Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (5 page)

From within the darkness overtaking him he heard the stranger speak.

“I’m sorry, Jonathan. This was never how I planned us meeting. You aren’t prepared, but you must bear this.”

CHAPTER FIVE

SATURDAY | JUNE 18, 2005 | 05:45 AM

THEY
sat silently in the hospital waiting room. Collin, still wide eyed, stared at the plain white wall across from them. Beside him, Hayden sat with his head bobbing above his knees as he studied the blood on his shoes. He’d been stroking the hair on his lip since they’d sat down twenty minutes ago.

Losing the staring contest with the wall, Collin returned to reality and slapped Hayden’s hand to remind him to stop fidgeting with his beard.

“I can’t get it out of my head,” Hayden said.

They hadn’t spoken about it, not since sitting down. Both had felt so useless in the house. They had managed to call 911, but only after a considerably long delay. The police and ambulance had shown up and taken Jonathan immediately to the hospital.

Hayden had wrapped him in a towel. Jonathan had been a distant stammering mess before he’d gone damn near catatonic, and all they’d been able to think to do for him was put him in a towel. Collin still shivered at the look Jonathan had had in his eyes, like his friend had been trapped in some infinite loop as he desperately sought to work something out in his head, but was so traumatized he couldn’t make sense of anything. When they had tried to ask him what happened, he could hardly speak.

“I don’t, don’t know. Hospital. Gotta take me now,” Jonathan had mumbled, without really looking at them, his eyes darting around the room like a cornered animal.

Playing it back now, hearing Jonathan’s confused and frightened voice in his head, Collin’s skin went cold. The image, the way his roommate clutched at his chest, unable to stop shaking, to get control, Collin wanted the whole disturbing memory wiped from his mind.

They had taken Hayden’s car and followed the ambulance to the hospital. The scene at the house had sobered them, though they likely shouldn’t have been driving. The ride was short and they had hardly spoken in the car. Their communication had been limited to the exchange of worried glances as Hayden tried to call Paige on his cell phone. She hadn’t picked up.

“Should we try her again?” Hayden asked.

“No, she probably won’t see her thirty missed calls till her and the Meathead wake up,” Collin said.

“Should we call his mom or something?” Hayden said.

Collin had thought about it for a moment and then responded “I don’t have the number, do you?”

Some more time passed before Collin asked the question they were both thinking.

“What the hell could have happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” Hayden said. “There was so much blood. I didn’t think a person could lose that much blood.”

“He must have been in shock right?” Collin asked.

Hayden shrugged.

“Without knowing what happened, he could have been like that for two minutes or twenty before we got home.”

The police had questioned both of them for a statement, but they knew so little. When they had returned home they hadn’t entered immediately. Since leaving the bar they could speak of nothing other than rebooting the New Testament. They’d sat on the porch brainstorming about it for five minutes before even going inside.

The floor had been slick. Collin had nearly slipped in the dark the moment they entered. When Hayden flipped on the light in the kitchen they saw that the pitcher of water from the refrigerator was lying on its side on the linoleum. Then they had noticed that the water was more pink than clear. Finally they had seen Jonathan’s foot from around the corner of the kitchen’s center island.

Collin remembered thinking that he must have underestimated how much Jonathan had drank if he’d dropped a pitcher full of Kool-Aid, neglected to clean it up, and then fell asleep on the kitchen floor. They had both been giggling at the sight until they had turned the corner and found that they had grossly misjudged the situation.

The reality had been like taking a crowbar to the face.

Jonathan laid face up on the linoleum. His pants and shoes were still on, but his shirt had been torn off the front of him. The remnants of the shirt sleeves were still attached to him. His entire chest was red with blood, his jeans saturated with it. He was in a puddle that had spread so far it had mixed with the water from the pitcher. His face looked like someone had taken a can of red spray paint across it.

For a moment neither of them had moved. Their feet were like iron weights anchoring them to the floor as they tried to process what they saw in front of them. When Jonathan’s body finally took a long labored breath they’d snapped back into the moment, stopped trying to understand and rushed to find some way to help.

They had been forced to kneel in the puddle surrounding their friend, desperately yelling his name. They’d felt the blood, cold from the linoleum, seeping into their clothes and covering their hands as they searched for some way to help him, both frantically looking for the injury where it had all come from.

“Jonathan! Can you hear me? What happened?”

“Jesus! Where is he hurt! Where is the blood coming from?”

Until he’d been put in the machine, Jonathan hadn’t been able to close his eyes without seeing the blond man’s face, the needle, the blood on linoleum.

The loud noise of the equipment was dampened by the ear plugs. He’d never been in an MRI. On television the machines had always appeared loud, uncomfortable, and claustrophobic. Jonathan didn’t feel any of those things. He found the cocoon of metal safe, the dulled white noise soothing, each a layer of buffer between him and reality.

As a child he’d often fallen asleep to the sprinkler systems running outside his bedroom window. When the water would stop, the abrupt end of the noise would wake him from sleep and leave him feeling like he’d been abandoned. The repetitive sound was just as comforting now as an adult, but the MRI would only provide this retreat for a short time. It gave him something to focus on, something to hold his panic at bay.

