Authors: Jeremy Laszlo
Chapter Seventeen
Greg is standing on the porch waiting for us, completely unaware of the fact that their little charade is up. He’s smiling at us, acting perfectly within the lie that they’ve come to know as their own little reality. It makes me sick and I’m more than willing to save his life, but only because there’s something more important at stake right now. If I was ever tested, now is the moment. I could take that cheating bastard to the grave with me and let him burn in hell or whatever is waiting for us. But I know that Lexi and Charlie are going to need him. I know that the world is going to need him. He’s the only one who can make any damned sense of all that madness on Jason’s walls and in his notebooks. I hope the dead know absolutely nothing about the world they left behind. I hope my father isn’t looking down upon this. He’d be so ashamed to see what his daughters have become.
Charlie cries from Greg’s arms weakly as Lexi kills the truck. I can feel her eyes on me and I know that she’s waiting for me to say something, to tell her whether I’m going to give her confession up or if I’m going to play along. I know that she doesn’t know that I’m going to die, so I wonder what she thinks the whole dynamic is going to be from here on out. I decide that it’s good enough to let her stew about it. She can eat herself up with worry for a while. But right now, in the silence of the truck, listening to Charlie’s hoarse little cries, I know that something needs to be said.
“I could do nothing,” I tell her, warning her with my cold, distant words. I feel like God right now. “I could walk in there and do nothing to Greg and give him exactly what he deserves. He could die of a fever, delirious, and in agony. I could end his miserable life and there would be nothing you could do to stop it.” I turn away from Greg and look her dead in the eyes. “But I want you to know something, Lexi. I’m going to save that bastard’s life and I’m going to save him for Charlie, because that little boy deserves a father and I know you lied to me and Noah, and everyone else, but you better tell that little boy the truth. He deserves it. As for me and Greg, we’re done. He’s all yours. I don’t care what you have to do or what you have to say to him, but make it work. You three are a family, so start acting like it.”
Before she can say anything, I throw open the door and sling the bag over my shoulder. It’s painful to walk. It’s painful to even breathe, but I keep moving. I know that the moment I stop, I’m going to regret it. Hobbling toward the farmhouse, I listen as Charlie begins screaming, despite Greg’s futile efforts to comfort him.
“He’s been crying for a while now,” Greg says amicably, sensing that something’s wrong. Even with his broken moral compass he can tell that something’s off. It’s like relationship radar, but in his case he has to be cautious from every angle with the fucked up love triangle he pursued. Even though he has no idea that something has happened, he knows that he and Lexi are in a bad spot. “I think he’s hungry, Lexi,” he says as Lexi rushes to take Charlie from him. Before I reach the porch, Lexi vanishes into the house. Greg must have found a way to un-barricade the door. I’m not so sure that’s a smart move, but I’m not here to judge anymore. I have one last job to do before I die and I intend to wrap up my affairs in this life rather quickly.
He waits for me on the porch while I approach him, limping as I go. I don’t want him standing there. I want him to go away and I want him to talk to Lexi. I want the two of them to have the fear of what I might do to them in their eyes. I want it all to just come to an end finally. I’ve come to terms with death, but I don’t think that up until this moment that I actually wanted to die. I just want all of it to be over, once and for all. I suppose that’s a sort of surrender that I’m willing to accept.
Rushing down the steps, he tries to help me in my attempt to climb them. Before he can touch me, I hold up my hand to keep him at bay. “Come on, babe, let me help you,” he says kindly to me, trying to act like he loves me. I know the truth. I know better. I wish that he would just get on board. Read the signs.
“I’m not your babe,” I tell him coldly, cutting deep at him. He reaches out to touch me, but the very idea of his hands being on me makes me want to throw up all over him. I can’t deal with that right now. I shake my head and hastily take another step, too hastily. I feel the pain and exhaustion hitting me like a cement truck and it’s almost too much for me. I can feel my knees shaking, trembling under the pressure as I lean against the railing of the porch steps with black spots dancing before my eyes. “Fuck off,” I tell him harshly, not willing to have him near me anymore. It’s time for him to just get the hint once and for all.
