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The pillows never felt flatter, and the duvet heavier, than when Robert Chase had laid in them the first time after the divorce. He felt like a reject - in the sense that everyone and everything he knew rejected him. His wife, his faith, his future; safe to say, by this point he'd felt like he had nothing. Dreadful, he climbs out of bed and puts on whatever clothes were nearest, pocketing only his keys, phone, and wallet.
Droplets of rain hit his head as he just keeps going, his pace seemingly never ending. He enters the 24/7 corner store, only getting a Monster and a pack of cigarettes. He murmurs a 'have a great night' as he exits the store, taking another pace around the block, exploring streets he never goes to just for a change. He has work tomorrow, and he couldn't care less.
How do you cope with the fact you're a murderer?; That your life has now permanently been altered with the weight of a secret no sane man would confess to? He did confess once, yet it did nothing. Was this a sign God Himself had given up on him..?
He sighs, legs weak from what he hadn't noticed had been an hour long walk. He'd wandered to worse parts of town before, but this one wasn't really pleasant either. The streets were full of trash and gunk, yet the emptiness and silence was a great way to balance out the quality of it. He proceeds to look for a place to sit while his drink is still cold, so that the moment he finally cracks open the cheap tin can, drinking the crisp, cold liquid inside, it'd feel like heaven compared to the desperate desert in his mouth and throat.
As soon as he gets into more of a pleasant part of town, he spots a bus stop. Hopeful, he approaches the lone bench, seeing a lady already sitting there. Her hands clutch a rosary, her clothes are dark. Reluctant, Chase sits next to her.
"The buses have all passed for today." The lady comments, putting a pause on her praying, which she resumes right after.
"I... know." Chase awkwardly says, voice shrill from disuse as his eyes lower.
He eyes the lady's thumb lazily switching between beads, hinting at years of use. The mere motion, hypnotizing Chase, was of pure muscle memory. Chase found himself mouthing the prayers alongside hers, only to notice their lips weren't matching up. He raised an eyebrow, but just retreated, taking out his drink and carefully eyeballing the woman as he cracked it open, trying not to be more of a nuisance. She looked about a year shy of her 40s, too young to be a widow.
He takes a sip of his drink and sets it aside, lighting up for the first time since high school. The nostalgic feeling of the hot smoke running down his throat and into his lungs causes him to lean his head back against the glass wall and look up at the awning, the sound of rain droplets hitting said awning filling his ears as he lazily blows out the smoke.
"Isn't the rain wonderful?" The lady pipes up, holding the crucifix.
Chase looks up at her, confused, as last he saw, she was still praying the 4th decade. Time flies when you cope hard enough.
"It is..." he lazily replies, leaning back again. "Your prayers. Your accent." he says, attempting to phrase a question, yet not quite finding the words to.
The lady just giggles at his stammering, "Hungarian."
Chase nods. "And your clothes... They're mourning colors."
The lady's smile dies, nodding.
"I lost my husband recently..."
Chase nods back, looking away. For a while, only the rain speaks again.
"I'm so sorry..." Chase eventually murmurs, as if it was mandatory.
"I'm just grateful to God I got some more time..." She eventually replies. "We... got some more time. To, y'know, prepare..."
"You can never prepare for that..." he reflexively replies, eyes numb with years of flatlines. "I'm a doctor... I've seen people go... quickly or slowly... either way, it ends the same for the ones who remain."
The lady just nods somberly.
"Are you not... upset?" he meekly asks.
"I choose not to be..." she shrugs, as if it were that easy. "Or at least... I choose to try to focus on gratitude towards what I still have... My friends, siblings... My son... Of course, I was livid the moment it happened... but who isn't?"
They now look at each other, Chase's numb eyes staring into hers, before he'd eventually look away to take another drag.
"I murdered a man..." Chase eventually confesses.
Now the rain speaks again, roaring loudly, as if to try and end the conversation. And yet, it continues.
"...Care to elaborate?"
Chase just shrugs, taking another drag. "I switched blood samples to have him be put on the wrong medication."
