Sunday 21st - afternoon or thereabouts

When Crozier woke again, the sickbay was strangely quiet. He looked around but could not see any attendants. Grunting as he sat up, he looked around again. Where was everybody? The other patients were sleeping - or no, Everett was awake and amusing himself with a book, one of Crozier's own illustrated books that he often loaned to patients.

"Everett, where is everyone?" he asked, squinting against the dim light.

"Oh, sir, are you all right? How is your - "

"Where is everyone? Bridgens and M'Clure."

Everett bit back his questions. "Not sure, sir. But I think it's about dinnertime."

"Can you read, Everett?"

The marine shook his head. "No sir. This, I'm just lookin' at the pictures."

Wincing, Crozier swung his legs over the side of the cot, ignorning Everett's warnings and protests. He steadied himself gripping at the rope and hauled himself to a standing position. The corner by the cabinets was where he kept crutches, and one or two might be useful now, if he could reach them. But this did not feel right at all. He sank to his hands and knees, deciding that crawling would be gentler on his head.

"Shut up, Everett. You'll waken the others," he grumbled. When he had reached the corner, he pulled himself up by gripping the cabinet and selected two of the padded sticks. The space across the floor to the door seemed vast, and he had time to think before crossing it. He was wearing a night shirt. M'Clure or perhaps Doctor Maturin must have taken his keys from his waistcoat pocket, but there was a spare set in an empty ointment jar at the back of a drawer. Keys could be lost, and it was always best to have spares.

He clacked and thumped his way across the floor, hissing at Everett to be quiet, and opened the door onto the messdeck. He hailed the first person that passed, his voice sounding heavy and hoarse in his ears. "You there. Come here and help me."

Oxley had wandered towards sickbay. He was looking forward to the planned skylarking that was going to happen this evening, but he really wanted the bandage off his wrist first, if that was possible. The others were all on a make-and-mend afternoon, unless they were on duty, and he'd sneaked away to see if M'Clure or Bridgens were around.

He stepped into sickbay nervously. If he disturbed any of the patients, he was going to be in a whole world of trouble and would probably end up on punishment duty for months.

He jumped as a vioce asked him to come and help, and almost turned tail. Something made him step further into sickbay though. There was someone hobbling around on crutches and he frowned. Thompson's ankle was nearly better, and he couldn't think who else might possibly be using crutches. He went to see who it was.

His eyes widened as he saw it was Doctor Crozier. "Sir? You ought to be in bed, sir, with your head an' all."

His opinion of Doctor Maturin shot up - he'd cut Mister Crozier's head open yesterday, and the man was already up and around. Well, he might not be walking, but even limping with the aid of crutches was better, far better, than Oxley had hoped for. And talking - and making sense! That was a real-life miracle, that was.

"Hush. Oxley is it?" He recognized the young man's voice, but he realized that his vision was still blurred. Please God it was only temporary. He had once been hit in the face with a cricket ball and his vision had been blurred for two days. "Hold these," he said, handing him the set of keys, "And help me into the dispensary."

The doctor was peering at him blearily, almost as though he was drunk and seeing double. Maybe getting hit in the head did that to you? It did do queer things to folks, that, after all.

But the doctor had recognised him. Maybe it was just his voice though; there weren't very many folks aboard Terpsy whose voices were breaking, after all.

"It is..." He paused and lowered his voice. "Aye, sir, it's me, right 'nough." The Doctor waved something at him and Oxley took it, to find it was a bunch of keys. If he was waving things around like that, maybe he couldn't see too well. "The dispensary, sir? Aye, aye sir. Um. D'you want to put one of them crutches down, sir, to make it a bit easier?"

Crozier handed him one of the crutches, leaning his weight on the other one, and then he put his arm across the young man's shoulder without waiting for permission. The young man was here, and he would serve as a human crutch. His mind was fixed on the dispensary, which was only a few feet away. "Unlock the door - one of the big keys."

Oh help! Oxley thought as Mister Crozier slung his arm across his shoulders unexpectedly, almost making him stagger. "Right, sir. Let's get there first, shall us?" he said, trying to remember to keep his voice down a bit. He wasn't sure quite how fast Mister Crozier could walk, and settled for a sort of shuffle across to the dispensary door where he started trying keys, till finally the door swung open. "Now what, sir?"

"Give me a chair now," Crozier sighed.

