Author's Note: Jeez, the pressure is on now! School work, applications AND writing a new chapter! Oh boy! I feel like I ought to clarify something – I am really not a dark, moody person. Writing is very cathartic for me and I use my words to release tension. I would hate to think that you all think that I am some broken soul that only writes the sad stuff! I am really quite peppy and upbeat! Hope you like the new chapter – I may not be able to update until the weekend (consider yourselves warned!)
It surrounds you
Sometimes it's easy to believe
Sometimes it hurts more than it seems
Now it's over
These are the scars you never show
There was a warning sign you know
One day you're near and then you go
("Fire Sign" by David Berkley)
The Day Of
"I wish I could stay"
She said it with such insincerity that Nick couldn't help but laugh. He was paying for playing hooky the previous day with a teetering mound of files that threatened to engulf the desk at any moment. Sara had wandered in with a cup of sludge that she claimed was coffee for him. He had looked at her, then back at the pile of work with his best puppy dog eyes. She chewed on her lower lip and tried to let him down gently.
"It's true!" she implored with as much conviction as she could muster. "I still have so much to process from my case last night."
Nick sighed and tried to look put out.
" I could see if Greg is available to help you," she offered, trying in vain to sound casual. He shot her a lethal look. Everyone knew about the fight that he and Greg had gotten into, even if they didn't know the extent of it. It was like being back in high school again, what with the gossip and people choosing sides. He was half expecting people to start slipping notes in his locker. He knew he wasn't helping matters any. Both he and Greg were being just as childish as everyone else by not talking to each other, and making snide comments about one another to fellow co-workers. It was juvenile really, but Nick maintained that he was right in the whole matter. It was Greg who was out of line. And if he's not going to apologize, neither will I! thought Nick snottily. Sara looked at him with a mixture of annoyance and pity.
"Oh come on Nick. This is so stupid. You two are both being ridiculous. Look, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?"
He stared at her. "Did you steal that from Dr. Phil?" he asked, barely hiding his smile.
She blushed furiously. "I happened to tune in one day, yes, and he makes a good point and…wait, how would YOU know that it was Dr. Phil who said it?"
Now it was Nick's turn to squirm. "I, uh, well its not like I watch really. I mean…I don't have to explain myself to you!" he said, trying to look defiant. They stared at each other and burst out laughing.
"I won't tell if you won't" said Nick.
"Deal," laughed Sara, sticking out her hand so they could shake on it. Nick felt lightness in his chest that he had not felt in so many days. It was refreshing to laugh again. It had been so long since he laughed that he felt slightly out of practice. It was as if he didn't really remember how to do it properly. As their laughter subsided, Sara got a serious look on her face.
"Nick, please think about what I said. I really hate to see you and Greg fighting like this. I just want everything to be good between you two."
"Sara…"
"Nick I mean it. It's not good for either one of you to be so angry at the other" she furrowed her brow slightly. "What did you two fight about anyways?"
Nick became engrossed in the file in front of him. "Nothing much. It's not a big deal. I should get back to work – lots of interesting reading to do you know"
She put her hand on his shoulder. "Nick, is everything okay?"
He looked up at her and tried to smile nonchalantly. "Sure. Why do you ask?"
She glanced at the file in his hand. "Well for one thing, you're reading the annual budget report from nineteen eighty-nine" she offered sweetly. He felt his face go red as he shut the file. She crouched down so that she was eye level with him.
"You would tell me if everything wasn't okay, wouldn't you?" she asked, trying to read his face. "Because you know that I just want to help, right?"
"Of course" he said dryly. "Everyone always just wants to help"
"Please don't push us away" she said, her eyes very sad.
How can I push you away when you're already gone? "I'm not. I just don't really want to talk about it. Look, the stuff between Greg and I, it's just a misunderstanding. We had some words about what happened at the crime scene, and it got a little ugly. It will blow over Sara, I promise. I know you just want to help. But what would really help me right now would be to have everyone just believe me when I say everything's okay"
She straightened up. "It's just hard to believe everything is okay when anyone with eyes can see that it's a lie"
He couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes. She would have seen the look of guilt that he was sure his face betrayed. She continued talking.
"I won't push you to talk to me Nick. But please know that there is nothing you could ever say that would make any of us think less of you. Please take care of yourself. We want our Nick back. We miss you."
She squeezed his shoulder lightly and hurried away, so that he wouldn't see the shimmer of tears that she could feel grazing her eyelids.
