The Song of Owen's Lament

           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?