Author: Jadecow
Email: Jadecow@hotmail.com
Summary: How can you tell someone how much they mean to you without words?
Disclaimer: The characters portrayed in this fanfic aren't mine. They're owned by a whole slew of people, including the much talented James Ellroy who first brought them to life from his disturbing and vivid imagination.
Author's Note: This follows the movie, not the book. Enjoy.
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I Know
By Jadecow
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When Dudley fired that last shot down at me, he could have aimed higher. He could have blew my fucking brains out all over the floor, and ended my miserable life right there. But he didn't, or he missed. Sometimes, it feels like what he did was worse then that. There's dignity in dying for justice. That final shot didn't kill me, but it shattered my jaw, nearly sliced my tongue clean in two. A year later and the best I can manage is a few words.
One small step at a time. That's what those fucking doctors told me when I was starting to walk again, starting to move again like a fucking human being. Except, now, I don't have a nurse on either side ready to steady me if I fall. All I've got is a bunch of scars and a lot of bad memories. I can move forward or backward, but most of the time it feels like I'm standing still while everything else speeds by. The only thing that keeps me sane is Lynn.
For the obvious reasons, I usually ignore the phone when it rings. Lynn works during the day, leaving me alone in our house on the outskirts of Bisbee. Anybody who is worth talking to would know not to call the house during the day and call Lynn's shop instead. If it's not someone close, they'll call back another time. Today the phone started ringing at nine in the morning. I let it go. It rang two dozen times, stopped, rang another dozen. When it rang a third time, I swallowed my pride and picked up.
I didn't have to say a word. It was the girl that worked at the store with Lynn, Mary. She spoke right away.
"Bud, it's Mary." She paused, I thought she wanted me to say something, but then I found out why she had stopped. "She's sick...Really sick. The doctor was just in here...I called him when she nearly fainted. They left in an ambulance. I have no idea what's going on. He said for you to go to the hospital."
I didn't know if I was going to cry or scream. My hand holding the phone ached I was holding it so tight. Mary said nothing for a few seconds, letting it sink in. I was asleep when Lynn left the house in the morning; just awake enough to receive her good-bye kiss with a smile. She didn't look ill then.
"Do you want me to call her mother for you?"
I thought about the effort it would take to go to the hospital alone, about how hard it would be to talk to her mother over the phone. Going her would be both harder and easier. I grunted, something I've been getting quite good at and hoped she knew that it was an affirmative.
"Okay, I'll tell her you're on your way to her house."
I hung up the phone before she said anything else. Lynn's mother lives on the other side of town the drive normally taking twenty minutes took me five. I'm lucky I didn't kill someone on the way there or on the way to the hospital. I don't remember the drive, either. Most of the morning is unclear, the building frustration rising in me so hard and so fast that it's all I could remember. A thousand questions ran through my mind in the car, a thousand more at the hospital, none of which I could voice.
The problem was her appendix. When we got there, they were just wheeling her in for emergency surgery. I nearly wore a hole in the floor of the waiting room while her mother sat calm in one of the cheep chairs. I was glad I picked her up. She loves Lynn as much as I do; she knew what questions I wanted to ask.
I was probably on the eightieth repeat of my path between the window and the wall opposite it when she spoke.
"Making yourself dizzy won't help."
I looked at her. She didn't understand that the pacing was the only thing from keeping me from snapping. Deep breathing, all that other bullshit ways to keep yourself calm never worked with me. There are no stops between anger and rage for me. And I was on the verge of being very, very, angry with myself. If I concentrated on left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, turn, I was okay. I wouldn't give in. I turned and kept pacing.
The rest was silence until the doctor came in. I listened to him talk to her; tell her that everything went as well as it normally does. Lynn would be awake before dinnertime. One of us could wait by her, but just one of us. I wanted to see her. I needed to see her. I couldn't believe that she was okay until I saw it with my own eyes.
Maybe her mother understood this. I don't know. She looked up at me and smiled. "Let me go in for a little while and then I'll call a cab to go home. The both of us don't need to be here. Lynn can call when she's feeling up to it, I'm sure."
Part of me wanted to argue, but the selfish part won out. I nodded and forced myself to sit in a chair as she left the room with the doctor. I stared at the floor and tried to convince myself everything was okay. My hands were shaking, and I felt dizzy. I was scared. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't believe she was okay.
A hand on my shoulder made me jump. I cursed myself and looked up, staring into the face of a doctor whose name I never bothered to get. I didn't give a fuck about his name. He led me into the room where Lynn was, her mother gone already. She never told me she was leaving, or maybe she did and I just didn't hear. I really didn't give a fuck. At the moment, the only thing that was on my mind was how small and weak, two words that never came to mind about her, Lynn looked lying in the bed.
I pulled up a chair and held her hand. A little over a year ago, it was the other way around. I'm sure it was worse for her. I was out for days. I wasn't supposed to wake up. Compared to the hell she went through, it should have been simple. But it wasn't. She was the only thing I needed in life, the only thing I had, and I almost lost her. A few more hours, the doctor told us, and her appendix could have burst. Then I'd be sitting by a grave rather then a bed.
Hours passed. I sat there holding her hand. I'm not sure when her eyes opened, or how long they were open. I was lost. The second she said my name, her voice hardly there, I was snapped back to reality.
I wanted to tell her so much. How scared I was, how much I loved her, how much I need her, how beautiful she was...I wanted to tell her to never scare me again, that without her life wouldn't be worth much...I wanted her to know how much she meant to me. But I couldn't. I couldn't fucking get one damn word out. I couldn't force the words no matter how hard I tried. She just locked her eyes on mine and didn't say anything either. I was so fucking angry. I couldn't tell her anything that I wanted to. That I needed to.
Then I did something I never did in front of her except for once, after I found the pictures of her and Exley. I cried. I was so fucking frustrated that she didn't know how much she meant, how much she scared the shit out of me...I hated myself for not being able to tell her everything I wanted to. I cried like a damn baby. I wound up kneeling next to her bed, my head buried in her shoulder, holding her, her holding me. When I finally stopped, out of tears and feeling completely drained, I looked into her eyes. She smiled.
"I know, Bud. I know."
I smiled back.
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FIN