21

"…how long have we been out here..?" Shaundi whispered, a hand propping her forehead up and she shivered beneath the heavy coat donated to her by Johnny.

She stared at the door, opening and closing with the hurried steps of scrub-attired professionals, all with blank stares like nothing was happening.

Nothing of their concern, anyway.

That same pit of ugliness was rising in her stomach again, reminding her of the cruelty of the world they lived in when they didn't have guns on them.

"Three hours, forty-five minutes." Oleg solemnly replied after a moment of stretching silence between them.

"What time is it?" She continued.

"Seventy fifty."

She'd run out of questions.

She'd run out of tears.

She'd run of breath to call her own, and now she was living on the life pumped into her by some kind of unseen miracle.

She took a breath, shaking and unstable.

Another one, slower now and followed up by swallowing.

She bunched her hands togethers, her fingers intertwining like sticky candy worms in the mud-slides she and her Dad used to make on the Sundays he got off. When he was off work and she'd wake him up at seven in the morning, right around this time, and they'd open up a fresh bag of gummy worms that he'd gotten the night before.

She'd stick her long fingers down into the bag and grab as many blue ones as she could. She hated the blue ones, but Daddy loved the green ones.

Then thirteen came, and she was 'too cool' to hang out with her Dad who worked so hard to just put the torn-up jersey on her back and the two year old converse sneakers that were on their last few months, on her feet.

And then her brother, in that seemingly meaningless, and utterly harmless little group of boys that smoked pot outside his high-school, died.

He died.

How?

She'd be damned if she'd ever believed the newspapers after that day, when they said it was a mysterious and unsolvable murder. She saw the stab wounds. She saw the blood and the fear in his eyes. She saw it all when they grabbed her from the chain-link fence while she'd been flirting with Nate Angelo. He was a sophomore, but he didn't have to know she was a freshman.

They grabbed her by her cleavage sporting tank-top and lead her through the parking lot by groping her ass. She was scared, but she recognized the guys. And they whispered in her ear that they had him. They had her brother.

He was half-empty by the point she saw him in the corner of the dank post-crack house with stab wounds and wheezing breathe.

And they looked to her.

'Promise to pay his debt, and we'll let him go.'

Another pointless turf-war, and her brother was the one who had to pay with his life. And she was the one who had to pay for the rest of her life.

Every time their father saw him, he couldn't hide the shame- both of them.

Now she would understand the silence at dinner, and understand the tears they both shared some nights, late in the hours of the early morning.

Now she would understand all of that.

She said yes. She'd of said anything to let him go.

He died.

He died anyway, late in the early hours of the morning.

In a hospital, like this. And she was sitting in the waiting room, intertwining her fingers and remembering the sticky worms her father and herself once had shared.

And all the innocence she should of kept, all the night she should of snuggled beside him.

Because now, he could never look her in the eye.

She never ate another gummy worm.

Gat folded his arms across his chest.

He should've.

That's the only thing he could think.

He should've.

Should've talked to him that night.

He thought he'd let them all have their fun. In the morning, he told himself, he'd talk to Jack at some point. Explain to him that they'd watched the tapes.

He would've hit him on the back, brought him in close, and held him like a real brother.

Even if he cried- he wouldn't coil away or start to feel that nervous twitch whenever he got too close to people. Because this was his brother.

This was his real brother, Jack Taylor.

Maybe not by blood.

But hell, he'd always wanted a brother.

He'd grown up with a younger sister, who was really only his half sister through his dad, named Mai Lee. She lived with her mom after his father decided that he, Johnny, was a bad influence on her 'genius'.

Yeah, she was always the prodigy child, coveted by the split couple. His own mother, a white woman he never got to know, sent him letters.

But he never got to read any of them- his father showed them to him and burned them.

Johnny figured she was a good person if his father hated her.

And in a language that felt like tin-foil in Johnny's mouth, they'd scream at each other in what was meant to be a soft-spoken language. He disgraced the Korean language, his father would say, but Christ, he was equally as loud.

