“Don’t be a child,” Iggy said, shining the light into Alex’s mouth. “Growing a tooth in a few days’ time isn’t pleasant, but it’s vastly superior to the alternative. Now lie down and let’s see to the rest of you.”
Alex plucked ineffectually at his shirt, but Iggy produced an angled pair of scissors and simply cut it off him. “Now lie down,” he said.
Iggy took half the pile of clean towels and tucked them under Alex’s head, then he retrieved the first vial from the end of the line on the counter and pulled out the stopper, breaking the lead seal.
“Drink up,” he said, passing it to Alex.
Alex painfully raised the vial to his lips. He had to turn a little on his side so as not to spill the mustard-colored liquid. It tasted vile, as all alchemical potions did, but he choked it down, then lay back down with a groan.
“Now,” Iggy said, moving around the table to examine Alex’s left side. “Let’s have a look at your wound.” He touched the jagged hole and Alex flinched. “Easy now,” he said. He probed the wound with his fingers and Alex sucked air in a long hiss.
“I’ll give you something for the pain,” Iggy said.
“No,” Alex gasped. “I’ve got an appointment with the Broker. I can’t afford to sleep.”
“And I know that,” Iggy said, handing him a vial with a liquid somewhere between red and pink. “Bottoms up, lad.”
Alex drank that one and immediately felt his hands go numb. The sensation seemed to crawl up his extremities, starting at his fingers and toes and moving inward. In a moment he couldn’t feel or move. His brain seemed to go fuzzy as well. He knew that should bother him, that he needed to be alert, but he just didn’t seem to care.
Iggy moved in and out of his vision, as he lay looking up at the light fixture on the ceiling. It was old and fancy, like most of the house, made of iron with a complex pattern of vines and ivy clinging to a lattice. The magelights inside were made of some kind of quartz with a yellow tint that always made the kitchen seem sunny, even in the middle of the night.
He saw a flash of light as Iggy used a rune, and then another flash sometime later. Then he felt nothing.
“Rink iss,” a voice that sounded remarkably like Iggy’s came from somewhere very far away. Suddenly his perspective changed as he was pulled up into a sitting position.
“Drink this,” he heard more clearly as the end of a glass vial was shoved into his mouth. Reflexively, Alex gulped down the liquid and the world suddenly came crashing down on him. He doubled over, swearing, as the left side of his body felt like someone was twisting it in a vice.
“Getting shot hurt less than this,” he croaked.
Iggy put his hand on Alex’s right shoulder and helped to ease him back up.
“Just breathe,” he said. “The reason it hurts so much is because the bullet bounced off a rib and hit another. You’re very lucky.”
“Funny,” Alex said, his breathing so shallow that it sounded like a panting dog. “I don’t feel lucky.”
Iggy laughed. “Give it a few minutes,” he said. “And you’re lucky because that bullet nicked your spleen. Once I moved it, you started bleeding for real. It was touch and go there for a few minutes.”
The pain started to dull and Alex found he could take regular breaths again.
“I guess I am lucky then,” he said. “Lucky I know you. Thanks, old man.”
Iggy chuckled. “You won’t be good as new for a week or two,” he said. “But as long as you weren’t planning to beat the truth out of the Broker, you should be able to question him just fine.” He pressed a rune paper into Alex’s hands. “It’s the last disguise rune I gave you,” he said. “I modified it so you’ll look like you did before. Should help with your interrogation. I assume you’ve got something interesting planned?”
Alex chuckled and instantly regretted it. “You know that pulp book of yours that’s just a rip off of The Pit and the Pendulum?” he asked Iggy.
“I rather like that book,” Iggy said with an indignant look.
“Well it gave me an idea for getting the truth out of the Broker without laying a finger on him.”
Iggy’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t know you read my books,” he said with a thinly veiled look of amusement.
“You said I’d be good as new in a week or two?” Alex said, changing the subject. “Why can’t American doctors heal people that fast?”
“Oh, they can,” Iggy said with a smile. “If you have the money. I used two major restoration runes on you along with tincture of purity, oil of regrowth, and a tonic of binding. You’d pay two thousand dollars for a doctor to give you that kind of treatment in an American hospital.”
“Two…” Alex couldn’t even finish naming the amount. “How am I going to pay you back for that?”
“There’s no need, lad,” he said. Iggy patted him on his good shoulder. “I’ve had most of that stuff since my navy days. I’m just glad it was still good all these years later.” Iggy walked away chuckling.
“You’re kidding about that stuff being expired, right?” Alex called after him, but Iggy just kept on going, right up the stairs to his room. Alex thought about going after him and getting a better answer, but one look around the room stopped him. Bloody medical instruments littered the counter by the stove where the still-steaming pot of water sat, cooling. Equally bloody towels littered the tile floor and the canvas on the table was wet with alchemical serums and blood. It had been close to nine when he’d arrived at the brownstone and the clock on the wall now showed just before eleven.
Alex had been on the table for almost two hours. As bad as that was for him, Iggy was in his seventies. The physical and mental strain of saving Alex’s life couldn’t have been easy to bear.
He slid gingerly down from the table and straightened up. Already the pain in his side was dwindling to a persistent, throbbing ache. Limping to the little table Iggy used to write his correspondence, Alex pulled out a pad of paper and left a note promising to clean up the kitchen as soon as he was done with the Broker. He hoped Iggy wouldn’t ignore it and do it himself. Alex owed him big.
With one last look at the kitchen-turned-operating-theater, Alex made his way slowly upstairs and stripped out of the rest of his ruined clothes. On top of everything, he would need a new suit. He only had two and this one was beyond saving.
Iggy had cut Alex’s shirt away to work on his side, but his left arm was now bound in a sling. He tried moving his left arm but that caused so much pain he almost blacked out. Working carefully with his right hand, he finally got it off so he could shower, holding his left arm rigid against his chest. Alex knew that the hole where the bullet had entered would be closed by now, so he suspected that showering would be okay. The alchemical potions that closed wounds were relatively cheap.
After a frustrating shower where he had to learn to scrub himself in whole new ways, Alex dressed in his remaining suit and fished his vault key out of his ruined slacks.
“All right, Mr. Brewer,” he said, putting on his hat. “It’s time you and I had a chat.”
Since it was after midnight, he had to walk the painful three blocks to Central Park to get a cab. The cabby wasn’t surprised that someone was out at this time of night — it was New York after all — but he did pause for a moment when Alex told him their destination.
“The Brooklyn Bridge?” he said. “You ain’t thinking about jumping or anything like that, are ya?”
Alex assured him that he had no such intentions, and then just sat back and enjoyed the ride. The driver let him off right as they reached the bridge and Alex waited for him to be on his way before pulling out his rune book. Alex had crossed the bridge many times and recently he’d seen work scaffolding on one of the pillars in the middle of the span. He walked out over the bridge, along the side of the road until he reached the area, then stepped past the construction barricade and onto the scaffolding.