Sympathy for the Devil

Monday - January 19th, 2004

Noon


There had been no visit to the private suite on the 12th floor the night before. There had been no sexual enticement brought on by alcohol and memories. There had been no one holding Lily when she woke up, alone, tired, restless in the middle of her bed. Her companion for the evening had been Danny, a bed away, snoring. Shane and Andrew had slyly taken off into the opposite room, doors locked, and never returned. She only smiled at the thought, happy for her old friend and her new, secret love affair. Shane deserved everything in the world; she deserved to be contented in life, to have all the things Lily wanted and more.

Carter had left earlier in the morning to take a swim in the pool, mentioning that he had to soak up all the sun he could get before it got cold again. He had offered for Lily to tag along with him, to warm her spirits a little in the fresh air, but she refused. She wanted to think, she needed to think, to process, to find Doctor Lillian Hanson again, instead of this carefree child she had let herself become over the past days.

When she slammed the door to the room the night before, she hadn't given another single thought to where Jeff had gone, where he might have ended up, if Shane had taken him back upstairs to the suite, or somehow pulled her mastermind strings to get another room on their floor. She just didn't care to worry about it after the car ride, the solemn, forced conversational walk through the hotel. Now she did though, sitting out on the balcony, wrapped up in the bed comforter, drinking coffee and watching the clouds separate one after the other. The sun shone through, but she paid it little attention. In her mind she was somewhere much different; a time when seeing the sun, when seeing the shore, the boats, the sand, roads, houses, trees, people, life…had been fair game for all willing participants in her world.

At times, she felt she too was going blind. There was blackness that had been shoveled away for eight years, and yet today, it was piling back up. It was the same darkness that her father left her with, the same Tommy had left. And now, it was Sheldon's turn. He was perhaps the best of all of them, leaving her fighting through black just to get back to him each time, just to keep him in her life somehow, to save him. As soon as she felt she was rescuing him from himself, or putting the odds in his favor again, he pushed her away, he forced her back with the evil that still filled him, the devil that had claimed his once even spirit. She remembered him being a mean person at times, even a callous, hatred prone guy, but never, not once illogically, with her.

Lily had little left in her heart to help him with, all of her good ideas, her attempts, had been shattered. The pills, through his abuse, were becoming the enemy, just another bullet to his beaten body. Her efforts to speak with him, to have her questions answered, to counsel him, had turned into nothing but arguments, nothing but a battle of defiance. Even the love she had tried to give him, the moments of utter passion through the last three days, had been for nothing but greater heartache. It seemed as if trying to understand Sheldon Jeffery Sands was little more than a full time job, it was simply an impossible feat. No doctor after her would master it, if she couldn't. She was absolutely sure of that.

She finished her coffee, and feeling guilt over the perfect, sunny, postcard view, she went back inside and drew the long silk curtains shut on the sliding doors. She was still alone in the room, in silence, in a now hazy blue darkness as well. Glancing toward the bathroom door, she thought about taking a shower, but gave into her laziness instead. The TV couldn't tempt her, her laptop, even the phone that begged for a call to her mother, to her office, to anywhere that would give her something else to worry about, a punishable outlet from her mind. Eventually, she travelled across the room to where her purse sat in the middle of the bed, and dumped out its contents in full, scattering them for better access. There were all sorts of makeup, folds of receipts, her wallet, keys, cell-phone, and sticking out of her checkbook, a yellow slip of paper; the one she wanted.

A prescription.

She read the paper slowly, mumbling the details of its content. 8mg tablets…ODT…blocks serotonin…she dropped the paper after she was satisfied enough with it, and glanced down to grab at the printed sheets she had gotten off of the internet before leaving Washington. The research had been done primarily on the basis of the drug being so new to her office's use, as well as her concern for a certain patient, one who she once thought needed it. She scanned with her finger through the paragraphs of information, voicing certain words, certain things that caught her eye. Faintness…hypotension…changes in heart rhythm. These were all side effects of the drug, all things that could and would happen when he went overboard enough with them, when he finished, if he finished the bottle too soon. She wanted to find him, shake some sense into him, and beg him to cut his toxic, careless bullshit out. But she knew better than to bother with anything like that yet. She had to get inside his head somehow, without actually seeing him. Lily needed to comprehend him, in a way she never thought she would ever have to.


