All the Time in the World (English)

Chapter 6 - I Want to See

Guy turned in his sleep, and the book fell to the floor with a thud.
"Let me sleep, Allan, I'm tired," he mumbled, still engrossed in the last remnants of a dream, then he opened his eyes and sighed, realizing that Allan could never disturb his sleep again because he had been dead for eight centuries, just like everyone else.
He got up and picked up the book from the floor, putting it on his lap. He opened it, carefully browsing it to the first illustration, an image of an archer dressed in green, surrounded by a group of companions and by the green of the forest trees.
Obviously, the characters depicted in that drawing didn't look like Robin and the others, but the artist had been able to grasp Robin's cheeky expression and the friendship that tied those men. Guy looked at the other drawings, pausing to look at the one representing Lady Marian.
"It doesn't look like you at all..." He whispered. "This is just a pretty girl, she has nothing to do with your courage and strength."
Despite these words, he could not stop touching the illustration with his fingertips before turning the page again.
That book was different from the ones he had seen in his time: it wasn't written by hand but it had been obtained by a mechanical process that allowed to print many identical copies of the same volume in a short time. The letters were clear and well-defined, but Guy was still getting used to reading that kind of print, so he was still at the beginning of the story and he was proceeding slowly.
He opened the book at the chapter that made him curious and that saddened him at the same time: the encounter between Guy of Gisborne and Robin Hood.
It was strange to see his name written on the pages of a book, strange to think that after eight centuries someone could still remember him. Instead, it was sad to realize that the only reason why people remembered him was for his rivalry with Robin Hood.
Guy had tried to read all that part: no one was talking about his alliance with Robin, no one seemed to remember that he had also tried to defend the castle in the name of the king. He was depicted as a man dressed in black with a grim face, dressed in an eerie cloak made from the skin of a horse, complete with head and mane.
He found himself sadly thinking that even his faithful horse had been dust for many centuries now, and that he would never groom again his dark mane at the end of a difficult day.
He hurried to send those thoughts away before he found himself in tears again.
If the sheriff could see him now, he would have a great deal of fun mocking him because of his weakness, because of the sadness that swelled in his heart and that made him burst into tears suddenly, without a real reason.
It had been a week since he discovered that he was in a future, strange, and terrifying world, and he had spent most of that time sleeping, completely devoid of energy.
To give up to sleep, for him who had always been tormented by nightmares, now was a blessing: he sank into a series of strange and twisted dreams that often frightened him, but that were also the only way to see again the faces of the people who he had known. Often there were Robin and Allan, sometimes the outlaws and other times just ordinary people: Locksley peasants who he barely remembered, or castle guards.
Never Marian.
Perhaps it was the right punishment for killing her, but the girl never appeared to him, not since he woke up in the future, and he wished with all his heart that he could be able to see her face again, at least in his dreams.
Guy watched the drawing that represented the moment when Robin Hood killed Guy of Gisborne and he thought that it was the most wrong illustration of the book. He and Robin had become friends and they had fought side by side, defending each other, the outlaw would never kill him in such a brutal way.
It was all wrong: it was Robin who had died and he, who was the villain of the story, the one who, in the book, died at the end of his chapter because he deserved it, he was alive eight centuries after the death of everyone else.
Guy closed the book and put it under the pillow.
He considered the idea of going back to sleep, then he decided to get out of bed.
Soon after, he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at his own image and wondering why he was the only one still alive. If he wasn't crazy and he had really arrived in a future where his wounds were curable, Guy couldn't understand why.
Why didn't such a miracle happen for Robin or Marian? He thought of Allan, as he had seen him the last time: his blue eyes wide open, staring at the sky, and his body pierced by arrows.
Why not him? Allan was an opportunistic thief, but even he would deserve to live more than Guy.
Allan was my friend. Even though I never told him.
Guy recalled that last, shameful betrayal when all the outlaws had accused Allan of having betrayed them again, and the young man had sought support in each of them, in vain.
When he asked Guy if at least he believed him, Gisborne had shrugged.
He would never forget the wounded look of the young man as he was tied by the others.
The worst thing was that Guy even believed him, but he didn't say anything because he knew that the outlaw barely tolerated him and they wouldn't listen to his words.
