He stood there dumbly, wondering what his next move should be. He remembered something he'd read, about death and grief-something about people getting really horny about the whole thing. The circle of life and all that. A slow smile spread across his face as he took a step toward the waiting room, only to be blindsided by a truck traveling at ninety miles per hour down the hallway.

As he senses returned, he realized it wasn't so much a truck as a fist, and that it was once again connected to the arm of James Selwyn, who hadn't even stopped to utter a threat and was already halfway back to the waiting room.

Andy: "Stone here…"
Chris: "I have news."
Andy: "Peterson, how lovely to hear from you again."
Chris: "Erm, ok..."
Andy: "Go on."

Chris: "I'm at Whidbey General Hospital right now watching one very distraught Marion McMally."
Andy: "I'm really not interested in how you choose to spend your time now."
Chris: "I believe she came in with your girlfriend, and things don't appear to be going very well. At least not from where I'm standing. There was an awful lot of blood involved."

Andy felt an icy cold beginning in the pit of his stomach. As much as he tried to push it away, it only rooted itself in deeper, slowly starting to grow.

Chris: "I'm going to assume that none of them have had a chance to get in touch with you yet. I just thought, seeing as I'm here, that I should give you ring and let you know what's going on."

Andy stared straight ahead at the muted actors playing across the screen in front of him. They were locked in that world, reliving the same dramas over and over without variation. After only a few seconds he looked away, focusing once again on the conversation.

Andy: "She's no longer my concern."

Without waiting for Peterson to respond, he turned his phone off completely. He didn't move for a few minutes, not even to un-mute the television. His mind raced as it tried to make sense of what little Chris had told him, and why it was making him feel the way it did. In the blink of an eye he'd hurtled his phone toward the screen of the TV, a small spray of electricity exploding from the center of the impact.

He leapt forward, grabbing the edges of the still-sparking screen and tearing it from the wall. It crashed loudly to the ground, a more satisfying outcome than the phone had been able to provide. He knew this was all madness, yet felt powerless to stop it.

He left the sparking mass of debris and headed back downstairs. His pulse was beating loudly in his ears, the only sound in his vast and empty house. It suddenly seemed so useless, so utterly pointless.

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a framed set of pictures of Emily propped up on a table across the room. He lunged forward, violently flinging the photograph against the wall. The glass shattered on impact while part of the frame snapped in half. He felt somewhat better, freed from at least one small reminder.

It wasn't going to be enough. She'd saturated his home with her presence, every inch serving as a memento of their time together. He'd thought the ghost of her existence had been strong earlier in the evening, but now it was overpowering. He began to grab objects at random, trying to splinter away the feelings of powerlessness that were crashing down on him.

He caught his reflection in a window and froze, transfixed by the vision of insanity staring back at him. It startled him, jarring him from his destructive rampage. There was fear in the eyes reflected back at him, uncertainty and insecurity written across the face. It was a reflection of all he'd despised and had worked for so many years to get rid of, only to find it had always been lurking just below the surface.

He reached back and punched straight at the window, splintering his reflection into a large and menacing web of cracked glass. A few stray shards cut into his hands, leaving a violent trail of crimson. He reveled in the pain, sharp and biting as the blood flowed forth freely. It gave him something else to focus on, at least for a short while.