#ITS A LONG STORY but he’s a patient at the clinic where I work and I had to call his office

[star-girl-05]

The Bet

James Wilson x Reader

He thought there was no way he’d lose, it seemed like a sure thing. That's the only reason he agreed to the terms, he should have known better. Never bet something you're not willing to lose, yet he did and now he has to go to work like this. Gosh House is going to ream him when he sees him. 

“Come on out James” your sing-song tone just made him want to lock himself in the bathroom forever. “Would you stop being a baby its not even that bad I could have made you do something way worse”

You weren't wrong, you could have made him do something long lasting like shaving his head. It was still bad though. He heard you call his name again, he was going to have come out or he’d be late for work. So finally after gathering all his courage he opened the bathroom door. As soon as you saw his face you were laughing. Wilsons' face lights up like a Christmas tree and he's covering his face in hopes you'll stop laughing. 

“Oh James, I’m sorry it's just” you find yourself laughing again “Don’t hide from me James I want to see your pretty face” That just made him want to hide more. He’s been in love with you for almost a year, always dropping hints he's in love with you, yet you never seem to pick up on them. House says it's obvious the two of you like each other but Wilsons isn’t so sure. 

“James” god he loves when you say his name. You pull Wilsons hands away from his face you do your best trying to hold in your laughter. “Wow you look..hm” your eyes study his face or more importantly the glued on mustache that now rests on his upper lip. 

“Don’t, it looks horrible” he was right it was bad he looked much better clean shaven. Though even with the ugly mustache he was still pretty. 

“It’s just for one day” it is true its just one day but Wilson didn’t just have to wear a fake mustache, every time someone asks about said mustache he owes you ten bucks. Easy money since you know every one he talks to today will be focused on it. 

“Maybe but I’ll be paying for weeks” that's true you're going to make quite a profit off today. 

As soon as Wilson enters the hospital eyes are on him even patients that have never seen him give him a funny look. House is the first to say anything, throwing a file on the nurses station and staring at Wilson with his mouth comically open. “Wilson, I think you got something there. ” He gestures at his face. Wilson rolled his eyes today's going to be a long day. 

“It's a really interesting story” you egg on trying to get House to say the golden words. 

“Okay I’ll bite what’s with the fake mustache” Wilson cursed under his breath pulling out his wallet and handing you the first ten of the day. House eyes the exchange getting even more curious about what's going on. “Hold up, what was that?” 

“Me and Wilson made a bet he lost and now everytime someone asks about his mustache he owes me ten bucks, I’ll give you two bucks if you help” House was agreeing instantly, happy to mess with Wilson in any way. Wilson on the other hand was anything but thrilled. He was objecting right away but it fell on deaf ears.  

Wilson spent the rest of his day getting paged to the clinic where patients asked about his mustache. At the end of the day Wilson owed 780 dollars. 

[geesegooseblog]

The Flower Dance - Harvey x Farmer

Chapter 1 : A Thoughtful Gift

Tags: n/a

A/N: hello my loves! It’s been a long time between stories, but in typical me-fashion I have two assignments due and haven’t touched either of them, so have a Stardew Valley fluff fic! This is also my first foray into first person perspective, so any notes are much appreciated and, as always, if you would like a tag for the next chapter let me know!

CW: n/a

Word count: 1.8k

🌸🌸🌸

The quiet hum of the waiting room in Doctor Harvey's clinic was a sound I never thought I'd grow to like. I was often in the clinic for more severe injuries - a laceration from my sword or a broken bone from a dangerous encounter in the mines - but today it was sheer clumsiness that landed me here, holding a ziploc bag full of ice cubes against the back of my head. That's the last time I swing a pickaxe in the quarry without wearing a helmet.

"I'm starting to think you're doing it on purpose," Maru mused, chuckling softly to herself as she sorted the paperwork she was filing behind the front desk. "What is it, like, the third time this week you're in here? If you wanted to see Harvey, you could just come in to say 'hi'. No need to injure yourself."

"Very funny." I responded sarcastically, my eyes fixated on the wall opposite me. Even though she was my closest friend in this town, Maru sure knew how to get on my nerves. "If it wasn't for my mishaps, where would Harvey get all of his work from? Annual checkups? I think not."

"Ooh, someone's getting flustered over there..." Maru chuckled again as she glanced over at me, fixing her glasses flush against her face a push against the bridge. She quickly changed the subject. "You gonna go to the Flower Dance tonight?"

I shifted slightly in my seat at the mention of the Flower Dance, an indicator that I had, in fact, been thinking about it. I had missed the last Flower Dance the year prior by staying back at the farm - large events like that had never been my strong suit. As the months approached to tonight's dance, however, I grew more and more fond of the idea of attending. With the renovation of the community centre, I knew for a fact that Mayor Lewis had planned a big celebration for this year's dance, shifting it from its normal morning start time to an evening event. I cleared my throat once and shifted my glance to Maru.

"... Maybe." I muttered, trying to play off my nerves coolly. That reaction only garnered a smirk from Maru, who spoke again.

"I know Harvey's gonna be there... maybe you can stop playing around and ask him. I know he'd like that."

"Maru, will you please keep your voice down?" I begged in a sharp whisper, shifting in my seat to face her. "I don't want Harvey to hear this."

Maru shrugged her shoulders, her smirk still plastered on her face. "Fine. Keep kidding yourself. Did you at least get my text?"

“Yes, I got the text.” I answered back quickly, my voice raising slightly from a whisper. “It’s in my bag, but it won’t be much of a surprise if he overhears us!”

As if on cue, the double doors beside Maru's desk opened, and an all too familiar voice spoke calmly to his patient.

"Now, like I said, George: if you have any concerns you'd like me to take a look at, I'm more than welcome to make a house visit next time."

The doctor came out through the doors pushing George in his wheelchair, Evelyn close behind the two of them.

"You're a good man, Harvey," Evelyn said kindly as she took over the handles of George's wheelchair. "We'll see you tonight."

I shared a quick smile with Evelyn as she took George through the clinic's front doors- George grumbled something to himself as they disappeared out the doors together. My gaze shifted to rest on the doctor, and I felt my cheeks grow warm as I saw him turn his attention to me. The way he looked in his white coat was nothing short of handsome, and the way his ginger hair was neatly groomed made it more so. Harvey looked over at me and sighed, taking the makeshift ice pack against my head into account as he put his hands into his pockets.

"Another accident?" He asked softly, although a hint of amusement could be heard in his voice. I gave a sheepish smile in return, feeling a little embarrassed at him seeing me like this.

"Come on back, I'll take a look at you." He said with a polite smile as he turned on his heel and headed back through the double doors. I grabbed my backpack from my feet and followed quickly behind him, catching a glance at Maru as I passed by. I watched her mouth the words 'ask him' as she gestured towards the doors, which was met with me gesturing a hand under my neck for her to cut it out. I followed quickly behind the doctor, the double doors closing behind us with a soft 'click'.

We made our way into his office. I set my bag down at the base of the small bed in the room and took my usual place right in the middle of the bed, my legs hanging off the side as I looked over at Harvey.

"What happened this time?" Harvey asked calmly with his back turned to me, grabbing some equipment from a drawer in his desk to check my vitals.

I lowered the bag of ice from my head and placed it gingerly next to me on the bed. "I was down in the quarry today. I guess I wasn't paying attention. I swung back a little too hard... hit the back of my head with the side of the pickaxe."

I heard Harvey chuckle softly to himself as he shook his head, the sound of his laugh made my cheeks grow warm.

"What am I going to do with you?" He asked as he sat down in his swivel chair, wheeling it over to me as he took out a small torchlight from his breast pocket. He shone the light in my eyes and made me look over the room in different directions, asking typical questions to ensure I wasn't too badly hurt; my name, the date, where I was, that sort of thing. After a few seconds, he smiled as he turned off the torchlight.

"Well, it's not a concussion," he started, his voice methodical yet kind. "I've said it before and I'll say it again: You need to be careful when you're working."

"I'm fine, Harvey," I replied softly. "I guess I've been... distracted."

Harvey smiled warmly. "I can understand that. It happens to the best of us. If you need any help with it though, you're more than welcome to talk to me about it."

The comment made me smile up at him. "Really? You’d do that?"

"Sure! You can always book an appointment for a consultation regarding your mental health, it's what I'm here for."

"... ah."

I sighed softly to myself, remembering where we were. I felt a nervous feeling growing in the pit of my chest, and I remembered what Maru had said earlier. My window to ask about tonight was here, and I knew I’d be kicking myself if I didn’t at least try. As Harvey turned back to his desk to scribble down some notes, I spoke up softly as I grabbed my backpack.

"I, uhm," I began nervously. "I hope you don't mind, but... I've brought you something."

Harvey's ears perked up, and he swivelled his chair around to look back at me, a surprised expression on his face.

"Oh? What is it?"

I rummaged around in my backpack, my fingers taking a few seconds to finally grab at a small bottle. I got my words out quickly, my nerves getting the better of me as I pulled out a small bottle of wine.

"Well, a little birdie may have told me that you like your wine. I had some grapes left over last summer from the harvest and I didn't know what to do with the excess so I..."

I presented the bottle to Harvey with a nervous smile. It had a small sticker on it with my handwriting, reading 'For the best doctor in Stardew Valley'.

"... I made you some."

Harvey's eyes widened in surprise as he saw the small bottle of wine in my hand, his smile widening in both delight and astonishment as he reached out and carefully took the bottle. He was touched, not having expected me to make such an effort.

"I'm... this is...." He trailed off as his voice caught in his throat, clearly at a loss for words. After a moment, he cleared his throat and smiled warmly. "You've made my day..."

I chuckled sheepishly as my gaze drifted to the floor, shuffling in my seat at his compliment.

"Nah... it's the least I can do," I insisted. "I'm in here almost weekly, I'm probably taking your attention away from your other patients when I come in."

"Nonsense," Harvey insisted. "This is wonderful. Thank you."

There was a comfortable silence between the two of us, and it took me a moment to snap back into my thoughts as I cleared my throat.

"Right, well... I best be off. Those crops won't water themselves."

I made my way off the bed, pacing quickly to the door. At that moment I remembered what Maru had said again. If I didn't take my chances and ask Harvey about tonight, my window would be closing. I stopped in my tracks and turned around to face him, leaning against the doorway as I tried to be casual.

"So... I heard Mayor Lewis talking about the Flower Dance happening tonight? The one that's happening down near Marnie's Ranch? Are you, uhm... are you gonna go?"

Harvey nodded once, a small knowing smile crossing his lips as I mentioned the dance. 

"Yes, I do believe I will be attending. The dance has been a tradition here in town for years. Have you picked out a dance partner?"

My eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the doctor. "Dance partner?"

Harvey nodded once more. "It's customary for the bachelorettes of the town to have a partner in mind when attending the dance. There's a 'singles only' dance after dinner where you have to pick someone out to dance with. It's meant to symbolise true admiration to be chosen..." Harvey cleared his throat once before continuing on softly. "Not that... I've ever really participated in it."

"You're kidding," I said, leaning against the doorway with my arms folded. "You've never been asked to the dance?"

He shook his head once. "Never. But, y'know..."

His glance drifted to the bottle of wine in his hand, a soft smile growing on his lips as he looked back up at me.

"I still hold out hope."

The implications of his words were not lost on me, and I felt my cheeks start to blush as I smiled down at him.

"I'll... keep that in mind when choosing my partner. See you tonight, Harvey."

"See you then."

With that, I turned on my heels and headed quickly out of his office, flinging my backpack over my shoulder as I raced down the hallway. I had a newfound confidence for the night that couldn't be matched, and I made sure to high-five Maru on my way out the front door for the tidbit on the wine.

[aifanfictions]

Write a story where Sherlock Holmes (BBC) falls in love with Rosie’s nanny. He likes that way she is so maternal towards Rosie that he starts thinking about having kids of his own.

Maternal Mysteries

Baker Street was as enigmatic as ever, and the legendary detective, Sherlock Holmes, was as brilliant and aloof as his reputation suggested. His brilliant mind was a whirlwind of ceaseless activity, constantly seeking out puzzles and mysteries to solve. But amidst the chaos of his tumultuous life, there was one mystery that had eluded him for far too long – the mystery of the human heart.

Rosie, the toddler daughter of Dr. John Watson, had brought an unexpected source of light and warmth into the once stern and stoic residence. Her laughter and curiosity were a stark contrast to the clinical and analytical atmosphere that usually permeated 221B Baker Street. It was her nanny, (Y/N), who bore the responsibility of caring for Rosie and taming the chaos of the household.

(Y/N) was a nurturing presence, her maternal instincts shining brightly. She was kind, patient, and endlessly gentle with Rosie, her soothing lullabies and loving presence a balm to the child's heart. Sherlock had never paid much heed to such matters before, but something about the way (Y/N) cared for Rosie intrigued him.

One evening, Sherlock found himself in a rare moment of reflection. He observed (Y/N) sitting on the floor, helping Rosie with a jigsaw puzzle, and a flicker of admiration lit up in his calculating eyes. It wasn't just her nurturing nature that intrigued him; it was the way her mind worked, the patience with which she guided Rosie through the intricate puzzle. (Y/N) was not just a nanny; she was a puzzle-solver in her own right.

Sherlock's curiosity was piqued. He decided to test her, setting up a complex puzzle that had left him momentarily stumped. With a subtle smile, he watched as (Y/N) knelt beside Rosie, taking a glance at the puzzle and its intricate pieces.

As (Y/N) examined the puzzle, her brow furrowed, and she started analyzing it systematically, just as she did with Rosie's puzzles. Sherlock's heart, a place he rarely ventured, skipped a beat as he realized that (Y/N) was unlike anyone he had ever met.

It took her only a matter of minutes to piece the puzzle together, and when she did, her eyes sparkled with triumph. "There you go, Rosie," she said with a soft smile, showing Rosie the completed puzzle. "We did it!"

Sherlock watched in silent awe, and for the first time, he realized that there were mysteries in life far more intriguing than crimes and conundrums. He was fascinated by the way (Y/N) approached life – with a motherly heart and a keen, analytical mind.

Over the following weeks, Sherlock found himself observing (Y/N) more closely. Her kindness, her maternal nature, and the way she solved puzzles with such ease fascinated him. He watched her teach Rosie about the world, and he saw how his once-chaotic life had been transformed by the presence of (Y/N) and Rosie.

One evening, as the embers of a fire danced in the hearth, Sherlock found himself alone with (Y/N) in the sitting room. He observed her gentle smile and the way she effortlessly cared for Rosie.

"(Y/N), you are truly remarkable," he said, his voice tinged with genuine admiration.

She looked up, her eyes meeting his. "Sherlock, what's come over you? You're not usually one for such compliments."

He cleared his throat and continued, "I've been observing you, and I've come to realize how extraordinary you are. Your patience, your analytical mind, your maternal instincts – they're all rather impressive."

(Y/N) blushed, feeling both flattered and surprised by Sherlock's words. "Thank you, Sherlock. That means a lot coming from you."

Sherlock's heart pounded as he searched for the right words, something that had always come easily to him, except in matters of the heart. "I've been thinking about… children, lately. It's a rather curious notion, I know, but I've been contemplating it."

(Y/N) raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Children, Sherlock? I never imagined you considering something like that."

Sherlock nodded, his voice softer than it had ever been. "Yes, well, you see, the way you care for Rosie, the way you approach life, has made me reevaluate things. It's a mystery I can't seem to solve, but it's a mystery that I find myself drawn to."

(Y/N) smiled warmly, her heart touched by his sincerity. "Sherlock, that's quite a revelation. Perhaps some mysteries are better left unsolved, but instead embraced."

In that quiet moment, the detective who had always believed in the power of logic and reason found himself facing the most enigmatic puzzle of all – the mysteries of the human heart. And in (Y/N)'s maternal presence and gentle spirit, he discovered a love and desire he had never known before.

As time passed, Sherlock and (Y/N) continued to care for Rosie, and their bond deepened. The mysteries of crime may have been Sherlock's profession, but the mysteries of the human heart were the most beguiling of all.

And so, as Sherlock navig

ated the uncharted territory of love and family, he soon realized that he had embarked on the most profound journey of his life.

One evening, as the city's mysteries called him away on another case, he left (Y/N) and Rosie behind, a familiar ache in his heart. It was during his absence that (Y/N) stumbled upon a new puzzle, one that could hold the key to their shared future.

A series of cryptic messages and strange occurrences had been left behind in their sitting room. The room was in disarray, with papers scattered, and books haphazardly arranged. Rosie had been drawing pictures, her scribbles and innocent creativity adding to the chaotic scene.

(Y/N), with her keen eye for detail, couldn't help but notice that there was something more to this apparent mess. The scribbles on Rosie's paper held an uncanny resemblance to symbols she had seen before, symbols that appeared to be part of a code.

Curiosity and a dash of excitement spurred (Y/N) into action. She began to piece together the clues, following the trail of enigmatic symbols left behind by the culprit. It was a puzzle that Sherlock himself would have admired, one that demanded a blend of analytical skill and creative thinking.

As she delved deeper into the mystery, (Y/N) found herself uncovering secrets that had eluded even Sherlock. The puzzles led her on a winding path through the city, and she was determined to get to the bottom of this cryptic enigma.

When Sherlock returned from his case, he found an expectant (Y/N) waiting for him, a glint of excitement in her eyes. She had cracked the code, and her heart swelled with pride as she unveiled the solution.

Sherlock, renowned for his ability to solve even the most perplexing mysteries, was taken aback. He couldn't help but be impressed by (Y/N)'s deduction skills. It was a moment that made him appreciate her even more.

With the puzzle solved and the case closed, Sherlock found himself looking at (Y/N) with newfound admiration. He was falling in love, not just with her, but with the idea of a family of their own, with children whose laughter and curiosity would fill Baker Street.

"(Y/N), you never cease to amaze me," he confessed, his voice carrying a warmth and vulnerability that was entirely unfamiliar to him. "Your maternal instincts, your deductive skills, your nurturing nature – they're all qualities I never knew I needed in my life."

(Y/N) smiled, her heart dancing with a newfound hope. "Sherlock, I never imagined that someone like you would appreciate someone like me. But I must admit, you're a mystery I'm willing to explore."

In the midst of the mysteries that had brought them together, Sherlock and (Y/N) discovered a love that was deeper and more profound than any puzzle they had ever encountered. Their shared journey of caring for Rosie and solving life's enigmas had led them to a love that was both unexpected and extraordinary.

Sherlock's heart had finally cracked the most enigmatic code of all – the code of love. And in (Y/N) and Rosie, he had found the most fulfilling and delightful mystery of his life.

As they continued their lives together on Baker Street, the detective who had once believed in the supremacy of reason and logic found that love was the most mysterious and enchanting puzzle of all, one that would unravel with each tender moment and cherished memory.

NOTE! This story was generated by OpenAI

[monsta-x-jagi]

Monsta X and their S/O’s Medical Profession

TLDR - they’re all obviously super supportive. I tried to make the professions match their personalities hehe

Shownu - Podiatrist

You gave the best massages. For a dancer like Shownu, sometimes he wondered if you were blessed with angelic healing powers or something when you helped him unwind after a long day of practicing. You always laughed at his musings and simply said its knowledge of muscles, but Shownu would continue looking at you with adoration and appreciation for how you treat him. Still, he’d worry about you essentially having to bring your work home, so he’s always prepared to return the favour if you want a massage too. The strangest outcome from dating a podiatrist however, was that he no longer buys someone high heels as a gift. Also as a podiatrist, you received far fewer emergency phone calls, so your date nights were fortunately not interrupted often, and you could make time to go to Shownu’s concerts too.

Wonho - Veterinarian

You and Wonho would definitely become the doting parents to lots of cute animals. Wonho probably comes to where you work to play with the animals. It’s almost like a date at an animal cafe, except you probably have fluffy patients to treat, but Wonho is taking up your time being your fluffy bunny. Honestly, you didn’t mind, but you were still on the clock, so... Wonho tries to engage with your work by putting on documentaries about animals, but he sometimes falls asleep, especially when he’s tired from his idol activities. You don’t mind, and think it’s super cute.

Minhyuk - Paediatrician

He would genuinely turn up at the hospital where you work just to say hi to your adorable patients. But then he’d pout when you weren’t there because you’re busy consulting or doing surgery. Because Minhyuk comes to the hospital so often, you usually go home together at the end of the day, maybe buying dinner from somewhere. He is very attuned to your emotions because treating children, especially ones with low chances of survival, does take its toll on you. More than once, you’ve cried about a patient, and Minhyuk has pulled you close, wrapping his arms around you and rubbing your back while you let out all your sadness.

Kihyun - Dermatologist

When Kihyun met you, Monsta X teased him relentlessly. There was something amusing about the young flexer meeting someone who specialised in skin treatments. Some people make comments about how you must be in a difficult position - you probably have clients who come in simply because of they want to see your celebrity boyfriend, and there’s also probably clients being referred to you by your celebrity boyfriend. These kinds of comments make you feel like people are devaluing your achievements, although Kihyun does recommend your clinic to friends, not just because he loves you, but because you’re good at your job. Sometimes, you’re a little too good at your job. All Kihyun might want is to lie down with his head in your lap, but you might end up simply looking at his skin to identify if he needs any treatments before comeback week.

