Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Gatsby Rewritten

"How is he doctor"
"He'll make it, but give him time Mr. Carraway."
"Thank you, I will."
At this point it looked like he would never wake up. His face was pale and sickly, that reassuring smile wiped from it. The only thing that let me know he was alive was his chest weakly moving with each shallow breath he took.
Two days earlier, myself along with some of Gatsby's servants had found him lying in his marble pool, the water red from his blood. Even in death he seemed happy. His eyes were closed, but he was wearing his rare smile, as if he was at peace. We immediately pulled him out of the water, and surprsingly he was still breathing. I remember the wails of the sirens, and the shouts as he was rushed in an ambulance to the nearest hospital. Waiting for him to wake up felt like an eternity. Of course Tom and Daisy never picked up, for they were careless people. They had run off again, they never wanted to deal with whatever chaos and destruction they caused. I left Gatsby briefly to go home and change clothes. I also stopped by his mansion to grab some clothes for him and one of his books in case he decided to waken.
I was reading one of the novels from his library, one that had astounded the man with the owl eyes, when my thoughts were interrupted.
"Good to see you, old sport."
I chuckled, and I didn't need to look up to know that I would see one of those reassuring smiles, that believed and understood you as much as you wanted to be understood and believed in.

It took Gatsby a few months to recover, and in that time Tom and Daisy never showed their faces. It wasn't until early 1923 that we heard of Tom and Daisy. The great football star Tom Buchanan and his family was missing, after driving home from a party in Chicago and crashing their car. They had found the body of a young girl, but the others were missing. When I first heard, I debated whether or not I should tell Gatsby. Eventually I did, and he simply responded with "Thank you, old sport."

I knew he wanted to be alone, and when I came back early the next day I found him on his dock, staring at that green light across the water. He was wearing the same shirt as the day before, one of the ones that Daisy had cried over. But as soon as he heard my footsteps, he stood up and collected himself. He took out his yellow car, and we went to lunch in the city. As we passed between West Egg and New York, we drove through the valley of ashes. I saw Wilson's car shop, which was now abandoned and lifeless. I glanced at Gatsby who looked at the Wilson's old shop before quickly turning his eyes back onto the road.
It was just Gatsby and I now, alone driving on the endless road along the valley of ashes. Jay had been devoted to her for the past five years, his first and only love. But the world continued taking what he found most valuable away from him. She was his first love, but he finally seemed to be moving on, working towards finding his own way and finding himself again.
As I thought about all this, I didn't notice the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, watching and brooding over the two men from West Egg.

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