Shield

Oli walked into the hospital room, his head hung low, greyish face invisible under his oversized hoodie.
"Fuck," he murmured under his breath looking at the pathetic figure lying in bed, almost translucent surrounded by white sheets, tubes, and probes covering his body, precariously keeping him alive.
He stared at Milo's blank face, unrested, once strong chest now deflated barely moving, how he had dreamt of that chest. He did not have that calm expression Oli often remembered. The expression he would wake up and fall asleep to. He did not recognize this face; it brought home the feeling of his memories being a  life ago.
Extending his arm slowly with his index finger Oli traced Milo's thick eyebrow of chocolate strands.  The skin underneath felt cold and lifeless, dry lips begging to be kissed in secrecy, Oli liked his own with a dry tongue.
"Do you think you can sleep all day lazy bones?" Oli whispered to the still form. "Get up. I'm finally back and all you want to do is sleep, I always had to drag you to bed, and now you are like this. Fucking hell."
Only the rhythmic mechanical sounds of the hospital's equipment answered him with a lazy hum. Oli was the quiet one. Milo was the one who could always talk up a storm, the witty one, big brains, big balls, silver tongue, likable, sexy. Oli was the muscle, a body to be tossed around. They were different halves of the same idiot. The rainstorm and the rainbow. The lunatic who dared to want different, conform with less.
There was a chair pulled in close to the bed and he sat down, letting his body fall heavy with a grunt. What should he do now? All he had thought about once the withdrawal became manageable was coming to the hospital, wanting to see Milo's familiar face. He felt a lump in his throat he could not swallow, a round pebble made of glass that would not go down.
"You never liked sleeping in, so what's the occasion now?" he asked Milo hoping for a reaction.  "Is your perfect life and your perfect wife wearing you down?" Oli's eyes felt hot and damp, they burned, and he rubbed at them aggressively, bloodshot and red, angry against his sickly color"Hey man, did you miss me?" he choked out, words trailing off. "Did you think of me? Did you give up on me too?... I thought of you, you now? Especially when I was high...oh man, it was so fucking good when I was high... I wish I was high. "
He felt anger and sadness fight inside him for the spotlight. He was not a complex man; he had few moods and now there were only too emotions he recognized.
He wanted to lift Milo and shake him awake, slap him hard across the face. How dare he make him worry like this? How dare he make him care for him still. How dare he try to leave before Oli when he had just got back.
Exhaling loudly, Oli cracked his neck, rubbed at his face, put his hands behind his head, and pressed firmly, trying to hold himself together.
"Fuck," he said again, this time louder, angry. "Fuck...fuck...FUCK!"
He kicked the tire of the bed that was close to him and Milo's body shuck lightly, restless in his sleepless coma.
"If I would have known that this is what it took to get you back, I would have shot him years ago." Oli turned fast, his face in disarray. Looking around him, his unkind eyes rested sharply on his sister.
"aren't you funny?" he said in a cold voice his eyes swollen from crying but wild with fight.
"I'm not supposed to be funny. I'm supposed to be witty, you know, crack a joke to break the tension," Nel teased.
"You're not. Cut the crap what do you want?" Oli snaped.
Nel breathed in deeply, wondering to herself what she wanted, what was next, what she could do. She shrugged. "I just want him to wake up," she finally said. It was honest and simple.
"Well, you can shit in one hand and want in the other and see which one fills faster Little Sis, I thought you would know that by now," Oli said.
"Will we ever be civil?" Nel clenched her chest and extended her free hand in a plea that tried to be sincere.
"See that's the thing, Lil Sis. You do think everything is about you. You do think that I hate you or that somebody else loves you? But at the end of the day, it is just you or me or them all alone and nobody gives a fuck
Shit, we could all be gone tomorrow and it will make no Goddamn difference. So, I'm going to ask you again, and I want you to think it through.  What the fuck do you want?" Oli was straining himself, trying to sound calm and failing miserably.
She was silent feeling an unspoken voice cracking inside her throat. Feeling all of those tears that she could never cry when she really wanted to dry up and used as flashes of their childhood flud over her. Feeling small and afraid once more. She remembered when he would hug her, and play with her, and in the moment that something was an inconvenience he would push her away furiously or beat her senseless on command taking his anger out on the world or just out of boredom, the present fear of never knowing what to expect. She remembered the good and the bad in a whirlwind of emotions she couldn't quite detangle. And as it came it was gone and once more, she was hollow, so she smiled.
"you were supposed to be my Arthur you know that? " Nel said honestly.
"I doubt that, little Shield, you little useless shield. " Oli added.
"Just say my name! would it kill you to just say my name Oli? She was my mother too you know... " Nel tried.
"I'm going back to the mansion," Oli sighed, tired, even presumably weak. "There are too many things I can shoot up here. I'll go back to my room."
"You are such a fucking coward!" Nel snaped. He looked at her wide eyes with amusement.
"Whatever," Oli blew her off.
"You think you are so special, so above everyone," Nel croaked. "You ran away, I didn't. I took it. Everything you threw at me, I took it. Fuck, I married him because you talked Father into it. Your father, he's fucking politician friends, you acted like such the fucking victim when I was their damn plaything. Passed around-" she choked her eyes glazed over her body frozen in place" I was the toy and still you ran away now, I am the villain? Fuck you."
Getting up, he walked past her like she was not there. Her, a white shadow, of smoke and dust disappeared under fluorescent lights, under hospital lights, under the bright lights of people who see you for what you're not, under the light of expectations and greed.
She was left there alone. Alone with herself. Alone with her husband. Alone with her never subsiding rage.
She could easily trace back where it all had started. Few people have the blessing of waking up every morning and knowing exactly where their life went to hell. When the "what ifs" or the "perhaps" could strangle you to sleep every night, a tough truth to swallow.
  Like every good soap opera, her modern life began and ended in a white wedding.
Or at least a life where she saw herself as the main character, the protagonist deciding her reality, being something more than a sidekick, a bargaining chip, the night's entertainment. But now she felt so used up and reduced.
Nel walked to the bed and, sitting down beside him, she caressed Milo's forehead half-heartedly.
"Don't worry," she whispered kissing him gently on the cheek. "He is even more naive than me if he thinks I'll let him go so easily. We're getting to the final stand dear. It will be everyone's turn at the bat, whether they want it or not."
She bit down on her lip. "Sweet dreams," she whispered and walked out of the room and thought "I want the world to go away."
In the hallway, Park waited. They walked together without sharing a word. She had more visits to pay this night.