Path of Dragons 14 - Chapter 27 - A Father's Role

Outside the clinic, Elijah stood motionless as waves of pedestrians passed him by.  Absent-mindedly, he tugged at the shirt Hope had made for him.  It wasn’t uncomfortable, but he could feel the newness against his skin.  Fortunately, it also served its purpose by helping him to blend in with the rest of the city’s population.  His bare feet were still an oddity, but the combination of his new clothes and fresh haircut helped to lessen the attention elicited by his appearance.

But he wasn’t that worried about that. 

Instead, his full attention had settled onto the clinic itself.  Like everything else in Ironshore, it had grown considerably during his absence.  What had started as a single floor with only a couple of Healers had blossomed into a multi-story building that very much resembled an old-world hospital.  The only difference was that the structure had been designed by a true master who’d been given free rein to make good on his artistic intentions. 

From an architectural standpoint, the entire city seemed to borrow principles from various styles, but to Elijah, it looked like nothing so much as an idealized and magical version of Victorian London.  Ironshore had no slums.  There was no garbage on even the poorest streets.  And almost everyone looked like they’d had their basic needs met.

It was a city of prosperity and modernity, with all the characteristics those traits brought along with them.

In that respect, the clinic was no different, and it featured rich ornamentation and intricate trim.  Elijah glanced back at the statue standing in the center of the attached plaza.  It depicted a man standing over a kneeling figure – almost like a saint looming over a supplicant.  Or a Healer over a patient, his hand outstretched to connect with the other’s forehead.

The Sculptor had clearly taken inspiration from Ron, because the resemblance was obvious.  The statue – made of something like bronze – stood atop a plinth and was surrounded by a bubbling fountain.  The attached plaque dedicated the piece to the people who’d fallen victim to the “Plague of 23” and the Healers who’d stopped its advance.

When Elijah had asked someone about the number, she’d looked at him like he’d gone insane.  But despite that, the woman had explained that it referred to the time that had passed since the World Tree had spread its influence to Earth.  Of course, she hadn’t put it so kindly.  Rather, she referred to it as the apocalypse.  But Elijah got the drift.

He also discovered that the date was currently forty-five, meaning that more than four decades had passed since the world had changed.

It was a sobering thought, realizing that he was well into his seventies.  By all rights, Elijah should’ve been doddering the days away in a nursing home.  Or living out his final years in a bungalow by the beach.  Instead, he felt stronger than ever, and he looked like a man barely into his thirties. 

At times, he forgot just how far he’d left normal humanity behind.  He could spend years working with magic and runes, fighting abyssal monsters, and literally reforming his body from single cells, but nothing affected his self-perception quite like the reminder of his vastly increased lifespan.

Even having barely scratched the surface of his potential, Elijah knew he would live for thousands of years.  And if he continued to progress?  That number would grow exponentially.  As far as he knew, transcendents were functionally immortal.  Certainly, they could be killed, but not by the passage of time.

The sheer scope of that left Elijah with a sense of existential dread mingled with anticipation.  Did he want to live forever?  He wasn’t certain of that.  But one thing he did know was that he definitely didn’t want to die.

And he had no intention of giving up or stopping his progression.

But before he could do anything, he needed to talk to his friend.  So, without further delay, he pushed forward and into the clinic.  Predictably, he found himself staring at a welcome desk manned by a pair of women in white uniforms.  Another woman stood nearby, and from her armor and weapon, her role was clear. 

She was the security guard. 

“How can we help you, sir?” asked the attendant, her voice kind but tinged with the sort of bored brevity characteristic of any worker mired in a public-facing position. 

“I’m here to see Ron.  Ron Dawson.”

“The Prime Healer?  Do you have an appointment?”

Elijah shook his head.  “He’s an old friend.”

“I’m sorry, but without an appointment, you will have to wait,” she said.  “Unless you are seriously injured or ill, in which case I will direct you to the Emergency Clinic.”

“Is that where Ron is?” he asked.

“I cannot disclose that, sir.”

Elijah resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  Instead, he thanked the woman and took a seat in the indicated waiting area.  There were only a few people there, most of whom Elijah took to be family or friends of people being treated, and it looked just like any other hospital waiting room he’d ever visited. 