Hyungwon - Anaesthesiologist

A perfect pairing - he sleeps like the dead, and you get people to sleep like the dead. However, you always had to arrive before the surgeons to help prep the patient, so some mornings, you had to disturb Hyungwon’s slumber since you’d start work earlier than him. When you missed Hyungwon at work, you’d ask the nurses in the suite to cue up some Monsta X songs, although you hadn’t told Hyungwon this yet. Unlike other doctors, you didn’t have any stories about difficult patients to share, but Hyungwon liked to scare his nieces and nephews by telling them iii they misbehaved, you’ll stick a needle in them for being naughty. As much as you hated being made to be the bad guy, he did have a point, so you just laughed along.

Joohoney - Paramedic

Your schedule could be hectic - night shifts, covering shifts, and other things. Joohoney always worried whether you were sleeping enough on days like that, and he liked to prepare meals, or at the very least some snacks, for days when your schedule didn’t align well with how normal people lived their lives. His sweet baby personality would probably struggle under the intense and somewhat confronting situations paramedics like you dealt with, but if you wanted to talk about your work, he’d always be open to listening. He’d definitely be thinking of you any time he hears an ambulance siren.

IM - Neurosurgeon

Supposedly the highest paid of all doctors, there was nothing you liked more than coming home to Changkyun after a 16 hour surgery. On those days, he’d have dinner and a hot bath ready for you. Sometimes, your surgery would finish really late into the night, so you would come home and try to sleep without wakening Changkyun. Usually, you did wake him up, but he didn’t let it show, and would simply leave breakfast ready for you in the morning for when you did eventually wake up. Likewise, if surgery finished in the middle of the day, you’d stop by his studio, and drop off coffee or snacks.

[ukrfeminism]

A nurse has described her eight years of hell as she fought the NHS over its failure to properly investigate claims she was sexually harassed by a colleague.

Michelle Russell, who has 30 years of experience, first raised allegations of sexual harassment by a male nurse to managers at the mental health unit where she worked in London in 2015.

Years of battling her case saw the trust’s initial investigation condemned as “catastrophically flawed” while the nursing watchdog, the Nursing Midwifery Council (NMC), apologised for taking so long to review her complaint and referred itself to its own regulator over the matter.

With the case still unresolved, Ms Russell will see her career in the NHS end this week after she was not offered any further contract work.

Speaking to The Independent she said: “If I’m going to lose my job, I want other nurses to know that this is what happens when you raise a concern. I want the public to know this is what happens to us in the NHS when we are trying to protect the public.

“I have an unblemished career. They’re crying out for nurses. I’ve dedicated my life to the NHS. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Former Labour health minister Ann Keen condemned the way in which Ms Russell had been treated: “This can’t be right. How is this happening?

“Pillars of society, letting not just one nurse down, but also potentially [failing] public safety. How, again, has it been demonstrated, that the NHS is not taking sexual abuse seriously?”

Roger Kline, who has led several major cultural reviews for the NHS, said: “It’s one of the worst cases I’ve seen where discrimination has been met with denial, avoidance and retaliation.

“Instead of dealing with allegations the trust brutally turned on her. This is not remotely how we should deal with allegations of sexual harassment made by competent experienced professionals. It has disgracefully ended Michelle’s nursing career.”

It shows “the general inability of the NHS to deal with sexual harassment until very recently. It is a scandal,” he added.

New figures show that the NMC is facing a growing backlog of 5,711 cases in December – up from 5,463 in June.

Last year our investigation revealed claims that a “culture of fear” in the NMC was leaving rogue nurses free to abuse patients. As a result of the stories, the NMC has launched three independent probes.

Ms Russell had worked as a nurse at North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT) for 20 years. However, in 2015, after months of alleged “unwarranted” touching and “inappropriate” behaviour from another nurse, she decided to report her concerns to her manager.

A full 12 months later, the trust’s HR department told Ms Russell her allegations were not upheld. During this time, she went off sick leave and as a result of being away from clinical duties for so long was unable to work as a nurse under NMC rules.

Throughout that time, Ms Russell said: “I was treated as the accused. I was isolated from any support that I may have had. It was like I had to explain why I didn’t move [during the incident]. Describe and draw on the desk what my personal space looked like.”

Her comments come in the same week as The Independent revealed tens of thousands of allegations of sexual assault and harassment have been recorded in mental health hospitals.

Despite her setback, Ms Russell persevered, determined for her story to be heard.

Standing in the rain outside parliament in 2018, holding a sign that read “I’m a nurse who was sexually assaulted at work and I’m going to lose MY job” she had a chance encounter with the NHS’ most senior nurse Ruth May.

This encounter prompted the NHS England executive to launch an independent review into North East London Foundation Trust’s investigation which later in July 2018 found the hospital’s report was “catastrophically flawed” and that it failed to understand its own HR policy on sexual harassment.

The catastrophic flaws also included trust officials communicating directly with Royal College of Nursing Officers who were representing both Ms Russell and her accused, which was against trust policy.

It also found the actions of the trust’s investigator had a “lack of impartiality” towards the issues Ms Russell had alleged and found the handling of her complaint was so “clumsy” it led to the breakdown of relationships and undermined the possibility of the nurse returning to her job.

A third independent report, by a consultancy called Vista commissioned by NELFT, finished in 2019 and upheld Ms Russell’s allegations, finding the male nurse’s behaviour “amounted to sexual harassment” and that “some aspects could be categorised as sexual assault”.

Both reports and a suspension letter cite allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Ms Russell’s alleged harasser involving the relatives of patients, one of which was withdrawn. The NELFT said it has not received any formal reports involving families, while the NMC claimed it could not find evidence of such claims.

In a statement to The Independent, NELFT said it had accepted the findings of the investigations in full, and taken the issues raised by Ms Russell “extremely seriously” and as a result has put in place new sexual safety policies and improved its oversight and training.

It claimed it had no direct formal complaints from patients or family members over the nurse.

Ms Russell first referred the nurse to the NMC in 2016. However, a year later, she found the NMC’s screening team had closed the case “without further investigation”.

Two years later the regulator reopened the case after a determined Ms Russell travelled to its offices and refused to leave until officials looked into the NHS England review.

During the investigation, Ms Russell’s GP was forced to write to the NMC and condemned it for failing to carry out its investigation in a “trauma-informed way”, a letter seen by The Independent shows.

The NMC’s delays worsened and it was not until July 2023 – after four years – that the NMC brought a fitness to practice hearing against her alleged harasser. In that period it found two other staff members at NELFT had made allegations of inappropriate verbal comments against the same alleged harasser. 

However, Ms Russell claims the NMC failed to investigate properly as it did not submit the NHS England review and Vista reviews as evidence to the fitness to practice hearing. The regulator said it was not able to establish direct evidence for the additional patient-related concerns in the reviews.

However, the defence was able to submit extracts from the first “catastrophically flawed” review by the hospital during the hearing.

Ms Russell says she was devastated after the NMC’s panel said her allegations could not be proved. The NMC’s panel did find there was a case to answer for a less serious allegation by one of the other two staff members.

The panel said there was not enough evidence to prove her claims on the “balance of probabilities”.

Since then, the NMC has referred itself to its regulator – the Professional Standards Authority – on the basis that its independent panel’s decision in Ms Russell’s case “is not sufficient to protect the public”.

She launched an employment tribunal claim against NELFT over its failures. This claim led to a settlement agreement in September 2022 for her to move to NHS England on secondment and for her post at NELFT to be filled. Next week that secondment will come to an end.

Andrea Sutcliffe, NMC chief executive and registrar, said: “I know it’s been an extremely difficult time for Ms Russell and on behalf of the NMC, I’m sorry this case took too long. There’s no place for sexual misconduct in society, and we took the concerns Ms Russell raised with us very seriously.

“We considered the evidence carefully and decided there was a case to answer, and we made that case at a hearing. However, an independent panel decided that the charges we brought in relation to Ms Russell were not proved. Understandably that has been very distressing for Ms Russell. We’ve asked the Professional Standards Authority to review the panel’s decision.” 

[comfy-whumpee]

Drain

Whumptober 12 - Red

-

Lachlan has lost count of how many times he has died.

He still remembers the first time. He was a new recruit keen to learn. He’d been approached as a medical student and invited for an apprenticeship. He’d taken a year out to do it, sanctioned by his university. Within the month he was at an underground clinic, working seven days a week with three other students and their mentor, Dr Xu.

Dr Xu was a tired and exacting teacher. He was reasonable, whenever they asked questions or were missing knowledge, but he didn’t tolerate mistakes. The Panacea Clinics had a reputation for giving around-the-clock service to their clients – not patients, clients – and for charging less than a normal private service. The trade-off was that they were seen by students, and only ever overseen by an actual doctor. But Lachlan learned more there than he had in three years of his degree.

It was exhausting work. All five of them lived at the clinic and Dr Xu was the only one who ever left. Theirs was literally underground, in a basement, so Lachlan didn’t see the sun through the entire year. Time lost all meaning; there was only the work, and between it, trying to live.

He might have returned to his normal life afterwards. But, after a particularly gruelling twenty-six hours on call, he had a palpitation that made him faint.

All of the others knew about his heart. It hadn’t caused problems so far, beyond the occasional need to sit down and breathe. But when the mortal terror overtook him, and he saw Dr Xu leaning over him…

It hurts too much to remember the fear. He didn’t know any of these people, not really, and he was certain he’d die.

Dr Xu had gathered the others with a heavily serious expression, so tense it scared them into silence.

“None of you can tell another soul what I’m about to do,” he made them vow. “Because it’s all I can do to save his life.”

It wasn’t even a question. The others agreed, frantic with fear, not knowing what to do. The clinic was able to help most of its clients, but it didn’t have the equipment that Lachlan would have needed.

Except Dr Xu took a couple of droplets from an old-fashioned glass vial and drip-fed them into Lachlan’s gasping mouth. The whole thing took less than a minute. His heart settled into a rhythm he could live with. His head spun as oxygen returned. Light settled in his eyes again.

The first thing he remembers seeing is the vial of red, deep red, almost black if not for the light coming through it. The taste of red in his throat and the feeling of it pulsing in his ears.

Was it death? He still can’t decide. But Dr Xu recommended him to Dr Swindon, and he came here to her lab. As it wasn’t a clinic, he was mostly doing chores, organising and cleaning things, sometimes fetching what she wanted while she pored over her microscope and ran test on the computers.

Two months in, she took samples from him, to study whether the cure remained in his system. She found traces. She decided to test its effectiveness.

