Desiderium: longing for something that has been lost

Chapter 29

"the question is how not to get cured, but how to live"-- joseph conrad

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Las Vegas

February 23, 2008

9:08 pm

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Spencer thought he had died. 

The last thing he remembered was a sharp pain registering somewhere in his body, a yell that faded away to static, and then he could see his mother.

Oh god, his mother.

He could feel his whole body fill with the need to hug her again, feel the roughness of her cotton sweater that rubbed against his cheek. He wanted so desperately to hear one more time, murmured little nothings as only a mother can deliver. 

He reached out, arms straining towards her as she glimmered against the bright, bright light. The pain, the ever-present pain, began to ebb away, and somewhere he knew, that he had died.

She stood in a doorway, blocking the light as it poured out. She made no move towards him, but watched him with a longing look on her own face.

He reached out one last time, his fingers touching the beloved cardigan. She grabbed his hand, dipped her head down softly and kissed his hand, and then, drew back from him, shutting the door, shutting him out from the brilliant, harsh light.

Mama, no, don't leave me again. Don't leave me here again, I want to be with you, I want to go with you.

The pain rushed back to him and he curled in on himself, one hand still outreached to where his mother had been standing only moments before.

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Pain.

It's such a strange concept. 

Pain is translated through the body by the aid of nociceptors stimulated by different neurotransmitters at the site of the transmission. These messengers travel along the spinal cord, in a nanosecond of time, relaying the message to the thalamus, the region of the brain which sends the signal to be processed by another part of the brain and send back an appropriate response, usually the skeletomuscular system, to avoid the source of the pain.

That's pain at it's core, stripped down to science and technicalities and facts.

But, what about the lingering, phantom pains? The ones the brain can't escape, the ones that settle in and float in the mind like lost revengeful ghosts?

Science has yet to strip those down to its inner workings. 

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Morgan was discharged from the hospital, holding the papers for a antibiotic he'd never take, and a coffee in a slightly shaky hand. Emily walked up to him, something akin to sympathy in her dark eyes. 

"You're free," she nudged him playfully, and he gave her a half-hearted smile. "What's wrong?"

He drank from the cup, winced and threw it out. "Can't work up the courage to go see them."

Emily nodded, and stared at the floor with him. "Derek, you already saw Garcia. Spencer won't wake up, if you want to see him, without feeling like throwing up with guilt that is, now would be the time."

He threw her a look. "I don't feel guilty."

"Oh, my bad then, completely misread the whole situation." She stuck her hand out, "C'mon, I'll go get these filled for you, and you--" She pointed down the hall. "At least go look in on him, I don't think anyone had been in to see him for a bit."