FicWad

CHAPTER THREE: FEBRUARY AND MARCH (KANDINSKY’S LYRIC AND NEW ROCHELLE)

Ranma hobbled off the train toward Nabiki, dragging the podus boot on his lame foot along the pavement as he maneuvered with a single axillary crutch on his left. The 1735 regional commuter had just pulled into Baltimore-Penn station. She was standing on the platform waiting for him. A cool early-March sunset breeze fluttered gently around her.

"Thank you for doing this for me," she said, taking his right hand in both of her own and leaning her head on his shoulder as she led him away. "Come. We'll be late."

# # # ##

Roughly two months had passed since his discharge and that fateful evening in his apartment. He remained grounded in Washington and would be for the foreseeable future. HQ agreed to reassign him for at least 6 months based on the medical statement Nabiki herself insisted on writing on his behalf. It would be the final thing that she could ethically get away with as a part of his care team. She had warned that he had a long, hard road of recovery ahead of him and that the time and space were appropriate.

He was torn initially. There had been an instinct to resist. He had worried that he would grow restless with longing for his previous vigorous pace of routine jet-shuttling between field sites and offices. Now, however, there also was, for the first time in a long time, areason to stay. It occurred to him that her assessment could not possibly have been free of bias. She would have been disappointed had he not let her write the letter. He also knew her well enough now, though, to know that she would not actually say that type of thing aloud.

Instead, she had only said, "It's always better to ask for more time than you think you're going to need with these sorts of things."

He was pleased to find himself rewarded with the discovery that he did not mind. This was not just because the new routine that his life settled into was comfortable and reassuring. He simply had neither the time nor the energy to miss the way things were.

A dogged determination set in. It  whipped constantly at him to regain what he could of his pre-morbid mind and body and as quickly as he could. He was haunted by her words echoing over and over in his head. They were carefully and deliberately chosen with what he now realised was a trademark of precision. Nabiki was always precise when she spoke, whether in Japanese or English, whether she was being profane or demure.

For now, I'd like for you to just think about getting back on your feet so you can walk hand-in-hand with me, even if it's just for a little while….

On weekdays, he would rise before the sun for daily sessions of pulmonary rehab exercises along with light weight endurance and resistance training. Physical and aqua therapy appointments were also inserted throughout the week.

The rest of each day was otherwise consumed with pushing to keep the Bhutan project moving from half a world away. He was constantly shuttling from meeting to meeting. More often than not, he did so via wheelchair. He did not yet have the endurance or the agility to navigate the massive HQ complex without needing to rest far too often. There were countless reports and briefs to write and submit in between. Even on top of that, there were often late-night teleconferences scheduled around the local time for the authorities and his team members on the ground.

Permeating everything were the butterflies and roses of his growing addiction to her presence in his life. He would rush out of conferences to check his phone for her texts. These were always filled with acerbic witticisms guaranteed to make him smile and laugh. She called him while driving home from work. They would share dinner over video chats most evenings. Like a child on Christmas Eve, he would fall asleep each night counting the days down to the weekend and when he could see her next. It was all silly, stupidly cliché, but no less maddeningly exhilarating and intoxicating.

He was consumed by an insatiable desire to discover and know everything he could about Nabiki. He recalled reading somewhere once that a person's personality is not actually fully developed until around their mid-twenties. A seemingly unnatural, unrelenting force compelled him to decode the mystery of how the frigidly cynical and angry teenage girl in his childhood memories had metamorphosed across the intervening years into the lady in her mid-thirties now at the center of his world. He had not known it was actually possible for him, or any person for that matter, to feel as he did. It was at once both awesome and terrifying.

He remembered the first time he went to her place in Harbor East. The unit was a tenth-floor single-bedroom flat with sauvignon-colored oak wood floors and eastward-facing windows overlooking the harbor. She had a refreshingly tasteful, but sensible aesthetic somewhere in between Scandinavian Minimalism and Japanese Iki, bold and confident without ever crossing over into the realm of gaudy and ostentatious. Except for the small living room, the furniture throughout was matching solid espresso wood with clean, crisp straight lines. The living room itself was finished with aNoguchi-styled coffee table with a freeform glass surface atop a curved, walnut wood base placed in front of a mercurial blue leather sofa. Both were overlooked by a large three-part canvas copy of Kandinsky's "Lyric (Man on aHorse)."

