Solitary Confinement

After Pete Valentine had disappeared down his new driveway and out of sight, Nick Russell wandered around his new yard. He told himself he was just getting used to the place but, down deep, he thought it was really a fear of being alone.

Not that it wasn't what he wanted, why he had come here in the first place. But now that he was actually faced with the stark reality of it, he had to admit he was really afraid. Being alone wasn't something he'd ever really faced before.

Oh, sure, all those months he'd spent in the hospital, he'd had plenty of what his psychiatrist and the staff called "alone time". Time to think about himself and everything he'd gone through--to try and deal with things in his own mind. One of the nurses had told him that the "alone time" was the toughest part for most patients. It was the time when you had to come face to face with everything you'd done and everything that had happened. No doubt about it, it had been rough.

Alone time in the hospital was much different, though. You were in a room, or maybe out on the patio smoking a cigarette by yourself. If it came to the point where you couldn't stand being alone any more, all you had to do was walk out a door or down a hall and- bam!- you weren't alone any more.

In his old life--the life of Nick the musician, Nick the star-you couldn't be really alone if you tried. Life was full of assistants, go-fers, hangers-on. Sometimes left you barely room to breathe, let alone really think about anything. You couldn't go out the door without an assistant. And God help you, if you thought you'd go for a walk without a bodyguard! You were property. All these people depended on you for their jobs and, even if they thought you were an ass-hole, they wanted to keep the gravy train safe.

But here, now, he really was alone. No assistants, no nurses, no other patients. Not even Pete who'd been around since they were teenagers and was sometimes like an old mother hen. He couldn't walk out a door or down a hall and be among other people again. He couldn't pick up the phone and have someone come over to hang with him just because he didn't feel like being by himself. All those old ties had been cut-deliberately-by him.

"Well," Nick thought to himself. "I've walked around the house and yard three times now, and it's starting to get dark. I really should go in the house."

As walked toward his new front porch, though, his steps slowed progressively as he approached it. He still wasn't ready. What if he was never ready?

Dropping to the steps, he sat there, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. If anyone had come up, it would have looked like a perfectly natural picture. A man sitting on his front steps, enjoying the early evening at his new house.

But right now, Nick Russell wasn't enjoying anything. He felt trapped. For some reason, the inside of the house represented his new life, and to step into it meant there was no going back. For a few fleeting seconds, he could see himself getting up and running down the driveway, following Pete Valentine's car all the way back to Sydney. Knowing he couldn't do that.

Branding himself a coward, he sat right there on the steps, frozen. Couldn't go forward. Couldn't go back. So Nick Russell took the only move left to him. Sideways. Lighting himself a cigarette, he leaned against the top step.

Instead of moving his body physically, he moved it mentally. Five years back. Back to the beginning of the end. Back to his little brother.