My Artificial Heart (18) I woke up from a dreamless sleep. At least I don't remember dreaming. But the moment I woke up, I could hear a distant female voice. The damn pervert in me was at it again, I could pick up a female voice a mile away. "Will he be ok?" I could hear the voice say. "He came in with a blood sugar of 889, that's 4 times the normal blood sugar level. Right now we're putting insulin into his system to help bring that down." I could barely hear what I assumed to be a doctor scribbling something on a clipboard. By the speed that he wrote he seemed quite fluent in doctor's handwriting. "What is your relation to him?" "He's a good customer over at the Sweet Factory, he comes there whenever he can. I guess you can say we're friends." Her voice was shaky, like as if she were confessing to a priest. "Friends?" Suddenly the EKG began to make noise, resounding its beeping hymn. Tammy was glad to see me awake again. "Friends..." The word being used with my name in the same sentence was shocking, let alone being said by a beautiful woman! Maybe Sandy didn't hate me after all, maybe she really was telling the truth when she told me there was a chance she would go out with me. If I died right there I would've actually died with a smile. Sandy as a friend, maybe even a girlfriend! The thought filled me with so much joy. "What's that noise? Is he..." "No, he's coming to." I heard footsteps, from the sky came the face of an old doctor, with at set of wrinkles that reminded me a lot of my grandpa. But where my eyes strayed and I wish would never have to move from again were on Sandy. Her eyes were wide with worry, but her small smirk showed she was glad to see me awake again. "Dreeve, can you hear me?" A woman talking comfortably to me, almost like a mother would. I questioned if I had already died and was in heaven now. "Yes, I can hear you Sandy!" I wanted to say, but I couldn't. My words came out a mumbles grunts. "His blood level is at 759, there is a chance he can make it, but his body can simply fail at any moment. We're flipping a coin here, there's still a chance that he might not pull through." Sandy frowned at me, "Dreeve, I told you not to eat so many sweets." She scolded me kindly. "I'm sorry." I wanted to say, but then forgot I couldn't even talk. "Wait a second, blood sugar? Eating too many sweets?" This sounded a lot like... "Mr. Rytl, you have type II diabetes. You came here unconscious, you are very lucky your friend was able to get you here in time. To put it plainly, you won't be eating anything with sugar for the rest of your life." Well, at least this doctor cut to the chase really fast. My eyes turned to Sandy again, I tried to lose myself in her soft, worrisome looks. I felt so special, how sick it was to think that. Sandy leaned over close to my face and whispered as quietly as she could, "I'm sorry about all this Dreeve, but at least you're still alive right?" She smiled again. "At least I still have you." I tried to say. "Don't try to talk now Dreeve, just rest. Look I gotta get back to work, you stay ok alright?" It's funny how only a woman can have the effect of making you feel all fuzzy inside. "I don't want to be late for my date." "Date!?" I screamed inside. My eyes shook with dread. The EKG began making noise again. "A boyfriend?" Since the day I walked out of prison and into that store I always thought Sandy was as pure and single as a girl scout. No wonder she was telling me she wasn't really up to dating. She was already taken. Suddenly all my hopes of going out with her and finally having a girlfriend vanished. In complete misery of the situation I began to cry. I wasn't even able to wipe my tears away. As if some greater power had paralyzed me just to show what a wuss I was. As if that didn't need to be pointed out already... Chapter 28: Doré Gatsumeh Ten Amis The night was as unforgiving as the luck that proceeded me. I had finally been let out of the hospital after 5 days. It had been so long since I had last had a bite of chocolate. It had been so long since I last talked to Sandy, or to any other female for that matter. Without those two precious things, my life had no purpose. "Tammy, can I ask you a favor?" "Um, sure Dreeve. What do you want?" Tammy perked up. "Tammy, please just for once. Can you please stop?" "Stop? Stop what?" Tammy had trouble understanding the word stop, to her to stop meant to die. "Stop beating, stop working, so that I can die. There's no need for you to continue to waste your time with me. I'm a lost cause. You know as well as I do that I am beyond help. So I'm asking you, please it would be really great if you can just stop beating. Please Tammy, I'm hurting badly. You'd really be doing me a favor. I know it'll be hard but I won't hold it against you." "Dreeve! No! You know I can't do that! I'm not designed to do that! I won't do that! I would never even think of such a thing. Dreeve I will