White Noise

Please, No Smoking

      John could count the troubles in his life on two hands, maybe three. He could stare at a blank white wall and reconsider every life choice he's ever made with accurate pessimism, every single time. He could somehow make it that his life was horrible, his wife was horrible, his child was horrible, his job was horrible, well everything was horrible! But it wasn't horrible; it only was in his mind. John had something, some sort of disorder that he hadn't bothered to get checked out. It might just be an extreme case of depression, or mood swings, or quite possibly it was just the overwhelming weight of reality crushing down on his soul every time he put his mind to it. No one knew that he hated his life, no one knew that he had saved divorce papers to his computer, ready to be printed out at the push of a button, no one knew that he kept a gun under his bed for when he thought the time was right. He smiled, he was good at smiling, he was so good at smiling, in fact, that no one knew he didn't want to. He couldn't force happiness into his heart like he could force that smile onto his face, he couldn't look at his wife and feel something other than absolute despair, rooted deep in his chest so that he could never get it out unless he took a knife and actually dug. It was nestled behind his rib cage, that anger, that disgust, it was a little ball, like a tumor, that got bigger every time he had to look at that accursed woman and force a smile onto his face. Every time she held his hand it got bigger, every time she kissed him, or talked to him, or even looked in his direction he felt that, that thing, swell inside of his chest until it felt as though it were interfering with the usual beat of his heart. John knew that it wasn't Mary's fault that he couldn't stand the sight of her, he knew that it wasn't little Rosie's fault either. It was his fault, he had made his life the way it was, he had put this curse upon himself the moment he got down on one knee. But it had been different back then, he hadn't seen it as such a commitment, he had seen marriage as a lifelong companionship, not a heavy weight on each of his ankles, dragging him to the ground every time he wanted to wander off and live his own life. He felt as though Mary's very presence hung over him like a very dark cloud, that it blocked out the sunlight and the blue skies above him, and even as everyone went out and enjoyed their life in the beautiful cloudless sky, John only saw rain. He only saw despair, and yet he couldn't talk to anyone about it, he couldn't express his feelings to anyone because they would just laugh at him, insist that he was normal, insist that he should be happy, and move on with their lives. Of course they would think that he was happy with his life, because they put themselves in his shoes and they see only the good parts. They see a beautiful wife and a lovely little daughter, they see a nice big house with a pool and a patio, and they see family barbecues and dance lessons and kindergarten graduation. But do they see the quiet dinners, do they see the sleepless nights? Do they see the darkness that haunts John's days like a sickness, following him around with the constant reminder that whatever he does, Mary will always be waiting for him when he got back? Will his friends ever know of the long drives he takes on weekends, insisting that he went out bowling or drinking? Do they know how he just drives and drives and drives, telling himself that today will be the day when he won't come back? Miles upon miles stretch under those worn car tires, he never knows where he's going, where he is, or how he'll get back, and yet somehow he always ends up on his old front porch, aching and miserable, fitting the key into the ever familiar lock. One of these days John wasn't going to come back. There would be no messy divorce, there would be no gossip. They'll most likely think he's dead, that he drove his old car off a cliff or got eaten by a bear, and they would mourn, and John would rejoice. Freedom, that was all he craved, a life without these shackles and a life where his heart could beat freely, unburdened by the constant hate that was weighting it down. They always said that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, but John was quite sure that his tunnel was going down. The light at the end of the tunnel was, in this case, death. It seemed the only way he could possibly get that woman off of his back, in fact they had made that promise when they had first gotten married, when the smile on his face was genuine. Till death do us part. It seemed so easy back then, didn't it? It seemed as though he wouldn't want to part, back then he had decided that he wanted to spend the rest of his happy life with this woman. It hadn't even been ten years and yet John had never regretted any decision more than his decision to marry that woman. He had let her infest his life, his heart, his freedom, until now he was sure that there was no part of his miserable life that she hadn't tainted with her touch. He wasn't John Watson anymore; he was Mary Morstan's rag doll, her chew toy. She attacked him every day and every night, through everything from her voice to her presence to her touch, and now any humanity that had once been nestled inside of John's soul had leaked out through the holes in his skin, created by every fingerprint she had ever laid upon him. But he knew, he knew that one day he would be freed by his real soulmate, by the person who he could genuinely love without forcing himself to smile. John knew that this person would wander helplessly into his life, and that he would never be satisfied until they were together until the untimely end. He would be freed, freed in the form of love, and once he was in his savior's arms that Mary and Rosie would simply wash away from his life forever. John was waiting for this person so desperately that he was forced to count the days, scribbling off another square in his calendar with a thick black marker, covering the entire block ruthlessly, marking yet another day descending into permanent darkness. Mary's darkness, her shadow.
