"Step back. She's waking up."
Everything was blurry as I opened my eyes, my chest aching for a reason I couldn't yet remember. A starkly white ceiling swam into vision, swirls of paint the only decoration on it, so different to the cloud-speckled sky I had been under what felt like only seconds ago I was completely disorientated.
"What… who… someone…"
The only person I knew I could rely on came into my head.
"Gene? Are you there? Where's Gene?"
Someone moved forwards, into my line of sight; a young woman with wavy red hair, grey-flecked blue eyes gently gazing into mine, her freckled hand reaching out to press against my forehead.
"No temperature. How do you feel, Ms Drake?"
"Who're you? Where's Gene?"
Still I didn't remember what had happened. The young nurse hesitated; my eyes found her name badge. Leanda, printed in small black letters; it gave me something to concentrate on, and the familiar shapes of the letters brought me back to myself.
And then it all came crashing down.
"Gene… GENE!"
And his deathly-pale face was in my mind's eye again, the lips whispering my name, the last word he would ever speak…
Crying out, I curled into a ball on the bed, Leanda's hands reaching out to gently tug the pillow into place and stepping back respectfully as the tears began to flow, my fists clenching, pummelling the mattress, sobs and screams echoing round the miserable room as it smashed into me that I would never see my Gene again.
"We've moved his body to the morgue. I'm not sure if you want to go and see him, but it's your choice whether you do."
I nodded through a haze of tears. My whole body seemed to ache but be numb at the same time; my thoughts could be of nothing but Gene. His voice crowded my ears, stuck in my head like a broken record, his final, faint words or his powerful bark, and the way his eyes had just glossed over, ceasing to move as his heart stuttered and finally fell, like a soldier gunned down in battle. Which was what he could have been described as.
"Would you like to go?"
I stuttered over mumbling "yes", wondering inside if it was the right choice. My heart told me it was; I knew that, in the state I was in, nothing could make things worse; the phrase "going to hell and back" came to mind, but I hadn't yet come back and I didn't know if I ever could.
"OK. I'll get a porter to take you there. You're in no fit state to walk; you wouldn't even get to the door. Just hang in there, Ms Drake."
Leanda quietly took her leave, giving me a small smile, trying to reassure me. Nothing could help me now, I thought, trying and failing to return it. As she turned to open the door, I caught the shimmer of tears in her young eyes.
I couldn't feel anything for her, though.
The porter arrived after a couple of minutes, pushing a dowdy old wheelchair, squeaking to a halt next to me and motioning for me to get in. Leanda put her hands under my arms and helped me in like a child; had I been in any normal state, I would have been annoyed, but still any emotional space I had was taken up by the mind-shattering pain I was feeling after… I didn't even want to think about it, but it wouldn't leave me alone, festooning itself in my brain and not letting me think about anything else. Even if I had wanted to try and forget the events of the previous day, my train of thought would have come in a circle back to it, and then his face would have filled my head again and his pout and I would have been unable to stop it.
"It's just down here," Leanda told me, holding doors open for the porter, her blue uniform a sharp contrast to the dull grey and off-white of the surrounding walls and furniture. Every so often the sound of crying would come from a room; I shuddered each time, not sure if I could take much more sadness.
And then we were there and Leanda was quietly telling a young man in front of the door that I wanted to "see" Mr Gene Hunt.
Taking deep breaths to try and steady myself, I clutched the armrests of the wheelchair hard as I approached the curtain around a small area of the morgue, my heart thumping so hard that the edges of my vision turned red.
Leanda's hand reached out to gently ease the dull brown fabric back.
And there he was.
Gene seemed almost shrunken in death, his eyes closed, inanimate, pale- cold. His injuries were covered by a white sheet, a different one to the one Chris had draped over him at the scene of his death, and the only part of his body visible was his head, the dark blond hair brushed back, flicked in places with red, surrounding his white skin like a golden halo. The thing that had made him him was gone; it had flown away, maybe to somewhere where I could never follow it. I could barely stand to see him, to know that those lips would never kiss me again, or frame the teasing sexual innuendos that had become part of him; but a little part of me wanted me to stay, and I knew this would be the last time, apart from the funeral, that I would see him again.
I stayed for what felt like days, but could only have been half an hour or so, stroking his cold skin, my hand caressing his, my heart bursting and my tears soaking into his lifeless skin.
Inside I knew it was useless.
Inside I knew I would never recover from losing him.
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to 57mrsmary on YouTube; I replied to her comment on Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. and it was her who gave me the "going to hell and back" paragraph. I hope you, unlike Alex, can recover, hang in there- my thoughts are with you. Jazzola