Rating: NC-17+
Pairing: RK/RT, RT/M, BF/RV
Author Name and Email: Hamlette e-mail at GreenEggsNSlash@aol.com
Warnings: This story has everything but the kitchen sink, and that may just be hidden somewhere that I haven't seen yet. Be prepared for not-niceness.
Notes: Bow down and worship The Bull God. Yes, I know. There are grammar and spelling mistakes. All anal-retentive types are welcome to send corrections, suggestions, etc. And most especially: Thanks to Serge, Slash Suits You, and all who inspired, critiqued, cajoled and waited patiently. This story is dedicated to each of you.
Beautiful Oblivion
Prologue
Soft.
I'm lying on something soft but it isn't my bed. I've known many beds but this one is new to me. I try to open my eyes, but the lids are rough as sandpaper and the pain forces me to keep them shut.
Pain. Pain is good. The pain gives me hope.
I squeeze my eyes shut and will the tears to come.
Finally, my eyes open and a sterile white light has me blinking rapidly while the tears escape my eyes and roll down my face.
I can see but I still can't focus.
The light makes me sneeze several times in rapid succession - loud messy sneezes. I raise my left hand to wipe away the tears and the snot. My hand rebels. It refuses to obey. I panic and thrash about wildly, like a wolf caught in one of those iron-jaw traps.
Suddenly, strong arms are holding me still and someone is speaking to me. I don't understand the words. But it is a kind voice. It croons softly, like a mother trying to soothe an infant.
The words have their desired effect. I calm enough to look at the face attached to that somehow familiar voice.
She is a plain woman with a small frame weighed down by more than a few good meals. Her dark skin has seen many years and far too much sun and wind. Her black bun is wiry and threaded with what a kinder soul might call silver, but her chocolate eyes are warm and caring and make her beautiful to even my critical eyes.
She smiles gently and continues speaking, " . . . all right. Everything is all right. You're safe now. No one will hurt you anymore. I'm Nurse Pohl, and I'm not going to let anyone hurt you. I promise."
I lie still and take several desperate gulps of air.
"This isn't Hell?" I ask, afraid of her answer.
"No dear, you're in Mercy General Hospital."
I run my tongue over my cracked lips and taste a faint hint of old blood.
"I'm not dead?"
"No, Constable Turnbull, you are very much alive."
My heart shatters. All of my hopes fade away.
I scream, horrible things, so unthinkable only a few short months ago. I curse everyone I have ever known, everyone I have never known. I scream until there are no more words. I scream until I am more animal than man.
I scream until the pain comes. The beautiful, blessed pain of a needle in my arm. As the light dims and the screaming fades, I pray fervently. I pray to a God I no longer believe in, to a God that no longer believes in me.
"Dear God," I think desperately, "please let them get the dosage wrong. Please, let me die."
*
The two orderlies stand by the door and look everywhere but at the figure lying strapped to the narrow bed. It is too uncomfortable to be in this room, to see a man as young and strong as they in such a state. It is, to both of them, an unwelcome reminder of just how fragile they truly are.
Bryoun, the younger and larger of the two, shifts his feet nervously and cracks his knuckles.
J.T., the brains of the operation, clears his throat and says to the floor, "Well, I guess we're done here."
He hesitates for a moment, as though expecting an answer from Nurse Pohl. When none is forthcoming, J.T. motions urgently to Bryoun and they hustle out the door. They head for the cafeteria in search of a smoke and younger, prettier nurses.
*
Helen Pohl has been a nurse at this hospital, in this wing on this very floor, for more years than even she will admit. She has seen enough tragedies to crush the spirit of scores of men. Yet she has survived. She has done so by always remaining separate, by keeping her concern just another piece of her uniform -- something to be taken off at the end of the day and left in her locker with all of her other medical equipment.
Helen has never questioned this ability. It has always come naturally for her. Why then, she wonders, does this young man seem to follow her home and haunt her dreams?
Helen reaches into the cart kept by the young constable's bed and retrieves a rough white towel. She takes a pitcher that is standing on top of the cart, pours some water onto the towel and warms it in her hands.
When the towel is no longer cold to the touch, she steps to the bed and gently cleans the young man's face.
Helen performs her task thoroughly and lovingly, as though there is nothing more important in all the world.
She talks as she works. It is a low, quiet commentary, meant only for his ears.
"Such a beautiful face. Do you have anyone to tell you what a beautiful face you have? I hope you do. You deserve it. Such a brave young man. I know you don't feel so brave right now. You feel small and lost and scared.
"Those awful scars on your back aren't the only ones you're carrying around with you. I can tell. I can always tell."
Helen blinks back unshed tears, as she has done so many times in these last weeks. She takes a deep breath and continues in a more practical Helen-like tone of voice.
