Dance over the Thunderclouds - 2. 2 Resurrection and Hospital

“Hmmmmmmmmm!”

Huh? Did he hear someone moaning?

Impossible!

Dead people hear no moaning. Dead people hear nothing! So, how could he hear moaning?

“Hmmmmmmmmm!”

“Weird…there it is again!”

As next he noticed that his throat vibrated like he was the one who was moaning and that it felt like sandpaper and his tongue like tanned leather. And on top of that, that he was incredibly thirsty!

There was this other sound, that was equally unexplainable as well:

“Beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep”.

“Man, that’s the lousiest techno I ever heard”.

His musical taste or opinion didn’t seem to matter; the sound just continued, almost eternally:

“Beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep”.

And what was that, what he saw shining behind his closed eyelids? White light? No, not that white light. That had been some kind of supranatural light. This was…artificial! He couldn’t understand, that he saw something in the first place, not even his eyelids, for the same reason: dead people are not supposed to see things.

He mustered the scarce quantities of energy and willpower and forced himself to open his eyes carefully, not because he really wanted to, but the urge to find out what went on behind his eyelids was stronger. He was immediately punished for it when he stared into a too shrill, white rectangle of white neon light, neatly divided into exactly equal small squares by a grid of black lines. It made his eyes hurt like hell and he pinched them right away to avoid it.

“Too bright! It hurts too much!” he muttered.

“Hey, you’re back again!” he heard an unfamiliar voice calling out excited.

“Have I been away then?” was the only thing his brain could think of in reaction.

Painstakingly he avoided to open his eyes again; it was no use to make the same mistake a second time. His ears picked up some stumbling around him and then a woman’s voice said:

“Hi, cutie! I see you have returned to our world!”

He simply couldn’t grasp it: here was another one who talked about being back and return. He wasn’t aware he had been away in the first place. It was reason enough to open his eyes again and as soon as he did, he saw a young woman dressed in white, who bent over him.

“Who… are… you?” he stammered laborious.

“I’m Petra, your nurse”, she said with a smile, “Now, can I get you something?”

“Yeeaahhh…” he answered, “I’m so thirsty!”

“That is easy enough to do something about it”, she smiled and before he knew it, she held a plastic cup in front of his lips with a lid on it, some spout sticking out from the top. She supported his head with her hand and with a “Here we go” she let him sip.

It tasted delicious, the cool water going over his parched tongue and dehydrated throat.

“Not so greedy, cutie!”, she cautioned him kindly, “Not all at once!”

She took the cup away from his mouth and over his head she said to someone:

“If he wants more, you can give it to him. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, sure”, the same unfamiliar voice, he heard before, said.

“What is that dumb beeping?” Dominic asked with great trouble.

“Beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep”.

“It is the monitor”, she answered patiently, “We use it to keep an eye on your heart rhythm”.

“But…”, he said, at a loss what was going on, “What happened?”

“Sorry,” she replied, “I have to go now. But I think your boyfriend can explain to you what happened”.

“Boyfriend? What boyfriend? Is there something I missed?”

He felt too miserable to find out what this was all about. He let his head sink back in the pillows and closed his eyes again.

But the thought of some “unknown boyfriend” kept gnawing at him. After a few minutes, almost on the verge of taking a nap, he opened his eyes again and with great difficulty he turned his head in the direction from where the unknown voice had come.

This simple turning of his head, normally something of a second, took some time. He noticed, that he had a hard time focusing his sight so that his eyes only recognized the blurry outline of a face as a result. But one thing was certain: despite all blurriness he saw that whoever it was wore glasses.

That on itself was not very shocking. But what did shock him was, what he saw behind them. There was one eye, that looked without seeing, lifeless, pallid and without any light. And it was surrounded by awfully maimed eyelids. The other eye however looked at him with a vivid, worried, and compassionate glance, almost warm and loving.

His fuzzy mind forced his eyes to focus further on the rest of the face around the glasses, almost wishing he hadn’t done so. It simply looked awful!

The nose was partly maimed as well on the same side as the mutilated eye and the whole face was covered with irregularly formed bleached spots, but funny enough the mouth was undamaged and showed a beaming smile. However, despite the smiling mouth, Dominic looked at him in horror and in his still somewhat impaired thinking a panicky thought came up:

“You see: they fooled me again! They fucked me another time and this time real good: I’m dead. I’m really dead! And they sent me to hell!”

But something didn’t fit, because the next thought, that was almost lucid, was:

“Who was the girl in white then? An angel? But angels don’t belong in hell. What has happened? Where the fuck am I?”

“Who…who…?” he tried to speak with a crackling voice.

“Take it easy, kid”, the face spoke soothingly, “What do you want to ask? Just take your time!”

Reality dictated Dominic, that he had to follow this advice: he had to take his time, being very unable to do it in a hurry. But his second attempt was quite successful:

“Who….who…are…you?”

“I’m Tobi”, was the reply.

“Don’t know any Tobi”, Dominic muttered.

“Well, you do know one now”, the face grinned, “But who are you?”

It really didn’t make sense to Dominic; this guy was sitting next to him and he didn’t even know who he was. It was simply absurd, as bizarre as the whole present surreal situation was. His eyes seemed to express it, because Tobi said with a smile:

“Oh yes, I know you are the kid they call Bunny at the Dance Temple but I don’t know your real name”.

“It’s Dominic!” Dominic murmured while he frantically tried to sort out where he was and what was going on. But with his head gradually clearing he decided to take a more assertive stance:

“But…who are you? Why are you here?”

“Because I felt I had to”, Tobi said, shrugging his shoulders slightly, “Everybody was shocked, but nobody seemed to care. So, I decided to come to the hospital with you”.

“Is that where I am?” Dominic whispered, suddenly feeling very afraid, “In hospital?”

“Yeap”, was the straightforward reaction.

Dominic tried to think it over which turned into a tiring effort. He had no idea why he was in some hospital:

“Could this Tobi guy know why?”

Although he never expressed it in spoken words, his eyes seemed to radiate the question, because Tobi continued:

“You crashed. And you crashed the real rough way, kid! You were lucky, that there happened to be a nurse among the dancers, who knew how to resuscitate. She got help from one of the security guys. If they hadn’t been there, you would have been dead. They kept you alive until the ambulance and the emergency physician arrived. You were damned lucky she was there!”

Dominic looked at him, his eyes large as saucers and was only able to shake his head in dismay, whispering slowly and almost inaudible:

“You can’t exterminate a rat that easy!”

Tobi looked at him with a non-committal expression in his eye, but the tone he used was more than a simple objection to Dominic’s statement, when he said:

“You’re no rat. You’re a human being…and on top of that a beautiful boy!”

“Guess so…”, Dominic muttered tired. But his mood shifted and he continued:

“But why all that? What do I have?”

“Cardiac arrest”, Tobi said as gently as he could.

“What’s that?” Dominic stammered with a fear, that threatened to go out of control.

“Your heart stopped!”.

Dominic stared at him with petrified eyes. He started to shudder slightly. It took him some time to recover from the shock before he stuttered:

“How…how…how….can…that happen?”

“You exhausted yourself to the absolute point zero. Four evenings of dancing, liberally popping speed, I guess too little and unhealthy food and too little sleep”.

“But I wasn’t even feeling tired!” Dominic protested feebly.

“But you were tired”, Tobi made his point, “You were literally dead-beat! But nobody told you how speed works, did they? Speed does not lessen fatigue, it only suppresses the feeling of being tired. But the body just tires on until it comes to a point where it says: ‘All very well, Dominic, but I’m through. I’m on strike!’. And then it all stops, including your heart. Anyway, it seems to me, that your speed supplier hasn’t given you the patient information leaflet, did he?”

“Does that mean I was dead?” Dominic wanted to know, the aftereffects of the shock still lingering on.

“Possibly”, Tobi said, “But just very, very briefly. The girl reacted very fast!”

“When was that?” Dominic stammered, avoiding gazing at the deformed face by staring straight ahead of him.

“Last Sunday!” Tobi replied directly.

“What day is it now then?” Dominic wanted to know, confusion reigning his mind.

“Wednesday”, came the shocking answer.

Dominic tried to make sense out of it all. It was all so unfathomable what he heard. He more or less decided to take it one step at a time and carefully asked:

“But how do you know me?”

“From the Dance Temple!” was the matter-of-fact answer.

“Funny”, Dominic uttered under his breath, “I never saw you”.

“That is to be expected”, Tobi said with a sad grin on his face, “I am one of the eternal wallflowers, who always hang with their back against some wall”.

“But you can’t”, Dominic almost cried out indignant, “You should be dancing”.

A hurt smile slid over Tobi’s face when he said:

“Dominic, look at me! Nobody wants to be seen dancing with me. Actually, nobody wants to be seen with me, no matter what we do. I’m the guy they call Scarface the same way they call you Bunny”.

“What happened to you?” Dominic blurted out spontaneously. He acutely felt an urgent need to know, although the reason for that was hidden in darkness.

Contrary to the rest of Tobi’s answers this one didn’t come straight away, showing that the man was clearly taken aback by the directness of his question. Dominic noticed, how Tobi’s good eye lost its smile when it turned gloomy but how it also expressed a kind of subdued anger. It took some time before Tobi responded slowly:

“Some psychopathic queerophobe threw acids over me!”

“That’s terrible!” Dominic tried to cry out.

“Yes”, Tobi responded with a sad remnant of a smile, “It is. But it has happened and it can’t be made undone”.

