do you hear the people? [union plot meeting]

Aodhán hasn’t been here in a long time — he remembers his first visit to the university library. Back then, the rows upon rows of shelves, the avenue between them, had felt endless, like the opportunities that were lined up in his head. He’d spent hours, days, hunched over the desks, becoming as familiar with their graffiti as the contents of his textbooks. Coming back transports him to that time, when everything first seemed simple. It all grew so complicated so fast after that, until now, when just by decision, it’s become crystal clear again.

On his way across campus, he sees the change in the grounds immediately. He’s heard about it, of course he has, during hushed conversations with the others, but seeing it is something different. Back in his university days, they decried the restrictions placed upon them. They slammed down their steins after classes, beer sloshing, hands and faces sticky. The students now walk with their heads down. It’s an uncanny imitation of what Aodhán believes university life should be, one he observes with understated displeasure as he sidles along to the library, one quick and gangly step at a time.

No nostalgia filters his view of things. The place is more miserable now than it was back then, something he’d thought verifiably impossible. Traveling past the textbooks piled on high, Aodhán takes stock of familiar names, flashes back to pens running dry and hands grabbing his beneath tables, but refuses to get lost in the past. That time is gone. The only thing he has is the now — the meeting.

He takes a spot behind Karl, crossing his arms over his chest. Aodhán leaves on his heavy wool coat, emboldened by the mass it affords him. He nods along, expression becoming stonier by the word. The document goes out; his hand twitches for a smoke.

Working at the hospital these past few months has been especially taxing on Aodhán. It’s never been an easy job — especially in pediatrics. Working with kids is rewarding a lot of the time, but Aodhán, alongside many of his colleagues, had emerged from the Rose Plague feeling powerless. Whole families succumbed before their eyes. Mothers and fathers clung to their babies, faces all aglow, eyes and cheeks fading dull within hours of each other. All of that over and over again, with nothing he could do but offer plainitives and a comforting hand. Those had been the toughest years on his marriage; they needed each other more than ever, he thinks, but what was he supposed to do? Go home? Risk giving it to all of them? Hardly. Aodhán spent so many nights asleep at the hospital, curled up in cots. Oftentimes, at the least, he had someone else’s hand in his, whose chemical work skin he pretended was hers — they’d all been worked to the brink of madness in those days. Seconds spent on each other, minutes spent in dreams were all they had.

Which is why the people needed to see the contents of this document. They’d all worked so hard. They all deserved better. At first, Aodhán had only been in it for better worker’s rights, for better pay — but this, this twisted excuse for medicine that Blessing’s given her namesake to is more than he can abide. He nods along, face serious, as their little crowd’s eyes scan the documents.

Karl is a generational orator, he thinks. Behind him, Aodhán acts columnic, affirming him as he speaks, waiting until he’s done. It’s better that the face of their cause is young, after all.

“You’ve all seen Cham,” he says, once the murmuring has died down, “You all know exactly what he’s capable of — what he isn’t capable of, more accurately. They won’t see us coming!” A pause. Aodhán steps forward, clears his throat. “I’ve seen what they’re doing. Demonstrating now, before it goes any further, is a necessity for the sake of our district.”