What the… fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Grabbing his chest, Bob Melanski is gasping for air, his eyes wide open, when he sees her. Mara, in handcuffs, brought in by Campbell, the one and only detective who, deep down, suspects why Bobby is here.
Does Campbell know? Know that Bobby has known Mara for more than 15 years, and is that the reason why she is dragging her through the door? For him to start tumbling back, for him to start grabbing his chest? For him to have what starts feeling like a heart attack?
When they approach, Bobby is shaking in his fundament. The pain in his chest grows intense. He starts sweating, his knees go weak, and his hands are trembling. A leaf in a storm that is growing stronger with each second that passes.
Mara has not seen him yet.
By God, she really hasn't changed! Still the same that Bobby remembers. A stubborn hooker who hates authority and doesn't even have enough respect to take her eyes off the ground to look at them.
Maybe Bob isn't fully right about the latter, because all at once she does. She takes her eyes off the ground and as hers meet Bob´s, she slips into hibernation. For Bobby it goes a bit further. The moment that their glances touch his legs fail to hold his body up. His hand still on his chest, he breaks down right there, in a crowded police station and amidst a dozen people who bend over him in shock and try their best to get him back.
However, for the moment Bob is dead.
He should be happy. For years he has longed for it to happen and almost every day he has thought about ending it himself.
Miserable coward!
Day after day, he would say it to himself, because yes, he actually is, and after the many times he has been saying it, he feels relief, when his heart stops beating and he drifts into unconsciousness.
It should have stopped long ago, his heart. It should have stopped on the night it broke apart. On the night that Bobby lost his life. The cold and rainy night when his daughter and his wife - both of them innocent of what was to happen to them - died in an accident.
In his company they lost their lives, Bob was there for all of it. He, who had made them both a promise that he would always keep them safe. That he would never let anything happen to them, and that if their integrity were ever threatened, he would rather die himself.
Unfortunately, he didn´t. Despite his promise that he would be the one to save them, he couldn´t. He didn't try hard enough, and had to watch them dying in his arms.
Oh why did he have to be in the car with them on the cold and rainy night? He shouldn't have been there at all, and if he hadn't been, it would never have happened the way it did.
They would still be here, they would still be breathing, if he could have died in their place.
The years after their death Bob tried to persuade himself that if he took himself out they might come back. That if there was a higher power, maybe it would be up for a bargain and take him instead of them. Unfortunately the wimp he was never brought himself to seal the deal and go through with the idea. Now he made it: He is dead, but what killed him was a heart attack, and the bargain that he has had in mind has failed.
Does it even matter? Now that he is following them into death, will he get to be with his family again?
They are waiting up there. That is at least what his dying brain is showing him when his heart stops beating and DNT is released in his system to make his last breath easier on him.
They say when you die you see your life passing by in what feels like seconds. The important things at least. and in Bobby's the things that were important were the devastating ones that made him who he is. A depressed and hopeless alcoholic, who finally feels a weight lifted off his shoulders when he sees the light and wrapped up in it, his daughter Aria and Anna, his wife, who are smiling at him.
Oh, those smiles!
How much he has longed for them, when he was still alive!
Her arms wide open, Anna is waiting for him to approach, so he starts running towards her. But when he has nearly reached her, the ground underneath his feet disintegrates. Only seconds away from her embrace he goes down.
Not now!
Not this close to everything that he has been longing for!
He tries to crawl, because all at once he feels too weak to get back up. Then suddenly he feels a force pulling on his feet. It is growing stronger and stronger to hold him back from everything that he has ever wanted, and as much as he tries to fight it off, he is not strong enough to win.
Typical, just typical!
Only a tea bag like you would be too weak to cross over when the last beat of the heart, the last breath in their lungs, the last energy impulse in their nervous system are done.
You don't deserve your family!
You don't deserve the other side!
Go back, you fucking coward and live a miserable life!
As if being pulled through a space between life and death, away from where he wants to be, isn't bad enough, all of a sudden Bob sees a memory that has been haunting him. Around him,he makes out the pictures of the accident.
A doorknob, it looks like a lion's head. Since that night it has been the first picture he sees when his PTSD would force him to revisit the images that have been burnt into his brain and make him physically sick.
The face of a barmaid, young and pretty.
Then on the counter in front of him empty glasses, they are multiplying.
The clock, so huge that you can see it from another room, and what it shows him through the door is eight o´clock, time for him to go.
After that another pint, half full. His hand is holding it and takes it to his lips. When he is downing it, he can feel the cold drink in his mouth again and tastes it once more on his tongue. A taste that has been sickening to him ever since.
Then his keys on the counter. He hears them jingling when his fingers grab them.
The next image are the red and white stripes on the exit door, and the lion's head door knob once more.