He sat stock still, afraid that if he moved he would crumble to the floor. He wanted so badly to believe what Sara said. He wanted to believe that the team still needed him. He wanted to talk to someone, anyone, and have them reassure him that somehow he could emerge from this nightmare. He wanted to go back in time and do something differently so that he could handle this somehow. But he knew there was no going back. He knew that there was no going forward. He was trapped in limbo, in his own personal purgatory. He stood suddenly. He needed to do something, to reassure himself that he was still really here, still really alive. He walked down the hall towards the break room. Maybe another cup of coffee flavored dirt would clear the cobwebs from his brain. As he walked down the shiny hallway, he became acutely aware of the eyes on him. He discreetly glanced from left to right, to make sure he wasn't imagining things. He wasn't. Out of every office someone watched him walk. He could see them studying him, like one of their specimens under the microscope. Occasionally they would whisper to someone else, though he couldn't make out the sounds. The ogled him and watched with perverse anticipation to see if this might be the moment that he finally lost his tenuous grasp on his sanity. It was akin to being trapped in a fishbowl, with eyes on all sides and no chance at escape. Their faces blurred and distorted. Was this what they did during those hours that he was trapped in the box? Did they sit like this and marvel at the spectacle that was his undoing? The lights became too bright, too harsh. He felt like there was a spotlight on him, drawing every eye to him. The walls seemed to morph, moving closer, then further away. The voices of his voyeurs grew louder into a cacophony of noise that ricocheted through his head like a quarter in a can. Were they laughing at him? He couldn't be sure, everything was so loud! Every insecurity, stress and fear that he had been bottling for the last nine months suddenly bubbled to the surface. He couldn't stand here anymore! They would be able to see the scars that he had tried so hard to hide. He wouldn't let them watch as he suffocated again. He felt the heat of tears scorch the corners of his eyes. He couldn't let this happen again! He turned and half-stumbled his way back down the hall, away from the eyes that wouldn't let him walk in peace. They wanted something to talk about? He was about to give it to them.
Nick flung the bathroom door open and all but threw himself in. Breathing fast, he leaned down to check under the stall doors. He was relieved to find he was alone. He struggled to get air into his lungs. Why did the air feel so thin in here? Every breath was a challenge for his body, which was revolting against him at that moment. He was doubled over, hands on his knees, trying to control his rising panic. Why couldn't he breathe! The room tilted sharply and he nearly fell. He clutched the edge of the nearest sink, leaning so far over that his head touched the moisture that lingered on the edge of the porcelain veneer. He tried to concentrate on the water droplets. Maybe that would center him. He focused on the feeling of dampness on his skin. The drops were cool and clung to the fine lines of his forehead. It helped. He was able to slow his breathing to a near normal rate. He forced himself to draw a breath in, then slowly release it. He loosened his death grip on the sides of the sink. The room seemed to right itself. Still leaning on the sink for support, he lifted his head to look at himself in the mirror.
You're pathetic, his inner critic taunted him.
He certainly looked pathetic. His hair was disheveled. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired looking. His cheeks were ghostly pale, but the skin around his nose was red, a sure sign that he had been crying. He hadn't noticed before, but his face was looking gaunt. When had his eyes shrunk so far back into his skull like that? When did the bones in his face start to protrude so sharply? He felt like it was a skeleton staring back at him.
You're such a loser.
He certainly felt like a loser. He felt as if he had broken some unspoken rule. He had showed the chinks in his armor. He had showed the dreaded emotion, and let them all know that things were maybe not as great as he had said they were. Why couldn't he have just gotten over it? Why did he have to be such an emotional wasteland? They clearly expected him to bounce back from this. What was wrong with him? No one else would still be such a mess.
You are such a waste of space.
He certainly knew that he was a waste of space. He hadn't been a functional, helpful member of the team for so many months. He was nothing but a cross they had to bear these days. They saw working with him as atonement for sins that they hadn't known they had committed. Why else would they keep him around? They couldn't even count on him not to lose it at a crime scene anymore. He was a liability. He knew it. The team wasn't doing their job anymore because they were too busy worrying about him. He wasn't adding anything to the team. He had been reduced to a body that just occupied space, and did nothing to contribute to the world around him.
Why don't you just kill yourself? Save someone else the trouble of having to do it later. The voice was unforgiving. It was a voice that Nick had never heard resonate within him before.
The voice bounced around in his head, taunting him, egging him on. Nick stared at the stranger in the mirror. The pathetic loser who was such a waste of space stared back at him. The last nine months flashed across the mirror like a filmstrip. He felt as if he were standing outside his world, watching it scream by. At that instant, he hated the person in the mirror. He hated everything about their life. He didn't want to live that person's life anymore. He saw the face of the man he once was slam into focus. He saw himself inside the box, screaming to get out. He was outside his life looking in and he didn't like what he saw. The images in the mirror hurt too much, and he couldn't bear to look anymore.
He didn't even hesitate as he turned his fist sideways and drove it into the glass.