Nabiki adored Kandinsky. She had fallen in love from the moment she first saw his work showcased in a touring exhibition at Tate Modern. That had been during  her first summer in England.

"He speaks to the essence of things, distills it down to the actual core of all that matters, and he's bold and unapologetic about it," she explained.

Ranma was not particularly knowledgeable about art, but he could see why this aesthetic embodied on the canvas in a few decisive strokes and squiggles rendered with precisely selected colours appealed to her, suited her.

Her fashion sense too was precise and elegantly minimalistic. Aside from four white coats and some scrubs, there was only the worn, crème-colored turtleneck she had worn the day that they had met at the coffee shop along with two other sweaters, half a dozen conservative professional blouses, two pairs of jeans, two or three patterned midi-length A-line skirts, three or four dresses, and some shawls. She did not own jewelry, and her ears were not pierced. Other than an occasional brush of foundation, she never wore makeup. It did not escape his notice that she did not need to in order to be beautiful.

"There's a funny thing about how women dress and how that changes as you watch them go through medical training," she told him. One could always tell who the preclinical students were because they did makeup, styled their hair, and wore heels when they went to the hospital or the clinic. As they progressed in their training, the shoes would get flatter, hair would get tied up or cut altogether, skirts would get traded out invariably for slacks, and the makeup would go away.

Besides that, it was apparently a terrible misconception that one made a meaningful salary as an academic attending. “For many of the disciplines around at this University, you may be surprised, but even after all that you go through to get to the point of earning an academic appointment, well, we have a workroom saying: you can't eat prestige,” she told him.

"So everyone is actually a closet monk or a nun when you take your white coats off?"

She laughed. "Okay, so it's not poverty," she conceded, "but people don't go into this business to get rich; only outsiders think that. Think about it. Between the debt from tuition loans most of the kids take on, the years of sub-minimum wage apprenticeship, and then being on your own to generate funding to pay for the right to continue working for the University - you're always struggling to stay afloat. It’s especially true when you're young and junior, trying to pay for yourself while keeping your start-up lab running and your students and techs fed, if you're lucky enough to even get a lab. That’s the reason everyone wants to go into private practice. I was lucky that I didn't have to take loans for my fees. If I hadn't, I don't know if I could have stayed with the University."

She explained how the system worked. In reality, the faculty were like franchise operators using the trademarks of the School and the University to attract research support and draw patients. Salaries by rank were fixed by the institution, but the University itself never compensated faculty. Individuals were responsible for supporting themselves by drawing in their own patient relative value unit streams and acquiring their own grants or philanthropic sponsors, the latter from which a royalty tax was owed to the Dean's office.

"You end up being afraid to get'awarded' a raise because procuring the funds to fill the gap is your problem."

Ranma was struck with incredulity."That's crazy! When you put it like that, this whole secret system of institutionalised bondage and oppression under a cloak of ivory tower veneer, why go through everything and choose to be whatcha are, Professor Tendou? What makes ya tick?"

"Remember that day in the Dome?"

He did remember. He had been studying the statue of the Christus Consolator.

"It's like you and what you do with the Bank, Ranma. Because you know someone has to and because you believe you can, and that belief has nothing to do with money. There are enough people out there who practice the way we tell them that they should, tethered and all with fidelity to algorithms spelled out in evidence-based guidelines. You see A, you do B. If you get C after B, you move on to D. But someone has to drive the science that underpins that evidence, to keep trying to make the way we do things to be better. We always need to remember to be better. Cancer? Dementia?The new novel Wuhan coronavirus? Jusenkyo curses even? For all that we know, for all the wonderful cutting-edge molecular-based precision technology that we are finally starting to have, there's so much more we still don't understand or don't even know that we don't know."

"What do ya think of this new virus?" he asked her.

