Broken

Chapter 3

     m?  a  ? Ar      u li   eni    o me?"

S  m look   up at t  e doctor, unsure how she wa   here, u  sure how he had come to b  here.

"I'm sor  y?"

"Sam, are you okay? You walked in here in a daze. You look terrible."

Sam blinked in the bright, blinding lights of the doctor's office, trying to recall how he had come to be here. He didn't remember driving, waiting, or doing anything really after Allie had...what had happened with Allie? He felt confused, sick, and mildly angry. He wanted to take a pill, he felt like it would help somehow.

"I...I'm fine, really, I just feel a bit sick today is all."

"Sam, I'm concerned. You don't look 'Just a bit sick,' you look like you're dying." She raised a gloved hand to feel his head and he flinched from the movement.

"...Sam, I'm taking you off your medication. You look seriously ill—I'm not sure I should even let you leave the hospital today—"

"Wha?! You can't take me off the medicine, it's the only thing keeping me going, I-I—I need the medicine, it's keeping me whole, I—I—please—"

She looked concerned as she looked down at him, and her concern angered her. What did she know about the medicine, it was helping him—if this was him with the medicine, how would he be without it? He couldn't remember how he was before the medicine, everything in the past was a blur, some faint memories floating up like pictures in a dark stream randomly before sinking down into the dark again. He needed the medicine, he didn't want to know what would happen if he stopped taking it, it made him feel good, better when he took it—HE HAD TO HAVE THE MEDICINE.

"Sam, you're clearly not doing well on this medicine, I can't let you continu—"

"Fuck you! Fuck you!" Sam spat, standing up suddenly, making the doctor stumble back, looking scared—her look of fear gave him mingled feelings of satisfaction and, oddly, pity and depression.

He turn  d to the door, rip  ed it o  en, and st    med out of the d  tor  office, not lo  ing back. He came out i  to the park  g lot, blinking and shie  ing his    es from the b  ght s  nlight, st   bli  g to his car, and pu   ng out into the st   et, nearly c   as     g into on   ming traffic, bl  r    his   orn lou   as he sp   to his  p r me t

He was sitting on his couch, staring at the black television screen. He, again, wasn't sure how he had come to be here, but he didn't care much. He blinked a few times, trying to think of why he felt the urgent need to do something, when, like a body floating up to the surface of a murky pond, an image of the little red pills floated up into his head.

He stood up and walked to the counter, rooting around and finding the small bottle of pills. It felt...empty.

He struggled with the cap for a moment before succeeding in getting it open, looking in, feeling numb as he saw one small little capsule sitting down at the bottom of the bottle. One little pill, that was all he had left. And then he remembered, she, his doctor, had stopped his refills, had stopped him from getting more. He hadn't realized he was so low, it felt like just yesterday the bottle had been full, but he needed more now, he had to get more.

But how? She had cut off his refills, he couldn't—but he could, couldn't he? He could steal more. Yes, yes, he could go and steal more. Desperate times called for desperate solutions, and now was a desperate time. He needed his pills before he lost more, they were the only things he could remember, the only things that constantly dominated his mind, clearly he needed them.

But how would he steal more? He didn't own any weapons, unless a steak knife or umbrella counted. He sat down on the couch, the last pill dissolving bitterly on his tongue, trying to think and growing frustrated at how useless his mind was, how slow and confused and muddled his thoughts were.

But finally, like a red flare being shot up from the dark depths of his mind, an idea came. The gunshot. From upstairs. Surely someone who shot themselves would've had more than one firearm...and what if the police had somehow missed it while cleaning up the scene? The police had always been lackluster in the city, as the mayor often sacrificed most of the police force's budget to spend on new infrastructure, sure that if there were just more things to do here more people would come to live and spend their money. Maybe, just maybe, they'd missed a gun, and maybe some ammunition, and then he would have a weapon, and he could go and get his pills.

He stood up from the couch and walked to his door. He made his way out into the hallway and walked to the elevator, surprised to see an out of order sign posted on the elevator doors. How long had it been there? It felt familiar, like it had been there for a while, but he really couldn't remember, nor did he truly care. He made his way up the stairs instead.

He found the apartment easily—bits of yellow police tape still stuck to the door. He tried the door and found it locked. He jingled the handle for a moment, trying it again, before looking up and down the hallway, making sure no one was around. People tended to stick to themselves in Garden's Edge, they wouldn't come out if they heard a loud crash...he took a step back and started kicking at the door, the wood creaking loudly as it started splintering and breaking. Finally, the door gave in, swinging in and revealing the room. Sam walked in.

The room was a mess. The gun must've been a shotgun, as dark bloodstains covered the walls, some splatters even being all the way up on the ceiling. It was obvious cleaners had tried to rid the walls of the bloodstains, but it clearly hadn't worked, instead, they had just smeared the bloodstains and made them pinker, fainter. Of course, a coat of paint would've fixed this, but the issue was the rest of the room was in chaos. The counters in the apartment were all broken, the windows were all shattered, massive holes were smashed randomly into the walls, and the wooden floor was broken in places. The occupant of the room had clearly taken some of his anger out on his room before blowing out his brains.

Sam walked into the room, kicking around at the piles of rubbish, feeling more and more disheartened. He began to doubt he would find a gun in here. He tried the bedroom door, and met a room that was the same size as his. He stood in the empty bedroom, and found himself wondering what this person's life had been. Who were they? What was their childhood like? Did they love their parents? Did they have any siblings? How had their high school years went? How had their life been before they pulled the trigger and ended it? Sam was overcome with a feeling of depression and isolation as he realized he would never know who this person had been, and, in fact, would never truly know any person—there were just too many experiences in everyone's life for anyone to tell their full story. And there were just too many people in the world, far too many people, all with rich, experience filled lives, for him to ever know more than a handful of these people's struggles, of these people's stories. He didn't have many friends, and most of his family was dead. Would anyone care when he died? His life would all be meaningless, wiped out the second he died, all of his struggles, all of his triumphs, all of his experiences lost when his brain finally stopped working. Already he was experiencing this, he was losing his memories. Was he dying then? Was this dying? He was scared and alone, so, so alone. A bird crashed into the window, making Sam snap out of his thoughts. He realized he had sunk into a corner of the bedroom, holding his head as waves of depression smothered him, tears spilling down his cheeks.

He also realized, crouched down as he was, that there was a loose floorboard between his legs. This stopped his thoughts as a bright excitement filled him. He reached with slightly trembling hands to the floorboard and pried it up, ignoring the pain as one of his fingernails broke. There, underneath the floorboard, was a small handgun and six bullets. Sam held the gun up, admiring it in the late sunlight streaming into the room from the dusty window on the far wall, all of his depressed thoughts banished by this marvel of human ingenuity.

He had a gun.