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dynamic-instability · 5 years ago

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In one of my classes we have to write weekly personal narratives about an experience with illness. This week, mine turned into this. It’s probably too personal, and too... immediate?? to turn in to a professor without cutting out a lot of stuff, but not too personal to post online I guess lol

_____________________________

It’s November again.

In 2009 the lights were too bright. Mid-October one morning I woke up to my dad turning on my lights and it was like having to look into the sun while posing for a photo—my eyes wouldn’t stay open, if I forced them to, they couldn’t stay pointed in one direction, they spasmed and hurt. When the light was dimmed, I still saw double. That morning, I showered in the dark, and I remember being scared. They gave me eyedrops that paralyzed my accommodative muscles. In November my pupils were giant discs and I wore reading glasses over sunglasses to look at the computer, and when it was all said and done, the lights were still too bright, and I still saw double.

In 2011 I was tired. There’s fatigue and then there’s fatigue, I learned that Fall. In May of that year I had pulled two all-nighters in a week, and that was the only other time I’d felt this kind of tired, a sensation in about the 30th hour of the second time where it’s like my brain itched. I once saw someone else online describe it as “nausea, but in your head and eyes instead of in your throat and stomach” and that’s the closest anyone else has come to describing it. By November this was happening more and more often. I remember laying down in the corner of the room during a break of Citywide choir and thinking what the hell is wrong with me? I got a cold the next week, and I thought that maybe that was all it was. It wasn’t.

In 2013 I went to the ER for the fifth time in three months of college, and when I wanted to leave before waiting another couple of hours to eventually see a doctor who would tell me once again that they couldn’t do anything to help me, the woman from student life who was there to drive me back to campus made me call my parents on speaker phone and get their permission to leave before she would turn on the car. I had missed more chemistry labs than I could afford to miss without failing, passed out in a voice lesson, was asked by the director to drop out of choir because watching me was distraction when I looked like I was in pain, and if I passed out it would have ruined the concert for everyone. I remember leaving calculus in the mornings mid-class to go to the bathroom and lay on the floor and cry. I remember not being able to lift my hand off the mattress of my dorm room bed. I withdrew from half of my classes on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and took the Spring semester off.

In 2014 I had made a promise to myself that I would come back to college full time for that Fall semester just to see if I could do it, and then if I couldn’t I would drop out for good. There was one week where I thought that might be happening. Mid-November. The girls in my dorm had made a fort in the lounge out of sheets and blankets and colorful scarves and I remember laying on the couch through the green-filtered light and feeling the world spin and thinking oh god I still can’t do this. The door opened with a rush of cold air and my friends came in with food for me, since I’d been too sick to go to dinner. They sat with me and helped me with chemistry, offered to type up a paper if I dictated it, told jokes and made me laugh. I took an incomplete in one class, but I passed everything else, just barely scraped through, and came back in January.

In 2015 I just wanted to sleep. I passed out in an elevator and heard familiar voices, concerned voices, as I came to, and I stayed there laying motionless for another minute longer, because as long as I wasn’t awake I didn’t have to keep pushing. I wrote whole pages of completely unreadable ochem notes because my hand wasn’t working any better than my brain, and woke up on the floor and was wheeled out on a stretcher crying. It was dark all the time. My cane slipped on wet leaves and I felt my wrist crunch and there it was, one too many missed organic chemistry labs. I couldn’t stand for an entire choir rehearsal because breathing to sing made me lightheaded. I slept for 16 hours a day. The week before Thanksgiving, I called my mother to tell her I had decided to take another hardship withdrawal, and she sighed. I had applied to transfer schools during my much more optimistic Spring semester and Summer, and the week I left was also the week I found out I’d been accepted.

And so okay now it’s 2019, and it’s October and now November again, semester plan again, dark again. My reading is piling up again, feeling overwhelmed again, laying on my kitchen floor again. But here’s the thing—my health is… fine? Midterm week I didn’t sleep, and yes I passed out twice, but no ER. For the past 18 months, I can count on one hand the number of mornings I’ve been unable to get out of bed because of fatigue. My heart still pounds too hard but my head doesn’t swim every time I sit up. I walk the streets of New York City like mobility has never been a problem. I always take the stairs. My brain doesn’t itch until it’s been 30 hours no sleep.

I couldn’t go to class last week. I lay on the floor of my kitchen and stared up at the ceiling and tried to get up, tried to type out an email to my professors, and I couldn’t do it. I was not too tired. I was not too weak. I was not in pain. I could not move. I try to write and try to write and try to write and the words don’t come. I eat instant oatmeal at 9 PM because I haven’t been to the store in a month. I have lost nearly 15 pounds since moving to New York. I clean the stove for two and a half hours but can’t bring myself to take the dead spider off the side of the bathtub. I check the door lock one-two-three times, pace the floor, sit back down. I do not read Austerlitz. I write a Canvas post for Self and Other but it’s nonsense. I do not write a Canvas post for Accounts of Self. I do not write a Canvas post for Applied Writing. I write a Canvas post for Illness and Disability and somehow forget to post it, the one thing I’ve actually done, because I’m too busy feeling sick at everything I haven’t. I shadow a doctor for the clinical witnessing assignment and everything is fine but when I try to write it up I have a panic attack that leaves me sobbing on my couch and the assignment nine days late and counting. It takes me eight hours to write two pages. I watch 18 hours of YouTube video essays discussing drama about creators I don’t even watch and play a stupid game on my phone for an entire weekend until I’ve spent $25+ in a labyrinth of microtransations and every time I close my eyes I see the moving dots.

In November of 2015 I had three overdue essays for Global Literature, and two more due in the next two weeks. More than half were on books I had not read. My pre-lab wasn’t done for organic chemistry, and I wondered for a moment, if I pretended to pass out, if that would be easier. I stayed up until 4 AM laying on my floor and listening to Hamilton. I was sick, that much is true, but when I felt okay I still sat at my computer and could not bring myself to write.

In 2011 I had so many unfinished assignments for my college-level English class that I resigned myself to failing and I went to school the morning of the final class, but I hid in the stairwell by the choir room until I heard the bell, and I never went back to that class.

2009 was the year my dad stopped being able to yell at me for not doing my homework, because no one, including me, could tell whether it was actually my eyes stopping me.

In 2008 I wrote 6 essays in the 5 days of Thanksgiving break because I had not done any work for Intro to Lit all semester. I pulled it off, somehow, even aced the class because of an unusually lenient late work policy, but what I most remember is the sick feeling of dread as I lay on the floor in the living room staring up at the Christmas tree and feeling invisible sand slip through an invisible hourglass and a vice tightening in my chest.

In 2006 I stayed up almost all night writing a paper and crying my eyes out because I couldn’t find the words to explain to anyone why it had been so impossible for me to get the work done, that I wasn’t being lazy or distracted, I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t necessarily reading YA novels or watching TV or IMing my friends instead of working, I could sit and stare at a blank word document for 6 hours straight and still it would not get done. Everyone talked about potential, talked about how smart I was, but a gradebook that is half 100’s and half 0’s still averages out to an F. No one, including me, could explain the discrepancy. The logic of that simple math was not lost on me, the knowledge that turning in half-finished or not very good work was mathematically better than not doing it, but that didn’t mean I could do it. Words failed me when I tried to explain the illogic of my particular suffering.

I didn’t hear the term executive dysfunction until I was in my 20s. In retrospect I was tentatively told at 16 that I had “probably some ADHD and OCD”, but that psychiatrist was someone I’d been sent to by a neurologist because he thought she could fix my eyes, and when she said she couldn’t, I stopped making appointments. After I got sick, physically sick, the lines blurred between what was causing what, to the point where even I have no idea. Two of the Novembers missing here are ones I spent at CC, on the block plan where I only took one class at a time. My physical health arguably improved a little after transferring in January of 2016, but mostly it didn’t, not until Spring of 2018 at least. And you can see that evidence in dropped blocks, concussions from passing out onto hard surfaces, a couple of incompletes taken when viral illnesses (or concussions) compounded my other problems. What the block plan changed was the way things pile up, lessened the struggle of constant task switching between classes. (Admittedly, I also had fewer papers when taking mostly science classes. Writing takes much more energy, and it’s much harder to convince myself it doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth submitting.) At CC nothing ever really reached the level of catastrophe. Some of that is purely the ability to drop a single block, meaning when it was my physical health that was the problem, I didn’t lose a whole semester, just one class, then reset. But I should have realized sooner that the block plan wouldn’t account for the level of improvement if my physical health had really been the only barrier.

So we’re back to now. Grad school. November again. Dark again. Semester plan again. Too much writing again. Crushing dread again. Dysfunction again. Panic attack in the middle of the night increasingly elaborate organizing rituals scream of the subway tracks in my mind can’t stop can’t start can’t breathe can’t move burnout again. This time without the explanation of chronic fatigue to fall back on.

I have my tricks, have actually learned somewhat to cope in the past 18 years. Schedules help, break tasks into pieces that are as small as possible. Mindfulness meditation. Forgive yourself when it’s not perfect. Get started with something easy, set a timer for 20 minutes and only work for those 20 minutes and then let yourself stop if you want to (and surprisingly often, you won’t want to, sometimes that momentum is all it takes). If you work better in the night, work in the night, who cares what society says your sleep schedule should be. When switching tasks, physically get up and move to a different location. Allow yourself to procrastinate on work with other work if that’s what you have to do. Delete the stupid games from your phone. One or two missed assignments are not actually the end of the world, if you let yourself view it as piling up, you won’t be able to get anything done, so if you absolutely have to, just move through and move on.

It’s not a catastrophe, this November. It’s a fight, but it’s not a catastrophe. I read Austerlitz and forgive myself for skimming it. I write a Canvas post and forgive myself when it’s only 500 words and doesn’t make complete sense. I read Toni Morrison and Édouard Louis and classmates’ discussion posts about Deaf culture and identity and remember why this matters in the first place, that it’s not just a series of assignments to overwhelm me, it’s a series of interesting complicated exhausting important thoughts and questions. I get it done. Some of it. Most of it. I let myself sleep. I breathe. I remember to be grateful because I can get out of bed in the mornings and take the stairs. I am okay.

#chronic illness #executive dysfunction #chronic fatigue #College and chronic illness #personal lol

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veritygrahams · 6 years ago

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Without Proof

Accident and Emergency was busy as usual. Severus was a young and excited student doctor, and he thrived in the A&E he even ended up watching a surgery and learning as they intricately repaired the damage. He wasn't going to be a surgeon. He was interested in the cerebral side of medicine: curing people with the miracle of drugs, therapies, and treatments. He was always available when the higher-ups asked for him. He was gifted in the art of medicine, and this focus on his work healed a broken heart.

After being paged for an incoming case, he rushed to the ambulance bay; it's how someone could become the best, how they always got the best cases—being there first, taking every chance, and not walking but running! The ambulance door opened and that old wound was ripped open. His heart had been broken long ago—beyond repair— he found solace at university, in medical school and now in his studies and his work.

"I have a twenty-three-year-old male. His temperature is thirty-eight degrees, his blood pressure is eighty over ninety, he's conscious but not aware, and he's been on twenty-four percent oxygen for fifteen minutes. We administered pain relief, ten cc's codeine; his breathing has eased, but he's not in a good way," the paramedic recited, pushing the chart into Severus' hand.

The paramedics pulled the gurney from the ambulance. On the bed was a man with a mass of dark hair; his eyes had a far off look, and his breathing was ragged. If this was an improvement, Severus didn't want to know what he'd been like before. Climbing out after him was the woman who had broken his heart: Lily.

He would know her anywhere, and he watched as her auburn hair whipped around her beautiful porcelain face. He looked into her forest green eyes. Who could forget those devastatingly beautiful evergreen eyes? They were just like the last time he had seen them: swollen, puffy, and red. It pained him to watch as tears spilled over.

"How did he present?" Severus forced his eyes over to the paramedic—the one that could give him information he needed to make it all better for her.

"His breathing was short and erratic; he's very confused, persistently coughing up blood. He's running a fever—it's getting higher—and his wife has said he's vomited as well."

Severus nodded sharply, pushing the gurney through the A&E doors and parking it in an empty room. Severus moved around hurriedly, connecting the man to various monitors and barking instructions. He had always been good at taking charge. He checked the man's breathing; his face darkened, barely noticing her standing to one side, reading his face.

"He's going into respiratory depression; what medication has he had that wasn't on the chart?" Severus barked at the paramedic.

"We didn't check." The man was flummoxed. "He was in agony; we had to give him something."

"Lily?" His tone softened.

"I wrote it all down. He's been on a bunch of different over the counter stuff; nothing helped." Her voice was breaking as she tried to hold back the tears; she was coming apart at the seams.

"Thank you." He turned to the man in front of him. He was already checking his airway; it wasn't good. "Right, I need an intubation kit, 8.0mm tube, now!"

Within moments he was at the head of the bed tilting the man's head back to see his airway clearly. Lily was gently moved aside by a nurse.

"Laryngoscope."

His favoured nurse, Poppy, passed one within seconds. Severus held the man's head, his eyes focused on hiss passageway, and gently slid the scope to the right of the man's mouth. He then held his tongue to one side as the scope slid down his throat.

"Tube."

He guided the tube down his throat. It became stuck just past his uvula and Severus frowned.

"7.0mm tube; his lymph nodes are enlarged."

The tube slipped in with ease this time. He removed the scope, gently, before ensuring the pilot balloon was inflated and attaching it to the ventilator. He watched the patient's chest; when it rose and fell gently, he sighed in relief.

"I want him admitted to the ICU immediately. His vitals need to be monitored; get a chest x-ray and a full blood panel. We also need a catheter and central line fitting, and monitor his urine output; anything out of the ordinary page myself or Dr. McGonagall," he rattled off to his faithful Poppy. "Oh, and a urine test".

"Yes, Dr. Snape, and what will you be doing?" Poppy questioned with a curt smile.

"Poppy, I'll be getting a full and detailed history," he said with a smile.

"You're speaking to the family?" She smirked.

"I'm just trying it out."

Severus turned round to see a petrified Lily. His heart sank. He wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the day talking to her. But not about him! Severus had purposefully pretended not to know the man she had chosen over him. He truly hated Potter.

"I think coffee is in order."

Much to his delight, Lily nodded.

They sat in a small room just off the ICU; the walls were painted a warm cream colour. There were plush sofas with cushions and throws. It was all in an effort to help families feel like their entire world wasn't falling apart.

Severus got the coffee, making it just how she liked it. He turned to her, watching as she pulled at the already fraying threads of her thick cardigan. She looked just as distraught as she had before; he imagined watching the intubation of a loved one didn't exactly inspire hope.

"Here," he handed her the steaming cup, "milk, three sugars? Even though I still feel obligated to educate you on the dangers of a high sugar diet." He tried a smile; it had been a while.

"You remembered?" Her lips upturned slightly—not enough to be considered a smile, but then people rarely smiled in the ICU waiting room.

"Of course. But, uh, I need his medical history." His voice was barely a whisper; he wasn't used to this aspect of the job. Usually, he would get the tests, leaving the questioning to Poppy.

"Erm, what do you need to know?" She stumbled over the words inelegantly.

"It's ok, just answer the questions as best you can. When did his symptoms start?"

"A week ago. It was only a cough—the flu, I guess." She continued to decimate the cardigan, a habit he remembered from the last moments he had with her. She had been heartbroken; it was all his fault of course.

"Has he had pneumonia before?"

"As a child, I think; he has a weak immune system, but it hasn't been a problem since we married. Oh my god, I don't even know the details!" She starting sobbing, and he saw how helpless she felt. She wore her heart on her sleeve; he thought she was strong in her vulnerability.

"That's ok; is he on any medication or supplements?"

"No, like I said, it's not been a problem. We try to make sure we run a clean shop; we take germs and illnesses seriously, as I'm sure you can imagine."

