Obscurity
Pairing: Ennis/Jack
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17 (Warning: violence !)
Summary: AU_AU. With this story I wanted to dive in the dark side of Brokeback Mountain. I wanted to experiment with fear, uncertainty and doubt. Ennis and Jack meet each other in the modern time.
Dedication: This story is dedicated to my German beta tanzmaeusi, who encouraged me to write this story. I also want to thank judy-blue-cat who helped me to understand the US-postal service and who also helped me to find the most suitable name for the city where this story takes place.
But tizi17 is the one you should thank the most if you like this story because she is the one who translates it. She is incredible and let me say she captures my writing perfectly. It's a great joy to work with her and I'm very happy I met her in this fandom. My special thank is dedicated to poppyhoney_67. She's our second native speaker besides Judy who is willing to help us catching the remaining errors. Thank you all !!
Feedback: Please !! It keeps all of us motivated...
* * *
Prologue: http://mel0804.livejournal.com/37179.html
1 Steel City: http://mel0804.livejournal.com/38777.html
2 Rust Town: http://mel0804.livejournal.com/46005.html
3
Iron district (part 1)
In a world time before us, in a stage of complete anarchy and confusion, unbound to space and time, invisible powers gathered in the dark silence of infinity.
In the non ending nothing they bundled their immense forces onto a small point in the nowhere, fed it with energy and commanded over the rise and fall of entire galaxies.
The Lords of the mights created in a billion years a universe, lightened the blackness of the Nothing with blazing celestial bodies - and every one of those stars found its steady place in the orbit of eternity.
From the chaos of infinity an iridescent cosmos formed, limited in time and space but endlessly manifold through life which prevailed after billions of years in that inhospitable world - purposeful and forming, powerful and persistent.
It was the beginning of mankind to give a different face to the world. Hesitantly feeling its way first, but in the run of history more and more audacious, man conquered his territory. Fighting and winning, destroying and creating anew he built his anthroposphere destroying forever those of others contemporarily.
He mutated from a careful human being, confirming to the world structure, being who submitted fearfully to the force of Nature, defying it dauntlessly nonetheless, to a soulless one exploiting his world, gagging the poor and slaving the weak. He became Lord over Life and Death.
The quiet river of life, the continuous rise and decay in accordance with eternity, had been interrupted.
+ + +
As Jack Twist woke from the coma the world around him was sterile and white. He opened his eyes slowly and painfully. Blinded by the pale light that bit his eyes and fogged by a dumb feeling of disorientation he tried to give a direction to his awakening senses, to define a goal for them.
But his body was numb, his memories vague and so he drifted in a useless existence for a few minutes before an exhausted sleep saved him.
The next time he woke up he looked into brown eyes and a friendly face smiling at him - but completely unknown to him.
“Hello Jack,“ the nameless voice said, checking his pulse routinely, raising his lids, lightening his iris with a lamp and adjusting the stethoscope on his bandaged chest.
“We are glad that you are back with us. You were asleep a long time. Nearly two months. Can you remember anything?“
“Who are you?“ his voice sounded strange to his ears. His tongue stuck plump and immobile to his palate.
“I'm Dr. Lureen Newsome, the ward physician.“
Gentle percussing of his forehead, indifferent questions about further pain.
“Where am I?“
Consternated look. “Hospital. And you really cannot remember anything?“
“N-n-no... What happened to my leg? Why... why can't I move?“
“You are in a plaster bed. You have been beaten up quite badly and left on the road. You nearly froze to death there. We could mend your hip, your leg was broken in several places, as were your ribs and your left arm. Furthermore you had a big haematoma in your head and a fractured skull. Not going to play baseball any time soon,“ she added nearly regretting, pointing with her eyes to a sport shirt somebody had folded neatly on the chair next to his bed. So as if he would wear it again the next morning.
“What... will I be able to walk again?“ Jack asked with rough voice and he felt his heartbeat rise fearfully. He had to be able to run again - he simply had to.
A tang of a memory caressed his mind telling him that running was vital. Vital for surviving for somebody such as him.
