Is it Worth it?

Sweat dripped down his forehead as his body thrashed beneath the blanket. His chest rose and fell in hurried concessions. His face was damp with fresh tears.

Once a man known for his lack of a heart now cried in his sleep, the vivid images of his failures playing out in his mind.

When the accident happened, when he was captured in the army, when he witnessed the slow agonising deaths of his friends, his colleges, his family. When the mission had failed.

He relived every bad mistake he ever made, all while knowing this time the consequences of his words, his actions, his hopes. He couldn’t change it now, he could only watch as he made the same mistakes, said the same words, done the same things, all for the same reasons. Every time in his career he tried to be anything more than just the guy who messed up – he made everything worse. Now he was the sole survivor of a mass kidnapping.

He was nothing more than a murderer.

He had only wanted to make the world safer, better, more peaceful for everyone. He had witnessed so much suffering, so much hardship, so much pain – he had wanted to stop it forever. He never wanted another person to experience what he had.

But here he was now, responsible for the deaths of thousands – if not millions of innocent lives. He could only see the family’s he had destroyed, the innocent lives he had taken, the constant destruction that he left behind him.

What he had created had done all that; he had created a monster.

Gasping for breath his eyes snapped open. Shivering and violently shaking he didn’t feel the sweat dripping through his eyebrows. He threw back the covers drenched in sweat and wiped at his forehead. The images still fresh in his mind.

He couldn’t think properly.

He craved a cool glass of whiskey.

Sliding of the bed, he grabbed onto the drip -for support and to move it around to the mini bar in the far end of the room – they had all been so confident he was sober. He was grateful then he had had it installed before his last ‘adventure’.

Because that's what it had been for him, one final venture, a chance to say goodbye to the life he had lived. But what was it now? he didn't get a chance to say goodbye.

Nevertheless, he winced as he bent down to open the door and winced when he reached up to grab the glass. No measurements needed, he just poured a large glass and poured it down his throat. He winced again.

The bad thoughts returned.

Everyone hated him. Everyone blamed him. Everyone mocked him, isolated him, despised him. He was personally responsible. He was to blame. All he could ever be was a failure, a murderer, a mistake…

For all anyone cared, he might as well have been dead.

He slouched against the bed frame hardly supporting his weak frame.

He glanced to the drip inserted in the back of his hand, the tiny piece of metal in his body that was supposed to get his back to his health. He hated the sight of it. What it meant. His health wasn’t worth that much – not the time or the effort. He would never be able to maintain it.

It would be wasted on him when so many deserved it so much more.

Now looking at it, he wondered if it was worth it at all? Was it worth his time? Everyone else’s time? The resources?

So he started pulling.

The wires and the tubes and the monitors.

He tore the plasters from his skin, the drips from his veins, the plastic monitors on his finger, the pads on his chest.

He fell to the ground gasping. The air in his lungs turned to led, poisoning his body from the inside out, every drop of blood curdled.

He clutched his chest and tried to scream out, but no words formed in his throat, or in his mind.

He clawed at the side of the bed as he slide down the side of the footboard.

He found himself fighting for life.

But the last fight of his life had been won; this time he wasn’t getting out alive.

There was no sole survivor this time.

No happy ending.

Was it worth it?