Chapter Text
Death had always waited in the wings of his life, ready to make a grand entrance. Lockwood had thought he would greet it as his leading lady when the big moment arrived – with a kiss on the hand, an ironical bow, a sardonic and faintly self-mocking smile. He had thought about it too much perhaps, or maybe not enough. At any rate, none of his imaginings had prepared him for this, for the sheer nothing of it all. To be dying on a fucking nothing job, for a nothing of a mistake by a nothing of a Rotwell agent – it was bitter beyond belief. He thought the bitterness of it might be killing him more than the footlong piece of rebar he was impaled on.
No. No, it was definitely the rebar. He craned his head to look at it and then just as quickly let his head drop. He couldn’t bear it, the obscenity of the gory protrusion, smeared with his blood and he didn’t dare think what else. The worst of it all was that it was probably keeping him alive for now, keeping the blood more or less where it ought to be. Oh God, oh God, it was going to take him hours to die. He sobbed convulsively, and the motion triggered a shockwave of pain from his abdomen that obliterated his every thought.
Static and darkness reigned for a while. Was this death? Surely death hurt less than this. Floating absently somewhere above the pain, he thought he heard voices calling. Those Rotwell kids maybe. He wondered vaguely if they had ever found the source and whether they would be found at fault in the inquest into his death. He hoped so; George and Holly would need the insurance payout. George. Genuine consciousness started to intrude again and with it, the guilt. Towering, monstrous shame, like a sensitive child might feel, a child that thinks every scolding is the end of its life. Only this was the end of his life and George would be so angry – he would think Lockwood had done this on purpose, gone charging in recklessly, disregarding his safety, his friends. But I didn’t do it, he wanted to cry. It wasn’t my fault this time, really it wasn’t.
Death approached. He thought he could hear her measured, echoing footsteps, the soft rustle of her cloak. And even though he had never been so destroyed, so desperate, so desolate, still he didn’t ask for mercy. The possibility never even occurred to him.
* * *
In ten years on the frontlines of the Problem, the medic had watched many people die. She knew the patterns of death, knew well the tremors that signalled its imminent arrival. She couldn’t see ghosts anymore, but she could still certainly call herself haunted. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the gore, the rent flesh and the broken bodies that kept her awake at night. It was the reactions of the dying that were seared into her memory.
Death took people in different ways: after all, there were as many ways of dying as there were people. Some panicked, some raged. Some subsided into it with a horrifying air of relief. And some, curiously enough, were ashamed. They wouldn’t meet her eyes or answer questions; they blushed when their injuries were examined. They cried as death drew closer and wasted precious energy in trying to hide their tears. It was a most mysterious reaction, but she had a theory about it. She thought that perhaps these people were used to being strong in life – or maybe just intensely private. Death was the great leveller; there was no armour that could hide you when your guts were literally spilling out for the world to see. And for some people, the shocking, involuntary intimacy of being seen in this most vulnerable moment was more unbearable than the very loss of their own lives.
The boy in the suit was one of those – although in truth, he was so still that she thought he was already dead to begin with. He had been blown backwards by a bomb flare that some young idiot of an agent had thrown in complete disregard for the confined space and the dangerous debris littering the half-ruined house they were clearing. Now he lay sprawled and unmoving on a pile of rubble, a steel spike sticking out of his abdomen. But then she knelt beside him, and his eyelids fluttered slightly.
“Hello,” said the medic in her most soothing tones. “Can you hear me?”
The boy didn’t respond, but he turned his face away and tried to cover the spike with his long, slim hands, which she took for confirmation that he was aware of her presence. She tried again.
“Can you tell me your name?”
His mouth pressed into a thin line, as though the sound of her voice was causing more pain than the metal bar in his gut.
“I’m going to have to move your hands,” she said, as gently as she could, and that finally got a response.
“Please don’t.” His voice was barely a whisper. It probably hurt him to talk. “Please go away.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
The boy’s fingers tightened on the bar, and the medic grimaced. She turned and nodded to her partner, who nodded back. He was a grizzled older man, who’d spent most of his life watching kids die like this every night. He didn’t like it any more than she did.
They sedated the boy and strapped his arms to his sides, but there was only so much the drugs could do, and besides, he urgently needed surgery. No one wanted to interfere with the anesthesiologist’s work. They cut his coat off him, got the stretcher and the gauze ready, and crouched on either side of him. The medic tried one last time.
“What’s your name, sir?” she asked again.
The boy screwed his eyes shut tightly.
“George?” he murmured questioningly.
It wasn’t clear whether he was answering her or calling out to someone, but the medic went with it. Sometimes these kids were hiding from someone or something. He wouldn’t be the first to give her a fake name.
“All right, George,” she said. “We’re going to lift you now. Count of three. One, two –”
Of course, they lifted before the countdown ended. It was an old trick, not giving the patient time to tense up fully. All the same, his scream was an awful, tearing sound, one she knew she would hear again when she next tried to sleep.
Then came the really bad part. They held the patient between them at a slight angle so that they could access his front and back at the same time, and packed the entry and exit wounds with gauze. He gasped and sobbed desperately, then mercifully passed out.
The ride to the hospital had never seemed so endlessly long. With every second that ticked past, his chances got slimmer. The one saving grace was that he didn’t seem to really be aware of his surroundings any more, although he did babble frequently under his breath. The medic leaned close to listen; if he had family, she might be able to offer them his last words as a comfort. It was mostly too slurred and faint to hear, but she caught the odd thing. “George” was repeated often, in that same questioning tone as though calling for someone. Probably not his own name then. “Holly” came up too a few times, and then, as his strength really started to fade, and she had to strain and strain for every word, he began to say “Luce” and “please” and then “sorry.” That last seemed to be a fixation.
“Sorry,” he said, over and over, until he lost consciousness completely. “Sorry, ‘m sorry. Sorry.”