The physician looked at him thoughtfully. “I guess so. We did what we could. The rest has to be done by therapy gymnasts and chiropractors. Won't be overnight - but yes, I guess you should be able to walk again.“
Jack closed his eyes in relief. That was all he had wanted to hear - all he needed to hear.
“You should rest now,“ he heard the sing song voice of the doctor before sleep took hold of him again. “I will tell the Police that you have woken up. They would want to talk with you.“
+ + +
The police officer questioning him presented himself as Randall Malone. He was tall, slender, and half of his face was covered with a thick full beard. His voice was soft, his questions came hesitantly, nearly lagging.
“Can you remember the night of the 12th December?“ he asked, and his pen was swaying expectantly over his notebook.
Jack closed his eyes. “I was at a bar. Drank, watched people.“
“You were alone there?“
“Yes.“
“You knew somebody at the bar?“
“Some from sight. Nobody personally.“
“What are you doing for a living Jack?“
“Help my parents on our ranch, when I'm not studying at Northwest College.“
“What do you study?“
“Business economics.“
“Your parents help you?“
“No.“
“Where do you live?“
“During semester in Powell, otherwise on my parents' ranch.“
“How do you finance your living?“
“Damn - what the hell are all those questions? What the fuck has this to do with the assault on me?“
The answer came softly as silk.
“We are trying to picture you Jack. We want to know who you are and what your habits are. We suspect personal motivation behind this aggression.“
“Personal motives? I didn't even know the fuckers who bashed me. How can you talk about personal motives then?“
“We questioned testimonies. At the bar.“
“So? And what did they say?“
Malone's grey eyes stabbed at Jack as he answered with limp voice. “That you provoked the aggressors.“
“W-w-what?“
A false smile lurked behind the beard and the façade of the gentle, compassionate man talking to a victim about an assault, crumbled.
“You looked at a guest's ass for too long. Somebody didn't like that... not at all...,“ he declared with a soft sing song and picked at his notebook ostensibly indifferent without taking his eyes from Jack who was looking at him, terrified.
“You want ... you want to insinuate that the assault was my fault?“
Randall Malone looked at his left hand fingernails, lost in thoughts. “I don't insinuate...,“ he said and dreamily he drew his thumb over his fingernail. “I am paid to ask questions and to observe...“
“... and hopefully also for getting those assholes that bashed me ready for hospital...,“ Jack mumbled with flat voice, fiddling anxiously with his bedcover.
Malone stretched out his hand with the long, powerful fingers and with nearly childlike joy he watched the marionette like suppleness of his fingers before he clenched his fist, hiding this shortly showing gesture of power in his groin.
He looked at Jack coldly. “Get them. Yeah, for that, too,“ he admitted and his soft voice had an echo as hard as steel. “But homophobe assaults are difficult to solve, you have to understand that. Of course we do what we can, but people don't talk, you know? Are you gay Jack?“
The question shot out of Malone's shapeless mouth like a snap, and his seemingly forceless indifference turned out to be a lurking slyness.
Jack's eyelids fluttered and he saw terrified how a secret satisfaction gloomed in the eyes of the man who was supposed to be his ally and had right now turned out to be his enemy.
His head fell back onto the cushions tiredly and he closed his eyes - drowning in a well known sense of abandonment washing over his body.
“That's nobody's business but mine... Randall,“ he said with long trained deadpan voice. Raging headaches began to spread behind his eyes, throwing flickering patterns onto his closed lids.
“Wouldn't you prefer to ask me what I remember?“
“Is there something?“ Randall asked indifferent and stopped for afew seconds to draw stickmen on his notebook.
“There were three of them. Had baseball bats. One of them bashing me was named Kenny. He was white, curly brown hair and brown eyes. Nearly black. And they were so cold...“
“That's about 50% of Wyoming population off, Mr. Twist. Extremely helpful for our investigation...,“ the officer stated sarcastically and got up, sighing.
“If anything comes to your mind what might really help us...,“ he left the sentence open. Boredom and disinterest spoke out of his every movement as he threw his card carelessly onto Jack's bed before leaving the room without any further word.
