thoughtformed | The Medication's Wearing Off

The bland, tired waiting room for the intensive care unit has had at least one occupant since 8:30 this morning. Unlike any of the other visitors, Sheska hasn't moved since she arrived. The styrofoam cup of coffee in her hands is stone cold, untouched, and she stares fixedly at the door to the unit, oblivious to everything around her. A bag sits at her feet, and some nurse has left a blanket on the chair next to her, but she doesn't really care. The world had narrowed down to one life. In one room. And the nurses hadn't let anyone in to see him yet.

((Pertaining to events to be worked through in this thread. Warning! Attempted suicide and self-harm within! Read/follow at your own risk.))

Edited 2014-04-03 01:37 (UTC)

The doctors don't really want to release Dave--he has other injuries besides the obvious, and they seem to think he could stand another night or two under observation. But he's let them know, as politely as he can, that if they don't let him walk out of there on his own two feet (or, well, one foot and two crutches), he's going to call his brother back to bust him free. The compromise is this: they'll let him go later on today, when Bro can pick him up, but in the meantime, they won't stop him from wandering around as long as he stays out of the staff's way, and promises to rest as much as possible.

He's decided resting right now is not particularly possible, and so he's hobbled down to the waiting room just for some variety. Other sick and hurt people don't generally make great company. He's not expecting to see Sheska there.

"Hey." He makes his way towards her, concerned. He doesn't have his shades, and his expressions are completely transparent without them. "What've they got you in for?"

Sheska hears him, but it takes a moment for it to sink in that someone is speaking to her directly. Even when she looks up, she's slow to recognize him. She blinks red-rimmed eyes, staring dully for a moment.

"Dave?" Her voice is quiet and rusty, but she straightens, and fear wipes out any other potential expression on her face. "Dave! Oh--" In her haste to stand, she almost drops the coffee, but sets it on a side table instead and sweeps the blanket off the chair, holding out a hand as though she could possibly help him better than his crutches.

"What... What happened?"

"Sports. Sports happened."

It's not technically a lie. He lets her help him sit with a slightly hitched breath, avoiding her gaze for a second while he gets his crutches arranged out of the way. Then he looks at her again like he can read the situation on her face. Unfortunately, he's not a mind-reader. He can only guess.

"So I guess you're not here to keep my scrawny ex-jock ass company." If she's seen Bro's eyes, Dave's are much the same, but sharp red instead of Bro's light amber. He's worried. "Did something happen? Are you okay?"

"Sports..." Slowly, she sinks down beside him, and for a moment rubs trembling hands over her face, obscuring the raw relief there. Later the half-truth in his words may come clear, but right now it's too plausible for a second look.

A little choked noise comes from behind her hands. "I wish I'd known you were here. I wish I'd..." She sighs and looks up involuntarily at the unit door across the room. For a moment silence gets the better of her before she masters a more level tone of voice. "I'm not hurt. I'm not here for me."

An attempt to meet his eyes fails seconds after contact. She can't quite face him when both of them are so openly vulnerable right now. She couldn't with Bro, either. Seeing them without their shields is too much. Still, she forces herself to continue, "It's K-Koizumi." She can't even say his name without effort. "He... He's been hurt. Badly. I don't--" Her throat closes and she has to stop and clears her throat, scrubbing at her eyes for a moment. "I'm here for him." Her own half-truth in exchange for his.

"Shit."

Koizumi. Dave kind of knows him in passing from the Midnight Channels and from hanging out so often around the police station. He's always seemed like a nice guy, willing to help, eager to stick his nose in everybody else's business.

Dave glances at the door to the ICU, too, then back to Sheska. After a moment, he lifts his hand. He hesitates there for a moment before he can move on; he's never been one for physical displays and hardly ever chooses to touch anyone. But he places his hand on Sheska's shoulder and pats her. Fumblingly, maybe. But he's there.

"It's good you are," he says, awkward at his most honest. He pulls his hand back to push at his shades, remembers they're not there, and puts his hand back down, feeling silly and inadequate. He looks at the tiles. "If it were me, I'd. I'd play it down, of course, but I'd like knowing my friends were looking out for me."

After another beat, he starts, "It wasn't," Mrs. Danvers,, he almost says, but closes his mouth on the question. "Anyone we know, was it," he finishes. "That hurt him, I mean. Since everyone was all messed up."

His touch almost breaks her right there, and its loss is an almost physical pain, but she's grateful for it anyway.

No, it's the question that makes something crack.

