Chapter Text
After his career and reputation are torpedoed with military precision in the Casa Santa Marta cafeteria, Tremblay collapses into a hard shutdown.
The dining room bubbles back to life, its volume rising as cardinals digest the meal they've been force fed.
Tremblay stands where he was felled. The weapons fired at him have left his physical structure intact, but are disintegrating him internally. He’s filling up with acid. His bones are hollowing out.
Tremblay's led from the dining room to the medical wing. He doesn't resist. Doesn't react. Doesn't speak.
He allows himself to be gently propelled along corridors and down steps like a mindless automaton. Someone's hand is on the small of his back, small and powerful, giving him momentum. Another person’s hand is on his arm above the elbow, fingers strong and firm, giving him direction. He's been loaned an engine and a rudder. His sails are shredded. His internal compass is melting.
The shock has knocked him offline. The trauma hasn't yet sunk its teeth in.
He's taken to a small room that smells of disinfectant and lavender. His supporters leave him in the care of a nurse with weary but kind eyes.
She sits him on the edge of a bed and takes a basic medical: blood pressure, pulse, temperature, reactions to a light shone in his eyes. She puts her hand on his arm and asks him if he’d like a glass of water.
Tremblay's pale skin is waxy with sweat. He looks like he’s drowning in brackish salt water.
The nurse pours him a glass of water and sets it on the bedside table, telling him that denying himself life support is not the noble punishment he thinks it is.
She explains that his blood pressure is only slightly elevated. His pulse is strong and regular. His temperature is perfectly average.
But his lack of reaction to external stimulus is concerning. There's an emptiness in his eyes. He stares ahead as if watching a scene playing out on the far side of the world. There's no muscle contraction or relaxation to his hand being stroked or gently pinched. He's not quite catatonic. He's not fully alive.
The nurse calls in one of the two doctors that are assigned to a conclave. And when the doctor drags his feet and grumbles that a breaker of laws and oaths shouldn't get special treatment, she argues that this is a medical emergency. Just look at him. He's been hollowed out. He looks like he's going to dissolve into a pile of ash. And if he collapses from a heart attack or a stroke, you'll be blamed for it. Do you want to explain to God why you cared more about your breakfast going cold than treating one of his children? Do you want a public scandal and your medical license revoked?
The doctor sighs and rolls his eyes. Folds his arms across his chest. Looks at Tremblay, who looks like he’s been dropped into a torture chamber.
The doctor gets to work. He measures Tremblay’s vital signs again, takes a blood sample, and gives him a cardiac CT scan to evaluate how damaged his heart is.
The tests come back and confirm that Trembly's still one of the most physically healthy cardinals on record. It's his mental state that's in catastrophic freefall.
The doctors and nurses aren't mental health specialists. A therapist isn't one of the authorized personnel allowed to stay during a conclave. Maybe one should be.
The doctor advises Tremblay to rest, eat, and drink. And, he mutters as he leaves the room, to stop lying and cheating. Or to at least cut back. As if Tremblay’s been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day for decades, and his preventable bad habits are finally taking their toll.
The nurse advises Tremblay to take confession. Not to a brother cardinal, but to one of the dedicated priests who are allowed in the conclave for such a purpose. He can confess in the language of his choice. Even, the nurse jokes, in that most awful of languages, Québécois French.
Tremblay continues staring dead ahead. He doesn't laugh. Doesn't compliment the effort. Doesn't pretend to be deeply offended. Doesn't turn the joke around and gently insult the person who delivered it. Doesn't behave like himself. Because a core part of himself has been annihilated.
And no-one knows how he's going to get it back.