That was the last time he saw Allan alive, then the sheriff killed him, and Guy had sworn to himself that Vaisey would have paid for that too.
Instead, he was defeated.
Guy hoped that at least Robin and Archer were able to take their revenge, then he realized how absurd his desire was.
Whatever happened, they were all dead now, Vaisey included.
Guy let out a bitter laugh: knowing that the sheriff had been dust for at least eight centuries while he still lived was however a satisfaction, though perhaps the fact of being still alive was more a curse than anything else.
He went out of the bathroom, hearing that somebody was knocking at the door, and he saw Dr. Robinson entering the room. The doctor was wearing the same orange outfit he had when he had rescued him. Guy didn't remember much of those moments, but that brilliant color was fixed in his memory.
The doctor smiled.
"I'm glad to see you standing. In the last few days I have been very busy with helicopter rescue and I didn't have time to visit my patients, but I see that Dr. Little did a good job.
"Where's Lady Alicia?"
"Today is her free day, so I'll visit you, I hope you don't mind too much. Lie on the bed, I have to check your wounds."
Guy meekly obeyed and he let the doctor do his work, but inwardly he felt a little lost. Since he had discovered the date of the current year and had that nervous breakdown, doctor Little had always been there to take care of him and to comfort him in the worst moments.
Knowing that today he couldn't count on her support made him vaguely anxious.
"Well, I'd say we can now remove these stitches," Jack said, after examining the wound, now almost healed. "You will feel a bit of discomfort, but if I hurt you, tell me."
"Does it mean that I recovered?" Guy asked while the doctor was working.
"It means that the wound has healed, but for a while you have to avoid making efforts or lifting weights. It will take some time before you can be considered completely recovered. When we rescued you, I wasn't sure that you would survive, now I can confess it."
"I was sure I was dead."
"You went very close to die. You have been very lucky because the people that found you were able to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation, so they had been able to keep you alive until our arrival. Well, all done now, you can dress up."
Guy got up from the bed and wore his t-shirt again, giving a quick glance at the scar on his belly.
Later he would look better at it with the help of the mirror, but it was already easy to understand that that scar would remain on his skin for all his life.
"How did they keep me alive?"
"They compressed your chest to simulate the heartbeat so blood could keep circulating in your body, and they blew air in your lungs, breathing for you."
"How did they know what to do? They were healers too?"
"No, you don't need to be a doctor to do that, anyone can learn the procedure."
"Me too?"
"Why not? If you wish, I can show you how to do it, using one of the dummies we use to practice and to organize first aid classes. For now, you can't put it into practice because it's quite physically challenging, but I can teach you the theory."
Guy nodded, fascinated by that idea. Since he was a boy, he had been trained to fight and to kill his enemies, and it seemed almost impossible to learn to save lives instead of taking them.
Maybe, if in the past he'd known that technique, Marian wouldn't have died...
Had I not planted a sword in her stomach, she wouldn't have died!
Guy struggled to reject those thoughts. He couldn't change the past and continuing to think about it would only drag him back into despair.
"Yes, I would like to learn it," he said in a low voice, and the doctor smiled.
"We'll organize that, then."
Jack Robinson took some notes on the medical record, and, when he looked back at Guy, he noticed that the other man was staring at him with an uncertain expression.
"Is everything alright, Guy?"
Gisborne seemed to make a decision.
"You use the flying device, don't you?"
"The helicopter?"
Guy nodded.
"Lady Alicia said that it has nothing to do with magic, and that it uses some mechanisms to fly. Is it true?"
The doctor looked at him curiously, wondering where he wanted to go with that discourse. Alicia Little had informed her colleagues of the panic breakdown that her patient had at the sight of cars and of the helicopter, and she had asked them to be cautious when they talked to Guy, to assist him when he asked for some explanation.
"It's true. It's a very complicated device, but there is nothing magic about it."
Guy took a deep breath.
"I want to see it."
Jack looked at him, surprised.
"The helicopter?"
"Yes."
The doctor wondered if it was a good idea, but Guy seemed rather determined.
"Are you sure? Alicia told me what happened a few days ago..."
"That's why I have to see it. My mother often said that usually we are afraid of what we don't know. And I'm tired of being scared."