It's the question that runs her back through her memories, as she's been doing all morning, picking out the most painfully relevant points to highlight. Dave doesn't know - he can't. He wasn't there last night to watch her take advantage of a friend. Hadn't seen it this morning: the graceful figure laid out in an ignominious heap on the floor, the shimmer of the knife, the widening stain. Hadn't realized who and what must have driven Koizumi to such desperate straits.

It's the question that brings horrible, hysterical laughter bubbling to her lips.

Sheska bites down on it, wide eyed with shock. Laughing is the last thing she wants to do right now and yet the urge hovers, pressing, suffocatingly strong. Blinking, she presses shaking fingers to her lips and fights it back, concentrating on her breathing. She's scaring him. She's scaring herself, a little, but more importantly, she's probably scaring him. Finally she swallows, and manages to keep her voice steady. "The only people in that apartment were the two of us. It..." She may not have wielded the knife, but she had surely been the tipping point. "It was a joint effort."

Oh, no.

"...Hey." He shifts in his seat to face her more, returning his hand to her shoulder. Once there, Dave realizes he doesn't really know what to say. He doesn't know what went down, he can't lay out the facts for her. But he doesn't move his hand this time, and his palm is warm and real.

"Listen, Sheska." He's solemn in a way he rarely is--a forthright seriousness stripped of metaphor and irony. "I know you're probably not gonna hear this, but whatever else you think, I want you to understand: Whatever it was, it wasn't you. Okay?"

It's a little too close to home, all these amazing people with all this misplaced guilt. Miss Danvers. Sheska. His leg aches, but so do other wounds: old wounds, bullet holes that didn't even leave a scar. He grips her a little more firmly, more solidly.

"I know you, and I know it wasn't you."

Sheska blinks and looks up at him, surprised out of her misery a little at the sudden shift in his tone. Dave has the same charismatic power his brother does, in times like this. When he goes serious, people listen.

She ought to shy away, to remove his hand, to not let him taint himself by associating with her, but... Instead he forms an anchor, a lighthouse in the storm, and she reaches up to cover his hand with her own instinctively. Still, her vision blurs around the edges and she ducks her head a moment to wipe the damp out of her eyes with her other hand.

"It's not that simple," she says softly. "It didn't happen all in a minute. It's been a long time coming and I didn't..." An involuntary shiver makes her pull her over-sized cardigan closer. "I did something we both regret. And it was the last straw. I'm not very good to my friends. This time it almost killed someone. I'm not even sure I should be here. He won't want to see me. I'll just make it worse. But I have to know he's... That he's going to recover."

"Not very good to your--" Dave starts, but cuts himself off before he can sound too incredulous. It's still written all over his face, though. On what planet is Sheska not good to her friends, Jesus Christ. She's a fucking saint.

"I don't know what you mean by 'joint effort,'" he says instead, looking ahead but keeping his hand where it is, "or what it is you think you did. And I get not wanting to say. I'm not asking you to." He shifts a little, trying to find a comfortable way to hold his leg. There isn't one.

Dave stays like that for a while, circling through his thoughts, biting the inside of his cheek. Eventually, he lifts his hand from her shoulder, only to hold her hand between them. "Can I tell you something instead," he finally asks, still studying the tiles rather than her face.

Edited 2014-04-06 19:05 (UTC)

Sheska looks down at the floor, trying to find the words to explain. He doesn't understand. The number of friends she's disappointed, or harmed by inaction... by not seeing what was clearly in front of her... If she lays it out for him, he'll hate her. But he deserves the truth. Secrets only hurt people.

She's too slow, and he takes her hand before she can open her mouth. "Of... of course."

"Did you ever meet my friend Jade? Jade Harley. She's not here now, but she types in green and likes dogs."

Also she's a goddess and an artist and a horrible flute player and an amazing bassist, and she used to see the future in her dreams, and when he first met her in person on her frozen wonderland she wore a dress made of stars to greet him. She wears glasses and raised herself from the dead and moved entire planets to protect them all. She smacked the juggernaut creature that killed their guardians in the snout with a rolled-up newspaper.

But yeah. Jade Harley. She types in green and likes dogs.

Dave's hand tightens a little. "When I was thirteen, we...I found out I was going to die." He looks up briefly. "Obviously it was more complicated than that, and it didn't stick. But I didn't know that then. I just--all I knew was that I was going to run out of time. That alpha Dave was just gonna. Stop.

"I haven't even really talked about this with Bro," he mumbles after a pause, and he looks away again. The story's hard for him to get out, from the tight set of his jaw. He closes his eyes again and breathes out.