“Did they get the bastard?” Dominic wanted to know.

“Yes, they did”, a brief reply came.

“So at least he is in jail now?” Dominic reasoned in the rhetoric question-form.

This somewhat re-assuring statement boomeranged back, when Tobi answered:

“No, he isn’t. The court deemed him insane and ordered his immediate admittance to a secured psychiatric clinic for an undetermined time. So, in a way he has his punishment”.

“That’s not enough”, Dominic mumbled angry and upset.

Tobi shook his head, stared briefly in front of him in thought and reacted with:

“Dominic, of course I blame him for being a queerophobe. But I can’t blame him for being a psychopath. That is a disease and one can’t blame people for being ill”.

Now it was Dominic’s turn to be abashed: here is this guy whose life is destroyed and he doesn’t blame the one who did it to him? It was the kind of reaction, that was unthinkable for him.

So, he didn’t think about it any longer and switched back to the how and why of his present condition. It was not out of cold egoism, but because he was unable to cope with the resulting questions, that started to pop up in his mind. And since he had enough on his hands with coping with his present situation as well, he turned his mind to more immediate matters.

“OK, so…you know me from the Dance Temple”, he started his next round of questioning, “But that is no reason to sit beside my bed now, is it?”

“No”, Tobi grinned, “But I told you why I did that”.

“Oh, come on, Tobi”, Dominic objected, “It doesn’t make sense. Why should you care about me? Just one of many in that club…and not exactly the one with the most favorable reputation. I know they call me Bunny…and I’m very well aware why and that it is the same kind of nickname as yours. It is only meant derisive!”

Tobi tilted his head somewhat, scratched his neck and heaved a deep sigh. After a short pause he said:

“Why should I care? What do you think?”

Dominic shrugged, only reacting with a curt and sharp:

“Don’t know! You tell me!”

Tobi dropped his eyes and after a second sigh he whispered:

“OK…because I fell in love with you! With the most beautiful boy my one working eye has ever seen. Well, even in the whole of my life, with one or both eyes. Doesn’t make that much difference”.

“Can’t be!” Dominic exclaimed, “Nobody loves me so why should you?”

“Maybe because I am not ‘nobody’”, was the soft reply.

“Impossible! Even Martha didn’t love me!” Dominic muttered, bordering on crying

Tobi rolled his eyes and somewhat sarcastic he said:

“Oh yeah…that one!”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Dominic asked caustic.

“I’ll tell you another time”, Tobi replied soothingly, ignoring the tarting in the voice, “When you have recovered. Call it very bad timing when we discuss that right now”.

“But…you never said anything about loving me!” Dominic said, still unconvinced.

“Dominic…again: look at me! I had exactly zilch chances with a desirable boy like you. You would have laughed me in the face and ridiculed me. So…I just swooned about you like some kind of unattainable… idol, an eternally unreachable love. But once you crashed…I felt I had to come with you”.

Dominic stared insinuatingly into Tobi’s only working eye and asked thoughtfully:

“So…you are the unexplainable boyfriend the nurse mentioned?”

Tobi grinned good-humored and replied with a slight undertone of guilt and shame:

“Yeah…I guess that is my fault!”

“How did you do that?” Dominic wanted to know, an expression of disbelief on his face.

“Quite simple. I just told the ambulance driver I wanted to come with you, but I couldn’t tell him why. And then this hunch came up right in time…since I was your boyfriend. No further questions asked. The only thing he said was ‘Hop in!’ And being deemed your boyfriend from then on, nobody in the hospital asked any questions. Sorry about that!”

Dominic shook his head laughing:

“Unbelievable! Oh…never mind! Just forget it!”

“But don’t get me wrong”, Tobi continued, “I didn’t want to play upon your situation and condition. It is just that...yes, I love you so I really felt obliged to be with you in these moments. But say so if you want me to leave!”

“No!!!” Dominic cried out in rapidly exploding despair.

No, he didn’t want Tobi to leave…but didn’t have a clou for what reason. Because on itself the whole story was absurd…but on the other hand…

“What? What is there on the other hand? My God, I’m too confused. Let me go back to sleep again and forget all about it!”

Tobi must have been a mind reader, because with gentle voice he spoke:

“I think, we’ve talked enough for now. You must be tired. So, how about sleeping a bit more?”

Dominic nodded.

“OK”, Tobi asked kind-hearted, “Shall I shake your pillows up a bit?”

“Yeah. But…can you please give me some water first? I’m so thirsty!”

Tobi rose, took the spouted cup and let Dominic sip from it, carefully supporting his head with the other large, manly hand.

“Beep…beep…beep…beep…beep”.

“Tobi”, Dominic asked with irritation, “Can you switch these annoying beeps off? I can never sleep with that in the background”.

“I can’t”, Tobi replied sympathetically, “And I doubt that they will do it so you’ll just have to get used to it, I’m afraid”.

“Damned”, Dominic growled.

He let his head sink in the pillows and closed his eyes. But he opened them again after a few seconds, looked straight into Tobi’s good eye and with an unexpected fear in his voice he asked:

“Tobi...please...don’t leave me…don’t go away!”

The man looked at him a bit puzzled but rapidly replied:

“No, Dominic, if you want me to be here, I’ll be here!”

“So…when I wake up…will you be there then? For me?”

“I will!” a soft whisper came back, “And now, sweet dreams!”

“Then everything is OK”, Dominic uttered under his breath, closed his eyes again and slid into dreamlands.

  

He slowly woke up when sunlight fell on his face. By now he knew it for certain: he wasn’t dead, he was alive. Sunlight had no place in the Realm of the Death, where there was only Darkness.

His ears picked up the morning songs of the birds through the open window. But to his annoyance the other sound was there as well on a continuous basis:

“Beep…beep…beep…beep…beep…beep”.

He tried to shut the cursed noise out of his mind and concentrated on the birds. While doing so, he turned his head to the left without thinking.

Next to his left arm he saw a head, that was resting on two arms that were lying on the blanket. It was Tobi, sound asleep, despite the uncomfortable position he was in.

A tender smile came on Dominic’s face.

“You kept your promise”, he whispered softly, not wanting to wake the man up, “You are there!”

A tear of emotion rolled out of his eye:

“You’re the first one who has ever kept a promise to me. Thank you!”

For once in his life, he felt intensely happy! And he admitted it freely: he loved that feeling!!

 

Doctors take acute heart failures very seriously, especially when they happened to occur in a twenty years old kid. As a logical consequence, it was not very self-evident he could go home within a few days. To the contrary: they kept him in the hospital for weeks!

Most of the time he was bored but he also started to appreciate the advantage of being there: he wasn’t alone all the time. There were always people around him: other patients, nurses, doctors, other patient’s visitors, you name it.

But there were also the many tests and examinations and these could frighten him. The first time they attached round stickers on his body and connected them to wires he was certain that his final hour had come. Now, after a fair number of these painless examinations, he was used to these regular ECGs and they didn’t bother him any longer. He didn’t like them but he just endured it. Apparently, someone saw a real need for them. But one particular test scared the hell out of him.

One morning they rolled him to a lower floor, bed and all, and he was put on some table in front of a huge humming machine. That on itself was already enough to terrify him, so he saw the lips of the nurse moving but couldn’t understand what she was actually saying, becoming more and more compulsively obsessed by the noise over his head.

But his muscles really started to cramp and his breathing became irregular when he felt the table under him moving towards the machine, that in his fearful imaginations had turned into a ravenous monster.

Once the table stopped moving, he found himself in a kind of tube with smooth surfaces, only sparsely lighted, with barely about four inches of space over his head and at his sides. By now his mind furiously started to send extremely urgent signals of panic:

“The critters…! The critters come…! I have to get out of here…!”

Within seconds, his terror ran completely out of hand and he started to yell:

“No!!...No!!...Get me out…they’re going to eat me…help!...please….they eat me!…! Help me out! HELP!”

In his frenzy of fear, he started to hit and kick against the smooth walls but they didn’t budge an inch and it was to no avail.

Although? Vaguely, very far away, he heard hurried footsteps and to his enormous relief he felt how the table moved again in the opposite direction, outside the machine.

A nurse, clearly shocked, stared at him with a white face when he came out and asked:

“What happened?”

“They want to eat me…”, Dominic screamed out of his senses, “They want to tear me apart and eat me”.

“Why didn’t you push the button?” she inquired worried.

Her eyes flashed around the table, searching for the reason for that and found it lying under the table:

“Ah, you dropped it!”

A second nurse came in. The first one barked:

“Get the doctor over here right away!”

“Are you sure?” the second nurse asked.

“Yes, I am!” was the adamant, sharp reply, “I’m not going to put him in again on my own account!”

It didn’t take long before Dr. Peter Wagner, assistant-cardiologist, sauntered in. He listened to the report from the nurse about what had happened, nodded and went to a cabinet where he opened a drawer. He took a vial of sedative from it and connected it to an intravenous drip tube.

Burdened by too much work in too little time he was harried and impatient and forgot a very important aspect of medicine: communicate with the patient what you are about to do!

So, he started to stab the needle in Dominic’s hand. It caused the boy to go ballistic. He screamed, hit, kicked and bit wildly, flailing his arms and legs in all directions in an effort to keep everyone and everything at bay. Suddenly his limbs fell down powerless on and beside the sliding table, sticking out in the most bizarre positions.

“My God”!” Dr. Wagner exclaimed in shock.

He tried if there was any reaction in the arms and legs but they seemed to be kind of paralyzed. However, the boy’s eyes were wide open!

