2019-05-24 - Feeling Good

Patient presents with a broken jaw, numerous lacerations on the face and scalp caused by blugeoning with a blunt object. Left eye retinal detachment. Loss of left and right canines, both top and bottom.

The steady beep of a heartrate monitor, coupled with the sound of the blood pressure cuff swelling and relaxing, provides a backdrop symphony to the macabre scene in front of Elise. The chart says he's John Doe but Elise knows the man in the bed, with the tubes and the monitors and the broken jaw and all those stitches that still ooze puss and blood, is Lukas Collins.

Patient underwent surgery to repair jaw and retinel detatchment. His mouth was wired shut. Surgery was unsuccessful as it pertains to the left eye. Eye was removed due to significant damage. He wears a patch on that side of his face now, white cotton and medical tape. Medical coma induced. She never expected to see him again. Prognosis of full recovery likely.

She never expected to enjoy seeing him like this.

Elise hadn't told Graham everything about that night. There was too much shame associated with the whole truth, too much pain. She wondered now if Lukas Collins would be in the morgue if she had told him everything. The thought of him lying on a cold slab, chest open and organs detached, gave her a sickening thrill.

She shouldn't like this. She shouldn't be happy about this. She should be terrified of what Graham is capable of, she should be afraid of this life he has brought her into. But Elise draws herself closer to Lukas Collins, and she slowly extracts the oxygen that's keeping him alive in the moment.

He starts to choke. He doesn't thrash, but he makes these awful, wet gagging sounds, a different sort of dark symphony from the medical beeps around him. "I hate you," she whispers. "I wish you were dead. He should have killed you. Maybe I should kill you now."

But she doesn't let him flatline; she won't even let the heartrate monitor blip. The oxygen is put back into place. He stops making those awful sounds. All that is left is the beep-beep-beep of the heartrate monitor, and the filling of the blood pressure cuff again.

"You're alive because of me," she says into his ear. "You'll stay alive because of me. Remember that. Remember me. Who's the chink whore now, you fucking piece of shit?"

She turns from the bed, and she retreats to make a note in his chart. Patient's doing good, prognosis of full recovery remains likely.

It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life.

And as Elise walks out of the hospital room to attend her next patient, she's feeling good.