"Jade needed my help with a frog thing. A time thing. And I spent weeks with her, on my end. It was just a couple hours or something for her, but for me--I could've told her. I told myself I couldn't, because it'd fuck up the timeline if she stopped it from happening and then it would just happen anyway, but I didn't...I never even tried. Maybe some other me tried, but that me." He frowns at the opposite wall, ashamed and unforgiving. He shrugs stiffly. "That me wasn't me. And in the end." He doesn't notice, but his free hand is gripping the edge of his seat, white-knuckled, like he has to keep himself from flying the scene. "I let her shoot me in the back. I never warned her. I never let her know.

"And that's the one thing I regret most about all of it," he says, still unable to look Sheska in the eye, but suddenly vehement. "Because it didn't have to be her fault--it wasn't her fault--and I didn't give her the chance to change it. And I never...I never talked to her about it, after. I could've while she was here but I never did, and I never knew how she felt about it because I was scared, because it was the wrong thing. Not to tell her. And it wasn't her fault I didn't tell her. It wasn't on her to get that intel out of me."

He lets go of Sheska's hand to hunch forward and grip his seat with both hands. "So that's not on you, either. Even if you say it was a long time coming, even if you want to blame yourself for not seeing it, it's...that's not on you."

Dave goes silent again, contemplating the cast on his foot. In the end, he says, "If it were me, I'd be kicking myself over making you think that for even a second. And." He straightens a little, looking up at her. "I'd want to see you. For sure. I'd want to tell you myself that it was never on you."

Sheska didn't know Jade, not really - just a vague memory of a young lady with lovely skin and bright eyes and a white dog, vivid green text and laughter on the Network for a while - and at first she listens with more obedience than interest. What catches her isn't the description of Jade. It's the look on his face, the all too eloquent pause, the tightening of his hand.

She can't hide the way everything stops, a sickening twist to the world that has her flashing back to her nightmares, when he says that he is - was - going to die. If he hasn't spoken to his brother about this, she is the last person fit to be his confidant. Stirring, she's about to object, but he forges ahead and she remains silent instead, biting her lip and knowing that if she interjects it will be all the harder for him to tell.

So she does the best she can. Rides it out with him, even if she can't stop herself from making a soft noise of shock and denial as he lays out in bare words how it was that he died. In the end, she meets his eyes through a haze of tears not yet fallen, her heart breaking for him.

Leaning in, Sheska wraps him in a hug, expecting nothing in return, but helpless to convey the depth of emotion any other way. He's sixteen. Sixteen! He should be worrying about what he's going to do when he gets out of school for the summer, not carrying this kind of guilt around with him! He doesn't deserve this.

"Sheska?"

She should have expected to see her here as she walks in and though Sheska isn't the person she's here to see, she makes a beeline for her and quietly slides into the seat beside her.

"Are you.. waiting to see Koizumi?" Julie can't think of another reason she might be here right now, but it doesn't hurt to ask...

Just to make conversation.

The secretary looks up, not at her name, but at Koizumi's, a painful mix of fear and hope plain in her face. Then she realizes who it is and the light dies. It takes her a moment to find the right word for the young woman next to her. "...Julie. I... Yes. He's still in there. Why are you...? Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine..." 'Fine' being a relative term, but as far as things usually went, she was alright.

"I came to see him, too." She sighs, pushing her hair back fretfully. "I can't believe he did this."

Guilt and pain flash briefly across Sheska's face, and she looks down at her cold coffee. "He's been through a lot, recently. This weekend was..." She has to pause and set the cup down before it betrayed how her hands were beginning to shake again. "It was not easy to wake up to. It must have been too much. He's wanted a way out. This must have been the last straw. It's... it's easier to see in hindsight."

"Yeah.. I got that impression." When she'd seen him last she'd realised that, but maybe she'd been lying to herself over how far it had taken him. She shakes her head, leaning forwards to prop her chin against her hand.

"Looking back, I.. You're right, the signs were all there." A sigh. "I tried. We both did."

It's a small surprise, though it shouldn't be. Of course, she couldn't have been the only one looking in on him. She'd been too wrapped up in her own actions and thoughts to notice. And it still hadn't been enough. Not with the shock and betrayal of the weekend.

"I didn't even think about it this weekend. He seemed better, and I thought...". She shakes her head. "It doesn't matter. I keep trying to figure out if I knew, somewhere under there, what was going on. If there was some way I could have... could have done something…"

"Yeah.. he seemed better." Julie presses her lips together, shaking her head and, after a moment, reaches out to place a hand on Sheska's arm.

"It's not our fault. Sometimes.. there isn't anything you can do and it doesn't mean you failed."

