Note: The twin-chapter of the previous one: it is 'now', so happening after the Red Eye. So to say the second round in the recycling obsession. Hope you get it. Thanks for the reviews in advance.

Chapter 2: Tuning up - rerun

-Now-

It was an impressive list. Almost like a table of contents in a medical textbook. Two gunshot wounds, a hole in the trachea, stab-wound in the right thigh, a broken wrist, incomplete fracture in two fingers, slight crack in two ribs and the right forearm, several contusions and grazes mainly on the upper body, internal hemorrhage, minor concussion. It was a wonder there was enough room for it on his medical chart hanging by the foot of his hospital bed.

He was a wreck. It wasn't listed that his ego and mind of magnitude had been slaughtered too, and it hurt more than the physical wounds.

He felt like a cracked thin glass, transparent and fragile, fearing that any minute he could be shattered to smithereens.

When he awoke there was a concert of mechanical sounds, beeps and chirps, and there was the mild smell of antiseptics and dry-cleaning so typical of hospitals. He was hooked on a respirator, an IV cannula was hanging from his left arm, and another machine was monitoring his heart sounds. And he couldn't move a finger. His right arm was wrapped up in a plaster cast, fingers secured with splints, his head, chest and thigh tightly bandaged, a live fire in his throat, scorching his windpipe with every breath. And as a punch line, his left wrist was cuffed with a long chain to the rail around the bed. As he turned his head to the left, through the round window on the door he could see a uniform guarding his room. Not that he could walk even as far as where the bedside table was.

Not that if he wanted to escape, any of it could hold him back.

Or if they decided he should not escape, for that matter. Then all the medical efforts were in vain. And it was very likely they had no intention to let him live. Actually it was a wonder he was still alive.

The IV, the respirator, the heart machine and the bandage from around her forehead were gone by the time they considered it was just decent to pay him a visit. He knew him, once they had worked together on an assignment. He was even insolent enough to bring a very symbolic bouquet of white chrysanthemums and lilies.

"Hitting a funeral parlor on the way here?" Jackson asked, voice barely above a raspy whisper, but still drenched in sarcasm. He tried with all his might to channel as much air through his torn windpipe while speaking as he could without blinding pain but he sounded pathetically weak nevertheless. He had been told the hole would close up fairly quickly, leaving only a small scar behind.

"Isn't it nice of me?" the other man taunted. He was clearly enjoying the situation. Jackson wasn't a popular one among the comrades.

"So, you're the lucky chosen one for the task?" Jackson asked calmly, but he ignored him.

"What a disappointment, Rippner. I'm sure you were told not to screw this up. I think the importance and gravity of this assignment were pretty clear. You are… oops, you were one of the best" he quipped, then remarked with a sly smile, "or at least they thought so, that's why it was given to you. We are not used to such epic failures."

Jackson's jaw clenched, sending a wave of pain through him, radiating from the scar on his neck.

"A nice full report landed at the police about you. Do you have any idea how much work it was, it is to settle this, to cleanse the file cabinets of your little blunder? To make the documents miraculously disappear when someone like Keefe's concerned? He is not the kind of person who'd just let you walk away with it."

"I'm a dead man anyway, so why bother? It's not like she knows anything about the company, you're safe. Just lay the blame on me, it's obvious."

The man eyed him, running his gaze over him, pausing at the bandages and the plaster cast.

"You're a wreck, Rippner. Since when you've been such a wuss? She was just some stupid chick, for crying out loud."

Jackson bit his lower lip to prevent himself from an angry retort he couldn't even form in his head. He really hadn't needed it to be said out loud.

"You are an asset for the company, you don't want to end up on the scrap list."

"I guess it's a bit late now," Jackson scoffed impatiently. "You know what? Do me a favor and keep this little speech to yourself. It's not that it can change anything anyway. I'm sure I'll be able to die without a ceremonial ticking-off. So just get over and done with it."

There was a short silence, both men in deep thoughts around the same subject.

"No respiratory for you to shut off", said Jackson with fake compassion in his voice. "No IV to mess with the fluids. So how you're gonna do it?"

"You don't know how lucky you are," the assassin remarked , this time with real regret on his face. "The Keefe case failed big time but it could be a message, if not as good as originally intended, but a message anyway. As I said you are an investment for the company, and they always make as much profit out of those investments as possible. Now you're given another chance. Next time you fail, no one saves your sorry ass. Take it as a warning."

Jackson just stared at him, trying to hide his surprise and relief. Clearly, the other man didn't expect any reaction for he added without a break:

"By the end of the week you'll be transported to another hospital where it's safe from Keefe and the feds, and you just disappear from sight."

Eventually he was released after three weeks of hospital treatment. He still had his arm and fingers in cast, but all the stitches had been removed from his wounds. He was ordered to rest, but it was an unnecessary remark for he was still frighteningly weak, the cracked ribs giving him a hard time in moving.

The face in the mirror could have belonged to anyone else, it was so foreign. Under the three-week stubble, or rather more like a beard, his skin was paler, his cheekbones more jutting than ever due to heavy weight loss. He had to dress in his old clothes, since he had nothing else there and no one to ask to bring new ones in for him; in the shirt with two bullet-holes and dark crimson drips of blood, the battered suit – his face turned white when his fingers touched the red scarf he had covered his throat wound with. The hospital hadn't thrown it away, it was there, folded neatly. He tossed it in the dustbin.

When he entered his apartment and took a look around, he had to lean against the wall, momentary black-dotted giddiness pouring on him. He hadn't tidied up the flat, and it was still stuck in a month earlier state: in the middle of the room, littering the floor and coffee table, there were the notes and files and photos of his last assignment, all the little details he had been flooded with, bathing in all those weeks, months.

Her face was staring up at him from everywhere, and all he could do was closing his eyes against the harsh reminder of his failure, against the picture he'd built of her in his mind which eventually, to some degree, led to his undoing.

"You were a nasty underestimation, weren't you, Lisa?"