DISCLAIMER The X-Men are the property
of Marvel Comics and are used without their
permission. Sikudhani McCoy is the property of Darqstar and is mentioned in this story
with her
permission. This is a work of fanfiction, intended for entertainment purposes only.
The Reflection In The Mirror
Part Six
By ScarletLady
Remy awoke to find the pup parked on his chest. That wasn't exactly unexpected, he'd gone
to sleep there, after all, but now
the pup was staring at him.
"T'ink maybe you wan' go outside, l'il Chat. Guess you goin' to be moving then,
neh?"
The pup calmly slid down the side of Remy's ribcage, and romped to the end of the bed,
where he again sat and watched him.
Remy pushed the covers aside, and swung up to his feet. Getting dressed was a chore he
tried not to think about in advance,
even though his wardrobe consisted of simple sweatsuits, and his running shoes were Velcro
fastened. One handed as he was, it was still difficult. His mane of long hair that used to
be a woman's fantasy was gone. It was something of a miracle it had grown back at all. It
was getting longer, but not because he wanted it that way. He couldn't keep it out of his
face, without two working hands to tie it back. It's shagginess at this point was due
entirely to the fact that he couldn't stand having a stranger touch him and mentally
cringe. He wasn't strong enough for that, yet.
He went to the door of his bedroom, and called the pup. "Let's get goin', Chat."
The pup looked down the sheer cliff he was perched on, and whined.
"Oops. Sorry 'bout dat, petite." Remy went back and picked up the pup.
"Guess de stairs gonna be a bit much, for a while too.
Let's hope you get bigger dan you are now real quick."
After shooing the puppy outside for a few minutes, Remy went about making sure the pup had
everything he'd need to be on his own for a short while. "Gotta go to town and pick
up de monthly stuff, pup. Maybe I find some Puppy Chow, and a couple of
toys too, neh? Also gotta go see the doc again." Remy's tone went flat on the last
statement. "Don' want to. Dey be talkin' bout
more surgery. Don' know how much more I can take, pup. De' hurt finally be levelin' off,
some. Nothin' dey can do 'bout de
face, but dey t'ink maybe dey can help de hands, maybe even de arms. Don' know if it be
worth it, pup. I do fine now,
d'accord?"
The puppy yipped.
Remy's shoulders sagged. "Non. You be right. Dis be no life I got here. It be
existing, no more. But I jus' don' know about dis
surgery dey want to do, pup. I jus' don' t'ink I can handle any more pain. Each time it
comes a li'l closer to gettin' loose. Don'
wan no more nightmares. Don' wan' to dream anymore. Not much of a life here, but don' know
what more dere is for someone
like me. Gonna have more t'inkin' to do, but be doin' it later. Jus' gonna get t'rough
today. Tomorrow take care of itself."
Remy played with the pup for a while, but as the sun climbed higher in the sky, Remy knew
he had to get going. "Better be
headin' out now, Chat. See you soon." He grabbed a ball cap and his gloves.
Chat stretched, yawned, and promptly settled in for a nap. Remy grinned. "Try to miss
me a li'l, Chat." The puppy snuffled a bit, and rolled over onto his back for a quick
tummy rub.
During the long walk to town, Remy's thoughts were brighter than usual. Most of the walk,
he had a half smile showing, as he
thought about his new friend.
Remy quickly did his necessary shopping for groceries with the aid of a stockboy, to
include food for the puppy, as well as a
couple of chew toys, to spare his fingers from sharp puppy teeth. They couldn't do any
more damage than had already been
done, but the nerves were painfully sensitive. He arranged with the stockboy to have them
delivered tomorrow morning.
His steps lagged a bit as he approached the hospital. Remy had no problem getting around,
unlike other blind people. He
always knew what was around him, but it was like walking through a maze blindfolded.
Occasionally his attention would falter
and he'd walk into a table, or miscalculate where the edge of a door was.
"Dieu", he said as he did that very thing. He felt his
frustration level rise out of all proportion to the incident. **I wan' see again!**
Temper simmering, but already cooling, Remy went to the desk and asked for Doctor
Harrigan. The hospital was the one place
where he didn't feel like the main attraction in a freak show. "Guess dey seen it
all, here", he thought.
The nurse told him that the Doctor was showing a group of new interns around the hospital.
He would probably be a little while, would he like to have a seat?
