55. Bertram #2
Thanks to her magically enhanced travel capabilities, Diana was able to deliver medical supplies from the Midsummer Knights Dragon Protection Society by the next morning.
With the magiveterinary tools designed to cut through dragon scales and skin, Helena was able to easily aspirate Lovey’s lump.
A subsequent examination of its contents confirmed Helena’s guess that this was a harmless cyst.
Helena was extremely relieved, and Bertram was relieved that Helena was relieved.
Bertram kept Lovey entertained, and Lovey happily chomped down on Bertram’s dragon-scale glove as Helena worked. Helena used the tools provided by Syr Hippolyta and her team to thoroughly cleans the cyst of all its contents, remove the sack, wash it out, and close the wound.
“What’s really interesting is that it wasn’t a traditional feather cyst the way you’d find in avian species, or a sebaceous cyst like I’ve dealt with on furry mammals,” Helena told Bertram, excitedly. “The contents of the cyst were both feathers and fur.”
“Mhm,” said Bertram, mouth closed tightly.
“Do we think that owl-bear feathers and fur share follicles? There are certain areas of Lovey’s body where it seems like she has both, and—are you ill?”
“No,” Bertram said.
“Really? You look a little—” Helena suddenly cut herself off.
Bertram smiled. “You were going to say green, weren’t you?”
Helena blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that! You just looked . . . uh . . . uncomfortable. And you usually seem like you can handle anything.”
“I try to, but certain things turn my stomach,” Bertram admitted. “Apparently one of them is abnormal cyst contents.”
Bertram shuddered, remembering what Helena said about feathers and fur combined. He tried not to be ill.
“That’s so funny,” Helena said. “I mean, it’s not funny. I just, I think of you as so stoic. I’m sure you’ve seen things in your field research . . .”
“Some more unpleasant than others,” Bertram agreed. “And I help with field medicine sometimes, but I’m not the Person who’s, uh, really getting in there the way you were. Thank goodness you were here with your medical training and, uh, strong stomach.”
“I don’t know about that.” But Helena smiled.
Bertram returned her smile. It still made him happy that his praise made her happy. And she had more than earned it. Bertram wasn’t simply saying those things to be kind—he truly would have been utterly lost as to how to go about clearing the contents of an owl-bear cyst.
Even thinking the phrase “clearing the contents of an owl-bear cyst” made him feel slightly ill.
Helena had been so quick, efficient, and effective in the procedure, and the stitches she used to close the wound were all perfectly even. It was hardly a major surgery, but it still went beyond the basic field medicine Bertram had been trained in.
Because Helena had been through extensive training—years and years of it, as a doctor.
And she had clearly taken it as seriously as she had taken everything else Bertram had ever seen her approach. No surprise there. Bertram had never known Helena to do anything halfway. She was probably valedictorian of her class. He had never asked, and she had never offered.
He had never asked her anything about medical school, really.
After all, it was—in some ways—the source of the conflict that had shattered what they had together.
It wasn’t medical school itself, of course; that had merely been the vehicle by which Helena’s true feelings about Bertram had come out.
Nevertheless, it was enough to make it a sore subject, to say the least.
So, Bertram had never thought about Helena in medical school, outside of that being where she chose to go instead of being with him.
But seeing her tend to Lovey, it was impossible not to think about how hard she must have worked to acquire those skills.
Bertram wondered how many sleepless nights Helena had spent pouring over textbook after textbook.
He wondered how many times she had shaken with anxiety before taking a test that she knew every answer to and then some, how many times she had cried over the rare A-minus or—undergods forbid—B+.
He was sure that medical school had been a huge undertaking for Helena, and the proof of the skills she had developed was right there, stitched into Lovey’s skin.
And he had never said one kind word to her about all the work she had done. No matter what those choices had done to her relationship with Bertram, there was no question that she had honed a skillset admirably—and not just any skillset, but one that helped. One that healed.
“Listen . . . I know this is probably too little too late, but…” Bertram swallowed. “Clearly . . .”
Helena raised an eyebrow. “Clearly?”
“The way you fixed Lovey up . . . we couldn’t have done that if you hadn’t, you know . . . you’re a doctor.”
“I am,” Helena said, her tone a little confused.
“And it’s not easy to become a doctor—even for you, I imagine, and, well, I know it’s too late but—I’m proud of you. For getting your MD. I should have said it sooner. I should have said that I was happy for you getting into med school in the first place—”
“Oh.” Helena looked away. “Don’t worry about it.”