"Mr. Watson?" asked a rather impatient feminine voice from above. John blinked, shaking his head as he stared absentmindedly at the poster of the food pyramid in front of him. A nurse was at his door, swinging on the handle with a clipboard in her hand. She was very stern and impatient looking, and John couldn't help but plaster his 'I'm the best doctor in the world' expression on every time he was forced to address her.
"Yes, sorry?" John muttered, blinking at the nurse and insisting that she state her case.
"You've got a patient, remember those?" she asked with a snap. John sighed heavily, spinning himself on his swivel chair with his toes and nodding.
"Yes, patients, those are the people who come to me to get better, right?" John wondered with a frown.
"Most of them, yes." The nurse agreed. John just waved his hand carelessly, grabbing the stethoscope from around his neck and tossing it carelessly onto the counter beside him. He was a doctor, a very grotesque job if you got in the right business, but for now he was just a checkup doctor, usually humoring people by addressing their daily aches and pains. It was a miserable, time consuming, stressful job, full of whiny old ladies and screaming children and mothers who were checking their watches every other second. It was probably half the reason he hated his life, the other half being owed completely to the family that had crawled out of hell just to be with him. Being a doctor brought good pay, that was one of the only reasons he stayed where he was. John could probably make it in the world as some other profession, a banker perhaps, or a dog walker, or a beggar on the side of the street. But he stayed where he was because that was what he was supposed to do, that was the plan. Everyone followed the plan like little soldiers, you go to high school, you get good grades, you go to college, you get good grades, you get a small job and work your way up, and you're trapped in the infinite combine of the never changing job atmosphere, usually ending up exactly where you started, but with a different tax bracket. So it was with John, pre-med, then medical school, then being a nurse, then an emergency room doctor, then a family doctor, and now here he sat, sitting atop a good fifteen years of medicine and torture, wondering what the pay was these days for psychopathic murderers.
"Ya, ya, send them in." John agreed with a careless wave of his hand. The nurse nodded, closing the door momentarily before shuffling in an older woman who was complaining of back pain. John examined it and prescribed some sort of pain medication, advising her to heat it and ice it whenever possible. As soon as this problem was solved, however, the woman went into other problems, like her joints and her head whenever she bent down in the garden too much. John just smiled, laughing along with her horrible jokes that she croaked out, nodding and giving his professional opinion for all her little problems. He was too afraid to just tell her that she was old, and as she got older these things happened, so he just kept his mouth shut and nodded along when she suggested that it was the caffeine in her iced tea, and that she was going to switch to diet from now on. The next patient was a young woman, seemingly just having had a baby, who seemed very timid to get any of John's opinions. She even cringed when he looked at her, or even touched her arm to give her the prescribed shots. Obviously she didn't trust men very much, but then again she needn't worry about John. He had wasted his life with one woman; he most certainly wasn't going to do it again. In the end he prescribed her some gummy women's vitamins, telling her to exercise off the baby weight and try to eat a balanced meal. She had probably heard all of this crap from her baby Facebook pages, and so she left without a goodbye or even a smile. So John sat in his swivel chair, tapping his pen against his clipboard in some makeshift melody. John watched the clock as it ticked in its never ending pattern, a constant tick every second, a slight move of the larger hand every minute, the progressive turn on the smaller hand as the minutes grew into hours. It was dreadfully boring, but the more he realized how the clocked worked the more he realized how late his new patient was. Oh but what did it matter, time was just an illusion anyway. Finally John threw his clipboard down in disgust, he was tired of waiting, he was the doctor, he wasn't supposed to be the one that was waiting! John got to his feet so violently that his swivel chair flew out behind him, and he flung his clipboard onto the exam table in a sudden flash of anger.
"Mrs. Turner!" he cried, rushing towards the door and throwing it open in annoyance. Mrs. Turner, the poor old secretary, clutched her white clad heart in surprise, sitting at her desk a little bit down the hall from John's room.
"Dr. Watson, yes?" she wondered, tapping her high heeled shoe against the tile floor as the phone rang ignored beside her.
"Patients, I thought I was supposed to have patients?" John growled, raising his eyebrows impatiently at her. Mrs. Turner shuttered in fear, grabbing at her clipboard with the printed schedule hanging from the clip. She was always very scared of John, although he never knew why. Sure he was a little bit...aggressive, but everyone gets angry sometimes? It wasn't like he would do anything to harm a woman such as her.
"Sorry Doctor, you had an eleven thirty appointment but no one has shown up, I suppose they changed their minds." Mrs. Turner muttered, dropping the clipboard beside her on the desk. The phone kept on ringing, that shrill, annoying sound filling the echoing white halls, ringing, ringing, ringing, the red light flashing along as it rang and penetrated John's ears like an electronic woman screaming...