“Babe, are you okay?” he asks me. I’m sure there’s a huge complexity to that question, but I’m not having any of it.
“I know, Greg,” I tell him coldly. “I know everything.” As I approach the door, leaving him behind me with the gravity of that statement, I know that he’s wondering what happens next. It’s funny, I’ve been thinking about that question a lot but I know what I need to do. I’m just not so certain he’s going to know what to do with himself. I think mercy is a bizarre concept. Mercy should not exist. Mercy is an abomination against the rules and laws of nature. For someone to act with mercy is against our animal nature. It throws everything out of balance. It is unnatural, a human concept. There’s something distinctly wrong in the world when mercy is applied. I step in over the threshold and look back at him. “Get on the table,” I tell him.
I don’t bother watching him as he awkwardly and cautiously climbs onto the table. I don’t want to feel any compassion as he struggles or grits his teeth against the pain. As he follows my instructions, I hand him a bottle of painkillers without so much as turning to face him. Lexi gives each of us a water bottle. I finally turn towards Greg as he nervously takes two of the pills. I can see the sweat beading across his face as he lies there, anticipating what’s to come. I untie the belt from around his knee and hand it to him. He’s not going to need it anymore. I’m going to save his leg, of that I have no doubt. He can be grateful for it later.
Getting all of the supplies I need, I look at him and meet his nervous, sorrowful gaze. The forlorn and saddened eyes look at me, hoping that I might forgive him or that I might let him have a second chance. If only he knew how impossible that request truly was. “This is going to hurt,” I tell him honestly, brutally so. “The painkillers I just gave you aren’t going to work for a while, but we don’t have time. It’ll dull the pain in a while, but immediately, you’re going to be in a world of hurt and I can’t help that. Try to keep as calm as you can, the faster your heart rate, the faster you’ll bleed out.”
It’s only right that he should suffer
.
Wrapping the belt around his head, I keep his mouth open. He’ll chew down on the belt, but it won’t move. Lexi hands me her own belt after I request it, and I take it from her, tying down his hands to the legs of the table. I’m not letting him get the chance to interrupt this impromptu surgery. I use my belt to fasten his other arm. Lexi quickly locates some nylon rope from the cellar and together we bind down Greg’s legs as well. I wonder if a part of her will enjoy the pain I put Greg through. I can’t say that I am not at least looking forward to it a little bit. It isn’t revenge. Not necessarily. More like a trade. His physical pain for my emotional pain. Tit for tat. Fighting a grin at the evil thought, I force myself to push my emotions aside for the moment. As I take a deep breath, the spots return before my eyes and in a brief moment of absolute clarity I can feel the inferno within my gut as the infection there grows worse by the second. I don’t have much time and every precious second is going to count. He’s going to need me working until my dying breath.
First things first, I remind myself of the basic, simple rule that everyone should follow when looking at a mountain of work. I grab the scalpels and look at the necrotic, infected wound sitting before me. There’s a reasonable amount of cutting that’s going to need to be done and the inflamed, highly sensitive tissue with exposed nerve endings has to go first. It’s going to hurt like hell and he’s going to feel every last bit of it. There’s no help for it even if I didn’t want him to feel the hurt.
He screams, as loud as his lungs will let him as I start to cut away the infected flesh. I toss the scraps of flesh and tissue I’m slicing away from him into a bowl that Lexi brings me. She paces nervously as he screams at the top of his lungs, his eyes wide in pain and his body bucking at the suffering that I’m inflicting upon him. I don’t feel the slightest drop of sympathy for him as I continue cutting. It’s hard to even identify this as human tissue when I cut it away. It just looks like rotten meat to me. Puss oozes out in small amounts, and as I work I try to imagine what the scar is going to look like. I’ll be able to bind it closed tightly, after I’ve removed the decaying muscle tissue, but it’ll still look pretty nasty when I’m through. He’ll never be the same again, but then again, no survivor of this world could ever go back to who they were.
