Shark of Spades

Relapse Part I

I woke up by myself this time and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes until my heart  rate slowed down a little. Then, feeling clammy, I silently got up  (hoping not to wake Jack) and moved into the kitchen to get a glass of water and calm myself down a little.

I normally don't get so worked up over memories, but I have never had that dream before, and the images were still fresh, still alive in my head, and every day that I was alive felt like I was being vivisected all over again.

I filled up the glass halfway and leaned against the counter, fully meaning to drink the water and go back to sleep, but I found that my hands wouldn't raise the glass to my lips. I stared down at them in distant horror, wondering why I was reacting in such a way to a dream of a memory that happened eight years ago.  So I just stood there, letting time pass, trying to pinpoint what may have triggered some emotional relapse, but my mind was moving only slightly faster than my hands.

I  don't know when it happened, or how long I was standing there, but one  moment I was holding the glass and the next I wasn't. One moment I was alone and the next I wasn't.

Joker grasped my hands gently. "Card? Card? Are you okay?" He looked like he was approaching a wild cat.

I struggled to speak, feeling constricted by some weight on my chest that I couldn't name. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He narrowed his eyes. "No, Card, you're not." He sounded pretty angry. Why is he angry?

"Then why'd you ask if you weren't going to believe me?" I asked tiredly, trying to turn my head away so I wouldn't have to look at him, but he shifted so he was holding my face in one hand and holding both of my  hands in the other.

"I do believe you. Most of the time. I believe that you want me to think that you're fine, but Card, you're not fine." He looked at the  floor for a second, and as though changing his mind suddenly, he picked me up and carried me back to my bed.

"Jack, stop. What are you doing?"

"I'm taking over the job of your better judgment for today because you're not functioning correctly," he replied tersely, not bothering to look me in the eyes but going back into the kitchen for something.

"I'm functioning just fine," I said as he came back with a rag and a bowl of water. "What's all that for?"

"It's all for you, and get this into your head - you're not fine. Just give up on that idea. If you were fine, you wouldn't have dropped a glass of water and gotten glass shards in your feet."

I  looked at my feet and realized that he was right; I was bleeding from multiple gashes on both of my feet, and I hadn't even realized it. I might've been more surprised if I wasn't completely astonished by Jack's actions. He took the cloth, dipped it in water, and wiped my feet of  the blood before he started to carefully pick out glass. Though it hurt,  I remained motionless out of shock, but Jack seemed to known that I was in pain anyhow. "If I had tweezers, this would be easier, so just bear  with me for now."

After ten minutes, he transferred the glass shards  to the kitchen garbage can and went into the bathroom to look for  something. Apparently not finding it, he came back out and made eye contact with me, as though afraid I wasn't all there. "Card, I need to bandage your feet. Do you have any kind of medical equipment in your  briefcase?"

Distantly, I nodded, still feeling confused and shocked and in a slightly different dimension.

"Okay, great. Now can you tell me where you put your briefcase?" he asked slowly, as though talking to a child.

I nodded towards the freezer, and although he raised an eyebrow, he obediently went over and pulled it out from behind the ice shelf. "Now  that's a weird place to put a piano," he said as he came over.

"It's not a piano. It's a briefcase," I replied, frowning, and he looked at me as though I were the bane of his existence.

Shaking his head, he was about to open up my briefcase, but I interrupted him.  "Give it to me." With a suspicious glance, he reluctantly handed it over  and I opened it, concealing the contents from his view, and rummaged for a minute to find my mini med kit. Once located, I shut the briefcase and handed the kit over to him, keeping the briefcase close to me.

With a sigh, he wrapped gauze around my feet, and when that was finished, he put the med kit on the floor next to my bed and turned to look at me,  which was more or less slightly impossible as I was avoiding all eye contact with him. After three minutes of this infuriating avoidance,  Jack knelt on the bed and grasped my shoulders. "Card. You're going to tell me what's happening."

Sorry, using a non-nonsense voice isn't going to work on me. "No, I'm not."

"Then I'll tell Evan."