The closing of the door echoed for a long time in Jack's ears as he stared pensively at the chair where Officer Malone had been sitting a few minutes ago.
This night the nightmares began.
+ + +
Dr. Lureen Newsome was a cold woman. Brought up by parents that didn't let her miss anything despite parental affection, she quickly had learned to take care of herself and to well close her heart.
She hadn't chosen to be a physician out of altruism towards those in need of help, but because it gave her power over life and death, well disguised in humanness, giving her a feeling of meaningfulness, letting her feel alive.
The contact to her patients was routine and distant, and during the five years since her approbation no patient had ever been able to get through her hard armor of professional indifference.
As Jack Twist had been brought in in a coma, half frozen and severely injured, she had been on night shift, assisting the surgeon on duty.
The bundle of meat in front of them on the operating table looked more dead than alive and the E.U. that had brought him in compressed in short sentences what kind of scenery they had found in the middle of the night. Shock was written large in everyone's face.
Not that Dr. Newsome had never been confronted with assaults before. She had splint fractures, stitched lacerations, and several times she had fixed some drunken men into unconsciousness to be able to cut out bullets of their bodies, or remove broken razor blades from rib bones. They lived in hard times, and the fight for survival was carried out on the open street.
But never before had she had to treat a body whose wounds testified a bestial brutality which caused a vertiginous nausea in her, letting her wish for the first time that the man wouldn't be able to remember anything when he woke from unconsciousness.
If he woke...
Chances were bad, and for many days the young man floated between life and death. The police had informed the relatives and told the hospital - and therefore Lureen Newsome as physician in charge - that the relatives had been informed about the accident.
But nobody came to ask for him. Not during the first critical hours, not during the days and weeks to follow.
And never Dr. Newsome heard Jack Twist ask for a visit, never saw him make a phone call, and only sometimes, in short moments of distraction when all his protective walls were broken by pain, she saw a flicker of expecting hope when she opened the door to enter the patient's room.
A flicker that bestowed his face an innocent vividness and a youthful vulnerability that touched her deeply. A flicker that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and every time she was a pitiful testimony when his face shut closed, he leaned back into his cushions in resignation and his particularly blue eyes lost their force and intensity.
Nothing indicated any more how injured he was, and how his isolation hurt him. His dull eyes clouded the view into his soul, and he greeted her with the same distant reservation he had shown ever since he woke up from coma.
And he could remember. Everything.
She recognized it in his tortured eyes and the panicked look when he woke up screaming in the middle of the night and the night nurse ran fearfully to his room - followed by her who with every time she reacted to his screams went farther into the patient's radius, breaking her own insensibility piece per piece.
She sensed his pain, felt his abandonment. And all she could do was to prescribe him drugs to calm and to ease his pain and to take care that his health care supported and quickened the healing process.
She acted in secret, and as her patient had recovered as much as to be able to walk with the help of crutches she knew that she could no longer delay what had caused her headaches for weeks.
So one night after work she took the phone and dialled a number.
+ + +
Two days later, by chance but with a feeling of endless relief, she saw that Jack Twist had a visit, first time after nearly four months. An elderly woman, bent and mousy, dressed in a faded grey cardigan and a washed out clear blue skirt, stepped into his room and closed the door behind her hesitantly.
With pounding heart and a smile on her lips Dr. Newsome continued her round, sparing Jack Twist's room to give more time to the patient and his visit.
When she walked along the coldly illuminated hallway an hour later she saw from the corner of her eyes as Jack Twist's visit hurried away with insecure steps.
The very same moment a blood-curdling cry sounded from room 63 and she heard glass splintering. She ran, terrified. Her shoes squeaked frantically on the yellowish linoleum floor and her white coat flapped helplessly around her knees as she tore the door open - waiting with trembling fear what dreadful sight might meet her eyes.
First her eyes went to the window and it took her mind a few seconds to realize what her eyes saw. The glass was intact. They were intact...
Relief spread in her body and made her tremble as her eyes slowly took in the room and finally stopped at the man who stood panting before her, steadying himself painfully on the crutches, and she saw aghast that blood was welling in thick drops from his hand, running down the handle of the walker.