He was never good enough. Grades, extra-curricular, or in social life.

It was always- why don't you have 'A's, Jong Han? Mai Lee has a 4.5 GPA. You dishonor your family!

It was always- why aren't you a chess champion like your sister, Mai Lee, Jong Han? You dishonor your family!

It was always-Why don't you have a girlfriend? Mai Lee will marry rich doctor when she older, Jong Han. You dishonor your family!

And he'd yell back, 'It's Johnny Gat, not Jong Han!'

He remembered the first time he put on sunglasses in a department store he was just fixing to heist with the new gang he'd joined. The first gang he ever joined. Hiding those ethnic eyes, hiding every piece of emotion, hiding the man behind the family name felt so right.

That little bitch, Mai Lee, who laughed and snorted at him when no one was in the room, was never his sister.

Jack was his brother.

Johnny swallowed.

It'd figure- the only one he ever called family would die.

Kill himself.

He shook his head.

'C'mon, Jack..'

He swallowed, taking a breath. Looking down at the same sanitized linoleum he'd been staring at for four hours now.

'Jack, this is…all my fault, man.'

'Jong Han, you dishonor your family.'

Johnny almost combated the words that frequently popped in his head out of ritual habit, but suddenly thought over the words again.

His family. Dishonored his family.

'….You're right for once, Appa.'

He nodded.

'You're right.'

He always expected the world from her.

But not in the way everyone else did.

Since she could remember, the world had expected the impossible, and scolded her when she brought on her very best. Every time she felt like she was thirty feet tall, the world shook their heads and said no. No, it wasn't good enough.

He asked the world from her too- but he knew she could deliver it. He knew her limitations, and still looked on at her like an incarnate god brought from heaven. Always urging her for more, to work just a little harder, and then in the end, he'd smile, clap her on the shoulder.

He was a hardass, but the eternal respect- the value of her work never went unnoticed in the end. The trust and loyalty she'd placed in him never felt questionable.

She never fell behind in the dust.

And when she was at her end, and she bit back at his words, he would flinch. Unlike the cold statues she'd grown up with. He'd soften for just a second, and she'd see the human side. He'd slink away just slightly, come back softer, and made sure to thank her.

He gave her the breathe of life she needed most days, when she was doubting herself- wondering if life could've went better for her if…?

If what?

She didn't know.

Sometimes, even the most trivial thoughts ran across her mind, on her worst days, she wondered about the most insignificant decisions she'd ever made.

What if she had went by Mackenzie, instead of just Kinzie? Would something even as small as that had changed anything?

And then, she'd snort at the humility she felt for even thinking about it, and drown in her self-pity until she'd accomplished something again and she'd sit back and soak in the appreciation that was owed to her by the gang.

And she'd realize again, this is where she belonged.

Illegal was just a word.

Illegal never really meant wrong.

Illegal was where she belonged.

It was nine in the morning, and the fluster of tail coats and the click of high heels echoed across the emergency room just above the sound of concerned mothers with their fevered children, yelling at nurses and doctors alike, whoever so happened to roam past them, really.

She sniffed, flipping through a few papers and stood before the motley crew who consisted of three smeared make-up wearing girls, and rumpled-clothing trending men.

She sighed a little, and looked at the person with the first sign of intelligent coherence.

"I believe all of you are here for…Jack Taylor. Am I right?"

"That is right." Oleg replied, as her eyes met his, "Is he recovering? He is awake?"

She gaped for a moment at his substantial size and then raised her eyebrows, as though noticing her own ignorance, and looked back down at the papers.

"I-I'm Dr. Johns, and yes, he's awake. We…had complications during the stomach pumping. It was…difficult and he's currently recovering. He's going to be fine, but-" She took in a breath and nodded to herself as she looked back over the notes, "The trouble was, he's not the best patient, just to be bluntly honest with you all here, and you can expect some nausea for a while. During the procedure, the stomach lining was scraped, you could say. So, in effect, there'll be some blood in any emesis, or vomit, he may produce. He's going to be put on a twenty-four hour watch considering the severity of his condition and…"

She tapped her pen on the clip-boarded papers, scanning across the attentive eyes of the group.

