He wasn't sure he had understood all that Jack had said, but he understood the meaning of the speech.
"You will shut me somewhere because you think I'm crazy."
"I did not say this. They will evaluate what is best for you so that you can live in the best way."
"In a cage, like one of the sheriff's birds..."
"You can't be sure. Much will depend on the test results."
"Do you think I'm crazy?"
"I'm not a psychologist, I do not have the ability to determine it, but you seem quite sensible. You can follow complex reasoning and in the last few weeks you've learned many things you didn't know, but you have to admit it's hard to believe that you may have traveled in time."
"I know, it's not easy to believe it even for me. But it's true."
"In any case you should be aware that for now you aren't able to manage by yourself."
"I'm doing my best to learn what I don't know."
"I know, Guy, but it will take some time."
"I won't have much choice, right? I will have to do what others will decide for me."
"They will decide what is best for you, it's their job."
Guy sighed.
"I'm tired of letting others make decisions in my place. I let the sheriff do it, and everyone suffered the consequences of it."
Jack stared at him.
"For a moment let's ignore all the rules and the bureaucratic aspect of your situation and imagine that you can now leave the hospital and live your life without anyone telling you anything: what would you do?"
"I should find a place where to live and a job."
"How? Legally you don't exist, no one would take you, but even if you should found someone willing to ignore rules and laws, what could you do? You don't know how to drive a car or any other means of transport that is not a horse, not to mention using a computer or just a phone."
Gisborne lowered his eyes: those were questions that he had already asked to himself and for which he had not yet found an answer. As much as he could try to learn, there were still too many things that he didn't know, and he knew that he wasn't able to face the world, yet.
"What will happen to me, then?"
"They'll help you. The decisions they are going to make will be primarily in your interest, so that you can live the best possible life."
"So that's why Alicia looked so nervous earlier? Because she had to tell me that I would be considered a poor idiot for the rest of my life?"
"Nobody thinks you're an idiot."
"Oh yes, they do. They all think I'm mad, do you think I don't realize it? That I don't hear the whispered comments and laughs? That I don't see the pitiful or amused glances when I can't do something that they have learned since they were little?"
Jack looked at him without saying anything, and Guy sighed.
"But maybe this is the punishment I have to endure for the mistakes I have committed in my life. I let myself to be tempted by power, and pride has often led me to act wrongly, maybe it's right that I don't have anything left of either of them."
"If it makes you feel better, you may consider it as a punishment, but perhaps you should simply accept that this is your situation and start from here, trying to see the positive side and to live as well as you can."
"Maybe you're right. I'm alive when I should have been dead for so many centuries and I'm probably ungrateful to complain... But I feel so alone! All the persons I knew are dead and none of you can really understand how strange this time is and how confused I am."
"I suppose that any twenty-first-century person would feel confused and lost too if they should find themselves in the twelfth century."
"Not so much, I think. You have an idea of how life was in the past, but for me it is all completely new and often unimaginable. But maybe I was lucky: in my time a person who should say that he came from the future could be mistaken for a witch and executed."
Jack nodded, and for a while they ate in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. The doctor found himself thinking that Guy's situation was terribly sad: even if his conviction of being a medieval knight came from mental illness or from a brain injury, he really believed it. Jack thought of how he would feel in finding himself completely alone in an unknown place, knowing that he would never see again any of the people he knew.
He tried to think of something to say to encourage him, but that situation was so unusual that he didn't know how to behave.
"You look tired," Guy said suddenly, and Jack nodded.
"It was a very challenging shift."
"Have you saved many lives today?"
"I hope so."
"You're lucky. When you go to sleep you don't have to be afraid of your conscience. You don't have demons who come to claw at your soul when you close your eyes..." Guy's voice broke and he was forced to stop for a moment, and Jack wondered what tormented him so much, but when he spoke again, Gisborne's tone was more light. "Do you have a family, doctor?"
"I'm married and I have two children, a five-year-old male and a female of two."
Guy remembered Isabella at that age, when she tried to follow him anywhere and he was annoyed because her presence distracted him from funnier games, but he had been also flattered when the sister offered him a flower picked in the meadow, or she climbed in his arms to give him a kiss.
Thinking to his childhood filled him with sadness: he had loved his sister, and yet he and Isabella had come to hate so much as to want to destroy each other.
But now to wonder how it might have happened was no longer important because even Isabella was dead, like everyone else.
He tried not to think about it and spoke to Jack.
"So why are you here to have lunch with me and not with your family?"
"My wife works, she'll be back home later, and the kids are at school. In fact, shortly I'll go to get them. My parents usually do it: they take them to their house for a few hours and I take advantage of it to rest after my shift, but today I want to stay with my children."
"Are you worried about them?"
Jack looked at Guy, surprised that he could guess his anxiety.