An internal memo had gone out the week before urging Bank staff in Hubei province to leave and advising all other personnel to postpone travel to the country if possible. By this time, everyone had seen the video streams of authorities in white Hazmat suits taking people from their homes, sometimes by force, to dedicated makeshift treatment centers. Some of these were little more than warehouses and auditoriums filled with endless rows of bodies on cots. He was reminded of an exhibit that he had seen once at the Peace Museum on a school field trip to Hiroshima. It was a canvas in the gallery of survivor's works depicting endless dead and broken bodies floating in a river.

"So many of them in Wuhan never had achance," she said sadly. "They definitely have an effective system for quarantining, but this thing is just different, and the technology and medical knowledge just isn't there."

"You think we would do better?"

"I don't know. I hope it doesn't come," she said. After a moment of thought, she added with an asymmetric smile, "I don't really think it could happen here."

Then she changed the topic.

# # # ##

Their first real fight took place the day they ran into Vasillis Panagopoulos at the local performing arts center. By this time, Ranma found himself able to again stand upright for several minutes at a time with only the intermittent support of a single crutch. He had managed at the office without the wheelchair the entire week before for the first time. To celebrate, he asked Nabiki on a whim to catch one of the evening performances.

She asked about bringing the wheelchair, but he declined. He was pleased that he could. She packed it anyway into the trunk of her car - just in case.

The performance turned out to be atwo-character play titled "In Sickness (Illness) and Health," a story about a newlywed couple whose world is turned upside down by a car accident that leaves the woman a quadriplegic. The man is steadfast in his commitment to his wife – at least initially. He showers her with affection and attention, overbearing in his desire to protect her, doing everything for her, keeping things from her which he believes would only burden her. His love inadvertently leads to mutual resentment over time. She feels he has smothered what remains of her identity; he is betrayed by her resentment. The story ends with the bittersweet sting of their divorce. They go their separate ways not because they do not love one another, but because they do.

"Saotome, old chap!" Vasillis shouted from across the hall, coming toward them. Panagopoulos was an Etonian brat from his YPP cohort when he joined the Bank. He was a towering Greek Adonis who, at every opportunity, flouted being an American by virtue of having been born in New York, but of course never mentioning that this was aconsequence of his wealthy dilettante mother's medical tourism. He spoke with aheavy Greek accent. No one liked him. He reminded Ranma of Tatewaki Kuno from his high school days. "Oh my, and Kiki Tendou too?!"

"Vasillis," Nabiki acknowledged coolly.

"You two know each other?" Ranma and Panagopoulos remarked simultaneously, both looking at her.

She explained that Panagopoulos had been at Balliol too at the same time as her. Then she wordlessly took Ranma's hand in her own.

"I had no idea, Saotome. Congratulations," Panagopoulos said as he noted their hands with apeculiar look in his eyes, one Ranma realised was suggestive of some sort of history. "Wonderful to see you on your feet again. We were all worried at the office when we heard that you were going to be some sort of cripple for life. Hope he hasn't weighed you down too much, Kiki-Love. I trust we'll be seeing you both next weekend?""

Ranma had no idea what he meant and turned to Nabiki with a questioning glance. She looked uneasy, which made him nervous.

"Good evening to you, Vasillis," she said, dismissing him with a nod.

"You two have a past?" Ranma asked once Panagopoulos was out of earshot.

"Not the kind he wishes," she answered dryly. "F-#king prick."

Ranma felt a smug grin coming on his face, but then it vanished as he remembered Panagopoulos' parting shot. "What did he mean about next weekend?"

That was when she told him about the private docent tour of Modigliani portraits scheduled the following Friday immediately after work hours. One of her patients with old Balliol ties had organised the event through the regional alumni society to promote awareness and raise funds for the autoimmune diseases research program with which she was affiliated at the School of Medicine. Panagopoulos knew because he was active in the Oxford Society.

Ranma felt the blood drain from his face as he listened. He was sickened by the ironic, growing realisation that rose up in the pit of his stomach. He knew why she hadn't told him.

"You're ashamed of me, aren't you," he said quietly.

Nabiki appeared visibly stricken. The look on her beautiful face was painful for him to see, but he had to know.

"No," she replied, a firm set to her jaw. "I'm not ashamed. Don't ever think that. I've told you how proud of you I am. I'm not lying."