“Oh my God...,“ she mumbled scared, running towards him. “What happened?“
She led him carefully to the bed. He leaned back lethargically and softly she took his cramped and slippery fingers from the crutch. She took his hand, trembling, and wiped it with her coat.
The blood shimmered jazzy red on blinking white. She stared at the morbid pattern as if paralysed and again at the hand ravaged by a gaping cut.
“That has to be stitched...,“ she whispered with dry lips and startled as Jack wrenched his hand from her.
“Leave me alone...,“ he said voiceless and turned away.
“But... you need medical care. We have to disinfect your hand and...“
“I told you to leave me alone!“
Loud and aggressive his voice echoed through the room, and she looked at him in shock. He sat upright in front of her and propped up on the cushions trying to stabilize. His body wasn't able yet to carry his weight on its own.
His eyes blazed with rage and hatred, and she staggered in front of these open emotions that threatened to burn her. In front of her there was an exceedingly desperate man whose safety walls had been torn down, trying with all his might to regain control over himself.
She understood instinctively that he had to be alone, that she had disturbed his tentative effort to gather hisself, and that the medication of his hand had time - had to have time.
Softly as a feather she caressed his damp cheek and for a split second she asked herself if those were tears or sweat what she felt.
“It's alright...,“ she whispered and heard her own soft voice with surprise. “It's alright....“
“No, nothing is alright...,“ Jack answered rough and with a definitiveness that frightened her. “Nothing's alright. Nothing will ever be right again...,“ he said, looked at her and took her hand off his cheek.
She looked into his eyes and saw a bottomless pit that filled her with a feeling of painful helplessness.
She stood. “I'm sorry...,“ she whispered nearly inaudibly before she turned around and left the room.
She intuited that she would never see him again.
+ + +
When the night nurse paged her a few hours later to come to room 63 she was prepared.
Dr. Lureen Newsome entered the room and looked with broken eyes at the empty bed in front of her, the bloody hand print immortalized on the cushion like a last greeting.
Jack Twist had disappeared.
+ + +
tbc with part 2 within the next days
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17 (Warning: violence !)
Summary: AU_AU. With this story I wanted to dive in the dark side of Brokeback Mountain. I wanted to experiment with fear, uncertainty and doubt. Ennis and Jack meet each other in the modern time.
Dedication: This story is dedicated to my German beta tanzmaeusi, who encouraged me to write this story. I also want to thank judy-blue-cat who helped me to understand the US-postal service and who also helped me to find the most suitable name for the city where this story takes place.
But tizi17 is the one you should thank the most if you like this story because she is the one who translates it. She is incredible and let me say she captures my writing perfectly. It's a great joy to work with her and I'm very happy I met her in this fandom. My special thank is dedicated to poppyhoney_67. She's our second native speaker besides Judy who is willing to help us catching the remaining errors. Thank you all !!
Feedback: Please !! It keeps all of us motivated...
* * *
Prologue: http://mel0804.livejournal.com/37179.html
1 Steel City: http://mel0804.livejournal.com/38777.html
2 Rust Town: http://mel0804.livejournal.com/46005.html
3
Iron district (part 1)
In a world time before us, in a stage of complete anarchy and confusion, unbound to space and time, invisible powers gathered in the dark silence of infinity.
In the non ending nothing they bundled their immense forces onto a small point in the nowhere, fed it with energy and commanded over the rise and fall of entire galaxies.
The Lords of the mights created in a billion years a universe, lightened the blackness of the Nothing with blazing celestial bodies - and every one of those stars found its steady place in the orbit of eternity.
From the chaos of infinity an iridescent cosmos formed, limited in time and space but endlessly manifold through life which prevailed after billions of years in that inhospitable world - purposeful and forming, powerful and persistent.
It was the beginning of mankind to give a different face to the world. Hesitantly feeling its way first, but in the run of history more and more audacious, man conquered his territory. Fighting and winning, destroying and creating anew he built his anthroposphere destroying forever those of others contemporarily.