"Well, what's done is done. No one can take away what has happened to you and no one can make you better, except you. You've been in here for twenty-three days. Do you realize that?
"If I had stayed in bed for twenty-three days when I was your age, my mother would have ridden that old nag of hers to my house and she would have . . .
"Well never mind what she would have done. Anyway it doesn't matter. Because I would never have stayed in bed that long.
"You should be out in the sunshine. Do you know that it hasn't rained for four whole days? How could you? You've been cooped up in this horrible little room. Wouldn't you like to go outside for a while? Flirt with some of the young nurses instead of old, dried up Helen? Of course you would. What healthy young man wouldn't?
"And it would make my life easier too. I can hardly get a day's work done for all the nurses and secretaries stopping by to find out when they can get a proper look at those beautiful blue eyes and long legs of yours.
"So we're agreed? Excellent. I'll be by first thing in the morning to give you your medicine and take you for a nice walk on the grounds."
And having made up their minds, Helen wads up the dirty towel and throws it into the hamper on her way out the door.
*********
Fifty-three days. It's been fifty-three days since they last undid the leather straps that had been holding me to my bed.
My bed. When did I start to think of it as mine?
I sigh and shift restlessly. There is nothing much wrong with my body, aside from the scars that mar my wrists and crisscross my back. I lean forward and relax my neck. I use the weight of my head to drag my torso forward and attempt to touch my toes. What once came so easily is now an agony. But it seems nothing comes easily anymore.
Nothing except that which I try so desperately to stop or at the very least ignore.
The memories of what I did, what I allowed myself to become. I sag back against my pillows, and the memories wash over me like brine over a fresh wound.
And, as always, after the memories come the questions. They burst into my head fully-formed and bounce off of my skull, keeping time with the second hand of the small clock that now sits on the table next to my bed.
What kind of a man have I become? Why did I surrender my soul so easily? When did I cross the line that I had drawn for myself so many years ago? How could I have done this to everyone I hold so dear? Who am I now?
Tears sting my eyes. I shake my head in a vain attempt to clear my brain, and my eyes come to rest on the clock -- such a small thing, seemingly so insignificant.
I remember clearly the morning Helen brought it to me. She smiled at me in that mother-hen way of hers and placed the clock in my hands. She wrapped my fingers around it and gently squeezed my hands.
"Your Daddy wanted you to have this," she said and walked out of the room.
It was nothing much to look at, just an old brass windup alarm clock that ticked too loudly and ran slow.
It was my grandfather's clock. The one he had taken with him to Regina and every other post, until the day my father left for the academy. Then he had passed it on, a new tradition in a family already weighed down by them.
I remember unpacking at the academy and the awful lead feeling that had formed in my throat when I realized my father had not secreted the clock in my bag as I had hoped. At the time, I wondered what imagined slight this was compensation for.
My grandfather used to tell me stories about this clock. I'm not sure I believe all of them, but I've never forgotten, not one.
Like the time he stepped off the plane in Aklavik and swung his pack over his shoulder, just in time to stop a bullet that had been fired during a bank robbery across the street. The clock stopped the bullet from going into my grandfather's back and my grandfather, Rothschild Turnbull, stopped the robbers from dogsledding away.
Or my personal favorite, how he was making his rounds through the North Country, visiting villages, and he got trapped for an entire winter in a settlement so small it didn't even have a name. He lost his pack and had to live like an Inuit the entire time.
Just as Rothschild arrived at the settlement, a trapper by the name of Three Leg McGroo lost his mind and announced he was going for a swim -naked -- in October -- in the Yukon. Well of course Rothschild couldn't allow that happen, and a world-class wrestling match ensued. Somehow in the middle of this madness, my grandfather's pack was knocked off of the only pier in the settlement into the frigid water.
Three years later, while in Regina for his tour as an instructor at the academy, Rothschild got a package from his favorite drinking partner and boon companion, Three Leg McGroo. Inside was that damned clock. It seemed the local natives had found it in the stomach of the largest whale they had caught in a decade.
Once this little clock and the stories that surrounded it made my eyes glow with excitement over the possibilities its adventures promised.
Now it inspires only regrets.
*
I had the perfect life. I had everything every young man dreams of, and I lost it all because of the one little piece of me that I never asked for.
I had always done so well. I had always been able to control myself. I had always managed to resist, to be the man everyone saw instead of the horrible thing I felt.
Everyone believed it. I was so convincing that I almost believed it.
I was the best. I was always the best. It's not bragging. It's just the truth.
From the start, I could do anything I set out to do.
My mother tells me I walked at nine months. I toilet trained myself. I was reading when I was three. I was an excellent horseman. I could run faster and jump higher than anyone. I skipped grades five and six. But it didn't matter, I was still bigger than most of the kids in grade seven. I was big enough and good enough to be captain of my school's hockey team, and I was valedictorian to boot.
