"I've gained the world then lost my soul
Maybe it's cause I'm getting old
All the people that I know
Have gained the world then lost their souls
There's no persuasion that I'm into
I've made some sense of what we've been through
We should form a new foundation
If we could find the right location
Is it prey
On display
I'm feeling well"
Morcheeba - Gained The World
I was breathing. Fast, loud, rapid, uncontrolled and shallow, but I was breathing. That's pretty much all I did at the moment, besides laying on a cold and chill floor staring at the bloodstains on the ceiling that pretended to be decoration, placed, meant to be there, intrinsically. Slime formed obstacles in my throat, hand in hand with the blood I was trying not to cough up. Moving hurt. Hurt like hell. Hence my main objective was to lay still and breathe, just not moving. I wouldn't care if the house was on fire, I was not moving.
My breathing became even more shallow, raspy and wheezing. I mentally smiled at myself, this is how I pictured myself sounding ten, twenty years from now, being the smoker that I am. I'll become one of those ugly old men that follow pretty young teens into alleys or stalking them over the phone. I simply had to breathe and it would scare them forever. This was not good. Black stars formed in front of my eyes again and I knew that I needed to breathe if I wanted to stay alive. But that meant moving. Was moving worth living? Or was dying good enough?
I didn't have much time, I reckon. I felt it was a despondent situation, I had nothing left in me. Moving, living, dying, moving, living, dying, moving, living, dying. I was pondering, ruminating too long and soon I felt that there was not enough oxygen left in my body to even move if I wanted to. My last thought was that I guessed I chose dying.
"Jazz?!"
Faint sounds from the distance. I was swimming in a pool of darkness, floating freely, being weightless. Just as I thought I liked flying, I began tumbling. My head started pounding, my sides aching, my leg hurt and the side of my face was in agonizing pain, almost unbearable. I didn't like this. I wanted to go back. I wanted to float and to fly and to swim weightlessly. My heart was longing for that cesspool of blackness that I forced my body to stop forthwith, right now. But it didn't obey.
Pushing hands, soft, warm, wet lips on mine. It felt right and it felt wrong at the same time, I couldn't understand the complexity of it, but it confused me. Someone grabbed my ankle and was pulling me back from my ethereal hole of serenity.
The faint sounds in the distance became words my head started to form and understand. 'Edic'. Pushing hands and passionate lips. Paramedic. Someone was where I was. Was that good or bad? A flash of a bat, a swinging hand appeared to me and I realised I was not safe. If I was not safe, the paramedic that was with me, clinging onto me for dear life, was not safe. A slamming door. Again, good or bad? Had the black shade in my memory left, leaving me to die or had someone else left? I remember Bosco slamming a door. Was it Bosco that had done this to me? No. That I knew for sure. Someone I held the deepest hatred towards had done this, but who was he? And where was he? Still here? Endangering the one that was fighting for me, because I gave up. Spinning, spinning out of control, a tornado ravaging through my head, messing up my memories, rain coming down to wash some away. I was a wreck.
I heard my name. Loud and clear, close to me, not from far away, but also tensed and full of shock, fear and disbelieve. A soft breeze blew past my cheek, almost as if caressing me. A wave of nausea washed over me like waves crashed the shoreline. I opened my eyes but the world was too blurry. I coughed, finally, and tasted that iron taste of blood.
My eyes were open wide within a second. My breathing was again, fast, loud, rapid, uncontrolled and shallow, but this time different. Within seconds, my entire world had changed and I had trouble holding on to the rollercoaster that was controlling my life. My heart was beating inside my chest, pounding away like the hands had done when reviving me. I missed a part of the sight of my left eye, bright white fabric dancing before it. My right knee was put in a cast. My right lower arm, wrist and hand forced into a splint.
As I started to remember, I closed my eyes. I welcomed the darkness and let it pull. I did not want to remember what had happened. Nor did I want to remember that I remembered only bits and broken pieces of the last couple of days.
Sleep was good. It's great and it's perfect. It made time go faster, or made you realise less that time is ticking by and you're wasting your life with chasing useless seconds. Minutes were all that mattered, hours even better. It became my hobby to keep track of how long I slept. I rang the nurse, pushing a nice, smooth red button that had been placed in my hand. Without words, she would see that I was awake. Without asking, she would write it down, make a joke and tell me what rank I achieved this time. Sleep was good. It was fun and great and perfect and just so damned useless. It was abstruse and esoteric.