Sheska draws a shaky breath, nodding blindly. It's an easy sentiment to say - and one she's told others before. It's a harder one to accept. Dimly, she admires that Julie can do that so well.

But Julie's faced worse things. Those nightmares... Sheska shudders, remembering the zombies. Perhaps it was no wonder that she could be calm and put-together in the face of all of this. "He'll get through this. ....Right?"

It's more difficult than she makes it look, but without that kind of hope, what else is there? Without hope they're no better than the things they're hiding from. Sheska has the right idea.

"I don't know," she replies honestly, resting her chin on one hand. "But either way, he's going to need us. He might not want us, but that's not the point."

Her breath catches as Julie unknowingly drives a dagger to the heart of one of her primary worries. "He needs you... I don't think he'll want to see me," she says softly. "I might just make it worse." Her fingers lace themselves together, twisting, locking into place. "B-but I can't just leave... not without looking in on him. Even just once. Just to see! Just to know." To replace the memory of the last time she saw him on that kitchen floor.

"He needs both of us, we're his friends!"

Julie sounds so, so certain of that as she slips from the uncomfortable chair and crouches in front of Sheska, taking both of her hands. "He needs us and we need to be strong for him. We need to be the strength that he doesn't have, until he's feeling better. Understand?"

It is a long while before Koizumi was allowed visitors, and even longer before he wakes. As he opens his eyes, he's hit by a wave or frustration and disappointment. He was still alive...

He closes his eyes in pure mental exhaustion. He'd thought that would be the end - that he wouldn't have to do this, wouldn't have to suffer anymore. He opened his eyes again slowly and looked at the mess of his wrists. It appeared somebody had other plans for him.

His mood and emotions fluctuate wildly over the next few days, as his body struggles with depression and blood loss and medication. He doesn't know if the visits from his friends are the best or worst parts of every day, but he knows it's hard to face them.

...Despite everything, they make it hard not to care.

It had taken a while for him to stabilized and longer for the nurses to offer her a look in. He's dozing when she enters, but as she hesitantly approaches the bed, his eyes flutter and open and his face twists, resignation and defeated yearning plain. Hope and relief rose on faltering wings, only to drop and shatter at her feet. He... He wants to be gone.

She shouldn't be here. She's only making it worse. For a moment she wavers, looking toward the open door, but can't quite bring herself to leave just yet. Extending her hand toward him, she means to touch him - to assure herself that this really isn't a dream, that he really is alive - but holds herself back and instead opens it palm up toward him. He can reach her if he wants to. If not... it's only as it should be.

"I... I'm sorry."

He looks up from studying his wrists to Sheska's palm, then looks between her palm and her face, and back again. His expression is almost blank, but through the exhaustion and the disappointment there is a hint of... confusion? As if he can't quite remember what the hand is supposed to mean.

After several long moments of studying her face, he recognizes her pain - it resonates with the pain he's been feeling for weeks now, though he doesn't quite realize that he put it there. He looks back down, and then - very slowly, his hand shaking from the damage and frailty in his wrist - begins to reach out toward her hand.

The movement is not driven by any particular emotion, but rather by a understanding that even if he's helpless against his own pain, this is something he can do to ease hers, if only a little. And he remembers that that is a good thing.

His palm touches hers, and his fingers - slowly and weakly, still trembling - curl gradually around hers. "Sheska..."

Edited 2014-04-03 09:23 (UTC)

She sees it coming, the moment of recognition and decision, the slow motion beset by the involuntary tremor, and yet... she can't quite believe it until he speaks.

For once she doesn't break down sobbing. She just stares at him, dumbfounded, white with shock. She can't wrap her mind around it. Her world cracks. Shifts. And comes apart at the seams.

Suddenly she's shaking too, all the strength gone out of her limbs. Gently - oh so very gently - she brings up her other hand to cup his in both of hers as if cradling the most fragile of things, and slowly sinks down in the chair beside the bed. She blinks, and is surprised to find that her cheeks are damp. She doesn't feel like she's crying. She doesn't feel much of anything right now, truth be told. It's too much. She can't absorb it all, and she's been trying for most of the day. But she can't seem to stop the tears slowly running down her face. She isn't even really breathing hard. Nothing makes sense.

She could ask questions. But she doesn't need to. She knows the answers. And even now, when her presence is a burden and must only hurt him further, she can't leave. So she sits silently, delicately holding his hand, and listening to the miracle of his breathing.

Edited 2014-04-04 04:28 (UTC)

Koizumi sees the shock, recognizes all the fear and pain and guilt, watches her walls break down. Despite everything, he feels something for her, even if he can't process it correctly. He doesn't know what it is he's feeling - doesn't want to feel anything, because it hurts, dammit - and his head feels all jumbled up and confused. All he knows is that she shouldn't feel so pained or guilty.

