Bones of Contention

Philip announced that something was wrong with his skeleton halfway through breakfast.

This was not, in itself, unusual.

Philip was the sort of person who could make nearly any statement sound like the beginning of a legal deposition against existence. He complained with intelligence, specificity, and the weary elegance of a man who had spent years refining dissatisfaction into a personal style. Usually, these complaints concerned films, weather, poor coffee, emotional repression, or Brenda pretending not to know exactly what he meant when he said things like some people clearly don’t respect gothic pacing.

But that morning, seated across from Yorn at a small table in Cobblestone Square Café, Philip set down his tea with unusual care and said, in a tone of dry concern:

“My femur is clicking.”

Yorn looked up from his cocoa.

“What.”

Philip gestured vaguely downward. “My left femur. Every time I sit down, it clicks like a cheap latch.” He rotated one shoulder, then frowned. “And something in my ribs has been off since yesterday. There’s a kind of… internal percussion happening when I breathe too hard.”

Yorn stared at him.

Philip, dressed in his usual oversized cardigan over a horror movie T-shirt, looked deeply offended by his own body in a way only a skeleton could. His bony fingers tapped irritably against the saucer. His jaw shifted by a fraction, then clicked back into place with the tiny, maddening sound of someone being proven right.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Yorn said.

“No,” Philip replied. “It sounds like a maraca wearing me from the inside.”

Around them, the café moved through its pleasant morning rhythm. Cups clinked. Someone laughed near the window. The scent of butterscotch scones and coffee drifted through the room. Outside, spring sunlight lit the square in soft gold, and Snowdrift Bay looked, for once, almost deceptively normal.

Yorn frowned.

“Have you seen Dr. Moosington?”

Philip made a face. “Not yet. I thought perhaps if I ignored it, my bones would become ashamed and realign themselves.”

“Has that ever worked.”

“No,” Philip admitted. “But I believe in giving bad ideas room to fail naturally.”

Yorn stood at once.

“Come on.”

Philip looked up. “Right now?”

“Yes.”

Philip sighed through his teeth, which sounded faintly like a dry breeze moving through decorative reeds.

“You’re being very sensible about this.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t care for it.”

Still, he stood.

The walk to the clinic was short, though Philip spent most of it offering increasingly dramatic accounts of his own structural discomfort.

“I’m telling you,” he said as they crossed the square, “my sternum feels judgmental.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I am being undermined by my own architecture.”

Yorn held the clinic door open for him. “Just tell the doctor that.”

“I intend to,” Philip said. “At length.”

Snowdrift Bay Clinic sat near the edge of the square, bright-windowed and tidy, with flower boxes under the front windows and a painted sign that looked more reassuring than most medical signage had any right to. Inside, the air smelled faintly of antiseptic, tea, and something herbal and clean.

The waiting room was pleasant enough to almost make one forget it was a place where people came to be medically corrected. A stack of magazines leaned on a side table. A watercolor landscape hung on one wall. The chairs looked comfortable, which Yorn suspected was strategic.

Behind the front desk stood Dr. Moosington.

Yorn had heard of him, of course. Everyone in town had. Dr. Moosington was one of those rare people in Snowdrift Bay whose reputation was almost entirely comforting. He was a moose—a tall, broad, dignified one—with thick brown fur, impressive antlers, and the kind of calm, intelligent eyes that made people start explaining symptoms they had intended to hide. His white coat sat neatly over a sweater vest, his stethoscope rested against his chest, and everything about him suggested steadiness, warmth, and a deep professional patience that had likely been tested in ways ordinary medicine schools never covered.

He looked up from a clipboard and smiled warmly as they entered.

“Yorn. Philip,” he said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

Philip placed one hand dramatically against his ribcage.

“My skeleton,” he said.

Dr. Moosington nodded as though this were a perfectly reasonable opening.

“Mm. In what way.”

“It has become argumentative.”

Yorn stepped in before Philip could elaborate into metaphor.

“His femur’s clicking,” he said. “And something in his ribs feels off.”

Dr. Moosington’s expression sharpened at once into professional concern.

“All right. Let’s have a look.”

The examination room was clean, softly lit, and lined with cabinets whose neatness suggested Dr. Moosington had strong feelings about labels. Philip climbed onto the exam table with the mild indignity of a man trying not to clatter in front of a professional. Yorn stood off to the side, hands in his pockets, trying to be supportive and noninvasive in roughly equal measure.

Dr. Moosington examined Philip with surprising gentleness for someone with hooves.

He listened.
He tapped lightly at the ribcage.
He checked the range of motion in one leg.
He asked Philip to sit, stand, rotate, cough, bend, and then do what Philip described as “a humiliating little twist” that produced an unmistakable clicking sound somewhere around the hip.

Dr. Moosington frowned thoughtfully.

“I’d like to get some imaging,” he said.

Philip nodded. “Fine.”

And then Yorn made the mistake.

It happened because he was trying to be helpful.