“Can you hear me, son?” he asked careful.

The only answer were two eyes that were fixated on him, pupils dilated, and filled with agony.

No matter if Dr. Wagner was only a humble co-assistant Cardiology, in his second practical year, he was also a smart man. Although he didn’t fully understand it, he vaguely recognized something, that was far outside his “private property” of hearts, but precisely this something was going on right here and he was certain it had nothing to do with the kid’s heart problems. He happened to know exactly the right person, who was knowledgeable in these kinds of subjects.

“Page Dr. Moller!”, he barked to one of the nurses.

“Sorry…?” the woman muttered hesitantly.

“Do I have to spell her name?” he cried out angry.

“No…but she is from Psychiatry, doctor”, was the reply.

“I know she is”, he confirmed in an acid tone, “So, would you be so kind to page Dr. Moller?”

Sensing that his presence would keep the boy fidgety and restless, experiencing it as a continuing threat, he withdrew to the Radiology doctor’s room, where Dr. Monika Moller turned up a few minutes later, a young woman with bright, cheerful eyes, a gorgeous smile and as enchanting as ever.

“Hi honey”, she smiled, “Are you trying to win me over to Cardiology?”

Peter Wagner shook his head and replied worried:

“No, this is serious! I got this boy in there, twenty, came in last week with a cardiac arrest after being picked up by the rescue services at a dance party”.

She looked unpleasantly surprised and reacted with a curt:

“Twenty and a cardiac arrest? That’s heavy stuff! But what has Psychiatry got to do with it?”

“We really need a MRT scan of his heart”, Peter explained with a deep sigh, “We suspect his heart is damaged. Now, when we shoved him into the tube, he freaked out completely. He almost tore the thing apart. So, I decided to sedate him and believe me or not…just when I wanted to push the needle in, he went berserk and then got completely cataleptic on me, just like that!”

“Huh?” she reacted in utter surprise, “Are you sure?”

“Almost”, he muttered, but then continued with:

“That is where I decided to get you in the game. It’s more your field of expertise than mine”.

“OK”, she said, slowly blowing the air out in thinking, “I’ll see what I can do. Where’s the sedative you wanted to give him?”

“On the table”, he replied with a nod.

She took the vial and the tube and went to the door.

“I stay here”, Peter said, “I’m afraid he might consider me a threat, so that he might flip out again”.

“If he does”, the young woman answered self-assured, “I guess I can handle that!”

“I don’t doubt that, sweetheart”, Peter replied with a worried frown, “But… maybe his heart can’t!”

She nodded in understanding, turned around and with a teasing giggle she said:

“Oh…well, I’ve got news for him: he’s not the only one who considers you a threat!”

“Fuck you, Monika”, Peter said with a wide grin.

Laughing, she faced him, stuck up her hand and wagged her index finger slowly in a warning gesture, while she spoke reproachfully:

“No, no…not during working hours!”

Just before she left the office she asked casually:

“Oh, what’s the kid’s name? Makes it easier”.

“Dominic”, was the short reply.

With that piece of information, she went into the examination room.

 

By now Dominic had recovered from his stupor-like condition but had become hyper-allergic for everything that was dressed in white. His eyes danced skittish through the room, tracking any movement by no matter which white-clad person and visually checking every tiny sound his ears picked up. But both these senses missed the young woman, that slowly approached him with a sweet, re-assuring smile on her face, only for the reason she didn’t wear white, but was dressed in a faded jeans and a red tank top. Nor did he see, how her medically-trained professional eyes slid over him in a first survey, immediately thinking:

“What are these scars on his arm?”

He only noticed her when he heard her saying to a nurse, when she already stood near him:

“Can you give me that stool, please?”

Once she had it, she placed it directly next to the sliding table and sat down beside the shivering boy laying on it.

“Hi, Dominic”, she said with a kind, warm smile, “I’m Monika. Do you want to tell me what happened, sweetie?”

Dominic gave no answer but just stared at her, his eyes still filled with terror and his face cramped up in a repelling grimace.

“OK, no problem”, she said with a calming, soft voice, “Now…hey Dominic, did the doctors tell you, you had a heart failure while you were dancing?”

Wordless Dominic nodded slowly; his mouth wide open.

“Are you a good dancer?” she asked curious, giggling in a winning way.

She noticed a microsecond of joy glittering in the boy’s eyes before they turned terrified again but the mouth slid in some makeshift smile and he nodded somewhat faster than the first time.

“I would love to see you dancing”, she said engagingly, only to get back to the matter at hand again with:

“But, sweetie…there’s a problem. The doctors think your heart is damaged so they really need this test to find out if, and when so, how and where it is damaged. Do you understand?”

“No…..”, a wailing sound came from deep within the boy, “Not back in…please?”

“We have to, sweetie…you want to go dancing again, don’t you?”

Slowly Dominic nodded his head.

“OK, I understand that”, she said, taking his hand in hers, “But…I think we can solve this. How about if I give you something that allows you to do a nice long nap while we do the test? So that you won’t be frightened in the machine? Is that OK with you?”

She saw the boy’s eyes fixated on hers…there was a tense silence. It even tensed her; she knew that the next reply would decide it: test or no test! And she certainly didn’t want to use violence or pressure…not with this boy who was so clearly in distress! It would amount to torture.

After what seemed an endless time, the boy slowly nodded and she heard him whisper, barely audible:

“Do you promise they won’t eat me?”

“I promise, sweetie. That machine there only makes huge numbers of small pictures of every bit and piece of your heart, maybe even millions of them. And from those pictures the doctors can see what is wrong with it. There’s nothing in it, that can eat you, I promise”.

A next period of silence followed in which Monika asked herself:

“Where does this obsessive fear of being eaten come from?”

Then Dominic asked, equally soft:

“Can you make me asleep then? So that I won’t be afraid?”

Monika could hardly suppress a sigh of relief and said gently:

“Brave boy! Of course I can. Now…the only thing you might notice is a teeny-weeny prick in your hand, but I’ll do it really careful! Can you handle that?”

Again, there was a slow nod as the only reaction.

Monika winked at him and rose. She took the needle and tried to concentrate on the insertion, while smiling encouragingly to the boy at the same time, cheerfully chattering about dancing while doing so to distract him from the prick, asking about the marks on his arm in between without Dominic noticing it, who answered truthfully that he had cut himself, leaving it open if it was by accident or on purpose. Miraculously, she managed to juggle all these simultaneous tasks in one smooth procedure. It worked!

“It’s already done, sweetie! Did you feel anything?” she asked.

It moved her when the boy shook his head, a sweet smile on his face, as sweet as she hadn’t seen it before.

“Are you a doctor?” Dominic asked, his speech already slurring from the sedative.

“Yes”, Monika replied, “I’m a kind of doctor”.

“But you don’t wear white!” Dominic objected weakly.

“Don’t tell anybody, sweetie”, she whispered in his ear, “but I hate white clothing”.

“So…do…I!” was the slow reaction.

Dominic felt his eyelids grow heavy and his fear subsided. From far away he heard Monika say:

“Sweet dreams, sweetie!”

By then he was sound asleep!

Monika rose, blowing the air out in relief.

“Give it a few minutes. He’ll be in his deep sleep by then. Then you can slide him in and run your test!” she told the nurses.

She walked back to the doctor’s room and when she entered it, she said:

“He’s sound asleep. You can run the tests now”.

“Thanks”, Peter replied relieved, “My compliments! I observed it over the monitor. That was magic what you did there!”

“Just the feminine touch”, she said with a dashy dance step.

But she turned serious again when she added:

“No, it is all about giving the kid the feeling he can trust someone”.

“Ah, so he didn’t trust me?” Peter reacted grumpy.

“I’m not talking about your technical competence, honey”, she reciprocated, “But let us say that your masculine way of barging in like the Famous Doctor Know-It-All wasn’t very helpful in instilling trust in the boy. If you would barge into my bedroom like that, I would also run away, screaming murder”.

“Oh...thanks”, Peter growled, his mood sinking.

“Don’t take it as an attack”, she smiled, trying to mitigate the effect of her remark, “Just learn from it. We’re both here to learn and I make other mistakes. So, don’t play the offended lover…or doctor”.

“Apology accepted”, he said, still somewhat surly.

“Can I see his status?” Monika asked.

He gave her the folder and she started flipping through the pages, frowning so every now and then. When she finished, she said:

“Have you seen these amphetamine blood levels at intake? They’re horrible!”

“Yeah…”, Peter sighed, “That little sod was damned lucky and he has a very strong physique”.

“Why lucky?” Monika inquired.

“There was some nurse in the crowd who immediately started resuscitation. If she hadn’t been there, there wouldn’t have been any need to page you today!”

Monika threw the folder on the desk, took a ballpoint and a piece of paper and jotted down the patient’s name, date of birth and patient registration number.

“I’ll see if we have something in our files on him”, she explained, “If we don’t… I can’t shake the feeling we will have a lot on him in a very short time! Because I think, that these scars were made there on purpose”.

She stuck the paper in the back pocket of her jeans and walked towards the door. Before she left however, she stopped right in front of Peter and said:

“Wow, asking help from Psychiatry? Hey, you might become a great doctor once, sweetheart!”

“Fu…”, Peter started to exclaim:

“No…”, she giggled, “But…I think my heart needs a routine check pretty soon!”

Peter stared in mock seriousness at the wall and pensively said:

“I don’t do house calls normally…but I guess I can make exceptions”.

