Hello everyone,
Sorry for the long time between updates, this was a bit of a difficult chapter. Thank you to InconspicuousBunny for the beta, I am as always, ridiculously grateful I hope you enjoy this chapter, please review and tell me what you think!
My eyes creaked open stiffly, but I immediately closed them again to block out the shining light that had pierced my brain.
"Sorry Justin," a calming male voice said and I frowned, wincing inside at the pain that that slight movement had caused. "I'll turn it down for you. Okay, you can open them now," he gently encouraged and I lifted my right eyelid slightly to the calmer light.
I opened both eyes slowly grimacing at the brightness of what I was sure was a very dim light to others. I blinked a couple of times before my eyes began to search the room. My gaze landed on my mom, whose own eyes were full of tears. I smiled weakly at her.
"Hey mom," I croaked in a voice that sounded so unlike my own, I thought for a moment it was another person speaking.
"You okay honey?" She asked and I nodded gently, only moving my head in the smallest way.
"Dry throat," I gasped out harshly and a nurse next to me lifted a cup of water to my lips. I tried to grab it with my hands but she chuckled softly, and batted my hand gently away.
"Oh no sweetie, uh-uh. You are not allowed to move your arms yet. Not until we've checked you out," she said in a loud and kind voice. She was a big, black lady, with a kind face and nose piercing. Her eyes were sympathetic and I began to like her immediately. But I did scowl at the fact that they didn't think I was strong enough to lift a cup of water to my lips.
"Oh don't you go giving me attitude young man, I got enough of that from you when you was sleeping. Always pulling at the wires, always kicking out. When you were passed over onto my care, the nurse Shanice well she was all 'he's a kicker Marie, he's a kicker,' and I took one look at your angelic little body, and gorgeous blonde hair and laughed. I did, I laughed, but no, every Goddamn night you kept me up. Kept me on my toes, I have to say. But this will all go a lot faster for you if you don't fight me at every step, Sunshine," she scolded lightly, her voice amused and her eyes glinting.
"Sunshine?" I asked, wondering how the hell she had managed to pick up a name that only-
"Sorry honey, I gave her that one." My eyes flickered past Marie and to the beaming face of Debbie.
"Deb!" I cried but immediately winced at the shearing pain in my throat, Marie smiled and sloshed some cooling water down my throat.
"How are you doing Sunshine? Holding up okay?" She asked and I nodded. "Course you are. Oh Sunshine, you had me so worried, I tell you. Fucking scared the life out of me- sorry," she added to the doctor who was stood at the back wall, who raised his eyebrows at Deb's language.
I beamed, well tried to and settled back into the cushions as Mom began to fill me in on everything I'd missed.
The door to my room suddenly flew open, and in burst a young man wearing bright red skin tight pants and a fluffy orange coloured top. He practically danced into the room and my mouth flew open at the sight of him. When his eyes finally landed on me, his mouth made a perfect 'o' and then he beamed at me. I was momentarily stunned by how wide and how bright his smile was.
"Baby!" he squealed and skipped over to me "You're awake! Oh thank God, seriously baby you had everyone in such a panic. Even Brian was shaken up by it," he looked at me knowingly as if that last bit would have been important to me and I frowned.
"I'm sorry but do I know you?" I asked him politely and his jaw dropped before he regained his composure quickly and laughed a little falsely.
"Oh you're such a tease. Anyways, I think-"
"No, seriously. I don't know you," I stated and I watched as Debbie stood up from her chair and my mom looked worriedly behind her at the doctor.
"Justin, honey. This isn't funny anymore. It's me Emmet. We met at the diner, and talked and had fun together. I took you shopping-"
"Okay thank you, Emmet. But I think it would be best if you waited outside now," the doctor spoke professionally and Emmet stuttered for a minute.
"But I, I have to, he knows me, he really does. He has to know..." Emmet trailed off at the look on the doctor's face and I stared between the two of them as he walked slowly out of the door, shooting me one last sad glance.
"Okay Justin, I'm going to need to ask you a few questions," the doctor said to me, holding out a clipboard and pulling out a pen from his pocket.
