Silence- A Sonnet

Beep…Beep….Beep…Beep…..

I hate that fucking sound.

It's dark in the hospital room, the incessantly bright light from the hallway barely peeking through the curtains pulled tight at the door. The ten by ten room is claustrophobic to me, nearly filled by the bed at its center, leaving just enough room for a chair and a narrow strip of floor to walk on. The air tastes of anesthetic and alcohol; sharp and sickening. The walls are unadorned and faded, and offer no distraction. The only movement, the only sound, comes from the beeping heart monitor bolted to the ceiling. Thin multi-colored wires snake out of it, flowing down to attach like alien tentacles to the chest of the only person left in the world that I care about.

Arms crossed, and limbs frozen stiff from hours in the same position, I narrow my eyes and glare at the machine. It's hypnotizing, the beep, beep, beep; like a barber pole the little vertical lines keep slicing upwards and continuing on and on into infinity. Day and night. Never changing, mind-numbing and monotonous. I hate it.

But I need it. Without it I wouldn't even know he was alive.

I scan his chest as I've done a million times before, hopelessly, desperately searching for any sign of life that can be seen by the naked eye. But his breathing is so shallow it's unnoticeable. He never murmurs, his eyes never move behind closed lids. When the nurses come to check his bandages they turn him like a sack of potatoes. His limbs flop with dead weight. His condition never worsens, and it never improves. So for now all I have is a stupid machine and a single stupid sound to let me know he's still in there, somewhere.

Not that I got much out of him normally.

Still.

It's difficult not to watch as the monitor coldly ticks on. It echoes in my head, bouncing and growing louder and louder to my ears in the silent hospital room. It taunts me. Each new spike reminds me of how close and impossibly far away he is. Of how I have to depend on this stupid, mindless machine to let me know his heart is still beating.

I try to shift my position in what must be the world's hardest chair. I'm pretty sure my ass has fallen asleep. Why are hospital chairs always so uncomfortable? I shift again, but it's no help. The padding has probably been worn completely away from hundreds of people doing exactly what I am: sitting, staring and trying not to feel so fucking helpless.

With enormous force I tear my eyes away from the screen to check the battered clock on the wall. 4:45 AM. Terrific.

Standing, I stretch my sore limbs, listening to my battered joints crack and pop. I take a second to work out the knots in my shoulder, kneading my fist deep into the muscle. It hurts like a bitch, but after a second it starts to help. I rub my eyes and face, trying to wipe the exhaustion away. I need to shave. My ass is definitely at least half asleep, and my back aches. And I need coffee.

My eyes dart back to the machine as I leave the room. No change. Surprise, surprise.

The fluorescent lights hum in the small kitchenette set aside for visitors, bright and jarring. Everything seems sharper and more real under them, compared to the fuzzy darkness of Ryan's room. The coffee smells old and sour. It looks like pudding, thick and dark, and I wonder if it will even pour. I swirl it around in the pot, testing it, fascinated by the slow tornado that forms in the center. It circles around and around and around, disappearing down in an endless spiral.

When someone suddenly speaks behind me I nearly have a heart attack, jumping about a foot and almost dropping the pot. The tornado disappears instantly and coffee sloshes out onto my pants and the floor. One of the nurses, Johanna, is standing behind me with a concerned look on her face. I'm abruptly aware that I must have been staring at the coffee for several minutes and I probably look insane. I shake my head trying to clear my thoughts.

"I'm sorry, what?" I ask, grabbing a fistful of napkins.

"I said, 'you probably don't want to drink that.'" She's in her fifties and a little stout, and her black hair is twisted into tight braids that are cut short and remind me of Whoopi Golberg. She had dark brown eyes that crinkle when she smiles and are clear and sharp. We've developed a little report over the past couple weeks, and I know from experience that though she may appear calm, inside her mind is furiously ticking away as she watches me. She tells me to call her Jo, but I can't. She's the only one of the staff I've felt comfortable around. I almost trust her. Almost. Trust has kind of been an issue for me lately.

"What doesn't kill you..." I respond and attempt to give her a winning smile. She doesn't buy it.

"Mmhmm. If you don't get some sleep soon, it just might." She says, pursing her lips, and putting her hand on her hip. I shrug her off, trying to finish my cleaning and somehow maneuver the questionable liquid into a cup. I can feel her gaze still on me, steady as a bull. I turn and face her, and we stare each other down for a second or two, but I can't stand the scrutiny and my eyes flash away. She chuckles a bit in triumph and brushes past me to the fridge.

"Any news?" She asks, pulling out a single serving orange juice cup. She means the manhunt. I shake my head. "Too bad. You should think about joining them. It might help."

I watch her down the orange juice like a shooter: all in one gulp. The woman never ceases to amaze me. "The whole country is looking; they've got all the help they need." I respond.

"I meant help you." She says. The unwarranted concern makes me itchingly uncomfortable. I turn away from her and search for creamer. Damn, only the powdered kind, I'll have to drink it black.

