All usual disclaimers apply.
*-~*
A faint and inconstant beeping slowly started to wake him up. Beeping? He didn't open his eyes at first, trying to remember why they were closed. He hadn't fallen asleep, right? No, of course not; he didn't have dreams. But he was in bed. He was laying down and covered with a blanket up to his chest: he could feel the blanket on top of him. But there was something else that was on him.
Restraints.
They were around his wrists and around his ankles. Opening his eyes, he tried to look down to see what was holding him down, but as he tried to raise his head, a sudden feeling of wooziness overtook him. He was extremely lightheaded, for some reason. Had the doctors drugged him? Did they inject something in him again? He tried to raise his hands up to a view so he could see what was around his wrists, but as he did so, something felt like it was burning in his wrists. What the hell.? Had this been what that voice told him?
Where was he?
"Mr. Johnson?"
Dwayne turned slowly towards where the voice came, and he saw Lisa Waltham walking in, smiling slightly, and walking towards the chair next to his bed. "I'm so glad you woke up. You scared us. All of us." She sat next to him and took a good look at him. He did look slightly better. He was extremely pale, though, and it was obvious that it was slightly hard for him to breathe. "Would you like anything? Some water to drink or anything."
Slowly, Dwayne shook his head and for the first time realized that he wasn't in his room. That the window that he always looked at wasn't where it was supposed to be. That, in fact, there were no windows. Frowning, he looked around as quickly as he could, starting to breathe heavier. This wasn't his bed. This wasn't his room. And he wasn't even wearing his clothes; he was wearing a white gown that looked like the one back in the hospital after the accident. It was cold. The blankets were cold. The beeping was annoying, and the whiteness in the room was something that was slowly starting to irritate him. "Where am I? Why am I here? This isn't my room!"
"No, Mr. Johnson, it isn't."
"I thought you were going to call me Dwayne."
Lisa looked at him for a short moment before frowning slightly when she realized that he was confused. Could it be? How could he not remember what had happened? He had been conscious when they had found him. "You don't remember what happened?" Dwayne, instead of answering, gave her a blank look. "Mr. Johnson, you were found in your room, on the floor, bleeding."
Frowning in confusion, Dwayne set his head back down on the pillow and shook his head. "Why would I be bleeding?"
"Dwayne, you tried to kill yourself." Very gently, she lowered the blanket down to his stomach and raised one of his hands as high as she could. She moved the restraints that he had on his wrist slightly lower, and she showed him how a bandage was covering his wrists down to the middle of his lower arm. They even had stains of blood on them; showing the vertical cuts that he had made. Carefully, she set the restraint back in its place and put his hand back down before covering him again. "A nurse found you laying on the floor, bleeding. You were conscious."
He what? He had finally gotten enough courage to do it? But. He hadn't tried to kill himself. Sure, he had thought about it, but then again that had been the only thing that he had been thinking for months now. He hadn't done anything. His memory was blurry, but the last things he remembered were the dream that he had had. The fact that he had actually slept and remembered that morning when Dani and Alex had died. He remembered how he had woken up, crying because of that. But, as he remembered that, he also remembered the conversation.
The scissors that had been on the nightstand.
Slowly, he shook his head. "No. I didn't. I didn't try anything."
"Mr. Johnson, we found you on the floor, bleeding, and the scissors still in your hands."
"But I wasn't. That couldn't have been. I talked to someone after I woke up from a dream and, sure, the scissors had been there, but I didn't do it."
Lisa sighed. "How did you even have scissors? No patient has access to scissors, and they shouldn't have been in your room."
Dwayne was starting to get irritated, both for the fact that she didn't seem to be listening to him nor letting him talk. "They weren't mine, Ms. Waltham. I woke up and they were there."
Lisa stayed silent, watching him. He seemed to be honest. "Who had you been talking to?"
"I.don't know. Every time he comes to 'visit', he comes during the night and never lets me see his face, nor turn on the lights. But we talk. Well.mostly him. He said that that room had been his. That that's why he goes."
Frowning, Lisa stared at him intently. A former patient? Nurses were on watch during the night, not letting the patients get out of their rooms to 'visit.' And no one had been changed from rooms, and there wasn't one patient that had been left from that place and came back again; that was why this hospital was so famous. But how could Dwayne not remember? Could he be making that up? Maybe deny that everything happened, just how he did with the deaths of his wife and son?
Could he be making up that voice he said he talked to?