Oxley looked around. There was a chair near the work-table and he guided Mister Crozier over to it carefully and waited until he'd sat down without toppling onto the floor. He backed away a little, unsure of what he should do next. He really needed to go and find Doctor Maturin, but he couldn't just leave Doctor Crozier by himself, not when he was in this state.

"And look in that chest and give me some breeches. And carefully pass me that wooden box there, and the keys," he added, pointing out his apothecary case.

Breeches? He was getting dressed?

"Sir, are you sure...? I mean, you had an awful bang on the head th'other day, and I'm sure it ain't right for you t'be up yet, sir. You can't hardly see, and you def'nitely can't walk straight."

He'd pointed at the corner of the medicine cabinet, and not at the wooden box the Oxley thought he'd meant to point out.

He sighed. He was going to get in awful trouble for this, but he couldn't see any way of telling the doctor - the doctor, for all love! - that he should be lying down, resting. He pulled a pair of breeches out of the chest and passed them over.

"I'm not up, I just want some breeches and my wooden box," he grumbled as he put them on clumsily.

"Y'looks pretty up t'me," Oxley muttered, as he manoeuvred his way round Crozier to reach his wooden box for him. "Here, I'm puttin' this on the table, sir. You don't look so steady as alla that, and I figure Doctor Matterin'll say you should be in your cot still, sir."

"If Doctor Maturin were here now, he would do this for me," Crozier grumbled, fumbling the smallest key into the lock. "Go into the sick bay and get a book for me, a book like a ledger with writing inside it. It has leather on the spine and blue paper on the covers. It's on the desk."

"If Doctor Matterin was 'ere now, he'd have you lashed into your hammock, I'm sure o' that much," Oxley said. "You ain't goin' to do anythin' daft, are you, sir?"

"I'm the surgeon of the Terpsichore," he muttered as opened the case and unlocked the sliding back panel. "I know what I'm doing. Go get me that book."

"Aye, aye, sir," Oxley said, and beat a hasty retreat back to the sickbay. Book... why did he want a book when he couldn't even see straight?

And he was going to go for the visiting Doctor just as soon as he could get away for five minutes. Mister Crozier had to lie down, Oxley was sure of that.

He found the book without any difficulty and brought it back to the dispensary, wondering where Bridgens was, or M'Clure.

It was good that the dispensary was so small, Crozier thought, because he was able to reach most of the cabinets and drawers from his chair. He found a dropper and loosened the panel in his apothecary case where he kept the most restricted medicines. Even though he could not read the labels, he knew the shapes and colors of each of the four bottles. And now here was Oxley with the day book.

"You can't read, can you Oxley?"

He shook his head. "No, sir. You axed me that afore, sir, on... on Friday mornin'." Before the doctor had got his head kicked in by that bloody horse. Why did he keep wanting to know if he could read?

"Oh. Yes." He opened the book and fumbled in a drawer until he found a magnifying glass. It was still difficult to read, particularly in a stranger's writing, but... Musci? "Has Doctor Maturin been using moss on Barrow's wound?" What kind of moss?

"I dunno, sir." And if Doctor Crozier was working, Oxley was going to be in real trouble. "You'd need to ask Doctor Matterin 'bout alla that, sir. Shall I get him for you?"

"No." He could worry about that later. He steadied the magnifying glass and searched for the entries about himself. "Can you read numbers at all?"

"A very little bit. Why?"

"Tell me all the numbers you can see here, starting at the bottom." He knew that there were many numbers mixed in with the records - dates, hours of the day, perhaps records of pulses and temperatures, but some of the numbers would refer to doses, and he would know them when he heard them. Unless Doctor Maturin had written them out longhand. "Ignore the ones on the side here. Those are just the dates."

He took the book and looked at it. None of the writing made any sense as he scanned the page, and then he found something he recognised. Thank heavens his dad had taught him his numbers, being a joiner. "Um, there's 55, then there's 95, then, well, looks like 10. You don't want the ones on the side, you said, sir. Then there's 80, 91, 5." He looked up. "There's a lot of patients in the sickbay right now, sir. If you can read a bit and tell me what line you want me to give you the number of, it'd be easier."

If he could get away for three minutes and find the other Doctor, it'd be even better, of course.

Crozier gazed blearily through the magnifying glass, but the writing was all aswim in his eyes. To hell with the numbers, he decided, unstopping the bottle. "Never mind, Oxley," he sighed. He took a quick swig directly from the bottle, grimacing at the taste.