"Okay," I nodded back and with help from Marie, I sat up straighter.
"What's your name?"
"Justin Taylor?"
"How old are you?"
"17,"
"Why are you here?"
I stared at him blankly for a moment, my eyes glanced to my mom and I shook my head.
"I don't know," I replied and the doctor nodded quickly before coming over to my bedside and shining a bright light into my eyes.
For the next 15 minutes or so, the doctor, whose name was Dr Peters and Marie, questioned me about a load of different things. They also ran lots of tests on my body and blood.
"Thank you Justin. We'll talk to you later about your test results but there's really no need to worry," he informed me and Marie nodded but I could tell from the way they both shared looks every now and then that something was wrong. And it was something to do why I was in hospital and more to do with the strange man in brightly coloured pants.
XXXXXXXXXX
"Debbie," Jennifer said to me and I blinked at her dumbly.
"Oh yeah, what is it?" I asked her, pushing away from the wall I had been leaning against.
"Dr Peters wants to see me now and I wondered if you would come with me? I don't really want to find out the news on my own, especially after what happened with Emmet," she said a little shakily and I gave her a small smile.
"Of course I'll come. Lead the way," I replied and followed her down a series of long corridors, until we came to a posh looking door with the name Dr Peters stuck on the front.
"Here we go," Jennifer muttered and she knocked politely on the door.
"Come in," Dr Peters muffled voice came and we opened the door and stepped into a very plush looking office.
The walls were plastered with awards and his view from the window was incredible. Behind his desk lay a massive bookshelf and he sat typing away on a very modern computer, which he didn't look up from until we'd sat ourselves down on the chairs opposite his desk.
"So, I bet you're wondering about Justin," he said finally and we both nodded. He tore his hands away from the keyboard and clasped them together in front of him whilst he stared at us gravely.
"We don't believe he has memory loss," he answered us and we both gaped at him, he held up his hand as I opened my mouth to speak and carried on "We do however believe he is suffering from what we call, LHD."
"And what in the name of God, is LHD?" I asked and he smiled.
"It means Locked Heart Disease. And in this case it's Justin's heart which has locked,"
"I'm sorry, what?" Jennifer asked and I nodded, not understanding what the fuck was going on.
"There are certain accidents that are so traumatic they actually affect the heart, not the one in your chest but the one in your box. Now when this happens, the heart believes that either it is going to die, or that it's being tortured or something like that. So what it does, is it takes the most precious and beautiful memories from its owners mind and locks them away. Locked. Very certain, and very important people have trained their heart to recognise what is considered 'important' so that if they were captured and tortured they wouldn't be able to give the information up. Because the heart has locked it away. That is why Justin couldn't remember certain childhood and adult memories and why he couldn't remember Emmet. I take it that Emmet is an important friend?" He asked us and Jennifer shook her head sadly.
She didn't know.
She and Justin had drifted apart when his sexuality became clear. It wasn't that she thought being gay was wrong, because nobody did really. But that didn't mean that she was completely fine with it and so she had no idea if Justin was close to Emmet or not.
"Well sort of," I answered. A thought drifted into my mind, if Justin wasn't able to remember Emmet, then why was he able to remember me? And would he be able to remember Brian?
"Excuse me a minute," I said and pretty much jogged out of the room and back to Justin's, which thankfully Marie wasn't occupying.
"Deb," he smiled when he saw me and I grinned back.
"How're you doing honey?" I asked hurriedly and he nodded. I took that to mean he was ok.
"I'm just going to ask you one more question okay sweetie?" I asked him, and he winced but nodded.
"Do you know a man named Brian Kinney? Think about it Justin, really think?" I begged him and he screwed his face up in concentration before looking up at me with sad eyes.
"I'm sorry Deb, I don't know who he is," he whispered and I sighed heavily.
"That's okay sweetie, it's okay," I replied, patting his cheek gently. He gave me a small smile before letting his eyes droop. Once I was sure he was fast asleep I walked quietly out of the room and bumped into Jennifer who was looking at me with worried eyes.