He mulled over her words quietly for amoment. "So will we be like the two-character play we just saw then?You're going to patronise me like this?"

She tugged on his hand, silently pleading with him to follow her to a nearby bench.

"You're right. I should have asked you, respected you enough to let you choose. It's just that I've watched you, seen how much you fight and how much you suffer, and I didn't want to burden you or to expose you to people like Vasillis," she confessed.

“I see,” he bit out tersely.

She took his right hand in both of hers and started to trace the lines on his palm with her index finger. Her eyes fell on the heavy boot on his right foot.

"I can only imagine what it must be like, and I don't know if I could be strong like you are if it were me. Boyd is a well-known medical ethicist who famously wrote about how sickness and illness are two different things. They are related but separate aspects of the human response to a disease. I've seen sickness many times, and I've cared for hundreds of people who have what you have, but I still don't know much about illness. Most doctors actually don't. I was too young when Ilost my Mum, and my father was not one to talk to his daughters about these types of things. Please be patient with me, Ranma. Teach me. I want to learn from you…."

# # # ##

They were at the coat check stand in the museum lobby, having just arrived from the station.

Ranma felt his eyes burst in their sockets at the sight of Nabiki as she slipped out of her smart, double-breasted royal blue overcoat. A long silk shawl with brilliant, bold, flaming strokes of crimson, royal blue, yellow, and orange was wrapped over her shoulders. She was wearing a two-part fit-and-flare midi evening dress. The top was a black, long-sleeved turtleneck and the bottom a heavy, brilliant turquoise floral-print A-line silk skirt with white orchids accented with pink and violet hues. Her long, shapely legs, clad in black tights, were accentuated by a pair of black patent leather stilettos.

"You like?" she asked demurely.

He nodded wordlessly. Whatever the expression was on his face, he was pleased to find that it made her smile and that the smile reached to the corners of her eyes.

Her benefactor was a middle-aged bespectacled uncle of a man named Sir Edward Christopher George-Chamberlain. His shoulders were visibly bowed under the weight of years of suffering from disease and treatments, but he retained an undeniably intact quiet dignity. His opening remarks began with appropriate acknowledgements and words of thanks. He touched briefly on the vastly unappreciated but no less horrific morbidity and mortality burden of his rare disease, his own close brushes with death, and his fortune to have had access to the University and the finest medicine in the world. He concluded with gracious words of appreciation for Nabiki and her people and how they had given him back a life when he and everyone around him had not thought it could be done, when everyone else had given up.

"God save the Queen!" he concluded. A polite refrain from the audience answered, echoing throughout the lobby. Ranma absently noted that Nabiki did not join the chorus.

She rose and followed with her own brief but gracious words of thanks to everyone for coming.

The tour itself followed.

Panagopoulos came to him immediately after the tour concluded and while Nabiki was away freshening up in one of the powder rooms. Ranma had done his best to hide the truth from public view, but by the end of the tour, he was exhausted. He was stretched out on a bench trying to recover.

"I see you're holding your own," Vasillis remarked. Ranma felt a wave of indignant fury rising inside himself. It was obvious that Panagopoulos was not just referring to his physical condition.

"My dear Vasillis, are you shamelessly self-promoting yourself again?" a male voice suddenly cut in."And this time with my friend, Doctor Saotome. My word, Boy!"

Ranma looked up and was surprised to see none other than Sir Edward standing over him offering up a dram of scotch whiskey, properly in a tulip-shaped glass. A seething crimson blaze exploded over Vasillis' face as he curtly excused himself and made his exit.

"Unfortunately, the world is too full of pretty, vapid children like him who think that name-dropping, money, and titles should define your identity," the older man said ruefully once Panagopoulos was out of hearing range. "Oxford has excelled at producing quite a few of these lately, but perhaps it's okay so long as you can get maybe one Kiki Tendou for every so many of those. Edward George-Chamberlain," he said, offering his hand for a shake. His grip was surprisingly firm. "So, you are Kiki's special friend."

"She told you that?"

