Time was like a vacuum. Without breath, without sound, without ration. Events
occurred slowly but deliberately, lethargically yet urgently. Intent flickered
and flashed in Paul's wide eyes. Callously, he grinned, an ample, twisted smile
that branded itself in Lucy's mind. When his body propelled itself into
malicious action, there was nothing she could do prevent it. He glided towards
her with paced and graceful movements. Paul agilely spun her around, her
bewildered body yielding to him. Dexterously, he tipped her head back by cupping
her chin. Her neck was now a wide, white canvas of soft flesh, readied by a sure
hand to be cut. Lucy's throat conceded to the blade without much of a struggle.
It slid through her skin with malevolent ease. Vulnerable epidermis split open
and doused Sobreki's knife in her warm blood. Her lungs pleaded for what might
have been their last breath. She began distancing herself from the initial shock
and instated to fight back. Lucy clawed at Paul's knife wielding arm. She
planted one flailing hand on his chest and pushed as firmly as she could manage.
But the damage had been done and her effort was of little relevancy. Sobreki
padded off purposefully.
Lucy remained teetering on precarious legs. She swatted at the air but connected with nothing. Paul switched off the lights and mumbled something distantly, but she couldn't understand him. Every sense was a dead end. Finally, her body surrendered to the pain. She collapsed hard but felt little. Her head was light and the circumstance became vague and removed. She knew Paul was still there with her, but she no longer sensed his presence. She was detached from the chaos, enveloped by a numb darkness that knew no suffering. Lucy could feel herself slipping away from the present, leaving life behind her. She forced herself back into consciousness, reacquainting herself with the rabid agony that resonated from her wound. She tried to lie still without losing her awareness. Music thundering outside the door helped keep her awake. There was a certain apathetic reality to her scene. She listened helplessly to the dull rumble of music coupled with the sound of her own gasping breath. Paul ignored her as he shifted anxiously in the corner. She was relieved he was choosing to leave her alone, but she still hoped he would show mercy and go get a doctor. She couldn't move without aggravating the wound, so she lay still and tried to muster up the strength to scream. But she knew her efforts would be little more than in vain. She wanted to cry, but sobbing stimulated her anguish, so she capped her emotions and focused on breathing. Sobreki had settled himself. He was no longer pacing or stirring. He stood silent in the corner. His sudden composure made Lucy hold her breath. She didn't want to attract his attention. But she soon realized that she was not the focus of his silent preparation.
Footsteps amplified in the hallway. They stopped outside the door. For a brief moment, there was a deathly calm. Then, the stillness was broken.
The air in the room was awkward and stale,
but not startlingly so. It was just a thought; a brief feeling that passed
through him and lingered undetected at his back. Carter glanced to the left,
then the right. Then
his eyes met the floor, greeted by a Valentines Day card that lie stranded on
the tile. He kneeled down and lifted it. He turned it between his fingers,
smiling as he glanced over the pattern. For a brief moment, he admired Lucy's
name, embodied in graceful ink, and he let their past discrepancies slip into
the back of his mind. The idea of her was pure delight, a sweet, eager harmony.
Inside those seconds, she was a light. There was a truth and decency about her
that felt so familiar. He'd seen her execute it with ardent passion countless
times prior. Lucy's resilient purity embraced him for that one moment, as if it
were all he knew.
And then it was shattered. The pain came so suddenly that he didn't even recognize it as pain. Sobreki's blade writhed in Carter's side, clawing fiercely at his tissue. His expression froze, arrested by shock. He was locked in an entirely new moment. It was a trice of callous insanity and staggering terror and it swallowed whole the previous peace of his thoughts of Lucy. Soon, the pain was tearing through his veins, twisting and distorting his visage into another skewed vision of agony. The knife exited abruptly and Carter's hand moved over his wound with timorous curiosity. Disbelieving, he handled the damp section of his shirt, which scantly sheltered the gapping laceration. He examined the wet, crimson warmth that stained his fingers. The realization struck him with insufferable potency. A lump rose in his throat and he swallowed hard. His legs began to fail as his muscles surrendered to the pain. Carter's body shrank and stumbled and he snatched at the air for support. The floor came to his aid much quicker, though. After a fumbling, desperate effort to lift himself, Carter hit the ground a second time. His breath raced in and out of his lungs in rapid gasps.
