2. #Mundane, October 2017

Mike didn't want to sit down. Imagination sketched the crutches flying across the waiting room when Daya returned for him, while his body wriggled feebly on the floor. She took pity on him after one comic fall about a century ago, but there was no need to overdo it.

The odds were in favor of it being a one-of-a-kind occurrence, not a systematic adoration of a klutz. Hence, he parked himself in a low-traffic corner, a granite statue of Commander in the graveyard, watching for his Donna Anna to saunter in.

Speaking of sauntering... Mike brought the crutches forward—the way an annoyingly cheerful nurse had taught him—and progressed two feet. Now, for a brief respite. Or not.

The silvery SantaFe nudged into the pickup zone—an odd experience, something akin to seeing his legs walk on their own (a terrible example in this instance)—and Daya hopped out, slamming the door shut. So, the fierce sprite did not like his tall SUV. He wondered why. Did she feel that the objects of known size gave away her miniature stature? In his humble opinion, the energy packed inside manipulated the space-time continuum, enlarging her presence.

That energy pulsated about her when Daya cut through the sliding doors into the waiting room. He managed five swinging steps while she closed the rest of the distance without so much as breaking a sweat. Fierce, beautifully fierce.

"You must really hate paying for parking," Mike said at the same time as the phone buzzed inside her jacket.

She glanced at it, and life drained out of her face.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, while his gamer's mind rooted through potential personal catastrophes. He shushed it. Nobody burned her home village, you dumbass. Ogres didn't torture her lover to death. This is Calgary, not Baldur's Gate.

She gaped at her phone. "My skates. They don't want to buy my skates."

"Okay. It's okay."

She was obviously crestfallen, and it made no sense. On any other day, he'd have taken her by the elbow, sat her down, bought her a cup of coffee to tease out the tragedy bit by bit. But today he had plunged from the towering height of a curb, ended up in an air-cast with crutches, not to mention a pouch of industrial-strength tylenol between his teeth. These fun accessories limited his powers of caffeinating the distraught just when he needed them the most. In video games, assassins leaped from the accurately rendered historic landmarks hundreds of feet tall and walked it off. Fantasy beats reality, zero to one million.

He pointed his crutch at a bank of three unoccupied chairs next to a woman with three vibrantly healthy kids and one piteously coughing runt of the family.

"Parking," Daya moaned, still staring dazedly at the phone screen, as if willing away the heartbreaking news.

This wasn't the circumstances under which he'd enjoyed watching her moan. He chased the flippant, painkiller-induced thought away and stuck to reality: "You can't drive with your hands shaking. Tell me what's wrong with your skates."

A lurch towards the vacant seat could mean: I will brook no argument. Or not, but it was the best he could offer. Luckily, the fear of making a spectacle of himself proved to be exaggerated. His foot couldn't carry weight, but he used it as a balancing point, not hit the fascinated minors with his crutches, and ended up with his butt in the traditional position. Thank goodness he decided against kneeling into the chair. The prospect of fighting back to his feet scared him, but the wise men live in the moment.

Daya propped the crutches and perched next to him. "My car broke down. I had a buyer for my skates, so I paid for the car. Now they won't buy it, and there is rent due."

"Aha. I see." This sounded so trivial, he barely kept the smile off his face. Skates must be eighty bucks new, or something like that, not the end of the world. "I'll be happy to lend you a few bucks to tide you over."

Her eyes widened in disbelief, then the dark arcs of her brows drew closer, in an alarmingly pretty frown. Malaka, he cursed in Ancient Greek, or so Assassin Creed led him to believe. Did I step on a cultural landmine?

"Ah, if money lending is a problem, can I just help? You went out of your way for me this morning. I would probably still be sitting on that parking lot crying without you."

Her breath recovered, trembling lips stretching into a brave smile. "You don't understand, Mike. I'm not talking about Canadian Tire skates. They are a pro figure skating gear, fifteen hundred new. Even if you had a few hundred to spare, I can't borrow this much from a stranger. It's not proper."

"You are not of my world," the damsel told the bumbling hero. Mike suddenly wished that he was of her world, someone who knew the difference between different skates and ran uphill for no good reason.

Daya used to be a bright jacket beyond the window at work, at the VITAL, a reliable splash of color on the surrounding landscape of boulders in a dry ditch, twisted fir-trees, and tufts of grass on the soccer fields. Now she had a name and knitted fingers and a bit of a backstory. A figure skater. What else could this miniature ball of energy be? Oh, come on. Like you had known any.

Meanwhile, she braided her hair into a soft cable about a wrist thick, and tied it off. The band flashed like a stop-sign against the black of the braid.

"I'll sell the car. I don't know why I snapped. My father, he kept telling me I'd end up in a homeless shelter here, so... whatever. Let's go. I'm good." To show just how good she now felt, Daya drummed a stirring march on her thighs.

"Uh-huh." In the games, gazillion pixel-hearted supplicants ran to Mike's avatar with every little thing. Free the slaves, Mike! Find my dear dead mother's necklace! Deliver our best cow from the bandits or our children will starve! Once, his martial arts prodigy had to shovel manure, but he couldn't recall if it delivered the slaves or the children.

