Monday
30 May 2022
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…
The word echoed in his head all night. She said they'd talk more tomorrow. He'd never looked forward to anything more in his life than tomorrow.
And now tomorrow was here. Well… just nearly. Six minutes still until midnight. He could barely contain himself. This was the lightest, happiest he'd ever felt.
It was all because of Christine, he knew. Christine was his new lease on life. With her, he felt the torment and tears from the past years fade away. The pain finally lost its edge. And, for the first time in his life, he did not dream!
No vivid images of his most reprehensible actions swept across his bloodied nightscape. No bony, echoing screams riddled his misshapen ears. No sordid memories distressed his mind and sneered at him from beyond the grave.
No – for the first time, he was truly at peace. And what a beautiful peace it was…! Beautiful, enlightening, and… addictive, too, for that matter… huh…
He lifted one of the hospital syringes from his cluttered desk. Why he hadn't thrown these all away immediately after he'd come to his senses yesterday, he didn't know. Regardless, though – here they were. Christine had asked yesterday if he had any friends… what a silly question! These syringes had been his friends for many, many years. With tender, practiced ease he plunged the needle into a small vial of morphine.
Warning: May be habit forming, the label read. Preservative free. 2 mg/mL per vial.
Weak shit, Erik thought with a roll of his eyes, before reaching for another four vials and sucking up their contents as well.
Five milliliters of morphine swirled in the syringe as he flicked the bubbles out with all the skill of a licensed professional. Then he sat on the edge of his bed, crossed his leg over the other, and rolled down his sock. Delicately, he lined up the tip of the needle with the spiderlike vein running between his first and second toes –
There was a momentary pinch, and then he was falling back against the bed with a contented, dazed sigh and a single thought in his head:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…
"- a male of unknown age, inconnu, presenting with altered mental status and apparent drug overdose. Tox screen positive for opioids, consistent with EMS reports of numerous vials of morphine scattered around the bedroom. Possible intentional overdose. Extensive facial lacerations. Covered in mud and debris."
A ruffling of fabric.
"Dressed in hospital scrubs. EMS found this with him."
Erik cracked open his eyes to see a doctor holding up 'his' ID badge.
"Looks like he's a nurse here," the doctor said, before noticing Erik's open eyes. "Jean? Jean, can you hear me?"
Erik nodded dumbly.
"Jean Dartigoyte," he heard a voice somewhere behind him say. "He's a nurse on 5B, isn't he?"
"Maybe?" Another replied. "Can't say I'm too surprised, though. This job's the reason I drink, after all."
"Jean!" The doctor snapped Erik's attention back to him. "Jean, stay with us."
Where's Christine?
"What happened to your face, Jean?" The doctor demanded. "Did someone do this to you?"
Someone besides a cruel God, you mean?
"Always… been… like this…" Christ, why was it so hard to get the words out? It felt like his mouth was moving in slow motion!
"He's completely out of it," the doctor said with a shake of his head. "Françoise, for God's sake, could you dress those wounds on his face before he gets an infection?!"
A nurse in a pink hairnet leaned over him and filled his vision with a giant wad of absorbent gauze. Erik shrunk away as it became clear she intended to apparently smother him with it, and he began squirming as her hands followed him. Is that how she wanted to play it? Fine, he'd fight back! Like hell he'd die in this pathetic hospital room!
"Hold still, Jean!" Françoise said as he began convulsing beneath her, attempting to strike her with any limb he could. "You've been hurt! Your face is badly wounded! You need to - hold still!"
"Do not touch me!" he roared, breaking free of her grasp. He sprang towards her, and she flew back to cower against the wall. He bared his naked face to her, flaring the torn edges of his malformed nasal cavity. "I will kill you if you touch me!"
"Help!" Françoise screamed in fright at the others in the room. "Don't just stand there! Help me! Please!"
Two nurses and a tech launched upon him and wrestled him back to the bed. They made quick work of retrieving a set of cloth restraints, tying his wrists snuggly to the bed rails on either side of him. Furiously he fought against them.
