S04E17 - The Chart

"The Chart" is the seventeenth episode of Season 4 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It falls inside the two weeks of bed rest Luther was ordered into after the building collapse in "Incoming", with Pawbert alone in the house enforcing it and Nick and Judy finally free on the same day.

Synopsis

Gray wolf Luther Pawthorne, the ZSI-ZPD liaison, is recovering at Pawthorne Mansion from three broken ribs, a bruised spine, and concussion symptoms. He falls in the living room trying to reach the kitchen for colder water, and his partner Pawbert Lynxley helps him back to the couch. Sleep-deprived from listening for him, Pawbert still sends ZPD officers Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps out for their first day off together in weeks. They walk to Acorn Heights, look up at their old apartment, and stand in the alley below the fire escape where Nick first raised the idea of marriage. He tells Judy he was shaking that night and expected her to say no. Pawbert keeps Luther on the couch, holds him steady in the bathroom, washes him around his bandages, and stress-cooks soup. Luther crosses the house anyway, takes case files from his office, and works in the library until Pawbert walks him back. Nick and Judy come home with noodles and hear that Luther escaped five times, six counting the morning fall. Nick makes The Chart on poster board, with categories for escape attempts, complaints about resting, and buildings collapsed on Luther, and hangs it on the living room wall. He refuses to record the bathroom assistance. That night Nick tells Judy he thinks about growing old with her but is not proposing, and they agree on a day alone together every month. By morning The Chart is laminated, and Nick adds two more categories over breakfast.

Plot

Luther wakes early on the living room couch, which has become his daytime post because the stairs are only manageable at night and only with a shoulder under his arm. His phone is gone, confiscated after a four in the morning incident, and the laptop is across the room. He tests his ribs, gets vertical, and decides the water in the kitchen is colder than the glass already within reach on the coffee table. The blanket has slipped around his hindpaw. He notices too late, catches it mid-stride, and goes down hard. Pawbert is already awake and listening, and reaches him in seconds. Luther calls the fall a hydration mission rather than an escape attempt; Pawbert counts it against the two overnight and the laptop at four. Back on the couch, Luther stops arguing and admits that he does not know how to do nothing.

In the kitchen, Nick burns a pan of hash browns badly enough that Judy turns off the burner, scrapes them into the trash, and starts pancakes herself. Pawbert comes in for the kitchen water, learns that this is the first day in weeks both of them are free, and tells them to spend it away from the house. He promises to call during an emergency and not for every escape attempt. Judy admits to Nick afterward that they never told Pawbert how frightened they were while Luther was gone, and that when she told Pawbert about worrying through Nick's academy days she watched him recognize the feeling.

They walk out through Savanna Central in civilian clothes, four years as partners visible in how they move around each other. The streets get narrower and the buildings older until they reach Acorn Heights and the third-floor walk-up they lived in for three years. Red brick, no elevator, fire escapes running up the side. The curtains in their old window are blue now, not the amber Judy chose, and a young capybara walks out of the front door past them without a glance.

Around the back, the alley holds the fire escape, still bolted to the brick outside what used to be their bedroom window. They cannot climb it anymore. Nick tells Judy this is where he first raised the idea of marriage, and reproduces the original sentence, a chain of qualifiers and hedges long enough that Judy laughs at it. She reminds him he was shaking. He agrees, and says he kept expecting her to refuse, because mammals like him do not get happy endings. Judy tells him he got one. Nick corrects her: what he got was her, which is different, because she is not an ending, she is ongoing, and every day she is still there he waits for the part where it comes apart. Judy answers that they did not outgrow the apartment, they got stretched. The life they built here was enough until Luther and Pawbert made enough stop being the ceiling. They go to lunch at the noodle place they used to go to.

At the mansion, Pawbert reads for a class with one eye on the couch, tracking the small tells that come before an escape attempt. Luther eventually asks for help getting to the bathroom, which costs him more than the walk does. His ribs will not permit the twist the job requires, and Pawbert steps in and handles it without ceremony or comment, then steadies him at the sink. Later there is a sponge bath around the bandages, a book instead of a screen, and soup — the recipe Pawbert's mother taught him, which he cooks when he is stressed.

By evening Luther has crossed the house to the library anyway. He is on the small sofa rather than his reading chair, because the chair would require sitting up, with case files from his office across the hall spread around him. Pawbert finds him breathing faster than he should be and tells him plainly what three broken ribs, a bruised spine, and unresolved concussion symptoms leave him capable of, which is healing and nothing else. When Luther says the two situations are not the same, Pawbert turns the lesson back on him: Luther taught him that needing help is not weakness but reality. Luther says he hates being useless. Pawbert tells him he is not useless, he is injured, and that the two are not the same thing. Getting back across the house takes both of them, one hallway at a time.