It played over and over like a broken record in his head. Her worrisome tone, his predatorially sick response. 'Get fucked'as if he had some right in this world or the next to speak to her that way, as if she were nothing more than a whore on a street corner or a criminal he was taking down. As if she didn't matter at all.

Lily's response was what truly drove him nuts now, sitting in the pitch darkness of what could only ever be his clouded, empty, dead suite, hungry and too lazy to get food, tired and too anxious to sleep, sorry but too angry to apologize. Her words stung still, and rightfully so. 'You were right you know…you haven't changed at all'. He knew he hadn't, he was a degenerate bastard, sharpened by the cards he'd been dealt when she had been gone. 'At all…you were right'sadly he was. The only problem being, that when he had told her this, when he had sworn on his unwavering interest, his unchanging personality, he had been lying to himself, and ultimately to her.

He reached into his jacket for the bottle of pills that they had fought over numerous times, the ones she had given him in confidence of his care, his health, the ones he had abused like alcohol, drugs, worthless, empty sex. There were few left, maybe five, six, less. His body was running on codeine, on the strength of a horse's own heart, on the medication that gave chemotherapy a wicked edge. He was losing himself with every cream tablet he placed on his tongue, with every swallowing choke he made to reduce the pain he felt increasing at every corner. Every time he let her in closer, every single time she tried to help him, the pain stung. He had fought it off for her sake, to tempt her, taste her, have her again. But it wasn't working the way he had hoped, and it certainly was doing anything but confusing him about the state of the case more. On top of trying to help Shane catch a decade old enemy, he had the stress of concerning himself with Lily's safety, no matter what she proved she could do.

The pills were his mental out from everything wrong and bad and tormenting.

From the demons that rattled him.

His room services charges had fed off of his credit for a twelve hours straight, since the night before. He'd already gone through an entire case and a half of beer on his own, the last of his twentieth bottle settled between the thin cotton of his boxers, a cigarette hanging off of his lip, coming to a staggering end. Sands' hadn't done a single thing since Shane had helped him up to the room, but think, play a little guitar to ease the pain of thinking, and then eventually, when striking at the cords of his will power to ignore it became too tough, he went back to debating. Good and evil sat perched on each of his shoulders for the large part of the night and now into the early afternoon (despite his knowledge of it). When one would speak, the other would interrupt with ridicule, false assurance of the master plans being concocted of tobacco and loneliness. He was losing it, slowly, thousands of miles from the only home he'd really ever known in the last eight years, and wishing he could find his way to the elevator, trail in a cloud of dust and despair to the sixth floor, and just say three words…I'm…sorry…Lily.

And if that didn't work, there were always the alternative three words.

He shuffled on the couch to remind himself where the stereo remote had ended up, under his thigh and the pillow, and he raised the volume as high as he could manage, holding the button with force into thin air. It was some newer rock, not the classic stuff, a band he thought he knew, Goo Goo Dolls. Odd as it was for him to admit he appreciated them better than The Stones or Dylan at the moment, he couldn't deny the truth they were laying out for his sleepless, unfocused mind. You and I got something…but it's all and then it's nothing to me. He shook his head in acceptance, in knowing it to be honest enough. And I got my defenses, when it comes to your intentions for me. This was undeniable. Try as he might to burn his walls for her sake. And we wake up in the breakdown, of the things we never thought we could be. Again, there was nothing to do but agree, lift himself from the couch, and throw his beer bottle across the room, across the space, the furniture he couldn't see, and wait aimlessly until he heard it shatter light years away against the wall.

He hoped someone would hear him at that point, come in and drag his sorry ass out and away, lock him up in a place that would always be plastered with her face in the black, and nothing else. He wanted to be forced to remind himself of her, in a four foot cell, for as long as they would allow him to stay, to work out his mind. And yet at the same time, he had the simple desire to lose it all, to have every chance taken away from him, to let someone kill him, quickly. It wasn't suicide if he wandered into the enemy's lair alone, it would be murder by attempt of a dangerous scheme. Lily couldn't hate him for taking her bullet.

But God knew, he knew, she would try.


