Chapter Text
With its off-white tiles and dirty mirrors, the tiny bathroom looks sepia-filtered in the cheap neon light, like an old photo of something long forgotten.
Only the sink is slightly off. It has its own color and pattern; it’s streaked with deep-red blood.
He can’t see this scene, however. First, he left his glasses on the bedside table in his bedroom. And second, he keeps his eyes closed as he stands there, head tilted forward, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Exhale. Inhale. Through the mouth.
Sigh. Now, wait.
It was his calmest night since he's been here again. (Here. Here. There.)
He couldn’t sleep, of course, as always, but still...
Blood’s still dripping with a sharp rhythm.
Nosebleed. (Epistaxis, he recalls almost immediately, the voice in his head sounds professional and in an absolute monotone.) Nothing life-threatening, rarely it is, nothing to worry about. He knows that, if nothing else, and the blood itself… It shouldn’t upset him. (There was blood in the ocean.)
Still, he has to lean on the sink to keep his hands from shaking, and himself from breaking down completely.
He tries not to sniffle.
A funny take on the situation: he thinks about those grounding techniques he taught to Chase (after he saved him).
Like: make yourself aware of some… Facts. Some things you’re one hundred percent sure about. (There’s a chance that these miraculous grounding techniques don't even work. He doesn’t know shit about this stuff. He’s a surgeon, for fuck’s sake.)
The name Dr. Henrik von Schneeplestein. (He’s still a surgeon, he needs to remember that. Those two letters at the beginning of his name are so, so important.)
It’s Schneep for friends. (For a few, it’s Henrik. Henrik. Henrik. He hears him saying it.)
He was away… for quite a long time. (Just for a few months. Only for a few weeks. No… It wasn’t enough.)
He’s in this apartment now. Pleasant, ordinary, even more so, familiar place. He moved here after the divorce, and his first observation right at the first sleepless night was that the streetlamp under the bedroom window shone too brightly for his taste and comfort. He got used to it, eventually. Now, he'll have to do it again.
But at least it’s near the hospital where he works. (Must be sure of that. Jack is in that hospital somewhere, in who knows what condition. Must be sure of this, too.)
He’s home. (What an interesting statement. Almost certainly, he never said he wanted to go home.)
He’s safe. (He cannot decide if it's rather a half-truth or a half-lie, and this should scare him.)
It’s in the middle of May. He opened all the windows before, for some draught, but the late-spring city-smoggy air is still.
It’s been a silent night. It’s still dark outside, he imagines. The last time he looked, there were no stars.
This is all fine. (“It’s not your fault," someone said something like this, right? So it has to be true.)
Exhale. Inhale. Through the mouth. Faster and faster until you can’t breathe.
He's squeezing the edge of the sink. The whole situation is ridiculous.
Calm the fuck down. (He misses being safe.)
Images and memories stir in his head, some with bright, almost flashing lights and vibrant colors, some with vaguely sketched lines, like the drawings in his anatomy notebooks. (Heart valve. Frontal lobe. Anterior triangle of the neck. The latter has been cut through.)
Various of them look like illustrations from the storybooks he read to his kid before bed. Before the divorce.
Here’s another grounding tip that might help: a happy memory can’t hurt anyone, right?
A nice bedtime story? Think of it this way.
He remembers his daughter loved the Grimms' Fairy Tales. His ex-wife didn’t, though. She thought they were too rough, too bloody for the fragile soul of their precious child.
But when his daughter was little and frightened of the dark (and when he could still see her), he, his dad, would sit on the edge of her bed and whisper her favorite stories.
He told her about the Singing Bone, about Death’s Messengers, all the twisted deals with the Devil, and, of course, about Doctor Know-all.
But honestly, it was always the most questionable, the most graphic details that reassured her. (She wanted to be a doctor, too. Like father, like daughter. That’s a terrible thought.)
It’s hilarious how fitting it is, really: es war einmal vor langer Zeit, he would say in his mother language.
Once upon a time.
Days, weeks, nine months ago, there was a doctor who ruined everything he loved.
One minute he was screaming in the operating theatre when he lost his patient, his best friend, held Jack’s lifeless hand convulsively, while all the screens of the medical machines were vibrating and buzzing wildly around him as a fatal error message. (“No, Jack, no, my friend, no! ”)
The next, it was the dead of night; the moon looked unimaginably yellow from behind the clouds, and he was standing on the edge of the ocean, on the grey sandy beach, the waves lapping at his feet. And he kept screaming and sobbing until his throat was clogged, and then he was still screaming and wept all his tears.
The blood from the operation, from his hands, from his medical gown, from his whole life, was falling into the noisy waves, into the sea foam.
He watched in horror. Of course, he ruined these waters, too.
After what seems like an eternity, his legs buckled. He was about to throw himself into the water and stay there. He was so tired.
Then a demon held him, pulled him close. His touch felt like an electric shock.
“No. No, no, no, please, doc,” the demon murmured, as if his voice had over one pitch, drowning out the sound of the water. The demon had glowing poison-green eyes, and a deep, bleeding cut on his neck that would never heal. “I want to help you.”
“You cannot,” the doctor said hoarsely, over and over again, “you cannot, you cannot,” until the words lost their meanings.
He was dizzy and cold and disgusted with himself, just wanted to get lost in the darkness that was closing in around him. He held onto the demon without second thought, as tightly as his remaining strength would allow him.
“I’m so sorry.”
He can't remember which one of them said that. Nor the answer. He must have fainted.
Perhaps after this, was the first time the demon had called him Henrik. He hadn't heard him then.
The perfect beginning of a fairy tale.
He didn't even notice that his eyes were so firmly closed that the fragment of memory was slowly being replaced by an unintelligible blur of colors and shapes.
It reminds him of static.
It reminds him of Anti. Not even a real name, most likely a force against everything, against his tormenting thoughts and growing anxiety.
One last idea: the bleeding wound on Anti’s neck before he tried to stitch it up. After all, back then, standing on the shore: they ruined the ocean together.
A selfish idea. Childish, even. Reassuring, nevertheless.
Anti would smile at this.
Sigh.
He can breathe now.
Schneep opens his eyes, straightens up. In the foggy mirror, with the symptoms of insomnia and without his glasses, he sees only a blurred image. There's the navy blue knitted sweater, there's the blood residue’s reddish-brown under his nose, there’s the perfect emptiness on his unshaven face and in his icy-grey eyes.
He wipes his nose with the back of his hand without thinking. Squints at it indifferently. He's about to open the tap, to clean the mess.
Then comes an ominous, loud explosion. He freezes.
Other noises followed the sound of the explosion, coming from the direction of the bedroom. Hasty footsteps, shuffling, floor creaking.
Schneep shakes his head and rushes over with a pounding (and somehow, waiting, moreover, hoping) heart.