Storymania - Bleeding Entropy by Oleander Myst

Bleeding Entropy (2)
Oleander Myst

Her voice trails off as she realizes she doesn’t want to tread in these waters yet, and she just gives me a knowing look.
“How’s she doing?”
A genuine question. For some reason I feel guilty about falling asleep. What if she had—*no*. Don’t got there Josh. Mrs. Reede’s face becomes a reflection of both hope and uncertainty.
“The doctors said the surgery went well and they were able to repair most of the damage. They said that we were lucky an ambulance crew was nearby.”
She pauses, and I steel myself for the bad news.
“The surgeon said she lost a dangerous amount of blood, and they’re still saying that she’s not out of the woods yet. When,”
Silently I thank her for saying when, “she wakes up and they’re sure the bleeding’s stopped, there’s still a danger of infection.”
Her voice is almost a whisper, and it doesn’t take a genius to see stomach wounds are a bitch. If I remember my history correctly, nearly all of Civil War soldiers with stomach wounds—*no*. Don’t go there Josh. There is an uncomfortable moment of silence as we run out of comfortable subjects to discuss. It’s not like now’s a great time to go, ‘Hey Mrs. Reede, how ‘bout those Redskins?’ Thankfully, Bosch, who peeks around the corner as if asking for permission to enter, breaks the silence. Mrs. Reede smiles tightly, and Bosch walks in, giving me an acknowledging look.
“Mrs. Reede, the doctors are outside—they want to talk to you.”
She nods at Bosch, and glances at her daughter before leaving the room, softly shutting the door behind her. There’s an uncomfortable moment of silence before the question burns through any reservations I may have about talking with Bosch.
“What happened?” I ask.
He looks uncomfortable here, amongst the feelings of mourning and borderline fear. He glances at Cleo for a moment, before looking me straight in the eye.
“AD Briggs isn’t going to let you stay here,” Bosch argued.
“I’ll tell him that he can write it up as a vacation,” I say.
If need be, I’d quit to stay here with Cleo. But I’m not leaving ‘till I know she’s okay. Bosch says nothing, knowing that I have a very valid point.
“Well at least try to get something to eat and some sleep,” Bosch says as he puts a hand on my shoulder.
I say nothing in response as he gets up, leaving the room with a last look at Cleo. His face is melancholy, and I resent the fact that he seems so unaffected by this world-shattering tragedy. I want to shake him, to scream at him that this is more than just a downed agent. It’s a downed soul, an injured other half. Someone’s bullet-riddled lover. Woah; that sounded pretty strong. But she is, in nearly every sense of the word. And it’s at that instant that I’ll leave nothing unsaid, that I won’t just write off all those deeply layered innuendoes and teases. And a certain moment in a certain hallway. Oh, she’ll know how I feel, how it tears me up when I realize that I might not have one more day to smile at her, to talk to her, even to gripe about traffic and gas prices. In one day, I could let her know she’s become that other half and something more—that she’s entered an area deep within me that I’d thought had died long ago. And she’s planted her seeds of hope and love there, nurturing them until they’re like giant cedars—making it so I can’t breathe without their sweet, life-giving oxygen. She is far too precious.
* ~ * ~ *
* ~ *7:13 AM, Three Days Later* ~ *
She’s in a coma. The moment the neurologist said the word; I could feel my blood freeze in my veins, my mind screaming a wordless scream of pain. Mrs. Reede looked stricken the moment she heard and she just stared at a wrinkle in Cleo’s sheets, almost as if she didn’t want to know. It was so hard to know that we’d have to relive the nightmare we had hoped had been behind us all over again, to feel the pain of watching Cleo lying there—not dead but not really wholly there either. Four years ago, I thought that the pain could never get any worse. But instead, it’s increased a hundredfold with each agonizing event and revelation. And many, many more wounds. Probably many I don't even know about.