"Would you do it again..?"
"..." Chase considers his answers. "If it were the same man, same actions, same influence... yes."
The lady just nods.
"What actions..?" She gently pries.
"I'm... not really supposed to-" but he bites his tongue, a quick glance at her face searching for a potential threat, and when he finds none, he continues. "He was a dictator. Swore to kill millions."
Silence falls yet again with the same bounty as the rain droplets hitting the awning, now more aggressively. Chase would've thought it may never end, meaning what he presumed to be the lady's goal of waiting it out to go home might not occur at any point of the night. He shifted slightly, attempting to get comfortable on the hard plastic bench, knowing this conversation may stretch way longer and more awkward than he'd anticipated.
"So... draw the line for me." She eventually pipes up. "You would do it again to another dictator, but... would you do it to a serial killer?"
"That's different." Chase takes a drag, the feeling of his wet jacket pressed to the hard plastic akin to his skin sloughing off. "I don't control what people have done, but I can control them based on what they intend to do. I'd treat the guy, then have him taken to the proper authorities." He takes a sip of the Monster he'd almost forgotten about. "Ideally, I should've done that here too, but... then, ideally, the authorities would've actually done something."
The lady nods.
"Are you Catholic?" She gently asks.
Chase budges a bit at the sudden topic change, yet nods reflexively. He then follows it with a heavy sigh, taking yet another drag, then throwing the filter out into a nearby puddle.
"On paper." He reluctantly murmurs. "I never believed. Not really. I was in the seminary, went to church more than I'd smoked cigarettes in high school..."
"And..?"
"It never stuck... I figured if I'd closed my eyes and muttered the same prayer fifty or so times every day..." he trails off, now looking away.
The lady mirrors him, looking ahead, down onto her rosary, still clutched in her hand.
"You cannot force God's love." She anecdotally says. "Faith comes from the heart. Anything else is not faith, but rather... a performance."
Chase nods, his heart jumping with conflict, his past religious guilt having been awoken again, now roaring louder than the storm just outside the awning.
"You were told to pray as if it's homework. You memorized all the prayers and chants... No wonder it didn't stick." She adds, scooting closer. "When my son was of age to understand, I told him... that no matter what he thinks is out there... God loves him no matter what. And that He'll forgive him the moment he steps not even a foot closer... and He'll love and forgive you too, no matter how many times you... fall into lust, pride, greed, smoke a cigarette..."
Chase is now sat slouched on the uncomfortable plastic chair digging into his bottom, his head shields the second cigarette and the now flat Monster. He looks up at her like a child, being read to sleep.
"God never punishes. Not even once." She adds. "I told that to my son, and I don't care how many complaints I'll get from angry priests or religious guides, I told him this, take it or leave it..."
"I know that." Chase softly replies, as if trying to win marks in the seminary again. "God doesn't punish, the Devil does."
"I'm sure you do know that..." she replies. "But do you acknowledge it..?"
Chase's eyes widen, an embarrassed blush building in his face - currently acting as his only way of staying warm in the storm -, as the lady just leans back, mirroring his previous position.
"Faith is never mandatory. It's not a requirement. It is, if you want to go to heaven, but..." she leans forward, now on level with Chase. "What use is being heaven-worthy when people dictate your life for you? The same God that wants to see you there, wants you to walk to him with your own two legs, not in the grasp of another."
She leans back again, Chase's head bobbing in consideration as he just turns away to take yet another drag after drag.
"But that's just my opinion." She leans closer, tone now giddier. "Don't tell the church. The old ladies there are real uptight..."
Chase lets out a prude chuckle, shivering from the cold. Seeing this, the lady wastes no time wrapping her scarf around him, which he, after the brief shock of the sudden contact, adjusts to fit just right. Chase catches a whiff of her perfume - something vintage, possibly foreign -, as he curls up, trying his best to retain heat.
"...When I lost my husband..." The mysterious lady suddenly starts. "I tried to do my best to keep my... our son out of the room. They'd talk, joke around, but whenever he'd let out that shrill, raw coughing sound..." she recalls. "It was like... an empty spray paint can... rattling with all its might... I figured I was protecting him whenever I'd end visiting hours early. And yet... the exact moment on his last day we walked in... the nurses said it was time."