He mutated from a careful human being, confirming to the world structure, being who submitted fearfully to the force of Nature, defying it dauntlessly nonetheless, to a soulless one exploiting his world, gagging the poor and slaving the weak. He became Lord over Life and Death.
The quiet river of life, the continuous rise and decay in accordance with eternity, had been interrupted.
+ + +
As Jack Twist woke from the coma the world around him was sterile and white. He opened his eyes slowly and painfully. Blinded by the pale light that bit his eyes and fogged by a dumb feeling of disorientation he tried to give a direction to his awakening senses, to define a goal for them.
But his body was numb, his memories vague and so he drifted in a useless existence for a few minutes before an exhausted sleep saved him.
The next time he woke up he looked into brown eyes and a friendly face smiling at him - but completely unknown to him.
“Hello Jack,“ the nameless voice said, checking his pulse routinely, raising his lids, lightening his iris with a lamp and adjusting the stethoscope on his bandaged chest.
“We are glad that you are back with us. You were asleep a long time. Nearly two months. Can you remember anything?“
“Who are you?“ his voice sounded strange to his ears. His tongue stuck plump and immobile to his palate.
“I'm Dr. Lureen Newsome, the ward physician.“
Gentle percussing of his forehead, indifferent questions about further pain.
“Where am I?“
Consternated look. “Hospital. And you really cannot remember anything?“
“N-n-no... What happened to my leg? Why... why can't I move?“
“You are in a plaster bed. You have been beaten up quite badly and left on the road. You nearly froze to death there. We could mend your hip, your leg was broken in several places, as were your ribs and your left arm. Furthermore you had a big haematoma in your head and a fractured skull. Not going to play baseball any time soon,“ she added nearly regretting, pointing with her eyes to a sport shirt somebody had folded neatly on the chair next to his bed. So as if he would wear it again the next morning.
“What... will I be able to walk again?“ Jack asked with rough voice and he felt his heartbeat rise fearfully. He had to be able to run again - he simply had to.
A tang of a memory caressed his mind telling him that running was vital. Vital for surviving for somebody such as him.
The physician looked at him thoughtfully. “I guess so. We did what we could. The rest has to be done by therapy gymnasts and chiropractors. Won't be overnight - but yes, I guess you should be able to walk again.“
Jack closed his eyes in relief. That was all he had wanted to hear - all he needed to hear.
“You should rest now,“ he heard the sing song voice of the doctor before sleep took hold of him again. “I will tell the Police that you have woken up. They would want to talk with you.“
+ + +
The police officer questioning him presented himself as Randall Malone. He was tall, slender, and half of his face was covered with a thick full beard. His voice was soft, his questions came hesitantly, nearly lagging.
“Can you remember the night of the 12th December?“ he asked, and his pen was swaying expectantly over his notebook.
Jack closed his eyes. “I was at a bar. Drank, watched people.“
“You were alone there?“
“Yes.“
“You knew somebody at the bar?“
“Some from sight. Nobody personally.“
“What are you doing for a living Jack?“
“Help my parents on our ranch, when I'm not studying at Northwest College.“
“What do you study?“
“Business economics.“
“Your parents help you?“
“No.“
“Where do you live?“
“During semester in Powell, otherwise on my parents' ranch.“
“How do you finance your living?“
“Damn - what the hell are all those questions? What the fuck has this to do with the assault on me?“
The answer came softly as silk.
“We are trying to picture you Jack. We want to know who you are and what your habits are. We suspect personal motivation behind this aggression.“
“Personal motives? I didn't even know the fuckers who bashed me. How can you talk about personal motives then?“
“We questioned testimonies. At the bar.“
“So? And what did they say?“
Malone's grey eyes stabbed at Jack as he answered with limp voice. “That you provoked the aggressors.“
“W-w-what?“
A false smile lurked behind the beard and the façade of the gentle, compassionate man talking to a victim about an assault, crumbled.
“You looked at a guest's ass for too long. Somebody didn't like that... not at all...,“ he declared with a soft sing song and picked at his notebook ostensibly indifferent without taking his eyes from Jack who was looking at him, terrified.
