It was quiet so far in the hospital. Garth Lowinn sat unnoticed in a far
corner of the cafeteria, where he nursed a cup of coffee surrounded by numerous
papers and folders. Obviously engrossed in deep reading, he occasionally made
notes with a homemade pencil, not aware of anything else around him.
Bliss, who usually WAS aware of her surroundings, was also in the
cafeteria, trying to teach Sheridan a new dance step she had learned earlier that
evening. The woman with the eye patch tried the butt-wiggling move again, and
only succeeding in tripping herself up and landing on the floor.
A string of garbled curses erupted from the corner table just then.
Turning, Bliss noticed Garth as he dug through the pile of papers he had
designated as "trash". "How's your nose?" she asked him.
"Huh?" He looked up, no signs of last night's injury visible. "Oh, Bliss, hey.
It's cool. I, um, fixed your bike, by the way."
"Already?"
"Well�" he turned slightly red. "Kettch wouldn't let me sleep 'til I fixed it;
and once I got into it � well, I kind of got carried away." He chuckled softly.
"You know me, I always did like that sort of work."
Outside, a figure in a tattered cloak slipped into the dark alley next to the
hospital. It moved with slow, jerky, deliberate steps. He slipped in through the
back door, moving with the same jerky gait, his hands by his side. He stumbled
slowly towards the lobby, his pace slowing, dying as he approached the opening
into the lobby. He coughed, sending a dark pink globule of spit flying from his
lips. His hand went from his side to the wall; he struggled to hold himself upright
as he was overtaken with a fit of coughing. The fit worsened, and got louder �
his body shook, and he finally fell to his knees. His torso keeled forward and his
head bounced against the floor with a cool 'thunk'.
"Medical emergency, staff to the lobby, please." Elliott's cheerful voice
called out. Darynn, a short, stocky, brown-haired medic rushed in. He was
shorter than the crumpled figure, but stronger than he looked. He knelt by the
figure and turned him over, unmindful of the pool of blood seeping from the
man's right side, staining his scrubs. The figure coughed again, and tried to look
up at the medic.
Roan had zeroed in on the cafeteria; well, the coffee, but seeing Garth,
she wandered back out into the lobby, just in time to see Darynn kneel. She
wandered over as the figure came face up. She paled. "Quent?"
All he could manage was a single, hiss-like word. "Help�" His eyes rolled
back into his head and his body shuddered as Darynn threw Quent over his
shoulder, not daring to wait for an orderly with a gurney. Blood seeped from
Quents side, onto Darynn's shoulder.
Roan followed them into the ER, not knowing what she could do, but not
wanting to leave Quent. As Darynn flopped Quent down on a table, Roan handed
stuff to him. She saw Quent's mouth move feverishly, and bent down in time to
hear him forms words - half sentences, statements, moans. "� dumb bitch �
bleeding � voices �" His hand moved to his face, smearing it with blood. "�find
her � kill her � make her scream � my name�"
Roan sighed. She spoke softly to the injured man. "Oh, Quent � this is
why I tried to get you to stop�" Remembering that she at glimpsed Bliss in the
caf�, she asked Elliott to page her.
Quent's breathing became excited, quickened, louder. He started to sit up
on the table. Darynn was still trying to staunch the flow of blood from the gaping
hole in Quent's side, so Roan tried to push him back down. Quent struggled
against her, giving the medic a rough shove in the chest, a wild look in his eyes.
"Get away from me!"
Injured as he was, his shove managed to drive Darynn back into the wall.
He was swearing profusely when Bliss walked in. "Quentari?" Darynn recognized
her as a medic-in-training, and tossed the half-bloodied packing material to her
while he grabbed as syringe to try to calm Quent.
He sat up straighter, but froze when he saw Bliss. His head cocked to the
side and his lips curled into a small smile. She added her hand to Roan's and
they got Quent prone again, side still oozing blood. Bliss spoke to him as she
held the pack against his artery, and Roan tried to look reassuring instead of
scared.
Darynn called for plasma, not knowing Quent's blood type. With Bliss trying to slow the blood loss, he looked at the gaping side wound. He shook his head, and not knowing what else to do, started stitching together the parts he could get to touch.
Roan smiled down at the patient. "Be good, hon. We want you to live, no matter what you want."
"Roan." He looked up at her, seeming to be oblivious to the fact that he was bleeding. "It's been so long."
She stroked his cheek gently, glad she could do something to calm him while the other two worked. "Yeah...: she said softly, "...missed you..."
"I missed you, too. You know, I'd stopped." He continued to bleed, his voice becoming hoarser.
She blinked. "Stopped? The killing, you mean?" She knew he probably shouldn't be talking, but she was curious. "So ... what *happened*, then?"
"One of them found me. She found me and did it back to me. The stupid bitch."
"Oh, Quent," Roan gave a small, sad smile. "I tried to warn you ... people just hate it when you kill them."
Quent chuckled a bit, coughing up more blood in the process. "She used an axe."
Darynn's brows rose at Quent's words ... that explained a lot about the wound. There was no way to close it, and he was still losing blood faster than they could replace it. The outcome looked to be inevitable; but it was in his nature to keep trying, anyway.
