Chapter 1

February 14, 1984

Darkness. I was one with the darkness. Empty, complete. I was and was not, am and am not. I float upon a gentle pillow of purest, inky black. Sweet, happy darkness. The end of it all.

What I didn't realize is that endings are just beginnings of something else.

I opened my eyes to light. I shouldn't have been able to. I was certain that I had finally reached the end. A hopeful wish. A yearning wish.

The light was blurred and incomplete. Some shadow, some light. I blinked to try to clear my eyes but it didn't work. Something was wrong with my eyes; it was as if they were matted and full of fluid; I could see nothing beyond that shadowy light.

I could hear, though; the monitor sounded higher and louder than I remembered as did the whooshing sound of the oxygen. It was funny and cyclical instead of steady as I remembered. A whoosh, pause, shoooop, pause, whoosh ... over and over and over again. Slow. Steady. Unfamiliar.

I could feel as well, discomfort not pain and coming from my throat of all places, not my chest. It was ... disconcerting. I had lived with that chest pain for weeks if not months and to not have it there, to not have any pain there, was almost blasphemy. I loved that pain; it was my dearest, closest friend. It meant I was finally... finally ... going to be finished with this life. And it had been taken away from me.

They'd saved me. Somehow, they'd managed to save me. Damn them. Damn them all. What right did they have to save a 69-year old man? I was dying ... I was finally, happily dying and they had taken that away from me. Why would they do that? Why couldn't they just let me die in peace??

The tears cleared my eyes but the bright lights were slightly painful. Bright pain or shadowy bliss, it didn't matter to me anymore. God Damn Them.

The world came to me in sharp relief which was at least as unusual as the lack of pain in my chest. I'd always been near-sighted; it was the bane of my existence. One of them, anyway. I'd worn glasses for it all my life so, honestly, it wasn't all that bad. Just another drop in my seemingly limitless bucket of pains and agonies.

Now, though, everything was sharp. Clear. Bright. The room looked different but then, they'd probably moved me after surgery. They'd told me I was on the heart transplant list, but I hadn't believed they'd find me a match. I was morbidly obese, as wide as I was tall and I'd pretty much done my damnedest to kill off my liver over the past 20 years. A million to one shot, the doctor had called the odds of them finding a donor for me. There were many others, younger people, ahead of me on the list.

I almost smiled when he told me. He thought I was afraid of death. He thought I didn't want to die. He didn't understand, if pain was my closest friend, death was barely in second.

They'd managed, though. Somehow. I hated them for it. I wondered; if I ripped out all of the tubes and lines running to my arms and chest, would they take the heart out and give it to someone who truly deserved it?

I tried to lift my arm to start my task ... but I couldn't lift it. The other arm, either. They'd move only a few inches before stopping. I felt a tightness on my wrists holding me down, holding them from getting on with what I wanted them to do. I looked down.

Shock. Fear. Disbelief. What the fuck is happening to me? The arms ... weren't mine. My arms were gnarled, wrinkled, old. Their color was dark and sallow, dotted with liver spots. These arms, the ones answering my calls, as limited as they could, were young and pink and fresh. Young hands. A child's hands, cuffed at the wrist so they could barely move.

"Well, good morning!" My head turned, a young man, maybe 30 was smiling at me as he entered the room. Dark hair, shaggy, a little long for my tastes but clean. Clear blue eyes behind round, tiny glasses, above a slight nose and long face. His smile didn't look real; it looked like one of those fake, plastic smiles everyone keeps around for use when they're not really happy but have to pretend that they are. He looked taller than me but then, who isn't?

"How are you feeling, Buck?" He asked as he pulled out one of those ear, nose throat contraptions. This one looked big and ... old somehow. Not shiny, like the newer models. His hand went to my eyes, holding them open, the light flashing into them. I tried to speak but all that came out was a hoarse noise, almost a grunt. There was something in my throat, something that stopped me from speaking. "Don't speak; we had to intubate you. That is, we had to put a pipe down your throat to help you breathe." I wanted to curse at the man, to tell him I fucking well knew what intubate meant but again, only that croak came out and the pressure in my throat turned into a little burn. "I said don't speak, okay youngster? Now, I can't say but you didn't give us a huge scare." He moved to the side, pushing my head slightly, the pressure of that damned instrument pushing into my ear until it fucking hurt. "Good, ear and eyes are clear. I'll check the other side in a minute." He held his hands in front of my face, his index finger pointing up. "I want you to follow the tip of my finger, okay. Only with your eyes now." He moved his finger back and forth and I followed it, grumbling but waiting, patiently. He ended by touching my finger with his nose and I crossed my eyes like a good fucking puppet. "Excellent. Reactions are normal," he said as he moved around the bed to the other side. Again, the pressure, this time in my other ear. It still fucking hurt. "Clear here, too. I'll have the nurse come in and take your vitals, then we'll see about getting that tube out of you, okay? Hang in there, buck."

Buck? Who the hell was Buck? Was that some kind of slang the youngsters were using nowadays? And I bet he thought he was fucking funny, calling me youngster like that. Youngster. He was one of those, one of those people that thought irony was funny. Well, wait until they got this tube out of me, then we'd see who was fucking funny...

My eyes, though, went back down to my hands. To those pink, young hands and I shuddered. Youngster?

Fade back to black, back to the safety of black.

February 15, 1984

"We can't fucking afford it, Sarah," the man argued, his voice loud and harsh. "We're in hock up to our eyeballs now. The banks come calling just last week."

"I'll get a job," the woman responded, her voice angry but carrying a pleading quality to it. "Mr. Akers down at the store is looking for someone..."

"Mr. Akers is looking for someone to replace Mrs. Akers, damn it," the man swore loudly. "I'll not have no wife a mine working at that place and that's for damn sure."

It was a bad dream ... and yet, it didn't seem all that much like a dream.

My eyes fluttered open. The blurriness I'd started with before was gone but the bright sun shining into the window was painful. I blinked and then squinted. Same white walls, though they seemed brighter than they should. White curtain was different than I remembered, too. The ancient television hanging on a tray on the wall was certainly different; hadn't all of these hospitals gone to flat panel yet? Not to mention it all seemed clearer than it should.

Same too loud beeping, though. I wondered how I managed to fall asleep to that sound. The stuttering whooshing sound was gone and I immediately realized that the tube was out of my throat. It hurt, but a good hurt if that were possible. Still no pain in my chest. Fucking bastards. Ruin a perfectly good death.

"Bucky?!?" A woman screamed from beside me. It wasn't for long, though. Suddenly, I had a woman lying on top of me, sobbing hard, squeezing the life out of me.

Okay, so I'd hoped for a heart attack. This was definitely another, more wonderful, way to go.

I tried to lift my arms to hold her, but I still couldn't. I still felt the same sudden stop as the cuffs on my wrists brought me up short. Wait ... my wrists. I remember before. Last night? Maybe, it was darker then and certainly brighter now. I remembered 'my' hands. Those young hands. Certainly too young for me.