Nick and Judy come home with noodle takeout to Pawbert's itemized tally — laptop attempt, kitchen fall, bathroom situation, shower attempt, library infiltration — five escapes, six counting the morning. Nick disappears and returns with poster board, markers, and a ruler, and builds The Chart on the coffee table in handwriting far neater than his usual scrawl. Categories accumulate: escape attempts at six, times Pawbert had to catch him at five, buildings collapsed on Luther at one, days without incident at zero, tally marks for complaints about resting and for every time Luther says he hates this. When Pawbert mentions the bathroom, Nick rules it off the record. Luther threatens to destroy the poster; Nick tells him it is getting laminated and that he will make copies. Pawbert sides with documentation, and The Chart goes on the living room wall where the couch cannot avoid it.

That night in their own room, Nick tells Judy he thinks about growing old with her, and that the part where she is there is the only part of it that does not frighten him, and that he is not proposing. Afterward they talk about the mansion, the pack, and what Judy has been carrying since the collapse — that something will eventually happen they cannot fix, and that what she wants is to have actually lived before it does. They settle on a day alone together every month and fall asleep arguing amiably about how far The Chart's jurisdiction extends.

In the morning The Chart is laminated and on the wall. Luther shifts on the couch and makes an involuntary pain noise, and Nick logs it as an incident on the grounds that a pain noise counts. Pawbert arrives with a tray and tells Luther that his dignity escaped five times yesterday and can recover along with his ribs, and Nick adds a category for Pawbert defending The Chart. Pawbert then mentions that Dr. Bailey said to call if they need sedation, and Nick adds one more. The pack eats breakfast around him.

Key Moments

• Luther falls in the living room trying to reach the kitchen for colder water, and Pawbert gets him back onto the couch
• Luther admits he does not know how to do nothing
• Pawbert, running on sleep taken in shifts, sends Nick and Judy out for their first shared day off in weeks
• Nick and Judy walk from Savanna Central to Acorn Heights and look up at the third-floor walk-up they lived in for three years, now someone else's
• In the alley behind the building they stand below the fire escape where Nick first raised the idea of marriage
• Nick tells Judy he was shaking that night and expected her to refuse, because mammals like him do not get happy endings
• Judy tells him they did not outgrow the apartment, they got stretched
• Luther asks for help getting to the bathroom, and Pawbert handles it without ceremony
• Pawbert sponge-bathes Luther around the bandages and stress-cooks soup from his mother's recipe
• Luther crosses the mansion to the library, takes case files from his office across the hall, and works from the sofa until Pawbert walks him back
• Pawbert turns Luther's own lesson back on him: needing help is not weakness, it is reality
• Nick builds The Chart on poster board after hearing Luther escaped five times, six counting the morning fall
• Nick rules the bathroom assistance off The Chart
• Pawbert sides with Nick, and The Chart is hung on the living room wall over Luther's objection
• Nick tells Judy he thinks about growing old with her and states that he is not proposing
• Nick and Judy agree on a day alone together every month
• The Chart is laminated by morning; Nick logs a pain noise as an incident and adds two more categories

Key Lines

Locations

• Pawthorne Mansion — living room, kitchen, bathroom, library, Nick and Judy's room
• Acorn Heights — Nick and Judy's old apartment building; a third-floor walk-up with red brick and fire escapes up the side. Only the exterior and the rear alley are seen; the interior is never entered
• Savanna Central — the walk out of the polished districts toward the old neighborhood

Items

• The Chart — Built by Nick on poster board with a ruler and markers, hung on the living room wall, laminated by morning. As rendered: ESCAPE ATTEMPTS: 6, TIMES PAWBERT HAD TO CATCH HIM: 5, BUILDINGS COLLAPSED ON LUTHER: 1, DAYS WITHOUT INCIDENT: 0, COMPLAINTS ABOUT RESTING (tally marks), UNAUTHORIZED HYGIENE ATTEMPTS: 1, TIMES LUTHER SAID HE HATES THIS: |, ESCAPE VELOCITY (estimated): LOW, PATIENT COOPERATION LEVEL: MINIMAL, WOLF STUBBORNNESS INDEX: EXTREME. The next morning adds TIMES PAWBERT DEFENDED THE CHART: 1 and SEDATION THREATS: 1
• Green sweater — Worn by Pawbert through the day of caregiving
• Soup — Pawbert's stress cooking, made from his mother's recipe and brought to Luther on the couch
• Kitchen water — Luther's claim that the kitchen tap runs colder than the glass already on the coffee table, and his stated reason for leaving the couch