"Jean," the doctor said. Erik seethed at the nasal voice attempting to placate him. "Jean. You need to calm down."
"I'll kill you. I'll fucking kill you. You don't know what I'm capable of…"
The doctor turned back to the nurses. "He's showing homicidal tendencies now. Have we heard back from the staffing department yet?"
"Yeah. But," Françoise said, still quivering in her danskos, "they said they can't afford to spare a sitter right now."
"He needs to be watched!" The doctor complained. "We can't leave a suicidal and homicidal patient alone! It's against policy!"
"I know, Doctor Divoc, believe me – you're arguing with the wrong person here," Françoise said. "But you know how short staffed we've been!"
"I'm going to talk to the supervisors," the doctor said, puffing out his chest. "They will listen to me! In the meantime, you -" he pointed at Françoise "- will stay here with him."
It was a stupid plan, Erik knew, as his breathing slowed to rate only slightly above normal. He tracked the doctor with his eyes as he left the room, followed by the two nurses and the tech who had held him down, leaving only the trembling nurse Françoise. A stupid plan, indeed, as he regained coherence and common sense.
He offered her a smile as his wrists slipped easily out of the restraints. They didn't call him the Trapdoor Lover for nothing…
"Françoise, dear," he said pleasantly. "There are two ways we can deal with this." He stood from the bed and raised himself to his full height before her. "The easy way -"
He towered over her, shrouding her in his shadow.
"- or the hard way."
She chose the third way, as it turned out - which was to faint in a very Victorian-era-woman-dying-of-hysteria manner.
Erik fled the emergency department immediately, stopping only to grab a new set of scrubs from the linen cart stationed in the hall. He left the employee badge with the unconscious nurse – all it brought him was temptation and he was glad to be rid of it. He stumbled into a restroom and threw the paper-thin top and bottom on, relishing the feeling of wearing clean clothes for the first time in days that weren't those blasted dot-patterned hospital gowns. He relieved himself briefly in the toilet, because he was in the restroom anyway, but when he turned to wash his hands he was met with –
"Horror!" he cried, jumping back from the sink. "Horror! Horror!"
It was his face reflecting back at him in the mirror – but his face was lacerated and bloodied. This was not the face he had grown unhappily accustomed to – it was so much worse! When did this happen?
"All our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death," he found himself saying without thinking. When he realized his lips' movements, he clamped his mouth shut with a squeak.
Where did that come from? Was he going mad? It must have been those damn drugs. Ten milligrams was too much – he should have known that! He'd never taken that much all at once.
He'd been cocky. He'd allowed his mind to be murkied and fogged over with the dense cloud of stupidity that only sapless love could bring. Christine had done this to him.
No – no, he couldn't blame Christine for this. Christine had been the spark, but he had stricken the match and held it to the kindling, hadn't he? He should have known from the moment they met how badly it would all turn out. There never should have been any tomorrows.
He leaned in at the mirror, studying his features with disgusted interest. He no longer looked like a corpse. After all, a death's head couldn't swell and bruise the way his face did. A death's head couldn't bleed this copiously.
He pondered, briefly, how it happened. Had he done this to himself? It wasn't likely. Even in his worst days he hadn't sought to further damage his appearance; he wasn't that self-deprecating. Perhaps he fell over while in his drug-induced haze and gotten his head bashed through a mirror – wouldn't that have been a funny sort of irony?
With a scowl he washed his hands and dried them. It was no use worrying about the mysterious appearance of his face. The only answers he would find were no doubt terrible.
Instead, though, he had a much better concept to consider: Christine.
When Erik stepped onto the elevator, it was with the assumption that he'd be riding it alone. But just at the last minute –
"Ah, just in time," a smarmy voice said.
Erik's groan was covered by the whir of the doors as they closed and the lift began to go up. Out of the corner of his eye, Erik watched nervously as Doctor Divoc studied him openly. Of all the shit luck…
"Are you new?" Doctor Divoc asked.
"Excuse me?" Erik replied.
"You don't have a badge," the doctor observed intelligently. "Did they forget to issue you one?"
