Rating: PG-13
Summary: "...I often feel like I shouldn't exist, like I'm flawed, like my existence is a crime. I can't be proud of myself, feel happy to be alive, or believe in anything…" A morbid little musing by Luka.
Spoilers: None really. Assume that this happens somewhere in the first half of season 9.
Disclaimer: ER still doesn't belong to me. Never did, never will, unless I suddenly get billions of dollars and buy the rights for it, and we know this ain't never happening.
Dedication: To all people ever hurt by the cruelty of others and to all those who ever felt alone and unhappy.
Author's note: I'm not feeling well. I'm angry with people for being such cruel assholes. I'm upset that people can hurt other people without blinking an eye. My life and the world are going to hell. The fact that I'm in the middle of a major depressive episode also probably has something to do with me writing so many depressing stories, but it's not going away any time soon, so I might produce some more of my morbid little tales. Anyway – if the show will give us some coherent info on Luka's past anytime soon (which I sincerely doubt) this will become a PU (parallel universe) fic. I have analyzed some of Luka's behavior and actions throughout his presence on ER (f.e. his hatred of abusers, his violent reaction to being hit by the mugger and the slight limp he gets when tired), and this fic is the result of my analysis. Also, this is not beta read. I know that I'm a bad girl for not doing it, but I just don't feel like I can entrust this story to someone right now. If you spot glaring errors, e-mail me, and I'll just correct them when I have some free time, and mention you in the intro for being so attentive.
P.S. I managed to go a whole story without mentioning a single name, not even the main character's! This must be some record!
P.P.S. I did a lot of research on Luka and discovered some bad bloopers the writers made – such as the fact that emergency medicine can't be chosen as a residency specialty in Croatia… Sometime soon I'll put up a page on my site with some of my observations.
To any potential flamers: The ideas presented here are a result of an extensive research done by yours truly. You can criticize the fic, but don't leave stupid comments saying: "But Luka is this and not that in my opinion and what you wrote in the story was wrong." My ideas – my story – my proverbial sandbox.
How do you tell someone that you have been tortured? If you are like me, you don't. Who will believe that my almost-unscarred, clean skin was once dirty and bruised, and that I once thought that if some magical creature offered to grant me three wishes I would wish for a shower, clean clothes and a way out of the place where I was trapped? It's not something one brings up in everyday conversation, and people usually think of torture as something out of the Middle Ages, something happening on the other side of the world, something that they are happy to have never encountered but are intrigued by.
When others talk or think of torture, they think of the Inquisition, of racks and thumbscrews, of dungeons and torturers in black hoods – and they are blessedly unaware. When I think of it I think of simple things, things that they can use every day without fear, things I can use only with a great effort. I can't drink water from a plastic bottle without thinking how much it hurts when someone stands over you and uses it as an ingenious, cheap and disposable substitute for a club. The torturers' faces are not covered – this way you remember them forever. Sure, sometimes you use your knowledge to identify them later, and you testify – but your testimony never brings the old you back. You wonder what happened to that man, at what moment in time you stopped being him and became you, and sometimes you catch glimpses of him, but most of the time he is lost inside you with no way out.
When you have been hurt – you sometimes don't know how to ever be fine, ever again. To other people, a gun is something distant and scary. For me it is scary, but not distant – I know how it sounds, what it does and the fear that grips me when I see it is more then a fear of death – since death is merciful, but the fear of fear – of being terrified again, and again, never knowing if death will come. I cannot understand how to feel like a normal person. I don't know anymore what a normal person is. How do they deal with things? How do they let go of their emotions? How do they sleep at night? I have not felt normal for so many years that I feel that the man who once was me is dead. What is happiness? I don't know how to feel happy, how to feel sad, how to feel human. I wish I had courage to ask, but I can't betray my secret, can't risk being looked at as damaged, can't stand to be pitied.