"Non. T'ink I go find him. Didn' have an appoin'ment, just had a question or two for
me." Remy asked for his approximate
whereabouts, and strode off.
The nurse watched his still award winning backside with a smile of pure appreciation.
Remy faltered for a second in shock as he caught that, and nearly blushed. He rounded the
corner, and doubled over laughing.
**Didn' t'ink dat would ever happen again!** First a new friend, then this! His life was
almost back to normal. He quickly
sobered. **So okay, it's gon' be a diff'rent normal for me now. But hey, it gettin' dere,
non?**
Remy heard/felt a large group of people heading toward him in the hallway, then caught Dr.
Harrigan's voice. "Remy, good of
you to stop by. I was just going over the hospital layout with our new group of interns. I
should be wrapped up in a bit, would
you like to wait in my office?"
Sitting around with nothing to do didn't have any appeal at all for the Cajun, and for the
moment, his shields seemed to be
holding pretty tightly; at least, he wasn't getting swamped with feelings of revulsion
from these fledgling doctors. "T'ink I maybe tag along?"
"Sure, sure. Glad to have you." The doctor continued on wending his way through
obstetrics, x-ray, pharmocology, admissions,
and other assorted areas. Finally, he approached the emergency room. "We can't go
inside at this particular moment, doctors.
They're dealing with a rather spectacular mess made by a head on collision. If you like
though, we could watch from the theater overhead. Show of hands in favor, please?"
After a quick count, the Dr. Harrigan herded the group towards the stairs.
"Remy?" he asked. "Coming?"
"T'ink not. Don' seem much point sitting up dere listenin' to a whole lot of
not'ing."
"Well, come by my office in an hour or so, all right? We'll talk then."
"Dat be fine." Remy said vaguely. He was catching something. What was it? It was
pulling him, almost calling him.
****************************************************************************
Dakota remembered the accident. It would have been a mercy to have forgotten, but mercy
was in short supply in her life these days. Every pain filled cry she mentally uttered was
relived again and again as the doctors probed and prodded, doing their best to repair her
shattered body.
In some foggy, dreamlike way, she realized the anesthesia was standing between her and the
screams she could feel trapped in the back of her throat.
One by one, the doctors began shaking their heads. "No hope for this one," she
heard one say. "Injuries too extensive," another added. "With these kinds
of injuries, it doesn't look good," was the most encouraging thing she heard out of
it all.
Her mind was filled with fog, but she heard every word, and slowly, oh so slowly, worked
it through. They didn't expect her to live. **So be it,** she thought. What, after all,
did she really have to stay for? The cat in the back alley she sometimes fed? He'd find
another soft touch, she was sure. The parents who refused to speak to her? It would be a
relief to them to have some socially acceptable excuse to not speak of her to family
aquaintances. Her job? Hm....well, she supposed the customers at Kelly's Diner would ask
after her for a day or two. But really, there was no shortage of down on their luck people
who could replace her at Kelly's. It had been awfully nice of Kelly to hire her with no
references, and nothing but his intuition to go on, but Kelly made a habit of that, and
she'd just been one more in a long line of people he'd helped.
Stacked up against all the reasons it would be a relief to let go, to give up the burden
her life had become, any reason she could find to stay seemed pitifully weak. In a brutal
bit of honesty, she was forced to admit there wasn't one person who would miss her.
She morbidly wondered who would attend her funeral. **Does a funeral parlor hire
professional mourners?**
Dakota wished she could tell the doctors to be content with having done their best. She
didn't mind...much. As big a mess as
she was physically, it wasn't a patch on what she felt in her head. Trying to resolve
feelings, emotions, and thoughts through a
velvet gray blur of medication and shock wasn't easy. It was beginning to put her to
sleep, too.
The doctors must think she was out cold. **Jesus C. Frog, couldn't have the patient waking
up on the operating table. It simply
isn't done.** She didn't want to sleep. After all, she'd heard from the best that she was
going to die. Things couldn't get much more final that that. She'd go gratefully,
well...at least quietly, but she wanted these last few...hours? Minutes? Crimeny, you'd
think they could have been just a bit more specific. These people were supposed to be
experts.
