Mercy

Perched upon a blemished armchair in distorted tranquility, I hummed a tune that existed only within the deepest corners of my mind. It was a gentle, woebegone melody I immersed myself into the moment my girlfriend had left the apartment, articulating my disdain for the woman in the despondent hum. The metrical groaning of broken springs added an eerie rhythm, giving my morose chanson a steady, if not unsettling, beat to follow. I was wholly lost in a pitiful rut with nothing but my melodious tendencies to assist in finding the total serenity I craved. I knew my girlfriend was going out to spend well over half of what little money she earned on useless little trinkets and outfits. It was money that shecould have used to help pay for the diapers and the formula and the countless necessities one must acquire when there’s an infant to take care of, yet she rarely heeded my pleas in taking dual responsibility of our daughter’s expenses. She had no interest in saving and wouldn’t know the meaning of the word if it waltzed straight up to her and slashed her $100 haircut to pieces, so I reluctantly became the leader of fiscal affairs, watching in dismay as my own paycheck was swallowed by infant provisions. It left little for either of us to comfortably survive, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way so long as my little girl wouldn’t starve.

Darcy didn’t care. She laughed every time I grumbled about some expensive new product she justhad to buy, watching with mounting fascination as her dark humor and flippant purchases brewed a bitter stew deep within my guts.

I wasn’t laughing. I found no hilarity in being pathetically dependent on a fucking college student who was two strokes away from getting fired from his dismal minimum wage salvation.

So I sat, allowing the momentum of the worse-for-wear chair to lead the chorus in my melancholic tune, as I gazed down upon the sleeping body nestled comfortably against my chest. Drool idly dribbled from the corners of her mouth and seeped into my shirt, but I didn’t give a damn. The way her tiny lips opened and closed, searching for food somewhere in her dreams like a baby bird begging for a worm, was enough to melt my hardened spirit into indistinguishable love goo, so naturally I allowed for the bubbly dampness to continue soaking into my shirt. She was perfect in every way…my little angel…and I felt an inner sense of pride in knowing that the subtle sounds of my dark song had lulled her into a sleep so profound that I’d most likely be sitting in that damn chair with her cradled in my arms until her mother returned.

Lord knowsthat wouldn’t have been any time soon.

She squirmed. My Cadence twisted even closer to my body, and I quickly began to worry that I’d done something to disturb her. Having no other ideas as to what could possibly settle her down once more, I stroked her peach-fuzz of strawberry blonde hair until she was virtually motionless save for her shallow breathing.

Not until I opened my eyes to find my hand frozen in mid-stroke did I realize it had all been a dream. A dream so vivid I felt as if reality had gone and ripped my heart right out and devoured it before me. I swore I could feel Cadence’s tiny body against mine, drooling into my shirt, squirming to get closer…and then I allowed my hand to rest upon whatever it had been stroking. Abruptly, it all became clear. My flashback felt so genuine because it was, in a sense. There was someone lost in slumber and curled right up beside me with his head on my chest. Fuck, I could even tell that the dampness in my hospital gown hadn’t been imaginary.

Billie Joe Armstrong had slept in my bed and not so much as a doctor or nurse bothered to wake us up so the old man could be carted off to his own hospital room.

With a yawn, I scanned the room for anything that might have been able to give light as to how long the pair of us had been sleeping and why the fuck no one happened to bitch us out. First, I spotted a fair few of the small, green and silver oxygen tanks Lorraine had been babbling about before she’d agitatedly whisked away to find them for a sneaky old bastard with a purdy mouth and a knack for juvenile behavior. What boggled my mind was why she wouldn’t have put an abrupt stop to the sketchy situation Billie and I were in, but I assumed it may have been her way of apologizing for forcing me to dwell upon the horrors of my past. The limpdick was, after all, consoling me in his own eccentric way.

Glancing at the clock on the bedside table, I found it to be 6:47. A fucking M. They’d kept me in the goddamn hospital overnight without my consent, and for what? A psychotic break? It was completely absurd, seeing as Elliot was most likely sitting in my car, anger rising with the sun, as he waited for me to return to him. My shift should have ended nearly twelve hours ago, yet there I was, groggy from the first few hours of genuine sleep I’d been fortunate enough to receive in well over five days. Worse still was the old man resting against me, the one I’d sucked off the day Elliot locked me away. The old man who refused to admit whether or not he was even a fairy.

I was so beyond fucked I could hardly stand it.

Before I was able to lapse into complete panic, Lorraine poked her head in through the door, notably checking up on myself and the sleeping form beside me. As she perceived my sudden consciousness, she drifted into the room and pulled a chair next to the bed. Its legs scraped against the floor with a maddening squeal, and I instantly made my auditory discomfort apparent. I shushed her, pressing a finger to my lips, as I nodded my head in Billie’s direction. She quietly mouthed her apologies before proceeding with her copious questions.