Erik thought on that, before replying with a succint. "…Yes."
"Well, then you best make sure you stop by the security office then and pick one up. It's very important for every employee to have a badge so we can easily identify them as staff members. Without them, it'd be only too easy for random people to just put on a pair of scrubs and sneak around this place. I mean – can you imagine?"
"I can, actually," Erik agreed.
The elevator chimed for the fourth floor and the doors opened to let the doctor out. Before crossing the lift's threshold, though, the doctor turned around and gave Erik another once-over.
For a tense moment the man studied him. Then -
"Have a good day, man."
And just like that, the elevator doors slid shut.
"You know, I've been seeing you around here a lot lately."
Erik felt a bead of sweat run down the back of his neck as Goggles narrowed their eyes suspiciously at him.
They were standing just outside Christine's door. Why the hell were there so many obstacles in his way today? All he wanted to do was visit Christine! He was literally right there. He could see her through the window. If he could distract Goggles, somehow, perhaps -
"You're a good man for putting in all this overtime." Goggles clapped him on the shoulder, and snorted out a laugh. "A true healthcare hero, aren't you!"
"Yes – I mean -" Erik floundered.
"Could have used the extra help the other day when we had that patient elopement," Goggles continued on. "Admin has been up our asses ever since. Said it was an adverse patient event, and they're making me take a series of online classes so 'it won't happen again'. The fucking nerve of those assholes. It was a druggie who was high off his ass, for crying out loud! He wasn't compliant with anything! He ripped out every IV I put in his arm, he refused to wear a mask, and the second he woke up he kept jumping out of bed and trying to throw himself on the floor. How are we supposed to help these people?"
Erik couldn't help but be a little defensive of himself. "Perhaps you're being a little -"
"Sorry, I'm just a little pissed, is all. Of course every patient deserves the right to treatment. Of course. Especially the rude as shit ones." Goggles rolled their eyes. "Anyway, Annie's got your assignment for the day. Sounds like a rotten group. Serves you right for coming in extra, huh?"
"Jean?" A voice called. "Has anyone seen Jean?"
"He's right here, Annie!" Goggles called back, then wiggled their eyebrows at him. "Good luck, sucker!" And with a chortle Goggles skirted out of view.
Erik saw the nurse named Annie lumbering purposefully towards him, a bundle of papers in her fists. His stomach lurched as he realized she was about to read off every word from that fat stack of papers to him – slowly. "No…"
"Excuse me?" she said.
"I -" Erik fought for a proper excuse. Anything that would save him – and these poor patients she was apparently about to hand over to him. "I'm not -"
"Erik?" Annie suddenly said, recognition glimmering in her eyes. "Is that really you?"
God help us all, Erik thought, taking a deep steadying breath. This day was far too trying – already his fingers were shaking with the first telltale sign of need. He decided to buy time by playing dumb. "Do we… know each other…?"
"Of course! It's me, Antoinette, from Lake Haven. Don't you remember me?"
Remember?
He closed his eyes and thought.
The ocean… he once saw the ocean in Christine's eyes…
It wasn't the ocean though. There were no waves. It was – a lake? Lake Haven?
"Antoinette?" he asked warily. "You work here now?"
"Lake Haven closed a little after you left," she said. "I've been here for the past twenty years." She studied him. "I can't believe you work here, too, now. The others at Lake Haven didn't think you'd ever amount to much, considering the state you were in back then. I'm very happy to see you've proven them wrong."
What else was there to say? "Thank you?"
"We simply must catch up," Antoinette went on, "another day. You'll have to explain to me how you got 'Jean' from 'Erik' – or is it the other way around? Nicknames are so funny. They call me Annie here, Erik, isn't that something else? I've never been an 'Annie'! Anyway, let me tell you about these patients. I have ten for you."
Erik grimaced. There was no way out, was there? She was really going to read him that entire thick stack of papers in her hands?
"Couldn't you just," he thought for a moment, "give me your papers?"
She cocked her head in confusion. "But I need to explain the patients to you so you know how to take care of them."
Wishful thinking, Antoinette. These patients are getting absolutely zero care from me today.