Then the stop sign close to the house of his parents in law, from where he was supposed to pick Anna and Aria up. His wife as she walks out the door with Aria cuddled into her arm. When the pacifier falls down, Anna´s eyes are following it to the ground. Shortly before she is about to call them back and look at Bob, who is waiting for them in his car, the series of images jumps forward.
He never gets to meet her eyes, never gets to see her smile for the last time she did.
What a gruesome punishment it is that, whenever he tries to think of it, the next thing he sees in his memory is looking in the rearview mirror and seeing little Aria screaming in the backseat of his car.
Then all at once there is the tree that he misses, because his drunk eyes are too slow to leave the reflection and return to the road. A delayed attempt to break, and Bob's memory goes black. When he blinks, the next thing he sees in front of him is Anna´s face after the accident. He doesn't remember her last smile, but only her wide open eyes. Her face, injured and covered in blood, when she takes her last breath and dies.
The force is still pulling on Bob's feet to hold him back from the light, back from his daughter and wife, whose smiles he craves like nothing else.
I´m on the way, he wants to scream. Wait for me, I won't be long. However, he cannot move his tongue. His lips stay sealed, and the force finally succeeds. It drags him through an iron door, behind which the life he has left behind is waiting for him.
For Aria and Anna! Be strong, you wimp!
Be strong enough to tear away from all the things that drag you down into a life, every day, every minute, every second of which feels like a punishment for the things you did.
Right then Bob Melanski starts to understand why life drives back into him and cannot let him go quite yet.
You are the reason why your family is dead.
You are the one who murdered them, and when Anna´s parents had you prosecuted, you were supposed to go to jail for it, but you escaped your punishment. You escaped the years that the jury gave you, because you were approached by the ones you work for now, by the ones you call your saviors.
But look at yourself now, just look at you!
They might not be your saviors, after all, but instead they might be sent by the Devil himself.
From far away Bob suddenly hears voices breaking through the layers of grey that the light he just saw has turned into, and all at once it is like a lightning bolt is hitting his chest. Not painful at the start, until he suddenly senses it again, the unbearable pain he is in.
In reaction to it he rips his eyes open. His torso shoots off the ground, and after a heart attack that had him killed for a moment he feels his heart beating again, he is gasping for air again, he is moving again. He is alive and wide awake.
Men from emergency services and colleagues are surrounding him, and once they can be sure that he isn't gone, they wipe the worried looks off their faces and start whispering.
"Oh, thank god!"
"Oh, great job!"
"Oh, we thought, you wouldn't make it."
"Well, maybe he only faked it..."
"Well, to be honest, it's his own fault, he should have retired years ago and could have done so with his generous pension."
"Well, he knew it was going to happen soon, with his high cholesterol, and, no offense, but he is fat. If he tried to lose the pounds then his heart would be happy out."
Fuck you all! Shut up, shut up, shut up!
Maybe thoughts like these aren't recommended after a heart attack like his, but Bobby thinks them anyway, while he is trying his best to see past the many people who are standing in his way. Only one thing matters to him now.
Where is she? Where is Mara?
In the first row of spectators he cannot make her out, and everything considered, he is surprised that she wouldn't want to witness the event that was him meeting death from the best possible seat. There is no denying it, she should want him dead, nearly as much as he does himself, but, no, he cannot see her anywhere around. Determined he tries to get up, his movements clumsy and slow, when a pair of hands stops him.
"Sir, you can't get up. We are going to carry you out, so we can take you to the hospital and see if you need a -"
Oh, shut up! Bobby´s shoe kicks the emergency doctor's hands away. For today, hasn't he been through enough?
He knows best what he needs and wants which right now is finding Mara!
There was a time in Bobby's life when he checked himself into a hospital every week. Not because he was sick or afraid that he could be. He did it for the care that came with it. Now he would genuinely need it, but he won't go today.
Fuck this shit! He has been over his addiction to hospitals for a long time and refuses to relapse, whatever it takes!
As the emergency doctor shrinks back from him after his kick, Bobby bends forward, falls on his hands and knees and starts crawling to the door. Faster than you would have expected it from a man of his size and in a condition like his. If he had been slower, he probably wouldn't have made it. But for the speed and the surrealness of the events, bewilderment spreads in the rows of people around him, and they give way to him.
When he reaches the door frame he pulls himself up on it and makes it on his feet. For some time he keeps on standing in the door, tumbling back and forth.
Is this a bad idea?
He squeezes his eyes closed and considers turning back, but when he opens his eyelids again, his dizziness is gone. The confirmation that he needed to walk on.
He makes it into the hallway, proud of himself for having escaped, like a Phoenix from the ashes. Even though he is not sure which direction to choose and has not been for the last 20 years, for once in all this time at least he has a goal: finding out where Mara is, before she can talk. Before she can expose him.