“We don’t usually allow this, but the two of you looked so comfortable that I just didn’t have the heart to wake you. How’re you feeling?”

“Peachy, darling. Just fucking peachy,” I mumbled through gritted teeth. I was oblivious to the arm that was still wrapped around the old man, though the mistress undoubtedly seemed distracted by it. Her discomfort lessened my panic, and I found myself smirking at her frowning lips.

“There’s nothing going on between you two, is there? It’s imperative for us to know, seeing as it would be highly inappropriate to send you to be his live-in caregiver until he…he…”

“Kicks it?” I offered, taken aback by her inability to affirm Billie’s impending demise.

“Yes, yes, but please answer the question, Mike. This arrangement won’t work unless I know this bond you two seem to have is merely platonic,” Lorraine pressed, yet again presenting me with the option to live with Billie. Apparently, the old bastard had gone and set his plan of saving me from Elliot into motion by himself. Sure, I was flattered by his persistence…but I felt suspicious of how Elliot would react to me up and abandoning him. Something nagging in my gut screamed that he would hunt me down until the day he died, and if that was the case, I wasn’t sure if it was even worth escaping.

“Nope. There’s nothing going on, nothing to suspect. He’s just guilty about what happened to me is all,” I calmly explained, yet the sponge bath scenario loomed in the back of my mind like an intruder. The memory was enough to disprove my reassurance, but of course Lorraine was incapable of knowing what had passed between Billie and me in that bathroom.

“What do you mean?” she inquired, leaning forward with mounting interest.

Fuck. As desperately as I had been trying to avoid speaking about the details of what had happened to me, I managed to hurl myself right back into the unpleasant recollections.

After swallowing the lump from my throat, I croaked, “My ex…the one who…who raped me…was dating Billie’s son when he was first admitted. That’s how he found me.”

Lorraine’s eyes grew wide with shock, her features adopting a more somber visage in an instant. I’d rendered her speechless. Mistress of Mindfuck: 1; Loonies: 1. The score had been evened, and never before had I been more determined to prevail.

“That is one hell of an unfortunate coincidence, Mike. I’m sorry,” she murmured, eyes glistening with moisture. They were just a blink or two from producing tears to weave mascara patterns into her cheeks, which significantly disturbed me. She was a psychiatrist and had surely treated dozens of rape victims, so why was my case depressing enough to make a shrink cry?

I must be one lucky sonuvabitch.

“I’m sorry, I must excuse myself,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands before making a hastened beeline towards the door. Staring, mystified, at the suddenly vacant chair in front of me, I added a point for the Loonies to the senseless mental scoreboard I’d arbitrarily created. Finally, we were in the lead.

I yawned for a second time and stole a glimpse down at Billie Joe, whose face was still concealed within my unflattering hospital gown, and wondered how long I would be trapped there until the lazy bastard decided to grace the room with his hesitant consciousness. After careful consideration and weighing the options of either attempting to fall back to sleep or provoking the old man into a premature wakefulness, I settled upon the latter. As deeply as my alarmingly realistic dream had been and as much as my heart ached to see my daughter again, regardless of the encounter being valid or not, I reasoned that dwelling upon an improbable desire was probably just as foolish as claiming aloud that I felt soulless. So, to wake Billie Joe, I coughed as repulsively as I could manage and wriggled about, watching intently as his sleeping form was torn from pleasant slumber.

“…the fuck’s goin’ on?” he grumbled, squinting up to see who’d made such an unholy racket. When it had been registered that he was still curled against my body, the tiniest of smirks danced wickedly across his lips. “Hello, sir,” he chuckled in an outrageously accurate British accent. “Was that nap fantastic for you as well?”

“Nap? Try night, Limpdick. It’s nearly seven fucking thirty in the morning,” I sighed, frowning slightly at how chipper he was for being awake all of sixty seconds.

“Shit,” he gasped. I assumed that if he’d had the strength, he would have sat bolt-upright and scurried out of my bed in embarrassment. Fatigue and general frailty, however, kept him glued to my side.

“Well, I guess I make a damn good pillow, then,” I mused.

“Yeah, guess so. Slept like a fuckin’ baby.”

Suddenly, the conversation wasn’t cute anymore. Any hint of cheerfulness vacated my appearance in a matter of seconds, and every fucking muscle in my body tensed. Of course he slept like a fuckin’ baby. For a while, he was. To me, having a body snuggled against mine triggered a supernatural feeling of my little girl being cradled in my arms once more.

For a while, Billie Joe was my Cadence.