It was like knowing a date was going to pick you up Friday night, but not having a clue
what time. Not that she'd had that
particular experience. With the date, not the time. On the other hand, how ready do you
have to be to die? Lots of people
didn't get any warning at all, so she guessed she was kind of lucky. It could have been
someone else traveling down that
particular road today. Someone with a family. Someone who would have her hand held, and
cried over because she was going
away.
**Gah. Where'd all this self pity come from?** She was used to being alone. It's been that
way more than half her life. **Gee, all 27 years of it. Whoohoo.** She couldn't remember
the last time someone had physically touched her, till the doctors stitched up every inch
of skin she had. Black humor danced through her. If she'd known a fatal car crash would
get someone's hands all over her, she might have tried it sooner.
Ah, there. She heard the doctor give instructions to move her to a room. Not ICU. Good.
Not carrying health insurance she
couldn't have afforded anyway seemed like a very smart move on her part. The hospital was
unwilling to spend money on
someone who was going to die, and apparently had noone else to foot the bill. She almost
giggled. **I hereby promise to never
reveal this to "Hard Copy"** she avowed.
She was by herself. When did that happen? When did everyone leave? She felt a stab of
panic intermix itself with the twinges of pain that were growing more bold.
She was always alone. Dang it, she was dying. The reality took hold. She tried to
understand what that would mean, but just felt empty. So many years wasted. She was a good
person, always tried to do the right thing, and help when she could, but without someone
to share things with, retrospectively it seemed kind of a pointless existence. Mortality
was a word in the dictionary. Now it stared her in the face, and demanded that she
acknowledge it. There was no escape.
**Having a friend here would be nice right about now,** she thought. At least, it would if
she had any friends. She'd stopped
believing she had anything to offer someone else a long time ago. The first time her
father had beaten her, she'd known there
was something wrong with her. Her father couldn't hate her if she were a good daughter.
She'd felt shock, but nothing else at the time. Oh, the pain was there, but it was just
pain. Pain alone couldn't make you cry.
Her father continued her "discipline" through the years. Her one act of both
defiance and self-preservation had been to cease talking. That had been 22 years ago. As a
child, when she'd felt the screams rising in the place where nightmares are born, she
locked them away, along with her voice. To speak now would mean opening that overful
closet, and watching all the things accumulated over the years fall free. Never! She'd
never allow the horror crammed into that space to pollute what was left of her life.
Besides, who would she talk to, anyways?
Wondering if she could even manage to speak again was kind of pointless, she decided. She
knew the doctors were aware she
didn't speak, her medical bracelet would have told them so. But it made no difference, to
them she was unconcious, likely to
stay that way, and if not, in too much pain to be coherent.
That she had noone to say goodbye to eliminated any lingering doubts she had about the
wisdom of going without making a
fuss. Not that she could have made much of a fuss, considering she didn't think she was
capable of lifting a finger, but it would have been the thought that counted, she was
sure.
She was glad her eyes were closed. Knowing death was creeping up on her was easier when
she couldn't see it. A touch
cowardly, perhaps, but bravery seemed a bit out of her reach at the moment. She gave a
mental sigh.
Wouldn't you know it, she was starting to feel bored. Pain was pain, and she'd lived with
one kind or another ever since she
was five. It was nothing new. But to be without her beloved books was irritating. You'd
figure someone would be playing a
radio or something at the very least. This place was like a tomb. ...Bad analogy. It was
awful quiet around here.
Her sensitive hearing picked up a small commotion down the hall. **Sounds like someone ran
into one of those cart thingies.**
Ah well, might as well be gory and take inventory of the damage. Head injury; she knew
that from both the doctors comments
and the feel of bandages criss-crossing her forehead. No sensation of hair on the back of
her neck. Did they cut it? Hope not.
She rather liked it long, and thought she looked like a poodle with it short. Then again,
no one was going to be photographing
her for posterity, so the heck with it. Her face from the cheekbones down felt like all
the skin was scraped off. Perhaps it was. Bandages again.
Sheesh. It would have been easier to start with what didn't hurt. Well, it was never too
late to take good advice. She began
again. Eyes feel all right. She sort of remembered covering them with her arm. She ran
over all other pertinent body parts. The
best she could figure, at least they were all still there. They hurt far to much to be
otherwise.
Ah...there! The back of her left hand seemed to hurt less than everything else. She
twitched it experimentally, and felt some sort of monitor fall beside her hand. An alarm
went off, and with some expectation, she waited. This might rate here some company.