"I can." He reached and squeezed her hand. "I'll do my best, I promise."

She smiled now, her shoulders a little less tense, and let out a long-held breath.

"His symptoms, would you describe them as continuous or intermittent?"

"Continuous, but they would occasionally get worse and then ease up. Does that make sense? Is that good or bad?"

"Lily, relax!" He waited whilst she tried to calm herself. "It just gives me the information I need to make a diagnosis; don't think about the good or bad, okay?"

She nodded, her face resolved as she wiped away the escaping tears.

"Is there anything that helped to relieve the symptoms, made him feel better?"

She shook her head as she pulled out a thread of wool and fiddled with it between her fingers.

"Has he traveled recently or been exposed to anything toxic, like chemicals?"

Again she shook her head, and he nodded, his hand still holding hers.

"Has he been around anyone that's been ill?"

"No; we have a baby, but he's been the picture of health. James is very careful."

"I understand. I just need to know about alcohol consumption, smoking, and what vaccines he has had."

"He's an occasional drinker, but since Harry had been born, it's lessened. He's never smoked, and he had all the usual vaccines—they were very careful, his parents. I can get copies of his records."

"No, that's fine." He paused, looking at her. How could he explain what was wrong? He figured he should just come out and tell her everything he knew—anything to stop her worrying.

"Lily, I think he has pneumonia, possibly with another infection. This wouldn't usually be a problem for a man of his age, but it's the weak immune system. That's why things have… escalated." He paused. "There are a variety of tests that we'll do: initially to get him off a ventilator, and secondly to find out which strain of bacteria caused the pneumonia. Once we have that, we'll begin treatment."

"It's definitely pneumonia?" she asked.

"Not definitely; that's why we'll do tests. Your husband has had a variety of medications. They haven't helped him, and I don't want to do anything other than improve his condition. That means we need proof it's pneumonia." He squeezed her hand again.

"He'll be ok?" Her lip trembled.

"I'll do everything I can, I promise!"

That was when she lunged into his embrace, sobbing, and whispered a million thank you's. He was there longer than he'd ever been known to have spent with a family member before.

Severus came back early the next morning. Once he had changed into his forest green scrubs, he made his way to the ICU. He glanced at the chart and then made his way to collect the X-rays and check the tests he'd ordered the day before. He had an early meeting with McGonagall; after all, he was still a student and unable to take action alone. It wasn't long before he was knocking purposefully at her door.

"Come in," she called.

"Minerva, I have x-rays from Mr. Potter in bed two."

She rose, switching on the viewing panel. He passed her the film. They stood in silence for a moment.

"So, what do you see, Severus?"

"I'd say pneumonia; there's also a lot of fluid in the lungs."

"What would you do about that?" she drilled.

"Put in a chest tube, which could get him off the ventilator."

"Anything else?"

"Well, I want to confirm pneumonia. I'm waiting for the blood and urine tests to come back. I'll order a CT to check for abscesses in the lungs."

"And what about Sputum test?"

"It's to test the fluid taken from a deep cough and at this point, I don't know if he'll be conscious."

"Very good. What about the pleural fluid culture?"

"TooI invasive; he needs to improve before I start poking his lungs with a giant needle," he drawled.

"How's the family?"

"He just has a wife and son. She's coping, although she's understandably worried; she wants assurance he'll be ok."

"You spoke to a family member?" She looked at him incredulously.

"You said in my last supervision that I should be more available to families!"

"I know, but I never expected you to do it. I'm impressed!" McGonagall smiled.

"I'm just trying it out; I doubt it'll stick."

"I expect nothing less, Severus. Now you have work to do; chest tubes don't get put in by themselves, you know."

"I can do it without supervision?"

"My best student can."

Severus explained as delicately as he could why the tube was in her husband's chest, draining it of fluid. He neglected to tell her that it'd been his first solo attempt. It'd gone exceptionally well; he had results coming soon, and with the fluid draining, he could get a CT scan.

As the tests came back, it was increasingly clear it was pneumonia, but they didn't know the strain of bacteria. That was a problem; they couldn't treat it without knowing, and the list of antibiotics was a mile long. Dr. McGonagall would hang, draw and quarter him if he treated without proof. He checked the vitals once more and was just marking down the urine output and checking the drip when she entered.

"Any news?"

He turned to face her. She was still in the same clothes that she'd arrived in; the cardigan had seen better days.

"I just noticed; lots of tests, not much treatment…" she trailed off.

"I understand, but we put the chest tube in, and now we can check his lungs for abscesses. He may even come off the ventilator," he said.

"Yeah…" Tears threatened to fall from her eyes again.

He wasn't sure what to say to comfort her, and the first, awkward sentence came tumbling from his lips. "Aww, does somebody need a hug?" he asked gently.

"Said Severus Snape, never!" She laughed lightly, but the tears still fell, and soon she was wrapped in his arms.

"Only to you," he whispered.

"Sev?" She looked up, still wrapped in his arms, her eyes imploring him. "Would you do something for me?"

"For you? Anything."

She pushed him away, pacing the room. Glancing up at him, her face filled with worry. "Promise me you won't wait too long to treat him?"

"I don't need to promise you; I'll do everything I can."

"I'm not stupid, Sev. You know it's pneumonia; there are drugs that could be helping!"

"Lily, it's complicated; different strains require different antibiotics!"

"So, you're telling me that there isn't something you would do in an emergency, something to give him more time? You're telling me the smartest man I know doesn't have a solution?"

"You're asking me to treat him without being sure. Do you know what that could do to me? My career? To your husband, if I'm wrong?"

She nodded.

"And you're asking anyway?"

She nodded again.

It was Severus' turn to pace; he could give Potter penicillin, but it was against protocol. Then again, it covered quite a few of the bacteria strains, and it wasn't as if they would give him so much that when it counted, it would be ineffective. There was no indication he was allergic, and it had a good chance of improving his condition.

He turned to her and stared into her forest green eyes. He would risk his career for the man she chose over him, a man that had played him so that he could get the girl.

"I'll start him on penicillin, unless he's allergic?"

Her face broke into a smile. She shook her head vigorously, launching herself at him. "I knew I could count on you, Sev!"

"I did say anything," he whispered, wrapping his arms around her.

He had put Potter on the penicillin, but it wasn't long before he presented with Angioedema—welts that indicated an allergic reaction. His already low blood pressure was falling.

Severus was paged when the man's heart had stopped pumping all together. Poppy hurried Lily out of the room.

"He's going into Anaphylaxis, get the paddles!" Severus shouted. Poppy was already prepared. "Give him Epinephrine and Dopamine! We need that blood pressure up!"

"Charging to two hundred!" Poppy called whilst another nurse applied compressions. "Clear!"

Severus applied the paddles, shocking Potter's heart.

"Charge to three hundred!" he called, the compressions resuming.

"Clear!" she shouted.

Severus shocked him again.

"Charge to four hundred!" he called desperately.

"Clear!"

Severus shocked him again. Potter arched off the bed, and a faint heartbeat resumed. Severus sighed as he looked over everything that the man had been prescribed, everything that had gone into his system. At that moment he realised Potter was allergic to penicillin.

"Dr. Snape, what caused this?"

"Penicillin; we need to flush it out of his system, now!" His head was in his hands.

"Speak to McGonagall; she'll know what to do," Poppy urged.

Severus nodded. His heart sank; it wasn't looking good.

With some trepidation, he made his way up to McGonagall's office. He had the chart, and the chart didn't lie. All he could do was hope that she knew something he didn't. Once he was there, he stood outside the door, not wanting to enter. When he finally knocked, she called him in straight away. She sat behind her desk with a pile of charts, her eyes tired and her lips pursed. The usually tight bun atop her head was slipping.

"Ah, Severus, how is Mr. Potter?" She smiled like he was the student she didn't need to worry about.

The smile faded when he slumped in the chair. He told her the truth; everything, his history with the wife, the favour that he had done her, and how it had gone horribly wrong.

"Give me the chart!" she demanded, her expression not improving. "And this is the most up to date information?"

"I came straight here," he whispered.

"Of all the students to do this..." She paused. "Severus, my most detached student, brilliant, but appalling bedside manner, terrible with families, the one time you engage… you make the worst decision! We need proof for a reason!" she was shouting by the end. "You know what this chart tells me, don't you?"

"I was hoping that you could fix it." He looked up.

"I don't have a magic wand, Severus! Her husband is falling into a coma and he won't wake; you do know that, don't you?"

Severus nodded.

"You will have to tell her."

"Please, don't!" he pleaded; he couldn't stand to look in those forest green eyes and tell her what he had done. "I—I can't!"

"Severus," she paused, shaking her head, "of all my students? You will tell her.

#severus snape #Lily Evans #lily potter #harry potter fanfiction #Harry Potter #harry potter fandom #pro snily #Muggle AU

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snickerl · 7 years ago

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The Woman From His Dreams

Post-Ghouli fanfiction

Not sure CC gives us a Mulder-Scully-William/Jackson reunion we can live with, so I wrote one I like.

Tagging @today-in-fic

His abilities have helped him to get here. They can be of real use sometimes, as much as Jackson curses them because most of the time they make his life more difficult instead of easier. He lost his parents because of them. When they were shot in order to get to him he only managed to escape because of his power to make people see what he wants them to see. He created a false reality and let everyone believe he shot himself in the head, including his birth mother who later held a speech at the morgue to what she believed was his corpse in a body bag. What she said touched him deep inside but it also overwhelmed him. He wasn’t able to handle the sobs and tears of a woman he knew but then again didn’t know.

He had dreamed of this woman when he was little and had shared his visions with her when he was a teenager, their heads aching in unison. He can’t explain how it worked, he just sent the signals out and felt they were being received. Always by the same person, a redheaded tiny woman with friendly blue eyes and a warm smile. It had eased his pain and his fear to know that there was someone out there experiencing the same thing. It made him less of a freak.

Three days ago, it was the other way around, Jackson was at the receiving end of the visions, but they didn’t consist of a global pandemic or a ufo hovering in the night sky, and that was exactly what worried him. The visions he shared with her this time led him to a silent pond where she was sitting in a wooden rowing boat. The boat had no oars, it just floated aimlessly around on the water and he was watching her from the shore. The silence was deafening. There was no rippling of waves, no chirping of birds, no rustling of leaves. No sounds at all. As if the place was dead. It scared him. He got in his car and drove 30 hours straight. Sometimes it helps to be some kind of superhuman, he never needed much sleep.

And now he’s here, the functional building of the George Washington University Hospital rising up to the dark night sky. As Jackson doesn’t know her name and wouldn’t know who to ask for at the reception, he stays put in his car in the parking lot until he shows up, the tall man who was with her when he faked his death. Jackson follows him inside, past the reception, up the stairs taking two at a time, into the hallway on the fourth floor and up to a room the man vanishes into without bothering to knock. Jackson stays behind in the hallway, breathing deeply through his nose in order to get his brain activity level down. He wants to step before them as himself today, not as Peter Wong, the pick up artist, but as Jackson Van De Kamp, their biological child.

He opens the door softly, he doesn’t want to startle them. When he makes a step into the room, the rubber soles of his sneakers silent on the linoleum flooring, he sees exactly what he feared to see for the past three days. The redheaded woman is lying in a bed, motionless and with closed eyes. There are monitors indicating her vitals, she’s hooked to an IV, wires are connected to her temples. Jackson knows what this means. She’s unconscious, maybe even comatose. At least, she isn’t put on a ventilator but breathing on her own. The man who led him here is sitting next to her bed on one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs which only seem to exist in hospitals, his elbows propped on his thighs and his head buried in his hands.

He has no idea how to introduce himself properly in a room so oppressively silent and to people he doesn’t know but are actually his blood relatives, so Jackson just asks what he has been wondering for three long days without announcing himself first.

“What’s the matter with her?”

The man’s posture dissolves only very slowly, his movements cumbersome as if a heavy load was on his shoulders. He turns his head in Jackson’s direction, his empty eyes scanning the room for the intruder. When he sees him and realization kicks in of who is standing in front of him, he stares at him, speechless for a moment. Maybe he isn’t sure if his visual nerves can be trusted.

“Jackson?” he asks incredulously. “Jackson Van De Kamp?”

Jackson nods. “Yes, sir, it’s me.”

“What are doing here?”

Jackson hardly recognizes the man’s voice. It’s so much smaller than when he heard him talk at the morgue or when he asked him to show himself in the hospital. Jackson had heard the worry in their voices, their need to know he was alright, but he wasn’t able to face them then. He used his power to create a fake reality again and hid behind the appearance of a nurse to escape from the situation. Things have changed, now he’s the one who is worried about them, the redheaded woman in the bed as well as the broken man beside her.

“I…uhm…I was summoned,” Jackson mumbles

“Summoned?”

“Mmm,” he only replies with a quick nod in the woman’s direction.

“Oh, I see. Another vision shared by the two of you.”

Only now is the man rising from his chair and closing the gap between them. Now that they are standing in front of each other, it’s obvious they look quite alike: tall, lean, long arms, thick brown hair. He puts his hand on Jackson’s shoulder and sighs, “good you’re here, kid.”

The back of Jackson’s throat tightens because of the sudden closeness to who he thinks must be his birth father. “How is she?” he asks, coming back to the initial motive for his being here. “What happened to her?”

The man sighs again, then leads Jackson to the bed. He shoves a chair to the other side and motions for him to sit down before he resumes his place opposite him.

“Several gunshots. She lost a lot of blood.” His voice is raucous and too weak for a man this tall and broad.

Jackson is shocked. Is he supposed to lose a third parent to gunshots? His terror must be readable on his face because the agent hurries to tell him, “not by the same people who shot your parents, Jackson. We worked on a completely different case. We were ambushed and she was ahead of me.” He swallows and rubs his wrinkled forehead. “She simply was out of the car faster than I was. I wasn’t fast enough. Had I been faster, I would’ve been in the front and could’ve taken the bullets for her. Then I would be lying here and she could be talking to you. She would be delighted, you know? I’m never going to forgive myself for having been so fucking slow if she won’t get a chance to talk to you anymore.”

Jackson is touched by the raw pain he hears and sees in front of him in this man’s voice, face, body posture. His whole demeanor cries out how much guilt he’s carrying.

One thing he heard frightens Jackson and he asks, although not wrapped in a question but in a statement, as if in so doing it was more likely his hope would come true, “but she’s going to make it.”

“Under the circumstances, you could say she was lucky. One bullet missed the main artery by a hairsbreadth. Some inner organs were injured though. They had to remove the spleen.”

“Is she going to make it?” Jackson insists. He’s not ready to lose his birth mother again now that he has just found her.

“She’s tough. She’s small but she’s strong. We’ve been in a situation like this more often than I would like, she’s always pulled through.”

They sit in silence for a moment, the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor the only sound in the room. It’s soothing in a way, as it indicates her heartbeat is steady and regular. Then Jackson realizes he still doesn’t even know the most commonplace things about these people.

“What’s her name?”

His counterpart looks at him with dull eyes, but then a hint of a smile is playing around his lips when he speaks of her. “Dana, her name is Dana. Dana Katherine Scully. She’s a medical doctor specialized in forensic pathology. She’s an FBI agent and we’ve been partners for almost 25 years now.”

Jackson hears admiration in the man’s voice but also deep affection and he wonders when being work partners had turned into life partners. Considering his birth date it must have been sometime around age six or seven into their partnership the latest. “Dana.” He lets the two syllables roll off his tongue. Female names with A’s in them have such a round, melodic ring to them. Dana. It’s a nice name. Jackson likes it. “ Erm…and your name?”

“Mulder,” the man answers taciturnly.

“Mulder? That’s all? Don’t you have a first and middle name?”

Jackson doesn’t know what to make of the man’s distorted face. He remembers that the redheaded woman, Dana, called him Mulder in the morgue in the short conversation they had next to his body.

