Disclaimer: Jay & Silent Bob are the intellectual property of Kevin Smith and View Askew Productions, and I have no intent to profit financially from the use of these characters.
TEN
Sometimes it's like I'm dreaming, seeing things I know can't be real. Like my parents, fucking smiling at me. Dad took off when I was still in kindergarten. Mom fucking threw me away years ago. Only time either one of them ever smiled was when they were fucking high, and that had jack shit to do with me.
Fucking dreams.
Other times it's like I'm blind. I can hear people talking, feel people touching me, touching bare skin on my chest or my stomach or touching my face. I try to open my eyes and I try to move, especially when I feel that shit, because I don't fucking like it and I want to find out who's fucking touching me and make them stop.
But I can't open my eyes and I can't move.
Once in awhile when I'm blind like that and listening to the voices, I find one that's familiar. Silent Bob. I don't really understand most of what he says, but it don't matter. His voice is real soft and warm, a little hoarse, and I can feel his hand holding mine. When he's talking and holding my hand, my brain relaxes and I stop trying to remember what the fuck happened, stop trying to figure out where I am and why I can't wake up.
Nobody's gonna fuck with me while he's here. Knowing that makes me feel something. Calm? Protected? Fuck, maybe this is what it's like to feel safe.
After awhile, the voices start making sense. People calling each other "doctor" and "nurse", talking about things like heart rate and blood pressure and morphine. Hospital. I must be in a hospital. I hate fucking hospitals. All I know about hospitals is pain.
So little I can't remember exactly what happened except my dad shook me, threw me into a wall. My arm hurts and it's bleeding. I won't stop crying so my mom takes me to the hospital. She don't stay, leaves me with a big lady I don't know. They give me a shot that makes me sleep. When I wake up there's a cast on my arm. My mom's there again, only it's not really her, it's the mom with the glassy eyes that don't hear me when I talk, the mom who forgets to feed me.
Eight years old, face and head all beat to hell by my mom's perverted fucking boyfriend cause I won't swallow his fucking dick. Bloody and dizzy and pissed off and scared, fighting the policeman that's holding a towel against my mouth while we ride through town in a cop car. Laying in an emergency room, crying for my mom even though I know she ain't coming, people holding me down and giving me a shot in my upper lip so they can try to sew it back into one piece. I'm kicking and screaming so there's another shot to knock me out. No mom when I wake up this time, not even the shitty one. No mom ever again.
I don't want to be here. Hospitals are bad.
If I could wake up, I'd run away. If I could move . . . I can move. Can feel the muscles in my arm flexing. I move the other one too. I move my legs. I open my eyes. It's so bright they start to water but I don't want to close them so I squint. Can't see much through the tears, everything's so blurry. I keep moving.
Lots of noises now, beeping, like an alarm clock, and there's people talking, people touching me. Only makes me want to run away more.
There's that voice again. Silent Bob. "It's ok, Jay, it's ok, calm down, it's alright. I won't let anybody hurt you. It's ok. Relax." He's close. One of those blurry people above me. I blink real hard because I want to see which one is him, but it don't help.
"Please relax, Jay. It's alright. I won't let anybody hurt you." Feel his hand wrapping around mine. Somebody . . . something happened before . . . somebody hurt me and Silent Bob stopped them. Ok. I stop moving and I let them touch me even though I don't like it.
Wave washes over me, and I feel really tired. I close my eyes and sleep.
- - -
The blindness is familiar by now. Noises, but they ain't too loud, quiet little beeps, a clicking sound. No voices. First thing I feel is the hand holding mine and I remember Silent Bob before I remember I'm in a hospital.
It's kinda dark, maybe nighttime, dark enough I can open my eyes without tears. Ceiling's white, no walls, only ugly green curtains hanging from long metal hooks on both sides. Stare awhile, blink, focus. Look to the left. A little screen with jagged lines, seen that kinda thing on TV. That must be my heartbeat. Fuck, that's weird. Watch it for a minute, shooting up, shooting down. Then I have to blink again, focus again, before I can look anywhere else.
Tubes in my nose, IV lines stuck in me, a blood pressure cuff on my left arm. Some fucking plastic thing clipped onto a finger on my left hand. Gotta blink again. Then I try checking out what's on my right.
Oh yeah. Silent Bob. Sitting there holding my fingers, his thumb on the part of my hand that ain't got a needle stuck in it. He's watching me. He looks like shit. Bags under his eyes. No hat covering up his messy hair, no trench coat hiding his wrinkled clothes. One of his arms is in a sling. He smiles at me.