It was papercuts, at first. It worked best on broken skin, she said, something she had already learned. So she would give him tiny, thin cuts, in various places, and measure their healing. It was inconvenient, but fascinating.

Larger cuts came next. He coped, until one day she put one just under his knee. It was four centimetres long – every cut that day was four centimetres, as precise as could be. But something about where it was turned his stomach. He didn’t know why, but feeling it with every step, skin shifting with the motion of his kneecap, made him feel squeamish for the first time in a long time.

But he sucked it up. He endured. The cuts healed slower and slower, until she decided to refresh his dose. At this point, nobody had told him what it was, but he drank it, diluted in water.

He’d known even then what she was building up to. It reminded him of horror stories about serial killers. They started small. They tested the boundaries of what they could get away with. But that was the price he paid for a healthy heart.

So when she told him, not asking but telling, that she was going to make a cut of life-threatening depth, he simply nodded. He held still. He kept his hands back and his head up. If he made it difficult, she would strap him down in future, so he didn’t.

He had nowhere else to go, at this point. He owed them his life.

She brought him back. And she promised that was one experiment they would not need to repeat. That was the end of it – until she got access to more blood. Until she got access to the body.

She doesn’t give him glasses of tinted water anymore. He knows what’s coming when the droplets fall into his mouth. He bleeds himself out and he takes the blood in. He knows this scientific ritual.

But the ecosystem of the lab has been disrupted, and Ms Annalise wants the body for different things. Lachlan has heard Northlight telling Kurt that she’s going to kill him, and they obviously have a motive for doing it, but… Lachlan thinks he believes them.

But what can he do? He’s a resident turned dependent, and leaving here risks breaking his heart in the most concrete way. He could cut his losses, but he has nobody outside of the Alliance. He hasn’t seen his family for years, and it’s only because of the work he does here that Presley is still alive.

His family needs the blood. Lachlan can do without, but… His parents only have one son left, now. They can’t lose Presley too. The Alliance has saved him once, visited him at hospital after his first big attack, brought him back from the brink like it was nothing. But Dr Swindon has showed him how it wears off even for papercuts. He can’t stop now.

But he can’t afford to lose Northlight either – lose the body – lose the cure.

[mariandjarin]

Eleni Skirata Diary Part 1

My story

(Eleni Skirata picture created by Canva AI)

Being me, it is funny.

The funniest part of my life is when unexpected situations appear on it.

One of them was falling into a portal and being kidnapped by Jango Fett.

Yes, Boba's father. (Well Boba is his copy actually)

Anyways that bounty hunter kidnapped me and brought me with Count Dooku, and at the end I finished with Kal'buir.

Nothing of that was part of my plans, but it happened in that way.

So, according to Count Dooku, I am special for the things I know about Kamino, the Kaminoans, and Darth Sidious' plans, but I am just a human being.  

What is a mystery to me is that Count Dooku said, "Let her train with the Republic Commandos. Let her become one of them. If some of the Cuy´val Dar ask you why a woman like her is here, tell them she is a special part of the project that cannot be revealed to them or anybody else".

So Jango followed Count Dooku's instructions, and I started training with the Republic Commandos.

I tried to discover the secret that surrounded my person and made me so special to be capture by a Sith Lord, but I didn´t found nothing. (Well not in my republic commando training).

Being a woman surrounded by men like them is difficult because you are the only woman in the training room (without considering Kaminoan women).

My squad was just one of many that trained with Kal'buir, but he helped me a lot during the hard training routines.

I didn't have the condition to be a warrior; I used to work making clinical analyses of blood, urine, and many other substances to give the results to the doctors so they could make the diagnosis of the patients. I didn't used to like my work, but I could say it is easier than Republic Commando training.

Being a woman has its priorities. One of them is that I have my own room. My own space to decorate and sleep or take a nap when I am able to do that. Also, I have my own bathroom.

The only thing I miss a lot is my piano. I used to play a lot of piano, and composing piano songs was my favorite hobby. It's still my favorite hobby, but I haven't played the piano for a long time. 

Also, I like singing. I don't have an Adele voice, but I love singing Mando'a songs, humming the tone of them, or any other song. 

Writing stories is another of my pastimes. So as you can see, I am writing mine.

Anyways, being in Kamino has been different from my home world, where the sun was there most of the time and it looked and felt like a desert. 

The big difference here is that there is nothing more than the training room, storms, and big and violent ocean waves.

(Well handsome supersoldiers are included too).

I used to avoid dates because being the only woman here makes you more interesting to those men, but after a while, I decided to give it a try.

Even when I knew it was risky.

My first date was with a guy called Niner. He is stoic and a gentleman, but which one of these soldiers is not a gentleman?

Ok, I was talking about Niner.

We had our time together. Meeting each other. Sharing pastimes, and yes, I know you want to know if there were some kisses. There were, but most of them were short, and they finished as soon as they started.

It is not allowed to date between comrades, but there is a moment in which you get bored and can't deny your nature. For Niner, well, he didn't know how to take that.

Everything ended two months later. Everyone was ready to ask for the second date, but I didn't want a second date. Niner stole my heart. If he wasn't ready. I decided to wait.

And it was okay until I met Sev from Delta Squad.

There were many stories about Delta Squad. 

Those Republic Commandos were trained by Walon Vau, the mando who has a strill with many privileges, but most of them disturb the inner peace of those around him.  

Well, Sev wasn´t the break rules guy, but we hid our relationship too well until Sergeant Vau discovered us.

That wasn't good. He gave Sev a fight that I won't ever forget. Sev and I were planning to get married, so you can imagine how well our relationship was, but after Vau discovered us, I was reassigned to be a rat lab from the Kaminoanis.

I still have my own room, but I can't go to see any of the boys, or they could be in trouble because of me, and by trouble I mean being killed. 

So, I can't see Kal´buir or the Nulls. I can't even answer their messages. It is like I am in a kind of prison prepared just for me.   

I miss all of them so much. 

Sev is still giving me gifts with love notes in secret. They just appear in my room. Maybe Lord Mirdalan is helping him. (Ok, that would be weird, but please, that strill is smart. All of them are smart). 

Even when this time I have had only for myself has been difficult, I have discovered that I can use the force, and I am very good at it!

Maybe that is what Kamionans, Count Dooku, and Dark Sidious were waiting for when I could use the force, but how? As their sith apprentice?   

I am not interested in those guys, but they could say something like, "We are going to kill your family if you don't do that."

In that case, I will need to use Plan B: Find me and make me do it if you can.

Where would I escape?, I don´t know yet, maybe I could go to the Jedi temple and train in their ways, but that could be difficult for the Jedi because I will involve them in my trouble.

Anyway, today I received a letter with an assigment. It says I am going to be part of...

Clone Force 99?!

Ok, I wasn't expecting that, but to tell you the truth, Darth Sidious and his plans always have a purpose.

Those clones are different to the other groups.

Let´s see what we can learn from each other and I will try to discover what is my part in Darth Sidious plans. (Without killing my new squad).

[vergess]

Here is a non paywalled copy. For future reference, if you use Firefox browser, you can circumvent this paywall by 1) entering Reader Mode then 2) refreshing the page while read mode is active. This bypasses the script that cuts the article.

Warren Hern: The Abortion Absolutist

Elaine Godfrey

26–33 minutes

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.

The sky above Boulder was dark when the abortion doctor picked me up for dinner. I had to squint to recognize Warren Hern in his thick aviator glasses and fur-trapper hat.

At the restaurant—a kitschy Italian spot along a pedestrian mall—Hern ignored the table the waiter offered us, pointed at one in the corner, and clomped over in his heavy hiking boots. He’d like to order right away, he said: the osso buco and a glass of Spanish red. How long will that take?

Hern spent the next two and a half hours of our dinner correcting me. A baby is a fetus until it is “born alive,” he told me as I chewed my bucatini. His dear friend, the Kansas physician George Tiller, was not “murdered” in 2009, he was assassinated. The activists who scream outside his clinic are not “pro-life,” they are fascists.

Pausing, Hern sighed. He is very busy, he said, and there are many things he’d rather be doing than talking to me. “But I can’t complain that the pro-choice movement has completely failed” at communicating, he said, “and then turn down an opportunity to communicate.”

Read: What winning did to the anti-abortion movement

I’d met Hern before, so I wasn’t surprised by his gruffness. The 84-year-old can be a curmudgeon—he’s obstinate, utterly certain of his position, and intolerant of criticism even as he dishes it out. Useful qualities, perhaps, for someone in his line of work.

Hern is now nearing his fifth decade of practice at his Boulder clinic; he has persisted through the entire arc of Roe v. Wade, its nearly 50-year rise and fall. He specializes in abortions late in pregnancy—the rarest, and most controversial, form of abortion. This means that Hern ends the pregnancies of women who are 22, 25, even 30 weeks along. Although 14 states now ban abortion in most or all circumstances, Colorado has no gestational limits on the procedure. Patients come to him from all over the country because he is one of only a handful of physicians who can, and will, perform an abortion so late.

During the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, when about 90 percent of abortions in America are carried out, the fetus’s appearance ranges from a small clot of phlegm to an alienlike ball of flesh. At 22 weeks, though, a human fetus has grown to about the size of a small melon. The procedures that Hern performs result in the removal of a body that, if you saw it, would inspire a sharp pang of recognition. These are the abortions that provide fodder for the gruesome images on protesters’ signs and the billboards along Midwest highways, images that can be difficult to look at for long.

Many of the women who visit Hern’s clinic do so because their health is at risk—or because their fetus has a serious abnormality that would require a baby to undergo countless surgeries with little chance of survival. But Hern does not restrict his work to these cases.

The phone at Hern’s clinic rings constantly these days. Since the overturning of Roe and the corresponding blitz of abortion bans, appointment books are filling up at clinics in states where abortion remains legal. Women who have to wait weeks for an appointment may end up missing the window for a first-trimester procedure. Some book a flight to Boulder to see Hern, who is treating about 50 percent more patients than usual.

These later abortions are the less common cases, and the hardest ones. They are the cases that even stalwart abortion-rights advocates generally prefer not to discuss. But as the pro-choice movement strives to shore up abortion rights after the fall of Roe, its members face strategic decisions about whether and how to defend this work.

Most Americans support abortion access, but they support it with limits—considerations about time and pain and fingernail development. Hern is reluctant to acknowledge any limit, any red line. He takes the woman’s-choice argument to its logical conclusion, in much the same way that, at this moment, anti-abortion activists are pressing their case to its extreme. Hern considers his religious adversaries to be zealots, and many of them are. But he is, in his own way, no less an absolutist.