My car was the fastest, my clothes the most stylish, my girlfriend the prettiest, my friends the coolest.
I was kind to children, the elderly and animals. I was loved by women and respected by men.
In short, I was everything every young man wants to be. And it all came so easily, without any visible effort on my part.
*
The hardest decision I ever faced was to join the NHL or the RCMP.
If I had been born into any other family in Canada, I would probably be a millionaire hockey player by now. But I'm a Turnbull.
You see, there has been a Turnbull in the RCMP for as long as there has been an RCMP, an NWMP in fact. The very first Constable Turnbull responded to an ad seeking competent horsemen. They were to tame the west, monitor the border and stop the illegal whiskey trade. Conditions were harsh and desertions were numerous.
I don't know how many of those one hundred fifty men made it through the first winter, but I do know Richmond Turnbull was one of them. And we Turnbull men have kept the tradition alive to this day. We pass down the badge and scarlet the way most fathers pass on their watches.
So my "hardest decision ever" wasn't very hard at all.
*
When the time came, I packed everything necessary for the academy and a picture of Lynn, my childhood sweetheart and then fiancee, into my father's duffel bag and headed off to Regina to meet my destiny.
I breezed through the academy -- of course -- and graduated first in my class -- also of course. So it came as a surprise when they tacked a sheet of paper with our first postings on the class bulletin board, and my name was nowhere on the list.
I felt thirty pairs of curious eyes burning holes into my back when Sergeant Allen, our class supervisor, called me out of class to ask me if I would consider a "somewhat unusual" assignment.
I could tell from his body language that it was something important. Something he didn't think should be given to a rookie, no matter how capable he seemed.
Naturally, this insulted my not inconsiderable pride. I stood ramrod straight, looked him directly in the eye and replied in my best Canada's Finest voice, "I would consider it an honor to serve in any capacity my superior officers deem necessary, Sir."
He responded with a characteristic, "Hmmph," and motioned for me to follow him.
We went to his office. I remember it was too small for the amount of RCMP-issue furniture it contained, and that he kept me at parade rest while he lounged in a decidedly non-issue leather chair.
His words were free of emotion and to the point.
"Go to your room. Change into the clothes you will find on your bunk. Take your uniforms and anything else that might identify you as a member of this force and give them to Constable MacKenzie. He will be waiting outside your door.
"Once you have done this, pack all of your civilian gear -- and I mean everything -- and leave it outside your door. Someone will come for it later.
"Then, walk to Bindle's newsstand and, with the change you will find in the right pocket of your jacket, buy a copy of the Toronto Star. Tuck the paper under your right arm and wait at the corner. You will be contacted from there."
It sounded so childish I almost laughed, but I saw the look in the Sergeant's eyes and stopped myself just in time.
He finished with a curt, "Dismissed."
I snapped to attention, saluted, turned on my heel and walked out of his office. Just as I was walking through the door he called out softly, "Good luck, son."
If I hadn't been so arrogant, I would have taken that for the warning that it was. I would have walked out of that office and run as fast as I could to anywhere but there.
*
Forty-seven minutes. It's been forty-seven minutes since Bryoun looked in on me. In exactly twenty-eight minutes J.T. will open the door and say, "How are you feeling this morning, Constable?" Just as he always does.
And I will smile that inane little smile I have had eight weeks to perfect and reply in my cheery, helpful voice, "Very well, thank you, J.T. And how are you this fine Autumn day?" Just as I always do.
It is very comforting in its sameness, this little game of ours. They pretend not to be checking to see if I've slashed my wrists again, and I pretend not to notice their pretending.
They like this new me. Who wouldn't? He is cheerful, helpful, courteous and conscientious. This Renfield Turnbull would never hurl obscenities at nurses. He would never scratch or punch or kick or bite the orderlies. He wouldn't smash out a picture window to get a piece of glass to cut his wrists. And he most certainly would never try to kill a fellow officer of the law to please his lover.
But I can't think about that. Those thoughts would never even occur to this Renfield Turnbull. And this Renfield Turnbull is the one I want to be. The only one I can accept. Because I can be me or I can be him. There are no shades of gray, only black and white. No matter what the doctors say.
And it is far to painful to admit that I have within me the darkness that made me do those things. Those things I can't think about without shaking and sweating from the sheer shame of it. And so I will be him.
It was difficult at first. I could only be him for a few moments before the other me, the real me, would return.
"Would you be so kind as to get me the McLean's on the dresser?" Would come out, closely followed by, "No, God Damn it, the current issue, you moron!"
But it's much easier now, almost second nature. And hopefully, someday very soon I will not even remember that there was another Renfield Turnbull.
On to Part 1