Jack Robinson thought for a moment, then nodded.
"All right, come with me."
"Now?"
"Yes."
The doctor went to the door and stopped to wait for him.
Guy hesitated, and for a moment he was tempted to tell him that he had changed his mind, that he would remain in the safe tranquility of his room, but he immediately recovered, and followed the doctor out of the door.
The corridor was much louder than his room, full of sounds, lights and strange things that he didn't understand, but Guy repeated to himself what Alicia had already explained to him, that in eight centuries mankind had invented many mechanical devices to simplify life, and that it was normal if he didn't understand how they worked seeing them for the first time, but that eventually he would learn.
He stared in surprise at a luminous panel attached to a wall on which pictures were moving, but he didn't say anything and he just followed the doctor to the lift door leading to the roof.
"Should we get in there?" He asked, looking at the inside of the cabin. "Why?"
"To go upstairs."
"Entering this sort of closet?"
Jack Robinson thought Alicia had not exaggerated: their patient seemed to really ignore the functioning of modern technology. Sometimes he had to deal with psychiatric patients claiming to be characters of the past, but those people rarely were astonished by trivial objects such as televisions, telephones, and lifts.
Guy of Gisborne, on the other hand, was genuinely fascinated by every little thing, even the most common as it could be a ball pen or the zipper of the sweatshirt they had given to him, and then he knew perfectly every detail of the habits and life of medieval people.
If he was pretending, he was probably the best actor who Jack Robinson had ever met in his life.
"It's called a lift. A system of cables and counterweights make the cabin to go up."
Guy accepted the explanation without asking any other questions, and they both got upstairs.
The other helicopter rescue team came at that moment from the door leading to the roof, pushing a stretcher. Jack stepped aside to let them pass and Guy imitated him.
Once the others had disappeared in the lift, Jack took two orange jackets from a wall hanger and he handed one to Guy.
"Wear this. At this time of the year it's cold, and Alicia wouldn't forgive me if you should get sick."
Guy slipped his jacket on, and, after a few attempts, he also managed to close the zipper, then walked to the door to the roof with Jack.
The flying device was in front of him, yellow and shiny, perched on the roof of the building like a huge dragonfly. Some attendants were working to prepare the aircraft for the next mission, and they greeted Jack, casting some puzzled looks at the stranger beside him.
Guy looked at the helicopter, trying not to think of the terror he had felt when he had seen it passing over his head, and Jack motioned him to get closer.
"That's the seat of the pilot, the person who makes it fly," he said, pointing to a seat in the front of the vehicle, "We doctors sit here, in the back. This is the place for the stretcher on which the wounded are carried."
Gisborne touched one of the sides of the helicopter and he realized that it was simple metal, a delicate and complex mechanism, but nothing other than a mechanical device. Not a demon nor a magic item, just an object created by man.
"I'd love to see it fly again, now that I know what it is."
Jack heard the sound of the alarm and grabbed Guy's arm, pulling him quickly away from the helicopter.
"It seems that your wish will be granted... Do you hear this sound? It's the signal that the team has to prepare for a mission, they will take off shortly. Come, let's stay at a safety distance, and we'll be able to watch them leaving. But we have to put these on, soon there will be a lot of noise."
The doctor took some earmuffs, and he handed a pair to Guy, showing him how to put them on, then he wore them too, and they both waited.
Shortly after, the helicopter rotor began to move, the doctors' team boarded and the aircraft took off, rising in the sky, and heading toward the city.
Guy watched it, completely fascinated by what seemed like a prodigy, and that instead was a conquest of humanity, a result of human intelligence. The helicopter's blades had generated an intense wind that ruffled his hair, sending it all over his face, and that made his eyes weep, but Guy just pushed away from his eyes the locks that hindered his sight.
The noise of the engine was intense and without the earmuffs it would have been deafening, similar to the galloping of a herd of wild horses and even the sensation of power was the same, yet, despite so much strength, the helicopter had hovered in air gracefully, as if it had no weight, then moved at a speed that no horse could ever match.
Guy was no longer afraid now, but his heart was beating fast in his chest.
Jack smiled at seeing his expression.
"So, what do you think?"
Guy looked toward the horizon, where he had seen the aircraft disappear.
"Can we wait for it to come back?"