Monika grinned brightly at him, kissed the tip of her index finger and pushed it on the tip of the man’s nose.

“OK…then I’ll see you tonight!” she muttered hoarse.

Whistling she walked through the door, into the corridor.

Peter was mighty glad he was in the doctor’s room, because he blushed as he had never blushed before. At least the nurses hadn’t seen anything; it was no use to fire the already buzzing gossip about the two of them.

 

For the rest Dominic’s stay in the hospital consisted of numbing boredom! The most exciting moment was, that he was moved to a normal station, finally getting rid of the continuous stream of “beeps” over his head, but that was about all change.

The only thing he could do was to lie on his bed or make a short stroll through the corridor, only to end up lying on bed again. He tried listening to the hospital radio, but found the music they broadcasted far below his own standards. It was all old rubbish.

“Oh man, I can’t believe this: they even have a channel with classical bullshit!”

He resorted to listening to music over his cell phone (the one he had bought to replace the phone he smashed) but after a few days the battery was flat as flat could be. And he really didn’t think of taking the charger with him when he had left home, that last night in freedom. The only thing left to him was lying on the bed, thinking, feeling sad and, most of all, feeling empty.

The evenings were the worst, the time when his roommates had visitors. But he had no visitors, since he had no friends, at least not any longer. He was the loner, the solitary kid. Although…there was an exception and that was Tobi.

Tobi was no longer sitting beside his bed full time. On a rational level Dominic could understand that: of course, the man had a life of his own, that had to continue as well, his job, his little household and the care for his cat. But emotionally he experienced it as if Tobi had abandoned him and that this last connection to a human being had been cut off forever.

But fortunately Tobi turned out to be a guy, who kept to his word. When he promised he would return to visit, he did, not every night but as often as he could. The evenings that he couldn’t, became hours of anxious waiting for Dominic, hours in which he looked eagerly to the door in the hope to see the silhouette of the man popping up, ending it with a desperate hand wringing and a deep sad feeling of extreme loneliness.

Coincidentally the very first evening his cell phone battery went flat, Tobi walked in with a broad grin. Without saying even “Hi” Dominic immediately complained:

“I can’t hear any music any longer”.

“Why is that?” Tobi asked somewhat puzzled.

“Battery is empty and I don’t have a charger here”.

Tobi just shrugged, replying:

“Is that all? Hey, if you can’t use your phone you can’t object, that I kidnap the thing for a day”.

“Why that?” Dominic asked suspicious.

“To buy you a new charger, honey”, was the straightforward answer, “And you know how it is. Each damned phone has its own charger, so it is the best, that I take it with me to get the right one”.

Somewhat sulky Dominic nodded and handed over his phone. Then he brightened up, exclaiming:

“So you will be here tomorrow evening as well?”

“If you want me to!” Tobi smiled.

“Yeah”, Dominic said out loud, “I want you to!”

Yeap, next evening Tobi was there again, not only with a new charger, but he brought company with him when he entered the hospital room. He lugged a huge teddy bear with him, only slightly smaller than he was, but of equal size to Dominic.

“What’s that?” Dominic stammered somewhat astonished.

Tobi shrugged and with a wide grin on his face he answered:

“Don’t know. It followed me up to the hospital, asking me if I knew if a kid called Bunny happened to be there! So, I decided to give your pal a hand in looking for you”.

“You’re weird”, Dominic exclaimed laughing.

Tobi ignored it and threw the bear on the bed, right next to Dominic, saying:

“At least in this way you’ll always have company!”, only to add:

“Fuck, that thing is heavy when you have to carry it”.

Dominic looked at him with gleaming, compelling eyes and remarked:

“Then sit down and rest, honey!”

Over time a kind of bond developed between the two outcasts, one because of scars he hadn’t asked for, the other exorcised from society because he was considered an eccentric at best and a lunatic in the worst washouts, because nobody understood what was actually going on. And during this time Dominic opened up, hesitantly, carefully and incredibly slowly. In tiny bits and pieces he started to tell Tobi of how his childhood and youth had been, the man listening flabbergasted and increasingly furious at those who had caused all that pain to the boy, but on the outside quiet and interested, nodding in confirmation so every now and then, keeping eye contact and only interrupting if he didn’t understand some detail.

During one evening, in which both were together without saying too much, Dominic stared ahead of him as if in some kind of trance. Out of the blue, without any concrete reason, he suddenly said, his voice devoid of intonation or emotion:

“I feel like an empty orange!”

“Huh?” Tobi reacted, taken aback by the unexpected statement.

“I feel like an empty orange!”, Dominic repeated with the same almost mechanical voice.

“What do you mean?” Tobi wanted to know.

“You know…”, came the stumbling answer, “the orange in the supermarket...brightly colored…but nothing…inside…maybe black, polluted air…but most likely not even that…Just emptiness…an appealing, bright peel…seducing the buyer…but once he…opens it…there’s no promise inside…just…emptiness!”

“But…”, Tobi asked, trying to understand, but groping in the dark, “What do you mean with emptiness? Can you express it in words, maybe?”

“Ha”, Dominic laughed scornful.

His dull eyes stared in Tobi’s direction, but it seemed as if they looked right through the man, not even seeing him.

“How…”, Dominic asked, still with the metallic voice as if drug-induced, “would you define…emptiness?”

That was a tough question. Tobi had to think very hard but after considering various options, that he found unsatisfactory, he settled for an uncertain:

“Eeeeuhhh…maybe…with…nothing?”

Dominic kept staring at him, a grin on his face. It was not a condescending grin, the grin of “what a dumb fool you are, that you don’t know the answer”, but Tobi saw the pent-up grin as ominous, that appeared to forecast something that he couldn’t comprehend.

A high, unreal giggle emanated out of Dominic’s throat and he said:

“Nice, …but…what…is nothing?”

Tobi gave up. The rest of the visiting time was spent in silence, but gradually Dominic became more or less get-at-able on a pretty normal level of communication.

At the end of the visit Tobi wanted to take his coat from the bed, but before he had the chance to do that, Dominic’s hand enclosed his wrist like a vise when he cried out, his eyes burning in anxiety:

“No! Don’t go away! Don’t leave me alone! Please…don’t go!”

“Relax, sweetheart”, Tobi said shocked, “I’ll be back…I promise!”

“You promise?” Dominic reacted, his voice high pitched and small like the voice of a very scared little boy.

“I promise”, was the reply, “Cross my heart!”

“Then it is OK”, Dominic muttered with a deep sigh, the fear disappearing from his eyes.

Tobi took his coat, stroked the boy over his hair and spoke soothingly:

“I’ll be back, maybe tomorrow but the day after at the latest. Is that OK with you?”

There was a single nod and they said their goodbyes.

And then there was this evening, that the teddy bear, given with so many good intents, formed the problem. No, it was more the way the bear was used and the reaction that it gave.

When Tobi entered the hospital room to visit Dominic, he saw the boy lying on his side with his back to the door, snugged up against the huge bear, his legs and arms clamped around it and sound asleep. The sight endeared him and as a result he made a big mistake without even knowing it: he bent over and kissed the boy softly in the neck, whispering:

“Hi there, beautiful dreamer”.

It brought a fearful reaction. Dominic stiffened completely and he cried out an icy and shrill:

“Noooooo!”.

It was followed by a wild flailing of arms and legs like he was fending off an attack. Then he turned around, stuck his arms and hands out in a parrying gesture and he stared at Tobi with eyes, that expressed fear, anger and hate!

“My God”, Tobi muttered, “What did I do? Slow down, sweetheart…I didn’t mean to do you any harm!”

It took some time before Dominic calmed down. The hate and anger disappeared from his eyes, the fear remained. Softly he asked:

“Did I hurt you?”

“No”, Tobi said, still recovering from the shock, “But I admit you startled me”.

“Sorry”, was the barely audible reaction, “It…it was not meant for you. It’s just…it triggered me…something ugly…something bad…but it was not meant for you. Honest!”

“It’s OK”, Tobi tried to comfort him, taking the boy in his arms, “I understand”.

But at the same time he thought:

“Do I? Do I really understand?”

Besides, Dominic made it perfectly clear that nobody could fool him, because he reacted with a sad grin on his face:

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t even understand it myself”.

That said, Tobi found it a very wise idea to avoid any other difficult or conflict-causing themes and he managed to chatter through the visiting time without any other incidents.

But again, there was this almost panicky question when he was about to leave:

“Will you be back? Are you angry with me because I hurt you? Please…tell me that you aren’t angry and will come back…be there for me!”

“Sweetheart”, Tobi tried to sooth all fears, “I ain’t going nowhere! And you didn’t hurt me. And secondly: I don’t leave people who I love. I know enough about how that feels to do that to you! I am there for you!”

By now Tobi saw reasons enough to report the strange conversation about the orange and his observations to the duty nurse, who reacted with a worried look and promised she would make the appropriate notes in Dominic’s status.

But when he walked out of the hospital, he struggled with his own memories… the ones that everybody left him when his once beautiful face had turned into the face of a leper because of the actions of one psychopath. Everybody…including his lover!

And that was something he would never do himself, as long as he lived! He knew how it felt!

 

But as stated before: the rest of Dominic’s days were composed of sheer boredom and he had plenty of time left to think, to worry and to fear for demons, that would no doubt appear sometime in the future. His mind was in constant turmoil, his feelings went ever darker and he sank deeper and deeper into the morass of depression, until he stuck into the quicksand up to his emotional neck and threatened to go under. He was so obsessed and pre-occupied with his emotions and fears, that he never noticed the worried looks on the faces of the nurses, who all made remarks on his mental condition on their duty reports and in his status.