Boylston St, Downtown Boston

Christmas Eve, 1995


The Trans Am rolled carefully over the rain slick streets, desperate tires and all. The backseat and trunk were packed to the brim with hand-wrapped presents and their bags for the weekend. Tommy and Shane drove closely behind them in his Mustang, the two of them working on solidifying their falling friendship for the hundredth time in three years. Lily sat as far over in the passenger's seat as she could, her eyes drifting between the buildings they passed and her own reflection in the rearview mirror. They had been in the car ten minutes, passing through midtown on their way out of Boston, and had not spoken a single word. The last thing she had said to Jeff was in front of his apartment as they pulled away, 'You need to get gas before we get on the expressway,' andhis response was very clearly, 'Fine.' The fight had been well defined this week, this round.

Jeff had gone to a bar. Lily had gone to class. Jeff had come back to his apartment where Lily was sleeping. Jeff had smelled like perfume, not her Chanel, but instead something cheap, a drugstore brand. Lily had argued her case against what his appeared to be. And Jeff had been sleeping on the couch since Tuesday, with Lily's engagement ring staring him down from the mantle where she left it for him.

They were going to the Cape together, all four of them, for her mother's sake. Shane and Tommy knew very little about their situation, and only assumed it was another one of their pointless fights based on nothing more than false theory, usually on Lily's side. Jeff knew he hadn't touched a single woman in the bar, but he chose not to fight her over nothing, and instead waited for the moment that would give him the clarity he needed to reassure her of his faithful pride. There was no one who could tempt him the way she could, and the few times he had been even slightly swayed in the last three years, it had been a mute irrationality. He needed her the way that Boston needed sun at this point. The separation, even in the car, was more than he knew how to bear, more than he could believe he had endured all week long. He wanted to reach across and grab her hand from her lap, hold onto it without needing to say a word. He wanted to touch her cheek, brush her veiling hair away; he just wanted to kiss her.

The car rolled into a clean stop at the corner of Boylston and Berkeley, no slam of the breaks, no motion at all. Ignoring him entirely, Lily moved her hand across to turn the radio up, the oldies coming through with Sweet Caroline, a classic on this street. Normally she would have smiled at this, a song they both knew, one they had each been individually raised on and sang well together. But today, she took her hand away and regained focus on herself and not him. She reached into her purse to take out her mascara, flipping down the half broken mirror and slowly applying the black to her eyes, feeling his stare from beside her. It did not make her change pace. She found her lip gloss and slowly speared it on as well, red for Christmas.

As she went for a second coat, Jeff grew anxious in watching her, being jealous of the tube of lipstick, where it was, where he wanted to be, and lightly tapped the gas, drifting out from the stoplight, and then immediately dropped his foot to the break. Lily's head jerked with her hand as the lipstick just missed her mouth and went towards the window. Grunting sweetly, she snapped her face toward him with an evil glare. Jeff tried his best not to laugh but found it too difficult to hold against, and so he did. This angered her even further as he rolled her eyes and turned back to refocus on her lips, stroking gently with the red goo, until he again found it impossible to stop himself, and jerked the car forward a second time, with a shove on the breaks as the stick of gloss ran against the corner of her mouth and cheek.

She said nothing, barely moving as he laughed on. The light was one of the longest in the city, and they both knew it. Time wore on as she closed the tube of lipstick and threw it back into her purse, sitting as still as possible, looking out at the intersection, the red smear untouched from her cheek.

"You still look sexy to me, baby." He enthused with a wide, laughing grin spread across his face. Lily noticed herself trying to hold back the same amusement, doing her very best to remain mad, to keep the ignorance intact. With Jeff though, nothing lasted very long unless one was strong enough to prevent it, and she usually wasn't.

"I'm not talking to you." She chided, a corner smile approaching on her lips. He saw this, the same as she felt it.

He rolled his eyes with a humored sigh. "What else is new?"

Silence prevailed yet again, for another minute, bringing their waiting period to almost three at the same red light. The rain pounded on the window, the wipers brushing back stroke after stroke, playing against the tune of the song, against her beating, fixated heart. Eventually, after another thirty seconds or so, she noticed from the corner of her eye, Jeff shifting into his jacket pocket as if he were looking for something. She tried to ignore him, but found it almost difficult when the light instantly flashed green again and he was still too preoccupied to move the car.

"Will you cut it out and go?!"

"Not yet…" he concluded as he tugged his palm out of the jacket and held it out, open for her to see its content. "Not until you put this back on."

