The Love Bite [boyxboy]

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine (Mark)

Pain.

That's all I felt as I watched everything go on around me from inside my own body. It was like being trapped in a glass box... Trapped inside your own body, watching the world around you continue. I could only lay there and move my fingers to ask for things. When they fed me, they took me off the ventilator long enough to eat before my chest started aching and burning.

My lungs squeezed tightly and expanded fully every time I tried to breath, only causing more pain as I struggling to suck oxygen into my body.

Everything hurt.

My head felt like it was going to explode half the time, my chest felt like it was going to just collapse on itself. I couldn't even remember how I got here. How did I end up in this hospital? What hospital is this?

I only remembered a pair of blue eyes leering at me before I was kicked in the back of the head. After that and before that was a total blur and I could only grab bits and pieces of it. If there was one thing I was sure of...

It was that I was terrified.

I didn't like it here. My heart monitor scared me, as if at any moment it'd flat line and that'd be the last thing I'd hear. The last thing I would see is the television across the room playing Captain America over and over again because the nurses didn't change the DVDs often enough. The last thing I'd feel is the agonizing pain in my chest and head.

"Mark?" One of the nurses, whose name was Kelsey, approached the side of the bed with a gentle smile, brushing the hair out of my face.

"You have a visitor." She said, making me look at her in confusion. She stepped aside and my heart sank as I saw Jack standing by the curtain that seperated my bed from the other patients in the room that were just lying there on their machines and ventilators, breathing mechanically. Kelsey fixed up the machines I was hooked to, then left Jack alone with me.

I wanted to call out to her, beg her to come back.

I didn't want to be alone with him.

Not when I was like this.

Not when I couldn't defend myself.

"Afternoon, Mark." Jack greeted dryly, setting his cane on the bed railing before he leaned over to check my stats on the machine beside me. He snorted and leaned back, scanning me from head to toe before he locked eyes with me.

"It's about time, ain't it? You lived a good four years, Mark. Four good years of running and hiding and pretending." He sighed, pausing to cough and wheeze a little. I winced a little, trying to shift on the bed, but sharp pangs echoed through my body, making me whimper. Instead, my fingertips twitched, but Jack didn't reach for the notepad and pencil.

"I don't need to know what you have to say," Jack retorted, making me grimace, "You knew this was bound to happen sooner or later... It's your fault, Mark. They died because of you." The backs of my eyes burned as I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out Jack's voice by thinking of anything else, but it was so hard with the pain throbbing in my lungs and head. I peeked my eyes back open to see Jack staring at me sadly.

He reached out and cupped my cheek, his calloused, wrinkling hand making my cheek burn. He stroked my cheek a couple times, then pulled his hand away.

"I hate you," Jack said at last as I could only stare up at him, "You look just like her... The same eyes, the same hair, the same nose, the same lips... How can you look so much like her? She was beautiful. She was strong..." He studied my face, then picked up his cane again.