"Hey. You're awake and you're not trying to kick anybody." He raises his eyebrows. I open my mouth to talk but nothing comes out. My throat hurts. Silent Bob lets go my hand, reaches over to a table where there's a plastic pitcher and a cup with a straw in it. He pours some water with his good arm. I take a little sip, wet my lips and my mouth, and another to wet my throat. Makes me cough.
Coughing fucking hurts, even though I don't cough hard. My side, my chest, my stomach, everything fucking hurts, and I'm crying and holding my breath at the same time. Suddenly there's a lady on my left, brown hair, green clothes . . . a nurse. She leans over me, puts her hand against the pain and tells me to keep breathing until it passes.
Once it does, I move my arm to push her off me. I ain't strong enough to do it but she gets the hint and pulls away. My cheeks are wet but I'm too weak to do anything about that either. I look back at Silent Bob. He's holding my hand again and there's tears in his eyes. "Sorry." he says. "Didn't mean to make you cough."
"S'ok." I say. Fuck, my voice is so quiet. I swallow. "Not your fault." He nods. "Hospital." I say.
"Yeah, you're in the hospital." Silent Bob says. Nurse comes around to that side of the bed and I see somebody else walking up, a guy in a white coat, kinda bald, wearing glasses. Doctor. I start shaking a little. I try to keep my eyes on Silent Bob. "I don't know how much you remember, but you were stabbed."
Stabbed? I think about it. Yeah, I remember. Pain. Burning, searing fucking pain. Shaking gets worse. Silent Bob rubs my hand. "You were hurt really badly and you lost alot of blood but you're gonna be ok. Just need to rest. Try to relax."
Stare again at the doctor and the nurse. Can't stop shaking. I hate being fucking scared like this. Can't run away and I can't fight. Being fucking trapped and helpless is way worse than any pain.
"Jay?" Silent Bob says and I look back at him. "It's ok. I won't let anybody hurt you." Still shaking, still scared, even though I believe him. Fuck. My teeth are chattering. I close my eyes. Go away. I want it all to go away, everything except Silent Bob.
Voices mumble to each other. Can feel tears spilling from my eyes and I can't fucking stop shaking. Silent Bob squeezes my fingers. "They're gonna give you something to help you sleep, Jay. Just hold on, ok? It'll be alright."
Few seconds pass and then the drugs hit me. Shaking finally stops. Didn't know my muscles were so tight but I feel the tension now, slipping out of me, right before I fall asleep.
- - -
Silent Bob. Been awake a few days now and the tubby fucker's always here, watching over me. Well, not always. Sometimes he has to go pee, go smoke, go shower, go sleep, go eat. But he always comes back. S'the only thing makes this fucking hospital shit bearable.
And he ain't so fucking silent lately. When the cops showed up to ask about what happened, he ran interference. When the doctor comes around every day, he asks questions. When they do any kind of test, he's the one who explains everything to me. He don't like talking, but he's doing alot of it. For me.
Sometimes I shake. They told me that was normal, considering everything I been through, my body shaking off some of the drugs and some of the trauma. Trauma. I fucking wanna laugh everytime somebody uses that fucking word. They don't fucking know from trauma.
Don't get me wrong, getting stabbed and nearly bleeding to death is pretty bad, but it ain't the first "trauma" I been through and it sure as shit won't be the last.
I try not to think about it or about the pain that throbs through my chest and my side whenever I'm awake. Just like I try not to think about all the other times I got hurt or fucked or tossed in the fucking garbage. Thinking about that shit don't help. Just makes me shake more, makes me wanna cry.
Sure is hard to forget, though, fucking stuck in this bed, too tired and too weak to move, not enough breath to really talk. Sleep alot. Fucking drugs make sure of that. TV don't really take my mind off of things, either, fucking place gets three channels and one of them's a fucking hospital channel with a bunch of shows about babies and heart attacks and how to eat right.
Laying here watching one of those fucking food shows now, aching as my last dose of drugs wears off. Three other kids in here with me, all of them unconscious, so they don't complain about my choice of programs. It's not a big room but it's big enough that the nurses sitting at their station at one end can't see the TV. Ain't supposed to be watching it anyway, supposed to be watching us.
Silent Bob went home a while ago, to clean up, get himself a meal. Keep looking toward the door, waiting for him to come back. I'm so busy looking at the door, I don't see the nurse until she's right beside me, makes me jump out of my skin, leaves me breathing hard, my heart thudding.
