Chapter 47. After All

The young healer awakened with a start, not sure for a moment where she was. Looking about the strange room, dimly lit by the glow of a watch-lamp, she wracked her befuddled brains. A confinement, snatching an hour or two of rest while waiting for a new babe to be born? A serious injury, where she wanted to keep an eye on the hobbit? A deathbed? ...and with that thought, memory returned in a rush.

Young Ferdi had been very weak, moaning deliriously the last time she'd seen him... how long ago was that? The quiet in the smial told her it was still the depths of the night. The farm family would arise several hours before the dawning to begin their daily tasks, but there was no sound in the smial at the moment, not even the scritch of a mouse.

Woodruff sat up, rather too abruptly, and swung her legs out from under the coverlet someone had laid over her--for she certainly did not remember lying herself down. Her head swam, but she forced herself to her feet and staggered a step or two, to the dressing table with its ewer and bowl. She had to steady herself on the solid wood a moment, before taking up the pitcher with shaking hands, to pour out some blessedly chilly water with which to splash herself into wakefulness. How long had it been since she'd enjoyed more than a few hours' sleep at a time?

No matter. People wouldn't stop falling ill or injuring themselves just because the healer was weary. And responsibility weighed ever more heavily... She must look in on young Ferdi, must make some sort of decision, for not to decide was a kind of deciding, after all. Hesitating, waiting, was the same as choosing to starve the teen to death. A growing teen could not go even a week without eating... half that time, perhaps... and young Ferdi was on his third day of water rations.

An easier passing, something whispered in the back of her mind. If she were to wait a few more hours, the hunger pains would ease and the young hobbit would fall into an ever-deepening sleep. His pain would no longer rouse him; it would be increasingly difficult for anyone to rouse him, as a matter of fact.

Whereas, if they were to give him food, and his injuries not sufficiently healed...

'I don't know what to do,' she whispered, raising haunted eyes to meet her own gaze in the looking glass.

This will never do, she heard Sweetbriar's brisk tones somewhere in the back of her memory. The family are distressed enough, without you adding to it with your own maunderings, lass! No, but you must put a brave face on the matter, for their sakes if not your own. Your feelings don't matter at the moment, but theirs do!

'Right,' she muttered, setting her shoulders and giving a nod to the wan face staring back at hers. She tried a smile, but it was more grimace than anything, and so she settled for a calm, collected expression. Not that she felt at all calm, or collected for that matter.

She tidied her hair and turned resolutely to the door. She would see this through...

She walked softly down the hall, hearing only sleepers' breaths from the rooms to either side, even from the room where Ferdi's family watched with him.

Yes, the watchers had all fallen asleep, fallen under the spell of the wee hours, fallen prey to the exhaustion of grief and long, hopeless waiting. Ferdinand and Stelliana leaned together, his arm around her. "Old Ferdi" dozed in his chair, his head back at an angle that would ensure a crick in his neck when he wakened, but left his snores free to rise to the ceiling. Rosemary had not gone to seek her own pillow, but lay huddled in a blanket on the pallet on the floor.

Yes, all in the room were sleeping, without benefit of bed and pillow and coverlet... But the bed itself was empty.

Woodruff stifled her startled exclamation, her hand over her mouth, as her thoughts tumbled over themselves. Where could the youth be? None of his family would have taken him from the bed, and then returned here to sleep! Could Farmer Paladin have spirited the lad out of the smial, to lie under the stars, to watch the sun rise in the morning? She'd heard the hobbit pontificate on occasion of the healing to be found in fresh air, under the open sky, the caress of breeze and starlight and sunlight, the scent of the earth and growing things in the air.

She made her way to the main entrance and threw open the door, to be met by deep silence, and then a whisper of wind that touched her cheek. The moon shone down cold and bright, lending enough light to the garden and the yard beyond to show that no hobbits were abroad, not in the area between smial and byre, at least.

Woodruff's stomach rumbled, loud in the night silence, and she took a deep breath of the cool night air. She doubted the youth was strong enough to wander from his bed, and there was the splinted leg to consider, but she could think of no other explanation. She'd have to rouse the smial.

It was not long before yawning, blinking hobbits were wide awake, shooting questions at one another, pulling on clothes over nightclothes in their haste. Young Ferdi must have wandered in his delirium, and who knew how far he'd managed to drag himself before collapsing?

