Some people mistook Leo for heartless. But that was a fallacy. His heart was as big as any mans. Maybe bigger.

  He just had a brain, too.

  The former told him to let the kid rest up awhile; give those mangled limbs a chance to mend. Whereas the latter operated under the more pragmatic credo of 'strike while the iron is hot,' or at least can't run away. And sensible or no, it was typically the more impatient entity.

  Right now he was wrestling with The Sunday Times crossword. A Monday morning ritual he'd indulged in for more years than he had fingers to count on. So far he had all but the last clue: "a sly deception/the position of the hands on the clock". The answer had eluded him for almost twenty minutes. Leo didn't like loose ends.

  "You wanted to see me, Leo?"

  Goliath took up most of the doorframe, not to mention the corridor, (and the continent). Leo couldn't decide whether his office was closing in on him or the metastasizing landmass was just getting larger. They called him 'Goliath' because of his legendary size, which was to Biblical proportion. Rumor had it, the gargantuan amalgam of flesh, muscle and bone broke off a glacier somewhere in the Atlantic roughly two million years ago. Too bad there were none left to confirm or deny it.

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  "Close the door," Leo instructed. The big bastard squeezed inside. "You heard about Michael."

  A low groan confirmed his rudimentary comprehension. "They said he ain't s'posed to wake up."

  "Isn't," Leo corrected him, then thought better of it. "It's not important. Cuz he did. Some time last night, I'm told."

  Poor Goliath tilted his gigantic head sideways. "But––they said––"

  "They were wrong, Goliath. As usual." Leo paused. This was getting him nowhere. "The point is he's doing better. I think. Gotta assume waking up's an improvement." Leo couldn't tell whether the big bruiser was following along or just pretending to. Leo couldn't care less. "So you know what to do. Right?"

  Still nothing. Then, like the trick knee that plagued him when it rained or so much as threatened to, something clicked.

  "You want me to––"

  "Bring me what's mine." Leo vociferously specified. "Politely, if possible. If not..." He let his words bob above the room's rising tension, hoping even a pea brain so small could read between line-spaces so big.

  Sure enough, the dense grey matter reconfigured inside that squishy melon of his, and Goliath turned to go without so much as goodbye.

  Leo went back to his crossword.

  The word, for which he had been searching — 'verticality,' — finally came to him.

  They always did, sooner or later.