written by: Roony
rating-PG-13
summary-upon learning of his lung cancer, John delves into Raven Scar, to find old and new fears.
Cancer Ward
'John, you should really start making arrangements. Get prepared.'
'No need. I already know where I'm going.'
John Constantine.
Banisher of some of the most wretched beings to come onto this plain.
Warrior against demons of hell.
Survivor and witness of some of the most dangerous and fucked up shit that you wouldn't even dare to have nightmares about.
And how was he going to die? A bug. That's really all cancer is really; a bug, a sickness. And it wasn't like it was just chance that it had invaded him-no, he had been stupid enough to bring it on himself.
Well no-this couldn't entirely be blamed on himself. Of course, he hardly ever blamed himself about, well, anything. With everything that had happened to him, didn't he deserve something to help him escape a bit? Did he create the tobacco plant; did he make up nicotine out of nothingness?
No. Of course not.
Who had, then?
John's dark eyes went upward.
Yep. That's who.
"Fuck you," John murmured under his breath-startling and offending an elderly woman in passing, not that he noticed. John Constantine had his own problems to worry about.
He stepped into the elevator, glad that no one else was already inside or making a move for it. He wanted-needed to be alone.
Just as the doors were closing, his fingers went instinctively to his coat pocket as the nicotine urge began to slowly bubble up. John cursed himself. Not even five minutes after he'd been told, and he was already going for the cigs.
He sighed as the nicotine began to quietly whine louder and louder.
"Well, damage's done," he said to himself as he slipped another Lucky Strike out and lit up.
His hand moved to press the button for the lobby but…
Damage is done…
The damage…
Lung riddled with it…
Coughing up the blood…
…he checked the elevator directory above the number pad and pressed 13.
'You'd think they'd skip a number like that in a hospital,' John thought cynically to himself.
The doors opened and he stepped out before he could change his mind.
And here he was.
Cancer Ward.
The front desk was empty at the moment, though he could see the white shoes and pink scrubs of a nurse disappearing into a back room for a quick minute. John figured he'd better slip in and out before too many questions were asked. This was a private matter.
On a whim, John took a left. The walls were whitewashed and you could see yourself in the polished tiles. The doors were all a grassy green, with their numbers in white print on black slides on the wall. But despite the atmosphere of cleanliness, the place still reeked. It smelled of that awful hospital smell. Cleaner and disinfectant attempted to cover up the stench, but it didn't work. What was that stench? Sickness and death.
John walked past all the rooms with closed doors. Now and then, he heard soft crying from behind a door. He never entered the ones with closed doors. He decided to simply wait for an open one to come by. Consider it looking for an omen, if you will.
He spotted one finally, and beyond it was a janitor, dressed in a blue uniform and cap, cleaning the floor up ahead. John stepped into the room before the janitor saw him. He wasn't in the mood for chit-chat.
It wasn't a private room. There were ten beds in the room, five to a wall with a big window on the far wall. Some of the beds had light green curtains around them, some didn't. From the ones without curtains and the silhouettes of those with curtains, John counted roughly four to six people. He could hear some wheezing dreadfully. One was snoring.
John quietly walked across the room, looking into each bed.
The first was a woman in her late sixties, sleeping quietly. She had a blue cloth wrapped around her head to hide her baldness caused by the chemotherapy. She looked thin, her cheek bones sticking out.
Further down the line was a man who was also bald from chemo, and he looked horribly pale.
There was another woman-the snorer, who had an unnaturally low voice brought on by her own smoking.
John saw all of them as they sat there, with wires and hoses hooked up to them, looking helpless. The feeling of death seemed to saturate the place. The lights weren't even on, bringing on an even more depressing mood. The only light came from the window-and things were already looking a bit overcast. John hated the window. It seemed to be shoving it into the patients: look at the wonderful and precious world that you're being caged away from. Look at what may be your last look at the blue sky.
John turned away from the window in loathing. His eyes happened to fall on an empty bed. He wondered…would he be the next occupant? Would he, the Great John Constantine, find himself bedridden, watching the world go by without even a second thought as he just sat around in the dark waiting to die?
No. He couldn't. Wouldn't. He was made of stronger stuff than that.
After all, wasn't he owed a favor? Surely, after all he'd done…
He had to talk to Gabriel and get this straightened out. He had to fix what must be a cosmic mistake.
'Or a cosmic joke…' a cynical voice hissed in the back of his head.
He turned and walked quickly out of the room. He turned and headed back the way he'd come, but…
"Hey, boy!" the quiet high-pitched voice called from behind.