The man sighs as if in defeat. “Of course, I do. My full name is Fox William Mulder.”

“Fox?”

“Now you know why I prefer to go by Mulder.”

Jackson contemplates for a moment. A distant memory creeps into his head. He remembers a stuffed animal he had when he was really little, three, maybe four years old. It was a reddish-brown fox with a bushy tail, pointed nose, and dark beady eyes. It had a place of honor on his bookshelf and his mother had always told him to be extra careful with it. Had it been something to take with him when he was given up for adoption? A fine bond his birth mother wanted to establish between him and his biological roots? Then something else struck him about the man’s name.

“William? Hmm…in the morgue…she called me William in the morgue. She said something like ‘if you are William’. Was that my name before I was adopted?”

The man who wants to be called Mulder nods.

“So I was named after you?”

“There are quite a few Williams in our families, actually. Scully’s father and brother are called William, referred to as Bill and Bill Jr. Her brother is still around but her father passed some years ago. My father was a William too, he’s the one I got my middle name from. Scully said she named you after my father, your grandfather. I guess we would’ve gone by Will with you with the many Bills we already had around. But Jackson is also a nice name.”

“It’s the only one I know.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

There’s a sadness resonating in his response. The remorse Jackson heard in Dana’s words in the morgue and the disillusionment shining through in Mulder’s reaction now give him an impression of how they had suffered throughout the years since they made the decision to give him up.

“You call her Scully? Not Dana?”

“It’s a habit from when we started working together and never unlearned. You’re not the first person to find it strange but for us, it’s the most natural thing.”

“Oh, I don’t find it strange, not at all. It’s cool. Better than one of those sappy pet names married people seem to have for each other.” His own parents, may they rest in peace, called each other by their first names, putting a 'yes, dear’ or 'please, love’ in occasionally. He had been spared the poppyheads, honeybunches, and snookums he heard at his friends’ houses and which made him gag. He had never heard a couple call each other by their last names, though, and wonders if it has any meaning beyond being a habit they never got rid of. Fox here doesn’t like his first name, that much is clear, but why Dana is fine with being called Scully by him, Jackson doesn’t understand. This woman’s personality has many interesting facets he’s only beginning to explore.

“I tried to picture her since I first came to the understanding that I had two mothers. That there was a birth mother somewhere in addition to my, uh…other mother.”

'Real’ had been on the tip of his tongue but it feels unfair. Unfair to Dana. If he labeled Helen Van De Kamp his real mother, what would Dana be then? Not a real mother as in only an illusion? A hallucination? Fake? Dana is his biological mother, the woman who gave birth to him. They had been physically connected by the umbilical cord for nine months. He carries her DNA. If all of this wasn’t real, what was?

“My parents never kept it a secret that I was adopted, so from early on I knew that I hadn’t grown in my mother’s belly but in another woman’s. It didn’t bother me that much really. Frankly, I didn’t think it was that uncommon. I must have been four or five when I started dreaming of a certain woman a lot, and after a while, I believed that she must be the one, the one with the belly I had grown up in. She had red hair and blue eyes and, uh, wait…” Jackson, hand to his brow, throws Mulder a questioning look, “does she even have blue eyes?”

“Yes. She has deep blue eyes. They are much like yours, actually. You had just been born when I told her you had her color and her eyes. It was so obvious you were her child. ”

“Hmm,” Jackson only replies. It’s giving him chills to be finally sitting in the same room with people who could tell him something about the first year of his life. It has been completely unaccounted for so far. As if he hadn’t existed before his first birthday.

He tried to get information from the adoption agency once he was old enough to file a formal inquiry on his own behalf but got disappointed when he found out his folder was sealed, the information in it classified, something called a closed adoption. His birth mother had demanded it, the social worker told him, leaving him with no legal rights to obtain any information about her identity. Jackson would’ve liked to ask the lady with the contrite face shrugging her shoulders in an apologetic gesture why his birth mother kept sneaking herself into his head then if she didn’t want him to find her, but how on earth was he supposed to make her understand what he was talking about? So he dropped it and paid more attention to the woman’s appearances in his imagination from then on: how she looked, moved, sounded.

She remained a mystery.

“Anyway, when I was little, I couldn’t make much of the dreams but they weren’t bad or anything so I was fine with them. When I hit puberty things started to change though. I had seizures that went along with visions which weren’t so innocent anymore. Some of them were actually quite disturbing, especially when I realized the woman from my childhood dreams was in them, or rather….”

Jackson leaves the last sentence unfinished, mainly because he lacks the right words to describe the exceptional experiences he had, but Mulder pushes impatiently driven by his thirst for understanding what the connection between them had been like.

“She wasn’t exactly in them like in the dreams. She was rather simply there somehow while I was having them. She was watching them with me as if she was standing next to me. I felt her presence and I heard her groan like me because of this nagging pain in our heads. But then again, they were only visions, nothing real. It was strange. I mean, nothing of this was really happening, it was only an imagination, but still…uh, sorry, it’s difficult to explain,” Jackson sighs, raking his fingers through his hair.

“No, you’re doing great, Jackson. How did you know this woman in your dreams and visions was your mother, uhm…birth mother?”

Mulder’s excitement it palpable. It’s the first time Jackson doesn’t encounter total incomprehension, disbelief, or even fright when he talks about his experiences. Mulder listens to him with an open mind, absorbing his words like a sponge. It’s a good feeling not to be looked at like he was some eccentric, a monstrosity who belonged in a freak show. It encourages Jackson to tell his entire story for the first time, even the things he had kept to himself all those years for fear of sounding stupid.

“I have no idea. I…just knew. Maybe from the dreams I had when I was a kid. In them, she always smiled lovingly at me, she sang lullabies, read stories. Mom’s stuff.”

“I see.”

“I had this one recurring dream where we were at the beach, our naked feet sinking into the sand where the waves were lapping ashore. I was afraid of the ocean because I’d never seen it before but the moment she took my hand my fears were forgotten.”

“It sounds just like her. Scully loves the ocean, her father was a Navy captain. She would’ve taken you to the beach, for sure.”

“In my dreams, I always felt protected and cared for because she was there. I was never afraid or insecure, and the feeling somehow lingered on even in the real world. It helped me cope with the seizures and the visions which honestly frightened the hell out of me. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. Nobody did. My parents didn’t know what to do with me, so they sent me to a shrink who was also clueless. She prescribed pills for the seizures but they had no effect at all, so I after a while I didn’t take them anymore. Knowing that she,” Jackson casts a glance at the ginger-haired woman in the bed whose blue eyes are still closed, “had the same visions like me made them less terrifying. I wasn’t alone in this, someone who I knew cared for me shared my fear, and so it was only half as bad. In the morgue she said she wished she’d been there to ease my pain…well, in a way, she was.”

Mulder stares at him for a beat, his face a stone mask. The only movements are his teeth grinding so severely, Jackson fears he might break his jaws. Then his face contorts into a grimace, pain, and sadness written all over it. “It would be so great if you could let her know,” he says, checking the monitors for any changes of her vitals. “It was her greatest concern that because you were given up for adoption you doubted yourself, that you thought you weren’t worthy to be loved. It kept her awake at night.”

The more Jackson hears about how Dana had coped - or rather not coped - with his adoption, the more he feels for her. She had struggled way more with the consequences of her decision than he had, his childish ignorance a blessing. And along with her the man in front of him had suffered, his birth father.

“You really didn’t give me up because you wanted to get rid of me, did you?”

“What? No! Not at all! You were a blessing, Jackson! Our miracle! I had told Scully once to hope for a miracle and we got our miracle in you. Nothing and no one has made her happier than you, and sadder once you were gone. I’d always thought she was pretty but pregnant Scully was stunningly beautiful. Radiant. My rational, no-nonsense partner had turned into a round, soft bundle of emotions. It was delightful and it even increased after she’d given birth to you. It took my breath away every time I saw her with you. She beamed with elation. She was so at peace with the world despite the hell she’d been through to get to this point in her life. It filled me with so much joy I almost exploded. Motherly Scully was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. If we could’ve only held on to our miracle, we would’ve had the best of lives together.”

Jackson gets the impression that Mulder spoke the last sentences more to himself than to him. Along with his narrative, his birth father has lost himself in his bittersweet memories, gazing in abstraction. Jackson is deeply moved and thinks hard about something nice to say.

“The Van De Kamps were the best parents I could imagine, but I guess you guys would’ve been quite okay too.”

Mulder shows him a smile but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“My parents hadn’t been the best examples to prepare me for my fatherly role but Scully knew what family was all about. She had the most wonderful mother and a very protective father. She would’ve been…she was…a terrific mother. Giving you up was an act of motherly love, Jackson. It tore her apart, but she wanted to get you out of harm’s way at all costs and hiding you in a family with no connection whatsoever to us was the only possible way. Actually, now that I think of it, it was good your parents gave you a new first name. It perfected the setup. Scully knew she would never get over it, but she went through with it nonetheless. For you.”

Mulder’s raving narrations of Dana’s qualities as a mother have an effect on Jackson. He’s overwhelmed by a sudden need for physical contact with her which he finds a bit embarrassing but still, he asks, ��can I touch her?”

“Of course! You can also talk to her if you want. She might hear us. Maybe you can do what I haven’t been able to do…bring her back.”

Jackson cautiously reaches out for her, grazing the back of her hand with his fingertips. For a split-second, he’s worried he might disturb her, but then he calls himself foolish for the thought as this is exactly his intention. He covers her entire hand with his which is easy because her hand is tiny compared to his. Her skin is soft and warm. She’s got nice hands. He imagines how they would’ve caressed his face or ruffled his hair if it had meant to be, how they would’ve prepared sandwiches for school or put a band-aid on a bleeding knee. He has problems to picture how these delicate fingers cut open a dead body or pull the trigger of a cold weapon.

Jackson feels the corners of his mouth rise into a smile on their own accord. It feels good to touch her. They are reunited after all those years. She’s the only mother he has left. He loved his mama, Helen Van De Kamp. She was a great mother - patient, empathetic, supportive, loving, caring. When he thinks about how she was shot in the head his stomach churns. Well, the men who did this to her and to his father paid bitterly for it. It was one of the moments his abilities came in very handy. Those assholes had no idea how he was able to manipulate them with his powers into shooting themselves. Mulder and Dana instantly grasped what had happened at the hospital reception. They’re smart, or maybe they just understand what his powers consist of because they know where they come from. If he puts two and two together, his extraordinary abilities made him an adoptive child. He already had them, or some, when he was a baby. That’s why Dana thought she was bringing him to safety with giving him up. These two people might eventually give him the answers he’s been longing for as long as he can remember. The answers to why he is such a freak.

But to be able to give him answers, she has to wake up.

Jackson shoves his chair closer to the headboard of the bed. It’s slightly elevated, probably to make it easier for her to breathe. Holding on to her hand, he leans in and starts talking. To his surprise, the words start flowing out of his mouth without thinking. He had racked his brain more than once about what he would say to his birth mother if he ever had the chance. What he hears himself say now is something completely different.

“Hi, Dana, it’s me. Jackson. Jackson Van De Kamp. You sent for me, right? You shared your vision with me. I saw you in that boat on the lake. You were about to let go, but then again you didn’t. You looked at me as I was standing on the shore.” Mulder moans silently but Jackson cannot be distracted. “Here I am, Dana. I’m here to get to know you better. I meant what I said at the gas station. I’m sure you figured out that the pick up artist was me controlling your perception of me. I also heard what you said at the morgue, and I’m sorry I had to put on that act. I simply didn’t know what else to do. I want you to know that I believe you when you say you didn’t give me up because you didn’t want me but because you loved me. I guess I have always known.”

Mulder can’t take it anymore. He jumps off his chair and after a few big strides, he’s crossed the entire room to stare out the window. Jackson doesn’t cast a glance at him, he’s completely focused on the message to his birth mother.

“You need to wake up, Dana. Don’t go there, as much as you would want because it’s warm and bright and there’s no pain over there and all your deceased loved ones are on the other side waiting for you. You have to stay in this world. With us, Mulder and me. You said you wished we had a chance to know each other. Well, here it is, your chance. All you have to do is open your eyes. Throw me the rope and let me pull you ashore.”

And then it just slips out of his mouth, completely not on purpose and completely unexpectedly. “Please, mom.”

Mom. The word tingles in Jackson’s ear like a blast injury.

He once stood too close to his dad firing at the range. He wasn’t wearing ear muffs and was diagnosed with an acoustic shock when days later he still heard the sound of the shot. It feels very similar right now. The word, just three letters, echos in his ear, bouncing off the walls of his auditory canal. Mulder also seems in shock, Jackson hears him suck in his breath.

“What?” Jackson hiccups for his part, “wh-where did that come from? I-I…I didn’t mean to…I…ugh, I don’t know.”

Mulder’s eyes are on him but Jackson can’t look at him right now. He’s not sure what his face offers as an explanation, whether Mulder can see how for a moment he feels he betrayed his mama calling Dana mom. Mama, the woman who raised him, who kissed his bruises better, comforted him when his favorite cat died and cheered him on at the baseball field. Would she believe she’s been replaced already? A pang of guilt makes itself felt in the pit of his stomach.

“In my head, I’ve always referred to her as my birth mother, never as…mom.”

“It’s okay, Jackson, there’s no need to justify yourself. You’re overwhelmed. This has simply been too much. You’re traumatized by your parents being shot and us arriving on the scene, I totally understand. You set the pace, kid. We are willing to be to you whatever you want us to be. Allies, friends, confidants. Parents, if you let us. I only wished Scully could’ve heard that. It’d make her so happy. You have to understand, she was never being spoken to as mom. By any of her children.”

“Children? I have siblings?”

Jackson sees that this is another painful chapter of their lives. His birth father’s face falls apart and a wave of grief wafts off of him.

“Scully was an unwilling participant of a secret program conducted by a shadow government. I will tell you more about it when the time is right, not today. This program is the reason why we are where we are at this very moment. She had a biological daughter who had been created with her DNA but she knew nothing about until she was three years old and incurably sick. Her name was Emily. She died only days after Scully had found her. All Scully could do was accompany her on her way to death, and she did so courageously. Emily never learned about their special connection and why Scully cared for her so dearly. And she never called her mom. That’s the short version,” he concludes.

“Am I right when I say that my life has also been influenced by this program you mentioned?”

“Yes. When Scully became pregnant, we feared the truth but hoped against all odds that you were a normal, healthy baby like the hundreds of thousands of other babies that were conceived every day on this planet. This time no petri dish had been involved, so there was cause for hope. When you were born, we still nurtured that hope, and for a short time, we were allowed to be happy and carefree with you. Then things changed for the worse. I had to leave to keep the both of you safe and Scully had to learn you were indeed special, that you had…abilities and that there were people out there who were after you because of them. She fought for you, believe me. Fiercely. But when your opponents have so much more power than you, when they have so many more resources, you get to a point where you realize that you don’t stand a chance against them. The day Scully had reached this point, all she could think of was for you to have a normal life without fear. It was more important to her than anything else.”

“So you weren’t around when the decision was made to give me up. It was hers alone, wasn’t it?”

Mulder’s chin drops to his chest. He avoids Jackson’s eyes when he mumbles, “yes, and I hate myself for having put this load on her. You have to know, she not only thinks she failed you, she also never stopped thinking she failed me. Failed as in she’d taken my son from me. Complete BS! As if I was in a position to blame her for anything,” he huffs.

Jackson has the feeling he’s talking about more than just the decision to give him up for adoption. The relationship of his birth parents seems to be multi-layered and complicated. Maybe he will get the whole picture one day when they are willing to open up about their entire history together and not only about the short time he was present in their lives. Right now isn’t the right moment to further mull over it. At present, there are more important issues.