In May of 2019, an envelope landed on my desk at work with a nature calendar inside. The photos—an arctic tern landing on a hunk of ice, a shock of mountain maple in the Holy Cross Wilderness, two sandhill cranes taking flight—were all credited to Hern. I’d interviewed him a week earlier for a short article about abortion-rights activism, and it amused me that a working abortion doctor was making wildlife calendars and express-mailing them to journalists. This past December, I flew to Boulder to meet him.

The first day I visited, no protesters were chanting outside; it was a Monday, and they tend to show up on Tuesdays, which is patient-intake day. Hern’s staff sat me in an office near the front desk, where I could hear calls coming in. I listened as a receptionist told a patient named Lindsey that it was okay to be anxious; she paused a few times while Lindsey cried.

“The fee will be about $6,000,” the receptionist said. Late abortions are expensive because they are medically complex. For patients who need financial aid, the National Abortion Federation may cover some of the cost, and local abortion funds often contribute. The receptionist told this to Lindsey, and offered her the organization’s number. “You can do partial cash and credit card, yes,” she said. Often, if a woman cannot afford to pay for her hotel, her transportation to Boulder, or some part of her procedure, Hern will foot the bill himself, staff members told me.

Hern stopped performing first-trimester abortions a few years ago; he saw too much need for later abortions, and his clinic couldn’t do it all. The procedure he uses takes three or four days and goes like this: After performing an ultrasound, he will use a thin needle to inject a medicine called digoxin through the patient’s abdomen to stop the fetus’s heart. This is called “inducing fetal demise.” Then Hern will insert one or more laminarias—a sterile, brownish rod of seaweed—into the patient’s cervix to start the dilation process.

From the May 2022 issue: The future of abortion in post-Roe America

When the cervix is sufficiently dilated after another day or two of adding and removing laminarias, Hern will drain the amniotic fluid, give the patient misoprostol, and remove the fetus. Sometimes, the fetus will be whole, intact. Other times, Hern must remove it in parts. If the patient asks, a nurse will wrap the fetus in a blanket to hold, or present a set of handprints or footprints for the patient to take home.

I interviewed half a dozen of Hern’s former patients. Most of the women who agreed to talk had wanted a child. But they’d received serious diagnoses late in pregnancy: disorders with disturbing names such as prune-belly syndrome, trisomy 13, Dandy-Walker malformation, and agenesis of the corpus callosum. Some said they considered their abortions a kind of mercy killing.

“I put my baby down,” Kate Carson, who’d gotten an abortion at Hern’s clinic in 2012, told me.  She’d been 35 weeks into a much-wanted pregnancy when her doctor diagnosed multiple brain anomalies. Carson’s daughter, the doctor said, would have trouble walking, talking, holding her head up, and swallowing. “It’s euthanasia. That’s the kind of killing this is,” she said. “But I would do it again a million times if I had to.”

Amber Jones, who terminated her pregnancy at about 24 weeks in 2016, told me that her baby’s diagnosis meant he would not survive. Hern reassured her, she said, that she “shouldn’t be made to carry the pregnancy. That it’s bullshit, and we have the right to access health care.”

Carson and other patients described Hern as brusque. But they seemed to take comfort in that brusqueness, as though Hern’s fierce assurance helped them feel more sure themselves. “I wouldn’t say he has a great bedside manner,” Carson told me. But “the degree of respect that I felt from him was enormous.”

Abortions that come after devastating medical diagnoses can be easier for some people to understand. But Hern estimates that at least half, and sometimes more, of the women who come to the clinic do not have these diagnoses. He and his staff are just as sympathetic to other circumstances. Many of the clinic’s teenage patients receive later abortions because they had no idea they were pregnant. Some sexual-assault victims ignore their pregnancies or feel too ashamed to see a doctor. Once, a staffer named Catherine told me, a patient opted for a later abortion because her husband had killed himself and she was suddenly broke. “There isn’t a single woman who has ever written on her bucket list that she wants to have a late abortion,” Catherine said. “There is always a reason.”

The reason doesn’t really matter to Hern. Medical viability for a fetus—or its ability to survive outside the uterus—is generally considered to be somewhere from 24 to 28 weeks. Hern, though, believes that the viability of a fetus is determined not by gestational age but by a woman’s willingness to carry it. He applies the same principle to all of his prospective patients: If he thinks it’s safer for them to have an abortion than to carry and deliver the baby, he’ll take the case—usually up until around 32 weeks, with some rare later exceptions, because of the increased risk of hemorrhage and other life-threatening conditions beyond that point.

Even within the abortion-rights community, Hern’s position is considered a hard-line one.

Frances Kissling, the founding president of the National Abortion Federation, the professional association for abortion providers, admires Hern and his commitment to women. But she has misgivings about his work. “Later-term abortions are more serious, ethically, than earlier abortions,” Kissling, who left NAF after a few years and went on to lead Catholics for Choice, told me—and only more so in cases that involve women who have not received any serious fetal diagnoses. “My ethics are such that I would say to them, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I cannot perform an abortion for you. I will do anything I can to help you get through the next two or three months, but I don’t do this,’” she said.

Hern bristles at the label abortion doctor. Too simplistic, he says. He will correct you if you use it. He is a physician, he says, who happens to specialize in abortion. Worse still is abortionist. He remains angry about a 2009 story in Esquire in which the author referred to him that way, again and again. It’s a pejorative, Hern says. He is more than his profession, he needs you to know. He is many things: an anthropologist, an epidemiologist, an adopted son of the Shipibo Indians in Peru. Abortion was never the destination for Hern, he insists; it was a detour.

As a child growing up in the suburbs of Denver, Hern dreamed of studying diseases in faraway places. During medical school, he worked as the unofficial doctor at a mining camp in Nicaragua, where he learned to speak Spanish. He spent six months in Peru, studying the culture and practices of the Shipibo. In 1966, the Peace Corps sent him to Brazil, where he learned Portuguese and trained under physicians who had started a family-planning association. Hern toured a maternity ward where one room was full of women recuperating from childbirth. Two other rooms held patients suffering from complications related to illegal abortions; at least half of those women ultimately died. This, he says, was formative.

From the June 1969 issue: The right of abortion

In 1970, Hern accepted a job at the now-defunct Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C., where he led the effort to open family-planning clinics across the country and launched a voluntary-sterilization program for adults in Appalachia. Given the link between the eugenics movement and the early birth-control movement, the word sterilization can carry an ominous ring. Hern says, though, that his work was intended to give low-income people choices and reduce their financial hardship. “Families like these,” he wrote in The New Republic at the time, require housing, clean water, food, and sanitation. “But one of the most important needs is freedom from the tyranny of their own biology.”

In 1973, Hern was back in Colorado—the first state to decriminalize abortion in some circumstances—acting as a consultant for family-planning programs when the world shifted. Sarah Weddington, a lawyer friend of Hern’s from D.C., had won the Roe v. Wade case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and abortion was now legal in all 50 states. Hern wrote op-eds defending the decision and an explainer about the procedure for The Denver Post. One day, he got a call from a Colorado group that wanted to start a nonprofit abortion clinic in Boulder. Would Hern be their medical director? Of course, he told them. Absolutely.

The Boulder Valley Clinic opened in November of that same year. Hern designed the medical protocols and performed all of the abortions himself. Although one major battle for abortion rights had been won, a larger war was just beginning. Demonstrators began gathering outside the new clinic. Two weeks after it opened, Hern received his first death threat—a late-night phone call at his secluded cabin in the mountains. The man on the phone said he was coming for Hern. The doctor began sleeping with a rifle next to his bed.

In 1975, Hern took out a loan and started his own practice. He named it the Boulder Abortion Clinic—avoiding euphemisms like women’s care because he wanted patients to be able to find him. At the time, Hern had never performed any second-trimester abortions, for which the standard procedure then was to inject a saline solution into the uterus to induce labor. But Hern had read about another method in a textbook that explained how Japanese doctors were using laminarias to end abnormal or dangerous pregnancies. The method took longer, but it was safer. Hern studied the technique, ordered laminarias, and got to work.

Hern was 34 when he performed his first abortion, a year before Roe v. Wade would be decided. A friend in D.C. who ran a local clinic invited him to come learn the procedure. Hern’s patient was 17 and in her first trimester of pregnancy. She wanted to be an anesthesiologist, he remembers.

Hern had learned how to do a dilation-and-curettage abortion in medical school, but still, he was terrified—and so was she. He recalls that after he finished and told her she wasn’t pregnant anymore, she wept with relief. He did too. “I was overwhelmed by the significance of this operation for this young woman’s life,” he told me. “This was a new definition, for me, for practicing medicine.”

But the work sometimes got to him. He would often retreat to his office to compose himself after an abortion. Partly, it was the high-stakes nature of the procedure. But he also needed time to process how the dead fetus looked, how removing it felt. Sometimes he’d sit in his office and think, What am I doing?

He had bad dreams too. In the 1970s, physicians did not induce fetal demise during abortion, and once or twice, during a procedure at 15 or 16 weeks, he used forceps to remove a fetus with a still-beating heart. The heart thumped for only a few seconds before stopping. But for a long while after, a vision of that fetus would wake Hern from sleep. He could see it in his mind, the inches-long body and its heart: beating, beating, beating. In one dream, Hern angled his own body to shield his staff from catching a glimpse.

Other people might have decided that this work wasn’t worth the haunting images, the pricks of conscience. They might have quit. But for Hern, the psychological stress of the work was the necessary cost of helping patients. He saw it as his job to carry some of the emotional weight. Over time, that stress became easier to manage. He stopped needing to compose himself between procedures. The bad dreams went away.

In 1978, Hern presented a paper before the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians in San Diego titled “What about us? Staff Reactions to D&E”—dilation-and-evacuation abortion—in which he concluded that, though medically safe, surgical second-trimester abortions are clearly more emotionally difficult for providers than earlier ones.

Some part of our cultural and perhaps even biological heritage recoils at a destructive operation on a form that is similar to our own, even though we know that the act has a positive effect for a living person … We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one’s eyes.

I quoted that paper during a conversation with Hern, as we sat shoulder to shoulder at a bar in downtown Boulder. He was nodding before I finished. Many of his colleagues were annoyed by what he’d written, he said. The abortion-rights movement isn’t exactly eager to talk about these visuals, mostly because it gives fodder to the opposition. Hern’s comments about “destruction” still appear on a number of anti-abortion websites as evidence of the horror of the procedure.

But the point of his report was to be honest, Hern said, and he stands by it. Why not face the truth that abortion late in pregnancy is, at least in one way, destructive? He still believes that such destruction can be a profoundly merciful act.

Annie Lowrey: American motherhood

Regardless of the circumstances of pregnancy, in Hern’s view, a woman’s life—her humanity, her wishes—isn’t just more important than her fetus’s. It is virtually the only thing that matters. That approach is diametrically opposed to the view of anti-abortion advocates, for whom pregnancy means motherhood and, often, self-sacrifice.

