Disclaimer: I do not own the characters portrayed in this work of fiction. They are the sole creative property of the creators and writers of "General Hospital".
A/N: For information on CPR classes in your area, contact your local Red Cross or hospital. There are also numerous on-line sources with information on how to perform life saving CPR, though you really should be properly trained. Those last resources should be utilized only under emergent conditions as nothing can substitute for the experience and practice gained from hands-on training. Though it is far better to do something than nothing.
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY TO MY EVIL COSMIC TWIN!!!!! And, yes, there will be more to come...
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Part II
(Halfway through)
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.
And some in dreams assured were
Of the spirit that plagued us so:
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
Chapter 1: Merciless Sun
"Our mortality is a borrowed thing." – Susan R.
The sun was merciless as it beat down on Jason's parched, exposed skin. He was thirsty, god was he thirsty. His tongue felt thick in his mouth and he knew that the sun, in its constant glare, had caused his skin to blister. The pain had long since become unbearable to the point where he no longer felt anything save for a numbness which ached in his very bones. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink, he mused as his eyes roamed the endless ocean surrounding him. The dry, humorless chuckle never left his throat.
He sat with his back propped up against the edge of the lifeboat he had managed to procure as the ship started to sink. Spinelli's head was in his lap, his body twisted painfully in on itself as nausea once again wracked his thin frame. Jason wished there was something he could do for the young man, but it was taking all of his waning strength to stay upright and keep his eyes open, he had nothing left to expend on the other man's behalf.
For some reason he had it drilled into his head that as long as he kept his eyes open and on the never-ending blue horizon all would be well, they would be safe and would find land or be rescued though no one in Port Charles had any reason to believe they had survived the pirate attack. If for some reason he closed his eyes…he shuddered at the very thought, picturing Spinelli and himself as little more than desiccated skeletons with their skin, thick as leather clinging to their lifeless bones.
Early in his work for Sonny Corinthos, Jason had learned that life was fleeting. He lived life on the edge and got off on it, at first. Later, he simply got used to the danger, to the idea that his life could be taken from him at a moment's notice. But, here, exposed to the unsympathetic sun, water stretching as far as he could see, and Spinelli sprawled out at the bottom of the Lilliputian lifeboat – he realized just how insignificant his life was in the grand scheme of things. How it could all be swept away in the blink of an eye.
So, he kept his eyes open and clung to what little hope he had left. As long as Spinelli kept breathing, as long as their limited supply of water lasted, as long as he kept his eyes open everything would be okay. A far cry from the adrenaline-rich life had lived up until two days ago, but it was what he had left and he would cling tenaciously to it.
Spinelli had long since lost the will to live. The sun, brutal albatross of the sky, weighed down upon him, making the slightest movement – the mere lifting of a finger – impossibly difficult to manage. It hurt to breathe the salt air through his sun-scorched lips. Would it be like this forever, that even his most basic bodily functions would have to come under his conscious control in order for him to go on existing?
He willed his lungs to cease their senseless ministrations. It would be pointless to exist much longer, the water, what little water they had, would soon be gone and he was unable to keep any of it down. He could do this one thing for his mentor, this one last thing; secure his life by forfeiting his own.
Thirst is a word that means: dryness to your mouth, the prompting that one ought to replenish one's fluids. It was no relative to the all-consuming, cramping, and debilitating sensation which currently consumed Spinelli's very existence. It burned. His throat was raw and his skin red. He was being cooked from the inside out and it hurt like hell. He knew he was going to die, it was just a matter of how long the sun, his own body, and the other elements planned to torture him before letting him slip into blessed darkness.
The truly awful, incredibly unfair aspect of the whole experience was that he was still seasick. He had been for the whole trip, but the edge had been taken off by the anti-nausea medicines he had consumed like candy. Here though, it was just him, his faulty inner ear and the ceaseless swelling ocean so much more magnified when one was lying inches rather than feet removed from it. It wasn't fair, it just wasn't. Dying from thirst, dying from the vicissitudes of the sun's action-that he could accept, but dying from seasickness, that was just undignified, not to mention incredibly painful as his body mustered the strength to dry heave once more.
Though it registered somewhere at the back of his mind that Jason was with him, that it was his 'Master' who had rescued him from the gunfire and the eventual sinking of the captured cargo ship, he felt alone in his agony. His life was reduced to the simple, mundane task of breathing. If only he had courage enough to discontinue it. Giving into his despair as another painful pang assaulted his stomach, he held his breath and simply stopped breathing.
