The Day Is Gone [Doc and Dominique]

[Dominique]

Dominique was in a haze of what she never felt before. Fear was clearly at the top capping a mountain of emotions that she was not sure she could get a handle on like Doc was demanding. She was wrapped up in what they would wear if an emergency was happening and just as Doc was done tying whatever it was she growled looking at a nurse who was coming at her with something else.

“Get the **** away from me!” She went to the sink while her eyes followed the nurse turning on her bootie covered shoes and back out the door.

Dominique washed up mirroring Doc’s pattern he went through doing what he had asked of her. Her jaw was so tight it ached. It was the only thing she could do to keep the burning in her eyes from drawing out the tears she had never allowed to fall since went to pick up Tavi that fateful morning. The best friend she ever had was gone before she could do anything to stop her from leaving the world she had promised to keep her safe in. It all was so much to absorb. There was no way Kenlie was going anywhere except back home to Vita Bella. She would get bandaged up, taken care of and when she was better her *** kicked for whatever it was that happened. There was nothing that they couldn’t make it through. They found each other against the odds and nothing was going to change that now. She shook the water off her hands.

Kenlie. Dominique was going to go in there and it would be some bad dream. She would not need the gloves. Her mind told her this as she stepped around Doc and went forward in her steps and started slamming the double doors open to see what she wanted to see. Kenlie laughing so hard and pulling one over her. Anything else would not be acceptable. **** life and **** happening. Nothing could touch Kenlie. She expected the world to hold the same promise she asked of Doc in return for her keeping hers to him.

[Kenlie (DELETED 4989)]

Cold hands, covered in blue latex. Needles piercing her veins. The distant hum of the respirator. She didn’t feel or hear any of it; or maybe she did, but she put up a wall between her thoughts and the chaos that was happening outside of her body. She didn’t want to be out there, alert and afraid of what was impending. But at the same time, she didn’t want to be in her own head, either.

Gunshots. It’s an odd thing, hearing them for the first time. There’s that moment where you wonder what you just heard: was it a muffler backfiring, a firecracker? But then you hear it again, and the reality quickly starts to sink in, much like the feeling in your gut. Tight, so tight and twisted up like you’re on a rollercoaster. The adrenaline kicks in, then--and before you know it, you’re frantically scrambling for somewhere to go, something to do. Fight or flight. Kenlie, the little firecracker that she was, chose option A.

She only had a knife. ‘Angel’, she called it, with its wings engraved into the beautiful steel and a blade sharp enough to cut through human skin like it was melted butter. She only knew this because that night, she killed for her first time. With nothing but red in her vision (was it blood, or was it anger?) she ran, tackled one of the males into the pavement and slammed him face-first against it until the crunching of cartilage and bone turned into a wet slap. Then, no holds barred, she grabbed Angel’s handle and slammed that blade through the back of the man’s skull with every ounce of force she could muster. At first, it was like carving through meat; then when the sharpness met bone, she gave a harsh tug to dislodge the knife. Then she repeated the process again, and again, and again…

[Doc]

Doc gave the Nurse a look that said, ‘let it go’ when Dominique barked at her. The nurse nodded, she had seen that reaction before. From the look in the nurse’s eyes, Doc knew it wasn’t good news. He looked over at the corner of the room and the nurse nodded, as they headed there. Their voices were hushed and solemn as the nurse informed him there would be no heart for Kenlie. Her body was too broken, her spot on the transplant list too low down. Even if they had a heart, the odds of her making it through the grueling operation was only about thirty percent. The organ bank said they just couldn’t risk a viable heart for such low odds.

Doc pressed his lips together into a grim line. Odds. It all came down to the odds. How many times had he given that same excuse to a family? That the reason their loved one had to die, was based on the odds of survival. But now he was faced with telling Minx, that she was going to lose her sister .. based on the odds. He asked the nurse to clear the room, to let the sisters have their last few moments together without interruption. The nurse drew in a long breath and nodded as she slowly let it out. It was just as hard for the professionals as it was for the families at times. They didn’t want to give up anymore than the families wanted them to, but in this case, it was futile. Best to let the girls have their moment.

[Dominique]

As the nurse spoke Dominique’s mind raced beyond what was said. She would find a heart. **** it all. She would find several. Her masterblade would. For the first time she would be willing to do the unthinkable to change everything that was being discussed with such a defeating and final tone. The world could go to hell for all she cared. She was no savior. The nurse looked healthy. Her eyes that were usually wide and warm narrowed as they met the woman’s chest where a heart was beating beneath. Suddenly Dominique was bargaining in her mind in the most sinful ways. How good of a person was this nurse that spoke behind the mask on her face? Did she deserve her next heart beat as much as Kenlie did her own?