Mulder seems to be of the same opinion because he leaves his spot near the window and resumes his place at his partner’s bed. He takes her hand and strokes it lovingly. Leaning into her he speaks to her, his voice touchingly raw.

“Scully, you have to wake up, William is here. Your son is here.”

Jackson flinches when he hears the unfamiliar name but he understands what Mulder tries to do and he thinks he could even get used to it. One day, he might be able to accept William as the name his birth parents have for him, like a parental pet name. They’re the only family he’s got left.

“Scully, please. We need you, Will and I. I already told you once in a situation like this that I didn’t believe you were ready to go yet, and today I’m telling you the same. Open your eyes and meet your son, Scully.”

Mulder kisses her forehead and slumps back into the chair which creaks properly. It’s evident how lost he is, how numb in the fear for her.

Jackson himself is at a loss about what else he can do, but then something his mama always told him comes to mind. “You cannot study on an empty stomach, Jackson,” she would say when he spent hours at his desk studying for exams. She would ruffle his hair and place a plate with homemade brownies next to his textbooks. She told him to take a break and have a snack and that after that he would be able to focus all the better. Jackson has the heavenly smell of his mother’s brownies in his nose and their rich, chocolatey taste on his tongue. Tears prick at his eyes. He hasn’t had a real chance to deal with his parents’ assassination yet and in moments like these, when sweet childhood memories sneak into his mind, he has no defense mechanism against them. He’s glad that Mulder’s paying more attention to the patient in the bed than to him, so brushing the tears from his cheeks pass unnoticed. He then decides to follow his mama’s advice.

“There’s a vending machine in the waiting area. Can I get you something, Mulder?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

No, you aren’t, Jackson thinks. He searches his pants pocket for money and finds two five-dollar bills and a few coins. He steps out of the room and sets out to where the vending machines are located near the reception.

“Hungry?” a nurse asks him when he assesses the offer.

“Yeah,” Jackson answers, uncertain what to choose. He has no idea what Mulder likes. He inserts a note into the slit, the display tells him he deposited five dollars and asks him to make a selection. “Chocolate never harms,” he mumbles and presses the button to release a Snickers bar, then opts for some M&Ms. A bag of chips, in case he prefers something salty, and a red bag of Skittles for himself. He pushes the candy into the pockets of his hoodie and tucks the chips under his arm. He scans the room but doesn’t find what he’s looking for.

He turns to the nurse behind the reception desk. “Excuse me, ma'am, can I get a coffee anywhere?”

“Sure, there’s a coffee machine down the hallway but the coffee tastes awful.”

Jackson shrugs his shoulders. “Ah well, it’ll have to do. As long as it’s hot.”

“Who are you visiting, young man?” the friendly nurse asks. She’s in her thirties probably, has warm eyes and shows him a compassionate smile.

“Dana Scully,” Jackson answers.

“Oh, the FBI agent who got shot.”

“Yes, that’s her.”

“I’m sorry, it must be hard for you to see your mom so severely injured.”

She’s not my mom, Jackson has on the tip of his tongue but then realizes that the nurse is indeed right. Dana Scully, the FBI agent who got shot, is his mom. He has even called her exactly that a few moments ago: mom. As confusing as the notion is, it’s also warming his heart and he hears himself say, “yes, it’s not easy.”

“You want the coffee for your dad?”

“Uhm, yes. He’s drained. I’ve got to get some food into him, and some caffeine wouldn’t harm either, I guess.”

“Absolutely. I sent him away to have a shower and some sleep this morning after he’d been keeping vigil at her bed for more than 24 hours, but he returned only two hours later.”

“He’s very worried.”

“Well, understandable. Her chances are not bad though. She’s in good shape, her overall constitution is above average for her age. The surgeon who performed the emergency operation told me he never believed someone could survive a gunshot wound as severe as this. Your mom is strong, and I bet she knows you and your dad are here. Just be patient and don’t lose hope. She can regain consciousness any time.” She smiles reassuringly at the teenager in front of her, totally oblivious to what her well-meant words do to him. “Here,” she says, placing a mug with a pink imprint on the counter, “have some of our coffee.” She fills the mug, probably her private one, from a thermos she conjures from under the counter. “Sugar? Milk?”

What now? Jackson doesn’t know how Mulder drinks his coffee. Is he a cappuccino double foam type or rather a black like my soul? “Black, please,” he finally decides. If Mulder wants sugar and milk, he can come back. “Thanks, you’re very kind.”

His hands full of the provisions he managed to provide, Jackson walks back to Dana’s room. The nurse said that she’s strong, that she can regain consciousness any time. He hopes to God she’s right. He has so many questions for her, and he wants to tell her about his childhood and youth, that it was good and that she doesn’t have to blame herself anymore. He’s about to pass through the doorframe when he hears someone say, “he’s alone out there? He’s in danger! Go, look for him!”

Jackson knows this voice, he heard it before from inside a body bag. The mug almost slips out of his hand. He takes a tentative step inside and the view he catches takes his breath away. The head section of the bed is elevated higher than before, Dana’s upper body being almost upright and her eyes are…open. But they aren’t looking at him, they are fixed on the man next to her bed.

“I can’t believe you let him go alone, Mulder. They’re after him, remember? Bring him back here right now!”

Is it possible this woman was unconscious half an hour ago? The intensity with which she’s scolding Mulder makes it hard to believe. Jackson commiserates with him. The man has spent three days at her bedside without considerable sleep and probably without food and drink, he had to cope with his biological child showing up out of thin air, and now he gets a lecture because he didn’t accompany his teenage son to the vending machine. If it wasn’t so damn surreal, it would be funny.

Jackson coughs, and when his birth parents’ heads turn in his direction, he murmurs, “I’m here. Unscathed.”

The room is silent within the fraction of a second.

What happens next is kind of a blur to Jackson. The world around him seems to keep turning but inside this room, it has come to a halt or is turning slower at any rate. He feels like being underwater, where the sounds from above the surface are muffled and one’s movements are harder because of the water resistance. He looks into his birth mother’s - his mom’s - eyes and contrary to the last time he had done the same thing, unbeknownst to her, he sees his own eyes reflected in hers. He’s familiar with that face beaming at him the way it’s beaming at him right now, with that blissful smile and that loving gaze. He knows it’s irrational, he’s paid attention in biology class when they studied the human brain and its power of recollection, but he swears deep down in his brain there is a memory of her, how she looked at him exactly like this when he was a baby. It’s contradicting the scientific facts but the heck with it, he isn’t a normal human being, human science doesn’t apply to him anyway.

Jackson’s musings are interrupted by a weak whisper. “Thank you, dear Lord,” he hears her voice which has a completely different timbre than moments ago when she was vigorously telling her partner to go look for him.

Mulder squeezes Dana’s shoulder gently, unable to take his eyes off of her as if he waited all his life to see this. Only when she folds the blanket back, obviously getting ready to leave the bed, he intervenes. “Woohoo, Scully, no! No way are you getting out of this bed! You stay right where you are!” Pinning her down forcefully with the hand that only seconds ago touched her so feathery, he looks at Jackson. “Would you mind coming over here? We have a very unreasonable patient here.” But Jackson feels glued to the spot where he’s standing, coffee mug in one hand, precariously tilted, bag of chips in the other. As much as he wants to, his feet won’t move. Mulder lets go of Dana, not without shooting her a stern look telling her quite cleary he wants her to stay put, then walks over to Jackson. “Hand me the mug before you spill it,” he says and takes the piece of pottery from him. He looks at the pink, glittery imprint and chuckles. “Born to be a Girl Boss. That’s actually your mug, Scully, isn’t it?”

“Oh shut up, Mulder,” she rebukes him, her vocal cords apparently having straightened again.

“Back from the unconscious for barely a quarter of an hour and already a big mouth again. Case closed. Your mug,” Mulder retorts putting the piece of evidence to his lips and taking a gulp for Dana and Jackson to see the imprint. He tries to hide his smile behind it but fails.

“Don’t be such a sissy, Mulder. I’ll buy you a mug saying Mr. Awesome as soon as I’m out of here if it makes you happy.”

“How about World’s Best Badass Partner?”

“If you insist.”

“I do.”

“Consider it done, Mulder. I’ll get you one of those travel mugs. You can bring it to the office every single day and show it around for everybody to see with a big, fat smirk on your face.”

“Sounds lovely when you put it like this.”

Jackson can’t believe what’s happening in front of his eyes. Here they are, all three of them at a life-altering moment. A blink of an eye ago, Dana was at the threshold to death, Mulder to insanity, and Jackson to losing his youthful optimism for good, and now they have nothing better to do but banter about the imprint on a stupid mug? It has broken the spell they’ve found themselves in, for sure. Maybe that has been their intention, although Jackson doubts they’re acting like this on purpose. Their banter seems so natural and effortless as if being the result of years of practice. In a way, he’s relieved they’ve lightened the atmosphere by it because as every teenager in the world he hates tawdry sappiness. “How about I buy you a set saying Partners in Crime?” he tries to join in and it doesn’t remain without effect. Both Dana’s and Mulder’s heads turn and they look at him as if for a moment they’d forgotten that he’s even there. From one second to the next, Dana’s face is serious again and the room is filled anew with the heaviness of the situation. “I’ve been hoping for this to happen. I prayed and hoped against all reason. And now it’s happening, truly happening,” she breathes.

“You…erm…you sent for me. The visions. They came from you, didn’t they?” At least Jackson’s vocal cords are still doing their job if his legs must quit the service. He’s still standing in the middle of the room a bit at a distance from his birth parents.

“I have no recollection of what I’ve been doing these past few days, I’m afraid. I’m not even sure this is real,” she says.

“It is real. I am real,” Jackson assures her. He takes a cautious step toward her bed, positioning himself at the foot of it.

“You have been talking to me.”

Jackson nods.

“You told me to wake up, didn’t you? You too, Mulder.”

“Yes, Scully. We hoped you’d hear us.”

“It’s scientifically proven that depending on the depth of the comatose state an unconscious person can perceive their surroundings, that they hear sounds, feel touches or temperature swings. So, yes, I heard you. Both of you. You said nice things. Very nice things.”

Mulder and Jackson exchange a look, both guessing what she might be referring to.

“You mean you heard me when in all my pathetic need for you I told you for the millionth time that I can’t live without you? That I’m helpless as a puppy when I’m on my own?”

Mulder has wrapped a joke around his questions but there is more than just a kernel of truth buried in there. The intensity with which these two people cling to each other is palpable. Jackson had seen his adoptive parents in love with each other, both deeply rooted in a solid marriage and an interplay of unconditional trust and loyalty, but his birth parents seem to have a relationship so symbiotic, he wonders how big the chances are to find a match this perfect among the seven billion people inhabiting this planet. Mulder and Dana appear like one human entity rather than two independent beings. You cannot harm one without hurting the other, one cannot be happy with the other being sad, one can simply not be without the other. Utter co-dependancy, that’s what Jackson sees when he looks at Dana and Mulder.

Being a child to a couple capable of giving so much selfless love must be a wonderful place to grow up in, comes to his mind. What a shame it has never happened. What has He been thinking to begrudge them children to raise? The love these two people have to give would’ve been enough for a whole bunch of them, including himself. The thought brings Jackson back to the moment he had said what Dana called nice things to her. Mulder tried to take the edge off it with his sad attempt to be funny but the pink elephant in the room is so big it takes almost the entire space. Jackson needs to address it.

“You heard me call you mom.”

Tears instantly well up in Dana’s eyes, intensifying their blue color to a degree it’s almost hypnotizing. She’s obviously struggling for words and losing the battle. She opens her mouth but no sound emits from it, so Jackson continues, “it wasn’t planned but neither inconsiderately spoken. It…it came from within somehow. I’m not going to deny that I was startled when I heard myself say it, but…I’m okay with it. With you being my mom, I mean.”

Taking it from the way Dana’s face lightens up, his is showing that he means it. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispers and reaches out for Mulder. Their hands find themselves blindly and intertwine, he then leans in and kisses her temple. “You don’t have to say anything, Scully. You were always meant to be a mother and now you’re reunited with your son. Finally.”

“He’s your son too, Mulder.”

Mulder nods. They’re gazing at each other so intensely, Jackson almost wants to wave at them and tell them that he’s also in the room, but then they tear their eyes away from each other and look at him. Dana holds her other hand out and now Jackson is finally able to move. He leaves his spot at the foot of the bed where his fingers have been clutching the footboard, closes the gap to her and willingly takes her hand. It’s as warm and soft as before when he spoke to her when she was still unconscious, but it feels so much better now. The energy she emits is electrifying. It passes through his whole body and empowers him in a way he hasn’t expected. It’s almost as if after these past weeks that have been so dark since his parents, the Van De Kamps, were murdered she’s breathing life into him again. On his lonely road trip he felt like he was drowning in a cold, deep ocean with no chance for rescue, and now the woman who gave birth to him once is pulling him out of the water into a life raft where he is protected and cared for and…loved.

Maybe it was all meant to happen like this, Jackson thinks. The Van De Kamps, the best parents in the true sense of the word, have taught him to believe that God has a plan, that everything happens for a reason. Maybe he was to reunite with his birth parents, who are equally devoted to him, exactly at the moment his adoptive parents were taken from him so he wouldn’t be alone. Dana gave him up at a moment she couldn’t protect him anymore in the strong belief he was safer and happier with other people. And he had been safe and happy with his adoptive parents. Until he had those visions that someone tried to track him down, to get at him because of his abilities. Thenceforward, the Van De Kamps didn’t know how to help and protect him any longer.

They tried, moved from the rural countryside into a city home to give him access to psychological and medical treatment, they installed an alarm system when he told them he feared he was being hunted, but their efforts were for naught. In the end, they made the ultimate sacrifice. They gave their lives for him, delaying the killers for the decisive seconds for Dana and Mulder to arrive at the scene and chase them away. If he looks at his life like this, it sounds like a well-planned and orchestrated course of events. It had to be someone’s plan, he just hopes it’s been a divine plan and not one set up by men. Mean men.

“What have you got in your pockets?” Mulder asks and tears Jackson away from his significant thoughts.

Jackson pulls the Snickers bar and the M&Ms out and deposits them on Dana’s lap. “Chocolate. And some Skittles, if you want.”

“Too much sugar for me,” Dana says in doctor’s mode now, “I will be put on a bland diet for some time, I assume, given the injuries to my abdomen.”

“Would something salty be okay? I also bought some chips.” He places the bag of Lays on the blanket draped over Dana’s legs.

“Mmmm, salt & vinegar. Good choice. Too greasy, though. Salt and fat is not a good combination for a traumatized digestive tract, but you got these for Mulder anyway, didn’t you?” She turns her head to the side. “Isn’t that some kind of offer to choose from, Mulder?”

“It’s great, thank you, Jackson. As long as I can have all the red M&Ms, I’m happy,” he says, ripping a corner off the candy bag. He picks a few red ones out with his long fingers and pops them into his mouth. “Yummm, almost as good as sunflower seeds.”

“Oh,” Jackson says, “I got some of those too.” He searches the inside pocket of the jacket he carelessly tossed to the ground when he first stepped into the room a lifetime ago and pulls out a little bag. “I only have the ones in shells, though. I love to crack them between my teeth. It’s almost meditative. It helps me concentrate.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Dana murmurs and Mulder stares wordlessly at him. Jackson no longer understands the world. What’s so weird about liking sunflower seeds, he asks himself. “Is something wrong? Did I say something stupid?”

“No, Jackson, there’s absolutely nothing wrong,” Dana’s says who seems to have found her voice faster than Mulder. “I just didn’t know that the craving for sunflower seeds was hereditary.”

