Chapter Text
Crawling out of that damned bathroom was agony.
Lawrence’s mind was flooding. He knew the adrenaline was the only thing keeping him from passing out from blood loss. He was a doctor for god's sake, but he was delirious, and saving himself and Adam was all that mattered.
Adam. Oh god Adam. He promised. He can't die now.
He needed to cauterize the wound. Urgently. The pipe. The pipes were hot, burning even. Lawrence proceeded to put the stump where his foot used to be directly on it.
It burned like nothing he had felt before. And the smell. The smell of burning flesh was an awful thing, a thing he never wanted to smell again. But he could handle it. He had to handle it. Because nothing could be worse than cutting his own foot off with a rusty hacksaw. The pain of that was unbearable. The sound was almost as bad. The cacophony of his crying, Adams screaming, and the dull scratch of metal cutting through flesh and bone was agony. He knew that awful sound would never leave his mind.
Climbing up the ladder was agony as well. It seemed like that was the only word he could use anymore. God he just wanted the pain to stop. But he promised. He needed to get help, even if it required heaving himself up a ladder on one foot. When he finally hoisted himself to the top, there was even more dragging himself across the floor, leaving bloody streaks like a twisted pathway. But at the end, there was a door. An exit. A way to finally get out of this hellhole he had spent hours in.
It took far too much effort to open it, he wasn’t surprised considering his dramatic loss of blood. But finally, it budged. He was outside. He hadn’t had fresh air in hours, and it was wonderful. It felt like he was alive again, not slowly rotting in that bathroom. He didn’t even realize he took things as simple as that for granted until now. But that wasn’t important. The only important thing was finding someone, anyone, with a phone.
Lawrence knew he must have looked like a zombie, pale, eyes rimmed red, crawling on the floor leaving a bloody trail behind him. He just hoped some kind soul would help him. Hell, they don't even have to be kind, just someone to call the police, an ambulance, anything.
There! A woman on her phone, walking casually along the sidewalk where he was crawling. The dizziness of blood loss was starting to get to him, and he couldn’t risk waiting any longer than he had to.
A shriek tore itself out of the woman’s mouth when she saw him. He could feel his own flinch tremble out of him. He was so sick of screaming. His vocal cords felt like dead flowers, like they could crumple in the faintest breeze. But he forced the words out anyway.
“Please…. Help me… 911… please…”
His words were choppy and almost incomprehensible through his crying. But through some miracle the woman managed to understand him. Her face was pale, but she still typed a number on her phone with hands shaking. The world was starting to get hazy, like a plastic bag was over his head, muffling his senses.
Only vague snippets of the woman's phone call registered in his mind. Things like “help… blood… come quickly please” and other standard information like where they were. Lawrence couldn’t seem to make out where they were. All he knew was that he crawled out of the warehouse behind him. Crawled out of that horrible bathroom. Alone.
He never thought he would feel so happy to hear sirens. Relief flooded his body, and he almost passed out on the spot knowing he would (hopefully) be safe. But then he realized he had to stay alert just a bit longer. He had to tell them about Adam, that someone was still down there in that bathroom, disgusting and dirty.
Lawrence recognized some of the doctors getting out of the ambulance. At first, he was confused, until he realized that the hospital he worked at was called to save him. He coughed out a pitiful excuse for a laugh at the distorted irony. It seemed that he was not the only one who recognized them, they saw him too, and the color drained from their faces. He almost had the urge to laugh again, either because their faces looked like cartoons because of how pale they were, or from shock.
Right, Adam. Lawrence knew he would succumb to blood loss soon, he was a doctor after all, so he needed to tell them quickly. He tried to crawl toward them, but he was already being placed on a stretcher, blood quickly staining its white surface.
“Please” he forced out of his throat “there’s… there's another person… Adam…. In the warehouse…. Help him… please.”
And with those final words, Doctor Lawrence Gordon finally passed out.
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Adam didn’t know how much time had passed in this shithole. He couldn’t read the clock, it still wasn't clear, even if his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The smells of the bathroom overwhelmed his senses. Since he could barely see, it seemed like his other senses were fired into overdrive. He smelled shit, piss, all those other awful bathroom smells, but the most brutal smell was the suffocating smell of blood.
Blood was everywhere, he didn’t need his vision to know that. He could practically feel his own blood mixing with Lawrence’s and Zep’s. Zep. Adam had killed him. With a toilet tank lid of all things. A gruesome ending for a person who was strangled in the grasp of a psychopath like he and Lawrence had been. Adam knew he wasn’t the best person. But he never thought he would kill someone. He was just so desperate. Maybe that was the same reason why Lawrence cut off his own foot.
Lawrence. Lawrence left him. Was anyone going to come back for him? God, he hoped so. He didn’t want to die stuck in this small room forever, chained to a pipe. Lawrence promised. People would come. He couldn’t give up hope yet. It was too early for that. At that moment, he heard a very, very faint sound. Footsteps.
No. No. Jigsaw was coming back to kill him. That had to be it. He was going to die. He failed his test.
His thoughts started to spiral out of control, delving deeper into panic and fear, until he heard those people yell. The sound echoed all around him “Police! We’re here to help!”. God it was the most beautiful sound, much better than the silence and desperate wails he had been plagued with for hours. And so, he did the only thing he seemed to know how to do anymore. He screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed until a light split the room in two. The door. They finally opened that goddamn door.
He could have laughed; he was so relieved. But all he could manage was a small smile as he was loaded onto a stretcher.
The last thing he remembers was his own voice, feeling almost disconnected from him, asking one simple question.
“Is Lawrence ok?”