I can't remember the last time I have felt happy. I often feel like I shouldn't exist, like I'm flawed, like my existence is a crime. I can't be proud of myself, feel happy to be alive, or believe in anything. I was told once that I should not have existed because of my nationality, because just being what I was since birth was supposed to mean that I hated everyone else. The man who said it made me repeat it, and I did, because my ribs were cracked and I was thirsty, and I would have said anything to get some water. If you are dehydrated, you will lose any national pride and say anything that you are told for a cup of dirty lukewarm water, and if you are in pain, cold and tired you will do anything just to get some sleep, so you can forget where you are and what is happening to you. You will learn to hate your age, and will regret that you were born at all. If you are a man, you wish you would have been born a woman, and if you are a woman, you wish you were born a man. You will wish to be anything but what you are.
The others don't understand. You want them to, but you don't want them to know what you once were, how you were reduced to a body without a soul, the time you were ready to do anything just to sleep, to drink, to eat. They will be sympathetic, but their curiosity morbid, and their pity will be out of interest rather then out of genuine sympathy. And so, you will walk among them day by day, with your strange behaviors and your terrifying emptiness, alienating them and yourself, wishing you could be dead. You will keep deluding yourself – if you're with someone you'll cling to them, suffocate them with your love or won't express your feelings at all, and if you're alone you'll live in your own world once you come home from work, a world where everything is just like it was before it happened, where there are still people you love and you're happy and whole.
You will never speak of the time when you wished to be dead rather then being hurt again. Sometimes, when you pass another person like you on the street or talk to them, you meet their eyes and recognize the same emptiness you feel every day, and remember things you have carefully forgotten over the years. The other person smiles sadly and remembers their morbid story, and you grimace and remember your own…
…Perhaps, at some point during your torture you are offered a chance to be unharmed – all you need to do in return is to use the skills for which you spent many years in medical school against others just like you. You refuse, and then you end up never being able to be a surgeon again, your priceless hands not worth a penny anymore. You get over it, because hands are not the most important thing in the world, and you hope and pray for someone to come and help, but they never do, and you know that there is no God anymore. Then, one day you find out that you will be free. You go from being a number in one place to being a number in another, but you don't have to be afraid all the time, just most of it. People turn the ruins of your body into a medical file, your pain is documented in cold medical terms and soulless photographs, and then you understand that despite being free, you have nowhere to go. After you're out, people want to know why you did certain things, why you let your soul quietly die while your body desperately wished it would have, but didn't. "Why did you not fight back?" some will ask, and you'll just smile sadly, thinking: "I did."
Food and showers once again become everyday things, and for a while, you feel like you can become normal again. You say to yourself that you can build yourself back up, despite knowing that your family is dead, and your home is in ruins, and having the modern equivalent of Hawthorne's infamous scarlet letter attached to you – the refugee status. You are bounced around, hoping someone will accept you, and finally someone in some country decides your life for you. You get your documents, go to your new homeland, wait around for a while, and try to pretend that everything is going to be fine now.
You triumphantly watch the bruises fade from your skin and celebrate every day when nothing hurts. One day your skin is free of any marks and you finally don't feel any pain, but then you realize that physical pain was something you could have easily dealt with – what comes next is a pain you cannot get medicine for, the pain that takes over you and defines who you are. For me, pain is an intimate acquaintance. Aches and pains, broken bones, sprained fingers, contusions, bruises and burns, things that are part of me, which make me want to kill anyone who raises their hand at an innocent person. Seeing innocent people hurt turns the part of my soul which is not dead yet into a monster, telling me to fight back, to hurt those who hurt others without a reason, to revenge myself for all the pain that was inflicted upon me. If that monster catches me when I am too weak to fight it, it takes over me and I just watch my body lashing out, wanting to undo the pain that was done to it, but just causing itself more pain.
I know that I should get help, but I don't know how to reach out anymore. It's like I'm lost in a fog, and I keep slipping up, doing wrong things, but it only happens to my body, which is so tired of a life without a soul that it intentionally does everything wrong. I live a different life from it - I'm a silent observer of an empty shell of a human being, a soul separated from a body. One day, I hope to reunite them, and be able to stop the pain, the pain that has become an unwelcome but enduring part of me. The easy way to do it is to step off the platform just when an L train is arriving at the station, or to never return from a lunch break on the roof, but I need choose the hard way – to open myself to someone and tell him or her every single detail, to talk my pain out, and perhaps, feel happiness again some day. But until that happens, I will just continue doing my job to give my body something to do, while my soul tries to get enough courage to make me come up to someone and say three short but difficult words – "Please help me."
The End