Chase offers a cigarette, awkward, which the lady takes.
"I still recall the flatline..." she whispers, lighting up, her free hand reaching out to grasp Chase's, the rosary falling as to tie them together. Her reflexive, comfortable grasp wielded the years of hand-holding her and her husband probably had. "Lung cancer, inoperable, if that's what you're asking."
Chase slowly nods. He takes an awkward sip of his drink to break the storm.
"I was real upset with God at that moment, I said some things I shouldn't have said... I felt real guilty... and yet I found I was forgiven the moment I began to feel the guilt." She takes a long, deep drag. "Guilt isn't meant to crush you, but remind you that maybe the thing you did wasn't the right thing to do..."
She then looks at Chase, whose gaze is now diverted onto the rosary. For once in his life, he felt as though holding one wasn't a punishment or an assignment.
"I think what I did was what I was destined to." He softly confesses. "I couldn't just... indirectly kill millions..."
The lady shrugs. "Then maybe part of your destiny is to turn back to the Lord and build yourself back up again. Or not. Only He knows that part."
"I can't." Chase mopes. "The priest didn't even absolve me..."
The lady's eyes now widen.
"He can't do that... Priests can't break the seal even if you confess to planning to kill them..." She frowns. "Find another priest. One with common sense."
Chase freezes at that advice. Was it really that simple? With the caring pat on the back from the lady that inadvertently placed her anorak partly on his back, he puts the idea on the back burner for now.
"I also lost my wife..." Chase brings up. "Divorce."
The lady nods.
"Maybe it wasn't meant to be..." she says, "what happened?"
Chase shrugs. "She said..." he starts, almost flinching at the thought of having to say it out loud. "She said I'm becoming like my boss. That I'm... poisoned by him."
They stay like that for a while, watching the storm slowly dissipate. The lady's anorak shielded Chase, like a mother's gentle reflex, as the thud of rain droplets on the awning got quieter.
"I should... go..." Chase slowly says, taking another sip of his Monster, finishing it. "Long day tomorrow."
The lady nods. "Go."
"Can I... get your name perhaps?" He says, almost by second nature. "Or a number?"
The lady chuckles at that, letting him pull away and stand up in anticipation.
"I haven't brought my cellphone..." she stands up as well, patting down her anorak from any potential dust, as if by second nature. "And all my friends just call me an 'old soul', I can't point as to why, though."
Chase looks down, disappointed.
"But I think I'll visit the clinic tomorrow. Got a lil tingly in my throat all of a sudden. Must be from the cold bench." She smiles. "Where will I find you?"
"Exam room two." He replies almost instantly, smiling. "Thank you..."
With that, they depart from one another. Chase ends up calling a cab, getting home and collapsing in the once again heavy sheets for the next two hours he's got until having to wake up. In retrospect, he realized just how enlightened he found himself during the conversation, but alas, it was time for everything to go back to the same heavy, cold, sinking feeling he felt in his chest he couldn't quite describe.
He curls up in bed, almost ashamed to be having any sort of pleasant emotion in times such as this, and yet he couldn't shake the lady's gentle smile from his mind. Usually, he'd call that feeling love. She couldn't have been old enough to be his mother, maybe an aunt or sister, but either way House would bring up Freud seeing them together. He toyed with this idea until he fell asleep, since comfort can't exist in his brain without love, even if it'd be early to say so. Her mourning clothes meant that best case, she'd been mourning for a year; worst case, she was just back from the funeral. This idea just made him feel even shittier.
Even guiltier.
Even more ashamed.
Even more like all he wanted was to disappear.
To cease to exist.
To go back to a time everything was alright.
Alright.
Right.
Okay.
Fine.
Meh.
Anything.
Anything but this.
Anything but the guilt and shame and wanting to disappear or cease to exist.
And then suddenly, the two hours had passed, and it was time to go to work again.