In here no one can know who he is and what he's here for. But Mara knows. Even though she has never known Bobby well, he let it slip to her one day, drunk and during the act, because he was convinced that telling her wouldn't change anything for him.
Why in all the world would anyone ever believe a hooker, and why would a hooker ever end up in a place like this, where someone would be interested in it?
Stupid, stupid, stupid, you shouldn't have told her, you cunt! Note to self: A prostitute should never be misused as a psychiatrist, even though their hourly rates and the relief you feel after an appointment with either might mislead you into thinking that they are one and the same.
Bob has turned a few corners. Because he can hear everyone from the other room looking for him now, he knocks on the next best door to his right.
No answer. Impatiently he is waiting right in front of it and when he cannot take it anymore, he tears it open. Behind it, no sign of Mara and Campbell. Only a man in a suit who is sitting down at a desk and staring at him.
"Did I say come in?"
He closes the document that he was just looking at as if it is secret.
"What are you doing, Melanski? You look.. Well, no offense, but you don't look great. Is everything okay?"
No, it is not!
It will in fact never be again if Bob will not find Mara.
"I´m looking for Campbell," he replies as calmly as he can. "I need to speak to her. Where is she?"
The suit man crosses his arms, gets up and slowly approaches him.
"Campbell? Why?"
Is that suspicion in his eyes?
Bob starts tensing up and feels sweat climbing down the wrinkles on his forehead.
What should he answer to make it seem like everything is fine?
"Campbell has… She has my car keys, I think. I must have left them in her office earlier today."
Oh, Bob, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Could you not have come up with a better excuse?
That's what he is thinking, but the man in the suit seems to buy it either way.
"Okay, ya, do you want me to call her? The last time I saw her today she was with a suspect."
"A suspect?"
Bob wipes across his face to stop the sweat from climbing down, but he only smears it all over, so his skin looks even shinier than before.
"A suspect in what case? I thought she just finished the one she was on, did I miss something?"
The man in the suit hesitates.
"Well, a suspect in the high profile murder case that she was called to earlier today. Everyone here was talking about it, I doubt that you could have missed it. Or,when did you come in today?"
"Well, an hour ago," Bob replies. "High profile murder case, how? Is it a politician?"
"No, the victim wasn't in politics. As far as I know, he was a scientist."
No, no, no!
This cannot be happening!
Bob starts feeling sick to his stomach, because he knows what he will hear next long before the suit man can go on.
"I think his name was Curbler or something. Prof. Dr. Aaron Curbler."
Don´t, don´t, don´t do it!
Even though Bob is trying to cajole himself, he cannot prevent himself from doing it. All of a sudden he bends a slight bit forward and throws up.
"Jesus, Melanski, are you okay? Do you need a doctor?"
Fuck you all, with your doctor!
Before the man in the suit can grab Bobby´s sleeve to pull him into the room, he is gone. No sign of him in the hallway either. He has escaped through the emergency exit door just a few steps away.
Air. Fresh air. He cannot remember that it has ever felt better. He sits down at the foot of the fire escape that the emergency exit has led him to, closes his eyes and opens his mouth a bit to reduce the effort that breathing causes.
Aaron Curbler, and they think that Mara has killed him…
He needs a minute, maybe five, to let the information sink in, and thereafter he tries to do what his many therapists have told him to, find a different perspective on the things that seem to be nothing but negative. Quite obviously, however, Bobby has never been really good at it. Otherwise, why would he be a hopeless alcoholic at the brink of suicide? That is why in this case, too, he cannot find an upside to the situation.
Aaron fucking Curbler!
The man who used him for his own purpose.
Aaron fucking Curbler!
Bob should have killed the man himself! For everything that he has done to him in his most vulnerable days.
Suddenly Bobby holds his breath.
Fuck, if Mara tells them what she knows, then they might in fact suspect that it wasn´t her at all.
They might think that Bob is the murderer then, because not only does Mara know who Bob really is. To make it worse she also knows what Aaron did to him.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Bob starts hitting the wall next to him with his fist, as if he's having a fit. To be fair, anger issues are what he has been diagnosed with by more than five different psychologists, and yes, maybe he should have worked on it, but he has just ignored the diagnosis, like his high cholesterol, his shortness of breath, and everything else that a doctor of any field has ever considered wrong with him.
If nothing has proven it before, then this day should end up proving it to him. The problems you ignore will not just go away, they will grow bigger day by day.
Not only did his cholesterol and shortness of breath grow into a heart attack that nearly left him dead. What could now be growing into an even bigger problem that might have him prosecuted is the issue with Aaron and Mara.
He should have listened to his fucking mother!
The people you decide to put your wiener into will be the ones to ruin you. Or, shorter: Those you fuck will fuck you over.