The older man smiled. "Not exactly, but I am an old man with two daughters of his own. She merely said she was bringing an old friend. I've known Kiki a long time though, ever since she and my younger one were housemates in their Uni days. She never brings company to these sorts of things, even when it probably would not hurt for her to do so, ergo you must indeed be special for her."

Ranma did not know what to say.

"Cheers," Sir Edward said, tipping his own glass. "Don't worry. Kiki wouldn't mind," he added with a conspiratorial wink.

Ranma was confused.

"Live a little. Otherwise, what's the point of going through it all. Yes?"

Now he understood. Those words had been Nabiki's to him that Night. "She told you?" he asked nervously, referring to his disease.

Sir Edward laughed. "Of course not, my boy! You should know your lady friend better than that. She would never with that sort of thing. No, I can just see it, being someone myself who knows something of what you must be going through. That boot on your foot and that crutch on your arm are not from physical trauma."

"Oh." Ranma was relieved."Well, then," he said, regarding the glass in hand and then nosing the contents before taking a small sip. Something was triggered in a remote memory. "Islay single malt?"

"Bravo!" the old man exclaimed with delight, impressed that his companion knew at least that much."Bruichladdich Black Art 9.1, 1992."

Ranma's eyes widened. The contents of the glass were nearly as old as he was. "Slàinte mhath," he offered with new appreciation.

"Slàinte mhath."

They talked pleasantly for some time after. Ranma savoured the brilliant warmth that shot through his body with each sip. He had not tasted whiskey of any sort for years. Their reflections on scotch turned to further reflections on Modigliani's short and tragic life that then segued into a discussion of social and wealth disparities around the globe that remained among other things. When Ranma was ready to be on his feet again, Sir Edward led him around and introduced him to various people until Nabiki eventually rejoined them. At the end of the evening, Ranma found himself sincerely hoping they would be able to meet again soon. He could not have known that they would never have that chance to speak with each other again.

The old man would be dead by the end of the following month.

# # # ##

"He really likes you," Nabiki mumbled as they lay snuggled together on the blue couch beneath her three-panel Kandinsky later that evening.

"He told ya that?"

"No, but it was obvious. The alcohol on your breath. There was no scotch being offered at the bar tonight. He was sharing with you something he brought himself."

"Oh. Right. I was wondering where ya were. You were gone for a while."

He felt the warmth of Nabiki's soft smile as she answered him in the darkness. "Sometimes, I just like watching you. I hope that's okay. You really charmed him - and everyone else too, save for Vasilis of course."

"I like the old man too," Ranma admitted. "What exactly was he knighted for by the way?"

"Investment banker turned biomedical philanthropist."

"He seems like the ideal Medici to your Machiavelli."

Nabiki laughed again, though it was now somewhat strained. "It's not quite like that, but, of course, a seasoned international policy expert might see it that way," she said lightly, but her voice betrayed her hurt.

"Sorry, bad metaphor," he offered, moving quickly to correct his unintended faux pas. He wondered if he was maybe somewhat buzzed. "Contrary to what everyone assumes, Machiavelli was actually a pretty honest and upright guy. His only real mistake was just being practical, but that's not a crime."

"Nice save, Saotome. I'm impressed."

"Did it work?"

He felt the lines and curves of her lithe, athletic body melting against him under the rich fabric of her dress. Her form was warm and fluid again in his arms. She nodded wordlessly against his chest, gently nuzzling the top of her head against the base of his chin.

"Were ya able to draw in what you need to stay afloat?"

"Yes, for quite a while actually. Thank you," she answered quietly, her ear over his heart.

He tightened his grip around her as he took in the moment in which he now found himself. Never in amillion years could he have imagined himself here with the beautiful, crazy, larger-than-life conundrum that Nabiki Tendou turned out to be: a fierce and fiery dragon; a sophisticated and demure lady; a sad, lonely girl misconstrued as a soulless Cheshire cat that delighted in tormenting others. A sense of deep pride swelled up from within him as he thought of how she had chosen to be here, now, and with him of all the billions of people in the vast, crazy, and messed-up world in which they lived – at least for this moment.

"I'm proud to be with you, Nabiki," he said. "I'm sorry if I haven't told you that."