But Bertram was worried.
“No, that was a huge accomplishment, and I didn’t even consider that. I was only thinking about what it meant for us, for our relationship, and I . . . I just didn’t understand why you would do it. I thought you were giving up on your dreams—”
“I was,” Helena said, shortly.
Bertram frowned. “But—”
“That’s why after I took my bereavement leave I never went back to my residency,” Helena said.
“If being a medical doctor were my dream, I could’ve returned to the hospital months ago.
But I didn’t. I always wanted to be doing this kind of fieldwork.
I wanted to be a leopardopterist, my whole life. ”
“That’s what I always thought,” Bertram said, his confusion mounting.
“You thought correctly. It was stupid that I ever—” Helena shook her head.
“Hey,” Bertram said, gently, “if you didn’t have medical training, you wouldn’t have been able to help Lovey like that.”
“Right, but I would’ve just called a vet, and that would’ve been fine.” Helena laughed bitterly. “What a fucking waste all those years were.”
Bertram shook his head. “They weren’t a waste; look at what you can do—”
“I could have been doing what I actually loved, studying otherfolk and . . . maybe”—Helena swallowed—“maybe things would have been different. Between us. My decision to leave . . . I didn’t mean to spring it on you like I did.”
Bertram ran his tongue nervously over his tusk. “You didn’t even tell me you applied.”
“Because I had no intention of going,” Helena said. “It just, it all got so complicated, and I felt so lost and . . . I should’ve just stayed with you. You have no idea how much I wanted to move in with you. How excited I was. How I imagined our lives would be . . .”
“Same,” Bertram admitted. “I was excited to move in with you.”
“Me too,” Helena said, softly. “I know at the time I said it was because I was excited to have someplace to hang all my regional fauna posters, but . . . it was more than that.”
Bertram smiled. “I figured.”
He winked at her and Helena blushed.
He felt warmth spread throughout his body. He liked that he could still make her blush.
“I know it was weird, because we never actually talked about our feelings,” Helena said, looking decidedly at Lovey instead of Bertram.
“And we never said we were even boyfriend and girlfriend or anything like that, but . . . we kind of—we kind of were, weren’t we?
Not just kind of. We really were. I mean, we were moving in together. ”
“I thought I was going to marry you,” Bertram admitted in a rush. “Not right away, of course. But I thought living together would be the first step, and then a few years down the line . . .”
“I wanted to marry you too,” Helena said.
“Not as much as I wanted to marry you.” Bertram’s voice became unsteady. “I had an entire proposal planned—”
“Oh, yeah?” Helena laughed. “Well, I had a fucking ring!”
Bertram chuckled. “You bought your own engagement ring?”
“No, I made one.”
Bertram raised an eyebrow. “You made your own—?”
“For you!” Helena said. “I made you an engagement ring. With your father.”
Bertram’s heart stopped. “What?”
“Yeah.” Helena smiled. “I was in Urghk’s forge, and I don’t know what possessed me to say it, but I suddenly turned to him and I said, ‘you know I’m in love with your son, right?’ ” Helena laughed and shook her head.
Bertram was too shocked to react.
“And Urghk said of course he knew, everyone knew, which is funny, because I don’t actually think Dr. J ever did, not really.
I think she had a vague idea, but you know how your mom is .
. . she can be a bit in the clouds. She’s like me—she sees all the little facts and details but sometimes misses big picture.
We’re both in our heads. But you’re like Urghk—he was all heart.
And I just said, ‘I think I’d like to marry him some day .
. . do you think you could show me how to make an orcish ring? Just in case?’ ”
Bertram’s heart raced. He almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Helena had crafted an engagement ring? For him?
With his father?
Bertram couldn’t decide what feeling was stronger—the sudden wave of grief at missing his father that overtook him, or the wave of grief at the life he and Helena had almost had together.
The combination of those elements made his soul ache with a longing that he couldn’t quite define. A longing for the father he had and missed, and a longing for the relationship with Helena he never fully had at all.
“Urghk and I cast the ring together,” Helena continued, “and he inscribed it with something in old orcish—he told me it had a really beautiful meaning but knowing your dad’s sense of humor it might’ve actually been a filthy joke or some stupid pun.”
It all felt far away to Bertram, too precious and painful to be real.