At first, Elijah tried to just wait.  He didn’t want to interrupt anything, after all.  But within a couple of minutes, his impatience got the better of him, and he did something he didn’t like to do.

In his domain, his locus was absolute.  He could feel everything, right down to the tiniest microbe or grain of sand.  However, things got a little muddier when his locus conflicted with someone else’s domain.  Like in Ironshore, which was technically within his sphere of control but also subject to Ramik’s Seal of Authority.  The end result was that his perception within Ironshore was a bit blurry. 

But he was orders of magnitude stronger than Ramik, so he was more than capable of bringing it into focus.  He just rarely had occasion to do so.  In this case, he surrendered to his impatience and turned his full concentration onto Ironshore.

Almost immediately, he felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data.  It was one thing to constantly sense everything on a seven-mile island.  It was something else entirely to feel an entire city whose population had long since surpassed six figures.

For a moment, Elijah drowned in that sea of information.  But after a few seconds, the power of his emerald mind came to the fore, cataloguing everything into easily digestible chunks.  Only a few moments later, he focused on the hospital, and he found his quarry soon enough.

Just as Elijah had predicted, Ron was in the Emergency Clinic.

So, Elijah pushed himself to his feet, nodded at the attendant, and headed back outside.  It didn’t take long for him to circle the building and find the emergency entrance, where he discovered another couple of guards.  Thankfully, they didn’t bar his way, and soon enough, he reached another waiting room.

This one was far more densely populated, with every seat taken.  Many of the people nursed wounds, while a few looked obviously ill.  Elijah resisted the urge to heal them, and instead made his way to a door at the back of the lobby.  Acting like he belonged there, he stepped through those doors and into a scene of controlled chaos.

Elijah had been in a few emergency rooms over the course of his life, but none on the scale of Ironshore’s clinic.  Hundreds of patients, each one lying on a cot, lined the walls, while Healers made their hurried rounds. 

“Sir, you can’t be back here,” came a voice that Elijah ignored.  Instead, he stepped forward, making his way toward where he’d last sensed Ron.  Of course, that caused a bit of a scene, with the speaker rushing outside, presumably to get the guards’ attention. 

And then, Elijah saw Ron surrounded by young people who crowded around a patient. 

That was when Elijah realized what was going on.  Ron wasn’t there to solve the problem.  Instead, he was using the clinic as a teaching opportunity for young Healers. 

“What are you doing back here, Elijah?” Ron demanded when the commotion got his attention. 

Elijah shrugged.  “I guess I should’ve made an appointment?”

Ron sighed.  Then, to one of the older students, he said, “Take over, Jenkins.  And don’t forget –”

“Control the ethereal flow.  I know.”

“And I’ll keep reminding you anyway,” Ron barked, obviously annoyed.  Then, to Elijah, he said, “Follow me.”

“I was hoping we could get lunch,” Elijah stated.  “We need to talk.”

Ron looked around.  “Fine.  Everyone’s got to eat, I suppose.”

With that, he removed his gloves and discarded them in a nearby trash bin.  Elijah noted that they weren’t latex, but rather made from some sort of thin leather.  He didn’t get the chance to inspect them further, because Ron hurried past him.  Elijah followed, pushing past the responding guards and out of the clinic.

“Where do you want to go?” asked Ron, his voice still carrying a tinge of annoyance with it.  Or maybe it was just anxiety.  After all, he had a stressful job.

“Uh…I could use a patty melt.”

Ron nodded and said that he knew a place.  Elijah, knowing how much the city had changed, decided to lean on his friend’s expertise.  And soon enough, he followed Ron to a familiar location.

Elijah shuddered to a stop when he read the sign.

Ron looked back, asking, “What’s wrong?”

For a few seconds, Elijah didn’t answer.  Instead, he just looked at the building that had once hosted Mama Lou’s diner.  Like every other structure in Ironshore, the building itself had grown, adding a few extra stories.  The restaurant’s façade looked mostly the same, displaying the unmistakable aesthetic of a fifties-style diner.  However, the name on the sign had changed.

“June’s,” he said aloud.

