Storyteller's Note: After all of this time, she's still with me.

I own nothing.

Nurse Jackie

Season 7 Episode 12

The Knife

Everyone was furious at her. And no one came. Her husband couldn't come, and probably wouldn't have even if it had been possible—he was going to prison because of her.

She knew why the doctors and nurses, all of whom were foreign to her, were so nasty with her; why they treated her as a useless piece of junkie meat wasting space on their table. She thought, for a serious moment, that she was dead; in a blinding, white Twilight Zone hell where she had finally come to have her just-rewards exacted; but she knew better and that she was far from being that lucky.

No, she was alive, thanks to the oxygen mask attached to her face, which was a touch too tight and pressing much too uncomfortably against her cheek bones.

And the Narcan shot, that had been administered in the ambulance, which was coursing through her veins and making her feel alive and wide awake in the worst possible way, as every part of her body that even thought it remembered a pain, called it forth for good measure, and made her feel as if she was in a boxing ring being pounded mercilessly by Muhammad Ali in his prime.

And her head: sick, pounding, alternating explosions that felt as if a man-sized timpani player on crack had been transplanted into her brain.

And the nausea; rolling waves of blackness that caused her seemingly immobile body to twist into almost impossible physical expressions of pain: fetal one moment, then up and hunched-over the next, gripping at her stomach and wishing that she could just push through her flesh and tear her offending innards out with her bare hands; then straighten the twenty-odd combined feet of them on the floor, sit beside and pet them into submission and ease, as if they were the cute little family lap dog, that needed the extra affection and direction to calm the fuck down and behave.

Good doggie... she praised the horrid vision in her head as she threw herself back upon the small bed between the short respite of the millionth spasm assaulting her body, and the millionth and one that was following close on its heels.

She understood completely why she was lying in the hospital room alone; why no visitors crowded around her bed; why there were no flowers; they had simply all washed their hands of her, once and for all, and she didn't blame them—they had to move on.

That realization and another crippling spasm of pain joined forces and hit her with their combined full force. And then everything went black.

"So...what, Jackie? You lookin' for my relief, here, or what?"

It was several months later and Jackie had just been given the privilege to receive visitors at the rehab center; it was Mike Cruz grimacing at her as he sat at a table in the visiting area, waiting for her to wipe the shocked look off her face and sit down. His question was the first knife in her heart, wielded without ceremony and dispatched expertly upon the element of surprise attack.

"Sit the fuck down, already, Jackie."

She did. She blinked away a tear. She gulped hard for a fortifying breath of air and resisted the urge to hang her head. It was going to be hard. She hadn't had anyone that she loved asking her for the explanation anymore, and it had been a blessing, as well as a heartbreak.

"I actually waited for you...through the divorce; through the cop—and you married Eddie? Fucking Christ!"

Jackie had no words, preoccupied more, at that moment with her soul, which was bleeding out from her. And then suddenly she did.

"I didn't ask you to do that, Mike."

"You know how I felt about you. It wasn't over and you know it," he accused her.

"Maybe. But there was the divorce. And the cop. And Eddie. And now...this. Why, Mike? What in God's name were you waiting for?"

A long silence between them as Mike's anger raged silently beneath the surface of his face, where his veins were pulsing visibly, and his jaw muscles were waging an equally visible war with his brain to keep the questions sealed safely behind the prison of his tightly-shut mouth. Finally, one began its slow and lethal eruption.

"Charlie didn't live to tell me, but you have..."

The battle had begun in earnest, and he brought forth another dagger to protect himself from her; this blade was poised for her consideration, instead of sudden ambush, and sang its silver glint at her as the sunlight from a window hit it just so; it was a glorious song that told a tale of endless victories, and many enemies cut down in defeat.

"I really wanna fuckin' know—what the fuck were you thinking, Jackie?"

The second blade found her heart.

"What goes through your head when, for what could be the last time of your life, you reach for the drugs? Huh? Are you even thinking of the people who love you? Will mourn you when you're gone? The hearts you're gonna break?"

The blade twisted.

Jackie gave him a wary smile, full of calm resignation. Time to stab back. You asked for it, remember that. "That's just it, Mike; you don't think of anything at all, least of all, any of that...especially that..." she gave a long sigh as her eyes darted away from his; she choked back more tears.

Mike waited.

After a long while she looked back at him and met his steely glare, which had never wavered from her. "You want—I wanted—the escape, from every responsibility—even the responsibility of loving; of being loved. In that moment? Nothing else matters. Not the fact that I could die. Or live. And what does it matter, anyway? Either way I'm gonna hurt somebody. Again. Sober; high; dead; alive. It's the most 'Fuck You' moment of your life, huh? Every time. Until it isn't anymore, I guess."

Her blade hit its mark with precision. It was the only way to set him free.

"Yeah, lady?" Mike rose angrily up from his chair, knocking it over with a loud clatter that disrupted the quiet room.

Yeah, buddy...shit hurts, huh?

It was not an unfamiliar scene. The regulars, at their tables with their visitors, steered them back to private conversation out of the solidarity of having been on that particular stage before; the newbies and their visitors gawked, many of them going through their own difficulties and trying hard not to put on the same show.

Mike was thinking of Charlie, then, wondering if his last moments had been comprised of the same; that 'Fuck You' moment where nothing and no one mattered—not even your own self.

"Fuck you, Jackie..." he spat out as he glared down at her, trying to hold his own tears at bay. "Fuck you. I get it, and you're right—I can't do...this...again. I won't." Mike stormed out.

And that right there? That right there...because I love you, too.