Without much notion, days passed by and I laid motionless in my pretty white, sterile smelling bed. I heard people talking, walking by, people getting called, visitors walking down the hall, patients rolling across rooms, seeing doctors. My room was peaceful and quiet and I made it my new job to keep it that way. I rarely wanted any visitors. If they did come, I'd force myself to sleep, simply closing my eyes and floating into the distance. There was one, however, that came without announcements and waltzed right through my vigorous nirvana.
I could hear him coming. Steady but uncertain footsteps, never knowing what was ahead of him through the hallways, halting at the nurses' station. The echoes reached my ears and I dared to sigh. It hurt. There he was again with his kind smile, precious words, caring eyes and careful movements. He was too good for me. He knew that. I managed to tell him once. But he waved the sentences away and they broke like a mirror in a storm.
Cautiously, I turned my head to greet him. The footsteps continued and they stopped when he stood in the doorway.
"Hey."
It was a soft greeting, but loving and caring. I looked at his dark tan and his almost black hair. Deep brown eyes wandered over the shielding white sheets.
I blinked. "Hey."
"How are you feeling?"
I rolled my eyes. "How do you think I'm feeling?"
Carlos snorted, he expected no other answer. He had come here too often. I had answered that question too many times.
He sat for hours, talking about his day, his view on the world, things that had been said, things that he had heard. Apparently, the people from the precinct were getting frustrated by my idea of talking to them, or rather, not talking to them. I knew I had to talk to them sooner or later, but right now, I was still collecting pieces of myself and my reminiscent memories. I tried to tell him that thinking, recalling the events, hurt. Not only in my head, but deeper down. He said he understood. I don't think he did. I don't think he could.
Carlos left, a little after midnight, after nurse Kylie threatened to limit his visiting hours to the standards of the hospital. Standards. Hospital. Hospital standards. Three common words that never really applied to me. I hated hospitals and everything about it. The forceful, penetrating smell, a combination of death and unnatural cleanseliness. I hated the disconsolated memories that were so impelling, I felt like it raped my soul all over again. I hated the bleeps, the small sounds, fragile footsteps, a hospital never slept. People died constantly, it's a life and death factory.
I couldn't sleep. For the first time since I was brutally attacked, I couldn't sleep. Not sleeping was generally something I dealt with. I suffered from insomnia since nine-eleven, and though I am still strongly convinced of the fact that that event has nothing to do with it, it's the first thing that people think. Main point is, I couldn't sleep.
The darkness somehow, someway, did not manage to grab me. I tried hard, as hard as my aching body would allow me, but I couldn't. Just as I was considering the fact that this was a sign, something someone was trying to tell me, he stood in my doorway. I had been so lost in my thoughts, my attempts to fall asleep, that I hadn't heard him. I didn't know what startled me the most, that he was there, standing there with those keen, radiant eyes or the fact that I had not heard him approach me.
Our eyes met and he didn't say a word. Casually, he was leaning against the doorframe, standing there, watching me, taking me in with those devouring eyes that I felt myself shrink and sink away in the cushions of the large bed I had drifted away in many times before.
"You look tired."
I blinked. I swallowed. Wanted to lick my dry lips. And then I moved my head, barely, but enough to make him understand that he could come in. Doc Montville had to sew my jaw shut in order to let the scars on my face heal as properly as they could, the best they could. When I asked, he answered. "You would say you're a Frankenstein in the making." Though I hated hospitals, I had one doctor that I trusted. That one doctor, Montville, had worked on me, trying to save my life as I laid helplessly and hopelessly on the abstract grey ER table. I hated to admit it, but he knew me well.
Bosco moved closer, his footsteps were mellifluous, feeble and sympathetic. Besides the sound of the leather jacket crackling as he sat down, he was quiet. I looked at him, waiting to hear why he had come. I knew he saw my questioned expression, but he didn't answer. That was Bosco, to me. He never answered my questions. Again I heard the cracking sound of moved leather and then I felt a tender warm hand closing around mine. My head told me to pull back. Something else, don't say it's my heart, told me to leave it there.
"How are you feeling?"
"'m 'kay."
Words came out half and wrongly formed, fragile and hushed, almost as if they were afraid to be heard. I couldn't speak properly yet, mostly because of the thick wire inside my mouth, but also because moving my jaw caused a motion throughout my face, skin twitching and forming, obliging to the movement of the bone. I felt the stitched pull at my face. It burnt.
"I miss you."