I shake my head and blink my eyes; angry with myself for blanking out when the neurologist is still talking. During the last few days I’ve managed to piss off about a dozen doctors and nurses trying to get someone to talk to me about Cleo’s condition. I’m sure Cleo would laugh at me if it were anyone else in that hospital bed. She says I’ve got a knack for making doctors wish they’d never sworn an oath. Feeling a pang of regret and guilt, I push the thought from my mind, tuning back in to the neurologist’s words.
“—weren’t sure about it until now; and we didn’t want to make any assumptions—”
“Why’s she in a coma?”
The question seems dumb, but my mind is on autopilot when I ask the question. The neurologist shifts, getting into lecture mode.
“The body has a natural tendency to slow down when injured or sick and concentrate on healing itself—It’s why you feel tired when you’ve got the flu or you’ve suffered an injury coupled with a traumatic experience. Extreme injuries call for extreme healing measures. Agent Reede lost a lot of blood, suffered a traumatic experience, and her body suffered a large amount of damage. While this isn’t what we had hoped for, the fact that the scans show she hasn’t suffered any brain damage points to the conclusion her body just needs to take some time out.”
The neurologist gives Mrs. Reede and I one of those annoyingly cheery smiles, the kind all nurses and doctors give you when they’re trying to bolster your spirits but try to not to get your hopes up either. And it’s horribly artificial as well. Mrs. Reede murmurs a few words of quiet thanks, along with a request to stay informed. The neurologist nods before moving away down the hall and disappearing into another room. Mrs. Reede turns to me, and I’m startled when I notice that she seems far more depressed than she did scant hours ago. And why do you think that might be? The tiny voice in my head nags.
“Josh, a friend of mine is bringing by a few more things from the house. I need to go down and pick them up...”
Her voice trails off, and I can hear that she is loath to go; but the unspoken question is recognizable between the lines.
“I’ll watch her.”
The answer is almost unnecessary; Mrs. Reede knows not even a pack of marauding werewolves could coax me from within six feet of Cleo. She smiles in appreciation as she slowly moves out of the room, closing the door so softly, leaving me with Cleo and my thoughts for company. I take the time to study Cleo as I have not done since before this whole mess happened; somehow I could never really bring myself to look at her—I mean *really* look. God knows, I don’t want this to be the last time that I see her. Her face is pale, the light rose color I associate with her and life absent. Her face is set, not in the peaceful relaxation of the sleeping, but the hard, frozen mask of one who was stopped in the midst of intense fear and pain. The are still tubes and wires taped to her arms, snaking out of her hospital gown, but they’ve taken away the drainage bag that had been filled with a reddish-pink bloody liquid soon after I arrived. I’m thankful that her eyes haven’t been taped; the time that the hospital had done that it was almost as if they didn’t want her to ever open them again, like they knew she never would. Her hair is spread around her like a river, a ruby halo framing her face, a banner signaling life standing out against the sterile whiteness of this sterile room. I feel tears begin to well up, and this time I don’t try to hold them back or hide them. They trickle down my cheeks and the five o’ clock shadow on my jaw, hot tears of lava tracing their way down my skin to fall with a soft plop on the blanket tucked so tightly around her still frame. Snaking my hand over and through the IV lines and wires taped to her arm, I grab her hand, squeezing it in a vise grip and not really caring that I might be hurting her; some pitiful part of me is hoping that if pain can take her away, it can also bring her back. I cry for what seems like hours, my mind, for once, an endless blank. No thoughts of vengeance or scenarios of what happened run through my head, and no horrible memories rear their ugly heads. There is only room for her name, searing my mind like a bolt of white lightning. I cry for her, for myself. I cry for us.