Before Jackson can process the words and ask her what she means by it, Mulder reaches into his pants pocket and pulls an identical bag out of it, also half empty. He casts it onto Dana’s lap just next to the one Jackson has left there a moment earlier. She picks them both up, holding them next to each other. “Like father, like son, I’d say.” She looks at them with a wide, joyful smile that is so contagious that quickly all three of them are gazing at each other with happy faces. Then Mulder breaks out into a laughter and Jackson and Dana join in.

“Ouch,” she whines, gently covering her stomach with her hands, “don’t make me laugh. The dressage on my abdomen tells me I had major surgery, so would you please mind me and my sensitive body parts.”

Mulder slaps his forehead with his open palm. “What have I been thinking? We need a doctor to check you out, Scully. Jackson, would you mind looking for a nurse and telling her to send a doctor in here to check her out?”

“I am a doctor, Mulder. I’m perfectly fine. I’ve never been better.”

“ Are you sure?”

“I am.”

She reaches out for both of them, encircling her delicate fingers securely around their hands. Jackson is surprised about how strong she appears all of a sudden.

“I have everything I need.”

A feeling of having arrived settles in Jackson’s chest, like a circle has been completed. He misses his parents very much, but fate has led him to two people who equally care for him. They loved him when he was a baby and never stopped. And he is sure that one day he will equally love them back.

For the first time in a long time, he feels good and looks at his future optimistically. With Dana and Mulder at his side, his parents now, he will be able to deal with all the demons in his life. The visions, his powers, the threats from God knows who or what - everything can be dealt with as long as they are with him. Jackson Van De Kamp aka William Scully or Mulder or Scully-Mulder is happy.

Who would have thought?

#jackson van de kamp #mulder and scully #season 11 closure

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starsaboveheartswithin · 7 years ago

Text

Not So Alone

March 2014

Tessa sighed deeply as she felt a warm hand slide form her elbow to her shoulder, pulling hair away from her neck. A pair of soft lips planted a kiss on her bare shoulder and gentle fingers tugged at her tank top strap a the lips left a trail of kisses surrounded by faint scratches of stubble from where they started to her neck and up to her ear.

“I know you’re awake.”

His voice, low at the most ordinary times, still held the husk of sleep that sent shivers down her spine and a grin spread across Tessa’s face as she felt Erik’s hand move to her waist and pull her closer.

“Isn’t it a little early?”

“Hmmmmmworth it, if you’re interested.”

Tessa opened her eyes and rolled over to face him. Even mussed from sleep, he was beautiful — deep brown eyes she wouldn’t have objected to drowning in peering out gently from under thick brows, skin as smooth and dark as his eyes and lips thick and soft and the sort she couldn’t look at like this without wanting to kiss, morning breath and all. She reached out to touch his face and her nails caught in the stubble that gave way to a trimmed beard near his jawline and mouth.

She kissed him, long and lazy, making it last, savoring the feel of his skin under her hands and the way his hands felt as they worked their way under the fabric of her shirt. “Anything in particular you had in mind?”

“Mmmmmfew things,” he rumbled, going to kiss her neck and making her laugh as he pulled her on top of him.

He nearly had her shirt off when the little black pagers on their respective nightstands buzzed. Persistently.

As one, they both reached for their pagers and checked the message. Trauma. All hands on deck.

“Duty calls,” Erik grumbled.

Tess pulled him back in for another kiss, slipping a little tongue, leaving him breathless. “Hold that thought. We’ll pick it up tonight.

_____________________________

The chief of surgery called them and residents like them “surgery junkies” and that wasn’t far from the truth. The traumas that had arrived at the ER by the time they got there almost made up for missing good-morning sex. A semi driver had a heart attack and sent his truck off an overpass and it landed on a traffic jam, including a full city bus, caused by another wreck further up. Deaths and massive injuries made for a very full ER at the closest Level 1 trauma center to the incident and the ER and ORs would be alive with activity that would last well into the afternoon. Tessa even had a patient handed to her by Metro Man himself before he whooshed off to find more people in the wreckage.

No one noticed the lost-looking man who wandered into the ER. Even if they had, there were lots of lost-looking people wandering in from the wreck. Cars full of people who weren’t hurt enough for ambulances, but still needed attention were filling the parking lot near the ER entrance. They’d been trickling in all day and interns, residents, attendings and nurses were too preoccupied with emergent cases to deal with a man who just looked a little dazed.

“Excuse me,” he said, catching a nurse’s elbow. “Do you know where I could find a Dr. Erik Dimka?”

The nurse was frazzled and focused on the task he’d been given, but scratched his head and looked around. “Uhh, probably in one of the trauma or operating rooms. If this isn’t an emergency, it would be better to leave a message with him. Are you a patient?”

“My wife was,” the man replied. “Is there a waiting room I could wait in? I really need to speak with him today.”

“Yeah, through those doors and turn left. Good luck. You may be waiting a while.”

And the man was lost to the chaos of the ER. The next thing anyone knew of him, he was causing some chaos of his own.

The pops could be heard down the hall. In Trauma Room 2, where Tess was, working on a man with a crushed rib cage with Dr. Charles Hampton, the cardiothoracic attending, the pops were louder, coming from the room just on the other side of the wall. Then came the screaming.

“Don’t move!” cried Dr. Hampton. “Dr. Lawson, you are the only thing keeping that man’s aorta from tearing further. Nurse, pull the shade on that door’s window and lock the door. We keep working, people.”

The nurse did as she was told as the rest of the nurses and doctors looked at each other, eyes wide. They didn’t need to ask each other if their hearts were pounding. They’d all worked hard for their right to be there and every one of them would have rather been somewhere else when a gunman was loose in the hospital. Having a shooting at a hospital was a nightmare. Having a shooting in a hospital right next door to where a man’s chest cavity was bare to the world as they waited for an open OR was even worse.

(Photo credit)

Where’s Erik? He was heading to the OR with Dr. Jessen, right? He’s not in the ER anymore. Right? Please be right. Oh, God, please be right. The running monologue repeated itself over and over as she worked. The hubub outside grew quieter and no more gunshots were heard.

BANG! BANG! “Dr. Lawson? Dr. Lawson, we need you over in Trauma 1!”

The muffled voice of an intern calling for her specifically pulled her attention away from her patient. She looked up at Dr. Hampton, who nodded for a second-year resident to take over. Tess rushed to the door, ripping off her mask and gloves and opened the door.

“What? What’s happening?”

“Dr. Dimka has been shot!”

Hearing the news, it was like she’d just been shot herself. “What?”

“Dr. Dimka. He’s in Trauma 1, gunshot wound to the chest and abdomen. He’s asking for you.”

Tess felt like she was moving through thick, muddy water and the lights all seemed too bright. Hands shaking, she shoved them into the gloves being held open for her by a nurse and moved into the space made for her by the other doctors.

“Erik? Erik, baby, can you hear me?” In any other situation, calling him “baby” during the course of their work would have resulted in an argument, but in that moment, they weren’t colleagues. She was a terrified fiance looking at two holes in the man she loved. But she was also a doctor, a surgeon.

His eyes flicked open and he groaned, reaching out his hand and Tessa grabbed it. The equipment surrounding them started making alarming beeps and his hand went limp. A nurse called out, “We’re losing him again!”

“Push another cc of epi!” Tess cried. “And pass me the paddles!”

“He’s reached his limit, Tess!” another resident replied, handing her a set of defibrillator paddles. They’d clearly been used, their surfaces covered in gel.

“Charge to 300! Clear!”

All eyes went from Erik to the machines.

“No change,” someone called out.

“Dammit!” Tess yelled. “Charge again! Clear!”

Nothing. Charge! Clear! Shock. Nothing. Charge! Clear! Shock. Nothing.

“Dr. Lawson —”

“No!” she practically shrieked at the attending. “I’m not giving up on him! Charge!” She turned back to Erik as the paddles charged again. “You’re not dying on me today. You can’t die on me!”

Shock. Nothing. Charge! Clear! Shock. Nothing …

“Come on!” She was nearly sobbing now and shook off the hands of the attending running the room.

“Dr. Lawson!”

She ignored him. No! This wasn’t happening! She’d laid her head on that chest the night before while watching the 11 o’clock news. She’d kissed those lips that were now so still, stared into those eyes the week before when they slowdanced at his brother’s wedding. If they lifted the lids, they would just see the whites. His eyes, his beautiful, deep, dark brown eyes, would have rolled up into his head.

“Charge!”

“Dr. Lawson!”

“What?!”

She looked up and no one else was touching Erik. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you in here working to save him?”

The attending grabbed her hands, forcing her to let go of the paddles. “Dr. Lawson, Tessa, he’s gone. You’re not going to bring him back. His aorta is torn. We couldn’t have gotten him to the OR in time. He’s gone.”

“No! No, no he can’t be …”

“Tessa, you know it as well as I do. A hollowpoint bullet to the chest and another near his diaphragm. There’s nothing we could have done to save him.”

Tessa couldn’t speak anymore. She barely registered the nurse’s arm around her shoulders until the nurse began to pull her away.

“No! Don’t touch me! Get out! Everyone get out!”

“Tessa, there’s no time for this,” the attending physician said, grasping her firmly by the shoulders. “We need the trauma room for others. There’s others who have been shot and there’s still more from the accident this morning. We’re going to take him to the morgue. I’m sorry it has to be this way, but we need to prep this room for another patient.”

“We don’t even have five minutes?” Tessa cried.

“No, people are dying and if you were Doctor Lawson right now, you’d know that. Right now, you’re Tessa Lawson, this man’s fiance. Nurse, take her out of here.”

Seeing Tessa emerge from the room, escorted by the nurse, the chief of surgery came over. He took one look at her and knew he didn’t need to ask.

“I’m so sorry, Dr. Lawson. Go home. You don’t need to be here anymore. Just go home.”

Tessa shook her head, her eyes out of focus. “I can’t. I can’t go home. Not yet. Look at this place — you do need me. Give me 15 minutes and I’ll be back.”

If anyone heard the hyperventilating and sobs coming from the supply closet on the second floor, they didn’t say anything.

(GIF credit)

_____________________________

She’d stayed to finish her shift, much to the shock and unwanted admiration from her colleagues. The truth was, the thought of coming home to the house she and Erik had bought together, complete with un-unpacked boxes, was just devastating.

Not quite as devastating as walking into an OR to find two nurses and in intern trying to keep her back.

“I don’t think you should be in here.”

“What do you mean, I shouldn’t be in here? Someone said you needed more hands in here.”

“It’s the shooter,” the intern blurted out.

The sight of the man who killed Erik, who’d torn her world apart, laying on an operating table nearly took her breath away. Then, just like they had with Erik, the monitors started beeping.

“His blood pressure is dropping!” a voice behind the wall of her coworkers cried.

(Photo credit)

“Not the fuck on my watch,” Tessa replied, forging through and arriving at the bedside and taking charge. “You are going to live a long, healthy life so you can see justice and live with what you’ve done,” she snarled, holding her hand out. “Ten blade!”

As they wheeled the shooter off to recovery, another nurse approached Tess in the hallway. “Dr Lawson? You left your phone in Trauma 2. You might want to respond to a few of these messages.”

16 voicemails. 56 text messages. The news had broken.

“I’m —” she began a text message. Fine? She wasn’t fine. She wasn’t OK. Nothing about this day was any kind of all right. Nothing was going to be fine ever again.

“I’m safe. Spread the word.” That would have to do for now.

Patients cared for and shift over hours later, Tess was exhausted and dodging the chief of surgery, who, rumor had it, was searching for her. He’d ban her from the hospital for a week at least. It was probably the right thing to do, but all she wanted to do was work. Sleep, then work. The day wasn’t done, though.

She checked in on her other patients before making her way to the shooter’s room. Surprisingly, he was awake.

“You the doctor who patched me up?” he asked. His eyes were dull and … almost bored. “You should have let me die.”

“You’re right. I should have, given what you did.” Tessa stepped up to the man’s bedside and began checking the monitors, making notes in the man’s chart. “How long have you been awake?”

“‘Bout half an hour.”

She made another note.

“For my own sanity, Mr. —” check the chart “Saunders, I need to know why. Why did you open fire at a hospital? You killed six people, maybe more by the time we know who is and isn’t going to survive.”

“That doctor killed my wife.”

“Which doctor? Four of the people who are dead were doctors.”

“Dr. Dimka. My wife came in with a bad case of heartburn and he killed her.”

Everything came rushing back to Tess, different pieces of information she’d received filling in blanks. Erik had talked about his patient with the severe heartburn, had been excited to see the surgery he’d been allowed to scrub in on as the lead surgeon in the OR. The woman and her family had been warned about potential side effects and complications and one had occurred. A blood vessel had been damaged by the stomach acids and had burst while in surgery. They tried to get the bleeding under control, even with the attending’s help, but it just hadn’t been enough. After pronouncing her dead, he went out to tell her husband, who punched Erik across the face and would have continued hitting him if he hadn’t been pulled away. She hadn’t been able to kiss Erik’s cheek for more than a week.

“You came in here and killed six people as compensation for your wife’s death?”

“Would have been seven if you’d let me die,” the man grumbled. “Plus, with him dead, there’s a chance that poor sap they were working on might survive. Did they?”

“No, they died, too,” Tess said, trying to keep her voice level. She was not going to dip to the level of screaming at patients. “Their surgeons and nurses getting shot and shot at can have that effect.”

“I wanted him to feel as hurt and as lost as I felt,” he gritted through his teeth. “He took her away from me!”

“He’s not feeling pain! He’s not feeling anything anymore! That’s the one saving grace in this whole tragedy. You thought you’d hurt him by killing him? He’s not hurt. I am! That man you mowed down was going to marry me in six months. I love him! His family loves him! You’ve only spread pain!”

Do not cry, do not cry, do not cry …

“Then why didn’t you let me die?”

“Because if I took you away out of vengeance, then there would just be more people hurting. Because despite the thing you did, there are still people who love you, who are frantically calling your phone right now to find out where you are and praying the man on the news isn’t you and if it is, that you’re still alive. Because I am a surgeon and when you are on an operating table in my OR, you are safe from anyone trying to hurt you and the only people allowed near you are the ones who want to see you healed. Because …” Get a grip of yourself! “Because people like Erik Dimka would have wanted to see you live and because I want to see you leave this hospital and go to prison for what you’ve done. You don’t get to take the easy way out with a bullet.”

Mr. Saunders was quiet, seemingly understanding that it wasn’t his place to speak to the woman whose life he just shattered.

“Now, if you need anything, that button there will call a nurse. I’d use it sparingly, though. You’re not exactly patient of the day with them. Get some rest. You’re going to need it.”

Heart pounding and eyes aching, Tessa turned on her heel and left the room.

“A moving speech.”

Tessa jumped and whirled around to see the surgical chief standing on the other side of the doorway.

“Are you ready to go home now or do we need to call your family to come get you?” _____________________________

Tess gathered her things, trying to ignore the pitying looks her coworkers tried to give her. One of the interns was sobbing in a corner near the doctor’s lounge. Word had it, he’d been dating one of the nurses who’d been killed. There was such an overflow of grief and pain. People hugging each other, speaking more gently to coworkers. Patients could feel it, too. Those who were strong enough to leave or had been there awaiting non-emergent surgeries were leaving, heading to hospitals out of town where they felt safer. Tess didn’t agree with their assessment, but understood. A place where such violence had been committed wouldn’t have sat well with her, either, if the place wasn’t her second home. First home, really, given the number of hours she’d spent there compared to the hours she’d spent at home.

How am I ever going to work in Trauma 1 again? Or that OR?

You’ll do it because that’s your job and it’s what Erik would have wanted.

The grief nearly consumed her again and she just made it to her car before her knees could buckle. She scrambled to get the car door shut before she covered her mouth and keened into her hand, letting all the exhaustion, pain, anger and fear the day had held rip its way out of her throat. She roared like a wounded animal in the driver’s seat, losing track of time. She didn’t know how long she sat there, rocking back and forth, trying to breathe and not being able to stop crying, but after a while, the tears dried up and her voice dwindled to nothing. There was simply nothing left and no more energy to put it out if there had been any more to release.