In reality though, the neighbor across the hall asked if he had mustard, and his coworkers traded shifts. Dire perils were out there, but they hid in plain sight.

Preoccupied with this paradox, Mike arose out of his chair and followed Daya on crutches without a dramatic interlude.

"How's your foot?" Daya asked, starting the car.

His response was automatic, and that's after he'd obsessed over every detail of his misadventure for a few hours: describing the fall to triage, a paper tag around his wrist, seeing his foot purple and swollen, enduring the X-Ray tech turning the unfortunate limb this way and that as tears sprang in his eyes, numbing to pain, the doctor rattling off what was routine stuff to a medic but bloody important to Mike, and, finally, that cheerful nurse with her late-Medieval ritual of cast and crutches.

"Three broken toes, with five pages of instructions on how to survive it."

Yep, that summed it up, but no longer had power to excite him. Instead, he brooded over Daya's rent, and how to hand in the quest's solution to the sprite behind the wheel. Not that she had sent him on the quest, it's just he wanted to volunteer.

She handed him the opening. "Where do you live, Mike?"

"Just drive to VITAL, I will give you directions from there." He cleared his throat. Found a speck of dust on his glasses. Glanced out of the window. By Grabthar's Hammer, he was running out of Deerfoot Trail. The drive there, when he was in pain, took an eternity and a half.

"My name," he started, "is Michael Giacomo Wilson. I hold a master's degree from UBC in History and Archival Studies."

She gave him a sideways glance, that pretty little frown in evidence. "Thanks. I'll mention it in your biography I'm writing."

"I work at the library at VITAL. Where you work too."

"Uh-huh."

This sounded so much better in his head, but there was nothing to it now. Next time he'd go for a haiku.

"I didn't want to sound creepy, that's why I'm giving you my CV. I own a condo in Heatherton, and I don't use the spare bedroom. That bedroom is yours if you help me dodge my mom's best intentions, help me around the house and get me back to walking — Hey, careful!"

The tires made a nerve-rattling sound as they caught the grate on the shoulder, but Daya straightened it.

She stared straight ahead, over the wheel. He cleared his throat.

"Ahem, for as long as you take to fix your cash flow. From the five pages of medical mumbo-jumbo, at least three are about physiotherapy and recovery workouts. Judging by those hill sprints, you're a miracle worker. I want to hire you."

After the pause stretched a little too long, he added a tentative, "And... you can prove your dad wrong?"

Daya chuckled. "I love my dad, actually. All my family."

"Sorry, if I'm projecting. My mother is... well, she isn't the warmest woman," Mike said.

The frown between her brows deepened. "I don't know... I'm grateful, Mike, and it sounds convenient—"

"I get it. I wish we had weeks to ponder, but it's an emergency... Give it a thought, okay? If my credentials do not ease all concerns as to my virtue, I will not be climbing any maidens' balconies for at least eight weeks for obvious health reasons." And I swore off pretty ladies a long time ago, but who would believe that.

Once he said his piece, he gave into exhaustion, and opened his mouth again only to give her the directions. It was 2017, the roommates of different gender were not unheard of, but if she was uncomfortable with taking on a job of a live-in caregiver, so be it. On Monday, he'll call his mother to fly over.

She walked him to his condo's doors and looked at the building as if it was a dungeon's entrance and a treasury rolled in one. Which they were in the games, but this was life.

"You know my number. Or you can find me in the library once I'm done wallowing in misery and sleep off codeine they fed me at the clinic."

"Thank you."

***

Mike woke up in the middle of the night, thirsty and with the air-cast crushing his foot like an Inquisition torture device. Whimpering, he grabbed the pump from the nightstand, to deflate the damn thing, and tear it off, off, off. He scratched with a vigor of a stray cat, wincing at his grotesquely swollen limb and the pain that knifed in mercilessly the moment the cast was off.

"Elevate," he moaned, navigating the treacherous terrain of his kitchen, the crutch digging into his armpit—yes, I'm doing it wrong, go to hell—"Ice, ice, I need ice..."

The stove clock blinked closer and closer to three am, the most miserable time of day, as he pounded the ice tray against the sink, tempted to screech like a frustrated monkey. Next he needed a glass, and a baggie, and a towel, more hopping, more misery...

Mike pressed his forehead to the cabinet, counting to ten. Right, we all hate fetching stuff, but we do it anyway. Come on. Or do you want to call mom? She'll jump at the opportunity to come and straighten out your life for you. Maybe even bring Don along for a good measure.

The cell beeped on the counter while he was gulping down the second glass of water over the sink. Someone else robbed of sleep, most likely a bot after his money.

He pushed the phone closer anyway and groaned. His glasses rested peacefully just where he'd left them, in the bedroom. Well, zoom in was there for a reason. He propped himself against the counter one-footed, scrolled one-handed and squinted at the foggy letters until they formed words.

Thank you again for the job offer. I'll move in tomorrow.

It took him the better part of an hour to collect the glass shards from the hardwood floor. Don't drink and read, Butterfingers, he chided himself and laughed sheepishly at his own joke. Another hour or two, and it wouldn't be creepy for him to answer the text.