Thomas Webster - Second Guessing

Compelling aspect: Do I have what it Takes?

Thomas lies in his hospital bed alone, awake, no television on, not even the normal sound of beeping machinery to distract his brain; all is silent. The nurses had removed most of the sensitive equipment from his room at his request. He had tried to explain that machines like that tend to just stop working around him. The nurses had dismissed him as superstitious until equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars began to short circuit around him. Finally they decided they would humor him and take out the equipment that wasn’t working. Even his bed broke, so he had to use a pile of pillows to lean on when he wanted to sit up. Outside his window he can see the city skyline with the top of the Capitol’s dome in the distance. The view is nice but it isn’t enough to distract him from his condemning thoughts.

How could he have been so foolish to lead his friends into the Nevernever of all places? They were fortunate they had all made it out alive and un-maimed ; there had been so many ways for them die in there that it wasn’t even funny. How could he have put them through that, put them in that kind of danger because of his own recklessness? What was he thinking anyway, going after an ogre in its lair? He should have worked harder to find another way, procure some kind of link that he could have used to force the ogre to come to him instead. But no, he had to go and do everything the hardest, most dangerous way possible. Why didn’t he think things through?

So many questions replayed themselves over and over in his brain, and he had no good way to answer them. One answer that keeps rearing its head at him and glaring him in the face is that he truly is a dangerous mad man, incapable of the basic logic that keeps most people alive. He is a threat to himself and those around him, because although he professes to care about his life and the lives of those around him he refuses to think things through enough to actually consider the danger his choices bring to everyone around him.

While these and other such cheerful sentiments occupy his mind Reah shows up in his doorway, radiant and beautiful as always. Her ruby red hair shimmering even under the hospital’s fluorescent lights, and the soft curves of her trim body visible beneath the thin fabric of her tightly stretched green tank top and the voluminous folds of her long, flowing, ivory colored sectioned shirt. She had been good about coming to visit him on a regular basis, but although he longed to be close to her mor than anything her presence has become unbearable to him since he has come to realize what he has meant to her life; which is nothing, but trouble, danger, and pain. Sometimes he has even pretended to be asleep so that he wouldn’t have to face her when she came by. Usually he visits with her, but doesn’t talk much.

She smiles warmly at him, and he feels his heart break with warmth of that smile and the kindness it shows juxtaposed in his mind with his own failures and unworthiness. He forces himself to smile back at her, but he knows she can tell it is forced. “Hi, Reah,” he says weakly. She walks up to him, a sad look on her face, and she touches his arm sympathetically, causing his cold skin to thrill at the sensation of her gentle fingers against it, and sending a shiver down his spine.

She asks how he is doing and he tells her fine. He has so much he wishes he could say to her but nothing he really can say. She tells him he is looking well, though he suspects she is only saying it to be kind. He replies, “Thanks, and you look really good too,” in what might be the biggest understatement ever to escape his lips. “I mean,” he adds quickly in an awkward attempt to mask his attraction, “You seem to have fully recovered from that disaster I led you into.

“Thank God you’re alright,” he says unguardedly, “I cannot believe I led you into that. I can’t imagine what I would have done if anything had happened to you. All I’ve ever done is caused you pain and put you in danger.”

Reah kindly insists that he’s wrong but he knows the truth. Her emerald eyes gaze into his as she tells him how good of a friend he has been to her, how he has helped her at times when others couldn’t or wouldn’t, and how he was one of the few people she knew she could trust. He tries to tell her that her trust is misplaced but she refuses to hear it.

“Thomas, there’s something I wanted to tell you,” she says soberly, and for the first a hint of nervousness crosses her beautiful face. “I won’t be able to come by Saturday because my boss at the arboretum set me up to go to this concert with some big money guy. He wants me to talk to the guy about helping out the arboretum since the Sequester has hit us hard.” She watches him intently as she tells him this, as if looking to see how he will react. Inwardly his heart is racing and his heart is sinking with the feeling that all his hopes and dream, or at least the only one that really matters, are slipping away into blackness. His soul is crying out “No”, silently begging her not go, to stay with him. He longs to tell her how he feels about her, but he tells himself he can’t. If he were to let her get close to him he would only bring more pain and danger to him. Besides, why would he even think that someone like her, a veritable goddess, would want to be with someone like him. All of these thoughts and feelings race and tumble around within him on the inside, but on the outside he only nods and sighs.