Fucking intensive care. S'a nice way of saying maximum security. They won't fucking leave you alone, always fucking checking on you. Taking blood, fooling with the oxygen, printing off papers from the heart monitor, measuring how much I been pissing through the fucking tube they've got shoved up my cock.
"Bitch, why you gotta fucking sneak up on me like that?" She just stares at me, scribbles something in my chart.
Ain't the first time she's scared me like that, either, bitch fucking enjoys it. Name's Michelle, got hips as wide as a fucking house and short hair and wears too much fucking makeup. She don't like me. Most of the people here've been real nice and they just ignore me when I flip 'em shit, but this one, her fucking eyes are always hard and cold, same as her hands when she touches me.
"Have some news for you, Jay." she says. Her fucking voice ain't any warmer than the rest of her. "Eight days in the hospital and finally, social services is sending someone down here to process you. Better late than never." Fuck. Ain't my imagination, how happy she is telling me that. Feel the shakes coming on again, starting inside, in my stomach and my chest. Makes the pain worse, makes my teeth rattle against each other.
Fucking social services. Can't even piss for myself yet or get out of fucking bed . . . still too sick to leave intensive fucking care, and already I gotta deal with this shit. Gotta start worrying about what comes next, where they'll put me when I get sprung from this place. Fuck! God fucking damn . . . oh God, now I'm gonna fucking cry in front of this ice queen.
"Not good news?" Michelle says. Now she's smiling. Told you she don't fucking like me. Shivering all over now, arms and legs and hands and guts and everything else I got, not enough control over my body to hold the tears back and my fucking face is burning with shame . . . squeeze my eyes shut tight and try not to sob, try not to fucking humiliate myself anymore than I already have.
"Jay?" Oh Bob . . . Silent fucking Bob . . . keep my eyes shut, blocking out everything except his voice. "Jay, what's wrong?" Talking so soft, worried. "Why is he crying?" Sounds pissed now that he's talking to her. I'd laugh if I wasn't so fucking tired and scared and goddamnit everything fucking hurts . . .
Hand on my arm, warm, patting me. Telling me it's ok. Then he's talking to her again, demanding to know what the hell's going on and did she do something or say something to make me cry, because he's had his eye on her, don't think he hasn't . . . I do laugh now, right in the middle of all this shit, a breathless snort but it feels good, takes the edge off the fucking shivers and breaks the lump in my throat.
Open my eyes again. He's right there, right fucking there, ain't looking at me but at that Michelle bitch, like maybe he wants to clock her. They have a mumbled conversation, short and sharp, but I can't hear the words, and then she stomps over to the nurses' station, slaps my chart down on the counter.
Silent Bob turns back to me, that fucking guard dog look on his face sliding off like a mask, and then his eyebrows go up. A question. What's wrong? Talk to me, kid. I sniff. Last few tears dribble down my cheeks. I swallow and look away, concentrate on the cracks in the wall and the feel of him touching my arm. The shakes are starting to fade off. I lift my other hand to wipe my face.
"Fucking social services." I tell the wall. "Somebody's coming to process me. Ask me questions, find out where I been, remind me what an asshole they think I am and what a big favor they're doing me by finding me someplace new to stay."
"Hmmmm." Silent Bob says. Pats my arm again and I listen to the chair dragging along the floor and his ass settling in it. Takes my hand. Doesn't do that so much anymore, the longer I been in here, cause it's kinda embarrassing and sometimes I pull away. Don't pull away now, but I don't look at him either.
"Don't know why it freaked me out so much when she told me." I say. "Been through this shit a million times before."
Silent Bob clears his throat. "Maybe that's why. Because it's the millionth time and you're sick of it. Or maybe it's because you nearly died eight days ago and you're tired and in pain."
Oh fuck him. Tears again. I'm turning into a such a fucking pussy.
"I'll be here, ok?" he says. "When they come to talk to you, I'll be here." Squeezes my hand. Yeah, he'll be here. Won't do any good. He can't call them off of me, can't make them go away. Can't force them to put me someplace where I won't get beat or worked like a slave or fucked up my ass until I get the chance to run away.
Can't do any of that shit.
Something must be fucking wrong with me. Cause even though I know all this, him telling me he's gonna be here makes me feel better. Enough that I don't even need the pain killers to give in and let myself sleep again. Stare at the wall and let the tears dry on my face, let Silent Bob hold my hand, and just go back to sleep.