Hern understands that few share his total conviction. “This is a grotesque conversation to many people,” he said at the bar. “But this is a surgical procedure for a life-threatening condition.”

During that conversation and the ones following it, I prodded for cracks in Hern’s certainty. At one point, I thought I’d found one: Hern had told me about a woman who’d sought an abortion because she didn’t want to have a baby girl. I thought he had refused. But when I followed up to ask him why, I learned that I had misunderstood. Hern said he had done abortions for sex selection twice: once for this woman; and once for someone who’d desperately wanted a girl. It was their choice to make, he explained.

“So if a pregnant woman with no health issues comes to the clinic, say, at 30 weeks, what would you do?” I asked Hern once. The question irked him. “Every pregnancy is a health issue!” he said. “There’s a certifiable risk of death from being pregnant, period.”

Hern met the Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller at a National Abortion Federation conference in the late 1970s. The two talked on the phone nearly every week for 30 years. Tiller was the opposite of Hern—gentle, soft-spoken, churchgoing. “George was a normal person,” Hern told me once. “That distinguishes him from me right away.” Yet Tiller was murdered for doing the same work.

The phone rang at Hern’s house one morning in May 2009, and Jeanne Tiller was on the line. “George is gone,” she told Hern. An anti-abortion fanatic had shot her husband at church, where he was serving as an usher. Hern flew to Wichita for the funeral, and helped carry his friend’s casket down the aisle of the packed College Hill United Methodist Church. Sixty federal marshals stood guard at the service, he said. They told him that he would likely be the next target. Later that week, Hern performed abortions for all of Tiller’s remaining patients at his clinic in Boulder.

Thirteen years after Tiller’s death, Hern and I stayed up late talking in the restaurant of my hotel. Hern was speaking so loudly—about Donald Trump, fascism, and anti-abortion violence—that the bartender had begun to stare. Opposition to abortion has long been “the hammer and tongs to power” for the Republican Party, Hern was saying, “because of their allegiance to the white Christian nationalists and white supremacists.” Christianity, he told me, not for the first time, “is now the face of fascism in America.” That moral arc of the universe bending toward justice? “That’s the belief, but I don’t believe it.”

David Frum: Roe is the new prohibition

I asked Hern whether he ever worried that now, in a post-Roe world, he might have an even bigger target on his back. I wondered whether it was a bit reckless for him to be so outspoken with reporters like me. Actually, it’s the opposite, Hern replied. Being so vocal “increases the political cost of assassinating me.”

“That’s dark,” I said.

He simply shrugged. “This is what I have to think about.”

Suddenly, he remembered that he’d brought me something. He dug around in his coat pocket, and pulled out a fridge magnet he’d made from a photograph he took a few years ago near the island of South Georgia: penguins diving off an iceberg into the deep blue ocean.

Hern is known for presenting such gifts to people—and for regularly mailing out his latest published works. In addition to the magnet and the calendar, Hern sent me a copy of his poetry collection and his new book on global ecology. In the latter, titled Homo Ecophagus, he compares mankind to a cancer on the planet, writing that our unrelenting population growth will ultimately lead to the demise of every species on Earth. To view human beings as a scourge seems a rather ominous perspective for a man who ends pregnancies for a living. Could he see his work as, even subliminally, a form of population control? When I asked about that, Hern shook his head vigorously, waving my question away, as if he’d been ready for it. “Being concerned about population growth is consistent with the idea of helping women and families control their fertility on a voluntary basis,” he said.

Gonzalez sometimes worries that Hern comes across as too intense. “I always tell him, ‘Don’t look like Bernie Sanders,’” she told me, in her thick Cuban accent. Part of her hates that he can be so angry, so severe. “But another part of me loves,” she said. “Because how many people do you know that live with the level of passion that Warren does?” Still, Gonzalez wishes he would retire so that they could have more time to travel together and photograph wildlife.

During my stay in Boulder, I did occasionally look at Hern and wonder: Would I want you in charge of my complex medical procedure? Next month, he’ll be 85, and when he shuffles around the clinic in his turquoise scrubs and white lab coat, he looks it.

Younger providers have opened a handful of new late-abortion clinics in recent years. Some of these providers and others in the field argue that Hern’s abortion procedures take longer than they need to, and that his methods are out of date. Hern should have retired decades ago, these critics say. “Being 84 and doing procedures is problematic,” one physician, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about Hern, told me. (When I asked Hern about the criticism of some of his methods, he said he has always emphasized patient safety and will alter his procedures if they make the abortion safer. “If people don’t agree with me, I don’t really care,” he said. “I don’t give a shit.”)

Hern is working with two other doctors in the hope that eventually they will take over the clinic. But he’s hard to please. “I have to find the right people, train them, get them to know what needs to be done,” he says. “Finding physicians willing to do this work—who will do it well, do it carefully—is difficult.”

One morning during my visit, Hern and I climbed up the hill behind his house. The ground was muddy, and, thanks to a recent skiing injury, Hern was unsteady on his feet. I briefly wondered if this hike might bring about the end of one of America’s most famous abortion physicians. At the top of the hill, Hern pointed up toward a grassy crest of land above us called the Dakota Ridge. A big problem with modern society is that we’ve forgotten that we’re part of all this, he said, waving toward the ridge. The Bible says to “go forth and multiply and dominate the Earth and blah-blah, but that is exactly the wrong advice.”

He’s read the Bible a few times, he said. But he’s not religious; he’s spiritual. “The natural world, the forest, is my cathedral,” he said. To watch the sunrise, to see a wild animal, “just to be there, that’s a spiritual experience for me.”

And then, suddenly, Hern was connecting it all, drawing everything together: religion, Republicans, the Supreme Court, the future of American society. “These people believe stuff that’s out of the medieval times. The Pleistocene!”

On my last day in Boulder, a few of the clinic staff gathered in the kitchen for an unofficial Christmas party. They’d finished the week’s procedures, and all of the patients had been sent home. Now it was time for eggnog. Gonzalez poured some into mugs, and the clinic administrator offered to spike it with a bottle of his homemade rum. They passed around a box of chocolate cupcakes that someone had brought in.

Hern congratulated his staff on a good year, and they listened, amused, while he explained that he wasn’t able to find any good Audubon calendars at Barnes & Noble for their annual staff Christmas gift. He made a joke that he’d already told me more than once: “I could just give you the calendars from last year to pass on to your Republican friends,” he said, with a laugh. “They won’t notice for about 300 years that they’re out of date.”

Read: The Roe baby

A dozen Christmas stockings hung on the bulletin board, each displaying a staff member’s name in glitter glue. Buttons were pinned on the board, too, including some emblazoned with George Tiller’s face. You will be greatly missed, one said. Someone had propped open an outer door for circulation, and a stack of papers near the phone rustled—instructions for how to talk to someone calling with a bomb threat. “TAKE A DEEP BREATH,” they read. “Questions to ask: When is the bomb going to explode? Where is it right now?”

Hern seemed not to notice the strange juxtaposition of it all—the eggnog and the abortions, the cupcakes and the bomb threats. The buttons with the image of his murdered friend and the fact of his own stubborn survival. Of course he didn’t. He has spent five decades living with these contradictions.

This was an interesting read. Surprisingly nonpreachy given the subject; and well worth the time.

[7r0773r]

The Pause Between Inhale and Exhale by Roselyn Elliott

Myth

It's my first week in the heart unit and my patient resembles my mother, plump, a curly haired pleaser. Only the irregular beat when I press the stethoscope hard under her left breast, tells me she is sick.

On white sheets taut across her bed, she sleeps serenely on her side.

Next morning in the morgue, I stand at the back in a huddle of classmates. The pathologist makes a few smart cuts, lifts her heart high in both hands toward the overhead light. We gape. Like a dumb flock we stare upward, at the kind heart, glistening and pliant in his hands.

The smell of viscera invades my future, vision blurs, fingers tingle. What keeps me from falling is friends, their warm bodies, pressing toward the center of our crowd, warm breath, brushing my ears. Not one of us faints during the lecture beneath her severed heart, but in the brilliant light I see the lie about our work: how each day is its own interlude of denial, how the story will tell itself over and over until the end of time.

***

Summer Lights

Fireflies seeding the backyard your first evening away for work. The trees and underbrush are alive with this party. Choreographed to attract a mate, or prey, each one emits its green flare the second another switches off. And this sultry June evening, the private universe of my right eye showers my vision with commas, half-moons, parallel gnats dancing to retinal lightning. At the window I turn my head quickly, catch the next shape, the next. Eye flashing with each small shift, floaters collide with fireflies. Sitting on this smooth bed I remember you'll be gone a week, reading papers, your eyes straining with students' cursive. I picture you bent over the table of notebooks, think of your patience in all things all these years, even when I don't see what you mean, or when I don't look at you long enough. Fireflies between trees, pierce the humid dusk with yellow beads, green stars lingering into the night.

***

On the Way to the Clinic, We Pass a Small Country

Two or three feet across, beside a public school where chain-link fences meet: plastic cups, burger wrappers old watch with a broken band, chicory in blue bloom. Ants burrow up, claim dead insects. A sparrow balances on a single stalk of timothy. In this city of fumes and noise, between brick walls, moss grows on one side of stones. On the way to treatment for these wild-growing tumors in my right breast,

I claim for myself this tiny triangular wasteland, this small autonomous nation.

***

Night Rumors

Tonight, my son molds himself into the couch and bites the remainder of his fingernails, kept worn and sore.

He rises abruptly to go out with his friends. When he stands, he is a tall man, grown to that altitude where life is deadly, bright and irregular.

I've seen them on the street in little crowds. He has told me they sit around at someone's house, seeking substance of the mind, or for the mind, hunting a certain mellow knowledge.

This is what a parent learns: In the dark our children find themselves. All night, shining and laughing above some shapeless maw,

they coax the thing until they hear it moan, then tempt it with their life light, tempt it further, then come home.

***

The Separation of Kin

Bovine distress bristles the countryside.

The calling is unbearable: their constant blatting across our yard. What could our neighbor be thinking, selling the babies to the other neighbor where they cry for their mothers in the field beside our house? Young throats open, offspring question parents, and the cows' reply with a low keening, answered ten seconds later. All night their pleadings echo over pastures, reverberate through our rooms, spread through the dark woods, tree trunk to tree leaf, rise above the canopy into morning. Tomorrow hoarse from exhaustion and despair, a deep acquiescence unknown to humans will have overtaken these sentient beasts, but this day our only choice is to endure this loss surrounding us, rivet our gaze in the amber light, and imagine silence.