She knew who Jack Taylor was.

She knew who these people were.

And never in her life, had she seen such undeniable loyalty in criminals.

She would've scoffed if she didn't have a job to do.

"…he's going to have to complete a small psychological evaluation before checking out. It's just a little talk with our psychologist, and he'll suggest whether he believes Jack is mentally well enough to return home."

"What'd you mean, mentally well enough? Look, Dr. Johns, our boy isn't…isn't…crazy. So, he had a bad night? I mean, everyone has a bad-"

"Mr. Washington, he attempted suicide." She said quickly, cutting him off short with a sharp gaze and an iron grip on his denial.

Pierce swallowed his next words, retreating like a beaten puppy.

Her voice calmed and her eyes became understanding as she watched him sink further down into the chair.

Guilt.

Easy to pin-point when you were thrown into these situations so often.

"He tried to kill himself, Mr. Washington. This is a very serious matter that we do take seriously. Trying to end your own life is very obviously, not a good sign of mental health. You're friend may need some…extensive counseling."

She brought her feet closer together, turning her head sideways.

"I understand, that all of you are feeling some denial or maybe guilt. It's common. But you should't feel guilt, most of all. Your friend is alive and will be much better after some rest. He's sleeping right now, and peacefully. I advise you all go home, take a shower, get some sleep, and eat something. Come back after six, and I'll see what I can do about bending the visitation rules. But for now, let him enjoy these few hours of sleep."

She smiled a little.

"It's going to be hard for him to keep anything down when he wakes up. I'm sure he'd love a few familiar faces then."

Here she came, walking up to him in those 'come-fuck-me' high heels.

Naked.

Ah, just the way he liked his women.

On his lap, her lips so close to his ear and oh, she knew how he liked it. He closed his eyes at the sensation of her lips around his ear, her teeth pressing into the cartilage lightly.

'Little bit of pain, Mr. Taylor?'

'Ahhh…' He shivered, 'Fuck yes.'

'Whatever makes you happy, Daddy.'

He frowned at the choice of words, feeling whatever prick of excitement rising in his pants- drop flat.

He remembered those words- a different context, but eerily similar.

The first time his father had introduced him to his gang, pushing him to become him and making him become the reflection he saw in the mirror. To become the perfect gangster he'd always wanted his little boy to be.

And his mother would look at him in horror like he was a monster. And Jack would breath uneasily, his eyes flickering back and forth between them. But how could he not choose him?

'It's in your blood.' His father said, 'In your blood to be this. You can't run from it, you can't hide from it.'

And everything your mother feared- became true in seconds…on his nineteenth birthday.

'You like that, Daddy?' The stripper whispered in his ear.

'I like Mr. Taylor, better…but keep doing what you're doing right….ahhh….there.'

'Shh…Mr. Taylor.'

Her dark-red fingers nails skimmed down his lips, 'I fucking love foreign men.'

He breathed out, grunting slightly before allowing any words to cross his mind.

'I must be everything you fantasized.' He said sarcastically after some words collected in his mind.

'And more.'

Her hands were sliding beneath his belt, her fingers trailing there way down to-

'Mr. Taylor?'

'Mmm?'

'Mr. Taylor? Wake up, Mr. Taylor.'

'What're you talking ab-…I am awake, Love. Keep going.'

"Mr. Taylor?"

Jack blinked against the sudden blinding light and the pain circling within his abdomen.

Just a…

Just a dream?

"Oh, fuck me…" He whispered, turning his head away from the fluorescence.

"Sorry to wake you, Mr. Taylor, but it seems you've…" She cleared her throat with a smile in those words, "Would you like some help, Mr. Taylor?"

