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They had given him two months to live, if living was what his existence could be described as. For days he had been unplugged, sat in silence in an empty and open room, phasing in and out of awareness. Falling asleep. Too tired to stay awake. Each time he went under, a persistent and chronic pain began to blossom across the entirety of his body. From the brief stupors he found a nurse petting back his hair, another clasped his hand and whispered.
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"Its okay, pet. Its okay. We're here for you."[break][break]
If he had been organic his face would have been pale. His hair would have turned gingerbread brown with sweat and oil. His lips would have been bright red but blue at the corners, skin tight against cheekbones. Instead, dying brain encased in a human-shaped metal box, the only thing sick about him was his aura. There was no light in his eyes. A starved puppy, with a dry mouth and dry eyes and a dry heart that felt like cracking in the heat. When the nurses offered him a drink he could only stare up at them, unable to reply, wanting the foggy glass of chilled water to try and chase away the burning pain in his limbs.
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Nobody was here now the machines had been disconnected, the IVs unplugged from his arm. The window was thrown open, the nurses repeating to themselves how they wanted him to feel the breeze through his hair one last time. But the air outside was still. The piercing blue sky outside made his head throb, the bleached light of the sun melding everything into one single blur. In an empty room he heard voices recite to him faded nursery rhymes.
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Mary had a little lamb[break]
Whose fleece was white as snow[break][break]
The same two lines. An interlude of static, screaming, and silence. Another unconscious stupor, woken to two different nurses. Isaiah's pupils were wide, sunken holes. The features on their faces were fuzzed, reaching through his vision from a dream or a nightmare. Flashes of relief and terror jolting through his system as he forgot and remembered, forgot and remembered. Multiple times he tried to tell them he had a headache, sledgehammers inside his skull beating outwards. All that come from him was a garbled, dry mess. The nurse pulled his head against his shoulder and tried to soothe him.
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Isaiah smiled and showed red teeth, though he couldn't taste the blood. It had been Christmas. The date sure said it had been. He couldn't remember anything. There were no decorations up on the walls. No opened presents resting on the bedside table, other than the sweater that Maddison had bought him, fluffy and big. When they caught him staring at they asked if he wanted to wear it. He nodded, and now sat with the hood up, slumped back against the flattened pillows, with the frayed blanket pulled up to his stomach.
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Of course, his still aware fragment hissed. Nobody cared enough. All you existed for was to make others feel good about themselves.
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Isaiah, disturbed by some dark revelation, began to howl and scream, bloodied voice tearing out of his collapsing throat until the metal caved in, and the scream turned fleshy and muffled, even with his mouth wide open. He gasped inwards and choked, breaking out into a coughing fit the brought plumes of blood and blue liquid up from his throat, staining the sweater. If a nurse tried to remove it he would howl and scratch, aiming for their face. The blue light inside his chest flickered, a rapid firing from his brain.
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Two more nurses tried to soothe him, risking getting battered by the furious child's free-flying fists. Fast enough and strong enough to break a jaw, or a heart. A wild, distraught and accidental strength, smashing into the bed rails and causing them to collapse down, buckling under metal and plastic.
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A number of doctors exchanged glances, and their sighs and bowed heads and glassy eyes brought a vale down on the room. Any hope was sucked out through the open window, fate gifting it to some other lost child. One barked a broken order – fix him up to some morphine. As much as they could without killing him quicker. Eventually it won't be enough, any way. They both left.
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A seizure silenced the screaming, and Isaiah's limbs dropped. The bolts of his hands toppled to the ground, the exterior plates began to fall away. A nurse couldn't help but yelp, picking up the pieces and whispering under her ragged breathing, no no no. She stood and waited for his eyes to flicker open, to see a soul behind his iris' and finding only a confused animal. Her lips lingered on his forehead, tears rolled down from her eyes and across her lips.
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"Why are you crying?" Isaiah's head tilted and his eyelids fluttered. The nurse covered her mouth and fled the room, his confused eyes following her the entire way, wishing he could crane his neck without something warm and wet trickling down the back of his head.
