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“Absurd. That is not what I said at all. Dr. Lecter gave misleading answers in my interviews. I will refute his refutations in my new book Blood and Chocolate.”
The sound of the car door slamming came dull through the phone. Leonard imagined Frederick had to be alone in the car for the moment, out of earshot of his bodyguards, because his voice lost some of the professional veneer. Leonard pushed his phone between shoulder and ear to take his cup from the coffee machine and grab a spoon while Frederick went on:
“Supermarket tabloids love Hannibal Lecter more than alien abductions. That is his demographic now. We know who his fans are-”
There was a quiet yelp, then a thud and a clatter.
“Hands shaking?” Leonard asked, slightly bemused, a little louder so Frederick could hear him while he retrieved his phone from under the seat or wherever it had escaped to. Frederick liked to pretend meeting with Lecter didn’t affect him, but Leonard knew that wasn’t true. He sipped his coffee, waiting.
At the other end, there was a shuffle, then the silence stretched on.
Leonard sat the cup down on the counter and took a look at his screen. The call hadn’t ended, but there was no one talking, no sounds at all.
His phone must’ve broken, he told himself, the coffee suddenly sour in his mouth.
-
The FBI contacted Leonard that evening, returning the many calls he had made on every FBI agents’ phone number that he could find in Frederick’s address book when his partner didn’t show up to their date at lunch.
The good news was, they’d found Frederick. The bad news was, the dragon had found him first.
Leonard got the name of a hospital.
The doctor faced him with the bored ease of a professional. “Sorry, but you can’t see Dr. Chilton right now. The risk of infection is too high and he’s not even conscious.”
Twelve years in court kept Leonard calm. The doctor would mentally drop out of the conversation if he started to act like the sort of visitor that went into hysterics. People didn’t like it if you seemed like work.
“Can you at least tell me what happened to him?”
“You’re not related to him, are you?”
Leonard considered lying, but since Frederick was guarded by the FBI, the doctor would ask for proof. “No,” he admitted.
“If Dr. Chilton wakes up, I’ll ask him if he wants to see you.”
If, not when. Leonard left the doctor standing and took a seat, thoughts racing through other options on how to acquire information about Frederick’s health. Crawford, Graham and Bloom wouldn’t want to talk to him, but perhaps there was some basic human compassion to be appealed to. Staring ahead onto the hallway, he suddenly saw a redheaded figure flit past two surprised-looking nurses.
Leonard jumped to his feet and grabbed Ms. Lounds’ arm before she could bolt. Frederick got along marginally well with the reporter, probably on account of her having saved his life, so he’d met her a few times outside of court.
“Let me guess who you visited,” he said flatly.
“I wasn’t in his room.”
Ms. Lounds wasn’t trying very hard to sound convincing.
“Drop it before I start thinking of all the lawsuits we could be having.”
“I didn’t even get any photos.” She paused at his no doubt unimpressed gaze. “Believe me, I couldn’t print it, anyway. Too gruesome.”
Leonard hoped he’d kept his looking-at-the-attorney pokerface.
“I’ll consider letting this slide if you tell me what the dragon did to him.”
She threw a gaze over her shoulder.
“He bit his lips clean off, glued him to a wheelchair and set him on fire. Partially inspired by... ‘me’, I suppose.”
When he opened his mouth, Leonard couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just stood there looking like an actor who’d forgotten his line.
“I’m sorry,” Ms. Lounds offered.
Leonard let go off her.
“That’s all.”
-
For a couple of bleak days, on which he neither slept nor ate nor did much else more productive than staring holes in the hospital wall, Leonard was convinced it was over, that not even Frederick could survive this. When he visited on the third day, the doctor came to him for once and Leonard braced himself, expecting to be shown a death certificate. Instead, he told him Frederick was awake.
The glass tube Frederick laid in had a panel of dials and switches that reminded Leonard of a cockpit. He looked at them for a little too long before he raised his eyes to see his partner.
