A/N Hang On St. Christopher is a Tom Waits song also addressed to the patron saint of travellers...just a bit of a fic that wouldn't let go, as Tom Waits inspired fics tend to do with me...and there's more where this came from, as I've been on a bit of a Waits binge of late. Oh, and for anyone curious, the play mentioned is Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon, which I saw at least six times when it was showing at McCarter. Hilarious look at death and reincarnation.
It's a medal that's sat wrapped around the handlebars for a long time now. He has no clue how it got there, or who put it there, but he's never removed it. He's never believed in God, but he believes in the saints. It makes no sense to most, but it makes sense to him. God was a metaphysical entity, unable to be proven, but saints, they were real-living, breathing, dying people. They stood for something, they were a tangible item, and giving a nod of affirmation to them never bothered him. Not that he believed in praying to them, he always believed that death was the end, and that angels-especially guardian ones-were just ideas formed to give a bit of hope to those who needed it.
He's never needed hope, nor has he ever wanted it.
But he keeps the medal of St. Christopher around the handlebars, watching it, occasionally, as it flaps in the breeze as he takes the bike out onto long deserted stretches of empty barren roads, hard to come by in this state, but they still existed. None in the general Princeton area, but he's never minded going out the good half hour to drive out to the Barrens, and let loose, cranking the engine until it redlines dangerously, despite being in the highest gear it will go.
He's never believed in fate, but he likes to live dangerously.
He doesn't believe in fate, he doesn't believe in the idea that everyone has a predetermined time to die, that everything happens for a reason, but he always lived life dangerously. It was a contradiction of sorts-he always believed that if he was going to die, he was going to die, but he reminded himself that fate was merely an illusion. After all, fate would imply a power greater than himself was at work, and he refused to believe that there was anything greater than man. But he always tossed his life aside, tearing around corners at much faster speeds than he really should have, knees nearly scraping the pavement around sharp corners, a fraction of an inch from a possibly life-ending crash.
It provides some sort of feeling in his numb life.
It's a rush, a thrill, that he doesn't get anywhere else. When he was younger, when his leg was still fully intact, he always drifted towards the dangerous sports. He'd never been a football fan-he was too tall and gangly to be good at it, but he drifted towards rugby-all the hard hits, but with none of the pads, and lacrosse, and hockey. He'd gone bungie jumping and sky diving, just because he could. He purposely buckled the harnesses on the roller coasters with a few inches of wiggle room, so that he'd feel himself slam shoulders first into the restraints around the loops after a split second of complete free-fall. Because it was the only emotion that he ever really felt.
But there was always a hairline of restraint.
He always had a lifeline to reach out to. He took his life in his hands on a regular basis, but he always just toed the line, he never really intended to cross it. Death was something that only cowards feared, but only the truly spineless actively sought. He had never feared death, but he always made sure that he wouldn't actually die. It was why he at least let off the accelerator when he went around the turns, it was why he'd paged the Cutthroat Bitch when he stuck a knife in an outlet, why, even when he decided to wash down a bottle of Oxycodone with a bottle of Maker's Mark, that he kept the phone nearby, knowing that if something had truly gone wrong, that he would have at least tried to save himself.
After all, where was the fun in nothingness?
But at same time, he enjoyed the thrill of always being on the edge, always wondering if maybe, just maybe, this was it. If this was the last time he'd ever look up and see the grey skys of New Jersey, the last time he'd ever tell a patient to go fuck themselves, the last time he'd talk to Cuddy's chest, or the last time he'd badger Wilson. The last time he'd hear the rev of the engine as it strained to keep pace with how fast he wanted it to be going. Because it encouraged him to live his life as he wanted to live it, and not as other people wanted him to.
After all, there was but one life to live.
He didn't believe in an afterlife, or heaven, or hell, or reincarnation. There was a play he had seen, at the little theater that squashed itself between the university, the train station, and a Wawa, that had been about a woman who killed herself, and was told that the afterlife was simply what she made of it. Of course, she'd gone on to be reincarnated in rather humorous ways-and he wouldn't mind, he supposed, if he had to be reincarnated, to be like she had-as a dog at one point. But the point that had stuck with him, and had cemented his own views on what happened after death, was that one got the afterlife that they believed in-and if he believed in none, then he would get none-a sort of prolonged anaesthesia, as the play had put it.
It was easier than worrying about what would happen to his soul.
He had no reason to live a pure, and joyous life, he had no reason to give to charity, or help his fellow man. He donated, occasionally, not because he cared, but because he had no other use for the money. And besides, it wasn't as though he was donating to poor little sick kids, he donated to the arts, because he could call it selfishly supporting things he liked. After all, if there was no money to fund art, how could he listen to good music, or see something decent. (Although no one would actually believe that he had bought all the different ticket packages to McCarter except for dance.) It was better than admitting that he actually enjoyed occasionally doing something good for the world.
Because he was not a good man.
He was a reckless man, and he took his life in his own hands, and he didn't care what happened to himself. He did things selfishly, and without forethought. And if it was his time, it was his time. He didn't believe in fate, but he knew that the only way to control the hour of his death would be to take his life himself-which he refused to do, not on moral grounds, but because there was no fun in knowing when he was going to die. So when he cut one turn a little more sharply than he'd planned on, it wasn't fear that gripped him, but rather a sort of exhileration, wondering if this was it. Wondering, as his hand grasped around the small piece of gold wrapped around the handlebars, the chain snapping as the bike seperated from him, if this was how he would go.
This was the moment he'd spent his whole life waiting for.
Even as the pavement cut into his left calf, as he went skidding across the road, even as he felt his ribs break as his torso landed heavily, arms crossed on his chest, rolling across the ground like a ragdoll, trying his hardest to fight the urge to tense up, helmet bouncing off of asphalt, he felt giddy, wondering if the last thing he'd see was the blue sky, or the green grass, or the black tar beneath him. Wondering if there would be a white light to guide him into the black void. He'd already died twice, technically. His heart had stopped on him twice, and each time had been a vastly different experience. But neither time had a white light opened up, steering him towards it, telling him to go, neither time had his life flashed before his eyes. But then again, neither time was supposed to be for good, was it?
He had a grin on his face, even when he came to a stop against a tree.
His breathing was hard and ragged, and he'd managed to fish out his phone-battered and bruised, but still functioning, as he managed to dial the three digits. He didn't feel much like talking, and instead settled on a simple "Crash" to the operator, leaving the phone on, but not saying anything else-they'd come find him, he knew they would. It was his single lifeline, letting everyone know that this hadn't been intentional, that he wasn't that much of a coward, but at ease with himself, knowing that if this was it, then so be it, that if the blood trickling down from cut on his brow was a sign of the end, then he was at peace with himself.
He had lived a good life, even if he wasn't a good man.
And as he lay there, breathing raggedly, he wasn't reflecting upon his mistakes, or even his glories. Instead, he was reveling in the high that not even railing line after line of Vicodin could produce. The pure rush of energy that came from not knowing if this was the end, that came from wondering if this was it. And it was why, when his eyes drifted shut, intending just to rest a bit as the sirens came into earshot, the last thing to leave his lips wasn't a begging cry for forgiveness, or even a cry of pain, but was rather adressed to the gold medal in his hands, not a prayer to the long-dead saint, but rather a comment.
"So St. Chris, enjoy the ride?"