"I'm doing just fine where I am, thanks." I say evenly, and a bit more harshly than I mean. She's silent behind me and I worry I've crossed a line. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, mentally berating myself for taking out my frustration on her.

I hear her sigh and the door creak open behind me. "Just don't forget to take care of yourself Agent Weston. Before we have to check you in," she says.

I open my eyes and start to reply, but I'm startled to find a small carton of coffee creamer sitting in front of me. I turn quickly to thank her but she's already swishing out the door.

The room seems darker when I return to it, but the machine of course beeps cheerily on just the same. I try to settle back into the rock hard chair, experimentally taking a sip of coffee. It's just as awful as I imagined, and lukewarm too. I drink it all the same, arching my back as I attempt to find a comfortable position. I try to look around, but like a moth, my eyes are inevitably drawn back to the monitor. I let myself be hypnotized by it and allow my thoughts to wander back over the past two, exhausting, weeks.

I had been in the middle of the first real sleep I'd had in months when I got the call. With Carroll officially dead and the hunt for his associates warming up, I had left the field office after ten grueling hours of wrap-up interviews and was completely drained. I'd barely arrived at the crummy motel the bureau had put us up in and had fallen asleep as soon as my head had hit the pillow.

My cell, when it rang suddenly in the middle of the night, jarred me violently awake. One look at the caller ID – UNKNOWN- had me instantly alert. I eyed the phone warily, allowing it to ring a couple more times before I plucked up the nerve to answer it.

"Hello?"

Silence.

"Hello….?" I tried again.

There was nothing but static on the other end. I pulled the phone away to check that the call was still going. The timer continued to tick on. Whoever was on the other side hadn't hung up. Cautiously I held the phone back up to my ear. I turned up the volume. The static continued, hissing continuously as I pressed the speaker closer to my ear straining to hear whatever I could. The room around me grew quiet and I waited, listening to the sound of nothing. Holding my breath. Seconds ticked by, the silence on the phone roaring in my ears.

"Are you paying attention Michael?"

Startled, I dropped the phone. The voice had been low, but feminine, and in the silence of the room it had sounded as loud as a gun shot. My heart started beating like thunder in my ears, and trying to steady my breathing I scrambled to pick the phone back up.

"Who is this?" I asked, unintentionally yelling, "Who the fuck is this?!"

I jerked the phone away, but this time the screen flashed that the call had been disconnected. Instantly I tried to redial the number, but it was blocked. I tried to run a tracing program I had installed, but it came up a dead end as well. In frustration I threw the phone onto the now crumpled bed spread.

I made my way into the bathroom and splashed cold water on myself. Staring into the mirror, I was disgusted at how white my face was. How the blues of my eyes seemed to betray the fear I felt inside. I leaned in closer to my reflection, staring deep into my own gaze and forced myself to take slower, calmer breaths. My jaw, shaven only just yesterday, tightened slightly. I forced my eyebrows down and un-furrowed my brow. I continued to breathe evenly until my face hardened and I felt in control of myself again.

And that was when the phone rang the second time.

My heart racing wildly, I lunged across the room. Ring, ring. Digging through the covers, I began to nearly panic as I became unable to find it. Ring, ring, I could hear the incessant tone repeating itself, but it continued to be muffled by the thick blanket. In a frenzy, I finally shook everything off the bed, and heard it tumble to the ground. On what felt like the one hundredth ring, I snatched it up and hastily pressed the answer button.

"What? What do you want?" I blurted out.

The person on the other end hesitated a second, but in the pause I noticed normal sounds in the background. The buzz and hum of a busy office at work. Finally a familiar voice, Turner, spoke.

"Agent Weston? I'm afraid there has been an incident."

I drove like a maniac to the hospital. It's a miracle I didn't run anyone over.

He was in surgery for six hours. They were the longest six hours of my life. I threw myself into the investigation, checking my phone for updates from the hospital literally every ten seconds. It didn't take us long to figure out it was Hardy's neighbor, and ex girlfriend, Molly who had been the attacker. Someone who had been in Ryan's life for years, someone he had trusted. So typical, another confident exposed as a Carrollite. We tracked her phone as far as a truck stop nearly fifty miles away. The sim card had been removed, and the remains of a broken iPhone were found in a ditch nearby. No one had seen her come, or watched her go. She had disappeared.

I arrived back at the hospital just in time for Ryan to be transferred out of the recovery wing and into the ICU. When I saw him, so white and lifeless on the bed, I felt my heart plummet into my stomach. At first I was convinced he was dead. He had a million tubes and wires coming out of him, and the doctors and nurses surrounded him, plucking at him like vultures. They seemed to swarm over him. I saw a nurse draw a liquid out of a vial into a syringe and bring it towards him, and I was suddenly terrified she meant to harm him. I smacked it out of her hand, screaming insensible phrases about poison. It took Turner and two other agents physically hauling me from the room and threatening to arrest me before I stopped yelling.

