"It's okay." He watches the man lying there. It strikes him then, how alive DeSalvo looks. For a man with holes ripped through his lung and neck, he's in remarkably good shape. Or so he looks--perhaps the natural melanin in his skin hides some inner pallor. But at least he smiles, a skill Jack feels he has lost in the past few days. Like sugar in a car's gas tank, the only laughter he can muster dies with a cough, or stops at a grainy memory of days, weeks, years before. He wishes he had a cigarette, though Kim would probably tell him off for it.
"You okay? Sure?" It is DeSalvo's low, purring voice, like the note of a cello fading at the end of a symphony.
"Fine." He replies stonily, though it is a lie through gritted teeth. "I'm fine."
"Liar."
One thing he has to give the defense department--they are farmers of truth, plowing through loads a dirt and bullshit to find the flowers they know are there. He wonders, briefly, if they hire their employees specifically for this skill. It brings a bitter, tired smile.
"How do you know?"
"Seen you lie...don't do it good..."
Jack doesn't know whether to hit DeSalvo or the wall. He's tired. Lost. Why is he here, anyhow, talking to a man he knew for what--two hours? Why did he come here, of all places, to the hospital, to death and pain and suffering, when he has plenty of that at home? The night before, when he went up to try and sleep--what a joke, he thinks--he passed Kim's room. His daughter--his beautiful, lively, stubborn daughter--lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. At nothing. He had watched her until it hurt--which wasn't long. It came back to him, then, a memory, 3 year old Kim, standing in a supermarket aisle and holding a box of hideously sugared cereal.
/"Daddy, this one!"
"No, honey, not that one."
"How come? Daddy, how come!"
"It's bad for you, sweetheart."
"Daddy!" He remembers her shrill cry of exasperation. "That's just one reason! Gimme free!"
Terri laughing. "Poor Daddy, she takes after you."/
He doesn't want to be here.
DeSalvo speaks again, in the low slur that comes courtesy of his bandages and the canyons carved into his neck and chest. "Jack?"
"Leave me alone," he says. "I shouldn't have come here. Leave me alone..."
He turns to leave, the ache building deep in his heart, writhing like a newborn dragon, fire burning his throat. He cages it fiercely.