"Everything's written down on them, right?" Erik asked. She nodded. "So there shouldn't be a problem. Just give them to me and you can go home early."
She looked conflicted – for a moment, and then she relented. "I am tired… and I am back tonight…"
She handed over the papers, hesitantly, before slowly turning - and then began lumbering down the hall before he could change his mind.
The papers went directly into the trash, of course, and then Erik entered Christine's room – at last.
To Erik's relief, the conversation was as easy as it was yesterday.
They spoke at length about many things – politics, religion, music, and more. He found he could say nearly anything to her without judgement.
At one point, though, she asked a question that gave him pause:
"Do you feel bad about any of the people you've killed?"
What a terrible question! And yet he couldn't bare to keep any secrets from her – not anymore.
"I regret them all. But only two of them keep me awake at night," he answered truthfully. "It was nearly thirty years ago. I was employed by some secretive government agency or another – I lost track of them after a while, you see, since they kept bouncing me around from department to department trying to figure out what to do with me. They knew I was useful but they couldn't decide what direction was best to point my talents. My direct supervisor was a man named Nadir Khan…" he trailed off momentarily.
He coughed and began again. "Nadir was a puppet. He was my supervisor in title only, just so they could define some sort of jurisdiction over me. But he didn't like being the puppet they wanted him to be. He saw me for what I was -" his voice broke, just a touch, "- and he didn't like it. But he also knew I was young, and that young people can be shaped into what older people want them to be. He spoke to me a lot about that, that I didn't have to be what the government was setting me up to be. I think, ultimately, he was the only person who ever truly cared about me."
"That's so -" Christine began.
Erik held up a long, pale finger. "Let me finish."
And he went on: "Eventually his superiors sent down an assignment to me, to assassinate a certain politician who was getting to be a bit too big of a problem. Big pharma, and all that. This politician – you would know him if I said his name, but then you'd be complicit, so for your sake let me call him the Ambassador – he was a bad man, just like every politician, but this thing in particular that they wanted me to kill him for – well, Christine, you see… it was a good thing. It would have been a good thing for a lot of people. Bad people can do good things from time to time, you know. Or so Nadir said to me, the night before I left on the plane.
"They found the Ambassador's body in a hotel room near the coast. But not just the Ambassador – his wife too, both mutilated beyond recognition. I told you about how I found great joy in torture back then… Nadir called me when he saw the news, and he interrogated me extensively on the matter.
"He said to me: The room was so filled with mangled bodies and blood that we could scarcely tell who was who… Erik, I know for a fact you killed the Ambassador and his wife, but what of their daughter? She was just seven years old. Tell me you didn't…
"Kazakhastan, I told him. I brought her to the maid in secret along with a few dufflebags of cash, in the confusion of it all, and I made her promise to bring the girl to Kazakhastan and never return."
"Nadir smiled at me in relief. I should have known, he told me. You were never a monster, after all!
"Not at all, indeed, Nadir, I replied. No, I wasn't a monster – not before then. But, oh, Christine – can you imagine the horror Nadir would have had if he knew the lies he was being told at that moment?
"So you see, Christine, I regret my actions from that day. I was not born a monster but I became one on that day. The Ambassador and his wife needed to die – they were in the way, after all, and politics is a very messy game. But his daughter? Did I really need to do that…?
"I ache, Christine, I ache - for her. And I ache for you, since you've now heard the terrible tale of it all." He lowered his eyes and awaited her response.
Christine hardly had to think it over. "I think Nadir was right."
Erik raised his head quickly and stared at her incredulously.
"Bad people can do good things, Erik," Christine said. "But I don't think that he was referring to you at all…" Erik's heart dropped. "…because despite everything you've done, I still believe that you are a good person, who's just done some very bad, very evil, things."
Erik's heart soared.
"But tell me, Erik," Christine said. "You only talked about the little girl. Who was the other person you mentioned? The other person who you regret killing?"
He was the only person who ever truly cared about me.
"Nadir," Erik answered mournfully. "I strangled him in his sleep that very same night."