Re: Hospital: Sam & Loren
[Loren didn't argue the terrorist thing. Sadist, terrorist, it was terminology made to sound different by the news anchors. It was all fear, and Loren hadn't lived in fear for a long time. The only recollection he even had of the emotion was involved in relation to other people. People he hadn't been able to do right by. Hannah. Jules. Others he tried not to remember.
Sam sat up in her skinny bed, and the more adapted to body-science(he still didn't know big words, he''d only relearned to read a couple of years ago) part of his brain told him that sitting up wasn't good, not in the condition she was in. Blood pressure could plummet in a hot bath, it could spasm at any differece in elevation. Yet the nurses had pumped her full of fluids to control that kind of thing, and so Loren just sat back, he watched her. He pulled his hand away from the metal bed rail because he knew what it was like not to want to be touched. Despite her touching him, he made all things backward. It wasn't even that he never wanted to be touched, just that he didn't want to touch. It made him uncomfortable, it made him scared of wanting more. Loren didn't know what a man like him was capable when he wanted more than a friendly trace of letters on the back of a hand. If he ever wanted a woman like that, it would terrify him to the point of... who knows.
But that was a lie told to himself. He'd read his own file years ago. Loren knew exactly what he was capable of. He watched Sam curl up in her sheets and protest Micah's strengths. A man with nothing to lose and nothing to fear could be a dangerous man, Loren knew this from experience.
He knew about the curiosities of suicide, even if he never talked about it. He knew about bad thoughts and bad deeds, wanting them gone. Loren didn't know about wanting to vanish just because it meant saving somebody else or making the pain of others stop. That made him think of Hannah, even if his face didn't react. Martyr.]
You won't have to do it again. You never had to do it. [He paused, thinking about the empty room and when his eyes skimmed her skinny bones, it wasn't with sympathy or concern. Hannah. He thought in the formulation of survival instincts.] You should eat something.
[Pause. Small smile.] It would make me happy f you did. [Because martyrs were about that.]