It took me a moment to truly feel myself again, the weightless sense of floating felt like it had become part of my flesh. The power from the kiss still raced through my body making my muscles tingle and my bones burn. It was as if he'd blown the cobwebs from my mind with that kiss. A lifetime of accumulated dust and debris I hadn't been aware of gone in a rush of power. The same way I was feeling the missing part of myself, the part that I could still feel now even with him gone. The place at my side where he should have been felt tender like a fresh scar but not empty, more like we'd been built to fit together but could also stand alone. The distinctive places where we fit merely giving us our own individuality instead of blending us together.
I could think more clearly now, with the clarity and perspective as if I were still above my life looking at it from every angle. More, my body felt fantastic. None of the aches and pains and discomfort that had been with me for my entire life were present now.
The power still circling through me seemed to be growing with every revolution, becoming part of me, finding its match in me. I hadn't been aware of any latent power in my self until now, not that I'd been delusional enough to think I'm normal. Powerful just wouldn't have been an adjective I'd associate with myself. I couldn't help but feel it now. My senses were beginning to register information as my brain searched for a reference that explained the things I'd never been able to be aware of before. The sound of footsteps muffled by layers of concrete, the cadence of breath from another room, the smell of the linoleum tiling the halls and the briny smell of soapy water in a metal tub.
I haven't even opened my eyes and I know exactly where I am and where everything around me is. A sparkling sense of awe filled me, almost exactly the same thing I'd felt earlier looking at the waving golden fins flutter in the water. Innocent wonder. I haven't felt innocent anything in at least a decade but now the world felt new and fresh. No, I feel new and freshly able to interpret the world. Effervescent bubbles of excitement and joy tingled through me and I could feel them more deeply. I felt like a shaken champagne bottle primed to explode and it was wonderful.
A familiar scent approached me and I rack my mind to figure out what it is. I know it's another one of those things I've never been able to really identify before. Unlike some of the other things around me, this is something I know intimately, just not as intricately as I could experience it now. It hit me. Juliet's perfume and Rachel's shampoo blending with the scents that were just a part of them. Overlaying those scents a sour smell I felt I should know but couldn't place. Voices began to filter to me in words instead of being relegated to the steady hum of background noise I'd been hearing and ignoring without thought.
M"Baby you need to just chill out. Something ... horrible happened to you tonight and I know you need to deal with it how ever you ... do. But you're sounding really crazy and I would like for you to just sit and explain to me what you're thinking," Rachel's voice was overly calm and steady with an undertone of tension, the way you'd talk down a person standing on a ledge or holding up a convenience store. It was a cop voice, good thing Rachel's a cop I guess, but I'd never heard her use it on Jules. I'm actually having a hard time remembering Rachel ever speak in anything less than indulgent tones with Jules. We've all always joked that Rachel saves all her anger for the bad guys.
B"You don't know. You don't understand, you can't," her voice sounded shattered, like she'd cried and screamed for hours and still didn't know what emotion to feel. My heart broke at her tone, even as questions arose with her words.
Our last "conversation" came to me and I remembered what she said about infection and controlling my self. What had she meant? Will she even be happy that I'm not dead? It hurt me to think it but I wouldn't bury my head in the sand about our friendship. It's real or it isn't, and I need to know either way, no pretending that everything's ok, even though that's exactly what I want to do. I need to know what the hell is going on here.
I quickly began to do reaction and reflex tests on myself, wiggling my toes, touching my thumb and fingers together simultaneously, rotating my feet and hands and head. Yup everything still works. I still hadn't opened my eyes. I knew what I'd see; I can smell the cotton and the too strong detergent the hospital used. The white sheet that had been pulled up over my face after I'd been declared dead. I probably would have been DOA except for Dr. Martin making them try and work on me. Try to get them to perform a miracle. I knew I had been dead, I'd understood that I would be coming back to that added complication when he had asked me. But somehow seeing the sheet pulled up over my face was simply one thing too much for me to process right now.