Jason sensed a change in Spinelli and tore his eyes from the horizon to the contorted face of the young man whose body was once again mounting a rebellion. It wasn't that which had drawn his attention away from his silent vigil. It took a moment for Jason to understand just what was different about the state of his charge and when he realized what had changed, that the boy was no longer breathing, panic lent him a strength the sun, in its mockery, had previously sapped from him.
Lifting the much too still form of Spinelli into a sitting position so that the boy's head was crushed to his chest, he started gently shaking him, willing him to breathe.
"Don't you dare die on me," he whispered hoarsely into Spinelli's ear. His throat pinched as the words forced their way out through the constricted airway and all but died on his burnt lips. He moved as quickly as his stiffened limbs would allow him to and, noting as afterthought how much weight the boy had lost on their two week journey to South America, he placed Spinelli once again on the bottom of the boat and knelt next to him.
Shaking with panic and dread, he placed two fingers on Spinelli's neck and allowed himself a brief sigh of relief. Spinelli's heart was still beating, albeit much too erratically. He would not quibble over such small matters. The ill-beating heart was the only thing keeping his friend alive at the moment. He would not offend the working organ even in thought lest it take its revenge on his faithful friend.
Tilting Spinelli's head back against the wooden planks to open the boy's airway, he pinched the boy's nose and placed his mouth securely over Spinelli's. He pushed two second long breaths into the slack mouth and watched the inanimate chest slowly rise before it once again fell as the shared air escaped. He waited a heartbeat, then two. Cursing, he took a deep breath and once again poured oxygen into the young man's uncooperative lungs.
He leaned back and watched as the chest rose and then fell. This time he waited three heartbeats, watching Spinelli's chest as he had been watching the horizon moments before. The chest remained still, taunting him as the empty horizon had.
"Spinelli!" Jason's face twisted in rage, "Breathe!" He filled his lungs with the fetid ocean air and expelled their contents into Spinelli's idle lungs. Terrified, he once again pressed his fingers to Spinelli's neck and felt for a pulse.
The ocean, sensing the direness of Spinelli's situation, ceased her rocking. She became as still as the non-breathing occupant in the lifeboat upon her glassy surface. The air, reduced to a stagnant whisper, held its breath in anxious anticipation. Time itself stopped and sluggishly returned as Jason's bloodless fingers registered the faint murmuring of Spinelli's heart.
Jason, filled with fury, pounded a fist into Spinelli's chest, "Breathe! That's an order god damn it!" Spinelli had never been reluctant to follow any of his orders in the past; Jason couldn't understand why his self-proclaimed grasshopper would choose this moment to start on a mutinous course.
"Don't you die…" his voice cracked. Tears wanted to come, but Jason's body had long since been tapped dry by the punishing sun and he sobbed tearless as he took a shuddering breath into his burning lungs and once again plied his mouth to Spinelli's. Expelling the hard won air into Spinelli's mouth he waited, counting tersely to three before once again breathing into the lungs hell-bent on being pertinacious in their refusal to secure oxygen of their own.
Jason gave himself over to the rhythmic routine as he continued breathing for Spinelli. His life was reduced to breathing in the brackish air surrounding him, expelling it into Spinelli's stubborn lungs, monitoring the lingering heartbeat, and resuming the sequence. The sun, ever present overseer, continued to beat down on them as Jason labored. His shadow moved clockwise as he worked and still the sun persisted, in its wrath, to bleed him of energy as it scorched his already damaged skin. Jason refused to give in, even as he began to falter.
If Spinelli died, he would soon follow after; he was not going to lose the young man who had suddenly become his world. There was no one else left. It was just the two of them, the sun, and the endless ocean and Jason refused to be left alone with the overbearing sun and the wayward ocean. No, if Spinelli's lungs insisted on being obstinate, he would close his eyes and let the cruel sun claim him.
Time no longer existed. How long had he been breathing for Spinelli? Jason was amazed that the boy's heart continued its service, pumping blood through the young man's veins, though he shouldn't have been. It was, after all, Spinelli's strongest instrument. His ability to love was unsurpassed by any other person Jason knew. Spinelli loved unconditionally. He loved the unlovable and the undeserving without reservation. Jason often wondered why Spinelli stayed with him, even when he had been unkind to him, and knew that it could all be attributed to Spinelli's unstoppable heart. He prayed that it would not fail him now.
He prayed that it would continue to serve, not just Spinelli, but also his mentor. Jason refused to think of himself as the young man's master though Spinelli often called him that. If he truly were his master, Spinelli would have long ago begun to breathe on his own; he would not have let Jason's pleas fall on deaf ears.
"C'mon Spinelli," he begged. His strength was nearly depleted. He took another shaky breath into his aching lungs and surrendered it to the young man watching as the chest rose and fell. Jason swayed once, his eyes drooped and he collapsed next to Spinelli.
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