Chapter Five:
There's a blackness like nothing I've ever felt. I always thought, like most people, that there would be a light, a tunnel perhaps, and maybe, funnily, St. Peter greeting me at those pearly gates with a disapproving look as his quill scratches for hours roughly against the parchment, weighing the wages of my sins.
It never comes, none of it. There's just that blackness and these muffled sounds all around me, distant and blurry.
A body slams into mine, cold and hard, and I hear that gunfire I've been bracing myself for all night, all these long months since that first one imprinted itself on my heart.
"Samantha?"
A hand on my cheek, warm with blood and cold with fear.
"Sam, answer me, look at me, come on."
There's a desperation in his voice and I start to think maybe I've cheated it once again. Maybe I'll be running from it my entire life.
"Jack?"
It's more of a croak really, but he must be satisfied enough because I feel myself being pulled into those strong arms, though I can barely move beyond allowing myself to be cradled awkwardly against his rapidly beating heart.
The first sight to greet me is the lifeless body of the perp I was convinced had ended my life. Danny stands over him, gun drawn, and still slightly tense as though there was a second that passed through him where he'd wondered if he'd been too late.
"Samantha?" He asks with this almost frightened innocence, as though he can't bear one more loss.
"I'm okay, Danny."
I'm truly not sure of that right now, but if false reassurances will erase the desperate worry emanating between the three of us right now, I'll let the lie slip easily from my lips. Jack's rocking me now and I almost wish he'll never let go.
Almost.
The eyes stare at me behind the mask, lifeless still as they were mere minutes ago. I turn my head to see Martin gently talking to Stephanie Beckett as she lies frightened on a gurney, her eyes never leaving the body bag containing her husband.
She lost something tonight, beyond just the physical presence of her husband, that I don't think she'll ever get back.
I feel the same way
And so, I make a mental note to speak to her and I allow sleep to beckon me as Jack whispers away my pain temporarily.
It's enough for now.
*
I find myself seeing solemn finalities in everyday things anymore. I don't know why, exactly, it's just there, this unwavering conviction in the back of my mind that today might be the last time I wash my dishes and flip casually through the television, cry unknowingly at those simple songs I hear far too infrequently.
I wonder if maybe tomorrow, today, this very hour or minute, might be the last time I look at him, really look at him and hear him and feel him. Not just because I wait for death sometimes at night when the house is quiet, but because I also wonder if maybe the next time I see him and breathe him in he'll look at me and realize he really doesn't want me, doesn't need me, and just like that, I'll be nothing more than dust in the wind.
Maybe that's how it will be.
Simple and quick and so completely resolute...that finality, that haunting finality I think about in that space between my dreams and reality.
Maybe that's how it will be.
Maybe that's how it will end.
Maybe he'll realize love was a parting glance between us just as I realize I can do nothing but stare at him as eternity passes me by.
*
There's degrees of pain and grief, you see. Sometimes I think that's what separates us the most, because our humanity, our sensitivity, even our perseverance really shines through in the face of what seems to be the loss of nothing less than our very lives.
Sometimes I think we really live when there's death all around us.
Stephanie Beckett, I think, is one of those people who falls apart on the outside, while pretending they're okay on the inside.
Me, on the other hand, I fall quietly apart as I pretend to be that little bit of all right we all keep tucked away for safe-keeping.
"Did it hurt, Samantha?"
Her voice is harsh and raspy, struggling to find a positive outcome to this whole situation.
"What?"
"When you were shot -- did it hurt?"
Her eyes beg for an answer that will quiet her nightmares because all she'll see for the rest of her life is the body of her husband who, maybe once, shared a completely human innocence himself. I see it in the photographs on the wall and I wish, for a moment, that I could've met that man beneath the glass. So she begs me in that way she has because, for once, I can give her a peace I haven't been able to give anyone for a long time.
"No, no, it didn't hurt, Stephanie. I kind of went numb, it was just a blur."
"Good."
Hollow and broken. "Good."
Almost a whisper now, as though she hears it, and believes it on the surface, but part of her never truly will.
"He felt no pain, Stephanie."
But he did.
And so did Anwar, and Annie, and Nicole, and Andy, and on and on until the names and faces are countless.
They all lost something; their lives, their innocence, their faith.
They, like me, lost themselves; completely or semi, but nonetheless, there's a hole within me, within them.
I'm sorry.
*
TBC...