Simple words. Catastrophic effects. Tomorrow would be disastrous. I sigh, it hurts less this time. Then he started to speak. Even if I could interrupt him, I let him talk. Not because I let him speak his mind, but because I wanted to know what he had to say. To me. About what happened. I'm curious of nature.
"I'm sorry. About everything. About what happened. That I didn't believe you. I'm really sorry. And I miss you. I miss the yelling in the morning that makes me snicker in the locker room. I miss your witty comments. I miss everything and I feel like I'm not entitled to miss that. To miss you. Because I didn't believe in you. Doc says your doing better. Your wounds are healing pretty well. It's all going to leave marks, but he says that you'll pull through, physically. Carlos told me that the wire is coming out next week. That's good, right?"
He doesn't await an answer.
"They buried your brother last Friday. I was there. Milo-. Well, let's just say that he said some pretty frightful things. Lieu was afraid he, or someone else, might cause some havoc. It was quiet. There weren't many people. Your father was drunk. We almost had to arrest him."
Bosco paused. He ran his other hand over his head, through his hair, his other hand not letting go.
"Cruz's been taking over for you. She's doing a pretty good job. She's different, you know. What happened really got to her. I think you're rubbing off on her, she's starting to become more and more honest, doing things by the book. It's weird. My mom says hi, too, by the way. She said she'll step by in the next couple of weeks. If you're not sleeping. Why did you do that, every time?"
I smiled with the good side of my face. There they were, the questions. Echoing, boisterous but gentle questions. Questions that demanded answers. I was in no mood to give them the answers. And then again, there they came, forming themselves in my mind like cancer did. Burning, screaming, demanding, shouting, wanting to come out.
"'vas easir."
The great, might Jazz Bishop, barely even able to talk. I swallowed and bent my face away. I hated the position that bastard had put me in. I inhaled, God I missed my cigarettes.
"Nut in th' mood. 'Pologies neiser."
He nodded, curling his lower lip upside down, as if frowning.
"How are you? Really?"
Time to pull back. So I did, I pulled back my hand, putting it away in my cloister of safeness and simplicity. The moment I closed my eyes, I saw him. Vibrant, fierce and sharp, right before my eyes. Hell blue eyes, penetrating and raging. He was furious. And he was so ready to take it all out on me. My face twists in a mixture of pain and the forcefulness of the memories that came flooding back like paper boats on the river. I hear a chair pushed backwards instantly, a hand on my shoulder and my name being called, followed by the shout for a nurse.
I push and wave him away. This recognition of previous experiences always hit me scare in the face. The realization hit me even harder. I recovered, stored everything in the back of my mind to be taken out later. When I felt like it. When I was ready to process the recollection.
The nurse left after I convinced her that everything was okay. Bos sat down again, watching and waiting at my bed side. His body curved along the chairs' boundaries too neatly, too perfect. I watched him smile.
"'Ou've tone tat too oft'n."
He caresses the right side of my face, prudent and gingerly. Before I realised it, my eyelids closed and the darkness was pulling at me again. Strangely enough, I felt safe. I drifted off into a troubled sleep, chased by haunting memories and morbid dreams. Yet, somehow, it all felt right.
I was breathing. Fast, loud, rapid, uncontrolled and shallow, but I was breathing. He was there, watching, hovering over me like the grey shadow that he was. He moved again, but I was too exhausted to respond. I let him. I gave up. After a while, I stopped feeling the power of his fists and feet connecting with my broken body. He spits in my face as he shouts at me. His eyes were on fire, scorching me every time he laid them down upon me.
And all I could do was laugh. I laughed at him, infuriating him. I set him on fire. I challenged him and I dared him and he replied with the smoothness and piercing slides of a skin-splitting blade that cut me wide open. The scars he left on my body will heal and at some point will become ignorant, part of me. But the scars he left deep down on me, will bleed until I die. I refuse to let anyone put a sterile gaze on it, because I want it to bleed. I want to bleed. I don't want to think of what he has done to me. I want to remember the fact that I was solely on my one, abandoned.
I led him on to believe that he had control over me. When I hit back, I stroke hard, merciless, ruthless, heartless and almost inhuman.
The echoes of the shots that I fired, ring in my ears, pulling me onto the surface of semi-awake. I taste the blood, feel the ways and curves of the kitchen knife running over my back as the caressing finger of a lover. I swim back into the darkness as he starts on my face. I'm oblivious. I do not care. I am ruthless. I am unbreakable.
I am soulless.