I'm so tired, wired too, I'm a mess I guess, I'm turnin' on the screw.

And just like that, in a blink, he was gone. But he was gone long before that, I just didn't know it. I just went through the motions, like I'm doing now.

Water like the colour of wine. Jaded, timid steps to the looming building down the road. Lucky it was close. Waiting for hours. And hours. An old woman behind me, "I just don't understand why I have to wait." And I wanted to smack her because behind the walls people were dying and bleeding and falling unconscious. Baby's crying and being hauled out into the night air while their fathers stared at the purple, churning sky. The night before the sky birthed lightning and long bass rolls of thunder, but tonight it just mocked us, threatening without producing. The witching hour upon us, drunks began to flood the room. One with a face half-framed in caked blood. Another young girl slumped against her boyfriend, her eyes rolling back and his frozen with fear. Another still, collapsed in a wheelchair, manically flipping between laughter and agonized wails, bugging the nurses, being told to sit and.......wait.
Then, a bed. A room where paint had been chipped off and someone had scrawled initials inside a pencil heart. Nurses came. Needles. IV's. Poking and prodding. Invading space. Pushing through a bubble like they owned the space inside it. Machines gurgled and beeped. More needles. A new room, the psych room because the other beds were empty. It was cold and all the machines were locked behind stainless steel. No food or drink. Vitals taken. More needles. Then, in a blur that still hasn't become clear I was on my back. My arm roughly taken to the side by the gas man, his face stony and bored with the repetitive job of ushering people into dreamland. Long, deep breaths. A foreign taste, like nothing else, a creeping cold forced into the depths of my lungs. Cold shots in the arm, travelling over my shoulder, up over my forehead, tickling my cheek like a kiss goodnight. And then nothing.

I awoke in a room less formal and sterile than the others. Kind nurses stood over me and asked me how I felt. "Very tired." I turned my head away and heard another nurse drooling over hearing Gary's accent in the waiting room. Too tired to care. Too empty to care. I took a T3, some apple juice, and was coaxed out of bed. The nurses were anxious, it was closing time. Wanting to get home to their families. Groggy, drained, stained with iodine, I slumped over a nurses shoulder and met the waiting party. Doped up, I could actually talk, and the ride home was almost pleasant. Only now does the anger, frustration, and deep silence start to creep up. I can only write. Like every other time my voice retreats into my chest, refusing to peep.