It wasn't uncommon for people that were depressed to do so. It was a way to let out some feelings they kept inside with 'people' that they felt comfortable with. Dwayne, though, hadn't shown any signs that he had been doing that. But, then again, he had been silent enough to think about it. Nonetheless, Lisa nodded slightly and stood. "I'll.go see when they'll bring you some water and if your family members were notified. I'll be back in a while." Without saying anything else, she walked out the door.
Dwayne watched her leave, frowning. Even if she hadn't said anything, her eyes explained everything. She thought that he was making everything up. That he had deliberately taken those scissors and tried to bleed to death. It sounded like a good plan, but he hadn't even thought about it for a long enough time to actually pull it off. He hadn't done it, dammit. He hadn't done it. He had been alone, sure, but he hadn't taken those scissors and done that. He hadn't, and he was sure. But. How could he be here, then? How could this be happening too? No. It was another nightmare. It was something else that he would be waking up and forget about later.
He wasn't crazy.
*.:.:.:.*
The howling of the wind could be heard, even if no windows were in the room. He was wide awake, staring at the ceiling above him. He couldn't sleep. He refused to sleep, actually. The doctor had injected a tranquilizer in him, but he was fighting it. No one was with him in the room; he was alone. The restraints were still on his wrists and his ankles, and he was covered up with the same blanket. He was really cold, but the doctors kept saying that it was because of the blood loss he had suffered. That it was normal.
But he didn't care.
There was a small light turned on in the corner of the room, but every other corner of the room was extremely dark for the lack of windows. The heart monitor that had been hooked to him was no longer there, so the beeping was gone.
Everything was silent.
"Finally got enough courage to do it, huh?"
Turning to the voice, Dwayne frowned slightly. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, you should have expected it, DJ."
"What happened that night? You were the one who put the scissors there, wasn't it?"
"No, no, no. You were."
Dwayne frowned in confusion and lifted his head very slightly. "N- No. I didn't take it to my room. You put them there! You pointed it out, remember? When I woke up?"
A laugh was heard. "Why, you have memory problems now too, Dwayne? I think you should be in a real asylum now. You're just imagining things. The scissors were brought in that room by you. No one else took them there. It was you. And you tried to kill yourself. You tried to end your misery. You didn't want to live anymore, remember? So, you just found the easy way out. You looked for the way to just.end it all."
As he talked, Dwayne didn't say anything. It was all true. If he could have, he would have 'pulled the plug' a long time ago. If someone would have left him alone and he would have had what he needed, he wouldn't have lived this long. He would have ended it before any of this could have happened. He would have never known this place, and he wouldn't be talking to the person that was there in the room. He would be gone; just how he wanted to be
Life would have stopped, just how he wanted it to.
But he knew for a fact that he hadn't taken those scissors in the room. They had been there when he woke up. *He* hadn't done it. He hadn't.
Had he.?
Shaking his head slightly, he frowned. "You're lying. I didn't."
"Of course you did." Slowly, steps started to get closer to the bed. "You honestly don't remember? It was your plan to have them there. You wanted to just end it. Everything else? You wanted to send it all to hell. It wasn't *me* that did it." A click was heard, and the light from the lamp got slightly stronger, bringing light to the whole room. Dwayne stared at the owner of the voice in shock as he walked towards the bed. "*We* did it. You planned it.and everything else was up to me." As Dwayne could finally see him, he realized why the voice had sounded so familiar. It hadn't been a past patient. It hadn't been someone who had been in his room.
It was.him.
It was The Rock.
The hair cut. The clothes, the presence. It was who he had once been. The well dressed cocky self who he had once been. The one who could never be again. The one who hadn't lost anything.
The voice he had been listening to had been himself the whole time.
~ ~ ~ ~
Once again, Dwayne opened his eyes quickly, gasping. The beeping of the heart monitor was quick and unsteady; showing how startled he had gotten because of the dream. Two nurses and a doctor were holding him down, mainly because he had tried to fight them even as he slept, but when they saw that he was awake, they all stared at him intently; trying to see what was wrong with him. Shaking, he leaned back on the pillow and shut his eyes, turning to the side and trying to make his breathing go back to normal. It wasn't real. It hadn't been real.
Had it.?
He felt how the grip of the nurses and the doctors let go of him and prepared his arm for a shot. Before he could argue against it, the feeling of the needle in his arm and how the dizziness grew; starting to knock him out.
The door was then heard how it opened and Dwayne could hear Lisa's voice, "What's wrong? What happened?"
"He suddenly woke up, Ms. Waltham. I don't know why, but he just.woke up. He was very agitated."
