Tuesday

March 12, 2002

Santa Monica, California

Jack took shallow breaths and waited, wondering if the dry heaves would continue. The taste of bile still lingered in his mouth and his legs were trembling. Too weak to kneel any longer, he sunk to thefloor. He laid his head on the ground and found the cold tile soothing against his clammy skin.

The light coming from the hallway bothered him. He closed his eyes and tried to block it out. The only sounds were his own labored breathing and the click of his watch.

'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone'. Words from the same poem had been circling in his mind all week. 'Silence the pianos and with muffled drums / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come'.

He opened his eyes and looked across the hallway into his bedroom. The room was partially-illuminated. With the little light there was, Jack could make out the clothes, dresser drawers and other items scattered across the room.

He'd been looking for something. Jack couldn't remember what, he wasn't really sure if he'd ever known. He had gone into the bedroom and started opening the drawers, there he'd seen all of her clothes. Clothes she'd worn, clothes she'd never wear again.

Jack had started taking the clothes out, taking the whole drawer out and emptying each onto the floor. His sister was coming over later in the week to help him get the house in order. She had mentioned giving Teri's things to charity. Of course, Teri wouldn't need them anymore.

But he couldn't give them away. The were her clothes, they belonged to Teri. Jack couldn't throw out her things.

He had left the clothes on the floor and gone into the closet. There, in the back, was a safe where he kept a gun. His other gun had been taken from him at work. He hadn't thought much about what he was doing at that moment but the idea had been in his mind since he held Teri's body in his arms. Jack couldn't continue like this, he didn't want to, he didn't deserve to. He should have been able to prevent it, he should have been there to save Teri. He should never have trusted anyone at CTU to protect her. They didn't care what had happened to him or to his family.

Jack's hand clenched into a fist and he felt his shoulders tighten. He should have killed Nina when he had the gun on her.

The way it felt to have his hand around her neck and the gun so close, his finger ready to pull the trigger; those were the thoughts that pushed him towards the safe. His right hand clenched and unclenched by his side as he walked, it had felt empty.

But the gun wasn't there tonight.

It was probably his dad's doing. His parents had been here earlier to check in on him and to get the rest of Kim's things. His dad had asked him what he wanted to do about Kim, Jack didn't remember the answer he gave. Maybe he hadn't responded at all. His dad had stood up, gave him a kiss on the head – the last time he had done that was when Jack was a kid - and left the room. He could have taken the gun then.

Jack had opened the safe and found it was empty.

At first he felt ashamed. He almost expected to turn around and see his father waiting behind him.

Then he had felt sick. Jack realized with anxious horror that this was the rest of his life. Teri was gone, this was real and she wasn't coming back. Right now, there was no escape.

He couldn't survive a week without her, he was expected to survive forty or fifty years? Jack honestly couldn't remember his life before he'd known Teri, they'd been together so long. She'd always been a presence in his life even when they weren't together.

How was he supposed to live the rest of his life when she'd been his life?

His stomach clenched and his heart beat a little faster. Jack closed his eyes and tried to take a deep breath.

'She was my North, my South, my East and West / My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song / I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong'.

Poem used is W.H. Auden's, "Funeral Blues".