For the next few days, no one could enter the room without me grilling them on their intent and exactly what they were doing, step by step. I questioned everyone, demanding their credentials and a full background check before they could lay a hand on him. I became obsessed with the idea that one of them was part of Carroll's cult, out to finish the job. I refused to sleep or leave the room, and trusted absolutely no one. I watched the nurses with a fanatical eye even as they performed the most harmless of duties.

Finally, after a week of next to no sleep, I caved in to the combined efforts of Agent Turner and Johanna the nurse (she was not Ryan's nurse and not allowed to even enter his room, which allowed me to at least discredit her as a threat) and slept on a couch in the visitor's waiting room. I slept that night for a whole eight hours, and only after repeated promises from the FBI that Ryan would be given a full guard, and that I could return the second I woke up. He made it through the night without me, and after that I eased up my watch slightly.

A few days later, they eased the guard on him, and soon there was no one but me. I continued to stay with him, but kept tabs on the investigation. I was sure he would wake up soon and want a full briefing, but as the days went on and there continued to be no change in his condition, I felt myself become more and more withdrawn. I became completely uninterested in the increasing cold hunt for Molly, and found myself losing track of time in the ever-lit timeless world of the hospital.

I trudge slowly out of my reverie and back into the quiet present, allowing the fog of the past to clear slowly from my head. Glancing down at my forgotten cup of coffee, I take a sip and find it cold. Grimacing, I toss the whole cup into the trash. I feel exhausted. I close my eyes, and roll my head around in a full circle, relishing the silence and feeling the bones crack and the muscles stretch. I stare absently at the ceiling, connecting the little holes in the tiles like constellations. It soothes me, this mindless game of connect the dots. I am tracing these patterns with my mind, when the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise. In the base of my skull, an alarm bell begins to ring but I can't immediately place what my subconscious has picked up.

That's when I notice the silence.

No beep, beep, beep.

My head snaps down to look at the monitor. It shows a single straight line tracing across its face, and with a sinking feeling I slowly turn my eyes towards the bed. Ryan is sitting straight up in it, the wires ripped off his chest and clutched in his hand. The covers have fallen off the top half of him, and I can see the bandages covering his wounds have come off, exposing his half-healed surgical scars. But it's his eyes that stop me cold. He is looking straight at me, unblinking, with no expression on his face. I catch my breath and my own eyes widen as we stare silently at each other.

Time slows as we are locked in each other's gaze. I can't even hear him breathing; I only hear the sound of my blood rushing in my ears. My neck feels suddenly like ice and heat at the same time, and my limbs feel shorter, as if only my clenching and unclenching fists exist.

Slowly, a sick grin crosses his face. I feel my heart stop beating all together as he lowers his face and narrows his eyes.

"Something wicked this way comes," he sneers, before putting his hand to his stitches and brutally ripping them out. I see blood gush out of them, pouring down the bed and soaking the covers. All the while Ryan stares intently at me, his grin widening like the pool of red around him.

I wake with a start, gasping for air. My heart is racing again, fast and loud and painful. I see that my hands are clutching the arms of the chair so tightly they are white and my nails have bitten into the wood. The room is brighter, the sun has obviously risen.

Immediately I look to the bed in front of me. Ryan Hardy sleeps on, intact and looking more peaceful than he ever did awake. There is no grin on his face, his eyes are shut, and after a quick inspection I find all the wires and his bandages are in place. I even find slight relief in the machine, as it continues to beep on, the same as it has for more than two weeks.

I must have dozed off. I clench my jaw, and attempt calm myself again. I am infuriated that I fell asleep and that I could be shaken by something as stupid as a simple nightmare. I have got to get myself together, or I know I won't be any help when Ryan wakes up.

If he wakes up, a little voice inside me taunts but I steadfastly ignore it. Instead I go in search of fresh coffee.

I am disturbingly proud of myself for merely flinching when my phone rings twenty minutes later. I press the answer button wearily.

"Weston," I mutter, glancing absently up at the monitor I once again loathe.

"Agent Weston, you better get down here." It's Turner again, and his voice sounds tired and drawn. "There's been a development."

I roll my eyes, and try to make my voice sound interested. "That's good news. But can't you just get me up to speed over the phone?"

"No. This one is big. There's been a Carroll sighting," he says it with such importance, I almost laugh out loud.

"Yeah, well sir, that's not really news. Aren't there about thirty a day?" I sigh to myself and stir my new cup of horrible coffee. "No offense, but I think I should keep my focus here for now and-"

"Damnit Weston…" he starts, then I hear someone cut him off and say something inaudible, and he sighs. "If you think it's the right thing to do sir," he responds to the other person, "the line isn't secure." There is a pause. Finally he brings the phone back and speaks to me again. "This one is different, Agent."

"Different how, sir?"

"It's a video. And Mike? It's addressed to you."

AN: I am aware Ryan's quote is not Poe. I am attempting to widen the literary focus. Wish me luck!

Hope you enjoyed this little prelude.