Eighth Day of Christmas #3
Kestrel sat cross-legged beside Gussie and said, “Take a breath, my pet.”
“This place is utterly reckless!” Gussie shouted. “We’re miles from a hospital, Mrs. Wattlesbrook made no contingencies for urgent injuries when we’re trapped in the snow—”
“I am the contingency.” Kestrel felt good declaring it, powerful even, and maybe it was a little bit true in a magical, hopeful way.
Gussie blinked and seemed to see her. Kestrel heard movement around her. Without looking away from Gussie, she knew Hank was encouraging the crowd to disperse and trust it all to Kestrel.
“I’m going to examine your arm,” Kestrel said, “and you are going to breathe.”
Gussie glared but didn’t put up a fight as Kestrel gently lifted her arm.
“Gussie, I don’t hear you breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth. In through your nose—one, two, three—out through your mouth—one, two, three, four, five . . .”
Kestrel kept giving breathing commands while she probed Gussie’s arm, felt the bone, the joint, carefully bent and straightened it. Gussie sucked in a breath.
“I see,” said Kestrel. “We’re in luck.”
She was speaking to Hank. She knew he would be nearby, waiting to help if she needed him. And sure enough, he answered from a few feet behind her.
“Good,” said Hank. “So is it—?”
Kestrel said, “I think so.”
Hank said, “It is the kind that you can—”
Kestrel said, “Most likely. But I think you should still—”
Hank said, “Absolutely. I’ll check with—”
Kestrel said, “Good idea. Let me know when—”
And Hank said, “On it,” and she heard his feet hurrying toward the back of the house.
Gussie whined a cry of frustration. “What are you talking about? Focus on me!”
“I am, one hundred percent,” said Kestrel. It was a small lie. Most of her thinking powers were focused on Gussie and the task at hand, but most of her body was still focused on Hank.
“Great news, Gus,” said Kestrel. “It’s not broken. Just a subluxation. Your elbow is partially dislocated. I need to perform a reduction.”
“You’re making up words! You don’t know what you’re doing, you’re a total and complete menace, and Austen would have written you as the annoying sister who always makes everybody roll their eyes and laugh behind your back!”
While she ranted, Kestrel held Gussie’s forearm and turned her hand so that it faced palm-up, pressed her thumb near the top of the radius bone, and slowly bent the elbow till she heard a faint click.
“There. Done.”
“It’s not done!” said Gussie. “It hurts! I can’t move my elbow!”
“Try,” said Kestrel.
Gussie tentatively tested out the joint. “Oh. It does feel better. I . . . Um . . . I was certain that it was broken and you were just torturing me.” Gussie’s eyes were down.
“Your joint came out of place, but I was able to put it back.”
Kestrel lay down on the floor beside Gussie. She didn’t know why, it just felt more equal and sociable. Gussie looked at her with scared, dark eyes, and Kestrel was flooded with a desire to calm her, as Hank had calmed the dog-spooked horse.
So she spoke his words. “You were scared. You thought you were in danger. But you’re not alone.
I’m with you.” And then more words came to her, as if they’d risen up from the floorboards and the house’s hundreds of years of experience sheltering humans.
“Your arm’s not broken and neither are you.
You are worthy and deserving of love and respect. ”
Gussie looked shocked. She blinked several times. Slowly her face scrunched up. And then she started to cry. Just sob and sob.
Kestrel’s heart warmed with so much compassion, she thought she’d burst. Five minutes ago, she’d considered Gussie a huge pain in the ass, but animosity took so much energy.
Besides, it clearly wasn’t easy to be Augusta Chen in this world, and the gods knew it wasn’t easy to be Kestrel Spinster either.
“Ignore me,” said Gussie through sobs.
“Nope,” said Kestrel.
“I’m so messed up,” Gussie muttered wetly.
“Baby girl, get in line,” said Kestrel, the compassion in her chest exploding out to every part of her and pricking tears in her own eyes. Why was everything so hard?
“This is humiliating,” said Gussie.
“It’s just us,” said Kestrel. “Just two girls having a cry together.” Gussie peeked and realized they were entirely alone.
“The British are so good at making themselves absent from public displays of emotion,” said Kestrel, “but I’m lousy at being British. So I’m going to stay here with you while you feel some stuff so you don’t have to feel it alone.”
At that, Gussie started to cry again. Kestrel turned onto her side to put a hand on her shoulder, and Gussie leaned into her, crying into her chest.
