It Could Have Been
The sound of suppressed crying echoed throughout the room, but was nearly swallowed by the sounds of the various machines hooked up to the boy on the bed in the center of the room. His mother looked to the nurse again, silently asking the question she had already asked so many times.
“I don’t know whether he will survive or not. Right now, it’s all in his hands. If he decides to give up the fight, there’s nothing we can do.” The mother nodded before the nurse was even done talking. She knew that answer by heart now.
Across the room the source of the crying could be found, a teenage girl the same age as the boy on the bed, though slightly under the average height. Even in her distress, beauty was written on her every feature. If one was close enough, she might have been heard muttering “Why? Oh, why? We were best friends, best friends How could this have happened—why did you do this to yourself? Why didn’t you just talk to me? I loved you, and it wasn’t unconditional. I had hoped that, given time, our friendship could have become so much more…”
Though the nurse was located on the other side of the room, years of hospital service allowed her to hear every word. A grim smile played across her face, and anyone who saw it could have surely told you that she found nothing humorous about the situation.
“Now that time with him you took for granted could be gone. You piled up your tomorrows and now all you have to show for it is empty yesterdays.”
The girl gave another sob. “Can you hear me?” she asked, “I love you. You hear that? I love you…”
---
Once he had fought the battle like a healthy person. When he saw an orc, troll, bog bloke, or even a giant, he had drawn his bow and shot it from a distance. When sometimes they snuck in right beside him, he pulled out his battle axe and sliced them down. And though he suffered wounds, none of them were ones he couldn’t recover from…
But long ago, something had gone wrong. He wasn’t sure how, or even when, but things were no longer as they should be. He surveyed the vast field before him, or tried to. A great army of all of his usual opponents had assembled somewhere along the line and attacked him. The field before was now littered with their bodies, the plants that weren’t crushed beneath them were stained red with their blood. He no longer had his bow, and his axe wasn’t going to last much longer. He was in one of the brief respites between the strikes of his enemies, trying to recuperate. He wouldn’t have time, he knew, for they always attacked again before he had a chance to regain his strength or heal his wounds. Sure enough, he heard again the hunting horn signaling their charge.
Grimly, he set himself for the attack. For just a second, he felt the sting of his wounds. He knew a look down would show that he was covered in blood, some of it his own and coming from fresh and grotesque cuts, but then he closed it off again, shutting off the pain like a light. Some might saw this was unhealthy, but he knew from his twisted experiences that this was the only way to he could keep himself alive…
A dozen orcs lead the charge, spearheading it. This time it appeared to be small, maybe 25 in all. Just enough, he knew, to break his concentration and keep him from healing. He met the first with a broad swing of his battleaxe. The orc dropped, only to discover that the move had been a feint. It tried to swing its sword at the human, but he was already past. Another broad swing, a real one this time, took three of the orcs across their chests, while he sent a kick to the broad forehead of the first brute, laying him low for the time being. He realized he was quickly being surrounded, but could do nothing about it. He feinted to the low left and the cut right, but the orcs had anticipated that move and were already there. He tried to spin out but he was already committed, he already had too much momentum built up. He tried to bring his axe to bear but was too late, receiving the blows of four orcs on the shaft of his weapon.
A resounding crack echoed across the battlefield.
He looked down, first at his broken weapon, then at the scimitar entering his chest. Beginning to fall, he watched the world blur out of focus…
---
A heart monitor sounded the alarm.
“We’re losing him!” the nurse shouted. Immediately doctors appeared with defibrillators, trying to jumpstart his heart. Within sixty seconds the scene was over, the boy’s heart had started again.
The only difference was renewed crying.
---
He stared across the field. He didn’t remember much after the scimiar stuck him, but he got the idea that a sudden gale picked up and killed the remaining orcs. That didn’t explain, however, the absence of a major wound in his chest…
Again he surveyed the battle field, and then he remembered. His axe!
His beautiful battle axe. There it lay, shattered into pieces, defiled by mud and orcflesh, once proud beauty now so diminished. Another weapon wouldn’t be hard to find, of course, but without his axe why should he continue to fight? For the principle of it, of course, but was that truly enough?
On the other side of the vale, his enemy was rallying. This was the last battle, he knew, the final charge. He had no doubt which side would prevail. He was amazed at how far his luck had already held…
This time he ran to meet them, looted orcblades flashing in his hands. Left, right, low, high, center; lunge, sweep, block. The moves seemed never to end, flowing endlessly into one another. Body after body hit the ground, never to arise again, but he was receiving grevious wounds at nearly the same pace. It wasn’t going to hold for very much longer.
---
The boy’s body was wracking with horrible coughing now, heartbeat swaying erratically from too low to too high. The mother watched unblinkingly. The girl’s weeping picked up yet again.
---
He rolled under a large orcs legs, slicing its groin in passing. An underhanded blow, yes, but necessary. Lurching back up he found that he was face to face with a frost giant. All of the other creatures lurched back into a rough ring—they wanted to see the giant pulverize him. And if it failed, they would already be fighting him again. He threw himself toward his foe with unmatched ferocity, taking just minutes to reduce it into a quivering pile of bleeding muscle. Then he was back to fighting the army.
But as he turned to face them, he realized that he was fighting slower, that the pain had come back and was slowing him down. It was, he knew, because he no longer cared. Why continue to fight when it would easier just to give it up? He stopped for a moment and looked down. It was not long before he saw what he was looking for—two swords soon erupted from his chest within seconds of another, followed quickly by three pikes. Orcs hooted and jeered, all pressing in to get a chance to stab at the once-mighty warrior that had been killing them with abandon mere minutes before. He watched his lifeblood flow out of him as more and more weapons were stuck into him. Some were quickly removed, and some were left to stick there.
He raised his gaze to the mountains enclosing the vale. It had been long, so long—how did he even get in here? When did the mountains rise around him, giving him the false sense of security, keeping his friends out? When had he made such a foolish decision? In his last moments, he chose to look out once again. He began his climb, hindered only by repeating stabs, wounds he no longer felt. He slipped on his own blood and resorted to crawling.
But he had let it go until too late, he knew. Orcs didn’t stop him, but hindered his crawl with their swords and spears. His pace slowed, his breathing became shallow, his blood poured more freely than ever before. Just mere yards away from the edge of the mountain he stopped and closed his eyes. He didn’t get back up.
Just a few feet farther and he might have heard a voice, echoing from outside of his head, saying the only words that could have motivated him to continue.
“I love you. You hear that? I love you…”
---
Finally, the body stopped its gyrations, and the heart monitor sounded its alarm yet again. This time, though, nothing the doctors did could start it again.
---
At the boy’s funeral few people showed up; he really hadn’t been that popular. She was there, though, the one who could have saved him, the one who waited too long to say what needed to be said.
He looked nice, she decided, in that suit. It covered the horrendous scars that covered him in places, the self-inflicted wounds that had one day gone to far…
She went home that night, wracked with grief, looking for some escape. For she knew that she could have saved him, if only she hadn’t been such a coward. Thinking of him, she went to the one thing that had always given him release, the blade she had stolen from his house when she discovered him laying on the floor, its hilt still stained with his blood.
It felt so good to watch her blood flow, she decided, like some reminder she was still alive…
The End
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....So, how was it? Any suggestions?