The evenings brought relief. Of course, the evenings when Tobi came to visit, they were his top evenings. But even the ones without his sole and faithful visitor became bearable, when he found another thing to occupy himself with. It was the evening sky!

It started purely by coincidence. One evening, when Tobi wasn’t visiting, he stared out of the large window. He was lucky: his bed was directly at the aperture and the Cardiology ward was on one of the upper floors of the hospital. It gave him an unrestricted outlook on the sky, not hindered by tree tops from the park around the building. His field of view was only obstructed by the big towering city-structures, but they were far, far away!

He was sitting on the bed edge and stared absentmindedly to the sky, of a beautiful red-orange hue with small whisps of purple. Over time the purple turned violet and the red-orange became a darker red. And again, somewhat later the violet predominated with a velvet black over it, the red gradually disappearing. Becoming fascinated with the sight, he gazed at the colorful spectacle for hours until the last traces of light disappeared in a black night.

“That must be the place where I can find freedom”, he muttered to himself.

He lied down next to his teddy bear, that was by now christened Grumbles, and whispered in the plush animal’s ear:

“Wasn’t that beautiful, Grumbles? That is where freedom is…”.

From then on, whenever Tobi was not there, he was fully obsessed by the evening skies. He was even more impressed when it was partly covered with large white clouds, that in his imagination became large, mysterious castles, storing unfulfilled promises in them, that drifted slowly by, driven by the winds. He loved the way how the white cotton dot rims absorbed the light, converting the red-orange into a tender pink shade, radiating it over the lands under them and bathing them in a peaceful evening light.

But the display, that impressed him by far the most, was the evening when a thunderstorm drifted in from the west. The high winds drove swirling dark heads into the air until they fell down again, overburdened by the weight of their own vapor contents. The orange sky disappeared, came back again, vanished another time only to struggle into visibility beyond the ominous black clouds once their heads had tumbled down. He lied down next to the bear, his feverishly gleaming eyes fixated on the cloud show outside and mighty impressed he whispered in its ear:

“You see that, Grumbles? You know…these dark clouds over there…they are my life. But on the other side of them, where it is orange, is where I can find freedom. I only have to jump over my life to reach freedom. I just have to find a way to do that”.

Then he uttered that strange giggle again, admonishing the bear with:

“Goddamned animal…you never say something back, don’t you? That is why I called you Grumbles!”

The bear just remained silent, as all good plush bears do.

Dominic clamped his arms around the large, soft neck, closed his eyes and fell asleep, preparing for another restless night, full of frightening and exhausting dreams.

Oh yes, the dreams….

They were there most of the nights and all of them were nightmares. The number of main characters in his nocturnal mental horror pictures had grown to three. First there were him and Martha. But added was an ugly, very mean and sadistic sorcerer, who was dressed in a long black robe and wore a black, wide-brimmed pointed hat. His eyes, that were covered by owl-like eyebrows, were satanic and he bore a great resemblance with his grandfather.

Both would forcibly undress him, chatting animatedly of how painful his death would be, describing meticulously how tiny sharp teeth would tear the lumps of flesh from his body to savor them, only to come back to get more of it. They would slosh him in the slit with brute force, close the small door under loud laughter and leave him to his fate: to be eaten by the critters and all of it was because he had to be punished for being alive, he…a demonic child, a filthy rat, unworthy of being on this planet.

But so every now and then the sinister duo wondered how they could extend the suffering with one of them asking:

“How about having some fun before he dies a terrible death?”

And then Martha would fuck him with the in reality already enormous phallus even growing further to astronomic proportions, causing lots of pain like he was torn apart from the inside out. And then the black magician would, hardly able to get his limp member up but nevertheless very able to squirt his acid juices in him, where they started to canker him from the inside out, causing unbearable suffering.

Every time this dream occurred, he woke up trembling, sweating and panting out of pure panic. He would bury his face in Grumbles’ plush fur and whisper:

“They did it again, Grumbles…Goddamn, they did it again to me…!”

Only to cry his heart out in the soft texture, trying to do it without making noise. He would always end with more or less the same question:

“Grumbles, do I really have no right to live?”

And Grumbles…he kept silent…as always!

But finally, deliverance would come, when the first rays of daylight peeped through the window beside his bed and even more when the night duty nurse came along and greeted him with a friendly:

“Good morning, sweetie. Slept well?”

He would stare in complete reverence at the white-clad figure like she was a good fairy, that would make Martha and the nefarious sorcerer disappear, but he was not answering.

“Dominic, can you hear me?” she asked.

He nodded with large eyes of admiration, still dazed by her appearance.

“Have you slept well, sweetie?” she repeated her question.

“Kind of…average, I guess”, he muttered timidly, terrified that his words would break the spell.

“OK! Now, would you like coffee or tea for your breakfast?”

“Cof…fee…”, he invariably answered.

“Then I’ll get you one”, she replied with a smile, that chased all the demons away.

“Funny”, he thought, “How can living people be so kind to a misfit like me?”

The positive effect would linger on for a short while and then the day really began, with all its fears, black thoughts and struggles, all bundled in one gigantic tornado that whirled through his mind. And he would find himself back where he had ended yesterday, before the sunset gave him hope on freedom.

 

Most patients are overjoyed when their doctor brings them the good news about their release, so Peter Wagner saw no reason to expect any other reaction, when he strolled into the hospital room. He greeted the other two patients with a short head nod and then he sat down on the bedside of Dominic’s bed.

“Hi, buddy”, he said with a kind smile, showing that he had learned from his previous mistake.

Dominic stared at him with mistrustful glance and reacted with a gruff:

“Hi”.

He couldn’t remember exactly under which circumstances, but he recognized the man as an immediate and serious threat to his wellbeing.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.

“OK…I guess”, was the harsh and apprehensive answer.

“Well”, Peter said, “I’ve got good news for you. Yes, your heart has slight damage on the left chamber, but it is not dangerous and we can keep it under control with medication…eeeuhh… with pills, I mean”.

Dominic just stared at him, not saying a single word.

“In other words, you can go home tomorrow, Dominic”, Peter said with a broad grin.

If Peter Wagner had expected a happy reaction he was to become very, very disappointed. Dominic’s eyes grew large and the initial suspicion was replaced by undiluted panic when he uttered an arduous:

“Huh?”

Dumbfounded Peter looked at him and asked:

“Aren’t you happy?”

“Nooo!” was the plaintive answer, “I don’t want to be alone!”

“Is there someone you can stay with or who can stay with you?” Peter asked, trying to find a solution.

Dominic just shook his head.

“But Dominic”, Peter explained, his voice full of understanding, “I can’t keep you here if you’re healthy again. Do you understand that?”

Dominic gave the wrong answer: for a second time he shook his head.

“Anyway, I’ll write a prescription for the pills and a letter for your own doctor and then you can leave at ten tomorrow morning”.

“Where to?” Dominic asked, feeling more and more like a cat in the corner.

“Home, I guess”, Peter replied, “Or maybe you can stay with a friend. I really can’t keep you here”.

Then he rose, laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder and took his leave with:

“Good luck, buddy. And stay healthy. Cut on the speed. OK?”

Then he left.

Dominic stared after the white-clad back, that left the room, feeling very scared. He didn’t want to be alone at home. He hated being at home.

He lied down again, took Grumbles in his arms and whispered:

“They’re kicking us out, Grumbles. They don’t like us anymore”.

The first tears flowed, carefully hidden in the bear’s fur.

“We’re left on our own”, Dominic complained in a low whisper, “Nobody gives a damn about us”.

Once he stopped crying, he stared at the ceiling with empty eyes, the bear tightly pressed against his body as if the plush thing had the power to radiate new strength in him.

A young nurse came by. She stopped at his bed and with a broad smile on her face she said:

“Hi, sweetie. I heard you’re going home tomorrow. We’re all going to miss you!”

Dominic looked at her with irrational anger on his face. He was one hundred percent certain she was fooling him, ridiculing and mocking him.

“You can’t miss me!” he snarled out aggressively.

“Why not?” she asked, surprised by his violent outburst.

Dominic cowered, making himself as small as possible and tried to hide behind the huge bear.

“Because nobody misses me”, he hissed, “Nobody ever missed me!”

The young girl was at a loss what to say next, so she settled for a somewhat murmured:

“Well, if it means anything to you: I most certainly will!”

Then she nearly fled from the room, shaking her head in incomprehension.

Dominic stared after her. He felt his anger subside, but his unrest didn’t diminish one bit, despite that he held on to Grumbles compulsively.

“I don’t want to be alone! I hate it to be alone! It makes me feel if I’m buried alive, only waiting for real death!”

In an impulse he threw Grumbles on the bed, jumped up and grabbed his cell phone. He jabbed the pre select with Tobi’s number.

Anxiously he waited for the call to be answered, but the ringing kept going and going without hearing a voice.

“Not another one”, he muttered, “Not again hanging out to dry for weeks”.

Only to cry out with a much louder voice, filled with numbing fear:

“I haven’t got weeks!”

His roommates looked up in surprise, but he was beyond caring.

Seconds before he threatened to lose his nerves, he heard:

“Tobi”.

“I’m so scared!” he almost yelled in the phone.

“Who is speaking”, the voice at the other end spoke somewhat formally.

“Me, Dominic!” he said softly, feeling a cold hand around his heart. Wasn’t this Tobi? Had Tobi also played some kind of bizarre game with him? Was Tobi fake?