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Light was fading, and the light in his chest was dull. A Santa hat was perched on his head, over the hood of the sweater that's neck was still stained and sticking to his collar. A doctor sat outside, wishing he could stand it inside that room to be with the boy. Everybody wanted to, but nobody did. The ward was full of unspoken curses. They were no better than the others the boy had once called friends.
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Another seizure racked Isaiah's fragile brain, tearing off memories and emotions and devouring them. When he woke, he was crying, his left side no longer responding. From teeth-torn lips came two words, shrieked over and over.
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"Mom! Dad! Mom! Dad! Mom? ..Dad?"[break][break]
"Ez! Hannah! Hannah! Ez! HANNAH?"[break][break]
"Where am I? Where are you? What happened to me?!"[break][break]
Nothing but crying came afterwards, heavy, hard sobbing that could be heard down into the cafeteria. Nurses and doctors gathered outside the door. Poised to enter, staring at the keypad. Backing away.
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Whatever behind that door was not Isaiah any more. That was not Maddison's curious case. That was a wild animal with a leg crushed in a bear trap, waiting for the poacher to appear over the hill and unload a slug into its brain and end the pain.
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"Somebody needs to go in."
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"Somebody needs to be there for him."
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"Somebody needs to tell him it'll be over soon."
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"He can't die alone."[break][break]
One by one, the nurses were torn to other duties and other, healthier patients that they could save. Bureaucracy clamped down onto the attention of doctors, until only one was left, sitting in front of Isaiah's door, head in her hands, weeping alongside the tired child.
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Seeing the doctor, a patient knelt down, coming up to investigate the poltergeist sounds.
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"He can't die alone," she repeated to the worn-faced patient.
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With a hand on her shoulder, the patient bit his lips.
"Sometimes people do."[break][break]
"He's a child!"[break][break]
"Not any more."[break][break]
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There was a weak string of tinsel wrapped around the foot of the bed, and a single card – a cheap, pixellated superstore card, the kind bought in boxes of 50, or 150 – signed by most of the staff. In his unplugged, uncomplicated brain, he retraced the squiggles over and over, like they were all routes through a tall, winding maze. That one would lead to an exit through which his uncomplicated thoughts could escape up into the air, and away. Without a body – without the natural state his soul had taken – his thoughts wandered easy. They were fleeing, evacuating, from the ruins.
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It was not yet Christmas day – it was his first and only December wake, bar a few hours on Christmas day, that he had always expected to spend alone and in silence. But it was close. The nurses rushed his exam, they rushed their perfectly rehearsed script, tripping over lines of dialogue and not even catching themselves when they called him something that wasn't his own name – Lee, Carver, Ben, Isha, Mr Nathans – too ecstatic at the prospect of fleeing the dreary place to spend time with their families. He picked this up, and as best as he could, slurred from drugs, he tried to tell them short, one-sentence stories to try and get them to stay, like an elderly man recites war tales to stop his children from abandoning him.
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None listened, eyes trained on the door. They worked half as slow and exited before they were supposed to. One nurse left a plate on his arm jammed into the one above it, creaking if he so much as budged. It stayed like that for hours, aching, making his eyes water, unable to call for help with his voice weaker than late winter ice. One had turned the TV on to try and cover his groaned attempts of contact up, poking the volume a little higher, higher still. He couldn't hear the duvet shift above him, or the soft scratch of hair against his pillow. But he waited, eyes never taking a long break from the door: they will be here soon. You won't spend this Christmas alone!
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Buzzing reception became a game. He needed to hear their names and know they were on their way. After six or so alerts, they kindly bocked him access, and threw him a link on the holo to a small, 10 minute long adventure game about a caterpillar searching for food, trying to become a butterfly. It was the best they could find on the database on such sort notice that wasn't ESPUS powered. He played it over and over, failing over and over. The humour was for children, the mechanics for the elderly. He was not supposed to be here, he was not supposed to be dead. Dying was not for the middle ground – that was for the old or the unexpected.