Her phone chirped at her from her pocket, likely the latest of many times since Tess had gotten to her car.

The latest text — surely her voicemail inbox was full — was from Ollie.

“Coming to get you. Be there in 5.”

She wanted to respond that it wasn’t necessary. She didn’t need someone to come get her, like a child after soccer practice. But she didn’t want to drive home, either. If she didn’t go home to that empty house, she could pretend, eventually, this had all been a nightmare and she would wake up to Erik’s gentle breathing next to her in bed, the coffee maker in the kitchen switching on at 5:30 a.m. and everything going as normal.

But that wasn’t practical. She couldn’t just not go home and it wasn’t healthy to fall into a delusion that what happened hadn’t.

Before Tessa could work up the will to respond, a pair of headlines made their way toward her, followed by a familiar black Lincoln Towncar.

She almost cried with relief to see Ollie step out of the car and approach her door. She opened the door and slowly stepped out. Her bones and muscles felt like they had aged 40 years that day.

Then there were arms around her, strong ones that smelled of pine and Irish whiskey in a good way and she let them support her, large hands smoothing her hair, deep voice cooing, the way he would a baby or sleepy toddler. She was sure he was actually saying words, but she was too tired to make them out. Just comfort sounds.

Ollie helped her to the passenger side of his car and went back to get her keys from the ignition and pull her bag from her passenger seat. With a click and a beep, he locked the car and slid into his own seat and drove back to the home he shared with Marie.

Everyone was there — two brothers and their wives and Andrew and his boyfriend, a coworker of Tessa’s, an eye surgeon, who had been off that day, along with Marie and quite a few of the Uncles. She looked at them as she came through the door, but she didn’t say anything, couldn’t make her mouth work, and, after accepting an embrace from Marie, just drifted up to her old bedroom, which was now laid out as a guest room. Tomorrow. She would deal with all of this tomorrow.

Current Day

Tears rolled down Tessa’s cheeks into her hair as she lay on her back in bed. The dream still plagued her, throwing all of the worst memories at her when all she wanted was some sleep.

Saunders hadn’t even seen the inside of a courtroom. The brother of one of the nurses he’d killed got ahold of him in jail and ended his life there in a cement cage. Tessa wasn’t surprised. She had a few Uncles and Cousins in the prison who likely would have done it, too, if given the chance. Four years. It had been nearly four years ago. Four years in March.

She listened, trying to control her breathing and trying not to sniffle too loud, for the sound of Rion’s breathing from the other room. Rion had woken her up crying before, so surely the other way around was possible. He’d had a long day and she’d had to carry him to bed. He needed to sleep.

Tessa sighed, wiping at her eyes. She couldn’t remember his voice. There were recordings of his voice in videos and things like that, but that was the voice he used for everyone else. His voice took on a different tone when it was just him and her and she couldn’t remember what he sounded like. The realization sent a new lump to her throat and a strangled sob. She had all the pictures in the world of them together — why hadn’t she kept a voicemail or something? Anything? She’d thought they’d share a life together, maybe have kids, and grow old on the back patio, talking surgery. She’d thought they had time.

Cry, just keep it quiet, she told herself.

No luck. Her door was opened just wide enough for Minion to be able to roll in if he needed to and she hadn’t realized he’d done so until there was a faint *clink* of glass ball on wooden bedframe. She ran a hand across her eyes and rolled over to peer down at him.

“Hey, are you OK? Did Rion have another nightmare? Did you?”

Minion wiggled in the negative. “You’re crying.”

Busted.

“Y-yeah, just a little. Dreams, you know. Silly.” Tess wiped at her face, hoping Minion would see it as an I’m-tired wipe instead of a sad one. She was supposed to be taking care of them, not the other way around.

Minion bumped his ball into the bedframe again, wordlessly indicating he wanted to be picked up. Tessa reached down and set him on the bed next to her pillow.

“Rion doesn’t like to be alone when he’s sad. He doesn’t always want to talk about it, but he doesn’t like to be alone. I’m going to stay here until you fall asleep, OK?”

Tessa didn’t know whether to cry again or smile, so she settled on whatever her face would do at the moment and hoped Minion would understand. “OK. Let me know if you want to go back to your bed, OK?” she asked, resting her right hand alongside Minion’s ball to make sure he wouldn’t roll off the bed.

“OK. Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

A few hours later, Tessa pulled half-way out of sleep. There was someone in her room that hadn’t been there when she’d fallen asleep. They weren’t moving around or getting into anything. The presence was just standing there by the bed. She cracked one eye open and found a pair of green eyes staring down at her.

Both she and Rion jumped in surprise.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “Can I come in, too?”

Tess scooched over, just past the middle of the queen-sized bed, to make room for him, pulling Minion carefully into the spot between the two pillows, and patted the spot she’d just left. In a way, she regretted not having told him to come to the other side of the bed — it was colder over there — but the deed was done and it wouldn’t take long for her to heat the unused, cold side of the bed.

Rion climbed up and assumed his usual cuddle position, head up against the underside of her chin and his fists tucked up under his, with the elbow on top resting over Tessa’s rib. Tessa let her right arm fall over him pulling him close.

She planted a kiss on Rion’s forehead and peeked up at Minion to make sure he was still asleep before letting her eyes close again and drifting back to sleep herself.

It wasn’t the way she’d planned for a full bed, but she didn’t feel quite so alone anymore.

#tw: gun violence #not so alone #erik and tess #minion is such a sweetheart #drabbles

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myloveofwords · 7 years ago

Text

Do You Believe?

Original Imagine: hi! I love your writing! it’s absolutely amazing! I was wondering if I could have a one shot request where the reader gets critically injured bc Barry wasn’t fast enough to save her. super angsty and sad? thank you! @zbvbble (Sorry it took so long Sweetie! hope you enjoy, cuz it almost killed me!)

Reader Gender: Female

Word Count: 2,000

Warnings: ANGST. SO MUCH ANGST. UH. OH MY GOD. I’M SO SORRY.

Author: Contrygal7

* * * * *

If I didn’t believe in you.

The words cut deep into your head, the first thought of the day and recalling fights hurt. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those words, though. Of course the first time wasn’t nearly as depressing.

No.

The first time it was warm. A fuzzy kinda warm that slowly seeps its way into your bones almost as if its igniting your entire body in a tantalizingly slow burn. The early morning sunshine, the whole world cascaded in a pink tint, as it fell lazily over the small bedroom in your even smaller studio apartment that you currently shared with your full time boyfriend part time superhero, Barry Allen.

The whole day seemed to reflect your mood, everything a stupid, can’t possibly be real kinda happy. Then you heard it, you’d heard it before of course, but singing in the shower was one thing… This was something different all together.

♪ If I didn’t believe in you♪

♪We’d never have gotten this far. ♪

♪If I didn’t believe in you♪

♪And all of the ten thousand women you are. ♪

He was actually singing. Like he sounded like he knew what the hell he was doing, now your boyfriend was many things. Goofy. Cute. Adorable. A super dork. Charismatic as hell when he wanted to be. But a singer? It just didn’t seem like it was actually him.

… Until he accidentally dropped this solid one liner into the air in front of him.

“Maybe I should just ask her… Nah. No. It’s too soon. Yeah. It’s wayyyyyyy to soon. But is it? Seven months? Maybe. I mean, ugh. I don’t know. I mean I know it’s what I want. But is it what she wants?”

Elevated heart rate, which Barry can hear, or sense or whatever the fuck he does. He turns around faster than your eyes can see, but living with a speedster you we’re used to it.

His deep blue eyes seemed to mirror your own terror as the two of you stood in the bright sunny kitchen, the tension palpable. You could feel his anxiety from across the small room as he too loudly asked “Coffee? You need coffee. I need coffee. I think we both need coffee. I’ll…”

Barry was gone and back in seconds two coffee cups from CC Jitters. You smile sweetly at his terror filled face as a single hand cups his cheek “Thank you sweetheart. Did you have something you wanted to ask me?”

His eyes screamed yes, but somehow he kept his dorkiness to a minimum as he, as slowly as a speedster can, dropped down on one knee. His big puppy dog eyes are what sealed the deal, he opened the small black velvet box in his hands. You looked down, catching glimpse of the shiny red bone shaped dog tag nestled inside.

BUT back to present day … Barry had left this morning with out a single noise.

You woke to a dark room and cold sheets. Glancing quickly at the alarm the 5:13 there glared at you with bright green neon. The world around you seemed to darken, you didn’t like fighting with Barry but sometimes he was just so stubborn.

The fight seemed to cycle and cycle thought your head. You overthought everything said and remembered everything. It was torture, sitting alone in a bed meant for two. Cold and alone. A single tear fell from your cheek as the words said came into razor focus:

“WEll, I’m sorry Barry! I’m sorry I can’t be everything that you want me to be! I’m sorry I’m not a doctor like Caitlin, or a superstar reporter like Iris! Shit Barry.“

"Who said anything about Caitlin or Iris?”

“And you’re never home! You’re always with everyone else but me. You leave me for days, sometimes weeks at a time with no explanation.”

“I have responsibilities (Y/N)! I can’t be here every time you have a feeling!”

“Like you’d know anything about me feelings, Barry. You’re never home. You’re always gallivanting around the city, fighting bad guys and ignoring ME!”

“I do NOT ignore you (Y/N).”

“Well you certainly don’t pay attention.“

"And when am I suppose to do that (Y/N)? The three hours I get to sleep at night? Or maybe you’d like the thirty minutes before hand when I eat before I pass out. Oh! Or maybe you’d like the eight hours when I’M AT WORK EVERYDAY.”

“OR you could come home before the goddamn crack of dawn. Or when you do come home, you always find some kind of excuse to leave yet again!“

The click of paws on the floor snapped you from your memory so you figured Flash, the lovable dalmatian that you and Barry adopted together, needed to go outside.

Without hesitation you stumbled your way through the dark gathering Flash’s leash and your shoes before hustling him outside.

The air was cold and wet. The rain fell around you, chilling you to the bone. You didn’t see anything until it was too late. The sweet smell filled your nostrils and the last thing you remember is the cool sensation against your face as you feel into the darkness.

* Barry’s P.O.V *

I should have went back this morning. I should have went home and crawled into bed, held her close and never left. My neck is sore from sleeping on the couch at the lab, my body aches from lack of sleep, and my head is spinning in regrets.

I should just go home now. Call the captain, tell him I need a personal day. Pick up some flowers and some pizza from that place in Gotham she loves so much. Meet her back at the apartment and lay in bed all day.

Hell, she’s never going to say yes to marrying me if I keep treating her like this. My hand instantly goes to cup the diamond ring in my coat pocket. I shake my head as I realize that I’d been carrying it around since the second month we’d started dating.

She is my everything. I have to make this up to her.

I take out my phone and begin to execute my brilliant plan, until my phone lights up and Cisco’s name pops up. Damn it.

”Cisco, whatever it is let Wally handle it. I can–“

"Barry. It’s (Y/N).”

I was in Star Labs before the call ended.

“What’s happening Cisco?”

“The Meta-finder got something. It’s him Barry. And he’s got (Y/N).”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. Neighbors place her walking Flash at 5, and he just popped up on my radar. We have no account of his whereabouts for in between.”

“That’s 3 hours Cisco.”

“Yeah, man. It’s bad. Want me to call Oliver?”

“No.”

I didn’t finish my sentence. I left her alone. Scared. In the middle of a fight. And now I may never get to see her smile again. I suited up and headed face first into a hurricane.

* * * * *

You woke with a throbbing in the back of your head. Your stomach growled causing you to slump forward, you realized your hands were bound behind you. You shuffled forward trying to regain some kind of bearing, and that’s when you heard him.

“Comfy?”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Oh I think we both know the answer to that question.”

“Well your not going to get it. He’s not coming.”

“Oh but he is.”

“Oh, but he’s not. Asshole.”

“Uh oh. Trouble in paradise?”

You tilted away from him, hoping to terminate any and all conversation which worked. For a whole half a second.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. He won’t get here in time.”

“I’m not taking the bait, asshole.”

“What is it with you and that word?”

“OH I’m sorry. Douche bag. There’s another word for ya.”

“What does Mr. Allen see in you anyway?”

Your eyes widened and you were thankful you’d turned your body away. How in the hell did he know? Your head began to throb again and you cried out.

The last thing you remember is Barry’s face as the darkness slowly took over. You stumbled over the words as they left your mouth. You didn’t know if he could hear them or not, but they needed to be said.

“I believe in you, Barry Allen.”

Your eyes closed slowly and your breathing soon followed. Everything blurred together. Then black.

* Barry’s P.O.V *

I saw the light leave her eyes and I cried out. I don’t remember much after that. Caitlin says it could have been that my body was moving faster than my brain could keep up with. Wells says it could have been too traumatic and I’ve blocked it out. I don’t know. I don’t really care.

All I know is she’s in a hospital bed, on life support and I’m still breathing. I haven’t figured out the how or the why yet.

Another tear falls down my face. It seems like that’s all I do now. Cry.

I feel nothing, I feel empty. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I just sit here and stare down at the love of my life. And pray that she will wake up.

Her last words bring a sharp pain to my chest.

I believe in you, Barry Allen.

Why? Her last words, she had to have known they were going to be, yet… She didn’t cry out for help. She didn’t try and plead for her life. She didn’t scream at the top of her lungs…

She told me exactly what I needed to hear. A single phrase and I felt I could take on the world. A conclusion of words that made me feel invisible. A solid string of syllables that connected the two of us in a way I didn’t even realize she was capable of.

A single memory came into mind. One with white curtains and yellow sunshine. Dirty dishes and happy times.

♪ If I didn’t believe in you. ♪

♪ We’d never have gotten this far. ♪

I took her hand into my own, feeling the warmth and smiling down at her.

♪ If I didn’t believe in you. ♪

♪ And all of the ten thousand women you are. ♪

I laughed slightly remembering how she hated when I sang that part to her. Part of me hoped it would piss her off enough she’d wake up.

♪ If I didn’t think you could do ♪

♪ Anything you ever wanted to ♪

♪ If I wasn’t certain that you’d come through somehow ♪

♪ The fact of the matter is, (Y/N). ♪

♪ I wouldn’t be sitting here now. ♪

She never once moved. I watched as the machine assisted her with each and every breath. The rise and fall of her chest and the sudden stillness of her seemed to be too much all at once.

I raised my hand to my face, feeling the sobs begin to tear through my body. I walked over to the machine and with a trembling hand, flipped all the necessary switches.

I watched though tear filled eyes as the machine took her final breath for her. Her eyes never once opening.

21:17

The clock taunted me beside me. I swear I could feel my soul leave my body.

I listened to the tantalizing beeping of the heart rate monitor.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

I listened closer as it begin to flat line signaling the end of her life.

BEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.

Silence. It filled the room. Filled my head, my heart. Everything. There is no moving on from this kind of pain.

This is it.

The end.

Beep.

. . . . . Then again… Maybe not.

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deadlykittenkaywriting · 7 years ago

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Tanzanite

SPN Rare Ship CC: Round 12 | @deadlyangelkay vs. @blue-reveries Prompt: Tanzanite Ship: Meanstiel (Meg/Dean/Cas) Word Count: 1220 Tags/Warnings: all tags, warnings here Summary: Polyamory AO3 Link

Being in a poly relationship is hard work. Even harder when you add in three different thought processes. Three very different personalities. Even three different egos. As with most things in life, the harder the work, the better the reward. In this case, the ability to keep the peace and harmony is far more rewarding.

Dean’s not dumb. He’s heard the whisperings. He’s seen the disdain in others eyes when the three of them go out. He knows that Castiel and Meg feel the stares too. Yes, it put a strain on their relationship at first. Dean hates judgemental douche bags, especially if said douche bag hurts someone he cares about.