This was, in the history of his life, how many of his problems had begun.

He looked at Philip. Then at Dr. Moosington. Then back at Philip’s very visible skeleton. And because the thought arrived in his mind wearing the disguise of practicality rather than danger, he said:

“But… couldn’t you just have him take off his clothes?”

Silence.

Not ordinary silence.

A total and immediate collapse of atmosphere.

Philip froze.

Dr. Moosington froze.

Yorn looked from one to the other, and only then, too late, realized that something had gone very wrong.

Philip’s jaw dropped.

Literally dropped.

It detached with a sharp clack, hit the floor, bounced once, and spun half a turn before lying there in what felt like reasonable protest.

Yorn stared at it.

Dr. Moosington stared at it.

Philip, jawless, stared at Yorn with such concentrated outrage that it somehow transcended facial limitations.

Yorn’s eyes widened. “Oh— no, no, that’s not—”

Philip bent, snatched up his jaw, and reattached it with offended precision.

“Did you,” he said, voice tight with disbelief, “just suggest I strip in front of you?”

Yorn blinked. “What? No!”

Dr. Moosington’s antlers twitched once.

Philip sat upright on the exam table, every bone in his body suddenly radiating personal insult.

“You looked directly at me,” he said, “and proposed that I take off my clothes.”

“No, I meant for the x-ray,” Yorn said quickly. “Because— well— because you’re already—”

He stopped.

Philip stared harder.

Yorn backpedaled at once.

“No, not like that. I just meant— I mean, you’re a skeleton already, so I thought maybe— for the machine— maybe it would be easier—”

“Easier,” Philip repeated.

“That came out wrong.”

“It came out horribly.”

Dr. Moosington cleared his throat, but did not yet intervene, perhaps because he too wanted to understand how deeply Yorn intended to commit to this explanation.

Yorn lifted both hands. “I didn’t mean anything weird by it. I just thought if the goal is to see the bones—”

Philip recoiled. “I am aware of the goal, Yorn.”

“Right. Yes. Obviously. I just thought because there’s not much in the way—”

Philip stared at him.

Yorn shut his eyes. “That also sounded bad.”

“Extraordinarily bad,” said Philip.

Now Dr. Moosington stepped in, his voice measured and calm in the way doctors used when trying not to let discomfort become spectacle.

“Yorn,” he said, “that was an inappropriate suggestion and you should, frankly, be ashamed.”

Yorn looked honestly startled. “I should?”

Both Philip and Dr. Moosington stared at him.

Yorn, realizing this only made things worse, immediately tried to recover.

“I mean— I’m sorry. I didn’t mean inappropriate, I just meant practical— no, not practical either, that sounds awful— I mean I was thinking medically, not… socially.”

Philip looked at the ceiling. “I would like to leave my body, but tragically I am already carrying it.”

Dr. Moosington folded his chart shut with quiet finality.

“This clinic,” he said, “maintains a respectful standard for all patients. We will proceed in the normal manner, and we will not suggest that anyone disrobe for your specific convenience.”

Yorn nodded at once. “But it wasn’t— Okay, understood.”

Philip, still glaring, said, “Excellent.”

But he was not ready to let it go.

“I cannot believe,” he said, turning back to Yorn, “that your first instinct in a clinical setting was ‘perhaps the skeleton should get naked.’”

“That was not my first instinct.”

“It was your spoken instinct.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How,” Philip asked, “did you mean it.”

Yorn opened his mouth.

Then closed it again.

Then, very carefully, said, “In a way that made sense for about half a second and now very clearly does not.”

That, at least, gave Dr. Moosington a small sign that there was still hope.

He nodded once. “Good. Then let us retire the idea completely.”

The x-rays took only a short while.

Yorn waited outside the imaging room in deep private shame while a woman with a sprained wrist and a little boy holding an ice pack both glanced at him in the universal way people glanced at someone who had clearly just said the wrong thing at medical volume.

When Philip emerged, he did not look at Yorn.

Dr. Moosington returned a few minutes later with the results and the composure of a man determined to restore medicine to the room.

“Well,” he said, “the good news is that nothing is seriously wrong.”

Philip relaxed by a fraction.

Dr. Moosington continued. “You’re dealing with a mild case of Skeletal Seasonal Shift Syndrome.”

Yorn blinked. “That’s real?”

“In skeletons, yes,” said Dr. Moosington.

Philip pointed at his own chest. “See? Vindication.”

“It’s caused by changes in humidity and temperature,” the doctor explained. “Your alignment is slightly off in a few areas, which is causing the clicking and rib instability.”

Philip sat up straighter. “So I’m not falling apart.”

“No more than usual,” said Dr. Moosington.

Philip nodded. “I’ll take it.”

Dr. Moosington prescribed a calcium polish, a few alignment stretches, and what he described as “less dramatic sitting for at least three days,” which Philip received as a personal affront but accepted.

The atmosphere, however, never fully recovered.