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The sun was sinking. Today someone had to come. It was Christmas, and his expiration date was out. This time, at least, he would not be alone. He would not be cold, or sad. There would be friends and family, the culmination of his years trials to find acceptance. They would decorate his room and the walls would ring with their laughter, and they might not give him things but that was okay. Having their presence would be enough, to have the room warm with their being so he could dwell in the friendship they offered. So the light could drive away the dark, and for a few hours nothing would hurt any more.
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But it still hurt. The light was dying, drowning behind the horizon, particles shattering against the glass. He stared at the door, on edge, whining, praying, crying without feeling the tears fall down. Just a few minutes with someone who cared. Just a second card for the bedside table. A tiny tree. A kiss. A hug. Something.
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But nobody came.
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Laying in the dark, the night shift just beginning, Isaiah imagined tiny cars racing through the tiles of the ceiling, or electricity running through wires, or streets from above. He had not given enough, he'd not kept quiet enough to warrant affection. They would – and had – gone elsewhere, or stayed put, no second thoughts. Their lives were their own, and he had been selfish to insert himself into it, knowing what was to come. Wherever anybody had gone, their interest in him far less voluminous and sincere than he had ever predicted, was unknown to him. In his exhilaration to have company in the game – the prospect of human interaction in reality that did not feel like latex and too many broken hearts -, to be recovering old feelings and people, anything but himself had been alien, and now he was paying the price.
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Something about him had worn them down so fast, so soon. His urgency, his clingyness. It was the same mistake he'd made before, but now time was running out, he had pushed too far. Tried too hard. He closed his eyes and let it out, tears rolling, stomach aching. It was over. His final Christmas would be spent alone, and it was entirely his fault.
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Still nobody came.
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The doctor and patient outside continued to wallow. Though the doctor's eyes were red and swollen, the patient – who had introduced himself as Adam – was still. He had seen and felt many others pass in this building. Sensitive to the souls of others, the pain such a young one felt horrified him. It was a wounded spirit, riddled with gashes and gangrened scars were stitches had been half-applied and then ripped out. He saw a hare. Brown fur fell away in clumps, a back leg mangled and poised above the floor, both ears broken and torn to the base. The creature dragged itself forward.
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Adam lifted his chin and let the image fade, replaced with the dull grey of the door in a dim corridor. As night approached the nurses were few and far between, and the doctors became reclusive entities that seemed to stalk the hallways, cursed by the burden of saving these souls or seeing them into the next life. With a sole exception.
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Palm pressed against the door, the doctor bowed her head. Pushing away, she took a deep breath and backed away. Adam stood alone in the corridor before the haunted room. The door was still unlocked, and without a glance he wandered inside. The air was hot and thick, the room full with the swift, rapid breathing of its patient. The hill of the blanket where the patient's body was had become a slope. When Isaiah shifted and groaned, screws and plates fell over the side of the bed. The left side of his face became unresponsive, eye half-lidded and mouth slack. The other side was tense, screwed up and covered in deep lines.
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Adam sat.
“Oh you poor creature...what has the world done to you?” He took the boys hand in his and squeezed.
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Isaiah's functioning eye peered across at the stranger. The piercing amber of his iris had dulled, becoming a light brown. Lips were red with blood, trickling down the side of his mouth and curving around his cheekbone and ear and onto the pillow.
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“Expecting someone else?”[break][break]
After a few minutes of silence, his lips twitching to try and form words, chest quivering trying to fill with air with which to speak, he finally managed to push the words out.
“Ex....pect....ting.....friends....fam...ily.” Head turned away to face the window, the curves of his cheek and nose and chin illuminated gold and red. A jewel sparkled on the highest curve, before falling from view.
“No....one....came.”[break][break]
The stranger nodded, running his thumb across the back of the boys hand. However much he was made of metal, he could feel the life ebbing away. No dying person was so still or so hard of speaking. The boy was in pain, and morphine could not fend of the deep, dagger aching that engulfed his body. But it was not causing him tears – the pain was a signal he was still alive for now. No, the tears were falling out of a desperation to not be alone. Desperation that he could somehow survive. That somewhere in the future he would be able to resume life, resume living again.