While I work, I can feel my vision coming and going, blurring on me as I flush the wound out with clean water before scraping down, nearly to the bone. I don’t know if it’s from the exhaustion after today’s events or if it’s the infection working its magic on me. I don’t trust myself or my body any longer. Stopping when my vision starts to cloud, I wipe my forehead with my arm, feigning that I am simply tired. Putting down my instruments, I take a sip of water, knowing it’s not enough, no matter how much I drink. Holding the bottle with my shaking hand, I look at the back of my hand and see drops of sweat. I’m sweating… everywhere. I’m sweating and the house is relatively cool. There’s no reason I should be sweating this much. This is so much more than a nervous sweat. I blink, realizing that my face is covered in sweat again already. I try to brush away the realization and get back to work, but I’m scared. I’m terrified that I’m not going to finish and that my time is going to be up sooner rather than later.
My shirt is mostly soaked from my own blood, but I’m sure that Lexi thinks it’s still wet from the dog she beat to death on top of me. I’m glad she hasn’t said anything about it. Finishing up with the infected tissue, I nod to myself, having taken everything that I can out of him. The wound is relatively clean, and what infection remains should be cleared out by the antibiotics within days. It’s not pretty, but he’ll live if I can get the damned thing closed. I can feel death breathing down my neck as Lexi tries to calm Charlie’s screams.
Greg is screaming.
Charlie is screaming.
My mind is screaming.
But death… he remains silently breathing down my neck.
I shake my head to clear it. It’s time to start suturing and I quickly go to work, bringing the enormous gaps between the torn muscle together. Placing a drain, I start bringing the gaping wound together around it, making sure that the drain is set properly. He’ll have no clue what it’s used for if I don’t explain it to him, but hopefully I’ll last that long. Every stitch seems to take an eternity. The needle feels clumsy in my hand. My fingers hold it awkwardly as my shaking seems magnified tenfold. I work from the bottom up, layer by layer, trying to do quality work, but it is near impossible. Fortunately, by now, Greg’s painkillers are taking the edge off. I watch as the gaping, once infected wound, made much larger by my work, is beginning to grow smaller once more. It’s not pretty, but it’ll suffice.
Looking up from his leg, I see that Greg’s face is still covered with beads of sweat and that his eyes are wide with suffering as I make each puncture wound, drawing the thread through and pulling his severed pieces together. I watch him pant as tears roll down his cheeks, running into his too long hair. I look back down at my work. I refuse to be a sucker for his tears. I’ve done everything that I can for him. For all of them. They won’t need me now that I’ve gotten them this far. There is no time for me to be a sensitive wreck.
I jab his shoulder, drawing his attention. “Look,” I command him, pointing to the drain that I’ve placed in his leg. Upon further inspection, I’m impressed with my own work. I’ve been out of practice and I’ve only done this maybe three times in my training before the world went to hell. He looks to where I’m pointing and I know that he’s doing the best that he can while being tied down to a heavy wooden table. “This is called a drain,” I tell him, educating his poor, dumb ass about what he’ll need to do to survive without me. “This is how you’re going to clean the wound and flush out any infection that builds up. Watch this as if your life depended upon it, because it does.”
Grabbing the bag of saline I hook it up to the drain, my fingers remembering everything that my teachers taught them and so much more. I place the bag over the wound, holding it properly and giving the bag a squeeze. Greg bucks and his whole body goes tense as the pressure skyrockets in the wound, while the saline rushes into every cavity and nook that is down there in the injury, hunting down any hiding spots for the infection that will inevitably try to come back. I give his face a mild slap to get his attention again. He looks at me like I’ve just stuck a knife into his face. I point to the bubbles of saline coming up from between the stitches, and the fluid oozes out.
Disconnecting the bag, I grab his leg and give it a squeeze, working my way from the knee down to his wound and then from his ankle up to his wound, pushing and forcing all of the liquid to the surface. It’s crimson with blood and I watch as his face twists in grimaces, enduring the agony that I’m forcing upon him with as much dignity that he can muster. It isn’t much. We watch as blood and all the other fluids inside his leg come rushing up and out through the drain. It’s a disturbing sight, like a morbid volcano, but it’s necessary if he wants to keep the wound clean.