No Sacrifice

                                                                                                        No Sacrifice

          Death awaited him as always however, this time, he would embrace it.  Above average Jarrod remembered the labels ‘nerd’, ‘geek’ and ‘most likely to succeed’.  At least laser surgery took care of his vision allowing freedom from one tag.  Leaving school with dreams of excelling Jarrod suddenly found him self adrift in a sea of mediocrity.  Lost and alone he turned to something that would never reject him, never turn its back.  It would constantly remind him how it needed him, tearing at his skin from the inside.

          Looking in the mirror Jarrod glanced over his lank dark hair, hollow cheeks and sunken black eyes.  Staring back was a face he barely recognised apart from the square jaw line prickled with stubble and slight kink in the bridge of his nose.  Taking a deep breath the smell of bleach, soap and disinfectant burned in his nostrils.  It was the cleanest he had been in a long time but still, he derived no comfort.  Leaning back on the basin and staring at the pile of crumpled clothes, he thought they looked like a pile of rich loamy dirt, heaped on the floor.  He wouldn’t need the clothes anymore anyway.

          A sharp wrap with a single knuckle broke his trance.

          “We’re ready for you now,” the nurse called through the door.  She didn’t need to specify a name; he was the only one there.

          Sucking in another even steadying breath Jarrod pulled the door open with one hand while holding the back of his pale blue gown with the other.  The nurse by the door startled him, looking more like an escort guard than a woman of compassion.  Her starched white uniform made her skin darker than her Latino heritage suggested, glowing white comfortable shoes made her look short.  Her large brown eyes held no secret, no softness of understanding, just another day, another stranger.  She was beautiful to him, perfect.

          “Room one, please, Mr. Pepper.” she prompted hugging a black clipboard. 

          As Jarrod padded barefoot toward room one he could feel her steps close behind, not beside, behind.  Good, Jarrod thought.  He didn’t want her sympathy nor her empathy, he wanted to do this alone.  Truthfully he knew he couldn’t face sorrowful eyes, the questions why, the embarrassment of it all.  When a judge calls you parasitic and not deserving to live in normal society, it can never be good.  He wanted some dignity in what he was about to do.

          The point between his shoulder blades crawled at the feel of her eyes watching for a twitch of hesitation in him.  Feint left? Feint right?  Jarrod smiled slightly at her misconception, the bulge of her loosely hidden glock in her thick waistband was unmistakable.

          In the emptiness of room one Jarrod wondered at what point things had gone so horribly wrong.  His mind remained blank, even as he lay quietly on the table top bed.  He could feel the cold vinyl against his back through the stiff starched white sheet, the cool black glass wall against his arm.  The small pillow crackled loudly under his head.  Shifting snapping foam next to his ears unsettled him.  Jarrod’s cool exterior began to break, his breath quickening.  Before his resolve was completely shattered, Jarrod tossed the offending pillow.

          “It will all be over in a minute,” the nurse said not bothered by the projectile.

          Leaning over Jarrod, the nurse attached the sensor lines to his exposed skin.  He felt hard metal press painfully against the thin bones in the back of his hand, could imagine the bullets lined up vertically, one chambered, the safety on.  The sensor patches were cold at first but soon warmed.  Jarrod could feel their stickiness pull on his skin.  It was strange how his senses were heightened to his bare surroundings.  The nurse smelt of soap, he could taste the bubbles in the back of his throat.  Disinfectant wafted in the air when she moved her gloved hands.  Her uniform rustled under its heavy burden of starch.  His accelerated heartbeat reverberated through the thin foam padding of the bed.  Jarrod willed himself to open his eyes, face the end.

          “Hope? Your name is Hope?” Jarrod noted the nurses name tag, her last name hidden beneath a thin blank label giving only a hint of the letters below.  Hope merely gave a tiny upturned noise of confirmation through pursed lips.  “Bet your parents were surprised by your career choice, working here.” Jarrod observed a slight embarrassment flash through Hopes eyes, the dip of avoidance of her head, a reddening of her cheeks.  “Or haven’t you told them.”

          “They wanted me to be a doctor.  I still get to help people.”
          “I wanted to be a psychiatrist.  What ever you do, don’t self medicate.”
          “So…you would have been Dr. Pepper?”

          Jarrod didn’t want to meet her amused look.  It wasn’t a moment for trading life’s irony.

          “Can I see her?”

          “Sure. Just keep watching the glass,” Hope said as she flicked a switch.

          He was used to the invasiveness of a needle prick but, instead of a rush of ecstasy he felt an immediate sapping of his strength.  The glass next to him shimmered.  Anna’s face appeared next to his.  Reaching over he gently touched the glass with his finger tips, tracing the outline of her face.  Had it really been that long since she walked out the door?

          Sweet Anna smiling up at a man holding a tiny baby dressed in pink.  The baby, close to her father’s chest, suckled her fist, new born blue eyes staring wide.  The man swayed slightly, shifting his weight gently from foot to foot, deep sadness haunting his darkly ringed eyes.

          A shadow threaded its way into Jarrod’s dulling senses.

          “Tell me?” Jarrod breathed trying to swallow the cardboard lump in his throat.

          Anna looked so different to her photo.  They had offered him more than a hundred photos but hers stood out as a radiant angel, just as he remembered her.  The woman shifted the bandana on her head, a large emerald and gold filigree ring adorned her middle finger, her grandmothers.  Jarrod remembered it well; it fetched a hundred dollars at the porn shop on Thirty Eighth Street.

         “She was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant.  She chose to go ahead with the pregnancy but the cancer grew inoperable, very aggressive.  Voluntary Life Exchange was her only chance.  She can’t see you,” Hope explained.

         Jarrod felt like he was melting into the bed, weak, heavy, his breath slowing.  His thoughts drifted.  Jarrod thought of his soul.  It seemed no less of a sacrifice than when a soldier gave up his life to save his mates.  The only difference being, at the point sacrifice, the soldier always believed there was a way out – that somehow he might live.  Hope.  Jarrod smiled softly.

         “Tell your parents, don’t live a lie,” Jarrod whispered weakly.

         He could imagine Anna dancing at the school reunion two weeks from now and felt his life was now worth while, surpassing the average.