“You want ... you want to insinuate that the assault was my fault?“
Randall Malone looked at his left hand fingernails, lost in thoughts. “I don't insinuate...,“ he said and dreamily he drew his thumb over his fingernail. “I am paid to ask questions and to observe...“
“... and hopefully also for getting those assholes that bashed me ready for hospital...,“ Jack mumbled with flat voice, fiddling anxiously with his bedcover.
Malone stretched out his hand with the long, powerful fingers and with nearly childlike joy he watched the marionette like suppleness of his fingers before he clenched his fist, hiding this shortly showing gesture of power in his groin.
He looked at Jack coldly. “Get them. Yeah, for that, too,“ he admitted and his soft voice had an echo as hard as steel. “But homophobe assaults are difficult to solve, you have to understand that. Of course we do what we can, but people don't talk, you know? Are you gay Jack?“
The question shot out of Malone's shapeless mouth like a snap, and his seemingly forceless indifference turned out to be a lurking slyness.
Jack's eyelids fluttered and he saw terrified how a secret satisfaction gloomed in the eyes of the man who was supposed to be his ally and had right now turned out to be his enemy.
His head fell back onto the cushions tiredly and he closed his eyes - drowning in a well known sense of abandonment washing over his body.
“That's nobody's business but mine... Randall,“ he said with long trained deadpan voice. Raging headaches began to spread behind his eyes, throwing flickering patterns onto his closed lids.
“Wouldn't you prefer to ask me what I remember?“
“Is there something?“ Randall asked indifferent and stopped for afew seconds to draw stickmen on his notebook.
“There were three of them. Had baseball bats. One of them bashing me was named Kenny. He was white, curly brown hair and brown eyes. Nearly black. And they were so cold...“
“That's about 50% of Wyoming population off, Mr. Twist. Extremely helpful for our investigation...,“ the officer stated sarcastically and got up, sighing.
“If anything comes to your mind what might really help us...,“ he left the sentence open. Boredom and disinterest spoke out of his every movement as he threw his card carelessly onto Jack's bed before leaving the room without any further word.
The closing of the door echoed for a long time in Jack's ears as he stared pensively at the chair where Officer Malone had been sitting a few minutes ago.
This night the nightmares began.
+ + +
Dr. Lureen Newsome was a cold woman. Brought up by parents that didn't let her miss anything despite parental affection, she quickly had learned to take care of herself and to well close her heart.
She hadn't chosen to be a physician out of altruism towards those in need of help, but because it gave her power over life and death, well disguised in humanness, giving her a feeling of meaningfulness, letting her feel alive.
The contact to her patients was routine and distant, and during the five years since her approbation no patient had ever been able to get through her hard armor of professional indifference.
As Jack Twist had been brought in in a coma, half frozen and severely injured, she had been on night shift, assisting the surgeon on duty.
The bundle of meat in front of them on the operating table looked more dead than alive and the E.U. that had brought him in compressed in short sentences what kind of scenery they had found in the middle of the night. Shock was written large in everyone's face.
Not that Dr. Newsome had never been confronted with assaults before. She had splint fractures, stitched lacerations, and several times she had fixed some drunken men into unconsciousness to be able to cut out bullets of their bodies, or remove broken razor blades from rib bones. They lived in hard times, and the fight for survival was carried out on the open street.
But never before had she had to treat a body whose wounds testified a bestial brutality which caused a vertiginous nausea in her, letting her wish for the first time that the man wouldn't be able to remember anything when he woke from unconsciousness.
If he woke...
Chances were bad, and for many days the young man floated between life and death. The police had informed the relatives and told the hospital - and therefore Lureen Newsome as physician in charge - that the relatives had been informed about the accident.
But nobody came to ask for him. Not during the first critical hours, not during the days and weeks to follow.
And never Dr. Newsome heard Jack Twist ask for a visit, never saw him make a phone call, and only sometimes, in short moments of distraction when all his protective walls were broken by pain, she saw a flicker of expecting hope when she opened the door to enter the patient's room.
A flicker that bestowed his face an innocent vividness and a youthful vulnerability that touched her deeply. A flicker that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and every time she was a pitiful testimony when his face shut closed, he leaned back into his cushions in resignation and his particularly blue eyes lost their force and intensity.
