Pygmalion Puzzlepieces
by Elphabah
She had not always been a junkie. Bloodshot eyes and scabbing lips, the sheer thought of drugs dulling her beautiful mind---it never would have occured to her that she awaited this fate. But what child ever thinks of such things when they are still innocent, still pure? As little children they dream of becoming ballerinas and fire-fighters, not hookers and thugs. In 8th grade she wins her school's science fair. It doesn't matter to her that she has grown up in poverty, because she knows she can rise above squalor. Oprah did, therefore Amanda Young believe she would do so too. She gets A's in math and dreams of someday inventing a cure for all of life's burdens. When she graduates high school she plans to attend Harvard, live abroad, save the world from itself. In most sense of the word, Amanda Young had always been a good girl.
But even good girls can go astray. And some times, they have no choice. At fifteen, she runs away from her trailer park home so her mother's boyfriend can't rape her. Skinny legs carry her from the man's lecherous hands. She bites her lip to keep from crying as she turns her back for good on the place that will always haunt her nightmares. Leaving behind her home, as ugly and grim as it had been, is the hardest thing she has ever done. But soon this first struggle is pushed away from the forefront of her thoughts, surmounted by the other agonies that come along. Eating out of trash cans, stealing money when she could. Suddenly all those A+'s and little badges of grade-school achievement fall short of what she needs to live.
And while she is busily trying to survive, keep afloat in the burning sea of concrete streets and enemies on every corner, her dreams are being devoured by harsh reality until nothing but the crums of what she had wished for were left behind.
And then comes the drugs. The sick relief. Medicine for her soul, is what the dealer says because one look in her wide brown eyes and she is exposed. Men see their prey, she is everyone's prey. Even to herself, she is a victim of her inner demons. All her secrets bleeding open. Food becomes an unncessary commodity under the weight of her addiction. Needles, the sweet rush of the metal syringe in her skin. Anything to ignore the world capsizing.
An overdose, she passes out. Amanda's young life of twenty-one could have been snuffed out, her golden thread of life snipped short by fate, but a neighbor finds her. Someone dials 911 and she is whisked away to the hospital. All she remembers at first are the florescent lights and phlegmy taste in her mouth. Doctors yelling frantically.
When John finds her, it is here. In this hospital. Under the most unglamorous conditions. If she had known what he would someday mean to her, she wonders what she could have done differently. Asked the nurse to bring her some make-up, a breath mint. But it all seems ridiculous to be concerned about that sort of thing now. And if things had gone differently, she might not have become the person of change she is now. John might have saw through her and found nothing worth preserving.
And besides at that very moment in time, Amanda is thinking of nothing else but the pains of withdrawal. A soft agonized moan escapes her lips. Bleary from fever, her eyes dart around the room. Everything spins and spins. She jerks her head to the side and catches his gaze, the only other occupant in the two-patient room. Azure eyes absorb her and she feels like her whole life is being put on display.
Amanda opens her mouth to yell something crude but the words are caught in her throat, dissolving on her parched tongue. He is still watching her when she slips unconscious and the room fades.
Everything changes after that. Everything.
"John," she whispers at his bed side. Amanda leans in the plastic chair, her arms draped across the railing as she lays her warm hands against his chest. She can feel his heart beating, the steady inhale-exhale pattern of his lunges. He is asleep but she speaks freely anyways, her voice almost inaudible, "you saved me from myself."
Under his guidance, her love for creating things rekindles. She moves to the gentle but firm command of his words like a dancer to the music of the orchestra. She gives him everything; 110 of her broken self. Her identity is molded and remolded and she prides herself in the person she becomes because of him.
If this all ends tomorrow, I want you to know it was worth it for me, she says to him countless times with a sincerity she thought long gone from her nature. John smiles faintly and smoothes her hair with his shaking hand. He doesn't answer her with words, only with the way he makes her feel.
Special. Unique. It's the first time in her life that she feels understood. One year and four months she's gone without drugs. John teaches her many things but one of which is the strength of will power. She doesn't need the needles anymore; she is on a journey were they aren't required in order to make her feel good.
"Do you know the story of Pygmalion?" John asks her one day, his slow quiet drawl entering the air unobtrusively. She is sitting on a stool while he paints, one of the last final activities he can manage before his motor skills begin to fail. When she subtley shakes her head, he continues, "Ovid once wrote of a sculptor named Pygmalion who falls in love with a statue he has created. It is a masterpiece but even as such, one cannot love a statue and expect the feelings to be recipicated."
At this point he pauses, gazing at Amanda with an unreadable expression.
"What happens to the sculptor?" She asks.
He doesn't immediately speak, his eyes shift back to the painting and he becomes focused on the piece before him. Still entranced with the acrylic paint on fresh canvas, John continues, "One day, Pygmalion's sadness catches the attention of a goddess and she grants him his greatest desire: his statue comes to life. She is cold at first, ingrateful towards the gift of mortality that had been presented to her. But she changes."
"Given the sculptor's guidance," John lays the brush down, finished. He licks a calloused finger, smearing the paint on the canvas so the colors bleed together. "She changes."
The game is not about cruelty or even so much as punishment; it is a fair path to redemption. Humans were flawed, after all. Pygmalion's statue-turned-human had been flawed. Mistakes were always to be made.
Which is why second chances could make all the difference. John cares for her more than all the others and her redemption becomes a matter of his personal concern---if he could save her, then he could save himself; so he's breaking his rules and giving her multiple second chances. It's hypocritical of him to say she must abide by the rules if he cannot do so himself but that is what love can do to someone. It makes them forget the rules set down. And when the rules no longer apply, it is no longer a game. It becomes a battle. Only then is all fair.
Every time she loses the game, the sharp sting of her defeat plunges into John's heart. He couldn't handle the pain anymore because it was digging into his psyche, the most protected part of his very being. He sets up this game, knowing that the weight of the outcome would either mean the continue of his legacy or the very destruction of it. Amanda tends to him, unaware of her part in this final round of Jigsaw's game.
She's screaming now, screaming through her tears. She hurls her words at him, Nobody ever fucking changes! In another time, another place he would have let her freely express her frutstration. But now, with the game's end so very near, he wishes Amanda had clarity to see what is before her. The gun is shaking in her hand, an explosion of fire crackling through the air. The bullet pierces the doctor's flesh and it seems on cue, the husband is rushing in. He takes a shot at Amanda, she crumbles to the ground still in too much shock to comprehend what has happened. It is a chain reaction, a series of events too quick for John to intervene. But he is already done to much as far as intervention, and he knows that consquences will soon approach him for his misconduct.
Her small hands against her neck, trying to keep her life from pooling out. Each pump of her artery increases the flow. Petal lips form a wide O, she gasps as blood fills her lunges. She chokes on her own fluids, but her eyes lock with his. Why oh why, John?
Their raport is being severed. She is leaving him, in just a few more seconds she will step beyond the threshold of the living so he must explain quickly. His words echo in the cavine of her mind, John knows it makes no difference if she cannot hear him. She falls back on the IV stand, tools tumble from a nearby operation tray.
I'm sorry Amanda. You were very special to me.
It isn't long before he joins her. Their final resting place, whether in a bed of sulphur or a bed of clouds. John doesn't know what awaits them but he looks forward to a second chance.
In unison, their last thoughts are shared.
Each promising that next time, they wouldn't let the other one down.