Owen
was a brilliant singer/songwriter, struggling to make a name for himself. On
weekday evenings, he had refined his craft as the house musician at a grimy,
after-hours dive, playing to the same six or seven drunken patrons who had permanently
reserved their stools at the bar. It was hardly glamourous; he had no delusions
that any of the drunkards were actually cognizant of his performances, but their
ignorance hardly bothered him because Owen was sure of at least one true fan in
the crowd. Every penetrating note Owen had plucked on his guitar strings and
the beautiful honesty of each lyric were at least enough to keep Emma, the
bartender, entranced, night after night. Owen was more than okay with that.
Offstage,
things were adorably awkward between the pair. For weeks, they made
uncomfortable attempts at playful banter and when things had finally clicked,
they had decided that perhaps they might expand their relationship beyond the
confines of that dingy little bar. They went out on a first date, which had led
to second date, and that brought them to their third, and with every meeting, they
became increasingly enamored with each other until they were all but joined at
the soul. After a matter of months, the fiercely passionate couple had grown almost
recklessly certain that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together
and it had come as a shock to everyone when a positively glowing Emma had
turned up at the bar, one day, with a modest ring adorning her finger.
Yet even as Emma had given Owen her heart, she was almost
equally as in love with her own volatile lifestyle. Somehow, Owen failed to
notice the visitors who happened by at odd times of the day or the hours when
Emma would inexplicably disappear. However, who could miss her mercurial turns
when she, looking pale and deathly, would show up, acting strangely manic and
irrationally shouting at Owen through shivering blue lips? He was hardly
without worry when she would then lock herself in the bathroom for an hour,
only to walk back out as though nothing had happened. And then there were the
phone calls, all from the same person… Viper. Emma practically jumped at the
mysterious Viper’s frequent calls. Who could that person have been to have had
such unrelenting sway over Owen’s bride to be?
Emma’s
erratic ways had come to a disastrous head when she had gone out with her
bridesmaids for her bachelorette party. Late in the party, the maid of honor
had found Emma in the stall of a nightclub bathroom, unconscious and choking on
the foam dripping from her lips; a needle clung to her arm and a half-empty bag
of heroin was lying at her feet. She barely survived the overdose and her parents
had wasted no time in sending her into an involuntary rehabilitation program. Owen
met with Emma’s doctor, Hayden Parkinson, about her recovery and while Owen
wanted nothing more in the world than to see his fiancée be healthy and happy,
he was unable to conceal his broken heart upon learning that the doctor’s treatment
plans had prohibited Emma from having any contact with the outside world… not
even her fiancé.
“We, at the
Underhill Institute, believe it essential to prevent our patients from being
swayed by toxic influences into falling back into their destructive habits,” the
doctor explained. “It is, therefore,
essential that they be properly sheltered until they’ve built up a resistance
to their unhealthy chemical dependencies.”
Owen had trusted to the wisdom of the doctors to see Emma
safely through her addiction but as the weeks had passed, Owen’s pangs of
longing for his absent beloved had grown unbearable. The only salve he could
manage was to take his longing and his heartache and let them spill out of him in
the form of a song, though even that had failed to ease his pain but instead
brought it inexorably into stark relief. It was like a constant kick in the
stomach, beating him down until, in sheer desperation, he climbed the walls of
the Underhill institute, armed only with his guitar, and played his song on the
lawn of the facility:
“If sunrise never came, you’d be my
candle in the dark,
And when my world drops out, you give
me wings that I may fly,
I offer you my everything to heal
your wounded heart,
And take away the heavy pains that
tear you up, inside…
Emma… the goddess of my dreams,
Forgive my missing all your cries for
help into the night,
I’ll breathe again, once you’ve come
back to me,
And when your world’s gone wrong, believe
I’ll help you make it right…”
Owen
envisioned that his words and melodies might somehow reach Emma behind the institute’s
hermetic walls and remind her of how much she was loved. He had no idea what
might happen from there, but what he absolutely didn’t expect was that the
universe would suddenly become fair and find Doctor Parkinson inexplicably
moved by Owen’s heartfelt display of devotion. The doctor had decided that Emma
was far enough through the woods that someone as willing and able as Owen would
be more than capable of helping her find her way. With that, he had magnanimously
offered Emma an early release into Owen’s custody and soon, the pair was on
their way home with the Underhill Institute shrinking in their rearview. As
Emma sat nestled in the passenger seat, Owen was delirious with joy and he knew
that everything was going to be alright.
“I’ve missed the hell out of you,”
Owen said, glancing over to take in her smile.
“OWEN, LOOK OUT!”
Emma suddenly called.
Owen
had only taken his eyes off the road for the briefest of moments but it was
long enough to miss the changing lights. A rumbling garbage truck had oozed
across their path and the world became a dreadful cacophony of crying tires,
distorting metal, shattering glass, and piercing screams. A sudden spell of
darkness had consumed Owen, during which he knew only emptiness, but then the
world was quickly wrenched back to his senses as the blinding flare of an
electric torch pierced his confused eyes.
“Sir, are you okay?” The
paramedic asked. “Can you tell me your
name? What’s your name, sir?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Owen
mumbled, blood and tears stinging his eyes as his mind embraced his
surroundings.
Next
to the hectic flashing of lights, the triage on the street, and the excited
chatter of gathering bystanders, Owen’s name had seemed utterly insignificant
in his own shell-shocked mind. Likewise, the agony of his two seemingly broken
hands and the notion that he might never again play his guitar had landed upon
his head with all the devastation of a single raindrop, when compared to the unfathomable
carnage of his nearly flattened car, embedded within the side of the mangled steel
behemoth that was unnaturally parked in the middle of the intersection. And he
was as far removed from okay as was
humanly possible, because the all that meant anything to him was lying still
and silent upon a shrouded gurney at his right… how could he ever be okay
again?