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“Are you ready?”[break][break]
“N...no.”[break][break]
“Readiness is not something you feel. It is something you commit.” He leaned forward and reached to pull Isaiah's gaze back to him, palm gentle against the wet cheek of the teenager. Chewing his bottom lip, all Adam could see was a shadow. Deep inside he was afraid this child would not be able to accept, and the spirit would be lost. But with so little love in the cyborg's eyes, Adam resigned. The boy had been badly mistreated, and now his heart was unable to function.
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More pieces fell to the floor, and when Isaiah closed his eyes, Adam got up and left.
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He cannot cry any more – he cannot move. His body is broken. His spirit doesn't want to cling on to life but some divine will deep inside his ghosted heart won't let him accept death. As the next involuntary spasm wrack through his brain, he goes under. It is an infinite amount of time, and when he wakes the night has fallen completely. The light pollution bleeds and tonight he cannot count the stars. He cannot count them and sleep through his final hours.
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But he can't see, anyway. His eyes are ruined, the internal fluids boiled and burst, streams of black roll down his face, fading into grey, then they merge with the black plates of his neck. The pain has overtaken the morphine now, the ache is everywhere. With every minute he feels the plates, the screws, the ligaments, the tendons, push away. Come undone. Under the pain hides numbness, paralysis. His lips twitch in tiny seizures, one eye bolted open that burns as it dries.
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On top of his hand is a larger, warmer hand. Slightly rough, but gentle. Where it touches there is no pain. With his one half-functioning eye he is unable to make out a face, only a plume of dark hair, but the aura is strong and regretful. It is one he has come to know well. But there is no way he can give Reuben Maddison any confirmation that he knows he is there. His vocal cords have collapsed completely, except when he scream or cries. Words don't form on his weak tongue.
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This is all he has for his finale – one man, whose life he is sure he has ruined. There is so much he owes this one man. Even if he could, asking him for one last act of mercy would be too much to plead for. Turn the dial up. A little higher. 6, 7, 8, 10. Lethal and painless. But...would it even be in the doctor's morals? Would he even admit defeat, even now, when death was standing at the foot of Isaiah's bed. It was better that he couldn't ask, better that way.
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His entire body shuddered, a long, pained wheeze dripping from his wet lips as his chest cavity collapsed. The core flickered, and hummed into silence. In his ears was nothing but the pressure of the ocean. If Maddison was crying, he couldn't hear it. If cars were honking in the city below, it was nothing but background ambience threaded through nausea.
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It was him, and a stranger who had dedicated his work to saving the life of one child. Who had constantly told him he was strong enough, that he was almost there, that it would be over soon. The finish line was indeed fast approaching, as the convulsions had faded from wild, animal thrashing to shudders and purring and twitching.
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His good eyes shut, finally. His breathing was slower, lighter, each exhale spilling more and more fractured pieces up into the air, into the sky. The monitors went berserk. Seismic brain activity. Everything was going haywire. Flashes of faces, over and over he saw them. Hands extended, retracted. Smiles turning to frowns. He saw them making promises, when behind their backs their fingers were crossed all along. What friends. What family. All he had was one doctor to sit by his bedside as he died. The cold flashes of that one final Christmas alone, with the only present he'd received he now wore into the doors of oblivion. The silence was screeching. The television clambering over his desperate plea for company, the pillow absorbing every tear that fell for every minute of every hour. How silly he had been, after all.
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In his heart, something replaced the fear, the muddled acceptance. It made death retreat. The face kept flashing, their deceitful grins searing into the only conscious part of him left. Their lives, so liveable, their situations so full of hope, their relationships so knitted and close. Their for each other. In hardship, they would never be alone.
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They would never know this, and he loathed it.
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The Big One knocked down every door, a flood of emotions – the superego torn down and barriers destroyed. Nothing was left, not remorse, not hope, not love. As his fragile brain pounded inside his skull, body writhing and metal screaming against metal, only a single thought was spared. Dark and destitute.
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Betrayal.
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Out of his mouth came a final cry, before Isaiah fell back, still. Broken, but not yet gone. In the wake of hatred, of absolute loathing, his heart held out. His soul was shattered into a million pieces, death's open palm willing it forward into nothingness.
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But it refused.
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