'Tea,' Eglantine said firmly, taking Woodruff's elbow and steering the young healer towards the kitchen. 'They'll take lanterns and begin the search, and if they don't find him right hereabouts they'll rouse the neighbours. But in the meantime, we'll brew some tea, good and strong and heartening...'

Her voice trailed off in astonishment as they reached the kitchen, for there sat the object of the search! He had evidently dragged himself over the polished floors of the smial to the kitchen, splinted leg and all, and somehow managed to get down loaf and butter and jam, and perhaps some cheese, from the looks of the rind and the butter-smeared plate and pot of jam nearby.

Seeing the grown-ups, the teen hastily stuffed the bread-and-jam he was holding into his mouth.

'Ferdi!' Woodruff cried, but it was obviously too late, from the state of the loaf on the plate beside him, and the smears of jam and butter to be seen on the plate, and on the teen's face. He'd all too evidently consumed half a loaf before they'd found him.

'I just wanted a little more bread,' he said through a mouthful.

'But...' Woodruff spluttered, advancing into the room. Ferdi quailed, as the healer crouched down and reached for his nightshirt, to examine his abdomen. The bruises were still there, but the teen pushed Woodruff's hands away before she could touch him.

'Don't!' he said, swallowing down the overlarge mouthful.

'Ferdi!' Stelliana cried from the doorway.

The teen, mistaking his mother's joy and consternation for rebuke, swivelled slightly with a wince to say, 'But I know what she'll do--she'll poke me and press me where it hurts and then she'll ask me if it hurts, when she knows very well that it hurts!'

Stelliana, scarcely heeding, ran to her son and knelt to swallow him, with a gulp, in her embrace, laughing and crying at one.

Confusion reigned as more hobbits came into the room, all exclaiming at once and surrounding the young hobbit they'd all but given up for lost.

'It's wonderful,' Ferdinand said, hugging wife and son tight from one side while Rosemary hugged from the other. 'He's healed, and you've restored him with food, and...'

'But I didn't...' Woodruff said, the befuddled feeling returning. She put a hand to her aching head.

'After the broth and bread you sent last night, Ferdi-lad fell into a restful sleep,' Stelliana said, beaming. 'And now look at him! Eating Dinny and Aggie out of hole and home!'

'Plenty more where that came from!' Eglantine said with a ringing laugh. 'Have at it, lad! And I'll fry up some sausages and eggs, and griddlecakes and...'

Woodruff tried to smile, amid the general hilarity, but her smile faded as she met Bilbo's knowing eye, and suddenly discerned the truth of the matter.

'Well then,' she said, straightening and somehow putting on a brisk manner, the manner Sweetbriar had taken no matter what, even if she returned to the little smial and burst into tears on closing the door behind her. 'I see I'm not needed here now. Just carry him back to his bed and feed him well, and I'll be on my way...'

'But stay to breakfast!' Eglantine said, and Paladin echoed. 'We're celebrating!'

'Aye, celebrating!' Ferdinand thundered, looking up from the faces of his family. 'You've saved my son, you have, with your healer's skill and knowledge.'

Every word struck as painfully as a blow. It was all Woodruff could do to keep from wincing, and she concentrated on steady breaths, that she might not burst into tears, completing her disgrace.

'No,' she said, 'really, there's much to be done and my time is not my own...'

Her only solace was to see Merry's joy as he pushed past "old Ferdi", Bilbo, and Frodo, to reach young Ferdibrand, to join the embrace. 'You're not dying!' the Brandybuck half-sobbed. 'I haven't murdered you, after all!'

'Merry!' Esmeralda gasped, but young Ferdi only said, 'You silly Brandybuck, what sort of nonsense are ye spouting? Foolishness worthy of a Took, ye river-rat!'

'Ferdi!' Stelliana tried to reprimand, but really she was laughing so hard from joy and relief that the effect was quite spoilt.

While the teens had the attention of all, Woodruff slipped quietly between Bilbo and "old Ferdi", out of the kitchen, scooped up her healer's bag from the corridor outside young Ferdi's room, and let herself out of the main entrance to the smial. She ran down the lane all the way to the road and onward; she stopped, gasping and out of breath, part way to Whitwell, and sank down in the ditch beside the road to have a thorough and private weep in the darkness before the dawning.