6.
There have been fifty-eight people in John's life that he was unable to save. He has a list. Some names on the list stand out with neon lights in his mind, containing paragraphs of information. Some don't have a name, only faces.
The first only really belongs on the list because it was the first, and oh God, he didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to help, the car came out of nowhere and the body was just lying there, bloody and broken. It was a life changing moment, where he discovered his life's ambition. He never wanted to just sit there and not know what to do again. At age nine and a half, John Watson was determined that when he grew up, he would be a veterinarian.
The second was lost in slow degrees and there was nothing that anyone in the world could do to stop the inevitable end. It was John's first practice as a doctor. He was fourteen years old and it felt as though the world was ending. His mum didn't want to die in a hospital. The nurse who came to help showed John and his father what to do while Harry lurked somewhere nearby, watching. John saw a new side of his father through the ordeal. Gone was the stoic soldier, the gruff man who stood tall and solid in the background, proud at his children's achievements and supporting in their failures but leaving it to his wife to provide the kisses and hugs and tears. He held his wife in his arms, gentle and soft, and John could see something breaking in his eyes.
John was old enough to know better, but still young enough to hope for miracles. He had some vague, childish notion that if only he was good enough, she might get better. If he got good grades, if he spent his afternoons at her side reading to her, seeing to her as a good nurse, if he just tried hard enough then the cancer would just go away. Harry was the opposite, leaving the house for days on end, drinking, partying, doing anything and everything to fill the void opening in her heart. Then she would rush back, suddenly terrified to find it too late, that all their mum's time had slipped away while she was out.
Harry took a girl home for the first time during her rebellion. John didn't like the girl, not because he thought Harry should be with a guy but because he thought that girl was not good for her. Elly liked parties, liked drinking, and John rather suspected she liked other recreational things as well. Their father took one look at the barely dressed blond hanging onto his daughter and threw the girl out. Harry got into a screaming match with him, her shouting that he was a homophobic arsehole who wanted her to be unhappy, and him shouting that he could care less what she thought she was, she wasn't bringing that bimbo into the house. John hid in his mother's room, classical music turned up high in the hopes that she wouldn't notice the row.
When she finally died, the entire world seemed to go quiet. There were no more shouting matches. Harry still drank, but she didn't go out. His father sat in their mother's room, looking too empty to even grieve. John threw himself into his work twice as hard, hardly knowing why, just anything to keep his mind off the empty room, all the while letting the thought creep in of how proud his mum would be if she saw his grades.
Then one day his father walked in while he was hard at work and placed his large hand over his, stilling the pen. John didn't look up.
"I have to finish this," he said, his voice almost growling. He surprised himself, how angry he suddenly felt.
"No, you don't," his father answered, and then, "Come on. We're going out."
"I don't want to go out," John answered, voice still quiet but feeling so tightly wound he feared he'd turn and just lash out at any moment.
"It doesn't matter. We're going out," his father said. John hit the desk instead of him and screamed, "I'm not finished!" His fist throbbed and he half expected his father to start shouting, to remind him who he was talking to and how he had better behave. But his father's voice remained quiet.
"Enough," he said, "Enough of this. It's time. We're going out."
He followed his father to the car. He didn't ask where they were going. If he considered at all, he might have thought the graveyard or a church, or somewhere along those lines. But all he could think of was his throbbing fist, and his unfinished paper, and how really fucking unfair the world was. Neither spoke for the entire car ride. When they finally pulled to a stop, it was outside an old transformed warehouse. John stared.
"Paintball?" he asked, completely confused. His father had dragged him away from an important paper to play paintball?
"Come on," his father said, and they went in.
It was surreal at first. John hadn't excepted anything like it and it felt a bit like being in a dream, or perhaps waking up from one. And at first he wasn't even trying, not really. But the atmosphere of the place seeped in, slowly, and suddenly all the anger and rage that had been hiding beneath his skin came rushing to the surface and for the first time it felt good. It felt right, holding the gun and blasting at people, and in his imagination bullets tore through skin and guts and bone and exploded, and everything that was wrong and unfair and deadly in the world fell before him.
Afterwards, splattered with paint, aching with spent adrenalin and muscles too used to sitting still, he was surprised to find how much lighter he felt. His father was equally splattered with paint, the same blank expression on his face. It was an odd sight to see.
"You did good out there," his father said suddenly, "You'd make a good soldier." John swallowed.
"Thanks," he answered at last. He wasn't thanking his father for the compliment. From the small smile his father sent him, he knew he understood.
That night, John let himself cry for real for the first time. And he really thought about his future. As a child he had dreams, to become a super hero or a vet, intangible and vivid. For the first time he looked at what he could be and made a real decision. He would become a doctor. Not because he wanted to cure the world; even if he somehow discovered a cure for cancer it would be bittersweet. It wouldn't bring his mum back. He would become a doctor because the world was large and cold and unfair…but he could fight back, at least a little, to set things right. And if he also kind of wanted to be a soldier and blast the bad guys away, well, perhaps there was a way to become a bit like a super hero after all.
If he had chosen a different path, there are fifty-six people he would never have seen die beneath his hands. But then again, there would have been at least a hundred more now living who might have died under someone else's.