Her beautiful eyes shimmered in the darkness in response, moved and suddenly deep and full of profound, unspoken meaning - perhaps even the potential of great promises. "Hold me, Ranma. Just hold me," she whispered as she kissed him fully on the lips.

It was the first time she ever kissed him.

The sweet peach blossom scent of her flooded over him now with the crisp freshness of ozone-rich air when sunlight peaks through clouds on a rainy day. The old man's final surprising words of brazen earnestness in private to him earlier before Nabiki had rejoined them were here again now, reverberating loudly in between the ears of his mind. They locked smartly, miraculously into a seemingly pre-ordained mold of unexpected affirmation.

Young people too often waste time which they don't realise is not actually theirs to have. Forgive an old man for being an old man, but I think someone should tell you this at least once about someone like Kiki. Girls like these do not ever show or give out their hearts. When they do, it is only once. It is for keeps. And it is forever.

Ranma eagerly, hungrily, greedily answered Nabiki with his own lips. "Nabiki," he breathed. "Nabiki, I –"

She cut him off, touching her finger to his lips as she gently shook her head. There would be time for talk later."Live in the moment with me, Ranma," she said. "Just be with me- with me only and fully in this moment."

Life was good – very, very good.

# # # ##

He awoke the next morning to find Nabiki already up. It was Saturday. She was seated at the island in her kitchen with her laptop, her eyes in a daze, mumbling numbly to herself while watching a BBC America news stream. The words were neither English nor Japanese. The broadcast was live from a New York suburb called New Rochelle.

"Everything okay?" he asked, announcing himself.

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky, that would be the splendor of the mighty One. Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," she answered, now in English.

He frowned, confused."Oppenheimer…?"

"Bhagavad Gita, from a seminar series back from my Uni days. Krishna reveals his true form as Vishnu to the warrior prince Arjuna," she answered in Japanese. She turned to him with worried eyes, her hands trembling. "I was wrong, Ranma. It's here. They've quarantined that whole town outside of New York. People are dying, and they will keep on dying."

He reached out instinctively and held her."We'll get through it," he said, willing that all the confidence he could muster should be audible in his voice. "It's not exactly the first time in human history that an epidemic has broken out in the world."

She reached up and took hold of his arms, as if bracing herself as she whispered another strange word he had never heard before.

"Aequanimitas…."

"Nabiki…?"

"Latin from an old essay by Osler talking about the key traits that make a good doctor," she explained."It's the DOM motto. 'Aequanimitas' is imperturbability, coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clarity of judgement in moments of grave peril. I think they will be calling on us soon to do things."

Panic seized him. He was gripped by the sense that something precious and dear was in imminent danger of slipping away. The reasons why and the ways that it would, however, he could not understand.

"I'll be here, Nabiki. I'll be with you – no matter what," he found himself blurting aloud.

Her face turned soft and gentle as she studied him. There was an unexpected sadness in her eyes as she tenderly brushed a lock of his hair out of his own. "Oh, Ranma. Brave and foolish Ranma…."

There it was - the irrefutable confirmation. He had done something wrong. "What do ya mean?" he asked nervously.

"I know you mean what you say, Ranma. Believe me when I tell you that I know you do. That's not it. It's just that things are going to be different now. When, how, how quickly, I don't know. You don't know either. I don't think anyone does."

"Nabiki, I don't know what's going on, what you're thinking, but whatever it is – "

Her finger was already there again on his lips to cut him off as she gently shook her head from side to side, trying her best to smile. "You're right. It's me that's being stupid. Whatever happens, thank you for wanting to be here, for wanting me."

Within days, there was also Boston, Seattle, L.A. as well as Paris, London, the whole of Italy – anywhere and everywhere that could be named. By mid-week, a memo from David Malpas had gone out stating that Bank HQ would be closed indefinitely to all in-person traffic. Tedros Ghebreyesus followed the day after with the WHO press conference that officially marked the end of the way the world had been. A transcript of the remarks had been circulated to Bankwide staff after, ensuring that no one could not know:

In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled. There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives. Thousands more are fighting for their lives in hospitals. In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher.

WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock, and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.

We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic….