The voice had gotten louder.
The shadow had gotten closer.
Carlton didn't know when the last time he slept was, but he knew he never went to sleep yesterday. And that he didn't fall asleep the night before either. He knew that at some point he had talked to Lily on the phone because O'Hara told him to. And he knew that he had made her cry, which was exactly why he hadn't wanted to talk to her in the first place.
"You're hurting her!" The shadow yelled at him from the corner as he watched the camera fall towards the couch and heard Marlowe running to comfort their baby after he had made her cry. "You're the worst father ever, making his daughter cry on her birthday." His voice sounded gravelly, grating in Carlton's ears.
"Stop it!" Carlton hissed at the shadow, turning off the phone.
"You should be there but instead you're stuck here because you're a useless son of a bitch and you can't do anything right." The voice was getting louder. Moving closer.
It wouldn't let up.
"Leave me alone!" he yelled, throwing his cane across the room with his strong arm, praying it would knock out the shadow.
"Pathetic," the shadow laughed, looking down at the cane that landed at his feet.
He couldn't think straight. Every time he tried to form a thought the shadow would show up, yelling in his ear and dismantling any sense of sanity he had managed to hold onto since his stint in the ICU.
This is what he had been fighting off since he was comatose. This insanity that had filled his dreams for a month straight had caught up to him with vengeance. And any sense of before that he had managed to hold onto had walked through that door when he kicked Marlowe out.
Since she had left, guilt and loneliness had been eating him alive, and the shadow took advantage of that every chance it got, pointing out exactly what Carlton was doing wrong. The door to his room had been tightly closed for a while. The window shades were drawn, making it impossible to tell day from night.
It was all just time. Time that he didn't want. Not anymore.
He couldn't live like this anymore.
"You're a failure," said the voice, and he was starting to agree.
"You're useless," it told him, and he knew it was right.
"They'd be better off without you," it reminded him day after day.
And he was having trouble finding a counterargument.
"I'm doing the best that I can," Carlton said, his eyes trying to make sense of the shadow. It had to have a face, didn't it? There had to be a reason this dark figure was tormenting him every chance he got. Who are you?
"Really?" a dark laugh escaped the shadow's lips, filling the room with ice that sent a chill down Carlton's spine. "This is the best you can do? You were on your way to being the Chief of Police at the department. You could run around with your daughter. Shoot a target farther away than any of the other detectives. You were at the top of the world. And now you're... this." The hand reached out for him, gesturing towards his weak body stuck in a chair. "It's pathetic, man."
He knew the voice was right. If the old him could see himself now, he would be ashamed. Ashamed of how useless he had become. Ashamed of what a whiny little baby he was being. Ashamed of everything about him.
But he had had a stroke. Shouldn't that count for something?
"No," the voice hissed from behind him this time, reading his thoughts.
"Why won't you leave me alone?" The desperation in his voice was unmistakable. He wanted this shadow to leave. He needed him to leave.
"I will never leave you," the voice hissed.
The door opened and his grandfather strolled in, shutting the door soundly behind him.
"Leave you alone?" his grandfather's dark laugh bellowed through the room. "Why should he leave you alone? He's right!"
"You don't know that," Carlton said.
You're not here. You're not here. You're not here, the last ounce of sanity that he had whispered softly, drowned out by frustration beating rapidly through his heart.
"You can't do anything right. Lassiters don't mope around cushy hospitals waiting to get better. Lassiters are men. They do their job. They provide for their family. That's what I did for your father and what he did for you until the day he died." His grandfather raised his eyebrows, making sure Carlton remembered exactly how that had gone down. "Not until the day he started feeling sick and then booked it to the nearest hospital to avoid responsibility. Until the day he was no longer breathing."
"I'm trying."
"No. You're not. You're sitting here feeling sorry for yourself. You're not a man. And you're not a father either."
"You're just a waste of space," the shadow chimed in, standing in front of him.
Carlton rubbed his hand, his one working hand, against his head. He started to turn his head, hoping that when he looked back up his tormentors would be gone. But as he slid his palm against his head, he was distracted by his hand slipping across the dent where his skull used to be. He could feel the soft spot, like the one Lily had on her head when she was born. The spot that he would softly stroke, brushing her wild hair flat with his fingertip. Where he would place his nose and smell the sweet new smell of his little infant.
He felt about as useless as an infant.
"I can't help it." He whispered, the short words coming from deep inside his heart. "What kind of father can't pick up his child? What kind of husband can't dance with his wife? What kind of grown ass man can't button up his own shirt? I'm worthless."
From somewhere above he heard a voice, soft and kind.
"You're not worthless, Carlton. You're my partner. I need you, Carlton. Exactly as you are."
"O'Hara?"