Lisa turned to Dwayne, about to ask him if he was alright, but he was already asleep. After the doctor checked on him, she watched as he and the nurses walked out. Sighing, she turned to him. His whole situation was an enigma. She wanted to do all she could to help him and to help him rid of what was haunting him. But it was hard without him letting anyone even get close. It was also hard because of his lack of desire to keep on living. As she watched him sleep, she thought of what she had told him. About him talking to someone.
Before her thoughts could continue, she sighed once again and walked outside. As she closed the door, she turned around to leave but let out a small surprised yelp when she saw someone in front of her. It was a man. He was around 6'2. His blond hair was short, and his clear blue eyes seemed cold. Emotionless, and grim. Lisa tried to hide her surprise when she had seen him and put her hand on her chest; trying to make her heart from stop beating so hard. "Who. I'm sorry, I was.surprised. Wh. What are you doing here?"
"I am sorry to have disturbed you, Ms. Waltham."
"Jake, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be down here. You're supposed to be upstairs, guarding the halls..."
Nodding, Jake smiled. "Yes, Ms. Waltham, but I wanted to see how Mr. Johnson was doing."
"Oh, right. You were the one that found him. He's. . .recovering. The doctors said he'll be fine, physically. Mentally, well, that's where I come in."
"Ah, I'm sure that you'll do fine. You always do, right?"
Lisa smiled slightly. "Thanks. If you'll excuse me, I have to get going. You should do the same, before you get in trouble by your official." Smiling slightly once more, she headed out of the infirmary of the asylum and went to the stairs; heading for her office. As she did so, however, she felt how she was overtaken by shivers. As if the storm that was going on outside was starting to slowly creep in the hospital.
Jake watched her go, a small smile on his face and making sure that she was upstairs. Turning, he looked around the halls; making sure that no one was there. He was a nurse in the hospital, and tonight it was his turn to be one of the ones that guard the halls of the second floor. When he made sure that no one was around, he opened the door to Dwayne's room and, through the light of the hall that managed to get in the room, he noticed that he was sleeping, his head turned to another wall. Jake had been the one that had been the one that had informed the doctors that Dwayne had been found on the ground, staring up at the ceiling with his wrists slashed and bleeding. Shaking his head and clicking his tongue twice, he closed the door again and went back upstairs.
*-~*
A faint and inconstant beeping slowly started to wake him up. Beeping? He didn't open his eyes at first, trying to remember why they were closed. He hadn't fallen asleep, right? No, of course not; he didn't have dreams. But he was in bed. He was laying down and covered with a blanket up to his chest: he could feel the blanket on top of him. But there was something else that was on him.
Restraints.
They were around his wrists and around his ankles. Opening his eyes, he tried to look down to see what was holding him down, but as he tried to raise his head, a sudden feeling of wooziness overtook him. He was extremely lightheaded, for some reason. Had the doctors drugged him? Did they inject something in him again? He tried to raise his hands up to a view so he could see what was around his wrists, but as he did so, something felt like it was burning in his wrists. What the hell.? Had this been what that voice told him?
Where was he?
"Mr. Johnson?"
Dwayne turned slowly towards where the voice came, and he saw Lisa Waltham walking in, smiling slightly, and walking towards the chair next to his bed. "I'm so glad you woke up. You scared us. All of us." She sat next to him and took a good look at him. He did look slightly better. He was extremely pale, though, and it was obvious that it was slightly hard for him to breathe. "Would you like anything? Some water to drink or anything."
Slowly, Dwayne shook his head and for the first time realized that he wasn't in his room. That the window that he always looked at wasn't where it was supposed to be. That, in fact, there were no windows. Frowning, he looked around as quickly as he could, starting to breathe heavier. This wasn't his bed. This wasn't his room. And he wasn't even wearing his clothes; he was wearing a white gown that looked like the one back in the hospital after the accident. It was cold. The blankets were cold. The beeping was annoying, and the whiteness in the room was something that was slowly starting to irritate him. "Where am I? Why am I here? This isn't my room!"
"No, Mr. Johnson, it isn't."
"I thought you were going to call me Dwayne."
Lisa looked at him for a short moment before frowning slightly when she realized that he was confused. Could it be? How could he not remember what had happened? He had been conscious when they had found him. "You don't remember what happened?" Dwayne, instead of answering, gave her a blank look. "Mr. Johnson, you were found in your room, on the floor, bleeding."
Frowning in confusion, Dwayne set his head back down on the pillow and shook his head. "Why would I be bleeding?"
