Voices – Page 56
“John? John, please wake up!”
Jen’s voice was calling him up from the depths of sleep, and there was an edge to it that made John force himself awake as quickly as he could.
“Jen? You okay? What’s going on?” John sat up in the dark, and felt Jen wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his chest. She spoke words, but they were muffled and incoherent. John hugged her for a moment, reaching over to turn on the light.
John wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he could feel tears against his skin. He reached down, unwound Jen’s arms, and gently pushed her back.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry for what?” John asked.
“I didn’t want to. I’m sorry. I didn’t… but I couldn’t… I’m sorry!”
John took her head in his hands, kissed her forehead, kissed her lips, tasted bourbon there, and drew away.
“Oh,” he said.
Jen covered her face with her hands and sobbed. “I wish I was dead,” she said.
“I don’t,” John said. “Jen, what happened? Jen… Christ, come here.”
He put his arms around her again, and Jen clutched at him. Slowly, she got herself under control.
“What happened?” John asked again, when she had stopped crying.
“I had a nightmare.”
“Your uncle?”
Jen shook her head. “No. I… it was in the tunnels, when we went to find Dr. Jackal. We couldn’t get your heart to work. I was screaming and Brian was dragging me away and we were leaving you for the fire. Then I woke up.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up, Jen?”
“I was confused, and scared. John, I’m sorry. I didn’t even mean to. I wasn’t even thinking. I was just so happy to be awake and all I wanted was to make sure the dream didn’t come back and I had the bottle in my mouth before I even realized what I was doing. I only took one drink. Then I woke you up. I’m sorry!” Jen’s voice was becoming frantic again.
“Jen, it’s okay. Relax. It’s one drink.”
“But I promised I’d stop! I thought you’d be pissed. I was scared to wake you up but then I started worrying that maybe you were still hurt and that’s why you didn’t wake up when I got out of bed, and then I couldn’t stop thinking about that. I sat up listening to your breathing for a while but I got too scared.”
John was quiet for a moment, considering. Jen let go of him and sat up, wiping tears away from her face.
“I’m a fucking nut,” she said finally.
John shook his head. “No, but you certainly keep things interesting. Jen, do you want me to get rid of the booze?”
She nodded.
John slid out from under the covers, stretched, and walked across the room to the bureau. He took the bottle from the drawer, and moved to the windows. He slid one open, leaned out, and threw the bottle into the alley. Jen flinched as she heard it shatter on the pavement below. John shut the window, turned back to her, and grinned.
“Gone,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.” John sat back down on the bed and met her eyes again. “You’re not nuts, Jen. It’ll get better, trust me.”
“It’s not fair that you get to be all stable and have your shit together and everything. How do you do it?”
John shrugged. “I start by not having a terribly history of sexual assault. My life wasn’t always this together, Jen. Things were bad for a while.”
He glanced at his right arm, and Jen’s eyes followed his, to the mass of scars on his bicep. She knew the origin of one, the most recent, still raised and flushed pink, not yet turned pale like the rest. The others seemed much older.
“You did that to yourself,” Jen said. “You cut yourself up.”
John nodded. “Yeah, and not because it was the cool thing to do, either. When the voices would get bad, before I learned how to filter them out or tone them down most of the time, I’d sit on the side of my bed with a razor, and think about doing my wrists. I wasn’t sleeping much, back then. The voices kept me awake. I was depressed and angry and scared, and I’d think about killing myself. What stopped me was fear.”
“Fear of dying?”
John shook his head. “I was afraid that the voices would follow me when I died.”
Jen ran her fingers along the scars, barely touching them. John watched, his expression slightly amused.
“I cut there because I had to cut somewhere. I had to. Like the way you had to drink. Do you understand?”
Jen nodded. She leaned forward and kissed his arm. John put his hand under her chin and brought her lips to his. He leaned back, lying down again, bringing Jen with him. After a while she broke away and, shivering a little, pulled the covers over them both.
“We’ll get you through this, Jen.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
Jen paused, as if trying to decide whether to believe him. Then she curled up against him, shut her eyes, and said, “okay.”
John reached over and turned off the light.