"Jen? What's wrong?"
"Dr Peters, he's sent us to see someone else. About Justin," she nearly sobbed and I felt cold all over.
"Why? What's happened?" I asked, my eyes searching her face and she shook slightly.
"No, nothing, nothing. He said it's nothing new but we really need to go see someone called Dr Thomas," she replied and I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.
"Okay, so Sunshine's fine? Nothing new has happened?"
"No everything's fine. It's just me, being silly," she coughed and I rubbed her arm soothingly.
"No, you're not. That's your kid in there. You're allowed to be as fucking emotional as you want," I said firmly, and she gave me a weak smile. We walked down to the other side of the hospital and entered an area of the building called, The Heart Unit. The first door on the right was Dr Thomas's, according to the receptionist, we knocked and then entered the room.
It looked a lot more like a doctors room, with a long bed on the far side of the wall, and pictures of the heart posted all over the wall. A woman with long ginger hair was sat on a large wooden chair, smiling at us.
"Please take a seat," she directed, pointing to the two smaller chairs that were seated diagonally opposite her. Jennifer and I sat down gingerly, waiting to hear news on Justin.
"My name is Dr Thomas, and I'm here to talk to you about Justin's heart problem," she paused and flicked through a couple of sheets of paper, her face thoughtful as she read the information. "It says here that Justin is suffering from LHD, is that correct?" We both nodded in confirmation and she continued.
"Now, this is a very rare type of heart problem, and it normally only happens in very severe circumstances. I'm not saying that what happened to Justin wasn't traumatic, but it couldn't be compared to say, a plane crash. Now what this does show us is Justin's feelings at the time . It suggests that he believed he had very little to hold onto, and that is why his heart reacted in such a way. His memories were and are precious to him and above everything else, he wanted them safe," she explained gently, speaking slowly to make sure we understood.
"There are certain exercises you can do to help unlock the memories and I have them here for you," she said as she leaned back to her desk and pulled a small booklet out of the drawer. "Someone, either yourselves or Dr Peters will need to explain to Justin what's happened, so that he can start to do these exercises immediately. However what you must not do is tell Justin downright who or what the object or person is who he has forgotten. If you reintroduce him to someone he has forgotten, his brain and heart will get confused and it could just wipe out his memory . We're not completely sure why this is, but we think it's because the heart will recognise the person in front of Justin as someone who was either killed or lost, because they have been locked away. This will then scare the heart and so it will shut down to protect Justin from pain.
It's a difficult concept I know, but if Justin does stick to this he will remember those who he has lost. I do have one more thing to say but if you have questions?" she finished raising her eyebrows at us.
"Yeah actually, I do. Sunshine, I mean Justin, he can't remember a man named Brian. Now Brian and he were kind of, well they weren't together, though they should have been with all the eye fucking they were doing," I muttered to Jennifer who shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Anyway they were on the verge of being in a relationship and he can't remember this man, but he can remember me? What the hell is that about?" I asked and Dr Thomas smiled softly.
"What is your relationship like with Justin?" she asked me.
"Well, I treated him like one of my sons, like I do with all my boys," I replied and her smile got even broader.
"But he's not actually related to you?" she confirmed and I nodded.
"I'm his mother," Jennifer added.
"And he remembered you fine?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Well there you go then," Dr Thomas said simply and I stared at her.
"What?" I frowned.
"If you treated him like a son, and he thought of you in the same way as he thinks of his own mother then he would remember you. His brain overrode his heart and said that the two of you were too important to be locked away," she smiled and I felt as the tears started to well up in my own eyes.
"Well okay then," I choked out and she beamed at me.
"But there is that one more thing I have to warn you about," she said quickly, her smile dropping to a more serious face.
"At this moment in time Justin's heart is weak. It's using up his energy to protect the information that he locked away. This means that he is more sustainable to problems."
"What kind of problems?" Jennifer asked frowning. She was leaning forward on her chair and clutching Justin's exercise sheet booklet tightly.