never abandon you, never!" Tammy's rhythm remained constant, even stronger than before. As if to say she had no intention of stopping anytime soon. I sighed. "I wish I could meet a woman just like you Tammy. But I can't, I just can't. Nothing I do can help, its like someone doesn't want me to be happy. But it would make me really happy if you could just stop singing for me. There's no need for me to go on anymore. It will only be the same thing over and over." "Dreeve, stop it! Don't say such things! You're going to make me cry." Her rhythm got faster, I began to feel her tears, a torrent of them pounding away at my chest. "We're both in this together remember? If you die so do I! I love you too much to just give up on you like that!" I placed my hand on my chest, and Tammy reached out with her constant song, with each beat she seemed to comfort me and let me know she was there. "I'm sorry Tammy, I'm being selfish again. God I'm such an asshole!" "It's ok Dreeve, it doesn't matter to me. You are a good man, and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise! You've just been given a lot of bad cards, things will get better Dreeve. You'll see. And when they do, you know that I'll be there too, like always. We're in this together! You can still get it right Dreeve, I know you can." I stood there in silence, listening to Tammy, ever truthful in her words with each heartbeat that pumped the blood into my undeserving carcass. I smiled involuntarily at her perseverance, and she smiled back at me. "Thank you, Tammy." "You're a good person Dreeve. No matter what you do, you're a good a person. Remember that, ok?" "I will." Somehow though, the coldness inside me only got greater. I felt sorry that Tammy was working so hard to keep me going, and despite that I was still heading for self-destruction. I soon realized that I would have to end things on my own. For Tammy's sake. Chapter 29: Suicide by Chocolate- Artificial Intervention against "God's Will" "Dreeve, are you ok? You haven't said anything in hours." I lay there in dead silence, I didn't want to hurt Tammy by not saying anything. But then again my mind was so numb with pressure on all sides, my pulse sloshed through my veins lazily, as if it no longer wanted to do anything except stand still and stop existing. Though I didn't know what Tammy was feeling, I'm sure she noticed that something was definitely wrong. "Lots of people got diabetes Dreeve, and it's not the end of the world. In fact people feel even better, and well, I'm sure you'll be just fine. I know you really liked chocolate, and I enjoyed it too. Because every time you ate chocolate it seemed nothing the world could throw at you would bring you down. But chocolate is just something you eat, I know you can handle things just fine with just you and me." I didn't even bother to blink, everything seemed sluggish, like I was waist deep in mud, meanwhile Tammy was desperately trying to pull me out. "You might not be able to eat the chocolate you like, but I'm sure there's tons of sugarless chocolate that can taste just as good! You just gotta improvise a little, but this isn't the end of the world. As long as we're on the same team it never will." I closed my eyes, I wanted to say something to Tammy. I truly did want to hurt her, she was trying so hard to pull me out of my depression, but I was refusing her help. I was being so inconsiderate, so rude, so downright mean! And I hated it, but there was nothing I could do. Not even my oath to respect women at all times could break me out of my unwanted withdrawal from chocolate. Chocolate had been such an important part of my life, right up there with Trissa chocolate was the one thing that kept me from simply throwing myself off a bridge. There was no alternative to chocolate, there was no alternative to Trissa. Both have been so sadistically taken away from me and denied to me. It made me sick! Sick at heart, sick because I knew that the only "alternative" to these two precious things was death. The only thing I had left to do was to end it all, simply slash my wrists, blow my brains out with a gun, run in front of a car, or better yet kill myself by eating the candy that was now so fatal to me! Tammy stirred suddenly, she sensed that I was thinking of something, that I was getting ideas. I was. I threw the sheets aside and abruptly got up from my hopelessly unkempt bed. "Hey! Where are you going Dreeve?" Tammy asked, surprised by my sudden movement. "I'm sorry Tammy." With what was left of my numbing mind, I dragged myself over to the cabinet where I kept my substantial stash of chocolate. Tammy instantly recognized the cabinets that I had nicknamed Candy Land. "Dreeve, what are you doing?" Tammy's voice drenched in worry, with each step I took closer to the deadly cabinets her fears were confirmed. I opened what I had once considered to be a holy tabernacle carelessly. I reached in and