"Dwayne, you tried to kill yourself." Very gently, she lowered the blanket down to his stomach and raised one of his hands as high as she could. She moved the restraints that he had on his wrist slightly lower, and she showed him how a bandage was covering his wrists down to the middle of his lower arm. They even had stains of blood on them; showing the vertical cuts that he had made. Carefully, she set the restraint back in its place and put his hand back down before covering him again. "A nurse found you laying on the floor, bleeding. You were conscious."
He what? He had finally gotten enough courage to do it? But. He hadn't tried to kill himself. Sure, he had thought about it, but then again that had been the only thing that he had been thinking for months now. He hadn't done anything. His memory was blurry, but the last things he remembered were the dream that he had had. The fact that he had actually slept and remembered that morning when Dani and Alex had died. He remembered how he had woken up, crying because of that. But, as he remembered that, he also remembered the conversation.
The scissors that had been on the nightstand.
Slowly, he shook his head. "No. I didn't. I didn't try anything."
"Mr. Johnson, we found you on the floor, bleeding, and the scissors still in your hands."
"But I wasn't. That couldn't have been. I talked to someone after I woke up from a dream and, sure, the scissors had been there, but I didn't do it."
Lisa sighed. "How did you even have scissors? No patient has access to scissors, and they shouldn't have been in your room."
Dwayne was starting to get irritated, both for the fact that she didn't seem to be listening to him nor letting him talk. "They weren't mine, Ms. Waltham. I woke up and they were there."
Lisa stayed silent, watching him. He seemed to be honest. "Who had you been talking to?"
"I.don't know. Every time he comes to 'visit', he comes during the night and never lets me see his face, nor turn on the lights. But we talk. Well.mostly him. He said that that room had been his. That that's why he goes."
Frowning, Lisa stared at him intently. A former patient? Nurses were on watch during the night, not letting the patients get out of their rooms to 'visit.' And no one had been changed from rooms, and there wasn't one patient that had been left from that place and came back again; that was why this hospital was so famous. But how could Dwayne not remember? Could he be making that up? Maybe deny that everything happened, just how he did with the deaths of his wife and son?
Could he be making up that voice he said he talked to?
It wasn't uncommon for people that were depressed to do so. It was a way to let out some feelings they kept inside with 'people' that they felt comfortable with. Dwayne, though, hadn't shown any signs that he had been doing that. But, then again, he had been silent enough to think about it. Nonetheless, Lisa nodded slightly and stood. "I'll.go see when they'll bring you some water and if your family members were notified. I'll be back in a while." Without saying anything else, she walked out the door.
Dwayne watched her leave, frowning. Even if she hadn't said anything, her eyes explained everything. She thought that he was making everything up. That he had deliberately taken those scissors and tried to bleed to death. It sounded like a good plan, but he hadn't even thought about it for a long enough time to actually pull it off. He hadn't done it, dammit. He hadn't done it. He had been alone, sure, but he hadn't taken those scissors and done that. He hadn't, and he was sure. But. How could he be here, then? How could this be happening too? No. It was another nightmare. It was something else that he would be waking up and forget about later.
He wasn't crazy.
*.:.:.:.*
The howling of the wind could be heard, even if no windows were in the room. He was wide awake, staring at the ceiling above him. He couldn't sleep. He refused to sleep, actually. The doctor had injected a tranquilizer in him, but he was fighting it. No one was with him in the room; he was alone. The restraints were still on his wrists and his ankles, and he was covered up with the same blanket. He was really cold, but the doctors kept saying that it was because of the blood loss he had suffered. That it was normal.
But he didn't care.
There was a small light turned on in the corner of the room, but every other corner of the room was extremely dark for the lack of windows. The heart monitor that had been hooked to him was no longer there, so the beeping was gone.
Everything was silent.
"Finally got enough courage to do it, huh?"
Turning to the voice, Dwayne frowned slightly. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, you should have expected it, DJ."
"What happened that night? You were the one who put the scissors there, wasn't it?"
"No, no, no. You were."
Dwayne frowned in confusion and lifted his head very slightly. "N- No. I didn't take it to my room. You put them there! You pointed it out, remember? When I woke up?"
A laugh was heard. "Why, you have memory problems now too, Dwayne? I think you should be in a real asylum now. You're just imagining things. The scissors were brought in that room by you. No one else took them there. It was you. And you tried to kill yourself. You tried to end your misery. You didn't want to live anymore, remember? So, you just found the easy way out. You looked for the way to just.end it all."