It was her ring.

She only looked down at it, then up at him angrily, furious by his timing. The seconds continued to pass, a line of traffic honking at them in a lead by her brother, and his smile wide, hopeful.

"Put it back on for me, please."

"Swear you didn't cheat on me."

"Easy. I didn't cheat." He returned mockingly, ignoring the shouting and horns from behind.

"You said it too fast. I don't believe you."

Shaking his head, he crumpled the ring in his hand again for safe keeping, and instantly leaned over from the wheel of the car, forcing his lips against hers, still wet from the fresh gloss. Lily tried to force him back, growling softly, until she eventually succumbed into the sound of the rain on the car and the angry drivers waiting on them. Her lips parted to allow his tongue the feast it seemed to desire, and as he slid within the heat of her mouth, he felt his foot coming off of the break. The car drifted a little before he caught it, his mouth still pressed tightly to hers, the swirl of his tongue against hers even rougher. In that instant of time, she forgave him for something he didn't do. She let him back into the circle.

They pulled away from each other in time to make it through the intersection, leaving Tommy and the other fifty angered drivers in a rumbling cloud of smoke and rain, waiting on a second red light. As they floated off towards Chinatown on their way out of South Boston, Lily took the ring from his hand and returned it to its rightful place, as if nothing had ever forced it off.


Shane & Lily's Room – 6th Floor


She remained standing, looking at the pile of mess from her purse, thinking about that day so many years ago that it had almost ended, the day she almost went back home to Chatham for good. Jeff's persistently adorable ways stopped her, they always had. With a smile and promise he could change her mind, with a laugh, a kiss and a sworn assurance, he good bring her back to him. She doubted though it would be so easy this time, she wasn't twenty anymore, she had a mind and a decade of added knowledge since then.

Reaching out into the stuff she had dumped from her bag, she saw the twinkle that her memory had conjured back up, the need to find the jewel. Wound to the curve of a white gold chain, was the ring. It hadn't changed at all in eight years, it still fit her finger perfectly as she placed it on, and it sparkled like the cold night he gave it to her, the rainy day he gave it back to her. She smiled out of habit, and took it from her finger to place it back into the pile.

"I need a drink," she whispered to herself with a smug grin.

Making her way to the wet bar, she found a bottle of wine that Shane had ordered on another night, and poured a glass smoothly, taking two sips. It calmed her as quick as she needed it too, and as she pranced back around to the other side of the bar, headed for the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of a silk something or other in one of the chairs. Lifting it to the lamplight in the room, she saw that it was a long scarf, satin, blue, and more than likely something Shane had left sitting around. She played with it for a minute or so, drinking her wine, her mind processing an idea, a thought, a scheme.

Lily had only wanted to understand him, to comprehend what he was going through, to attempt to "see" and feel the world on his level; to help him. The scarf in her hands held the answer she needed, a blindfold, an imaginary state behind it cover. She could be Jeff this way, learn how his mind works in utter darkness, get to the bottom of the pain, the agony, by merely stepping into his world, and wandering around hopelessly lost for a while. Medically, it was laughable, but mentally, it sounded so insane, that she was willing to bet that it just might work, that maybe it could bring her the answers she required to save him from himself for good.

Setting the glass down, she tiptoed out into the middle of the room, the blue satin of the scarf almost perfectly complimenting her silk nightgown of a similar hue. Before blocking her view, she reached out to grab the remote for the stereo, and pressed play on the CD that she had left in from days before. The volume was forced as high as it would go, anything that was left on the floor remained as cherished obstacles, and she then slowly lifted the scarf to her eyes, tying it, rendering her visionless instantly. Between her already wary sense of the room, the classic, pounding beat of Keith Richard's Gibson, the lightness of her weight she had from the wine, and her amused, reckless mind taking over, Lily more prepared for the truth than she ever had, and carefully, awkwardly took her first step into blindness.

"Think like Jeff…be mean…" she whispered out loud with a smile as she counted her first steps, "One…two…three…" the music continued as she hobbled away in the direction of the bed, unbeknownst of course. Another three steps came and went and her knees fell into contact roughly with the baseboard of the bed. "Damn. Okay…6 steps from…wherever."

