TK Special #2 - krazydiamond... What's More Krazy Than A Diamond?

THE GARDEN

The world is comprised of noise, sounds that scratched at the inside of my head. The rhythmic beep and ping of mechanical vampires pumping numbing venom into my veins through burning needles. The uneven hiss of oxygen gushing in my nostrils. The quiet rustle of bleached cotton sheets over dry skin. Slowly flaking away like the rest of me, preparing to shed my human skin.

He enters then, his diminishing resolve clear in his eyes. The pain eating me alive pales in comparison to what I see in his gaze. My brilliant, brilliant love, why can't you see it's better to let me go? Instead, the scrape of metal on linoleum marks the start of another vigilant night, and another torturous session as I watch him suffer my death.

His fingers weave through mine. This is new. Nathan hasn't touched me in weeks, as if physical contact will cause me to evaporate like morning mist.

His lips brush the brittle skin on the back of my hand, a spark of warmth that jolts of my arm, forcing me to focus on the words spilling from his lips, caught in the fog of morphine.

"I've done it Jo, I found the code."

I tried to speak, the words stuck fast in a throat half rotted inside. He brushes the wispy strands of hair still clinging to my skull out of my eyes.

"Tonight, I'm taking you out of here."

The fire in his eyes scares me. I can feel the heat of it reaching forth, the flames licking over my body. Understanding slams into me, causing me to choke on my breath with a rasping cough. Nathan reaches for a cup on the night stand, fishing a chip of ice he carefully rubs across my chapped lips.

"Just a bit longer, Jo, just a bit longer."

I don't have the strength to stay awake for him. Consciousness is a fleeting creature, here one more, startled away the next. My hours spent awake have trickled away over the weeks. The doctors told me I don't have long now. I realize how close I am when I wake briefly in Nathan's arms. The numerous sounds of my hospital room are gone, boiling down to the sound of his breath and heartbeat where my head rests against his chest. It is the sound that fills my world as he carries me through the empty corridors of the hospital. Where are the night staff? Wouldn't someone stop him?

We pass the front desk where the night nurse gives a subtle nod, buzzing us from the building. Ah, Nathan what have you done?

For the time in weeks, I smell the fresh night air, tinged by recent rainfall, cool and damp against my skin. Nathan carries me to our car, carefully buckling me in. I can barely breathe, my lungs struggling to take in air in great wheezing gasps. I wonder if this is what drowning feels like. Nathan shoots me a worried glance as he drives out of the hospital parking lot, a war of determination and regret in the set of his jaw.

"Hang on for me, Jo, a little while longer."

When consciousness slips away like a bird in flight, I think I've failed him but I wake again in the familiar confines of his lab. There is a sharp pinch at my temples. I can feel the intrusion of the metal piercing my temples, but can't reach up the hand to feel it. It feels like an ice pick jammed into my brain.

"Sorry, sweetheart, those are necessary for the procedure." Nathan is looking desperation, more than anything I want to wrap my arms around him and tell him everything is going to be okay.

"Please, please work," he whispers as his free hand reaches out, hitting a key on his laptop.

The pain vanishes.

For a moment I hear Nathan sob, a soft broken cry before nothing. The absence of noise has its own sound, a muted scream you can't hear so much as feel. I would say it is something you can feel in your bones but I can't feel those either. You don't realize how in tune you are to the subtle sensations of the inner workings of your body until they vanish. I can't feel my pulse, my breath, or the tingle of sleeping nerves. Nothing.