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

[librariansheart]

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."

[callbacks]

"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.

[librariansheart]

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."

[callbacks]

"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."

[librariansheart]

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.