"It has been a bad accident, there have been casualties and very serious injuries. Even some children... While I was trying to save them, I kept thinking about my children, what would I do if such a thing happened to them or to my wife... I don't think I could bear it."
"Go to them. And whatever happens, never abandon your family, everything else is not as important as it may seem."
"Do you know, Guy? You are right. I'll get you back to the ward and then I'll go and get my kids."
"It's not necessary, I can go back on my own. Maybe I can't deal with the modern world, but I wandered enough in the hospital and I can remember the way to my room."
Jack hesitated.
"Are you sure?"
"Even if I look crazy to your eyes, I'm not stupid, I'm not a fool."
The doctor looked at him, fearing that he had offended him, but Guy was smiling and Jack smiled back at him.
"I'll go, then, thank you for your company."

Guy looked at the doctor going away, and he found himself jealous.
Once, having a family had been his greatest wish, and he had believed that marrying Marian was the only way he had to be happy and in peace again, but he had destroyed that dream with his own hands.
He would never have a house warmed by the love of a wife and he would never take his children on his shoulders to play with them, now he knew and accepted it.
After what he had done to Marian, he had lost all the right to dream of a happy future, and it was better this way. During his life he had destroyed the lives of each of the women who had been close to him: his mother, Isabella, Marian, and Meg had died because of him. The only one who survived was Annie, maybe because Robin had helped her to run away before it was too late.
Guy wondered what happened to her and to the child. His son.
They are dead too, what could you expect after eight centuries?
He hoped that at least they had lived a serene and long life, and he found himself thinking that perhaps with Annie he could have been happy. If he had allowed himself to fall in love with her even though she was only a servant, perhaps his life wouldn't have been so disastrous: he would have never looked at Marian, and every night he would return to a home warmed by his wife's affection and by the laughter of their children.
He tried to remember the face of his son, without succeeding. He had held him in his arms only once, shortly after he was born, and at that moment he had only wanted to run away, to avoid that unwanted responsibility.
He wondered if it was possible to find out what had happened to Annie and Seth, and he told himself that he had to ask it to Alicia.
With a sigh he got up from the table and put away the tray, as Alicia had taught him the first time she had accompanied him to eat at the hospital's cafeteria, then he left the cafeteria and decided to go back to his room to reflect in peace on what Jack Robinson had told him.
On one hand, he felt relieved that he wasn't going to find himself suddenly on his own, but to think that he was considered a fool, unable to provide for himself, was humiliating.
He stopped in front of the lift doors and pressed the call button, surprised to notice how easily that gesture had become natural to him. Only a few weeks before, the idea of being closed in a cabin to go up or down to another floor seemed absurd and unnatural, while now he was simply grateful that he didn't have to climb the stairs when his muscles felt so sore.
He entered the lift and pressed the button with the number of his floor, then he stood in a corner, averting is gaze from the other people who had entered the lift. Learning to use those modern tools seemed easier than talking to people, at least for now.
At the first stop, most of the people went out, and Guy smiled to see Dr. Little coming in.
"Alicia!"
The woman winced, surprised to see him.
"Oh, Guy. I'm sorry to be so late. I rescheduled your examinations that were planned for today, I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to be present too."
"The examinations to understand how crazy I am and to decide what to do with me?" Guy asked, trying to downplay, but Alicia didn't smile and she remained silent.
Gisborne noticed that she looked downcast and that her eyes were bright with tears.
"What's up, Alicia?"
"Nothing. I'm just tired."
The doors of the lift opened again and the others went out. Guy looked at the floor's number and he saw that they would have to get out there too, but he didn't move, and pressed the button to the top floor.
"This is what I said to the sheriff when I didn't want to talk to him about my problems."
The woman sighed.
"Don't worry, tomorrow it will be over, it's nothing."
Guy stared at her, worried.
"Did you cry? Has anyone made you suffer?"
Alicia stroked his cheek and she tried to smile.
"You are very dear, but really, it's just a bad moment. I would never give up on my job, but sometimes there are particularly hard days and today it is one of those."
Guy suddenly understood.
"Have you lost one of your patients?"
Alicia nodded, raising her hand to dry her eyes.
"It's not the first and it won't be the last one, but when it happens to kids it's worse. I thought he would make it, but then the situation suddenly took a turn for the worse."
The lift stopped and Guy took Alicia's hand, leading her out of the cabin, then he stopped and hugged her, a bit awkwardly.
Alicia looked up, surprised by that gesture, and saw that Gisborne seemed at the same time worried about her and a little embarrassed by that tenderness.
"There is never anyone here, you can cry, if you need it."
Alicia smiled at his tense and clumsy tone.
"You're not used to console people, are you?"
Guy sighed.
"Not much, is it so obvious?"
The woman laughed to see his afflicted expression, then the laughter turned to tears and Alicia found herself sobbing, with her face pressed against Guy's chest.