* ~ * ~ *
My tears are beginning to dry when the door opens, admitting a nurse instead of Mrs. Reede. I look up briefly, and she gives me another one of those fake smiles as her eyes meet mine. She’s carrying what looks like a small toolbox, which she sets down on a small table near Cleo’s bed next to the dozen white lilies I sent along with a box of clothes from my apartment. She turns to me, an unreadable expression on her face before turning back. As she starts to pull bandages and assorted supplies out of her box, I realize that this is one of the occasions in which Cleo gets her bandages changed—an occasion I’ve missed so far. The nurse gives me a questioning look, but for some reason I don’t want to leave Cleo, I can bite back any feelings of queasiness in order to stay with her. In a way, I suppose it’s another exercise in self-punishment. Even though I know I didn’t do it, I still feel as if I’m to blame for what happened. And some sadistic part of my mind is forming an alliance with the guilt I feel, demanding that I look at her, and see what I’ve done. The nurse says nothing as she turns back to her work. I turn away as the nurse exposes Cleo’s bandage and nothing else, and then, my muscles ignoring the last resisting part of my mind, I look up. Nearly her entire midriff is swaddled in white cloth, but a few dark red, almost brown, dots of blood have seeped through, staining the bandage. The nurse carefully uses a pair of blunt scissors to cut through the layers on Cleo’s right side, away from the wound itself. There’s one last snip and the bandage falls away, exposing the injury beneath. I clamp down a wave of nausea, angry with myself for feeling so about something having to do with Cleo. It’s more like I’m violently angry with the people who would do this to her. There’s an angry line of red extending out from the wound itself, the mark of the surgeon’s scalpel. The black stitches contrast sharply with the white of her skin and the few rusty areas of dried blood that have leaked from the broken capillaries in her skin. Suddenly I’m struck by the fact that that’s going to leave one hell of a scar. And then again, I’m struck full in the face by the fact that this isn’t Cleo’s only scar. I know she’s got one from the implant at the base of her neck, and a small one on her temple, hidden by her hairline, from the broken glass of the table she was thrown onto by the Bounty Hunter. Then there’s the scars on her wrists, pale white lines, barely noticeable, from the many times her hands have been bound and she’s struggled to get out of them. She’s never called attention to them, but I’ve seen them, and every time I do I’m reminded of a bloody jute cord tossed in the trunk of her car on Skyland Mountain four years ago. But this scar will be as no other, a screaming reminder of what happened, a visual trigger for a moment that has to be one of her most terrifying—never mind she’ll probably never want to wear a bikini again.
For a moment I’m taken to a different place—a place so vividly pictured in the photos of the incident report: a dark, dingy area. I’m sitting by Cleo, watching as the bullet is fired, and lodges itself deep inside her stomach. At first it doesn’t look like anything more than a small hole torn in the white silk of her blouse. Then the blood comes. Bright crimson seeping through the hole onto the silk of her shirt. Her hands raise to her wound, as if she’s somehow trying to stop the bleeding, but the blood pouts out in scarlet satin ribbons between her fingers. I duck and try to save her, but its already too late. Time speeds up again, and I see a bright red spot blossom on my shirt, a small spot of red slowly flowing out. There’s another slow pause before I crash to the ground. And then there’s Cleo, her eyes wide in shock and pain, and maybe even disbelief. And then I see the neat spot of red on her blouse just to the left of her navel—a spot that's rapidly growing, gushing out blood. Then her legs give way, and she slides down to the floor, her mouth and eyes still wide open; yet clouded with pain. She leaves a bright smear of red on the wall behind her as she slides down: angry brush strokes contrasting with the ashen wall. Time speeds up a hundredfold, and I lean over, forward, horror written all over my face as I inch over next to Cleo, pressing my hand against the red spot on her shirt. The instant I do, the red runs through my fingers, unstoppable. I reached for her neck, checking her pulse, leaving a red smear on the pale skin and making it look like someone slashed her throat from ear to ear. Reaching into my pocket for my cell phone, I smear more blood all over the cloth and my phone, making the narrow plastic hard to hold onto. With difficulty I dial 911, screaming at the operator that there’s an agent down and I need someone there right fucking *now* because my partner was hurt in a shoot out and oh God she’s gonna die and there’s so much blood and it’s all over every where all over my hands all over her. . .The phone slips out of my hand like a greased pig, sliding through the giant pool being formed from my and Cleo’s blood running together. The pool creeps forward, soaking my pant leg and I look down in growing panic. Jolting my head back up, I look at Cleo, and my mind finally blows at the sight of a small trickle of blood running out of the corner of her mouth, making her every shallow breath sound like a kid blowing frothy bubbles in his milk glass. And then my spirit runs, leaving her alone to bleed to death in a matter of minutes on a dirty floor in a dingy hall in the dark without me and I wasn’t there to keep it from happening because she almost died alone almost died without ever having the brick house with the picket fence, two point five kids, loving husband and Golden Retriever that you know she wants.