“Oh hi”, Tobi called out, “I didn’t expect you”.

The cold hand disappeared as by magic.

“I’m so scared”, he repeated, very near to crying.

“What is going on?” Tobi asked, his voice suddenly sounding worried.

“They don’t like us any longer over here! They are kicking us out tomorrow, Grumbles and me”.

“No”, Tobi tried to sooth things, “It means you are healthy again so you can go home. Hey, that is great news!”

“No”, Dominic screamed, “They hate the guts of us. That is why they throw us out!”

“Sweetheart”, Tobi persisted, “They are not throwing you out! Hospitals don’t do that, even if they don’t like the patients. If they would, most hospitals would be half empty by now. It is just that you are OK and recovered now, so you can go home!”

“I don’t want to go home!” Dominic objected violently.

“Why not?”

“I’m all alone at home. And I don’t want to be alone! I’m scared when I’m alone!”

He heard some rumbling on the other side, followed by:

“Give me a second, sweetheart. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back. Promise!”

He heard Tobi say something to some other person, but to his relief the man kept his promise, because he returned promptly.

“So…”, he said slowly, like he was thinking it over, “You are not scared when there is someone around? Is that right?”

“Guess so…”, Dominic reacted vaguely.

“Then…”.

Another short thinking pause followed, but Tobi continued very soon with:

“How about you come to me then? Until you’re really back on your feet? OK, I must work during the day, but then you have Grumbles and Nora to look after you. And once you feel well, you can go home. Is that an idea?”

“Who is Nora?” Dominic asked suspiciously.

“My cat”, Tobi grinned, “Well, what do you think?”

“No!” Dominic reacted impulsively.

“What no?” Tobi asked astonished, “You don’t want to come to me? Why not? I’ve got plenty of space for the two of us”.

Fully out of the blue Dominic said forcefully:

“I don’t trust you!”

“Huh?” Tobi cried out with a voice, that sounded if he was stung by a scorpion, “Why not? What have I done wrong?”

“Don’t be angry with me…please”, Dominic cried out in despair, “I want to trust you…I’d love to trust you…but…I can’t…! I simply can’t! It is just that…I trust no one! Everybody has hurt me! So maybe you would hurt me too when I’m with you!”

“Dominic”, Tobi said very quiet, “I won’t hurt you! In no matter which way. I love you! And in my way of thinking one does not hurt the person he loves. You understand?”

“Guess so”.

Again, there was a silence, but this time it appeared to be painful. Dominic tried to break the unbearable tension by asking:

“Are you mad at me now? Don’t you like me any longer as well?”

“No, sweetheart, I still love you!” came the re-assuring answer, “But we do have a problem over here. You don’t want to go home and you don’t want to come to my place. But… problems are there to be solved”.

“How?” Dominic asked with pent-up curiosity, sensing a spark of hope.

“To be honest…I don’t know yet”, Tobi said with a deep sigh, “Let us do it this way. You think it over during the day. And then I come to visit you tonight and we can talk it over. You even have time to reconsider! Because I take the day off tomorrow and I’ll pick you up at the hospital. And then I bring you to where you decide you want to go to. Is that an idea? At least for the time being?”

“Guess so”, Dominic murmured disillusioned.

“Fine”, Tobi said, “Then you start to think it over and I’ll see you tonight! OK?”

“Guess so”.

“Gotta run now, sweetheart!” Tobi started to wrap up the call, “They’re waiting for me. See you tonight! And sweet kiss. Bye…”

“Guess so”.

The terrible click came, ending the call.

“Guess…so…”, Dominic mumbled in himself.

It appeared to him, that the phone call was a waste of time. He had hoped, that Tobi had an instant answer to his problem, but the phone call did nothing to alleviate his fears and worries.

Vaguely it occurred to him, that he had caused the problem himself: it was him who didn’t want to go home but it was him as well who refused the alternative, to go to Tobi’s place.

“He’s nice, he’s really sweet. But I hardly know him. He can’t expect me to trust him…I trust no one, so why should I trust him?”

It was Grumbles again who bore the brunt of his despair, when he clamped his arms around the animal’s neck for another time, while he fought to think over Tobi’s proposal in a coherent and reasonable way. Maybe it was a good thing, that Grumbles was a plush animal; a real animal might have suffocated from the cramped strangulation.

“On itself it is a good idea…at least I’m not alone…but…what if he has a slit at his place? And puts me in it? Does it matter, one slit or the other? And what if he punishes me? I couldn’t stand it…not from him…I always want to be a good boy, not the boy that deserves punishment. But in some weird way…everybody thinks I need punishment. He thinks as well for sure!”

Distraught he squeezed his eyes stiffly.

“Everybody wants to punish me. Why should he be an exception? And even worse…what if he kicks me out after a few days…because he thinks I’m impossible to live with under one roof. I don’t want him to go away…I don’t want him to leave me…oh my God…it is so confusing…I can’t get a grip on it! What do I have to do now? I only have time until tomorrow morning”.

Only to let it follow with an even more depressing thought:

“Nobody loves me…nobody sees any need for me…they all deny me the right to live…Why? Because I’m bad?”

During the rest of the day his mind kept oscillating between quite meaningful thoughts and irrational emotions, while he kept holding onto Grumbles for dear life. His whole being withdrew into the small space in his skull, oblivious of everything around him. He was so obsessed with all of it, that he didn’t recognize the signs of impending panic and unrest. He started to shiver, his breathing turned somewhat shallow and agitated, his heart thumped in his chest in an ever-increasing tempo, cold sweat started to trickle from his forehead, only to become a gushing flood all over his body.

In his mind things went wrong at an alarming speed. There was no control left, his way of thinking becoming more and more ominous, threatening and dangerous:

“Of course he can’t live with me…nobody can. Everybody turns their back on me… because…I’m a wicked boy…a heinous creature…a satanic child…! Maybe I was innocent once, when I was born as some kind of accident…or did they choose to ignore my devilish nature? Why didn’t they kill me right away? Or even abort me before? Why not? Is it, because they were cowards…like I am?”

His mind took a break of some seconds, just to ponder over these last three questions, then resumed its derailed way of reasoning:

“I’m not human…I’m just a piece of filth…I’m invisible for others…the Evil in flesh…I have no right to live…but I live…breaking the rules again…I must be punished…for being alive…but no one sees me, so they can’t…so…I must punish myself…punish…punish… PUNISH!”

His eyes, normally bright, turned veiled and absent, but they danced around the hospital room agitatedly, looking for a tool that could be used for punishment. There was nothing!

Frustration came on top of his fearful anxiety, not doing much good to mitigate it. But at last, by a stroke of luck, he saw something: on the small plateau over the wash basin lay a pair of scissors, probably forgotten to take away after morning rounds. It was just the right thing he needed.

He let go of Grumbles and rose. With tired, uncoordinated steps he moved towards the wash basin. His two roommates didn’t notice it: one was taking a nap, the other sat at the table, absorbed in reading a newspaper.

His eyes were filled with a far-away glance when he reached the plateau and his hand grabbed the scissors. He tried to hide them when he faltered back to his bed, fell on it and started to carve into his right arm again with the sharp points, thinking:

“Pain…pain….it feels so good…at least I feel something…I need pain…need punishment! Punishment…!”

Involuntarily he groaned from pain from the first cut…and exactly that betrayed him. Just when he was about to start the second cut, looking in satisfaction at the blood spreading over his arm from the first, the man reading a newspaper looked up at him. With horrified eyes he hit the alarm button and started to yell:

“Nurse…nurse…help! HELP!”

Then he jumped up and with a speed that was astonishing for a man his age he ran towards Dominic in a futile attempt to keep the boy from hurting himself.

“Don’t do that, son!” the man screamed, trying to get a hold of the scissors in Dominic’s left hand. It had a reverse effect.

Instead of calming down by the intervention Dominic tried to hit the oldtimer with the hand that held the scissors, screeching:

“Stay away from me! I must punish myself…it’s none of your business…stay out of it…leave me alone!”

The man recoiled in horror, yelling another time:

“Nurse…help!”

A nurse ran in, in due time to witness how Dominic pushed the scissors deep in his arm the second time, calling out:

“What’s going…”,

Her sentence was cut off when she saw what was happening. She rushed to the bed, crying out:

“Dominic, stop that!”

But Dominic didn’t stop, no matter how hard the nurse tried to grab the scissors out of his hand. His left arm flailed around, pointing the scissors at her and making stabbing movements towards her to ward her off. He kicked and pounded and he kept screaming at the top of his lungs that she had to back off…that it was not of her business. The third and fourth cut followed in rapid succession.

A second nurse and the ward matron ran in, followed by doctor Peter Wagner, who knew enough at first glance and yelled to one of the nurses:

“Clear the room and get security up. And page Dr. Moller…urgent!”

Then he made his own attempt to get a hold of the disordered boy, with exactly the wrong results. Although virtually senseless and out of his mind, the sight of the doctor signaled a very urgent warning in Dominic’s mind:

“It’s him again…! He wants to put me in the slit…he’s dangerous…! He will do it again!”

“Get your hands off me, fucking bastard!” he shrieked in a maniacal high-pitched voice.

He took Grumbles and used the huge bear to keep everybody and especially Peter Wagner at bay, smashing around at random, hitting who- and whatever he could hit.

But Peter didn’t give up. Trying to stop the self-wounding he made another attempt to get the boy under physical control and screamed to drown out Dominic’s high-pitched crying:

“Dominic, stop that! Don’t do that! Calm down!”

