Chapter 60 Death Would Be Kinder
Niklaus
Pain comes second. The loneliness comes first.
I never realized how loud loss could be.
And you’d think I’d manage to be much louder than it, but I am not.
Two people rush me through the muggy halls to the stadium.
And I don’t scream. I clutch my mangled wrist to my chest with a sopping rag, holding the dismembered fingers in my right hand as twisty vines of blood lace in a webbed pattern down my arm, dripping from my elbow.
I have stopped to vomit three times.
I have stared ahead as my heart, mind, and soul go numb.
I have asked God to let me die.
I have passed our cages on the way, and they are so much bigger without her here.
Two familiar voices speak to me and to each other, holding up my weight, and attempting to add pressure to the open wounds.
I come in and out of the monstrous zaps of pain bombing into my hand, all the way to my shoulder.
It’s a blast strong and loud enough to wake me from this daze of survival momentarily.
Each time it unfurls the zing of fire and live, angry wires within me, I can’t even make a sound. I hunch forward and take it.
“She—left—me.”
“We will find her, Niklaus! Just hold on!” Sophia’s voice.
I’m slung over the stage where inmates come and go from my vision. The black and red ceiling spins and duplicates as my hand is worked on.
I should die here.
She left me.
I should die.
“…is going to sting!”
A cold splash of water rinses my hand and arm. But it quickly combusts into a chemical fire, eating away at my flesh and bone. It’s so unbearable, for three long seconds I worry the agony will either kill me or send me spiraling into permanent madness.
I yell, flailing off the stage.
Inmates hold me down.
“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“She’s—gone.”
I don’t have a grasp on reality. It’s a fevered nightmare provoked by my bad karma and some kind of deadly illness. My fingers…Sapphire…
What’s going to happen now?
My nerves are pinched, and the wounds are compressed. Arguing breaks out over me. Shouting that takes place between my language and Old Alkadonian. I want to tell them all to shut the hell up. The noise or the trauma has me dry heaving with my head rolling to the right side.
“…if we don’t at least try, he’ll never have these fingers again!”
That possible future thumps viscerally in and out of my thoughts. Do I even care at this point? She’s gone. I’ve been left here all alone. Would I rather just die? Would that be a kinder fate than what I shall endure living the rest of my life here?
But what if she returns?
There really isn’t a chance of that.
At least, not from what I’ve seen.
But even still, if she somehow, some way, figures out how to control where she goes and when…
“Reattach them,” I bark, sweat pouring down my face and neck. “All—three—of—them.”
There’s an uncomfortable breath of silence.
I stretch my eyes wide to scan the faces around me.
“There are only two fingers we can try to save…”
“No.” I look down at my blurring left hand. My index, middle, and ring fingers are gone. “Where’s the third?”
Sophia exchanges a look of sorrow with Jack. “The Guardian took it. The one Sapphire hurt before she got her punishment. He kept it for himself.”
I drop my head back to the stage and close my eyes and unwelcome tears spill down my temples, into my hair.
“Save the two you have then,” I mutter. But I have no hope they’ll be able to do it. Reattaching limbs is nearly impossible.
“Drink. It’s Honey of Sweet Nectar Valley,” Jack orders, tipping a leather-wrapped canteen up to my lips. I chug the sweet, syrupy juice until I feel as though I might puke again.
The liquid doesn’t take away the anguish I’m writhing in, but it does help a little. A tingling numbness rolls over my body, starting at my scalp and prickling its way down to my feet.
“I know it’s hard, but please Niklaus, try to hold still.
I have a chemical that increases the chance of the finger successfully reattaching.
But it doesn’t always work.” Sophia leans so close to my hand; her eyelashes practically graze my knuckles.
She applies pressure with a tourniquet above the gashes, taking lead on sewing my fingers back to my hand—and from what I can tell, her focus is unshakable.
Surgically still hands. A rhythm that is far more confident and well-measured than I would have expected from a young woman who desperately needs her glasses.
With help, they align my finger-bones, stitching the muscle together, examining tendons and nerve endings.
A needle and thread carving through my pulsing, stinging, open dismemberment is a horrific trip to hell and back.
I black out and come back, only to realize they still aren’t finished.
The cramps coil so tightly around my bones, I can feel the lingering effects into the base of my spine.
I howl, pray, wish that God would end it mercifully.
She’s gone.
“Done. Now we wait,” Sophia announces.
I cry and exhale at the same time. Even though my fingers are sewn back on, they don’t feel like mine at all. They are someone else’s. Foreign objects attached to me.
“Wait for what?” Jack asks.
“If they get darker. Blue or black. We failed. They weren’t attached properly, and they will decay. But if they turn pink, there is blood flow.”
I grind my teeth back and forth.
What the fuck is the point? She’s gone. Sapphire is fucking gone. And I am still here.
“Oh! Look! Pink!” Jack exclaims, throwing back his head to laugh. “That’s pink, right?”
“Yes!” Sophia claps her hands. “Oh, thank God!”
I don’t bother looking.
“Niklaus. It’s done. We saved the two fingers!”
The ceiling swims in warm, devastated water as my eyes grow hot and burn.
“Which one is gone?” I whisper.
Jack drops to a knee so he can answer. “The ring finger.”
I feel broken and obliterated.
“At least you weren’t wearing your wedding ring.”
The tears spill over.
“Right.”
This has to be a nightmare.
“We’re going to find your wife, friend.” Jack pats me on the shoulder.
No, you won’t.
Sapphire is gone.
And I am never going home.