Strained sweat matted his forehead. The world that surrounded him was suddenly intensely unfamiliar. It was as if all the reason and order in his life had been ravished. But there was no sense of delirium cogent enough to lay claim to what he felt when spotted Sobreki's original victim. There was no shade of color accurate enough to describe the ghastly tone in Lucy's complexion as she lie bleeding and rasping for breath. Never had Carter seen more suffering compounded into a single pair of eyes. The sight of her was staggering. It plastered itself in his mind, behind his eyes, and it would linger in every nightmare from that moment on. A gruesome portrait of his innocent Lucy that he'd be forced to live with eternally, forced to recall every time he heard her name. Her mutilated, violated body and her grave stare and the thought of her delicate purity ravaged and perverted into torment were all branded into his being.
"L… Lucy," Carter choked vainly on the utterance. A name he'd said clearly a thousand times. He'd shouted it, mumbled it, whispered it, and simply said it more often the he could recount. He'd always taken for granted the fact that he could call out her name at any time and she would be there eagerly awaiting orders by the time he'd turned his back. Now, he was lying feebly in an expanding pool of his own warm blood. Half a dozen feet away, with wide, helpless eyes, Lucy was staring at him, and she was saying more in that stare than she could ever possibly express in words. It was a haunting stare, infected with a potent blend of agony and fear, an unflinching gaze that penetrated and adulterated him with boundless sorrow. Death lingered in that stare, emanating from her wet, round eyes. A cold, ominous feeling filled the room, suffocating him, strangling and stifling every word he tried to utter. He would have sold his soul to say that name clearly one more time.
But the silence between them prevailed,
altered only by a broken cry or a fragile moan. The weight of their shared
terror was crushing him. His body clung resolutely to the cold tile. It was
agony to try to move, even to flinch. Carter grew conscious of the vibrations
that were washing over him, rattling his brittle bones. Music poured in from the
next room, seeping through County's thin walled ER. Its obvious irony
overwhelmed him to no end. As they lie there, suffering, dying, the rest of the
ward danced and
laughed with oblivious abandon. They were all so close, their cheerful voices
and pleasant conversation taunting his ears. Their presence brushed by him so
proximally that he could almost feel the warmth of their breath. The overbearing
pain that held him hostage contorted their words. Distorted gaiety struck him as
deliberate cruelty. Silent screams rang out deep in his mind until his inner
voice was hoarse. But they ignorantly continued their celebration.
Meanwhile, Lucy continued to bleed and
continued to die. Mustering every ounce of strength he possessed, Carter tried
to sit up, to move, to inch closer to her broken, desperate body. She might as
well have been a million miles away for all the good it did him. He knew that if
he kept struggling like this, he'd pass out, but it wasn't until his head felt
light and his eyes clouded with darkness that he allowed himself to rest. He
cried as a reflex. He didn't have the strength to sob, but the tears flowed
without concession. They slipped over his skin and into his hair and filled his
eyes to the point that Lucy's image became a blur. Her body seemed intolerably
distant, but her presence was never closer to him. Her pain mingled with his
own. Their every emotion spanned the dead air between them and was shared and
realized entirely. Every thought, every feeling filled him, transcending the
torment. In his mind, Carter reached for her, he stretched until his muscles
snapped and his bones shattered from the sheer pressure of his extent. He
screamed until his lungs were barren and his throat cracked. All the while, she
beckoned and pleaded with those kaleidoscope eyes. Her fading spirit engulfed
him, boring into his soul, driving his every physical effort. But it was all for
not and the gaping, empty expanse between them
remained intact. Carter struggled with the thought of this being his last chance
to see her, his last chance to speak to her. His mind was flooded with thoughts
of things he should have told her when he'd had the chance. Regret, guilt, the
feelings were overwhelming. He pushed them to the back of his mind and fought to
keep hope for her survival undiminished. But the stiff alliance of both physical
and emotional anguish was getting the better of him. Despite noble efforts, the
darkness was now swelling around his eyes without warrant. Lucy was falling away
from him. He didn't want to leave her there, cold and alone and helpless. But he
had vanquished his efforts. She was beyond his grasp now. Night closed in on
him, leaving a question hanging in its sky: would he live to see another day and
would Lucy live to see it with him?
And then, he was gone, imprisoned in a dull catalepsy. The emotions had rushed in quickly and surprisingly vividly considering their short stay. They had overthrown him and severed his connection to Lucy, perhaps forever. Death lingered overhead, both Carter and Lucy in its sight. It was impending for one of them. But for, now it simply perched and waited as time took it toll.