Meg didn’t really care. If anything it fueled her into being more physical in her affections in public.

But Castiel… Poor Castiel couldn’t handle the strain at first. He had the biggest heart of the three of them. He loved both Dean and Meg equally. Wanted to be with the both of them, but felt like the stigma from outside sources and the bickering between his two loves was tearing him in half. Much to Meg and Dean’s surprise, Castiel even left them, tired of it all. Six months into their relationship, a simple note on the counter placed by his phone.

The note simply said that until Dean and Meg had learned to ‘stow their crap’ he would be at this his brother’s house and will return when he felt it was time.

The first week since Castiel left, they had spent that time at each other’s throats. Meg blamed Dean for his inability to talk like an adult about his feelings. His need to drown in whiskey when he was angry, frustrated or upset. Dean turned around and lashed at her, calling her every name that would make not only his mother but his aunt Ellen both roll in their graves.

Week two was the silent treatment. Their king sized bed had a huge gaping hole in the middle where Castiel was meant to be, while Dean and Meg lie on their sides, their backs to each other.

Week three, the dam broke, so to speak. Dean had come home to find Meg on the shower floor, sobbing as the icy water assaulted her. Her eye makeup left black streaks down her face as she tried to shield herself with one of Castiel’s dress shirts. Dean shut the water off and joinder her on the floor. He pulled her to him and held her until her sobs were just silent shakes of her small body.

Week four and five they had come to an agreement. No more acting as if they were the mistresses to their own relationship to Castiel. Their priority was Castiel’s happiness. They spent the time getting to know each other more intimately and not sexually as they both agreed that they would rather have Castiel with them for that. Instead, they had intimate conversations while eating or laying in bed.

Who knew they both shared a love for Metallica?

Their dynamic had changed noticeably to other as well. They no longer appeared at odds with each other or just as if they were acquaintances. It was clear that there was a friendship forming and that they were getting closer. Dean’s brother, Sam, had even commented on the harmonious feel surrounding the two.

By the sixth week, Castiel came home. He came home unexpectedly to find his two loves on the couch. Dean’s head in Meg’s lap and she gently scratched her nails along his scalp. When Castiel opened his mouth to comment on the sight before him - as Dean and Meg had hardly touched each other, ever - Meg held her finger to her lips. A small smile was hidden behind her finger. She leaned her head back, welcoming the gentle yet loving kiss Castiel bestowed upon her and watched him with amused eyes as he moved to sit on the coffee table across from them.

He couldn’t help the fond smile on his face as he took in the sight in front of him. Both his loves were dressed for bed. Dean in his standard red and black flannel pants, wearing Castiel’s Illinois State University shirt. Meg was wearing Dean’s Metallica shirt and most likely nothing else beneath as she liked to ‘breathe’ at night.

Castiel gave her a pointed look at the shirt, he knew for a fact that was one of Dean’s favorites and he was surprised to see it on Meg.

She just shrugged. “Apparently, I’m worthy of it because I can name more than three of their songs,” she explained softly.

Castiel chuckled, reaching out to touch Dean. the back of his fingers gently brushes against the apple of Dean’s cheeks. Dean hums at the contact and nuzzles his face into Meg’s thigh.

“I see you’re getting along, now.”

Meg smiles at that and looks down at Dean, her fingers still carding their way through his short hair. “Yeah, he’s not so bad. I guess we can keep him.” she jokes.

Castiel playfully shoves Meg’s other leg making her snicker. “How long has he been out?”

“Fell asleep during Doctor Sexy. Like five minutes into the newest episode. Apparently, Adler was riding his ass hard today and he nearly quit.” Castiel gaped at her. “What?” she asked.

“He told you that?”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Yeah. In fact, did you know that he is in the running for a junior partner? I have no idea what the hell he does at Sandover, but you should have been here last week, Clarence. Crowley and Cain think he’s the best candidate for the position and it was like Dean was on cloud nine.”

Castiel just looked at her in wonder. His plan had worked. The two people he loved the most were able to get to know each other without him acting as a mediator. He wondered just how well they got to know each other while he was gone and found himself asking that very same question out loud.

Meg shook her head. “We didn’t. The most we did was cuddle at night. Neither one of us were in the mood without you with us.”

“Wouldn’t be the same without you, Sunshine.” Dean’s voice was thick with sleep and Castiel looked down to see half-lidded, green eyes looking up at him. Dean gave him a small smile. “Welcome home, Cas. We missed you.”

Castiel smiled at Dean, moving to give him a soft kiss, much like the one he had given Meg. “I missed you both as well. What do you say to us going to bed?”

Dean nodded, slowly pushing himself up off Meg.

“You two are like old men. I swear.” Meg teased, getting up and moving past the two men, only to squeak in surprise when Dean slaps her ass.

“You love it, Masters.”

Castiel waited for the snarky, insult like comment that was bound to follow but was pleasantly surprised when she stuck her tongue out at Dean then winked.

“You comin’ Cas?” Dean asked as he stood up. Castiel only nodded and followed them both to the bedroom.

That night was the first night in which the three went to sleep as one loving unit and Castiel could feel it through his soul.

#spnrareshipcc #meanstiel #blue-reveries #polyamourous #fan fiction #deadlykittenkay ► deadlyangelkay #my writing

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bang-me-bangtan-style · 8 years ago

Photo

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WORD COUNT: 3257

It was really true when people said that you don't know what you have until its gone. You don't get, or understand it fully because you were to blind to see the bigger picture. You should have been happy with the person in your life regardless of all the obstacles in your way. So when that person could possibly disappear forever without fair waring it was only right to feel this type of pain. The excurating pain of what could have been and what should have been. A constant reminder of what you should have done, should have did. And if sehun died right now. This is what you were expected to feel.

Everything seemed to be going in slow motion as you watched them load up sehun. The neighborhood was being noisy and others watched in panic as they seen your brother being taken off.

Riding in the ambulance to the hospital with Sehun you tightly held his hand as you seen how bad his condition was. he started jerking." he is having a seizure!" you jumped and you looked around at the paramedics and suddenly your hands were torn apart and you were pushed back and out the way. you immediately started to cry as if you had any left to spare.

In your little corner that they trapped you in you watch them cater to your brother. "I need a sedative!" the one who seemed like the lead paramedic said. "start an IV need about 400 cc!" as your brother kept jerking around violently they put together an IV and as soon as they gave him the sedative he slowly calmed. "he should be fine till we get there but as soon as we arrive he is going to need a gastric suction." he continued.

(Gastric suction: is a procedure that empties the contents of the stomach. It may be done for tests, or to remove materials such as poisons or for a patient who has overdosed.)

"This is 376, we have a patient who needs a gastric suction as soon as we arrive on the scene." The second paramedic said. He waited for a reply. "We will be there in 3 minutes. " he replied. "Alright thank-you."

He looked at you. "Someone will show you to the waiting room till you can see him. You looked up from your shaking hands. "Arasso."

Arriving, everything went so fast. You were dragged out while Sehun was inches behind you. You got dragged out the way as they pushed him immediately towards the side entrance of the hospital. Doctors in white coats were waiting and quickly went to Sehun as he came into view. And with that disappeared towards the ER.

"Agassi, ttara wa, " a person with hospital uniform said grabbing you towards the actual door of the hospital.As the guy guided you, you started to feel heavy pain in your chest. Suddenly everything was too quiet. And it cleared your thoughts and senses you could now think straight, having time to think about everything that just happened. All you could hear were the sounds of hushed talking and phones ringing at the receptionist desk. Everyone around you seemed to be far away and when you got to the waiting room it seemed you were out of it. The ahjussi had to call you to get you attention.

"Agassi, wait here and I'll come back when I hear back from them." All you could do was shake your head in response. you just didn't have the strength to speak..

He left you there in the waiting room at the door and you watched him leave. Slowly you turned around and seen the various people waiting for their love ones as well.

You sat down and you couldn't think anything but bad thoughts. Another thing, you couldn't sit still. One more thing, although many people were in the waiting room, everyone was dead silent. All except the little girl who seem to be oblivious to her mother's silent sobs. She was playing with the toys pervaded by the hospital.

That scene made you think the worst. Maybe her husband was in the ER getting surgery or something traumatically. Hopefully not but that was your first guess. You felt a pang in your already stabled heart.

After observing every inch of the room of the waiting room. And everyone in it. You still had Sehun in the back of your mind. Bad thoughts following right behind. you could only hope and pray he would be fine. If not, you would blame yourself for the rest of your life.

You held your hands on your lap clasping them together tightly almost painfully. Without realizing it your hands became red almost purple. Your anxiety at its highest peak.

Your phone vibrated.

From: luhan

I'm at your house nobody's is here.

You wanted to ignore it but you realized he would find out sooner or later. After all he was your best friend and you didn't want secret between you two. And then you thought about your biggest secret. We'll all except for that one.

To: Luhan

I'm at the hospital with sehun. He OD. He tried to kill himself.

Minutes seemed to pass by and No response came from Luhan. And then you phone started to ring. You who was still hyperventilating decided it wasn't the best idea to answer the call with everyone in the ER so quiet and waiting for their loved ones you could barely manage to stay quiet now. Again, he called. And you swiped to button to stop it.

From Luhan:

Where are you what hospital. I'm going to be there with you.

How sweet of him.

To Luhan:

I'm at Kyungsoo med

From Luhan:

Arasso I'll be there.

Minutes passed by again and soon you finally got yourself together whereas you were not crying anymore. But everything you breathed in and out was difficult. It was painful. But already you weren't crying anymore.

Your phone vibrated and it was Luhan.

From Luhan:

what floor?

To Luhan:

I don't know let me go ask.

Getting up you went you to the receptions desk.

" May I help you?" She said.

"Dae, could you tell me what floor we are located on. I have a friend who is lost."

She smiled. "We are on the 5 floor the OR section." She replied.

"Thank-you." And you walked away and went outside the waiting room.

You dialed his number.

"Luhan, I'm on floor five, the OR section. Waiting room 3" you said looking at the number on the door. You walked little from the room. To make sure you weren't to disturb others.

"Okay I'm coming." He said.

You tried to gather your thoughts as you waited for Luhan to come. You put your fingers through your hair in frustration not knowing what was going on with your brother at the moment.

You were pulled into an embrace and you know right then that it was luhan. He tightly held you and you felt a warmness of possibly. "So, tell me what happened. Why would Sehun do that to himself?" he said it was kind of a win lose situation If you told him. That would be like possibly telling him the truth about your secret. You didn't want to do that but his eyes were inviting for an explanation. you treated him like husband best friend he was, and this was the result. Be it would all come back to why? Why did you treat him that way? You felt to needy him giving more to you than he received back from you. You were hesitant to answer and Luhan pulled away and knitted his eyebrows together. So, you lied knitting your own eye brows together your watery eyes tearing up more. "I don't know."

Could you go to jail for these kinds of things? For all your lies? the way you beat around the bush the way you did? No wonder you couldn't sleep well at night, for lying when you knew the truth.

"I'm sure whatever the reason we need to help him and if he is alright he will never do it again most likely," Luhan said. Humph again. Little did he know that this was the exact third time for him. Since you pushed him away and you said you wanted him out of your life it seemed as if he was determined to get rid of his existence something you didn't want to think about because you felt guilty every time. And now you were seeing it with you own eyes it was very unbearable.

In response to luhan statement you just sobbed because the truth behind this was horrible. And you thought that that should be you instead of him. You were almost a murderer, a 2nd hand degree murderer "Come on let's go wait." He said pulling you, the murderer towards the waiting room.

You sat down and people looked up. It made you uncomfortable with everyone's eyes on your every move but you tried time shake it off. Your anxiety should be the last thing to worry about at this moment.

"You know if you're tired you can lay on me." Luhan suggested.

As you kept going in and out of consciousness. Your head kept banging around. It had been already exactly. 4 hours since you and luhan had sat down to wait. People had left and new people had come in. It was just the waiting game for now.

"No, I'm fine." You lied but you were tired, very tired.

A few moments later: Your head jerked again.

"See lay on me you're going to get a neck cramp sitting like that." He said jerking you awake.

Your eyes jolted open. guessing you fell asleep again. You felt annoyed but Finally, you let him scoot closer to you so you could put your head on his shoulder. and after that you passed out.

"your fucking disgusting." a familiar voice said. Weirdly the halls were dark and No one was around. You couldn't see this person but you could hear them. You looked around at all the corners of the long hallway and slowly walked. "I mean I thought at first it was an innocent thing but I figured it out. I figured you out Ana. And now that I know your secret I can't express how disgusted I am by you."

Your heart was beating fast and you felt like crying. What was life? Was this familiar Person talking about...perhaps your secret? Andwae you hadn't told a soul and you were time take that to the grave. But you still couldn't help but have confusion spread across your face. "Ana don't look so surprised you and I both know Exactly what is going on." You stopped at the end of the dark hallway at this statement. You could either go right or left at the end. And you contemplated whether to go either way. Finally deciding you went left and as you kept walking down that hall Someone snatched you up from behind. "Ana I know you know that I know. Why don't you just admit it." They whispered in your ear. You jumped and quickly turned around.

Laughing. He started laughing. Kai was laughing. "Are you scared? Did I scare you." Instead of answering you started looking around at the empty hallway and when you turned around he was gone but he was still laughing. At this point you had gotten scared and you wonderful how he disappeared. And then suddenly his voice stopped. You turned the other way and started running for the entrance of the school. You heard a loud bang and you stopped it was just around the corner. You felt frozen. It was as if you were in a horror movie. Your heart was beating fast and you felt the need to hide. What was going to happen? Where you going to die? Your heart was in your ears as it vested loudly.

You had to turn this last corner to get towards the main office of the school. And then go from there to the exit. So, you had time move. Even if it was one step at a time. as you took you first step. You stopped. You didn't know if you could or even if you should do this. But as you rounded the corner your breath caught in your throat. And when you finally got to the other side nothing.

You were scarred that kai might scare you but if he wasn't here then, where was he? Another bang was herd but if was coming from the other side of the school. The side at which you just came. Quickly you wanted. to go and you paced your way towards the last corner. Looking back, you ran into something or rather someone and you cried bloody murder. "Ana what's wrong I've been looking for you." As you screamed on the ground scooting back you looked you to only see Sehun. Utterly concerned and oblivious but the suddenly he looked pained and he struggled to speak.

You looked confused as blood came out from his mouth. Looking down you seen the knife. Falling to his knees kai stood behind him.

"your next, run."

You backed up and started to run, footsteps following behind you....

Screaming. In reality you were screaming.

"Ana what's wrong wake up?"

But you seemed trapped you were still running from kai.

"Ana!" luhan shook you.

Kai was just a few feet behind you, right when he grabbed you

You jumped awake opening your eyes to every pair of eyes in the room that were on you. Luhan quickly apologized dragging you out.

A night mare. That was a night mare. One which you haven't had in a long time. Why were they making their comeback?

"Ana Gwen cha na? luhan said concerned.

the dreamed scared you half to death you could imagine your secret out in the open like that.

you couldn't even comprehend as the dream washed over you like that.

"Ana." you were now being shook by the shoulders by luhan. coming back into reality you looked at him and started to cry. he just held you close and tight. He just took it as you were still in shock about sehun.

But you took it as punishment for you recent actions.

" he is OK and alive the procedure went 100% as planned and he is now sleeping. You can visit him but just know he isn't awake."

Luhan had gave you time to spend with your unconscious brother so he stood outside the door. You stood in the middle of the room and you instantly started crying. Why? Why must he do this too you! Make you fall in love with him and then you having to push him away. Why! Why did he did he think it was OK to break your heart in two by trying to rid himself from you! Maybe it was your fault, but he shouldn't just go do it so easily like he did! Why was he so reckless so....so crazy!? Never in a million years did you feel like you died inside like the way you did when you seen the paramedics try to bring him back when he stopped breathing. Never would you want to experience that again. Never would you want him to experience that...that...pain... you would rather tell the whole world your dark secret. That to see your brother commit suicide again.

