Kiss and Die

Chapter 53

Mann went to the hospital and sat in the chair by Tammy’s bed. He watched the nurses come and go, checking on their patient. The machines breathed for her. The drips fed into her system. Pouches of blood hung from hooks. Mann looked at her and wondered what she was dreaming of. Mann’s dreams scared him. He was too frightened to fall asleep any more. He was frightened to be alone. He felt he belonged to the life of shadows more than ever. Nothing made him happy. Everything brought him a heavy burden. He hadn’t smiled in a long time. He hadn’t had a good sleep for weeks. Mann had so many snapshots of hell locked into his brain that he could barely contain them. When he slept, someone let them out. He longed to run on the top of a mountain range, to lift his head and feel the icy wind cut into his lungs. He longed to be free of the burden of knowing too much, feeling too much. He closed his eyes briefly. He listened to the comforting sound of the machines. He didn’t want to go home. Home was where his heart had been broken. Home was where he didn’t belong.

His body felt heavy. He listened to the sounds of voices in the corridor outside and was comforted by the noise, the odd shout, laugh, whispered concerns and the swish of a uniform, the rolling of trolley wheels. Now, in the quiet of the room, listening to the comforting electronic beep of Tammy’s heart, he felt safe enough to close his eyes and try to sleep. He tried to find that mental paradise – once it had been a white sand beach, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves, feeling the sun on his face and the breeze over his skin. He and Helen dreamed of escaping to a beach hut somewhere. That was in the early days of their relationship. That was when Mann had let his guard down and Helen had found the cracks in his armour. But it hadn’t lasted and over the five years they were together by the end, they were almost strangers again, come full circle. Helen knew it was over, that’s why she had pushed so hard to go to the next stage in their relationship: marriage, kids. The more she pushed, albeit gently, the more Mann realized it was never going to be for him. The more she loved him the more trapped he felt. It was then that he realized he wasn’t someone who would find happiness through loving another. He was irrevocably damaged.

He was just a scrawny eighteen-year-old, when the men held him back and forced him to watch his father’s execution. His father had taken twenty minutes to die as each man aimed his cleaver and felled his father like a tree. The last blow split his skull. Mann had been as helpless as a baby to stop it happening. The men had left him weeping. He had crawled on his hands and knees to his father, and cradled his bloody body. Mann had scars in his heart and soul that would never heal, no matter how much Helen tried. So Mann had let her go when she called his bluff. He had let her leave when she said it was now or never. He hadn’t realized the taxi would take her to hell.

He sat back in the chair and willed sleep to come. He felt his body become heavy, his muscles released their tension. Mann’s dreams were often in English. But his dreams were nightmares in any language. The background noise of the corridor outside filtered in as dull lullaby, comforting, droning and then it stopped resisting and let the muscles go and Mann drifted into an uneasy sleep. He found himself back with Helen. She was laughing, smiling. For a few seconds he was so happy to see her face and then her expression changed. Mann couldn’t wake up. He was caught in hell with her. He was twisting with pain. His head was inside the hood. He was with Helen. Her voice was his. Her screams coming out of his own mouth. From outside the darkness he heard two men talking. Mann had always believed he killed the man who took the last breath from Helen until now.

‘Sir?’

He was awakened, startled by a nurse staring into his face. He could smell her starchy uniform, hear it crackle. It was light in the room.

‘Any change?’

The nurse turned away and went back over to check on Tammy. She changed her drip and set up a new bag of blood and saline. She moved around the bed with a hypnotic calmness, a precision that Mann could have watched for hours. Her tasks were executed in sequence, in silence. Her hands moved, her starchy uniform touched the bed and creased. Her eyes watched and her ears listened. She shook her head as she finished taking Tammy’s obs.

‘She’s holding on,’ she said with that look of sympathy that Mann knew well. It said, you should go; there are worse times to come, go and get some rest. Mann knew she was right but he also knew that he had scores to settle first.