I feel as if I should be crying now, but the past few days seem to have overtaxed my tear ducts; so I can only stare vacantly as the nurse finishes changing Cleo’s bandage before packing her things into the box and making a few notes on Cleo’s chart. Halfway to the door, the nurse stops, looking back at Cleo and I.
“Look, I know it’s none of my business, but are you two married?”
The look on her face belies the fact that she’s probably finding out if the rumor floating around the nurses’ station is true: that Agent Reede was nearly killed in the line of duty and her ‘partner’ rushes to her side, crying and hanging his head as she struggles for her very life. It sounds like a bad romance novel; but supposedly nurses are incurable romantics. Whenever I pass by the station, the nurses who aren’t busy are gathered in front of a small TV watching soaps. I think for a moment, but something inside me seems unwilling to tell the whole truth. Or maybe to say the truth in it’s entirety. My mouth moves before I’m sure of my response, deciding for me.
“In a way.”
The nurse’s mouth forms an O, looking at me in confusion veiled with sympathy. And then she turns, not really understanding but deciding not to press the issue. I’m glad when she leaves; I’m not fond of having people ask questions when I’m in no mood or shape to answer them with a response I won’t regret later. But I won’t regret this one.

* ~ * ~ *
* ~ *10:14 PM* ~ *
The couch is lumpy, but I have to think about it to feel it. I seem to have been floating in a dream world for the last five days, oblivious to everything but the rise and fall of Cleo’s chest as she lies there. The moonlight filters into the room through the blinds covering the window, throwing bars of washed out white light across the bed. I just stare at the figure in the middle of the room, seeing her but not really concentrating on the image. Instead, my mind is elsewhere, thinking about everything and nothing. Moments of blank mindlessness sprinkled around soul-searching epiphanies. Then my mind comes to rest on the one thing it cares about; the thing that I can’t stop thinking about even if I tried. Cleo. I heard a story once; of a man and a woman that had just gotten married but, tragically, had gotten in a car wreck on the way to the airport for their honeymoon. They both went to the hospital, where the woman went into a coma. The man died. The woman was in the coma for eighteen years, and when she woke up, the first words put of her mouth were: “Where’s my husband?” When they told her what had happened, that her husband had died eighteen years ago, she was inconsolable. They signed her up for therapy after she was released, but she killed herself within five hours of the first session. I don’t know if that story was real or someone’s idea of a sad campfire story, but it cuts too close too home when I’m staring at Cleo like she is now.
I look at her face, searching for some sign that she’s right there, that she's just sleeping and she’ll wake up if I call her. The thought is torture and it takes all my willpower not to go over there and shake her, to call her name softly, hoping that she’d mumble something about letting her sleep because she stayed up all night working on the Betts case so Bosch wouldn’t chew us out and make her fill out even more paperwork and could it please wait ‘till morning? And maybe, if I cracked some joke about the early agent gets the free breakfast she’d slowly sit up, turning on the lamp above her head and banishing all the shadows. . .The shadows. I sit up as if I were just struck by lightning, leaping over to the window and pull the blinds up, letting the moonlight flood in the room in a bright column, lighting up her face in an eartheal glow. Even though the shadows are gone, she doesn’t react in the slightest. What did you expect you idiot? The child within me recoils from the sniping adult that just spoke, retreating to the corner with all of its false hopes and fantasies. I turn away to the window as the child and adult both cry, neither knowing what to do next.