He hadn't meant to do it like this. The glass shattered around him, slicing from its frame like deadly drops of rain. He stared at the wall where the glass had once been. The reflection was gone, but the pain remained. He had tried to erase what was on the surface, but he couldn't get rid of what lay underneath. He began to try and wrest any remaining shards from the wall. He ignored the vicious bites of the mirror as he tried to clear away every last vestige of who he was. He wanted this to be over.
He wasn't even aware of doing it. As he grasped a large shard in his left hand, he braced his right against the wall. As he pulled the glass free with a victorious tug, it sliced through the air, finding its way into the delicate flesh of his wrist. He didn't even feel the pain at first. It was the strangest thing. For a long second, nothing happened. Then the blood began to pour from the wound, far too fast. He stared at it in a mixture of fascination and shock. The blood was so dark and thick. It was rushing out faster than Nick could have thought possible. He let his arm drop to his side as he sank to his knees, not feeling the glass go through his pants. Why didn't it hurt? He didn't even notice that the blood was flowing faster now. Shouldn't it hurt? He felt dizzy. Where was he again? He didn't even notice that he had picked up a small fragment of glass in his bloody right hand. He ran the glass over his left wrist without thinking. He only knew that it should hurt. The cut to his left wrist was nowhere near as deep. But the blood began to leak out and drip onto the floor around him. He caught a glimpse of himself in the pieces of the mirror. His last idle thought was that he almost looked like himself again.
Then the world fell away from his as he collapsed on the floor.
And still the blood flowed.
He couldn't remember how long he had been lying there. Had it been minutes, or was it hours? For all he knew, it could have been days. He was slowly becoming reacquainted with his surroundings. He could touch the rough, icy linoleum under his palm. He could hear every hum and shudder of the pipes that ran underneath the floor. He could taste the acrid remnants of too-old coffee on his lips. He could smell the traces of watered down Lysol that was intended to cover up the bacteria, not disinfect it. He could see his reflection in the crimson rivers that poured from his wrists.
He couldn't remember how he got to this point. He tried hard to focus on the events leading up to this moment. The world slowed to a crawl around him as he pondered what it was that had brought him here, wherever the hell "here" was. He didn't remember walking into this room, and he certainly didn't remember how the razor sharp shard of glass had found its way through his flesh. He tried to think a little further back then the events of today. The past few days were too a blur to him. There were fragmented images and thoughts: flashing lights, raised voices, unspeakable sadness and little blue pills. But try as he might, he couldn't link these things together to make a story. It was like to trying to put a puzzle together without having all the pieces first. The last thing that he could clearly remember was being in the box. That damned box stood out in his mind, as it had for every hour, of every day since he'd been in it. It was the one constant in his life. No matter what else happened, the damn box was always there. It was there when he went to sleep. It was there when it woke up. So it was no surprise that it was here now, as he lay in a growing sea of his own blood. This was yet another dramatic event that he could add to an ever growing list. He thought of all the traumatic events he had been through in the last six years. He had stared down the barrel of more than one gun, been stalked, been accused of murder and buried alive. Was it any wonder that it all led to this? How much could one person take? It seems like something out of an H. Rider Haggard story, he thought to himself. The hero faces a myriad of near death experiences and unparalleled peril. The problem was that this was his life, and facing death was not the glamorous event that books made it out to be. And still he found himself here, the fallen hero once again, waiting for someone to rescue him. I would have made a brilliant damsel in distress he thought. He would have laughed if he hadn't wanted to cry. He couldn't save himself. He couldn't be saved from himself. He was a white knight without a horse, and without a mighty sword with which to slay his dragons. It seemed that he had come out of the ground, only to find himself doomed to go back in it. He had gone from one coffin to another. He couldn't get himself out of the first one and he hadn't been able to keep himself out of this one.
The red that flowed so freely was rapidly losing its color. It had been so bright, so vibrant a minute ago. Now it had faded to a rusty-gray color. He realized that he was slipping away into the clutches of Death and was not surprised that he didn't fight it. He was surprised to find however, that it didn't hurt. The last time he had faced Death it had hurt a lot. But as he watched his life rush from his body, he felt no pain. He made no effort to cry out or to try and staunch the flow. He had resigned himself to this fate and he was ready. He wondered if they would find the note. It was sitting on the shelf in the locker he had deliberately left open, one last cry for help. Would they understand? Could they understand? He hadn't wanted things to wind up so terribly confused. He had only wanted to escape himself for a little while and instead had wound up like this. His last conscious thought was that they wouldn't blame themselves.
As the world faded to black around him, he didn't hear the door open. He didn't hear the guttural, primal cry that reverberated off the walls, staining the room with the horror of the situation.
"NICK!"