He’d prepared himself meticulously for the worst. Given the nature of his clientele, mutilated bodies weren’t new to him, but it was still different to recognise a familiar face behind the scorched skin and raw flesh. Of course, it was probably a sign of Frederick’s dramatically random and intense luck – of which he had both the good and bad variety –, that Frederick was still recognisable at all.
“No flowers?” Frederick asked. Every word was spoken with considerable effort. There was hollow amusement in his tone.
“You got a vase in there?” Leonard shot back.
He kept staring at him to get used to it. Frederick turned his head a fraction towards him.
“It is unsettling for people to look at me,” he said thoughtfully. “Humans do not want to... be confronted with their own physicality. We like... to think we are more durable, something more than meat we prepare to eat... no doubt Hannibal likes the idea of me like this.”
“Ever consider it’s unsettling for people to see their significant other has been burned alive?” Leonard asked. On good days, he had a high tolerance for psychological ramblings and listened with interest. Today was not a good day.
Frederick snorted quietly.
“I do not think I would get... paid for that sort of analysis.”
“Well, I get money to dumb my analysis down for a jury.” Leonard let his gaze linger on Frederick’s eyes. Those were still the same – he had gotten with him when one was already clouded. “I’m trying to think of a way to ask you how you are that doesn’t seem intensely sarcastic, given the circumstances.”
“I plan to live. I think I will,” Frederick managed. “That is... an improvement over my mindset during much of my stay with the dragon.”
Leonard only nodded his head. Right now, he couldn’t ask for more optimism.
“Are you going to visit again?” Frederick asked quietly into the silence.
Leonard raised a brow.
“Obviously. There’s a few cases I can’t drop, but I’m going to take time off work as soon as possible.”
He could see the muscles working where Frederick’s lips should be as he sorted through his thoughts.
“Don’t feel obligated... to stay with me. Alana Bloom came here... to condescend to me already. I don’t need pity to fracture what’s... left of my pride.”
With a shake of his head, Leonard looked down at him.
“Frederick, you know me. Am I the sort of person who’d be here if I didn’t honestly want to be?”
“Are you saying you are not moral enough to be... dishonestly compassionate?”
“I’m a lawyer, am I not?” He placed his hand against the glass wall. “And besides, I know you don’t need me here to survive. This is what, the third time? This is your idea of Tuesday.”
When Frederick raised his arm, Leonard could see his burned skin inhibiting the movement like tough old leather. Frederick’s bandaged hand touched against the glass wall on the other side, parallel to his own. Neither of them were very gentle people, but Leonard wished he could have taken him in his arms right then. He didn’t quite know what to do with that thought.
“Must be boring in that tube. I’ll bring something... I just got the The Litigators, I can read that to you,” he said, just so he had something productive to offer besides nice sentiments.
“Grisham? His books are unfathomably boring,” Frederick said, knowing full well he was Leonard’s favourite author, taunting him into a verbal sparring match as he so often liked to do on the small everyday topics. It moved a weight from Leonard’s heart. It was not just Frederick’s face that remained recognisable.
“You never gave him a real chance, but I guess now you’ll have to. I mean, what will you do to stop me from reading it? You can’t even get out of your terrarium.”
Frederick gave a hoarse chuckle that sounded more like a cough. Leonard knocked against the glass wall again.
“By the way,” he said nonchalantly, “we’ll have to get married soon. I am getting really sick of navigating this hospital without some official documents to wave in your doctors’ faces when I’m asking for details on your health.”
Frederick took a few seconds to find an answer. He was surprised, Leonard guessed. He would have to learn to read Frederick’s expressions such as they were for the time being until he was well enough to visit a plastic surgeon.
“Since this involves legal matters, I’d be remiss not to listen to my lawyer,” Frederick said, eventually, and Leonard was pretty sure that if he could have, he would have smiled.