[gffa]

Do you think one could follow the Jedi Code/Lifestyle in real life as a positive manner of living or do you think it only works in Star Wars? I asked this on r/Mawinstallation and the answers I got were either:

''The Jedi code is oppressive so no'' ( this was the most upvoted answer )

''The Jedi code works but only for the Jedi''

''The Jedi code requires the force to work and since the force doesn't exist in the real world, the code cannot work''

And finally, I got only a single reply that said

''Yes, the Jedi code does work in real life, that's the entire point of Star Wars''.

What is your take on this?

This is going to be sort of a long, roundabout answer, but the short version is: In the finer details, we're not space psychics, but as a general idea? Yes. First of all, what even IS the Jedi Code?  Are we talking about the whole “there is no emotion, there is peace”/”emotion, yet peace” meditation mantra, which we should point out is nowhere in the movies or TV shows, but is entirely in the novels and comics supplementary material?  Are we talking about a more generalized idea of Jedi philosophy?  And what, precisely, does that mean?  I mean, what’s oppressive about it and what scene evidences that that’s what the Jedi taught? Second, there are two talks that George Lucas gave that I think really illustrate this view of emotional navigation and how that impacts Star Wars and the Force: There’s the writers meeting of The Clone Wars where he talks about the light side and the dark side and there’s an Academy of Achievement Speech from 2013 where he talks about joy vs pleasure:     “Happiness is pleasure and happiness is joy. It can be either one, you add them up and it can be the uber category of happiness.     “Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. It peaks and then it goes down–it peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. It’s like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether you’re shopping or you’re engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it.     “On the other hand is joy and joy is the thing that doesn’t go as high as pleasure, in terms of your emotional reaction. But it stays with you. Joy is something you can recall, pleasure you can’t.  So the secret is that, even though it’s not as intense as pleasure, the joy will last you a lot longer.     “People who get the pleasure they keep saying, ‘Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars–!’ You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car, that’s it, that’s the highest peak. Yes, you could get three Ferraris and a new gulf stream jet and maybe you’ll get close. But you have to keep going and eventually you’ll run out.  You just can’t do it, it doesn’t work.     “If you’re trying to sustain that level of peak pleasure, you’re doomed. It’s a very American idea, but it just can’t happen. You just let it go. Peak.  Break. Pleasure is fun it’s great, but you can’t keep it going forever.     “Just accept the fact that it’s here and it’s gone, and maybe again it’ll come back and you’ll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It’s all about your pleasure, it’s about you. It’s a selfish self-centered emotion, that’s created by self-centered motive of greed.     “Joy is compassion, joy is giving yourself to somebody else or something else. And it’s the kind of thing that is in it’s subtlty and lowness more powerful than pleasure.  If you get hung up on pleasure you’re doomed. If you pursue joy you will find everlasting happiness.”  –George Lucas And how I like to compare that to The Hijacking of the American Mind by Robert Lustig, MD, MSL, which is a book about how corporations have hijacked our pleasure centers to make us focused on reward over pleasure.  It talks about the exact same concepts, with only slight word adjustments, but otherwise might as well be verbatim: “At this point it’s essential to define and clarify what I mean by these two words—pleasure and happiness—which can mean different things to different people.     “Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “pleasure” as “enjoyment or satisfaction derived from what is to one’s liking”; or “gratification”; or “reward.” While “pleasure” has a multitude of synonyms, it is this phenomenon of reward that we will explore, as scientists have elaborated a specific “reward pathway” in the brain, and we now understand the neuroscience of its regulation. Conversely, “happiness” is defined as “the quality or state of being happy”; or “joy”; or “contentment.” While there are many synonyms for “happiness,” it is the phenomenon that Aristotle originally referred to as eudemonia, or the internal experience of contentment, that we will parse in this book. Contentment is the lowest baseline level of happiness, the state in which it’s not necessary to seek more. In the movie Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), middle-aged married couple Beatrice Arthur and Richard Castellano were asked the question “Are you happy?”—to which they responded, “Happy? Who’s happy? We’re content.” Scientists now understand that there is a specific “contentment pathway” that is completely separate from the pleasure or reward pathway in the brain and under completely different regulation. Pleasure (reward) is the emotional state where your brain says, This feels good—I want more, while happiness (contentment) is the emotional state where your brain says, This feels good—I don’t want or need any more.     “Reward and contentment are both positive emotions, highly valued by humans, and both reasons for initiative and personal betterment. It’s hard to be happy if you derive no pleasure for your efforts—but this is exactly what is seen in the various forms of addiction. Conversely, if you are perennially discontent, as is so often seen in patients with clinical depression, you may lose the impetus to better your social position in life, and it’s virtually impossible to derive reward for your efforts. Reward and contentment rely on the presence of the other. Nonetheless, they are decidedly different phenomena. Yet both have been slowly and mysteriously vanishing from our global ethos as the prevalence of addiction and depression continues to climb.     “Drumroll … without further ado, behold the seven differences between reward and contentment: Reward is short-lived (about an hour, like a good meal). Get it, experience it, and get over it. Why do you think you can’t remember what you ate for dinner yesterday? Conversely, contentment lasts much longer (weeks to months to years). It’s what happens when you have a working marriage or watch your teenager graduate from high school. And if you experience contentment from a sense of achievement or purpose, the chances are that you will feel it for a long time to come, perhaps even the rest of your life.Reward is visceral in terms of excitement (e.g., a casino, a football game, or a strip club). It activates the body’s fight-or-flight system, which causes blood pressure and heart rate to go up. Conversely, contentment is ethereal and calming (e.g., listening to soothing music or watching the waves of the ocean). It makes your heart rate slow and your blood pressure decline.       - “ Reward can be achieved with different substances (e.g., heroin, nicotine, cocaine, caffeine, alcohol, and of course sugar). Each stimulates the reward center of the brain. Some are legal, some are not. Conversely, contentment is not achievable with substance use. Rather, contentment is usually achieved with deeds (like graduating from college or having a child who can navigate his or her own path in life).       - “Reward occurs with the process of taking (like from a casino). Gambling is definitely a high: when you win, it is fundamentally rewarding, both viscerally and economically. But go back to the same table the next day. Maybe you’ll feel a jolt of excitement to try again. But there’s no glow, no lasting feeling from the night before. Or go buy a nice dress at Macy’s. Then try it on again a month later. Does it generate the same enthusiasm? Conversely, contentment is often generated through giving (like giving money to a charity, or giving your time to your child, or devoting time and energy to a worthwhile project).       - Reward is yours and yours alone. Your sense of reward does not immediately impact anyone else. Conversely, your contentment, or lack of it, often impacts other people directly and can impact society at large. Those who are extremely unhappy (the Columbine shooters) can take their unhappiness out on others. It should be said at this point that pleasure and happiness are by no means mutually exclusive. A dinner at the Bay Area Michelin three-star restaurant the French Laundry can likely generate simultaneous pleasure for you from the stellar food and wine but can also generate contentment from the shared experience with spouse, family, or friends, and then possibly a bit of unhappiness when the bill arrives.       - Reward when unchecked can lead us into misery, like addiction. Too much substance use (food, drugs, nicotine, alcohol) or compulsive behaviors (gambling, shopping, surfing the internet, sex) will overload the reward pathway and lead not just to dejection, destitution, and disease but not uncommonly death as well. Conversely, walking in the woods or playing with your grandchildren or pets (as long as you don’t have to clean up after them) could bring contentment and keep you from being miserable in the first place.       - Last and most important, reward is driven by dopamine, and contentment by serotonin. Each is a neurotransmitter—a biochemical manufactured in the brain that drives feelings and emotions—but the two couldn’t be more different. Although dopamine and serotonin drive separate brain processes, it is where they overlap and how they influence each other that generates the action in this story. Two separate chemicals, two separate brain pathways, two separate regulatory schemes, and two separate physiological and psychological outcomes. How and where these two chemicals work, and how they work either in concert or in opposition to each other, is the holy grail in the ultimate quest for both pleasure and happiness.”                                – Robert Lustig, MD, MSL And then lets add in what Dave Filoni has said about the Force and the core themes of Star Wars:     "In the end, it’s about fundamentally becoming selfless moreso than selfish.  It seems so simple, but it’s so hard to do.  And when you’re tempted by the dark side, you don’t overcome it once in life and then you’re good.  It’s a constant.  And that’s what, really, Star Wars is about and what I think George wanted people to know.  That to be a good person and to really feel better about your life and experience life fully you have to let go of everything you fear to lose. Because then you can’t be controlled.        “But when you fear, fear is the path to the dark side, it’s also the shadow of greed, because greed makes you covet things, greed makes you surround yourself with all these things that make you feel comfortable in the moment, but they don’t really make you happy.  And then, when you’re afraid of something, it makes you angry, when you get angry, you start to hate something, sometimes you don’t even know why.  When you hate, do you often know why you hate?  No, you direct it at things and then you hate it.  And it’s hard because anger can be a strength at times, but you can’t use it in such a selfish way, it can be a destroyer then.        “These are the core things of Star Wars.“  –Dave Filoni So, the core things of Star Wars and the Jedi teachings (because Jedi teachings are basically almost word for word how GL described how the Force works) can very much be a reflection of real world teachings and ways to live by, because all of the above are about how GL viewed the world and what he wanted to put into his movies. Further, Jedi teachings are basically just reworded Buddhism + Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.  And both of those are very livable by our real world standards, if you so choose.  GL was very much about how SW had themes that were meant to be picked up on by the audience and even DF has said this:  “ Jedi have the ability to turn the tide, to make a significant moment, to give hope where there’s none.  That’s their ultimate role to play, to be this example of selflessness.  And that’s what makes them a hero, when no one else can match that heroic thing.  And then our job is to emulate that, to use that example, and further our own lives.” --Dave Filoni Ultimately, the Jedi are specifically focused on disciplining themselves (which GL has said is the only way to overcome the dark side, in that TCW writers’ meeting), probably to a degree most of us wouldn’t have the room to devote to, but that doesn’t mean that the broader strokes aren’t meant to be applicable to our lives or don’t echo real world teachings.

[henryobsessed]

The Veterinarian and the Werewolf - Chapter 13

Word Count: 1599

Warning - Angst

A/N once again thanks to my beta buddy @sillyrabbit81 I'm going to finish this story this week or next hopefully :) so hehe hold onto your hats Selah

Chapter 13 – Jessie

Jessie kicked the door to the back of the house open, for the first time in a long-time panic filled her brain as she yelled, “Quick Joe get my medical bag from the truck.” All eyes turned to her. She looked a sight, blood splattered across her top, her neck and face and through her hair. In her arms lay Henry his limp body terrifying the group more than the blood. Joe quickly jumped into action, his training kicking into gear as he ran to the truck. Tom ran to Jessie attempting to take the wolf’s body from her, but she refused to let him go. Refused to accept that he was possibly gone.

