He can't see his doctor, only feels the warmth of that sad smile as the pills are placed in his mouth. Bitter on his tongue, sharp on taste buds that haven't known sweetness for eight years. He lets the pills soak in his mouth, lets his world be narrowed down to just the sensation of tiny capsules resting against his teeth.
Everything is out-of-focus, like a poorly executed fade into one of those new silent films. John Doe looks out of the window with his good eye, the one he hasn't tried to claw out of his skull, and he sees the same butterfly that he saw yesterday.
A brilliant blue against the pale pink sky, it flutters in the breeze like Luka's dark, dark hair. He watches as another butterfly follows, and they dance against the glass.
The medications don't work, and he repeats this mantra in his head. They only help him ease into the warm arms of unconsciousness, not ridding him of the boy in his peripheral vision who prunes the roses or the phantom taste of bitter coffee and apple pie at the back of his throat. He drifts for a moment, his memory wavering, his name warm in his mouth.
He wakes again with a start, shaking and aware. He cries out, not knowing whether to be excited or afraid. His wrist has partially healed, but the bleeding has ceased and that's enough to make him tear off the tourniquet with trembling fingers.
He screams, ripping the bandage off of his eye to claw at them again, digging his nails into his eyes in a fit of manic insanity. He feels the warm gush of blood, and the doctor watching him with sad eyes as the nurses try to restrain the nameless patient.
He refuses to eat when he's conscious. Sinners don't deserve to eat, he explains, and asks again why it is that he can't die, why he just keeps healing. Physically, because he's not healing at all emotionally. The doctor tells him that it's because he's special, because he's not like the rest. Because he's different.
Later that night, when the doctor isn't keeping an eye on him like a naughty child, he cries and drives the blade into his right wrist. He cuts through layers of skin and allows his sin to pour out over the pure tile floor of the hospital room before he goes deeper, slicing and tearing muscle until he feels the scrape of bone. He twists the blade once, twice, feeling his pulse vibrate through the scalpel and he collapses into the puddle of crimson beneath him, tasting it, drowning in it…
He cries for his sister and coffee and the vision of a boy who was always there.
When his death is explained to him the next day, he asks only for his watch and his name, seeing no boy and tasting no bitterness for the first time.
"I didn't go deep enough," he whispers, and sleeps for the first night in eight long years.