You hesitantly walked to his bed. The sound of the machine was beeping slowly indicating that is heart rate was at a normal level and that he was breathing still and you hoped it would stay that way. He had an oxygen mask on his face and his dyed blond hair was pushed back. his chest raised and fell with each breath. His thin wrist was bandaged up from the serious cut he had inflicted and you put your hand over your mouth to silence your sobs.

So, this was his secret. This was what he kept from you while you kept from him.

Self-harm.

And you thought your silly infatuation was hurtful. He was in more pain than you could ever be.

Now that you had slowly made it to the side of the bed you looked down at him it was so heartbreaking. That you wanted time turn around. You would do anything in the world to switch places. With him. Sehun didn't deserve this. And you didn't deserve him. Not now not ever.

You grabbed his hand and looked at the bandage on his left wrist. his other, his right wrist had the hospital tag on it. OH SEHUN it read.

"Sehun-ah I'm so sorry." You violently sobbed.

"Sehun I'm so sorry I wish I could take it all back I wish I could get another chance. Everything I did and said to you I'm so sorry." You could barely understand your own words and if someone was actually listening they probably couldn't understand your words either.

"Sehun please one day forgive me. Forgive me for all my sins." You squeezed his hand. "One...one day...you're going to realize. You deserve so much better and you're going to have a person who loves you since I never did it right. I could never get it right, I wish I did but I hadn't. " crying more you held your mouth as your other hand held his. "I'm sorry for all the pain I caused you," you said through your hand. "it never should of took place."

If only you loved him right. Like the way, you mentioned 99% of these events could have been prevented. But No, you just had to listen to your mind and not your heart.

Stupid minds.

Stupid hearts

"Omma, Sehun is in the hospital I know you and appa will be back in a few days but I just wanted to let you know Sehun is in the hospital. I was going to keep it from you but I thought that it would be best if I shouldn't. Mom he tried to kill himself. " you were sobbing into the answer machine of your mom who was on the other side of the world. "Mom, dad please do not send him away please. He needs me and I need him. I can't let you out him in an institution. For his actions. Please." You were crying in the bathroom stall in one of the hospitals restrooms. "just please when you get this call me. " your voice cracked. "I love you." And you hung up..

You pulled your legs to your chest. And gripped the phone tightly as you cried. More. Again. You felt alone. In your world, full of blame. Although luhan was here with you, you felt alone. You just needed to cry this last bit out before you could face anyone again. Luhan was probably wondering where you were but you didn't care. You needed this.

Some one walked in and you quickly wiped your tears. You went out time wash your hands. The stranger quickly smiled at you and you politely bowed. You dried your hands and you walked out the bathroom.

"There you are." Luhan said. You stopped in front of him ignoring his comment.

"Luhan Can I tell you a secret?"

Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnn

And so it begainssss mwhaahaaaaa

#EXO #oh sehun #minseok #ohsehin #sehun #exo luhan #exom #exok #jongade #jongin #asianfanfics #fanfic #kris wu #kris #zhang yixing #xiumin #iluvexo12 #forbidden love #gdragon #bigbang

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markhardycreative · 7 years ago

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Loupedeck for Adobe Lightroom 6 & CC

Loupedeck is awesome, Loupedeck is great, Loupedeck makes me a better retoucher simply because its rekindled my love of RAW processing and as sad as it sounds I do actually love what I do which is mostly retouching photos.

Now that's a pretty open and shut statement to start an article with but it's important to not waste your time thinking you're about to read (or not) anything other than a positive look at what I think is a positive step forward in the photo manipulation world.

Why Lightroom? (warning: sob story coming up)

Here's something that's important to understand about why I use Lightroom. I use Lightroom for retouching at speed! I've been a dedicated user since it was in beta, what must have been 10 years ago, which is about the same time I started shooting property and weddings. Disciplines which both require retouching a high volume of images in a very short time.

Over the years after sitting up all night after a busy day shooting retouching hundreds of images into the early hours knowing I had to get them finished and send off before doing the same thing all over again in just a few hours I looked for ANY way to get through pictures quicker. I used actions, presets, tried other software, tried outsourcing, tried enlisting help from other photographers. My own wife (who's a doctor and nothing to do with photography) even at one point after seeing me constantly working and not sleeping more than a few hours every night asked if I could teach her how to retouch so she could help. So I come from a place of "Please for the love of all that is good someone design something to make my life easier!"

AND SO ALONG COMES LOUPEDECK......

Loupedeck was orginally a 'indiegogo' project (and how I wish I'd known about it back then just look at the backer perks! I would've loved that trip to try it out with the hotel)

I'd read about several other editing console products for Lightroom in the past and they all looked... ok. I think it was a facebook post featuring an article about Loupedeck's first finished units being shipped that caught my attention. I was getting very bored with Lightroom, sounds odd yes, but truly I was. Day in, day out, I would use the same trusty presets, do the same things, with the same sliders on my Wacom Tablet. I even took to using Apps like 'be focused pro' to try to challenge myself by improving my productivity. I had overlays for my keyboard from amazon, shortcuts assigned to the wacom tablet, but I still wondered if I could work faster - yet maintain the same quality.

Whilst on holiday I started watching youtube videos of people using Loupedeck. They were all very simple reviews that didn't really show me the actual unit properly. I wanted to see all the knobs and know if it was possible to use two or more at once. I started writing to loupedeck and Felix a very kind and helpful rep started writing back. A week into my holiday I thought 'Ah to hell with it! I spent the money and ordered 'my' Loupedeck.

5 - 7 days later....

It's here! It came in two boxes. The first is white with Loupedeck printed on it and inside that a black embossed box again with the words Loupedeck. I'm not going to go into anymore details here, whilst like it's design it's a box... many others on youtube will do far better justice to it in unboxing sessions.

Straight away I download the firmware for my mac and plug the unit into a usb port. A light came on, I opened Lightroom to be greeted with a message

'Loupedeck thinks you look great today' Well thank you Loupedeck that's very kind. A window pops up presenting me with options to customise Loupedeck.

I assign the top P buttons to presets, C1 dial to perspective correction, C2 button to gradient, and C3 to Radial gradient. That should do me for the moment. That's about it from there you can leap straight into things.

One pretty cool function I didn't know it did - If you press any of the dial it resets that value, for example if I spin a colour wheel and don't like what I've done rather than spin it back again I just press down on it it makes a satisfying 'click' and the value returns to 0.

All dials and wheels spin and turn 360 degrees which is good. Whilst I'm on this subject the turning mechanism and indeed dials are really well made. It doesn't feel loose or that they are going to come off anytime soon. Some of the buttons are a little stiff on rare occasions, my right arrow key for example tends to get slightly stuck but I think this is isolated to my unit and is the type of thing that would happen to any product you buy it's really not a big deal but it's the only negative I can find to the mechanical function of the unit.

The main unit is made of plastic, it's light and means when I'm working with the unit and my hands are resting on it it is not cold like aluminium might be. A few things at this point I would have liked. The first is a detachable USB cable like my wacom tablet, just incase the usb wire fails I would normally just replace it but when it's attached to the device I'd have to send it back to repairs. Better yet bluetooth. My only other criticism of the construction is the groove with holds the wire might be better if it let the wire sit a little deeper, mine tends to pop out ever so slightly.

So down to it , I started retouching some images. Within ten minutes I work out this isn't something you can just start twiddling the knobs and dials of and expect it to make you infinitely quicker than you were before. You have to learn where everything on the device is just like typing on a keyboard, at first you have to keep looking down looking at the letters you're typing then back up at the screen to check you've put them in the right order, but the more you practice the more you learn where those letters are and before you know it you're just staring at the screen typing and moving your fingers by instinct. It took me just over a month to get to that place with Loupedeck but when I did... 'wow'.. yes I was able to work much quicker than before.

I found I was working dials in groups of two, I'd be pulling the blacks down and the whites up simultaneously The same with the shadows and highlights, contrast and clarity, in fact at one point I realised I started using the edge of my palm pulling down the blacks whilst my little finger pulled up the shadows and my other hand the highlights!

Using the colour wheels is also incredibly quick! In my job at certain times of the year or after certain weather like rain the camera has a tendency to capture grass as a very bright yellow. When this happens I typically pull the luminance of the yellow down then the hue of the yellow up (to make it more green), then the saturation to the yellow down slightly to bring it back to the green colour that it should be, in the past that would involve a lot of clicking and sliding the panels with the graphics tablet, now i press the appropriate button to select 'lum', 'hue', or 'sat', and just to the right of them are all my colour wheels perfect! The led light to the side of lum, hue, and sat is incredibly useful. I do wish the colour wheels had some of these faint led's or something to illuminate them in the dark. I tend to dim all lights and cut out external light sources when retouching so that external light and colours don't influence the light and colours I'm seeing on the screen.

Now I know I said I can use the dials without looking, but that's also partly because they are well spread out. I love the set up of the colour wheels and I wouldn't want it changed but it is more difficult to know which wheel goes with which colour without looking. I have slight issues with the darker blue. I kept getting it mixed up with the colour to the right of it in dim lighting, I manipulate the colour blue a lot so in the end I put a tiny glow in the dark dot on my unit so a very quick glance down confirms where that colour is.

All the other buttons on the unit work really well. I particularly like the way you can swap between rating images by colour or numbers and by clicking between the two options you get an on screen message.

There are two Zoom buttons, I kind of wish one of these had been replaced with something else like 'select WB point' or even better another custom dial! The custom dial is a really strong point of the unit and by pressing the Fn key you can assign this custom dial another function which can be set up in the Loupedeck options menu.

Performance...

You can customise how fast Loupesdeck reacts based on how fast or slow you spin dials (I'm not sure what I've just typed makes sense??) basically... you can change the settings so that a small turn makes a BIG change on the slider or the other way around - dial sensitivity.. I can't think of another way to describe it. I've not played around with it too much as I'm used to how the dials work by default. One thing I do find is the more confident I get the more I start trying to spin dials and wheels really fast. It backfires on me in that the particular dial or wheel will adjust the slider up and then it'll 'rubber band' back down again. That's my bad 'bull in a china shop' mentality. Whats better practice is to work quickly but to not go too nutts on the unit.

Changes you make on Loupedeck adjust incredibly quickly on screen no real lag at all (unless its Lightroom lag which you'd get whether you were using the unit of not). One thing that does happen is as you make adjustments don't expect the visual sliders on the right to show up if they're not currently on your screen. So if my colour sliders menu is closed and I adjust the colour wheels on Loupedeck the panel doesn't open up on the screen, you'd have to actually click it open to see this (or press a key board short cut should one exist for that panel). If this happens and you're working quickly not wanting to click open panels you can't see then you can adjust be sight.

slightly off topic RANT WARNING!..

Any sort of performance issues I experienced are based more on Adobe's relationship with Apple which I think has plagued Lightroom for a good few years now. I remember back in 2014 when we bought new imacs with the new screens only to find Lightroom was';t compatible with the high resolution screens meaning we had to either reduce the resolution of the screen or make the windows substantially smaller to get a smooth Lightroom working environment. The same thing has happened again. I'm currently on a mid 2017 imac and as soon as Lightroom cc Classic dropped I noticed a huge increase in Lag I won't go into that now, only that the issue became so incredibly frustrating it actually made me revert back to Lightroom 6 as a stand alone copy and eventually move my RAW workflow mostly to Capture One Pro.

Rant over and back to Loupedeck.

There's a nifty little export button on the unit, all it does is open the export window, again I think it could've been used for something else, however as it's there I do use it, and I challenge anyone not to get the weirdest sense of joy pressing it when you're done, it's the strangest thing.

PRESETS

Loupedeck comes with some Lightroom presets, I've not used them. I tend to make my own presets rather than use other peoples, for no other reason than I just don't. So using them I've no idea if they're good or not since I've not any experience of using others in that regard it's wrong for me to judge them, but just to say they're there if you want to have a look once you buy the unit.

BUYING AND PRICE

Several places sell Loupedeck now a google search would show you UK stockists. I got mine directly from the website and it arrived in a week, I'm sure I remember paying close to 329 euros but currently on their site it's 249 euros, so in my opinion that's really very good value.

Loupedeck with other RAW editing software.

So when I was completely fed up with Lightroom Classic cola CC or whatever they're calling it at the moment. I wrote to the guys and gals at Loupedeck to ask if they had any plans to expand to other software. I'll be honest my love of this unit is the only thing still keeping me hanging on to Adobe's raw processing software at this point. They wrote back to say they are currently in talks with some other companies.

Then last month a very clever person posted on a facebook group I'm a member of they had got Loupedeck working with Capture One. Incredibly excited I got all the info and gave it a go myself.

Now basically what this clever person did was to program Loupedeck as a midi device with some purchaseable software called 'Bome'. You then just reassign the dials and buttons to Capture one functions. And 'by golly gosh' it actually works!... Ok so the colour wheels don't actually do what they're meant to do but are just assignable as buttons, and YES I accept you could just get any midi device for far cheaper and do the same but I have Loupedeck so thought I'd try it, it's just a fun thing.

Something pretty cool I was able to do was to assign brush size adjusting to a dial, it's incredible smooth and easy to use. This made me think, if Loupedeck 2 should ever appear how about a brush size dial?!

Using Bome in no way gets rid of Loupedecks proper software you just need to remember to close bome before opening Lightroom. It's a bit of fun but no substitute for the real thing of using Loupedeck with it's proper dedicated software with Lightroom.

Loupedeck alternatives

Loupedeck is awesome why on earth would you want to use anything else?! :) Incase you do or like me you're slowly watching Adobe doing weird and wonderful things with Lightroom, and change your RAW editing software here are some others you can look at (sources and prices are correct as of December 2017) Please note: I've not used any of these I'm just putting them out there for anyone to research further should they desire, it's actually this research that lead to me end up buying Loupedeck.

PALETTE

These look pretty nifty you kind of build you'r own kit, however quite pricey to me!

TANGENT

I found out about these whilst researching control devices for Capture One, lots of variety. Prices range from £300 - a lot of money :)

BEHRINGER MINI X-TOUCH (OR OTHER MIDI DEVICES)

The cheapest option but also the most manual set up needed, you basically plug these 'bad boys' in and assign controls from lightroom to the buttons and dials. I did order one in July from Amazon for £50 but after a month of waiting I gave up and bought Loupedeck instead. There are lots of guides about how to set these up on youtube, but obviously you run the risk of it stopping working after Lightroom updates. People seem to like the model to the left because like Loupedeck the dials are unobstructed.

So there you have it

There are other options out there but despite this I'd still buy Loupedeck in a heartbeat. I think it's incredibly well priced, it just works (unlike apple and adobes relationship these days it seems) it is constantly being worked on with positive updates and it is most definitely becoming more and more popular, appearing in more shops and online outlets all the time.

As I am quite passionate about this device I will keep my eyes peeled for any new developments in the Loupedeck camp with updates and new products so do check back here for any new news. Or lets be honest you could just check on their site.. Check here or there it makes no difference, they're worth your attention and keeping your photographic eyes on in the future.

NOTE: THIS IS A COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT REVIEW I HAVE NO CURRENT ASSOCIATION WITH LOUPEDECK (However if they would like to reach out and form one based on this review they can hit my contacts section... I'm just saying...)

I'll be doing some live sessions using Loupedeck soon so another thing if you are interseted to stop by for.

#Loupedeck #should-I-buy #Property-photographer-surrey #Mark-Hardy #Blog-farnham #Adobe-Lightroom #Lightroom-controller #review #indiegogo #project #Surrey-property #wacom #Bome #is-any-good

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