"She..." Quent coughed again, his eyes clenched shut, and he grimaced. "She hit me before ... before I knew she was there ... but I stopped her."
"Oh?" Roan asked quietly. "You killed her?"
"Yeah." He looked up at the medic trying to stitch shut the large hunk of flesh that was missing from his right side. "You ever killed anyone with an axe?"
Darynn tried to keep his voice level. "Not my job, buddy. This here's what I do ... wait for the one's that are left."
Quent was having trouble keeping his eyes open as the blood poured from his wounds. Again he coughed, his whole body shook, and blood slid down his lips to his chin.
Bliss, nearly whispering, said, "Aw, Quent ... I think you've done it this time." She knew as well as Darynn did what was going on. Keeping one hand on the pressure pack, she grabbed a cloth with the other to clean up his face.
He looked up at Bliss. "Can we go back to my room? If I'm really going to die, I don't want to do it here."
As Bliss and Darynn got Quent ready to go, hooking up a mobile IV and helping him into a wheelchair, Roan was at the door of the ER cubicle, growling at a psychiatrist that was trying to get in to "help" Quent. Looking like a cornered mother bear, she hissed, "OH no ... a shrink is the LAST thing he needs now."
As if it wasn't obvious, Dr. Andrus said "Well, then, what *does* he need?"
Struggling to sit up, Quent said. "I ... need ... to die in peace."
As they wheeled Quent out into the corridor, Andrus said in a surprisingly condescending tone, Well Quent, if you really ARE dying, I'm the closest thing to a confessional you have."
Behind him, Darynn mouthed the words "really are" to Bliss incredulously. Quent looked like an animal had taken a huge bite out of him. It didn't take a psychic to see that the man wouldn't make through the night.
Quent's head swam as he was wheeled toward the elevator, his eyes half shut. As he passed Andrus, he said, "I don't need to confess to you. I know what I've done ... and I'm ... not ... sorry. I'm ... paying ... for my sins right now."
Darynn hooked up another plasma bag to the IV. It might be just delaying the inevitable, but he couldn't just stop trying. As they reached the elevator, Quent once again looked up at Bliss. "How are the boys?"
She smiled as she pushed the "up" button. "They're doing fine, Quent. Growing up straight and tall. You'd be proud of them."
"Do they ... remember me?"
"Yes, they remember you. They still ask me when we are going to have another picnic."
"Tell them I was proud..." he paused for another fit of coughing. "You've done a good thing, Bliss."
"I try, Quent; I try..." she replied softly. She wheeled them into the elevator when the door opened. "When all is said and done, Roan, we should take Quent out to where Luciann is..."
Tears flowing, Roan stopped at the elevator entrance after Bliss, Darynn and Quent were in, blocking the shrink who was still concerned for the mostly dead man's sanity. She nodded at Bliss as the doors closed. "Yes." She laid her head on Quent's shoulder, his blood re-coloring her blouse.
The doors opened again as Bliss was informing Elliott that their whereabouts were classified. The tiny "wake" moved into Quentari's old room. "Here we are. Your room of art."
He looked up at the ceiling, watching the sheets blow in the gentle wind from the fan in the corner. "Lock the door."
Bliss did so, continuing, "No one moved or touched a thing. We knew you'd be back someday." Roan just stood there and tried to smile for him, through the blood and tears.
As he turned his head to the side, looking at the room, a small smile crossed his lips. "It's so cold in here. The voices; they're getting louder." Roan went to hold him again, Bliss doing the same on the other, covering his body with theirs. Darynn stood back, trying to be professionaly detached. "I loved you both. I'm going to miss you. I'm going to miss this place."
"I love you, too..." The women smiled sadly at each other as they spoke in unison.
"They're so loud now. Like they're inside my head." Roan was sobbing out loud now, while Bliss' hand went to his forehead, caressing. "My father used to tell me I'd never amount to anything. I ... think ..." His body shook violently as he coughed again, blood shot straight up out of his lips, splattering across Bliss' arm. "I ... think ... he ... was ... right ... never done a good thing in my life."
Bliss didn't flinch as the blood hit. "No, he wasn't. You've..." her voice caught, choked with emotion. "You've always been special to me - and not just *anyone* makes the cut."
He smiled as she spoke to him, his eyes closing, the voices sounding like a chorus now. He could fell their song.
Roan kissed his forehead. "You helped me when I was in the psych ward. That's a good thing."
His smiled faded a bit as his eyes shut. "I ... I ... want you to write ... down the last thing I say." His voice was less than a whisper now, as he struggled to make his last words loud enough to be heard.
Darynn grabbed his notebook. "You don't have to move, girls," he told them softly. "I've got it."
Quent whispered again, not yet convinced that they had understood it. "Put it on the wall ... put it over my ..." he sobbed a bit, "... grave."
Roan shook with her tears. Bliss spoke through hers. "I will, hon."
Quent whispered one last time. "... it's been fun..." And with that and a smile, his ears rang with the song of a thousand lost souls, his body relaxed, and his life slipped away, going to someplace better. To nowhere at all.
Roan and Bliss felt his muscles go slack, but they didn't let go, his blood slowly cooling on their clothes. They each sang prayers to guide him, not convinced that he was going nowhere; perhaps he just didn't know the way.