She turned around, refocused, trying to catch the tempo of the music but of course failing as soon as her foot twisted inside of a misplaced shirt and threw her forward quickly. Catching her balance before a rug burn ensued, she laughed it off, and went on, in the middle of the room, stepping with an extended foot for future knowledge of the floor's mess. It wasn't anywhere near easy, but it was interesting in a very morbid, almost troubling way. Holding her hands out, she continued counting steps, the heels of her bare feet close in manner, and her fingers wiggling in reach for the next barricade. It ended up being the long table beneath where she recalled the flat screen TV. She traced the edge of the table for its length, touching the few objects on top of it, and let go as she neared where the bathroom ought to have been in her mind. Proudly, she found it without a hitch.

"There's no way it's this easy all the time…he would be nicer if it was." Smiling at the statement, she felt her way around the bathroom for a few minutes, noting the steps from the second door of the toilet, to where the large glass shower opened up. The counter was as ongoing as she remembered it looking like, with two separate sinks, another, smaller flat screen mounted into the mirror, and crap scattered everywhere from their stay. She left again, counting off with her feet from the door to the direction of the wet bar. This though, was easily halted by the barstool she had forgotten was out of place, in the middle of the room, from where Danny had eaten his breakfast in front of the TV.

She took four steps in its path, before her foot fell under the rounded leg, and her entire body fell over it, screaming loudly through the music, and rolling against the ground as it toppled her thighs. "Ow, shit!" She lay still for a moment, her eyes, though blinded tight, facing upward to the ceiling, her back arched on the floor in pain. Lily took a breath, pushed herself up, kicked the stool out of the way and stubbed her toe in the process, growing even angrier. She grabbed at her foot and fell back to the floor, cursing, yelling in and out of the high pressure of the rock music.

I need an aspirin and beer…she thought simply, only catching the impulse another three seconds later. She let her foot rest on the floor as she sat in the black, thinking about it, about aspirin, pain killers for her toe, her legs, her mind from this rendezvous with practical suicide. Lily was catching on quickly to Jeff's state, to the ticking time bomb his brain had come into, she was beginning to realize the importance of those pills for him. It's for the physical and mental agony, she debated, the pills are the only reward he has for himself. To get up…and try again. Pushing herself onto her knees, she crawled across the floor and back to the bed, reaching up and feeling around in the mess from her purse again, until she found the box of Tic-Tacks she was looking for.

"You're not the only one with nasty little pills, Shel…" she hummed with a shake of the box into her hand. When she felt one of the round mints fall into the palm of her hand, she shucked it back and swallowed, never tasting it, only needing the mental pull, the effect on her brain. Of course the mint did nothing but settle into her stomach with her breakfast and coffee, but it somehow gave her ability to stand up again, to push on and try over with the action. Lily's feet pattered against the carpet again as she began reaching out, feeling the edge of the bed, the nightstand, the lamp, the door to Shane and Andy's room, the curtains on the wall, the sliding glass doors behind them, which were warmed with glowing heat, heat she could feel upon her faux blindness, tempting her. She stood for a moment, letting herself fall into his mind, into what he would feel or know at this moment. She imagined what would be in his head, what his answer to this loss would be, Fucking sun…has no remorse for those of us lost in the dark. It was about right.

She went on forever throughout the room, testing all limits, falling over couches, beds, more chairs, a table or two, one of her high heels, and even a pair of Carter's boxers. Every time she fell, or tripped, or made a mistake that cost her any mental stability, she swallowed a mint, "a Zofran tablet". With the music still blasting, her eyes covered, and her head somewhere else in an attempt to become a confused man, a lost soul, she never noticed the company she had gained.

Shane and Andy had left their room a half hour into her blind escapade, and come to her room to check up on her. She couldn't hear the key card click to let them in, she couldn't see their faces to know they were there, and she couldn't hear them calling her name, watching her, laughing at times and for Shane, wanting to cry at others. She watched Lily with a confidence that almost broke her heart completely. Shane understood what she was doing, she could see it in the way she tripped with a curse of willful anger, the way she counted her steps for later notation, the way she tossed back Tick-Tacks like they were opium. She got the hint, the gist, and she could feel the love absorbing her bones, the love that her best friend had for her brother…still and forever.

They left her to continue the experiment, Andy chuckling at the art of her medical practices, and Shane hopeful for her brother's condition, for a change.