Dominique stepped away when she felt what was rearing its dark head. A part of her that was prepared to make everything right. Stop all of this in its dismal tracks. The odds were with Kenlie from day one. The nurse was talking out of her ***. She didn’t know Kenlie at all. Dominique knew it standing there. There were two choices not just one. The one the nurse spoke of...just letting her go was not an option. Her eyes didn’t burn anymore and her aching jaw parted with the opening of her own lips. It would be up to her to make things right as much as they ever could be with what she needed to do.

Dominique swallowed hard and made her way across the room. A soft hiss followed her across the sterile white floor of the room as she made her way to where Kenlie was. There she found her in a what appeared to be a web of tubes and monitors blinking and beeping. She glared at the numbers she didn’t understand the significance of, her hand reached out and felt the fading warmth of the tattooed skin beneath her own fingertips.

[Kenlie (DELETED 4989)]

The girl felt someone touch her, and even though it was invisible it was somehow just as tangible as the tears dripping down her cheeks. It was 10:18 PM on the sixth of October, 2014, and her sister was holding her hand in a hospital room.

Back on the ninth of June in 2009, it was a friend grabbing her arms to pull her away from the wreckage she’d created. It wasn’t until she was twisted away that her eyes finally met the mess of another corpse. One she didn’t want to see. One she refused to believe was real, even as she was reliving it in her dreams five years later.

Her fingers twitched in Dominique’s grasp.

Ray’s head was like a Fruit Gusher; his beautiful mind splattered across the pavement, his blood still dripping from the exit wound at the top of his skull. Her heart wrenched and she felt so sick that she dry heaved on the spot, but nothing but sobs came up. Even in such a low, pitiful state, the strongest hands weren’t strong enough to keep her away from him.

Kenlie wrenched herself free and fell onto her knees. Despite her hands being unsure, she brushed the pads of her fingers across the front of his flannel shirt, from where the top buttons were undone to his abdomen. His chest lay open to show where her initials were inked into his skin. KS.

Guttural sobs clawed their way from her throat as she hunched herself across her lover’s body and finally found the soaked hair on top of his head, once greased back with gel, now absolutely matted by brain matter and vitae. Her chest felt like it might burst right then, because when she kissed his lips, soft and pleading, again and again… there was nothing. Not the happy murmur of her name, not the scent of menthols on his tongue, not his breath on her lips. Nothing.

She cursed, and then she begged him to wake up.

“Ray, please… Please, please, baby...”

After that, Kenlie prayed. For her heart to stop, right then, right now, because she didn’t think she could go on another minute. Not without him. Not without his smile, his warm voice, or the sensation of his thumb tracing her lips.

“Let me go with him.”

And just like that, her heart gave up just a little more.

[Doc]

Doc turned the heart monitor volume off, that last thing Dominique needed to hear, was her sister’s heart dying. Kenlie’s heartbeats were getting slower and slower. The heart monitor screen showed the heartbeat spikes getting further and further apart. An intern was already unhooking the IV bag. “Give her a ******* minute..” He hissed at the intern. Doc pushed the remaining intern out and shut the door.

Turning, Doc took his mask off and said quietly, “You will only have a few minutes before they come and want to get her ready for the morgue.” He absently rearranged the surgical tray, and checked Kenlie’s IV line. He had rushed the intern out before he was done removing the line. He looked pointedly at Minx, then at the IV line while he rolled the clamp back and forth, opening and closing the line. “I’ll keep them out.. while you say goodbye..” He walked to the door, and said quietly, “She lost a lot of blood in the accident…” He slipped out, and stood watch by the door.

[Dominique]

Dominique watched Doc leave and now she felt that pull between them tighten like a noose around her own neck. He owed her and she should have been able at that moment to ask him to make this right, to fix it. She would give the rest of whatever she had left to bargain with. But he already promised and he already did everything she asked for her word in turn. HOPE reached out shaking as the chipped blue polished fingertips disappeared beneath the dark hair that framed the sweetest face she couldn’t allow to leave her. Her jaw tightened again as she looked over to the scalpel on the tray. Her fingers left Kenlie’s hair and she leaned down and brushed her dry lips across the cooling cheek.

“I promised you I would never let you go. Forgive me but this is the only option.” Dominique pressed her lips to her cheek as her hand curled around the sterile blade. If there was any other way she would stop then and there but there wasn’t. Dominique was not going to say good bye. Kenlie was going home where she belonged.