As he talked, Dwayne didn't say anything. It was all true. If he could have, he would have 'pulled the plug' a long time ago. If someone would have left him alone and he would have had what he needed, he wouldn't have lived this long. He would have ended it before any of this could have happened. He would have never known this place, and he wouldn't be talking to the person that was there in the room. He would be gone; just how he wanted to be
Life would have stopped, just how he wanted it to.
But he knew for a fact that he hadn't taken those scissors in the room. They had been there when he woke up. *He* hadn't done it. He hadn't.
Had he.?
Shaking his head slightly, he frowned. "You're lying. I didn't."
"Of course you did." Slowly, steps started to get closer to the bed. "You honestly don't remember? It was your plan to have them there. You wanted to just end it. Everything else? You wanted to send it all to hell. It wasn't *me* that did it." A click was heard, and the light from the lamp got slightly stronger, bringing light to the whole room. Dwayne stared at the owner of the voice in shock as he walked towards the bed. "*We* did it. You planned it.and everything else was up to me." As Dwayne could finally see him, he realized why the voice had sounded so familiar. It hadn't been a past patient. It hadn't been someone who had been in his room.
It was.him.
It was The Rock.
The hair cut. The clothes, the presence. It was who he had once been. The well dressed cocky self who he had once been. The one who could never be again. The one who hadn't lost anything.
The voice he had been listening to had been himself the whole time.
~ ~ ~ ~
Once again, Dwayne opened his eyes quickly, gasping. The beeping of the heart monitor was quick and unsteady; showing how startled he had gotten because of the dream. Two nurses and a doctor were holding him down, mainly because he had tried to fight them even as he slept, but when they saw that he was awake, they all stared at him intently; trying to see what was wrong with him. Shaking, he leaned back on the pillow and shut his eyes, turning to the side and trying to make his breathing go back to normal. It wasn't real. It hadn't been real.
Had it.?
He felt how the grip of the nurses and the doctors let go of him and prepared his arm for a shot. Before he could argue against it, the feeling of the needle in his arm and how the dizziness grew; starting to knock him out.
The door was then heard how it opened and Dwayne could hear Lisa's voice, "What's wrong? What happened?"
"He suddenly woke up, Ms. Waltham. I don't know why, but he just.woke up. He was very agitated."
Lisa turned to Dwayne, about to ask him if he was alright, but he was already asleep. After the doctor checked on him, she watched as he and the nurses walked out. Sighing, she turned to him. His whole situation was an enigma. She wanted to do all she could to help him and to help him rid of what was haunting him. But it was hard without him letting anyone even get close. It was also hard because of his lack of desire to keep on living. As she watched him sleep, she thought of what she had told him. About him talking to someone.
Before her thoughts could continue, she sighed once again and walked outside. As she closed the door, she turned around to leave but let out a small surprised yelp when she saw someone in front of her. It was a man. He was around 6'2. His blond hair was short, and his clear blue eyes seemed cold. Emotionless, and grim. Lisa tried to hide her surprise when she had seen him and put her hand on her chest; trying to make her heart from stop beating so hard. "Who. I'm sorry, I was.surprised. Wh. What are you doing here?"
"I am sorry to have disturbed you, Ms. Waltham."
"Jake, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be down here. You're supposed to be upstairs, guarding the halls..."
Nodding, Jake smiled. "Yes, Ms. Waltham, but I wanted to see how Mr. Johnson was doing."
"Oh, right. You were the one that found him. He's. . .recovering. The doctors said he'll be fine, physically. Mentally, well, that's where I come in."
"Ah, I'm sure that you'll do fine. You always do, right?"
Lisa smiled slightly. "Thanks. If you'll excuse me, I have to get going. You should do the same, before you get in trouble by your official." Smiling slightly once more, she headed out of the infirmary of the asylum and went to the stairs; heading for her office. As she did so, however, she felt how she was overtaken by shivers. As if the storm that was going on outside was starting to slowly creep in the hospital.
Jake watched her go, a small smile on his face and making sure that she was upstairs. Turning, he looked around the halls; making sure that no one was there. He was a nurse in the hospital, and tonight it was his turn to be one of the ones that guard the halls of the second floor. When he made sure that no one was around, he opened the door to Dwayne's room and, through the light of the hall that managed to get in the room, he noticed that he was sleeping, his head turned to another wall. Jake had been the one that had been the one that had informed the doctors that Dwayne had been found on the ground, staring up at the ceiling with his wrists slashed and bleeding. Shaking his head and clicking his tongue twice, he closed the door again and went back upstairs.