"Answer the phone." John snapped, and with that he turned on his heel and marched down to the break room. He was feeling very angry right now, his fists were clenched under his white coat and his stethoscope swung violently around his neck. He made his way down to the breakroom in his white shoes, his heels clicking against the title in a very lovely, relaxing sound. It almost sounded like a clock, it had rhythm, it had precision, he knew every sound that his shoe was going to make before it hit the ground, as though he had choreographed with every step he had ever taken in all the years he had walked these halls. Suddenly, however, the clean, sanitized smell of the hospital was interrupted by the awful stink of cigarette smoke, filling up John's lungs second hand as he walked through the accursed cloud. John stopped abruptly, his bad mood rising almost to the brim as he turned on a man sitting on a bench, a cigarette clasped between his teeth with his curly head leaning against the white wall behind him.
"Excuse me sir, but this is a doctor's office." John snapped. The man hummed, his eyes partially closed as though he were about to fall asleep. Slowly one of them opened, glancing John over once before closing once more, and blowing out another disgusting cloud of smoke from his lips.
"Excellent observation." He muttered. John scowled, waving his hand in front of his face to try to clear the air.
"And that means we have a very strict no smoking policy." John insisted, not bothering to play any games with this seemingly incompetent man. His scowl deepened as the man opened his eyes once more, beautiful eyes, almost hypnotizing...with greens the color of beautiful trees and blues the color of the calm ocean...a world in itself, trapped inside his iris. John cleared his throat determinedly, trying not to let this man's beauty possess him so quickly. But as the stranger watched him for a moment, and as he had the opportunity to appreciate the sculpture of flesh in front of him, it was hard to keep his scowl in place and his heart still.
"No smoking..." the man muttered, blowing yet another puff of smoke from his beautiful curved lips. John nodded once more, but he was starting to feel tempted, to feel reluctant. This man was a force of nature, of beauty in its purest form, John didn't want to upset him and ruin his chances of ever getting closer...
"Yes, no smoking. Could you please get rid of your cigarette?" John asked with a bit of a trembling voice. The man reached up two very long, very pale fingers and plucked the cigarette from his mouth, holding it between his fingers and letting a very small smile cross a corner of his lips.
"Now what's wrong with smoking?" he wondered. "It calms the mind and soul."
"And kills the lungs." John added.
"I rather think that's a fair trade. Peace and calmness in return for a shorter life span, it's a win-win." The man smiled once more, as though he hadn't a care in the world, and leaned his head up against the wall behind him. His let his hand dangle, and the cigarette sat smoldering between his knuckles.
"We'll you're certainly welcome to commit long term suicide somewhere else, but this is a doctor's office, and we strive to be as healthy and cleanly as possible." John insisted. The man just laughed, getting to his feet very slowly. John took a step back in surprise, not expecting the man to make any sort of move. Surely he wasn't going to get violent? The stranger towered over John enough to look down into his eyes, his tall, lanky figure standing proudly before him like sculpted marble. He was dressed as though he were going to a fancy dinner, with slacks and a black jacket, looking very out of place in a crummy old doctor's office. John tried to take a breath, but it seems that his lungs wouldn't work; it must've been all that smoke inhalation.
"What are you going to do to stop me?" the man asked in a rather purring voice, as though there was something much more than emotions, something much more seductive, hidden under his deep baritone.
"I could ask you to leave the premises." John muttered quickly, his words stumbling over themselves as he spat them out. The man nodded, sighing in annoyance as if he's heard that one thousands of times. Instead of responding, however, the stranger took a step forward, closing the gap of smoky air between the two of them so that his thin form was towering even closer. John seemed to be paralyzed in his gaze, his mind was split in half, part of him wanted to step back, but the more irrational side begged him to step closer, to press himself against this man's chest and feel his breath against his face... The man kept a very calm expression, and slowly he lifted his hand to John's partially open lips. John couldn't move, it seemed as though he could do nothing but gaze and tremble as he felt the stranger tuck the half smoked cigarette between his teeth. It tasted like the horrible smell of an ash tray, and every quick intake of breath was clogged with thick smoke that burned his throat as it made its way into his poor lungs. But he couldn't do anything about it, he could barely move, his mind was racing faster than his heart and yet he stood stone still. And then the man leaned closer, so that his lips hovered just above John's ear, he could feel his breath along the side of his face, he could feel the soft prick of his black curls brushing up against his cheeks.
"No smoking doctor." he whispered, sending a hurricane of shivers down John's spine. The man finally drew away, glancing at John's name tag with a small smile on his face. John could only watch him, with that putrid cigarette still jammed uncomfortably in his mouth, his limbs like iron and his heart on fire. And with that the man walked away, winking one of his beautiful eyes and disappearing down the hallway. Where he was off to John had no idea, but he dared not follow. That was the stranger's grand exit, and to ruin that would be to ruin his beautiful mysteriousness.