Blind from panic Dominic held the scissors, pointed at him in a threatening way, stabbing in the air as a kind of last warning not to approach him and not to force him to use the scissors as a dagger. Peter considered it a partial victory, at least for the time being. As long as the scissors were used to keep him away in this menacing way, the boy couldn’t continue to hurt himself with them, so he accepted the status quo until new possibilities would arise, either by enough force to attempt physical restraint or by the returning of the boy’s common sense. But it shouldn’t take too long, because one look at the wounds made it clear that these needed surgical care as soon as possible.

“Get a surgeon up from Emergency”, he whispered to a nurse, “To take care of the wounds if we have a chance”.

Then he tried again to calm Dominic down with a very soft and embalming:

“Dominic, may we have a look at your wounds? Is that OK with you?”

Dominic shook his head frantically, hissing:

“Stay away from me…everyone…just stay away from me. And let me punish myself… that is what I deserve!”

“Why is that, Dominic?” Peter asked quietly, “You’ve done nothing wrong”.

“Yeah, I did”, Dominic answered in a low, animal-like growl, “It must be…otherwise you wouldn’t kick me out of here!”

Peter knew, that return of common sense was a dwindling option; the situation had deteriorated and could get volatile again pretty soon.

“Where’s Moller?” he asked.

No, it was not Monika Moller who entered the room, but two huge men from security. Peter knew he had to make a decision to avoid further physical damage.

“Try to do it nice and easy, but bring him under physical control”, he sighed, feeling if he had suffered a defeat.

But even two large, strong men had a hard time to get the frail boy under control. Dominic resisted in every way he could, throwing things, hitting with Grumbles, kicking…but he was no match for the two men. In a matter of a few minutes they had him in a firm grip. But even then, Dominic didn’t give in…although his limbs were firmly held, he tried to struggle free from the entrapment but when he didn’t succeed in doing so, he resorted to biting and spitting and he cried out every obscenity and curse he knew at the two in a shrill, raw voice. And then…

All of a sudden, his resistance ceased. He started to shudder irrepressibly, his left arm fell down lifeless and with the strength in his left hand gone the scissors fell harmlessly on the floor. His right arm did the same, making Grumbles ending up on the floor as well. His legs became limp, he pulled his head in his neck and his eyes distended to unimaginable and frightening size. He lay on the bed lifeless, buried under the two security men.

“My God, doctor”, one of them reacted in shock, “What happened? I didn’t want to…”.

Rapidly Peter took his stethoscope and checked Dominic’s heart and breathing. The heart thumped furiously, but that was to be expected after all the physical exertion the boy had pushed himself through. The breathing was shallow… hadn’t he seen that before, exactly in this same boy?

“Don’t you worry”, he re-assured the security man, “He’s alive”.

“But…I didn’t want to hurt him!” the man cried out in light despair.

“You didn’t!”, Peter muttered with a sigh of desperation of his own.

Exactly at that moment Monika Moller ran in with a:

“What’s going on?”

“You took your time!” Peter barked angry.

“Hey, I can’t split myself in pieces”, she reacted annoyed, “I was at Emergency for a crisis intervention”.

“Well, over here the crisis is over by now”, Peter replied, nodding towards the seemingly dead Dominic on the bed.

“Aaahhh…”, Monika reacted, “Dominic again? What happened?”

Peter told her how things had started, what had happened and how it had ended.

“Wow”, Monika muttered impressed, “He just kept fighting against…”.

She mustered the two security men and then continued with a soft giggle:

“About two hundred fifty kilos of muscle. Incredible!”

“Well, doctor”, one of the security men said with a touch of shame in his voice, “I never met such a frail boy who has that much strength. It was really unbelievable”.

“Yeah”, Monika reacted absent-minded, thinking it over, “But it means that he suffered from a tremendous amount of tension, otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible”.

“And since then, actually a few seconds before you came in, he is in this cataleptic condition, like at Radiology a few weeks ago”, Peter added to complete the picture, “I checked his vitals, all somewhat fast and shallow, but still within safety margins”.

Monika shook her head and reacted with:

“No, this is not catalepsy. Of course, I have to run tests to exclude organic causes, but I have the suspicion, that this is a case of acute conversion disorder”.

“Never heard of it”, Peter said in surprise, “What’s that?”

“Aaah, you haven’t paid attention during the Psychiatry lectures?” Monika smiled.

“Don’t know”, Peter grumbled, “But I admit: I’ve never heard of it!”

“It’s a kind of psychological and physiological defense mechanism”, Monika explained, “When emotions and tensions become too high to handle for both body and soul, both just switch off…and that results in what you see now. You’ve got a penlight?”

Peter grabbed in the breast pocket of his doctor’s coat and handed her the penlight.

She shone in Dominic’s eyes, shivering a bit when she saw the empty, large eyes, pupils diluted as far as was humanly possible, but there was no reaction to the sharp light. Then she lifted the left hand and arm and let loose: the arm just fell down like a lifeless object.

She put her lips against the boy’s ear and whispered penetratingly:

“Hi, Dominic, it’s Monika…can you hear me, sweetie?”

Again, there was no reaction whatsoever.

She tried a second time:

“Dominic…can you hear me?”

No response came.

“All corresponding with ACD”, she said, “Can I use a phone somewhere over here?”

“Come with me”, Peter answered.

Before she left, she pointed at one nurse and the two security men and said:

“Keep an eye on him. If he stirs, just give me a holler”.

Once at the nurses’ station she took the phone and dialed her own station:

“Monika here. Get me a bed in the isolation!”

There was a short pause when she listened to the reply, her face growing irritated, finally saying:

“I know there aren’t. So, just make one! I’ve got a potential ACD over here. What do you want me to do: kick him on the street or something? I’ll be there with him in five, maximum ten minutes!”

She cut the line, looked at Peter and asked:

“You got some heavy sedative over here? I have to do something to diminish the tensions in him to avoid a repeat”.

Peter opened a drawer, but having no knowledge of what a psychiatrist calls heavy, he said:

“See for yourself if there something you can use”.

She ferreted about through the drawer. While doing so, she asked:

“Do you have any idea what might have caused this?”

Peter shrugged, replying:

“Don’t know. I told him this morning he is released tomorrow morning. His heart has slight damage, but that can be controlled with medication. Contrary to other patients, he was not exactly thrilled by the idea”.

“Ahaaa”, Monika reacted, “So that is the trigger!”

“Hey”, Peter snorted somewhat indignant, “What else could I do? I can’t keep him here!”

“That’s not what I mean”, Monika said fast, “You did nothing wrong. But…if you look at it through his eyes: he simply feels abandoned and that frightens him to an extent, that you and I can’t understand. And since this morning it has built up into an unmanageable level. That caused some kind of chain reaction”.

“Pffff…”, Peter sighed, “I already feel guilty for having to use violence to control him. Don’t make it worse”.

“Oh, come on”, Monika protested, “You did nothing wrong. As far as the forced physical restraint is concerned: under the circumstances I would have decided the same thing. It’s no use to let the kid shed his own blood, is it?”

“No”, Peter replied in dejection, “Poor kid!”

“Peter”, she said with a weary smile, “I’ve got a whole station of poor kids, in one way or another all flotsam of this society. He has the misfortune he’s just another one of them! OK, this will do”.

She took the vial out and inquired:

“What is his weight?”

Peter checked the status and gave her the information.

“Fine, then six cc will do the trick. He’s in for a long nice nap and I hope he doesn’t remember a thing of what happened once he wakes up!”

Once she gave Dominic the injection, she asked for two nurses and the three of them took him two floors down to Psychiatry.

Peter saw them disappear in the elevator, still feeling it as a kind of personal defeat and still feeling guilty.

 

In early evening Tobi walked whistling through the corridor of the Cardiology station. His whistling did not mean he was happy or cheerful. He was well aware, that he had a tough talk with Dominic ahead of him, in which he wanted to try to convince the kid, that it was in his own interest to come with him to his place for a while and he wasn’t looking forward to that chat. But over the years he had developed a very funny way of coping with stress: he did it by whistling or humming some tune, either an existing one or one that he “composed” himself while whistling it.

He rounded the corner into the hospital room and stared at the empty bed at the window. He was perplexed, his whistling stopped abruptly, his heart thumped in his chest and uneasy he asked the once-neighbor:

“Where’s Dominic?”

The man shrugged and replied:

“To another station. You better ask the nurse about it!”

He ran to the nurses’ station, barged in without knocking and feeling really worried he called out:

“Where’s Dominic?”

“Slow down!” the nurse smiled.

“No, I won’t slow down!”, he reacted sharply, more or less out of character, “Where is Dominic?”

“He’s transferred to another station”, the woman replied.

“To which station?”

“To…Psychiatry”, she answered reluctantly.

“Huh?” Tobi cried out, “Why that?”

“It is about something that happened this afternoon”, she answered, “But I don’t know what it was. I wasn’t on duty this afternoon. Honest! I only know he was transferred to Psychiatry. Oh, and I heard that my colleagues took good care, that his bear went with him”.

“Where is Psychiatry?” Tobi growled impatient.

“It’s two floors down. If you step out of the elevator, you’ll find it directly at your right hand”.

“Thanks”, he said curt, turning around immediately.

He re-entered the corridor in the direction of the elevator with brisk pace, but by now the tension inside him had become so high, that he forgot to start whistling again.