Dr. Moosington remained polite, but with the cool distance of a man who now regarded Yorn as medically well-meaning but conversationally unsafe. Philip answered questions, accepted instructions, and got down from the exam table without once making eye contact with Yorn unless absolutely required by geometry.

Outside the clinic, the spring air should have helped.

It did not.

Yorn walked beside Philip in heavy silence for half a block before trying, carefully, to speak.

“Well,” he said, “at least it’s nothing serious.”

Philip kept walking.

“That’s your opening line?” he asked at last.

Yorn winced. “No.”

“Good.”

They walked three more steps.

Then Philip stopped, turned, and faced him fully.

Now that they were outside, with the clinic behind them and public space to absorb the damage, his outrage had ripened into something drier and more controlled—which, in Philip, was always more dangerous.

“Yorn,” he said, “I need you to understand that I have had many humiliations in my afterlife.”

Yorn nodded cautiously.

“I have had my pelvis come loose on a staircase. I have sneezed and lost two fingers. Brenda once laughed so hard at one of my jokes that my jaw fell into a punch bowl.”

“Philip—”

“No. You’re hearing this.”

Yorn closed his mouth.

Philip lifted one bony hand and counted off with great precision.

“I have been mistaken for a decoration at three separate Halloween parties. A child once asked if I was available for rent. And yet, somehow, despite all that, what happened in that clinic today has leapt to the very top of the list.”

Yorn looked genuinely miserable. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“I know.”

That almost made it worse.

Philip sighed, some of the heat going out of him.

“You really didn’t mean it,” he said. “Which is the only reason I’m not making this a blood feud.”

“I appreciate that.”

“You shouldn’t.”

Yorn rubbed the back of his neck. “I just… thought because you’re already a skeleton, the x-ray part would be simpler.”

Philip stared at him for one long beat.

Then he said, with exhausted disbelief, “There it is again.”

Yorn flinched. “Right. Sorry.”

“Do you hear how you keep making it worse?”

“Yes.”

“And yet.”

“Yes.”

They resumed walking.

The silence between them was no longer hostile, exactly. Just singed around the edges.

By the time they reached the square, the story had already begun to spread, because Snowdrift Bay observed no reasonable quarantine period for personal humiliation.

By evening, Barnaby Blackbeard was retelling it at the Salty Kraken to a full and delighted audience.

He stood near the bar with one boot on a chair, tankard in hand, putting on voices.

“And then,” Barnaby boomed, pitching his own voice upward into a crude approximation of Yorn’s earnestness, “‘Couldn’t he just take off his clothes?’”

The tavern exploded.

Laughter hit the rafters.

Spike nearly fell off his stool.

Somewhere near the back, someone shouted, “No!”

Barnaby slapped the bar and kept going.

“And the doctor freezes, the skeleton’s jaw hits the floor, and Yorn—bless the great shaggy fool—just keeps explainin’!”

More laughter.

Yorn sat hunched at a corner table with a cider and the expression of a man contemplating self-exile.

Across from him, Philip sipped his drink with the air of someone who had suffered terribly and was at least entitled to watch the aftermath.

“You’re enjoying this,” Yorn muttered.

Philip took another sip. “Not at first.”

“And now?”

Philip considered. “A little.”

Yorn groaned and dragged one hand over his face.

“You’re never going to let this go.”

“No,” Philip said. “But I may eventually become more elegant about it.”

Barnaby, still performing for the room, launched into a physically impossible reenactment of Yorn’s horrified backpedaling.

Spike called out, “Guess he just wanted to know what was under the hood!”

That earned another round of laughter.

Yorn looked up at the ceiling as if asking fate whether there was some upper limit to collective amusement.

Apparently there was not.

Philip, mercifully, set down his glass and leaned forward a little.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I know you didn’t mean it cruelly.”

Yorn looked at him. “That does not help as much as you think.”

“I know,” said Philip. “But it’s true.”

A beat passed.

Then Philip added, “Still, if you ever again suggest I undress for diagnostic efficiency, I will throw one of my own ribs at you.”

“That’s fair.”

“It is.”

Yorn sighed, then finally laughed despite himself—quietly, painfully, but genuinely.

Across the tavern, the story rolled on. Barnaby had reached the jaw-dropping part again. Spike was embellishing. Someone at the bar was already repeating the tale badly to someone who had only just arrived. Snowdrift Bay was doing what it did best: taking a private embarrassment and converting it into local folklore before the subject had finished his drink.

Yorn lifted his cider.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve learned something.”

Philip raised an invisible eyebrow.

“What.”

Yorn took a long drink.

“Never suggest that a talking skeleton strip for medical convenience.”

Philip considered that.

Then nodded.

“As lessons go,” he said, “it is unusually well tailored to your life here.”

And despite everything—despite the shame, the laughter, the fact that he would absolutely hear this story repeated for months—Yorn had to admit that Philip was right.

Because in Snowdrift Bay, even humiliation tended to become part of the furniture eventually.

Which was comforting.

In a terrible way.