Dark Secret

Chapter 4

Mark was lying on the examination bed in a small room, waiting for a doctor to arrive. He lay on his side staring at the wall, his left hand lying in front of him which was not only aching after taking a butt load of painkillers and was very heavily bandaged from his wrist upward. The dressing had become a bit icky and was waiting for somebody to re-bandage it. He had completely zoned out, lost in thought and completely unaware when a doctor came in through the door staring down at his clipboard. He flipped up a page, still keeping his eyes on the board in hand, "Mr. Fischbach....". The doctor looked over to his patient who still lay on his back looking up.
"Mark?" he said doubtfully said, then noticing his bright red hair sticking up slightly.
"Mark!" he said confidently identifying his patient. Mark snapped out of his daydream and rolled over to see the doctor standing there in slight disbelief. It was Dr. Ridgewell, better known to Mark as Tom. Mark, Jack and him had been friends for a while now and had began to hang out more now that he had a full time job in the L.A. hospital. He still had a small yet pretty obvious cut in his forehead from when they had been messing around at Comic Con and Felix accidentally stabbed him in the head with his nail.

Mark was staring at his doctor, unsure if he was happy to see him or not.
What if he told Jack?
"Tom... hi" Mark said quietly. Tom walked over to him, still looking slightly surprised to see him here.
"Mark, what the hell happened? Someone told me you fucked up your hand cause you lost your shit something? Did you get into a fight with someone?"  His face was etched with concerned for his friend as this kind of behavior was very unlike Mark.
"Yeah, I beat the shit out of the banister." Mark said white a slight smile forming in the corner of his mouth. "This doesn't sound like you Mark, you're like most laid back guy I know! Why would... you didn't break up with Jack or anything did you?" Mark's eyes widened.
"NO! No god no nothing like that! I just... I need to know if I am right about something. Recently I can't really explain it, I sometimes want to lash out for no reason and usually I can control it but it's getting worse and... I'm afraid someone will get hurt..." His words began to trail off as Tom put his hand on Mark's shoulder, reassuring him that everything would be O.K.
"I'll tell you what we'll do, I will send my next appointment to Dr. Avidan so we can work out the problem, does that sound good?". Mark nodded his head slowly, sitting himself up at the edge of the bed. He instinctively used his left hand to raise himself, quickly reeling it back as he felt the sudden pain hit it like a sledgehammer.
"Maybe we should take a look at that first and get some clean bandages".

Tom began to slowly unwrap the dressing around Mark's hand, causing Mark's arm to stiffen and bite his lip as he could still feel the pain despite the strength of the painkillers he had been given. Tom finished taking the last of the bandaging of, seeing his fingers had been forced back into place so that the bone could heal, however they still looked slightly misshapen and were still extremely bruised and cut. The doctors from earlier managed to reduce most of the swelling in his hand and had stitched the small crater in his hand where his knuckle had been.
"Jesus Mark, how many times did you punch that thing?" Tom said with a look of both shock and slight horror at the sight of his hand.
"Just the once I'm pretty sure" Mark mumbled, Tom looking at him in disbelief.
"Mark, I don't think it's possible for a normal human male to cause that much damage to themselves with one punch."

Suddenly Tom was taken off guard by his throat being grabbed and then being pinned against the wall with extreme force, his feet hovering a few inches off the floor. Tom began to desperately claw at Mark's arms and face in attempt to make him loosen his grip but when that wasn't working he began to try and pry Mark's hand away from his neck enough to that he could take a breathe, but that wasn't happening either. Mark moved his face closer to Tom's ear, a disturbingly large grin across his face.
"Who said I'm normal?" in a low and gravely whisper, the grin seemingly plastered to his face. He pulled his head back to face Tom who was staring at Mark's eyes. They had become completely bloodshot, tinting the white of his eyes with red blood vessels. Tom, still trying to pry away Mark's hand, was beginning to lose consciousness before being dropped to the floor gasping for air and watched as Mark's knees buckled beneath him and falling to his knees. He was clutching his head with his uninjured hand before hitting the floor with a thud and hitting his head off the hard floor and drifting into unconsciousness.