"Well, there is only really one main one. A Heart Snatcher, or a Heart Breaker, it depends on which you would like to call it really," she answered. Dr Thomas had started to sit more rigidly in her chair, and it was obvious that she did not enjoy this topic of conversation.
"And what exactly is that?" Jennifer questioned, wanting more information.
"It's a person," I replied and the doctor snapped her gaze to me. "Oh sorry,"
"No, no it's fine. Continue, if you want," she smiled sadly at me.
"Well, it's a person whose own heart is weak. Very weak, it doesn't have enough energy to survive on its own, so it uses other peoples. Other peoples pain more like. Basically, I'm not quite clear on the technicalities but what they do is they have this device, like a tracking device, except what is does is find weak and unprotected hearts. Like Justin's is right now," I explained to Jennifer whose expression was becoming more and more worried.
"These devices are illegal, and the police do an excellent job of finding Heart Snatcher's so they are very few left," Dr Thomas tried to reassure her.
"Yeah but the ones that are left are as lethal as ever. Once they've found a heart, I don't know how exactly they do it, but they manage to put it into a kinda of trance thing. Once this is done, they have complete control over the heart and its emotions. Because of this they make the owners heart fall in love with them very quickly. That's right isn't it Doc?" I looked over to her and she nodded.
"Yes. But it goes on. Once the person, in this case it would be Justin, is in love the Snatcher would do something so horrible it would break Justin's heart, clean in two. But because his heart is still very much in love with the Snatcher, the Snatcher can use the hurt and pain that Justin is feeling to make his own heart a lot more alive and energetic. The harder the hurt the person is feeling, the more energy is transferred to the Snatcher. It's a very brutal and disgusting situation," Dr Thomas finished off for me and Jennifer looked horrified.
"How exactly do they take control over someone else's heart?" I asked quietly.
"They use a very small microchip which they insert straight into the middle of the heart. Once the chip is in place they can very quickly start to take control over the emotions, hormones and nerves that are inside that heart. Evil though it may be, it's a very ingenious method," she explained and I nodded.
"How do we stop this?" Jennifer whispered, looking at Dr Thomas with an almost frantic expression.
"I'm afraid all you can do is wait. Keep the heart close at hand and never leave it by itself. Wait for Justin to remember whatever it is he has forgotten and once he has remembered the hearts protective walls will close back up and he will be safe again. I'm sorry that I can't offer you more than that, scientists are still working on a method of stopping this completely,"
Jennifer and I mumbled our thanks and quietly left the room.
I explained about the diner and how I had to get back, but I would come back and check in on Sunshine. Jennifer smiled and thanked me, giving me a kiss on the cheek. I turned to leave when I heard her call my name. I spun back around.
"Yeah honey?"
"How did, how did you know about the Heart Breakers?" she asked blushing slightly.
I smiled at her sadly for a moment, as the memories of years gone by flew across my mind.
"It happened to someone I once knew," I said wistfully.
"Someone close to you?"
I nodded, "Extremely close," I murmured, thinking of the deep crack that was still obvious through the centre of my heart.
XXXXXXXXX
In a small and shabby apartment a while away from Liberty Avenue, the curtains blew out of the window and into the night breeze. The light filtered in onto a makeshift table where a young man was leaning over a beautiful wooden box. The lid was lifted and only a small pink area of the heart that was kept inside, was available. Using nimble fingers a tiny micro chip was inserted into the middle of the heart and buried deep inside, leaving only a tiny scar behind it. The lid was slammed closed and the box was placed back where it had been found, at the back of a series of paint bottles.
The man fled from the room picking up the two heavy cases he had bought with him. He quietly climbed out of the window and shut them behind him and everything was silent yet again.
A few hours later, a key turned in the lock of the door and a pretty, middle aged blonde woman entered the room. She swept past the once open window and hurried over to the paints. She lifted the box gently, with loving fingers, and placed it inside a bigger cardboard box she was carrying. She stumbled over to the door and shut it behind her with her foot. The apartment was bathed in silence and moonlight once more.
And if the woman had looked carefully, really looked, she would have seen a lone violin string lying underneath the window.