John stopped and turned to see the janitor from before, still mopping, only he'd moved further down the hall, closer to him. The cap he wore kept a shadow over his features, yet the janitor seemed oddly familiar.
Before John could ask, the janitor spoke in a raspy voice as he raised his head slightly, "I knows you."
Yes, the voice… He knew it from somewhere, but he couldn't place it. But in his line of work, John often placed people like that automatically under the 'Untrustworthy' category.
The janitor cracked grin. His teeth were yellow and rotted.
"Ah, but you don't knows me, do ya boy?"
"You seem familiar," John admitted.
"Oh. Da great Constantine remembah ol' Loki, do he?"
The janitor, apparently going by the name 'Loki', took off his hat in a gesture of respect-but it was a mockery. His hair was silver-and his ears were pointed. His eyes flashed up at John with a green glow. And now John could see it if he looked a bit closer: the yellow cracked canines were abnormally long, like fangs.
John's eyes narrowed.
"Thank ya kindly, boy," the janitor said, his tone taunting.
"You…"
He remembered the janitor now. He'd been a janitor then, too. Yes, he'd mop the floors just as he'd been doing a minute ago.
He'd come around the psychiatric ward-usually at night. He would attack and torment the mental patients. Of course, when the patients would tell their doctors of the horror, no one believed them. People tend to not listen to you when you're crazy. In the end, the janitor made most of the kids worse. A good few ended up on meds, keeping them almost catatonic all day.
John remembered lying in his bed, gripping his blankets with terror. He could see the janitor's true form, and he sometimes got the hint that the janitor knew that. But the janitor never made a move for him, never spoke to him, and hardly even looked at him. John had always considered himself lucky…but now he wasn't so sure.
"I knew you could see me then, boy. You was da only one dat ever closed his peepers when I come 'round. All da others, dey just stared an' dey say I ain't real. Now, dat hurt Loki's feelin's, see. So I gots to show 'em." Loki cracked another grin. "But I nevah had to show ya nothin' boy, so I leaves you alone den."
Loki flicked his green tail.
John glared at him. "You better keep it that way," he growled warningly.
Loki went on, like he didn't even hear John, his green eyes flashing, "Course, den you leave. And ya grow up, boy. And now ya hurtin' us. You been hurtin' a lot of us."
John smirked. "Yeah. You bet, you demon piece of shit."
Loki's tail flicked again and his face became irritated. But then his grin cracked free again.
"But…den you get sick, don't ya, boy?" He pointed a clawed finger straight at John's chest as his eyes glowed brighter for a minute. "You got it all in ya. It's gonna eat ya up, boy." Loki smacked his lips. "But not 'fore I get to make you hurt, jes' like ya make mah brothers hurt, and mah sisters hurt." He grinned. "Jes' like dey all gonna hurt ya. You gonna be screamin' boy." Loki's eyes glistened with pleasure from just thinking about it. "I gonna make ya hurt, and den mah brothers and sisters make ya scream an' cry."
John glared at the half-breed. He wanted to appear threatening, didn't want to make it look like Loki was getting at him. But truth be told, he was. John Constantine was soon going to bedridden and helpless, which meant half-breeds could start a line around the block for the privilege of giving a preview of the hell to come.
Loki, apparently satisfied, snapped his fingers and disappeared, mop and all.
John turned on his heel. He had to get out of here. He had to talk to Gabriel.
But he almost ran into a red head nurse who'd just exited one of the private rooms.
"Hey!" she said in surprise.
"Hey your self. Watch it," John growled.
He made a move to walk past her, but she held out an arm.
"Hey! This is a hospital! What do you think you're doing smoking in here!" she demanded.
John's eyes when to the Lucky Strike sticking out of his mouth. Huh. He hadn't even noticed it; he'd gotten so used to the feel of one between his lips.
"Put it out! Right now!" The nurse snapped.
John gave her a look, then stubbed out the cig on the nearby whitewashed wall, pleased if he had made a stain on it.
The nurse made an irritated grunt and made a move to get back to whatever she'd been on her way to doing. But she stopped and looked at John for a minute. She frowned, and for a minute looked sorry for him. Why? He didn't look that sick…yet.
She suddenly pointed to the room she'd left.
"You know, I just had to remake the bed of the patient who was last in here," she said.
John started to stride past. "Look, I don't have time-"
But the nurse was in his way.
"And he died because of those things," she went on, "He died in there all alone, too. You know, if you don't stop smoking those things, that's probably how you'll end up too!"