He could hardly endure the time the elevator needed to get two floors lower, but then he stormed out of it, turned right and almost ran into the Psychiatry station.

“Hey”, a middle-aged woman called after him from a kind of office, “Wait a minute. Where are you going to?”

“I…I…”, he stuttered, “I’m looking for Dominic”.

“And who is Dominic?” she asked somewhat suspicious.

“Euuhhh…he came down from Cardiology this afternoon…you know? Slim kid, dark blond hair…”.

“Ah, yeah”, she said with a vague smile, “He’s at the closed ward. At the end of the corridor. Once you get at the door, don’t forget to push the button on the door’s right side. Otherwise, you’ll have a very hard time getting in”.

He was already running again, came at the door and rang the bell. After about two minutes he heard the jangling of keys and the door was opened by a male nurse…or was it a professional wrestler?

The man was huge, had very broad shoulders, arms like trunk trees and a neck that made even Grumbles’s neck a miniature. But he was kind. With a smile he asked:

“Hi, can I help you?”

“Yeah”, Tobi answered agitated, “I’m looking for Dominic!”

“OK, come in”, was the matter-of-fact reply.

Immediately after coming in the door was locked again.

“May I ask who you are?” the man asked.

“I’m Tobi…his boyfriend”.

“OK”, came the reply, again accompanied by a kind smile, “How about if you take a chair, Tobi. I’ll rustle up the doctor so you can talk to her. OK?”

“Sure!”, Tobi said, seeing no alternative to do as he was more or less ordered, no matter how kind it was done.

The walking bear was back within a few minutes, followed in his tracks by a nice-looking young woman in her end twenties. The man pointed at him and exchanged some soft words and the woman came directly towards him.

“Hi”, she said with a heartwarming smile, “So, you are Dominic’s boyfriend? May I ask your name?”

“It’s Tobi!”

“Hi, Tobi”, she reacted, sticking her hand out, “I’m Monika Moller, Duty Station Psychiatrist. Shall we go to my office? So we can talk it over?”

She didn’t wait for his reply but walked towards an open door. Tobi followed somewhat meekly. When he came in the small office, she already sat behind a desk and invited him to take a seat as well. Then she started to talk:

“In a nutshell, Tobi…Dominic freaked out totally on Cardiology this afternoon. He started to inflict wounds on himself with a scissors, quite serious wounds, to be honest. At least, we had to call in a surgeon to take care of them. But…that’s not all”.

“My God…”, Tobi muttered dismayed, “Even more than that? I think it is bad enough!”

She smiled sympathetically, then continued:

“Yeah, I’m afraid there is more. When the nurses and the doctor tried to stop him from wounding himself, he really flipped out. He threatened them with the scissors, kicked, hit, bit…all of it. In the end the doctor decided to call in security to bring him under physical restraint. It’s not the preferred option to do, but I honestly think he had no other choice. Anyway, when the security men had him under control, he simply collapsed. OK…it is more complicated than that, but let us call it that way. That is where they called me in and I decided to take him to Psychiatry”.

“Jesus…!” Tobi was only able to utter, but he recovered and asked:

“Where is he now?”

“In the isolation. On my orders”, she said matter-of-factly.

It was another shock for Tobi. With big eyes he stared at the woman opposite him and cried out:

“Why that?”

“Because we want to avoid every possible risk on new self-inflicted wounds…or even more extreme actions! Besides…I wan’t you to know you can’t take him out from here. He’s here on court’s orders”.

Tobi didn’t need any additional explanation of her last answer. She seemed to sense his concern, because she continued:

“But don’t you worry. He won’t notice he is there. He is sound asleep, nicely snugged up against that huge bear of him”.

“How can you be sure of that?” Tobi wanted to know, somewhat suspicious of the soothing words.

“Because”, she said with a disarming grin, “We have him under continuous camera surveillance. He can’t even cough in his sleep without us knowing it. And last time I looked at the screen, which was just before I came here to see you, he was sleeping like a baby. Which he should…I gave him enough to sleep on until tomorrow morning”.

It was another remark for which Tobi didn’t need an explanation. But the doctor surprised him, when she said:

“You want to see him?”

“Can I?” he asked taken aback.

She shrugged and responded:

“If you can handle it…why not? You really won’t disturb him. But…isolation is not exactly the most cheerful room, actually it is pretty depressing. It’s just a mattress, no furniture, no things around, no blanket, no sheets. And he looks pretty beaten up himself. His right arm is packed in bandages from his shoulder to almost his wrist and there are bruises from the fight. Sorry, we couldn’t avoid that. But if you think you can handle it, I’ll bring you there!”

Tobi nodded eagerly.

She rose and with another infectious grin she said:

“Then come on!”

After a brief walk they came at a door. She opened it with a key and invited him in after switching on some light. Tobi entered and stood in a kind of shock.

“Why is he naked?” he asked.

“Standard procedure in isolation”, she answered, “Nothing that can be used to cause additional harm is allowed in the room, not even clothing”.

“But…isn’t he cold then?” Tobi asked worried.

Monika shook her head, denying it with:

“Don’t you worry. We take care of that!”

Eased by her answer he looked down on the sleeping boy. The doctor was right: he was snugged up tightly against Grumbles, on his right side with his back to the door, his breathing deep and regular. His arms were clamped around the bear’s neck, his left leg lay over the puppet’s belly. His right cheek was pressed against the huge head, turning his face somewhat up. It enabled Tobi to have a look at the face. For the first time in his days with the boy there was no trace of the haunted, hurt soul. There was even a serene smile around his lips. It touched Tobi deeply.

He couldn’t remember where, but he had read some description of Dominic’s… no, of Bunny’s naked body. The rest of the piece was pure filth, but when he saw the boy’s naked appearance right in front of his eye, he could only wholeheartedly concur with the author’s poetic description of the way Bunny looked undressed: in one word angelic!

But his mind was not on arousal or sex. It would chase him far over his moral limits. It would amount to abusing a very vulnerable and emotionally damaged kid, something he was not prepared to do. Besides, he had far more pressing concerns as far as this boy was concerned than only a one-night stand or some quickie.

“Can I…?” he started a question, gesturing towards Dominic.

“Yeah, sure”, Monika reacted with a chuckle, “You really won’t wake him up. If you do, I’m filing a complaint with the sedative supplier”.

Tobi got on his knees, directly beside the mattress. Gently he stroked with his index finger over Dominic’s left cheek and whispered:

“Hi, my sweetest…they told me you made quite a riot today. Doesn’t matter, honey. I guess you had your own good reasons to do that. Hey…if you can hear me…I love you. And I promise you: I will never ever let you down, I will always be there for you. If you allow me, we will get you over all this together. Now…sleep on, little beauty… have sweet dreams”.

He bent over and pressed a careful kiss on the nape, still worried that he might wake Dominic. But Dominic showed no reaction at all.

Tobi rose, nodded to the doctor and expressed his thanks for the possibility to pay at least a brief visit.

When they walked on the corridor again, Monika asked:

“What do you know about him?”

Tobi shrugged and said somewhat embarrassed:

“Not that much. Only what he told me”.

“Oh well,” Monika sighed, “That is more than I know right now. So…step back into my office and we’ll make an appointment during daytime to talk it over. Is that OK with you?”

Tobi nodded.

They went back into the little office and she started to consult her agenda:

“Tomorrow, 15.00? Does that suit you?” she suggested.

“Yeah, fine, I’ll be…here I suppose?

”Yeap”, she said with a confirming nod, “He is awake by then so you can have a real talk with him, after we have finished”.

“That would be great!” Tobi exclaimed, a large smile of relief on his face.

“Oh…”, Monika asked, “May I ask you something?”

Tobi nodded.

“Forgive me for asking”, she said wavering, “But what happened to you?”

With a sigh Tobi responded:

“Some lunatic threw acids over me because I am homosexual”.

She shook her head, but Tobi couldn’t understand if it was in disgust or disbelief or both.

“How did you cope with that?” came her next question.

Tobi shrugged and said:

“Of course, I had a hard time. But it has happened and I can’t make it undone so I acquiesced in it and took it as a matter of life”.

“Tough”, she muttered with an admiring smile. But then her expression changed when she continued:

“If you’re serious about Dominic...if my suspicions are right, you will have to be tough to handle that. I just want to warn you”.

“What are these suspicions, doctor?” Tobi wanted to know.

She shook her head and replied:

“No…just suspicions. I have to run a number of diagnostic tests, but I can only do that slowly. If I do all in one day, it might cause new unrest in him. In other words, it’ll take a lot of time”.

She stuck her hand out another time, saying:

“Well, I have to run. I’ve got more patients and a lot of paperwork as well. We’ll see each other tomorrow”.

Tobi nodded, shook her hand and walked towards the door, that was unlocked again by the huge male nurse, who gave him another kind smile as goodbye.

Once outside, on his way to the parking lot, he replayed things in his mind, including the image of that serene slim angel on that mattress, clamped around a huge teddy bear. It brought tears in his eyes.

“I repeat my vow, sweetheart, I will never let you down, no matter how rough things may get”, he muttered in himself.

He got at his car and stepped in. Coincidentally he stared into the rear-view mirror, his one functioning eye showing more determination than both eyes of many other people did. By pure coincidence Dominic had given him a new goal in life and he was hellbent on pulling it through, no matter what obstacles he might encounter!

He blew the air out and started his car. After slowly rolling to the parking lot exit, he turned right onto the broad street and began his long drive home through an always busy Berlin, whistling “his own version” of Ravel’s Bolero.