"Carlton. Listen to my voice." He couldn't see anyone but the dark figure and his grandfather standing in front of him. The room was pitch black and the two men stood glaring at him, illuminated by a spotlight. His eyes darted around, searching for the source of the voice, but his blind spot had clouded all of his vision.
"I can't do this. I'm so tired of trying."
"You have to keep trying," the soft voice said. "You have a wife who loves you more than the world and a daughter who looks up to you. They just want you home."
"This isn't how it was supposed to go," Carlton sighed. "I was supposed to be the hero. I dedicated my entire life to being a detective. If I fell, I was supposed to fall in a storm of bullets, fighting the bad guys until the very end. It wasn't supposed to end like this."
He felt guilt choking him, regret suffocating him, misery strangling him. He couldn't breathe, wet tears stinging the corners of his useless eyes, loud gasps he could only assume came from his mouth filling his ears.
"Carlton, you are a hero," He heard her calm voice say. "It doesn't matter how this happened or why or when. You are a hero to me and to Marlowe and to Lily. I never could have gotten where I am without you standing by me every step of the way. So what if you fell? Who cares if you never work as a detective again? I don't. Marlowe doesn't. Lily definitely doesn't. We're just so happy you're alive."
"Yeah, right," Carlton scoffed in unison with the dark shadow, his mind fighting with itself to hear her. Part of him wanted to. He wanted to hear every word she was saying- let them wash over him and take away all the hurt. He wanted to break down in her arms and let her tell him he would get better.
But he still didn't believe she was even there in the first place. She couldn't be, right? She was supposed to be on bed rest. This was just another sick joke being played on him by his sick, delirious mind, trying to get back at him for ever wanting anything in the first place. She wasn't real. She couldn't be. This was all just a figment of his imagination again.
"Yeah right?" he heard her yell, startling him into shaking his head back into focus. She had to be real. She had to be in here, somewhere.
Where is she?
"Carlton, do you even realize what we went through that first night? Do you know how many times I held your wife, afraid to tell her it would be okay because even the doctors didn't seem to think it would be? Do you know what it felt like for me, watching your legs give out from under you in the middle of that stupid store? You are my best friend, Carlton. One of my favorite people in the entire world, and then you were just gone. Do you know how scared I was for you? How certain I was that I would never see you again? How sure Marlowe was that she had just become a widow?"
"I…I…" he stammered, trying to make sense of her words. Feeling miserable for everything that he had put them through and pathetic for only caring about how hard it had been on him.
"No," Juliet cried, and he could hear the desperation in her voice. "Of course you didn't. Because you weren't even there for any of it. Even when you're awake it's like you're gone."
His heart felt like it was misfiring, sending tingly signals prickling down his stiff arms and legs.
"How dare you put them through that," the dark figure said, his arms crossed stiffly as he paced easily across the room.
"I didn't mean to." His voice felt heavy in his throat. His words sounded wrong as they formed in his mouth. Everything felt so wrong. His body, his mind. This wasn't how he wanted to live.
He had spent months trying to hold it together, fighting with all of the strength he had, as little as he may have had, just to keep up the will to live. But his will was dwindling away rapidly, like sand falling quicker and quicker down the hourglass as the last few grains slipped through the hole.
"I'm not good for anyone. I'm just a burden. I can't do anything. I will never be able to take care of myself. I can't pick up Lily or chase down scumbags with you. What's even the point?"
"We don't care about any of that. You are part of a family, and your family misses you. Even if you're different now. They want you back. All of us do."
He was starting to calm down, his heart slowing to the sound of her voice.
"That's crap!" the dark shadow yelled, slamming his fist on the side of the bed and making Carlton jump. "You'll never be as good as you once were. They could never want you like this. What's the point in trying?"
"There is no point. You're either better than this or you're not, and I think he's proven to everyone that he's not." His grandfather waved his hand around the hospital room, making sure everyone remembered exactly where they were.
"They don't want me like this," Carlton said, feeling completely deflated and yet free finally coming to the conclusion that the dark figure had been trying to show him all along. He was done. He was a goner. This would be it and he was okay with that. He was so exhausted. He couldn't fight anymore. His will to live had been sucked out of him and beaten into the ground over and over again. He was too tired to try to pick it up day in and day out over and over again. He couldn't do it anymore.
"I'm done." He slumped sideways on his chair, finally giving into the weight of his eyelids, surrendering to the exhaustion that had been weighing him down for the last three months as the image of his grandfather and the dark figure drifting away into the darkness.
"Carlton! No!" He heard his partner say, but as he shut his eyes, her voice faded softly into the background. He felt peace take over his body, relaxing his limbs and slowing his breath as he leaned over to let his head fall into his hand.
It wasn't until he felt the barrel of a gun resting against his temple that he even realized he was holding one at all.