Far, far below, the streets of New York tangle around the buildings spread as far as I can see. Even at this hour the streets are busy, delivery trucks and cars trying to get from one place to another. There are people below; a few in the white uniforms of nurses walking in and out of the hospital while other people carry stuffed animals and balloons. I wonder if any of the people out there in the glittering city below have ever felt as scared, helpless, and utterly lost as I do now. Have they ever felt the warm wetness of a person’s blood, the fear and desperation that accompanies the moment? Have they ever seen the evil of men who would give away their own daughters to God only knows who—or what—for something no one knows of? Have they ever felt the fear, anger, and hate that comes from not knowing where you were for three months of your life; not knowing what happened to you? Do they know what it is to have a tiny scrap of metal control your life? Have they seen a person waste away to almost a shell of their former self, bleeding and dying from a mass of haywire cells hiding behind two forest green eyes? Do they know what it is to watch your every dream squashed before you can live it? Do any of them know what I know? Feel what I feel? See what I see? In some ways, I hope they do. But it is too much for them—anyone—to handle, and I wouldn’t want anyone to carry that burden. But Cleo does. And her own as well.
I turn away from the window, tears sliding freely down my face as I turn to the only place I know to find some measure of comfort and security. I don’t even bother to find a chair as my knees buckle, dumping me on the floor next to Cleo’s bed in a kneeling position. I am too weary, too emotionally strung out, to care. My mouth opens slightly, and I can feel the scratchiness of the blanket on my lips as I sob; great side-heaving sobs, unaware of the tiny half gasping—half keening cry I make in the back of my throat. It’s my own wordless plea for her to come back—that I need her. In desperation I grab her hand, enfolding her slender fingers with my own.
I haven’t broken down like this since the darkest days of her cancer—when she was days away from death and I had just been offered a chance to know everything by joining those who I saw as the enemy. It was then that I cried for her to come back as I do now—that I can’t possibly do this without her. In the early days when I was in the VCS, about a year after my screw-up with John Barnett, a hostage, and a missed opportunity, I would have turned to a bottle for a quick escape. I wasn’t an alcoholic—and that’s not a knee-jerk denial—but sometimes it felt good to be so drunk you couldn’t remember your name, much less the bloody fragments of a little girl that was ripped to shreds by her father and his chainsaw. But Cleo has become my bottle; my drug—I am reduced to nothing without her. What seems like hours pass—I have no way of telling—as I lay in a crumpled heap at Cleo’s side, focusing on nothing but the heat of the tears and the burning sobs as if they were the flames that could cleanse me. And then, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wing against my skin, Cleo’s fingers briefly spasm against my own.
Instantly, I look up, catching my breath and unknowingly hold it as I stare at her face, waiting for her eyes to open and glitter like precious gems in the moonlight. Minutes pass, and I can gradually feel my elation begin to spiral towards the ground in a death spin like a downed jet fighter as, except for the eerily even rise and fall of her breathing, she remains still. I slump against the bed, wondering if I had imagined it. God, Cleo, I’m hallucinating. Did I think that if I hoped and concentrated on it hard enough, Cleo would wake up? If I concentrate hard enough could I get her out of that bed, to walk over to me and tell me that it’s okay? Yeah, and get tossed in the loony bin two floors up, the sniping adult says. Before I even know what I’m doing, I’m reaching up, fingers poised to touch the fragile creature I’ve nearly destroyed, hell, maybe I have. She looks like she's a modern day Sleeping Beauty: frozen in a cryogenic sleep just waiting for her prince to find the cure. I found the cure once before, saving her from an icy eternity. But this hell has nothing to do with alien viruses. The moment my fingers brush the soft skin at the small hollow where her jaw meets her neck, I swear I can feel a small spark jump between us; the electric thrill of life. Her skin is warm, something which I find deceptively comforting. Gently, as if I’m somehow afraid to hurt her further, I trace her delicate jawbone with a featherlight touch.
“No!” she screams.