"That a fact…" John muttered sarcastically to himself.
"I know what I'm talking about! I work here, and I've seen people come in here all the time because of the things smoking does to them!" The nurse went on, "And he tried smoking them, all the way up to the end. He'd sneak them in somehow. I tried to help him, but it was no use."
John really wanted to shove her off of her little soapbox and get going. He'd come across Christian fundamentalists who weren't this self-righteous.
"Tobacco causes four hundred and forty five new cases of lung cancer everyday! And cigarettes contain 69 cancer-causing agents!"
Oh great. Now she was suddenly a Fact-Finder…
"Of course, it's the addiction that really is the problem," she said.
Hey-why the hell was she looking at him with that 'I-feel-so-sorry-for-you-poor-dear' look? Was she being condescending?
"Have you ever tried quitting? It's hard, because of the nicotine, but if you get the right help…"
Yes, she was.
"Have you ever seen a human lung?" the nurse asked, "I mean, the real thing? And the lung of someone who'd been smoking? It's-"
This was taking too long.
"Shut up," John said suddenly.
The nurse jerked back like he'd slapped her across the face.
"Excuse me?" she said, shocked.
"Look, uh…" John checked her name tag. "Look, Mary Ann, if you want to preach about the evils of tobacco, go preach to some one who make actually give a shit. If you want to see some real evil, take a better look around. You've got a lot of patients here, but how many are getting decent treatment and how many more aren't even here, all because they can't pay you to enough to save their lives? And how much of the money they pay actually going into treatments and not into the golfing expeditions of the Department Heads?"
The nurse looked rather flustered, but her face was turning red with anger.
But John wasn't finished. He was towering over her, and his own anger far surpassed anything this red head in pink.
"The guy that died in there?" he said, gesturing to the one she'd exited, "The guy's probably grateful he's finally gotten away from you. The man was dying, but from the day he got that room, you probably pestered him every chance you got to get him to quit before he died. Did it ever occur to you that maybe that was the time he needed a fix the most?"
May Ann tried to start talking again: "Now, see here-"
But John thought she'd talked enough. He cut her off, not letting her get any further.
"Now, as for lungs," he leaned in a bit closer, "I have seen many different organs and innards in my line of work. Hearts, spleens, intestines, spines…But no, I have admittedly never seen a lung." As an after thought, he added, "At least, not a human one."
The nurse's expression said that she didn't quite know what to make of him. But the sudden loss of color in her face said that she wasn't going to take any chances. She scurried away from him as fast as he could.
John managed to get back onto the elevator without incident.
He wasn't as lucky as last time though because this time there were roughly five people already in it. With an irritated sigh, he stepped in. However, most emptied out by the time he got to the 7th floor… As yes, Lucky Floor Seven. It certainly held a lot of memories for John, being the Raven Scar Mental Ward.
The man in the gray sweatshirt-who, by the looks of him, was about to start his shift as an orderly-got off and John just waited for the door to close. It was making him nervous. The incident in the Cancer Ward with Loki had been enough of a drag down Memory Lane for him.
'Just close… Just close…' John willed the doors quietly.
But they stood there, like they were waiting for something.
At that moment, a pair of white-clad orderlies and a nurse in her pink scrubs passed by, wheeling a gurney. John happened to catch sight of the person-no, the kid in the gurney. The boy was black, with mocha skin and dark curly hair. The boy's eyes were squeezed shut and he was whispering something over and over.
"…go away-make-it-go-away-make-it-go-away-make-it-go-away…"
The young, blonde nurse put her hand to the boy's forehead in hopes of comforting him. John didn't have to watch them go. The sick feeling in his gut told him exactly where the boy was headed. He'd been there before, in the gurney headed for that very room.
Electro-shock therapy.
A sudden flash-he was a teenager, being held down on a table. Electrodes were attached in various places on his body. A sudden pain-and then his own screaming.
That was it. John had never gotten out one of his Lucky Strikes and his lighter faster. He had to get out of here. If the doors would just close-
And, amazingly, they did. Or started to, at least. John felt a huge wave of relief flow over him. Okay, he was going to first get the hell out of Raven Scar before he went crazy. Then he was going to meet up with Gabriel. The image of the Cancer Ward patients flashed through his head. And then Loki's promise:
"…not 'fore I get to make you hurt…"
John was so wrapped up in his thoughts, he never noticed the woman with dark hair that ran to catch the elevator.
"Hold the elevator!" she called. When he didn't make a move, she explained to him, "You're going down."
"Not if I can help it," John replied snidely as the doors closed.