There were no tears. No need for a single one. Dominique bargained it all out back when the nurse was chattering away like it was a done deal with the tone of one who could control the universe. This was the second option. When you love someone and can save them from harm and permanent loss, you do. You fight, you stand strong and if need be, you bleed. The sharp edge arrived in a smooth sweep across the inside of Dominique’s left wrist. The burn was nothing compared to the sight of her dark blood rising quickly to the surface filling the space between the deep divide of her skin. It was going to save her. Keep her from leaving.

The black fluid from Dominique’s severed veins surfaced. She ignored it. Instead she pulled the tape that helped keep the tubing in Kenlie’s mouth. It was no longer needed. Next she tugged out the tube that was in the way from saving her. Black beads started floating and now the realization of what she was doing hit her. No other option. She told herself this as she placed her wrist over the blue-gray lips of the sister she was not willing to say goodbye to.

“Please…” Dominique whispered against Kenlie’s ear. “Don’t leave.”

Dominique wrapped her hand around her sliced wrist and squeezed hard. No matter how much it hurt, how fragile her own bones were now becoming she squeezed.

“Kenlie!” She growled.

[Kenlie (DELETED 4989)]

“Kenlie!”

Her friend was shouting to get her attention, but she couldn’t muster up any will to move, let alone lift her head away from Ray’s chest.

“Kenlie, we have to go!”

Tires screeched across the asphalt as the rival parties fled the scene, in fear of their life, for jail time -- a few of them even had fear for what they’d done. But it wasn’t enough. The girl shook her head over and over, murmuring soft Spanish beneath her breath, against Ray’s exposed skin, against her initials.

“No te dejare ir.”

The words came out more hoarse than she’d expected, or remembered. It was like she’d swallowed something whole, and now she sounded like death herself. Then something else she couldn’t quite recall happened: her lips were cold and met with something wet, warm and bitter like copper. With a stir, she began to lift her head with a reluctance that said she wasn’t ready to look at his face. Not yet. Still, she looked -- and what she saw wasn’t a cold, gray face that was once the man she loved. He was there, looking down at her with warm, brown eyes; awake and completely transfixed.

There was no blood. There was no crime scene. Instead of pavement, they laid on the ugly, **** brown carpet that covered his mother’s basement. Over them was the warm, flannel sleeping bag that she used to get tangled up in all too easily. Tears still stained her cheeks, but with a gentle care, Ray used his thumb to wipe them away and then traced her lips with a smile that she slowly began to mirror.

“It’s time for you to go, sunshine.” At first, she didn’t quite understand his words. He had just got there. Of course it couldn’t be time…

She said it again.

“No te dejare ir.” I’m not letting you go. There was a look in Ray’s eyes that she’d never seen until then. It was a seriousness, a sadness, and a hopefulness all wrapped up in one. It would have made her heart ache, but then she realized she couldn’t even feel it anymore. He cupped either side of Kenlie’s head and brought her down against his chest so he could lay his lips into her hair and kiss the top of her scalp.

“No tienes que hacerlo,” he whispered. You don’t have to. There was no need for him to say anything else.

Without having to think much about it, the girl tipped her head back to open up her throat more and then took a good mouthful of the dark bitterness that stood heavy on her tongue. With a wince, she swallowed, and kept going until she couldn’t consume anymore.

[Doc]

The wristwatch said that fifteen minutes had past. Doc knew what he wanted to have happened during that time. However, he wasn’t sure that was ‘what’ actually had happened. He glanced in, where he saw Dominique draped over Kenlie’s body. Well ****. He sighed. He pushed the door open, thinking that Dominique had actually let her go, until he got closer. The blades on the surgical tray were haphazard, and though Kenlie had a deathly pallor she seemed at peace.

Reaching forward, he pulled Dominique off of Kenlie, noticing the black seeping blood still oozing out and about. He was relieved. “Minx,..” He shook her, she was lethargic. He draped her back over Kenlie, while he located a bandage to wrap around her wrist. Fixing the bandage around her wrist, he helped Dominique back through the double doors. “I am going to sit you here on the bench, by the lockers. Let your energy build. I have to move..” He looked around, “Your sister where she will be safe.. If someone comes the morgue guy already came.” He looked Dominique. “Understand.. ? The morgue guy already came.”

[Dominique]

Dominique was feeling like she had been tapped of all the energy she had. Nodding in understanding was overwhelming. Did she do it? She had no idea how the hell it really worked, but did she? Her eyes watched Doc move around and finally before she lost the chance or the energy to ask she did just that.

“Kenlie…” She loved that name. She wanted to know where it came from. Doc would be the only one to confirm if she would get the chance to ask. “Tell me she didn’t leave.” Dominique would never say die.