The Long Road Home #0

“There, that’s the last of it.” Vance laid down the scissors and removed the bandages from Jonah’s right hand. “Can you flex your fingers?” Jonah didn’t respond at first, then, slowly, he did as he’d been asked. Vance nodded and said, “Looks good. The lacerations weren’t too deep, but you had so many I was worried about how well they’d heal.”

“He’s had a lot worse, haven’t you, cowboy?” Stiletta laid her own hand upon Jonah’s shoulder -- he didn’t seem to notice. “One time, a guy smashed both his hands with a sledgehammer.”

Vance’s eyes widened. “Was that here or...you know...back there?”

“Back there,” Stiletta replied. “He told me about it months ago, when I asked about the funny scars on his palms. Then there was another guy who snapped half his fingers by stomping on them. Hard to believe he can still make a fist after all that.” She leaned a little closer to Jonah, saying, “You wanna tell Vance about what you did to those guys? I bet he’d like to hear.”

Jonah said nothing, he just sat upon the gurney, with no expression on his pale face. He hadn’t shaved in days, and the bags under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights.

“That’s all right, you can tell me later,” Vance said, gently picking up Jonah’s left hand and going to work with the scissors again. He examined the healing wounds with the same care as before, then said, “I don’t think we need to wrap them up again. Just keep your hands clean, okay?” He tried to look Jonah in the eyes as he spoke, but the man’s head was tilted slightly downward. “Let’s move on to your stitches, shall we?” Vance began to pull up Jonah’s shirt, then stopped when he saw what was underneath...or rather what wasn’t. “Where’s the bandage?”

“No clue,” Stiletta said. “He must’ve pulled it off at some point. He was complaining yesterday about it itching.”

Vance swore under his breath as he gave the stitches a closer look -- the wound across Jonah’s abdomen had nearly closed, though it was still an angry reddish-purple. “Fine, you can leave it off...but same rules as with the hands. If this gets infected, you’re going to be in trouble real quick, understand?” He swabbed the area with antiseptic, just to be sure, then let the shirt fall back into place. “Just sit tight for a few minutes, Jonah, we’ll be right back,” Vance told him, while looking at Stiletta and gesturing towards the back of the infirmary. Once the two of them had walked over there, Vance asked in a low voice, “Has he said anything today?”

“Not a word,” she answered. “I don’t get it, he’s been fine all week. Red’s even got him scheduled for watchdog tomorrow. But today it’s been like dealing with a...” She bit her tongue, not wanting to say the first word that came to mind: corpse.

“Post-traumatic stress can be like that -- good one day, bad the next -- and disassociation isn’t uncommon at all. Right now, his mind’s focused on the trauma, and we’re just background noise. All we can do is keep talking to him like normal, try to draw him back to reality. When he’s responsive again, we’ll have do our best to keep him from relapsing. Getting him back on watchdog duty will probably help.” Vance shook his head, saying, “I’ll admit, I don’t like the idea of giving him a high-powered rifle, but he seems to respond better in that kind of situation, like he’s falling back into an old routine. Was he ever a soldier, back where he came from?”

“He’s mentioned something about a war once or twice, but I think it was a long time ago...for him, I mean.” Stiletta let out a sigh. “What about the pills? Any luck?”

“Yes and no.” Vance opened a nearby cabinet drawer and produced a clear plastic baggie with a dozen pills inside. “A medico at Freepoint had some quetiapine...it’s an antipsychotic. Not what I was hoping for, but it does sometimes help PTSD and insomnia. Problem is, there can be side effects, plus it might take a couple of weeks before we see any results, and I don’t know if we’ll be able to get more.”

“But it’s a start, right? If it can at least help Hex get some sleep, calm down the nightmares, maybe he can pull himself the rest the way out once the pills are gone.”

“Maybe...or we might just make him sick as a dog for two weeks. And that’s another thing: he cannot be drinking while he’s on this stuff. It’s bad enough that he was getting drunk when I had him on the painkillers, but antipsychotics alter brain chemistry. If you...”

“Ah ain’t crazy.”

Stiletta and Vance both turned to see Jonah standing less than five feet away. The blank look was gone, replaced by one that bordered on anger. “Jonah, are you okay?” Stiletta asked.

“Yuh think just ‘cause yuh know all thet fancy doctorin’, yuh kin get away with talkin’ ‘bout me like thet?” Jonah was glaring at Vance, completely ignoring Stiletta’s query.

Vance blinked in confusion, then said, “I-I wasn’t referring to you, Jonah, I was talking about the pills. ‘Antipsychotic’ is a drug classification.”

“We just want to help you,” Stiletta added, taking a step towards Jonah. She could see his hands were beginning to tremble, and that was never a good sign. “If you take the pills, you’ll be able to sleep through the night, and you’ll start feeling better.”

“No, Ah won’t. Yuh said they’d make me sick, mess with muh brain...”

“That’s what they’re designed to do,” Vance replied, then realized it was the wrong thing to say when Hex’s expression became more fierce.

“Ah won’t let yuh poison me!” Jonah lunged forward and grabbed the baggie out of Vance’s hand. He then spun around, ran out of the infirmary, and headed for the communal bathrooms located near the sleeping quarters. As luck would have it, whomever was on honey wagon duty hadn’t emptied the tanks yet, so Jonah ripped the baggie open with his teeth and dumped the pills down into the mess that lay beneath one of the toilet lids.

“What the Hell are you doing, Hex?” Stiletta yelled when she barged into the bathroom.

“Gettin’ rid of thet snake oil.” He threw the empty bag into the toilet for good measure. “There...now they ain’t no good fer nobody.”

Stiletta gaped at him for a moment, then went up and began beating him with her fists. “You stupid briq-licker! What’s wrong with you?”

Jonah whirled on her and roared, “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me, dammit!” Despite his furious expression, the fear dancing in his eyes was plain to see. “Why cain’t y’all just leave me be fer five goddam seconds? The both of yuh keep pokin’ an’ proddin’ at me like a couple of buzzards on a dead man. Well, Ah ain’t dead! Yuh hear me? Ah ain’t dead!” His voice had an edge of hysteria to it, and his hands now shook uncontrollably.

Just then, Vance arrived at the bathroom door. Jonah stared daggers at him, then shoved past and headed down the corridor to his room. The doctor watched him go, unsure if he should follow, then went over to Stiletta instead, who was leaning hard against the wall. “What happened? What’d he do?” he asked. Stiletta gestured vaguely towards the toilet, and Vance said, “I’ll try to find some more. Maybe if we ground them up and slipped them in his food...”

“That he hardly ever eats these days,” Stiletta interrupted. “Unless you plan on force-feeding him the stuff, which I’m sure will go over great with him.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I don’t know what to do anymore...even I’m starting to lose sleep over this.”

“Try to hang in there. It won’t do any good if you fall apart too.” Vance slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I just wish there was a way we could get him to talk about it, maybe we could convince him to not be afraid of what he found.”

“Not be afraid? Jonah found his own dead body in the back of this stinking warehouse, and nobody knows how it got here!” Stiletta wiped a hand roughly at her cheeks, saying, “I don’t think there’s anybody on this planet with enough willpower to resist being afraid of something like that.”