Jerry had never been the same since the death of his parents. He was left with the instinct to fill the holes left and smother his weaknesses through community services. Though it had been years since the last investigator had closed the books, he still remembered the grisly murder in his darkest dreams. Too often did he awaken in his quarters at the local hospital in a sweat. He held his forearm in bitter despair weeping while staring at it into the past. Marking where his skin had let slip the last drop of childhood innocence was a never-ending assortment of medical ailments embedded into a jet black scar. The officers claimed that the man was diseased with an autoimmune disorder of some kind but they also said that they could not get any of his DNA out of the wound, it had already become too mingled with the blood stream. They had lost any critical evidence they had ever had, because the city’s finest was not fine enough. But Jerry knew it was not fully their fault that the criminal had never been apprehended, he had withheld vital information for some reason he still to this day could not understand. “Now you can be just like me boy,” whispered a voice in the recesses of his mind while an image of a scarred body and torso blurred across his vision. This man had marked him, made a puppet, a monster, a copy out of him.

Jerry donned his uniform and walked out to help prepare breakfast for his elderly patients and get the proper prescription and dosages distributed. He hated Wednesdays because every week was a quiet reminder of the day of his parents death. But not just that it was sponge bath day. The oldest and harshest of the patients, Mr. Johnson, was now in his care seeing as Ms. Norah had quit. As he arrived at the Mr. Johnson’s accommodations a gruff voice answered the sound of steps before he knocked. “Come in.” Jerry stopped suddenly startled, yet vividly aware. Something scratched through his subconscious paining him in some unnamable way. He opened the door. “Time for your bath Mr. Johnson.” Mr. Johnson unwrapped his numerous bandages and removed his shirt sitting on the edge of his bed facing the door. He laid his arms and hands palms upon his knees apparently resting and exhausted from this little effort. Jerry’s heart stopped on the man’s left forearm like a mirror image of his very own right was an encrusted grey and moist wound. He stepped forward, mouth opened in awe. “Right under my nose.” He said aloud. Mr. Johnson looked perplexed. Jerry reached for bottle of liquid medication in his belt and a syringe and began to fill it flicking the tip of his needle quickly. Mr. Johnson leaned back struggling across the bed as Jerry lifted his sleeve. “Now Mr. Johnson don’t you want to look just like me?”
Jerry reached for the morning paper in front of his dorm room. He sipped from his cup of dark coffee and opened it to a precise page: the obituary. “Mr. Johnson slipped away as the elderly often do before we know it...” began the article. He smiled. Wednesdays for some odd reason didn’t seem as atrocious as he remembered them.