Suddenly Gussie sat upright.
“I don’t want you comforting me. You of all people! I dislike you amazingly!”
Kestrel sat up and wondered if it was too late to become extremely British. But it was hard to slink away after dropping dazzlingly compassionate lines like You don’t have to feel it alone . . .
“Can we just forget this archnemesis thing? Start over?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Gussie. “You’re not my archnemesis. I just don’t like you. How do you not realize that you’ve . . . ruined my perfect holiday!”
“Me?” Despite her own fears that she was generally to blame, still Kestrel was amazed that she had any impact on Gussie at all.
“Ugh, it’s always like this!” said Gussie.
“I would spend all summer hyping myself up for a new school year, time to start over and be a better version of myself, but then on the first day I’d do something wrong and kids would laugh at me, and I’d spend the entire year trying to claw my way out of the trap I’d fallen into instead of, I don’t know, just thriving. ”
Kestrel nodded, getting all this on a profound level.
“Why am I talking about school?” said Gussie. “I am an intelligent, successful, grown woman. I am not in eighth grade.”
“We never really escape being thirteen.”
“Never! It’s infuriating!” Gussie glared harder at Kestrel, a warning that just because they agreed on something didn’t mean she had forgotten that she was angry with her.
“I’ve finally come to the one place in all the world where I should fit perfectly .
. . and then—you.” Gussie began to sob again.
“What did I do?” Kestrel asked, and then immediately regretted it. Alarm bells clanged in her skull, her entire system went into red alert: Warning, warning, incoming personal conflict.
“How can you ask me that? Do you mean you wrecked my holiday by accident ?” Gussie huffed an angry breath.
“I’d hoped the other guest in the house would be my friend and ally, but from day one, you were already best friends with everyone, sharing inside jokes, whispering with them, taking them away from me.
It made me feel . . .” She trailed off, her lower lip trembling.
“I didn’t realize,” said Kestrel. But she was starting to. And the realization was sinking into her belly with sickening speed. Once again, even when she was sincerely trying, she could still ruin Christmas.
“Some mornings I would be determined to start fresh and pretend everything was fine,” said Gussie, “but then I would enter a room, and you’d already be there, buddy-buddy with the gents, and for an instant they were clearly annoyed to see me because I was interrupting their time with you.
I’ve looked forward to this experience for years, but every time I try to immerse myself, you pull me back out, and I don’t want you gaslighting me into believing it’s all my fault that I feel this way—”
“You’re right,” Kestrel said quickly, trying to stop this sensation that she was literally dying.
Gussie blinked. “I’m right?”
“Yep. I’m sorry. I’m the worst, I know I am—”
“That’s not—”
“No! Please! Allow me to acknowledge how I’m generally a wrecking ball and destroy peace and harmony on accident so we can move past this part real quick.
I can’t stand this another second. I know I’m needy and crave attention and think I’m always right and I hate these things about myself, but I’m also so terrible at reconciliation, I don’t know how to do this and I literally feel like I can’t breathe so can we pretend we worked it all out in great detail but actually just jump ahead to the part where we decide to be best friends? ”
Gussie hiccuped a breath and gazed at her in amazement. “Is that . . . a thing that can just happen?”
No magically perfect words were rising up from the house’s foundation anymore, so Kestrel just shrugged and hoped.
Gussie closed her eyes thoughtfully. The hall grandfather clock tick-tick-ticked. Kestrel straightened her legs out in front of her. They ached with the effort not to run away. She patted them in sympathy.
And then Gussie said, “Okay,” and seemed surprised to hear the word come out of her own mouth. “Okay. I like this part.”
Kestrel’s painfully tight belly relaxed. Emotional avoidance wins again!
She crossed her legs underneath her skirt and scooted closer to Gussie.
“So here’s the scoop—Colonel Andrews and Captain Relish are both the bees knees.
We are not remotely interested in each other romantically.
I’m the buddy, but you are the leading-lady love interest. Live out your perfect Austen story.
Let them keep wooing you, and tell me all about it like we’re old girlfriends.
I’ll give you advice, you won’t take it, we’ll laugh about it and have the time of our lives. ”
“Okay!” Gussie rolled onto her belly, bending her knees so her feet stuck in the air, as if they were at a sleepover and not lying at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m leaning toward Captain Relish. I’ve spent more time with him. Colonel Andrews is so frequently away.”