He doesn't want her to cry.

He pats her hands feeble in what he means to be a reassuring gesture. His hand then moves up, cupping her cheek - a little roughly, movements still uneven - while trying to wipe her tears away. Gently, not even really knowing what he's saying but relying entirely on memory and habit, he tries to calm her down. "Shh, Sheska, it's all right, everything's all right, it's not your fault. I'm right here."

Sheska blinks as the room spins nauseatingly, acid bitter in the back of her mouth. Everything was not all right. It was her fault. He was here because of her. Her mistakes, her poor decisions, her self-absorbed ways. But also because luck hadn't entirely deserted her and they had been in time. Otherwise she wouldn't be here, and neither would he.

A raspy, garbled sound that might have been a laugh or a protest makes her way out before she can stop it, and she gently recaptures his hands. "No, d-don't... please don't. I can't--" For a moment she's back in the apartment, pressing the wounds closed, slipping in his blood, and her stomach lurches violently. Then she's back, clutching him too tightly, and she drops his hands as she recoils with a choked cry.

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.

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.

Edited 2014-04-03 09:25 (UTC)

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.

Edited 2014-04-05 23:43 (UTC)

Julie's there as soon as she can be, more than ready to punch the young man when she walks into the hospital room. The moment she sees him, though, the resolve to do that falters and she just walks quietly to the side of the bed, fists clenching and unclenching by her sides.

She'd tell him that he should have said something, but she knows what his silence meant. He really wanted to die.. and she's not sure how to deal with that.

The young woman swallows once, lightly touching Koizumi's arm. There was a whole speech in her head before she'd pushed the door open but now she can't remember a word of it.

Koizumi's attention seems to be drifting, and it takes a few moments of Julie touching his arm for him to even realize she was there. Even after he slowly turns to look at her, recognition and understanding are slow in coming.

"...Julie."

Pains twists his face and he turns away, his breath coming more sharply. He may not have been able to process it at the time - truth be told, he's still having trouble understanding it - but Lin and Sheska's visits yesterday had firmly driven home the very real pain he had caused them, and all his friends.

He wants to be gone, that hasn't changed - he doesn't want to feel anymore, it just hurts too much - but he never wanted to cause them pain. Especially not... not the kind he's feeling - the kind that drove him to this.

So when he sees her, knowing, feeling the pain he caused, wanting to be gone but unable to leave, it's just too much for him again. Turned away from her, almost hyperventilating, his panic and his helplessness overflow. Hands shaking, completely out of control, he bites his lip - hard, to the point of drawing blood - trying to use the physical pain as a focus, something he can control, something to hold on to to not get swept away.

Her eyes fly wide at his reaction and she moves close to the bed, curling her fingers around his hand, lifting it up to clasp it in both of hers. The emotional reaction is good - it means something - but that doesn't mean it's any easier to see.

"Koizumi, don't--..." Julie has more experience in this than she would like and none of it is experience she wants to remember. Perry - already dead before R killed him, just walking around waiting to die. Her mother...

Her mother, who had been driven to complete despair while trying to be strong for her daughter and husband and had chosen to give herself to the zombies rather than continue living. She grips Koizumi's hand hard.

"I'm not angry. I thought I was, but.. I'm not."

Aisling was not the sort to pay attention to such mortal constraints as "visiting hours". She came when she wished, slipping past the barriers like a breeze in these public spaces. Night had fallen in the outside world, and the interior lights were set low in mimicry, the nurses mainly staying at their station while their charges slept, so no one noticed the slight figure who hopped up onto the end of the bed and slowly, delicately, crept up the side to perch beside her friend and watch him sleep with sad, ancient eyes. Feather-light fingertips traced the lines of worry and sorrow on his face. Dream walking is not her gift. Would that she could bring him some measure of peace.

With a soft sigh, she retreated to the visitor's chair, breathing soft life over the hard tile of the floor to raise a soft carpet of white blossoms that brought the scent of fresh air and life into this dead space. The chair was more than enough space for a dog to curl up in, and the padded arms hiding her from view from the corridor, but not from the bed. There she waited, keeping watch. Sooner or later, he would wake, and she would be there to help stave off the nightmares. The late watches of the night moved on.

The Medication's Wearing Off - Open Log

Tick tick tick tick...

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How to save a life...

Between the lines of fear and blame...

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Sometimes solutions aren't so simple...

Sometimes goodbye's the only way...

The sun will set for you

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The shadows grow and the crowds disappear