No one knew anything yet. The doctors, the police, not even Hayden and Collin could help piece together the moments between losing consciousness and waking in the puddle.

Jonathan had felt their distrust of his story. All that blood with no wound; it left too many unanswered questions. They hadn’t said it, but their eyes gave them away as he tried to explain. Whenever he said he couldn’t remember, that he’d been unconscious, the look of skepticism flashing through their thoughts was poorly hidden. At least they kept their opinions to themselves until the facts had been gathered.

He couldn’t blame them for it. Overwhelming fear was the worst lens to observe a situation through. It rendered the observer’s memory untrustworthy. He heard the words come out of his own mouth and knew his response would have been the same. Jonathan himself questioned what he remembered, doubted it. He found himself leaving out details as they seemed impossible.

Until he’d been made to lie still in the machine he hadn’t really been given enough time alone to try and process it for himself, without an audience, to reconstruct events in a manner that made any sense. He struggled to build a timeline in his head. Alcohol, physical and psychological trauma, drugged sedation, all allied against him to create a fog of uncertainty over everything he thought he remembered.

He had dreamed.

He was a child, sometime near his ninth birthday. He was riding in the passenger seat of a pickup truck, a blue Ford Ranger that belonged to his father. He’d remembered the smell and feel of the plastic canvas car seat, so distinct, not like leather or upholstery. His father drove, he’d tuned the radio to the same oldies station he always had when Jonathan was young.

The truck itself betrayed that he was dreaming. It had been totaled in the wreck that took his father’s life. He’d taken this drive with his father as a child.

The dash was too high and he had to push against his seat belt to try and see the road in front of them. He’d forgotten that about childhood. The repeated struggle to see what was happening right in front of him, whether it was because he was being sheltered from it by his parents, or just because he was too damn short to see over the dash.

Perspective, literally and figuratively, was gained with age.

It was early morning, and as they drove he’d asked his father why cats meowed and dogs barked. His father took the question seriously enough, not blowing Jonathan off, not getting impatient at the question of a child that seemed obvious.

“Everything just does what it can,” Douglas said.

To Jonathan the statement only begged more questions.

“Why can’t cats bark?”

His father smiled, taking his eyes off the road for a moment.

“Why can’t you talk out of your ears? Things are all born able to do certain things, and the parts they’re born with have limits. Cats aren’t born to bark, dogs aren’t born to purr.”

That had given Jonathan something to think about for a while and some time passed before he’d spoken again.

“Can I have a dog, Dad?” Jonathan asked.

His father had sighed as the real reason for his son’s questions was revealed. He looked out the driver’s side window quietly for a few moments, thinking of how to respond.

“Son, sometimes wanting something is better than having it,” he said, clearly amused with himself.

What Douglas found funny at the time had been lost on Jonathan. His eye’s fell to his lap while he pondered, but when he looked back to argue, his attention was drawn away by abrupt changes in his surroundings; changes that didn’t belong in the memory.

The daylight seemed to fade away quickly, as though the hours were moving forward at an unnatural speed, pushing them into the onset of night. The weather grew turbulent, rain beginning to pound the windshield as they drove. Douglas squinted through the window, turning on the wipers but no longer able to see the road clearly in front of them. The radio cut out, the music replaced with the static of dead air.

Suddenly his father turned to him, taking his eyes off the road. Douglas’ face had become so serious, as though they were having a conversation about life and death, not cats and dogs. It gave Jonathan a chill to see such a sudden change in the way his father looked at him.

“It’s got to be close, Jonathan, so close death can’t tell you apart.”

Unsure what his father was telling him, Jonathan starred back at a loss for what to say. Before he had the chance to ask for an explanation, the speakers blared to life, as though the radio had tuned itself to a new station. No music followed, only a voice that brought a rise of panic inside him.

“I’m sorry Jonathan. The selection process is not always clear. I don’t know that you are right for this,”
said the voice of his attacker.
“You’ll know what to do. I’ll be there to help you, when it comes. Follow your—”

Whatever the blond man had been saying had faded out. Jonathan’s mind had shut down completely. Not even a dream could persist.

Waking from those drug induced depths had been slow, fragmented.

He didn’t immediately remember what had happened and at first it was just unpleasant sensations. The floor he was on felt wrong. Cool and hard against his back, not comfortable like a mattress should be. He was damp. His eyes were shut but the darkness had retreated, and he’d become aware of light hitting the surface of his closed lids. His thoughts had become more lucid.

Did I get sick drinking? Did I sleep on the bathroom floor?
He had heard his name over and over again as if it were far away.

“Jonathan! Jonathan!”

He thought he recognized the voices. He could hear their panic, but had still been too distant to share in their fear.

Are Hayden and Collin yelling for me?
He’d thought.

Why did they sound so upset, so desperate? He’d felt like he should wake up, see what the problem was, but he couldn’t open his eyes. He was caught between states, and couldn’t will himself back to consciousness. He’d remembered that he didn’t want to wake up, that he didn’t want what waited for him in the waking world. He just couldn’t remember why.

There had been something wrong with his chest.
He’d remembered that the muscles felt like they had fallen asleep. They tingled with the pins and needles that came with lack of blood flow. A sensation he’d had in his limbs, but never his chest.