Black and Blue

13 - I Try to Avoid Some Feelings

He laughed harder than ever before, yelling that last sentence with such irony and mirth that I wondered if he was even high anymore. It sounded just a little too much like the real him. I froze for a good second, waiting for something awful to happen. Maybe he'd break out into a coughing fit, maybe he'd pull something from laughing so hard. Maybe he'd wake up, and get hungry, and go right back to the animalistic state he must've been in before...

No. This is already enough, this is the same state he was in when he killed...

I hugged myself and narrowed my eyes, gaze trained on his face. Right now he looked about as harmless as a day-old puppy. Definitely acting as clingy as one. I couldn't tell for the life of me whether this was all an act, or if all of his weapons and defenses went down around me. I didn't want to consider either of those possibilities, so I got to healing.

"Alright. Could you just hold still for me? This shouldn't take too...long..."

I faltered when I opened up his hoodie, revealing tonight's set of cuts laid out on his torso like a scoreboard. I didn't get the luxury of a shirt to cover up his more gory wounds; it was all there on sickening display, bloody and probably already infected. Meanwhile, Jack didn't flinch. He wasn't exactly staying still like I'd asked, either, though. He took the liberty to look around the room in awe, like he was in a glittering mansion, stretching out and shifting around, trying to get back up every other second.

Oh, that sure would've been helpful while I was dragging you up a flight of stairs!

Every tool at my disposal would just end up hurting him more if he kept moving like that, without a care in the world. Not even a cotton pad with some rubbing alcohol was safe. I groaned and abandoned the disturbing sight of his chest, holding him down by the shoulders.

"Jesus...hold still, Jack, you'll make me kill you!"

At those words, he froze up with the expression of a startled animal. His breathing started to quicken, and I raised an eyebrow. Either he listened to me for once, or I just made everything a thousand times worse.

"Hey, are you—"

"That's exactly what she said," he whispered.

"Exactly what who...?"

I trailed off, digging through my brain and everything I'd learned about him over the past month or so. I remembered "that girl" and "those people," and felt some wickedly sharp combination of fear and guilt crawl up my spine. It was what's-her-face, Jenny Smith, the girl who sacrificed him all those years ago. Taking a deep breath, I set everything down, brushed myself off, and awkwardly patted both of his shoulders. His expression didn't fade; I wondered what exactly he was seeing right now, staring dead at the ceiling with terror carved in the space around his eyes. I shook my head and tightened my grip on him, careful not to scare him any more.

"Hey. Jack, it's me. You're safe. I'm going to heal you, remember?"

His hands twitched one more time, and he attempted to tilt his head back further onto the floor. How he planned to make that happen, I had no idea, but he was trying.

"...what?" he said after a good minute, furrowing his eyebrows. I sighed.

"I said, you're—"

"Oh! Oh, hi, Sawyer, what are you...what're you doing here?"

"...this is my house."

"You live here?"

"Yep."

"That's so cool. I don't live in a house, it's more like a—"

"Okay, chatterbox," I said, placing a hand over his mouth and holding a finger to my lips. "It's time to quiet down. We—I need to focus. You want to get better, right?"