There’s a blur in front of my eyes and I can feel a hand wrap around my wrist in a vise grip, squeezing the bones as if to crush them. Then for a moment everything stops, and I can see a pair of dark green eyes staring at me with a mixture of terror, rage, and sheer hate. And then there’s another blur, and seconds later I can feel fists pummeling me, connecting with my chest and stomach as claws extend to scratch my face. Instinctively I reach up to protect myself, but a solid left hook sails past my upraised hands to connect squarely with my cheek, sending me flying backwards to meet the floor with stars dancing in my eyes.
“Get the hell away from me!”
Even with my vision swimming, I can recognize Cleo’s furious cries. I can hear her wrestling with the sheets as if they’re arms trying to hold her down, making her yell louder.
“I’m gonna die, oh God, I’m gonna die!”
Her voice cracks as she begins to cry.
“You’re not going to do this again! Don’t—”
Her last cry is strangled as she gasps, struggling for breath. Instantly I’m on my feet. My Cleo may be back, but her demons have drawn closer. Before I know it, I’m next to the bed, reaching out to lay a hand on her shoulder like a lifeline back to the shore. Fast as lightning, she lunges at me, arms outstretched not in a plea to be rescued, but in an attempt to rip my eyeballs out. Moving fast, I grab her by her wrists, holding her back, staring into her eyes; eyes which reflect the tortured spirit of a hunted animal fighting for its life. My God, Cleo—what have they done to you? She lets out a blood-curdling yell, thrashing and squirming against me in an effort to free herself. I can only look on, unable to help her. Gradually she stops thrashing and the crazed look in her eyes disappears, replaced instead by the faint glitter of fearful awareness. Cleo’s eyes snap into focus, sliding upwards as she sees that my face has replaced that of the demons chasing her. Or was I the demon she was trying to flee?
“Josh,” she says in a small, fearful voice. The one word speaks volumes, “Where am I? What happened? Am I okay? Why am I reacting like that? *Why*?”
I can tell that she is scared; both of what happened to her and what will become of her. And then she leans forward, holding me like I’m the anchor that keeps her from being swept back into the abyss from which she just returned. Suddenly I feel something wet and warm on my arm, and I look down. I freeze when I see what it is that’s on my arm. Even in the pale moonlight, it’s not hard to disconcern the deep scarlet of fresh blood, warm, and sticky. Looking down, I can feel something cold drop in the pit of my stomach as I see the large red stain that is spreading over the pale blue of Cleo’s hospital gown—a red which easily soaks through the thin paper and runs onto the snow white sheets, forming irregular blobs and spots. The red is gradually leaking down; turning the sheets bundled over Cleo’s lap a vivid ruby stain. She’s torn her stitches. REALLY torn them. I have to get a nurse in here *right* now. Or she’s going to die right in front of me. I start to pull out of her embrace, but she just holds on tighter, a small cry ripping through her, wordlessly telling me not to desert her. Like I deserted her before.
“Cleo, I need to get a nurse in here. You’ve torn your stitches and you’re bleeding. I really need you to let go, I promise I’ll be back.”
My tone is as soothing as I can manage with the crushing weight of panic scrabbling at my throat. Her grip loosens, silently trusting me to hurry. And then I look into her eyes. While the Cleo I know is reflected in those bottomless green orbs, there’s an emptiness too, like a star winked out in her constellation. Like a part of her was snuffed out, locked away forever. The flames of Hell have burned her. . . but not all of her has escaped it. I’m shocked. And frightened. Terrified actually. I run to the nurses station, screaming for someone to get to 207 as fast as they can or else she’s gonna bleed to death and her mother’s not there and I’m scared and so is she and she better not die now. . .
The nurses’ feet pound down the hallway, echoing eerily like the vast empty chasm I saw in Cleo’s soul; a fresh wound that neither doctors, nurses, specialists, crystals, prayers, nor hypnosis can cure. And then there’s a moment of clarity and I see that which might save both of us.
Together we can heal the bruises and wounds that scar our spirits and souls, freeing us from the earth to soar amongst the stars in the velvet purity of the night. As one.

Go to part: 1 2