fumbled through the pile, I had every chocolate memorized simply by touch and sound. So indulged was my sweet fetish that I could tell the difference between a Milky Way, and a 3 Musketeers bar by just their smell. I reached in until I felt the crackling wrapper of a Peanut Butter M&M's bag, I picked the bag out from my stash and held the bright colored bag before me. Such a harmless and innocent looking treat, and it would be my own little bullet to the head! No bullets tasted as good as these, at least this would be a bittersweet end to a life that was anything but sweet. "Dreeve! You know you can't eat those! Those things got so much sugar in them they'll kill you for sure!" I slowly tore the bag open like I was opening the case of a gun. My hands twitched nervously as I held the bright colored cyanide capsules in the palm of my hand; this gun was now loaded. "Dreeve, no! Don't do it, please! You know that will kill you! Put the M&M's down and step away from the chocolate! Come on Dreeve, this isn't like you!" Tammy pleaded desperately. "I need to have some chocolate! I don't care if it kills me!" "You don't care? Dreeve, this isn't the way to solve your problems. Just think about what your doing!" Thinking was not my specialty, doing incredibly stupid things to hurt myself though, was. "This sucks so much Tammy, I'm sorry." I devoured the handful of M&M's within seconds, the once chocolately delightful morsels now burned my insides as I gulped them down. "Dreeve! Have you gone crazy!? Why'd you do that?" "I will be dead soon enough, this is the most pleasant way I could think of doing it. I didn't want to do it any other way cause I didn't want to hurt you. I will dead soon, but I'm sure you'll be ok. You won't be effected by my blood sugar. The people at the morgue will certainly get you out of me and find you a much better home. A home where you won't have to put up with me. I'm doing this for the both of us Tammy." "Why would you want to do this!? This whole diabetes thing is just a minor setback! And one thing that's for sure is that I don't want any new home! I want you! Why are you trying to kill yourself!? What good will that do except make me homeless!" "Being homeless is much more better than being with me." I ate another handful. "Stop it!" Tammy pounded, punched and kicked away at me from the inside, as if trying to block me from laying my fingers on another M&M. But she wasn't able to stop me, and I gulped down another handful of M&M's. "Dreeve, chocolate is just something you eat! It isn't something that should run your life, or decide whether you live or die! You're making a bunch of candy more valuable then your own life! Please listen to me! You don't have to put all the blame on yourself!" I became lightheaded as I foolishly stumbled across the room like a drunkard. My knees wavered, and just as if someone had gotten a hammer and slammed it into my kneecaps my face went flat to the floor. There was a long dragged out silence, we both were in shock at what was happening. We lied there and listened to each other, my rough uneven breathing and her throbbing heartbeat. The M&M's lied scattered across the dull brown carpeting of my home. I squinted through my blurred eyes and caught sight of a single blue M&M. With my weak arms I slowly reached for the morsel of death. "Dreeve..." Tammy's voice came weaker than before. "What is 'hell' supposed to be? And what's 'heaven'? I keep hearing people talk about them a lot." Tammy's voice shivered from the cold shadow that death always seemed to cast on people. I completely forgot about the single blue M&M, Tammy's question had caught me completely by surprise. I realized that she truly must've not known what heaven or hell was, I never remembered even talking about afterlife talk to her at all. I didn't know much about it either, I tried repeating what my mom had told me when I had asked such a question. "Heaven and hell are places people go after they die." "How come there are two places for people to go to? Is their any difference? Lot's of people tell other people 'To go to hell', is that where we're going to go, hell?" "There's a big difference between heaven and hell, where you go after you die is determined by how good or bad of a person you were. Sort of like how Santa Claus gives presents to good little kids and coal to the bad ones. People who do lots of good, like Trissa, Sandy or my mom will go to heaven for sure. Bad people, very bad people like me will probably go to hell." "You're not a bad person Dreeve, you're a very good person. You and me, we're both going to go to heaven." "Bad people go to hell as punishment for hurting others. Just like I do, even right now all I'm doing is hurting you with all this crap! I'm definitely going to hell, there's no doubt about that. I'm going straight to hell to burn with all the other mean people."
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