"Please just let me do this alone. I don't need you to come with me ... you just can't understand ... you shouldn't see," desperation crept into her already anguished sounding voice. "I need to do this alone."
"And I need to stay with you right now. You know Rory was my friend too, maybe I don't want to be alone right now," her voice did seem sad but it sounded more cajoling than anything and I wondered what must Juliet look like right now to bring out the crisis management training in Rachel.
I reached up and pulled the sheet from my face before opening my eyes. Looking straight into a light fixture directly above me.
"Fuck!!" the bright florescent light seared my eyes stabbing pain into my temple. I shut my eyes and sat up gingerly so I wasn't staring right into the light again before I slit my eyes open, carefully. Don't ask me why I'm such a dumbass that I can't make the logical leap from increased senses to increased vision and what that might mean.
VThe world was pulsing with colors and the harsh lighting accented even the tinniest details which I couldn't help but focus on. The pain in my temples was spreading across my forehead from the sensory overload. I'd kill for the grey distortion of my contacts right now. "Jesus Christ, that hurts," my eyes were watering even as they adjusted to the brilliant intensity of my new vision. I didn't have time to appreciate the new way light was reflecting off of the dust motes or how I could see even the tiniest details of the fabric I was now clutching to my chest. Juliet and Rachel were standing not twenty feet from me with differing levels of shock coloring their faces.
They always looked like they should be on the cover of some magazine when they were together, they were both so beautiful and such a perfect compliment for each other. Juliet with her petite pixie flawlessness, enhanced by the whimsically cut hair and the warm eyes the color of the inside of a honey comb. Rachel who stood more than six inches above her at 5'9". Her hair, a dark almost auburn brown and her blue eyes were the color of the sea in the tropics. A statuesque figure that Juliet and I had always harassed her for not dressing for completed the package. She'd never quite grown out of her tomboy phase, and could usually, when not in uniform, be found in jeans and a vintage tee shirt. Like now, only she'd added a faded college zip up to the look in deference to the cooling autumn nights.
Juliet was still wearing the short red dress from earlier though now it was coated with blood. My blood. She recovered first and anger transformed her face so that I barely recognized her.
"What did you do?" Jules snarled at me. I guess it's my turn to have my mouth hang open in shock. As far as I knew I'd been mostly dead all day. She started looking around the narrow hall, under the gurney I was sitting on and in the janitor's closet next to her. There were more doors on the other side of me, even across from me but she was giving me a ten foot radius and she would have to breach that barrier to check anywhere else. Ice crystals crawled under my skin, numbing me, thankfully pushing back the choking lump of grief that was forming along with horrifying suspicions. I'd choose numb over emotional hemorrhage any day. Rachel finally snapped from her stupor.
"Shit! Jesus Christ, Rory," she shook her head and looked at me again, "Rory?" She sounded so confused for a second before she gathered her self together. "What the fuck is going on here? I don't understand," anger was beginning to creep into her voice incinerating the sadness and the shock. Her eyes darted between us before landing suspiciously on Jules and staying there. "You said I wouldn't understand, is this what you were talking about," she turned tortured turquoise eyes to me, "But I saw you. You were definitely, definitely dead," she was back to staring at the floor an expression of loss on her face like she didn't know what to believe, but knew the truth was going to hurt like hell. When she looked at Juliet again and there was a hardness in her eyes I'd only ever seen her direct at criminals.
"What the fuck is going on? No more traumatized bullshit side stepping. Did you two plan this? Is this some insurance fraud type of thing?" the cop voice was back in full on mirrored aviator glasses mode, the voice you'd hear asking you to assume the position and put your hands behind your head. I was still playing catch-up trying to understand what Jules wasn't saying. So the voice didn't have the same snap-to-it for me that it did for Juliet. Maybe it wasn't that scary to me since we aren't sleeping together. Something about the person who shares your bed being angry at you always seems to make people try that much harder to fix things. She spun around to face Rachel, almost but not completely turning her back on me.
I would have laughed except for the complete and total lack of anything funny right now.