A nurse hustled in, panting slightly, and looked for the source of the noise. Spotting the
disconnected monitor, she quickly
reattached it, all the while muttering about careless aides, then bustled back out.
Dakota wondered if the nurse even looked at her while she fussed with that bit of plastic
that seemed so important to her.
Probably not, she decided. After all, she wasn't going to be around long enough for the
nurse to have to worry about her. And
again, she'd gone full circle.
Death. It was welcome, but did it have to be so...final? Reincarnation was looking better
all the time. Did she have time to
convert to Buddhism? She thought she might make a rather nice pet. Then again, with the
way her luck was running lately, she'd wind up in the pound, waiting for D-Day.
It occurred to her that she was growing rather whimsical. It'd been a long time since
she'd been able to see amusement in
anything, and so she let the mischief in her have it's way. After all, what could possibly
happen if she said to hell with all of her problems? The commotion down the hall had
settled down, finally, but lots of footsteps were growing closer. Bigwigs on tour, she
decided from all the tap taps instead of the squish of nurses crepe soled shoes.
Well, that distraction didn't last long. Bored again. Locked inside her mind, she searched
for diversion. The pain she was feeling may have been a constant companion, but she'd
never hurt so many places at the same time. Setting it aside was growing a bit difficult.
She needed to focus on something else.
Dakota idly wondered who would end up with her books. There was something she would miss
after all. Maybe I can come
back and haunt a library? Her books had been her companions when lonely, her solace when
sad, and her escape from a world
that seemed designed for pairs.
She started a catalogue of her favorites. Absolutely anything at all by Louisa May Alcott.
Whoever thought they were children's books had certainly never read them as an adult.
Simon Green, who wrote with humor dancing through his pages, Sharon Green (no relation)
who's views on male/female relationships came through loud and clear. Mercedes Lackey,
who's
imagination took flight, and carried you with it, Georgette Heyer, writing with an old
fashioned view of the world, yet managed to make you love her thoroughly believable
characters. Judith McNaught, who's ability to make one feel the romance her characters
feel always enthralled her. Romance, fantasy, history. These were her choices. Hm...no
murder mysteries, no true crime, no death, blood, gore, sensationalism. Escapism at it's
purest, it seemed. No reality may enter here. Well, Jiminy
Grapefruit, she dealt with reality every day. Why should she bring its ugliness into her
one absolute pleasure?
She heard the voices in the hall again. **Sounds like a herd of door to door salesmen.**
The nurse had left her door slightly
ajar, enough for her to clearly hear the conversations swirling from one side of the hall
to the other.
"No need to stop here. This floor is relatively untenanted, and there's just enough
time to get to the cafeteria for lunch."
Then she heard The Voice. "Doc?" Water over gravel. Smoke over sandpaper. Like a
fuzzy warm blanket on a cold winter
morning, it suddenly wrapped around her. Everything she was responded to that incredible
sensation. Tears started forming
under her closed lids. **Too late, too late,** her heart mocked.
She begged The Voice to say something else. It obliged. "What's wrong wit' her?"
An accent she couldn't place, but enchanted her nonetheless.
"She's one of the car accident victims we saw in the emergency room. I'm afraid
there's not much we can do for her."
"She be okay, though?"
A hesitation. A long hesitation. "No." No more than that.
"She goin' to die?"
The tears in her eyes grew in size. **Not going to cry!** She refused to allow it. It
didn't do a smidge of good when she was
five, it certainly wouldn't help her now. She made herself concentrate on the voice. Focus
on one thing, and let the rest go away.
As voices go, it was well worth listening to. She wished she could listen to it forever.
Or at least what she had left of forever.
The Voice had a small conference with the "salesmen" she now knew were doctors.
The shoes had skittered to a stop in a
cluster around her door.
"No fam'ly?"
"Not that we know of, Remy." A name! Her voice was called Remy.
"Maybe I could stay here for a while? I got time."
"We still have things to discuss, Remy."
"I got time for dat later. She don'."
"Very well, another day. But we will talk, Remy. You know as well as I what there is
to be gained."
"Later, den. T'anks, doc."
The Voice - Remy - came inside her room, and pulled up a chair beside her bed.
"Hello, chere. I be Remy LeBeau. I t'ink maybe you lonely, non?
**French! He's French. Wow. I must have some good Karma somewhere to rate a this one on my
deathbed.