The Medication's Wearing Off - Open Log

[librariansheart]

Who: Anyone with cause to be at the hospital
What: Visits with patients or those in the waiting room
Where: New Moore General Hospital
When: 4/2 and the few days after
Warnings: Excessive guilt, angst, depression, mention of self-harm and attempted suicide


Waiting rooms aren't hell. They're purgatory, and for some, that's worse.

After the last few days, there are a number of new patients for the New Moore hospital, and nearly everyone has someone waiting to see them. The lobbies always have someone there, uncomfortably ignoring the other people, or trying to distract themselves with limping conversation.

Looking for someone? Grab a cup of industrial strength coffee and have a look. They're bound to be around sometime.


NOTES: Tag individual threads within, or make your own - you don't need to be here for Sheska!

Comments

Sometimes solutions aren't so simple...

[steelweb]

Lin can be heard before she's seen. Some poor nurse having a loud argument with the Chief of Police about policy and bringing metal into the room of a man on suicide watch. But nurses in this place must have spines stronger than steel, because when she finally storms into the room, Lin's in her tank top and uniform pants, fury and fear and... desperation etched on her face.

Just across the threshold she stops dead, too much emotion suddenly mixing into an unreadable mask.

Sometimes goodbye's the only way...

[dontmindmepleasecontinue]

Koizumi hears the argument, but he's too far lost in his own mind - he doesn't really register the voice until she's standing in the doorway. He stares up at her for a long moment, mind blank - head and wrists both aching. He knows he should be feeling something now, but he can't quite remember what.

He vaguely feels like he should comfort or reassure her, but he doesn't have it in him. He's so clouded by pain and emptiness and utter despair that seeing her doesn't really manage to pull him back to reality. He feels so alone, detached... like she is in a different world.

Eventually, years of acting courteous and considerate bring him words to say, actions to perform - even if he can't remember the meaning behind them. "Lin... ah.

Why don't you... sit down." He slowly gestures to the chair. Was that right? He struggles to figure it out, but it's too much effort, and he lets it go again. He is too tired to care.

The sun will set for you

[steelweb]

He's alive. He's conscious. He's lucid (for varying definitions of the term).

And she's going to kill him.

In two strides, she's across the room, hands gripping his shoulders and pinning him to the pillows. "Don't you dare act like this is normal."

Her voice is pitched low, and trembles with a level of fear and anguish she has displayed only twice before: when she lost her bending and in the house. The guilt that had so characterized that particular confrontation simply isn't present here, but she isn't hiding anything. Not this time.

Doubt and fright age her more than the years she's been through, deepening the lines of her face, weighing down her shoulders and bowing her back. Even more than that, she's trembling. Lin Beifong does not shake. She does not shiver. She stands strong. But this... this has gotten under her skin faster than anything else this place has done to her. It isn't something she can fight, or change, or fix.

"What difference did you think this would make, boy?" she says, shaking him slightly. "Your death won't bring them back. It won't make this place better. It won't make people happy. It won't let you see them again. You'd just be gone!" Her voice cracks, and she stares into his eyes, trying to see if she'd gotten through to him at all. Probably not. Depression, especially this deep, isn't something you can just break through in a moment. It's a long process of slow rebuilding. She knows that. But that doesn't stop her from trying.