Jack squinted against the light again and he attempted to raise a hand to point towards the light, but instead, found his sweaty palms restrained, his entire arm, in fact, was pinned down against the bed.

He snarled slightly and jerked against whatever was holding him back, and the woman was suddenly leaning over him, pulling at some sheets that were cocooned around his body.

"Okay, wait…flip over…"

He rolled his eyes to himself at his predicament, and compliantly, rolled to the left as she pulled the sheets at the same time.

"Almost got it…oh, it's wrapped around your leg here."

She pulled at the little wrapped cloth around his right leg and successfully, managed to pull them out from around him.

He would've smiled in relief, if he wasn't attempting to recall the events that lead him to…wherever he was…

He looked around, confused.

Hospital?

She picked them up softly, putting them back across his body and noticeably avoiding shaking them out. He would've asked, but again, his mind was too occupied with the puzzle at hand.

Four AM.

Xanax…

Everclear…

That's it.

"Mr. Taylor, while I have you awake, I'd like to ask if you remember what happened? In other words, do you know why you're here?"

He paused, looking up into her eyes as she smoothed the blanket across his body and he stuck his arms out from in juvenile defiance.

"…No."

"What is the last thing you remember?"

"Some…liquor?"

She snorted and put a hand to her mouth, "I-I'm sorry, but…some? Your choice of words are pretty poor, Mr. Taylor. You were at an inhuman intoxication level. Does the word Xanax ring anything?"

"….You found that in my system too, huh?"

"You don't need to lie, Mr. Taylor."

"I'm not lying. Sure, I remember Xanax. Doesn't mean I remember taking it. I wouldn't doubt it though, Love."

"That's Dr. Johns."

"Sure, sure, Love. Well, thing is, I'm not one for lying. So, I'm gonna go ahead and guess, that I did take my illegal Xanax with my illegal 190 proofEverclear and vodka. How's that for lying? I'm gonna go ahead and guess further, just to humor you. I'm gonna guess that alcohol and Xanax don't place like the nice little tots they should? Is that it?"

"Are you implying you didn't know?"

"No, I know they don't play nice. I told you, I was humoring you."

His voice was darker now and Dr. Johns blinked momentarily. "You attempted suicide, Mr. Taylor. I don't find that humorous."

"Yeah…well…" Jack shrugged it off, looking up to the doctor, "Who hasn't thought about it? Not my fault I'm the only one with balls to do-"

He lurched forward from his position, wrapping one arm around his abdomen and Dr. Johns quickly swung the small table around to his bed, which, on it, a small bowl was placed and immediately, Jack threw up every bit of churned up edible product they'd been pushing down his esophagus when he'd been unconscious.

"That'll be…happening for a while. I hope you enjoyed your sleep while you had it…"

Jack smiled distantly at the memory of the dream, and then frowned.

So close to reliving that ecstasy…

Jack gripped the railings, his arms convulsing and causing the metal to vibrate at an unearthly speed. His skin was pale and drops of sweat gathered in the creases of his forehead.

Now, he remembered everything.

Everything.

The talk with Miller.

The tapes.

Rape.

He retched again, and the nurse, standing by with a pitying look, picked the bowl up with a gloved hand, setting another in it's place and wiping the left-over puke from his lips with a wet rag.

He released an exhausted breath.

His arms still shaking in his lap as he attempted to close his eyes.

"You're looking…sickly." Dr. Johns murmured with a smile.

Jack re-opened his eyes, looking on through a blurry gaze as the colors and lines formed together again and he could make out her oval face and round eyes that matched her heart-like lips.

"You're paler than me." She commented with a smile, "Don't worry though. You get worse before you get better. Which places you at making progress."

"Doesn't feel like it. Is this normal- puking so much?" Jack murmured.

"Everyone's different, Mr. Taylor, but I'll retain bragging rights. I did predict this."

"I don't want to know how…"

"Good. I don't want to share my secrets."

He quirked an eyebrow.