Nothing indicated any more how injured he was, and how his isolation hurt him. His dull eyes clouded the view into his soul, and he greeted her with the same distant reservation he had shown ever since he woke up from coma.
And he could remember. Everything.
She recognized it in his tortured eyes and the panicked look when he woke up screaming in the middle of the night and the night nurse ran fearfully to his room - followed by her who with every time she reacted to his screams went farther into the patient's radius, breaking her own insensibility piece per piece.
She sensed his pain, felt his abandonment. And all she could do was to prescribe him drugs to calm and to ease his pain and to take care that his health care supported and quickened the healing process.
She acted in secret, and as her patient had recovered as much as to be able to walk with the help of crutches she knew that she could no longer delay what had caused her headaches for weeks.
So one night after work she took the phone and dialled a number.
+ + +
Two days later, by chance but with a feeling of endless relief, she saw that Jack Twist had a visit, first time after nearly four months. An elderly woman, bent and mousy, dressed in a faded grey cardigan and a washed out clear blue skirt, stepped into his room and closed the door behind her hesitantly.
With pounding heart and a smile on her lips Dr. Newsome continued her round, sparing Jack Twist's room to give more time to the patient and his visit.
When she walked along the coldly illuminated hallway an hour later she saw from the corner of her eyes as Jack Twist's visit hurried away with insecure steps.
The very same moment a blood-curdling cry sounded from room 63 and she heard glass splintering. She ran, terrified. Her shoes squeaked frantically on the yellowish linoleum floor and her white coat flapped helplessly around her knees as she tore the door open - waiting with trembling fear what dreadful sight might meet her eyes.
First her eyes went to the window and it took her mind a few seconds to realize what her eyes saw. The glass was intact. They were intact...
Relief spread in her body and made her tremble as her eyes slowly took in the room and finally stopped at the man who stood panting before her, steadying himself painfully on the crutches, and she saw aghast that blood was welling in thick drops from his hand, running down the handle of the walker.
“Oh my God...,“ she mumbled scared, running towards him. “What happened?“
She led him carefully to the bed. He leaned back lethargically and softly she took his cramped and slippery fingers from the crutch. She took his hand, trembling, and wiped it with her coat.
The blood shimmered jazzy red on blinking white. She stared at the morbid pattern as if paralysed and again at the hand ravaged by a gaping cut.
“That has to be stitched...,“ she whispered with dry lips and startled as Jack wrenched his hand from her.
“Leave me alone...,“ he said voiceless and turned away.
“But... you need medical care. We have to disinfect your hand and...“
“I told you to leave me alone!“
Loud and aggressive his voice echoed through the room, and she looked at him in shock. He sat upright in front of her and propped up on the cushions trying to stabilize. His body wasn't able yet to carry his weight on its own.
His eyes blazed with rage and hatred, and she staggered in front of these open emotions that threatened to burn her. In front of her there was an exceedingly desperate man whose safety walls had been torn down, trying with all his might to regain control over himself.
She understood instinctively that he had to be alone, that she had disturbed his tentative effort to gather hisself, and that the medication of his hand had time - had to have time.
Softly as a feather she caressed his damp cheek and for a split second she asked herself if those were tears or sweat what she felt.
“It's alright...,“ she whispered and heard her own soft voice with surprise. “It's alright....“
“No, nothing is alright...,“ Jack answered rough and with a definitiveness that frightened her. “Nothing's alright. Nothing will ever be right again...,“ he said, looked at her and took her hand off his cheek.
She looked into his eyes and saw a bottomless pit that filled her with a feeling of painful helplessness.
She stood. “I'm sorry...,“ she whispered nearly inaudibly before she turned around and left the room.
She intuited that she would never see him again.
+ + +
When the night nurse paged her a few hours later to come to room 63 she was prepared.
Dr. Lureen Newsome entered the room and looked with broken eyes at the empty bed in front of her, the bloody hand print immortalized on the cushion like a last greeting.
Jack Twist had disappeared.
+ + +
tbc with part 2 within the next days