“Oh,” Ron responded.  He rested his hand on Elijah’s shoulder.  “I keep forgetting how much you’ve missed.  Sue Anne died more than ten years ago.  Her daughter-in-law took over and changed the name.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.  I never asked why.  I think it’s a touchy subject.  They weren’t really getting along well there at the end.”

“How did she die?”

“Age.  Heart gave out in her sleep.”

“That…sucks,” Elijah remarked, trying to recover from the shock.  Sue Anne hadn’t really been a friend.  More of an acquaintance.  But he’d liked her, and she had liked him.  Knowing that she’d died – and from something as mundane as heart disease – hit Elijah harder than he’d expected.

“We can go somewhere else.”

“No.  It’s fine.  Just…shocked, I guess.  Let’s get some food.”

After that, they made their way inside.  Thankfully, the interior hadn’t changed very much.  Some of the booths had been reupholstered, and the bar had been resurfaced.  However, the rest of the diner looked strikingly familiar.

Except instead of a middle-aged woman manning the grill, there was a petite young woman.  A stocky man that favored Sue Anne worked alongside her.  That must’ve been her son.

“Sit wherever you like,” the young woman – presumably June – called out.  Elijah and Ron settled onto opposite sides of the booth.  Within a few moments, the man took their orders.  Elijah chose a patty melt with a side of fries, while Ron asked for an egg white omelet with bacon. 

“Watching your diet?” Elijah asked.

Ron shrugged.  “Something like that.  Jess said I was getting fat.”

Elijah chuckled.  “You look pretty trim to me.”

“That’s because you didn’t see me a couple of years ago.  Things got out of hand,” he admitted.  “But I like egg whites.  Really.  They’re so much better than pancakes with lots of syrup.”

“I almost believe you!” Elijah lied.

Ron sighed.  “Look.  I know why you’re here.”

“Do you?”

“My daughter is not subtle.”

“And?  Your response?”

“I don’t have one,” Ron admitted.  “Listen – my feelings aren’t complicated.  Miguel can do what he wants.  He will do what he wants.  I can’t stop him.  But if you expect me to stand idly by while my grandchild’s father runs off, leaving Hope to manage it all on her own…I just can’t do that, Elijah.  I won’t.”

“Who said anything about standing idly by?”

“What do you mean?”

“I assume you’ll be there for her,” Elijah said.  “So will Carmen.  And a hundred other people in the grove.  You know you can’t stop this.  Right or wrong, good idea or bad, you can’t keep Miguel from doing what he considers his duty.  Maybe if he was still a child…but he hasn’t been that for a long time.  So, if you can’t change something, what do you do?”

Ron sighed.  “Adjust.  Adapt.  You’re saying that I should do whatever I can to help Hope.”

Elijah shrugged.  “You don’t need me to tell you what to do,” he pointed out.  “You’re one of the best people I’ve ever known.  You know what you should do.  But I told Hope I would talk to you.  So, I figured we could use this time to catch up.  How have you been?”

Ron sighed, then leaned back in the booth.  “Busy.  Always busy.”

“I saw you got a statue.”

Ron groaned. “I hate that thing.”

“I think it looks good.  Very heroic.  Saintly, almost,” Elijah remarked with a grin at his friend’s discomfort.  “You cure a plague or something?”

“Or something,” Ron admitted.

Then, he went on to describe the disease that had swept through the city shortly after the last Primal Realm had been conquered.  It had killed thousands before Ron and Jess had figured out how to combat it.  “If we’d been even a little slower, Ironshore would be a very different place.”

“How about you and Jess?”

At that point, they’d both already received their meals, and Elijah was happy to find that the quality hadn’t fallen.  The patty melt was just like he liked it, with plenty of onions and drenched in cheese.  Meanwhile, the fries were perfectly crispy and well-seasoned. 

As they ate, Ron recounted the past couple of decades.  He and Jess were married a few years after the threat of excisement had faded, and by all accounts, they were happy.  Both were kept extremely busy with their work at the clinic, though Elijah suspected that was how they both liked it.

In all, they spent a few hours in that diner, reacquainting themselves with one another and reestablishing their friendship.  To Elijah’s immense relief, Ron was the same man he’d always been.  Solid.  Dependable.  A good friend who would do whatever the situation required of him.

It was nice to see that, even with the passage of so much time, some things hadn’t really changed.