"Oh, and by the way. You have some visitors…I have to ask permission before I let them in. What'd you think? Are you up to it?"

"Are you kidding me, Love? I'll…have your dog killed or…or something if you let them in. Tell them I'm sleeping or something."

Dr. Johns let out a soft laugh, "Alright, alright, Mr. Taylor. Contain yourself."

Just as the shadows of the figures came into his site, he felt another wave of nausea hit him and lurched forward again, emptying the last of what he'd probably be able to puke into the small bowl, and the same nurse, back again with a glass of water, took the bowl again with another sympathetic smile and wiped his face, though nothing was there this time.

"Man, Doc wasn't kidding, Boss." Gat murmured, "You feelin' like shit or…?"

Jack coughed, sitting back into the bed weakly, "….I'm fine. I'm fine."

"I'll leave you alone…but try and drink that glass of water, Mr. Taylor, without it coming back up."

With that, Dr. Johns closed the door behind herself, the soft click of her heels could be heard in the silence.

Jack blinked quietly, swallowing and attempting to ease the burn in his throat from the acid resting in his throat. He looked at the glass of water, droplets slid down the side of the glass, and it was so tempting.

More than anything- he craved water.

But he wouldn't move.

"Boss, we-…" Johnny trailed off momentarily, "I think that we all wanna-"

"Know that doctors first name? Fuck yes, mate. Find that out for me, would you? You see the arse on her?"

"Boss."

"While you're doing that- Shaundi, would you mind finding me some real food? I'm puking because this shits so nasty. They call this edible? Christ, I wouldn't feed my dog this."

Jack thought over his words for a second.

"Boss, look, man this is serious, we-"

"Speaking of dogs." Jack cut Gat off swiftly, "Pierce, find me a dog. I want a dog."

"….are you fucking with me?"

"No, I'm not fucking with you. I want some huge, threatening motherfucker, too. No pussy dogs. And no puppies."

"You on pain medication?" Pierce questioned, eyeing up the IVs and then down to his pallor, examining the dark rings around his eyes and the slight tremor running through his body.

Strong as ever? No. He shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that. He was just resilient.

"Right." Jack snorted, "Someone who just tried killing themselves on addictive medication- and they'd give me the pain killers?"

The mood went back to darkness, and Jack turned away from the crowd standing by the door, feeling that rise of hatred make it's way into his cheeks and color them pink.

This was pitiful.

Him, in a bed with IV's and a bowl in front of him in case he had to puke up an organ. Him, in a bed shaking and shivering beneath three blankets. Him, with everyone who once had respect for him, knew him as indestructible, witnessing the precursor to his death.

"Serious as a heart attack…" Pierce murmured, "…I gotcha back, Man."

"Kinzie, Oleg go get the flat fixed." Jack murmured, his voice considerably more flat now, and without the humor he'd attempted to use previously for the sake of hiding his embarrassment.

It was obvious by this point though, because Johnny, who Jack had glared at before turning away, had bit his cheek and looked away. Hands balled into fists and grinding his teeth.

"Wh-What'd I do…Mate?"

Jack breathed in slowly, looking out the window with the dimming sunlight setting behind the buildings.

He blinked momentarily, looking out of the very corner of his eye at the barren-faced cyber God. Just a black t-shirt and some jeans. No make-up. Nothing special to deck out his usual neon outfit. His side-bang was even tucked behind an ear and in a rustled mess.

"Stay here." Jack murmured. "Sit down."

Matt lowered himself into a chair, slowly with a strong force of hesitation attempting to keep him on his feet. He looked to the others who didn't acknowledge it.

"We'll be back, Boss." Johnny murmured, "We'll be back."

He looked towards the bed-ridden man he called brother with a reassuring pinched expression that Jack didn't see, but both knew he felt.

'I'm gonna be back, Jack.' He thought, 'I'm gonna be back, and we're gonna hash this shit out.'

Jack's lips parted, pulling from each other slowly.

"I know."