She pushed past Joe into the kitchen, sizing up the situation and determining the table was the best place to operate. “Dillon, go get the tarp from the shed? Tom, clear the table off, I don’t have time to get to the clinic, so this is going to have to do.”

Together the boys worked fast, clearing the table, laying out the protective cover, and Joe organising what was needed from the travel kit that she used at the ranches. Finally, she allowed Joe to take Henry from her arms laying him out on the table.

“Where is the wound Jessie?” he asked assessing his body.

“Shoulder, right scapula, the bullet is lodged in the bone.” The panic was beginning to settle allowing her training to kick into gear, but the next words from Joe halted her.

“Jessie, are you hurt? Where did all the blood come from? This wound would not bleed like that.”

The boys all looked at her, then she looked down at Henry, she couldn’t lose it, not yet, not until he was safe. A growl built in her throat busting its way through her mouth, “Just concentrate on Henry, I’m fine. Just focus on him.”

Together they worked on the wolf, after 30 minutes all that remained was a shaved square of skin and a neatly stitched up hole. A bullet lay next to the bloody gauzes and surgical tools. Together they cleaned him up and Tom carried him up to their bedroom laying him on the bed. They attached the IV bag to her headboard and at that moment Jessie's adrenaline faded, the images of what she had witnessed, flooded her mind and she shakily slid to the floor. Not sure what to do, the boys moved towards her trying not to crowd her, but all concerned.

Questions began filtering through her haze. “Are you alright Jessie? Are you hurt? What happened?” She tried to speak, but nothing could come out, even that action was too much.

She finally heard another voice, Dillon’s talking to the boys. “We have to get her out of those clothes and in a bath, Tom, go run a bath, Joe and I will look after her here, ok.”

She heard his shaky voice protest. “No, if anyone should do that it should be me.”

She wanted to protest to tell them to leave her alone, but it was like she was trapped within her own body. Nothing was working. Gratefully, she heard Joe’s placating Tom. “We have known her a long time Tom. Please, just do what we are asking you to do.” Silence hung in the air until a small sob could be heard and then footsteps.

Very gently the boys undressed her, assessing her body for damage, they left her underclothes on thankfully unspoiled by the blood. It was a strange sensation being cared for like this, Jessie wanted to talk, wanted to move but found she was too exhausted to carry out her own wants. Dillon, the stronger of the two lifted her gently bridal style, her long legs hanging off his arm as he gently sat her in the bath. Together, they removed all traces of blood from her hair and skin. At one point Dillon left leaving Joe on his own to sit with her. “Jessie, I don’t know what’s going on, but this looks really serious. Whatever it is you know that we will look after you, protect you and Henry ok. You’re safe with us.”

The words broke through her battered brain. Her breathing began to shudder, and her shoulders shook as the tears began to fall, the fear, panic and anger all tumbling over her in waves of emotion. Dillon returned with a cup of hot coffee saw the dam break, without thought he motioned for Joe, “Get in and hold her honey.” Fully clothed Joe got in the tub and pulled Jessie into his arms the water spilling slightly over the side of the tub as their weights combined. Dillon quickly sat the coffee down and mopped up the mess to the sounds of Jessie’s muffled cries.

A long time later, Jessie was warmly rugged up on the bed next to Henry. His breathing was gentle and steady, her shudders long subsided, chairs had been bought up to the room as Joe monitored Henry and no one was willing to leave Jessie. Finally, regaining some of her focus and right mind, Jessie had a new hot cup of coffee in her hands and was trying to work out a way to describe what had happened.

She looked at the boys who were all waiting patiently. “This morning when I went out to get the milk, there was a letter from Boyd. He threatened to kill Henry and harm Tom if I didn’t meet him this afternoon in the forest.”

Angry protests left Tom’s lip at this comment and Dillion placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him, before saying, “Keep going, Jessie. So, you slipped out to meet with Boyd?”

She looked down at Henry, her hand reached out to touch his fur and calm filled her at the contact. “He was blackmailing me to be his “little woman”, threatening us, and was in the process of trying to get me to kiss him when Henry jumped out in between us. Boyd laughed and pulled a gun on him, saying that if he killed five of the six wolves here fifteen years ago, he would kill one more. Something snapped in Henry, and he leapt at Boyd. The gun went off, but it didn’t deter him. He tore Boyd apart, ripping his throat out, and… and… once he was dead, he collapsed.”

Silence filled the room as each person looked at Henry, they all knew that he was now a condemned animal. If anyone figured out what had killed Boyd, the sheriff would order his destruction. Jessie would have no legal recourse to defy the order. Slow tears began to fall again down her cheeks, if only he could turn human if only he could fight hard enough then he would be safe. No court of law would be able to say a human had killed Boyd.

The boys began to stir, and it was Tom who spoke first. “Jessie, we can’t tell anyone. we have to let him be found by someone else. Give Henry enough of a chance to heal so he can get away. Once the town knows they will put out a hunting order, he won’t be safe anywhere here.” She knew he was right, if he was strong enough to move, she would have taken him far away, but he needed at least two days more to stabilise if his healing rate was anything like last time.

Grateful for his healing abilities she said quietly, “He will be ok in two maybe three days. You saw how quickly he healed last time Joe, then I will leave. I’ll drive until he is better, then we will find a new place to live. Joe, I’m sorry to do that to you. But I’m sure you could advertise for a new Vet to fill my place.” All three boys began to protest at her words none wanting her to leave. For a life lived in solitude, she had made an impact on all of their lives.

Tired and weary Jessie placed the coffee down and laid beside her rescuer, lover, and mate. Placing her hand lightly across his body, she shut her eyes and fell asleep.

Over the following day, Henry slowly began to wake. He had stopped appearing in Jessie’s dreams and his absence was acutely felt by her.

On the morning of the second day, Joe came running into the house shouting, “Jessie, Jessie, they found him! Jessie, the sheriff and the ranchers are set up at the local hall readying a hunt. But I heard Tom’s dad say they should start here first!!”

Panic filled her body; they had run out of time.

She ran up to their room. Tom was sitting by Henry, but there was no time to worry what he would think, what any of them thought. Pushing Tom out of the way she knelt next to Henry her hand threading into his fur as she had done that last time, they were together in her dream. Desperation filled her voice as she pleaded, “Henry, please Henry, you have to change, you have to come to the surface, they are coming to get you, I can’t protect you like this! Pleeeeese! Henry change!”

She heard the sound of someone banging on the front door, and Dillon and Joe answering. Loud shouts and angry voices were heard floating up the stairs as she looked back fixing her eyes on his startled blue ones.

“Please my love, my mate. Come back to me.”

Chapter 14

[dirtychocolatechai]

meet-cute | b.b.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader Warning(s): fluff, awkward Bucky, vet appointment stuff, Alpine Request: Babes if you're lowkey taking requests can I lowkey make one? 👉🏼👈🏼🥺💕 something flirty and cute and maybe a lil spicy with Bucky and vet!reader where something's going on with Alpine? Not self indulgent at all 😻💖 Notes: This was the first thing I’ve written in months and it felt damn good. Funny story, I actually almost went to school to be a vet tech + shadowed a vet for two weeks and got to see some wickedly cool things.

This was a bit self-indulgent on my part because I had a cat who passed away some years ago because of struvite stones and I wished he had a happier ending like Alpine so I thought why not 🤷‍♀️💖

Taglist is open

(gif from google)

There’s nothing Bucky hates more than the stringent smell of industrial cleaners and clinical white walls - too many associations and shades of memory long laid to rest - except for when something’s going on with Alpine. The Turkish Angora was fine up until a few days ago when he started to hide away and sleep all day.

That wasn’t too concerning at first...

But then came the pained little noises, the frantic running back and forth from the litter box, the excessive grooming. The pit that started forming low in his belly grew, his instincts screaming at him that something was wrong, very wrong, with his little buddy. 

Bucky wasn’t about to fuck around and set up an appointment with the first vet office he could find that had a same-day opening. And now he’s trying not to fall apart at the seams while he waits for the docs to do their magic and tell him what the hell’s going on with his cat and what he has to do to fix it.

The vet tech collected Alpine a bit ago and every minute stretches into years, the cat’s pitiful meow echoing in his ears and those betrayed eyes burned onto the backs of his eyelids.

I know, Bub, I’m sorry but they gotta figure out what’s going on. It’ll be okay, they’ll take care of you. 

His ass went numb from the plastic chair ages ago, his leg jiggling up and down at a rapid pace as he chews on his thumbnail and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

God, he knows these things take time but he’d rather be back at home, curled up on the couch with Alpine pigging out on breakfast food and watching space documentaries. 

How much longer-

“Alright, Mr. Barnes?”

The heavy door swings open with a click, a kind, professional voice preceding a pair of sensible shoes as the vet steps into the room with a clipboard cradled against her chest. His eyes snap up, skipping over her completely to look at the tech holding his cat who looks absolutely miserable. 

She introduces herself but he’s not paying attention. He’s not meaning to be rude but all his focus narrows in on that white little face, the knot in his chest unfurling at the little mew.

He smiles, his eyes crinkling around the edges as he breathes, “Hey there, Little Buddy.” 

The vet doesn’t push, in fact, she seems a little enamored with how much he melts at the sight of his pet. Her own lips quirk up into a soft smile while she stands off to the side patiently as Alpine’s set down on the metal table.

Bucky gets in a few good scritches under his chin, the beginnings of a purr just starting to vibrate his hand when the vet clears her throat delicately. 

He clears his throat, heat burrowing into the apples of his cheeks. “Shi - uh, ‘m sorry.” A hand scrubs over the back of his neck. “I’m just - uh - y’know...” 

Her laugh trickles down his spine like warm rain, the sound effectively drawing his attention away from the cat rubbing up against his side. He gets his first look at her and oh.

A bare face and a no-nonsense hairstyle greet him, her scrubs and white coat adding to the overall doctor vibe but she’s still breathtaking. The natural beauty in the curves of her face, the slant of her brows, the sparkle of her eyes.

He feels like he got sucker-punched in the chest, his heart giving a sudden throb that has him coughing like an idiot as he scrambles to not look like such a jackass.

“So,” he clears his throat, scratching at the stubble along his jaw, “What’s - what’s wrong with him?” 

Glancing down at Alpine’s chart, she hums and writes a note before glancing back up with a reassuring smile. “Nothing that can’t be managed with a special diet and watching his water intake.”

It’s like the weight of the world disappears from his shoulders, his broad frame practically heaving with his sigh of relief. “Oh thank fucking- ahem, ‘scuse me - thank god.” 

Her chuckle and sly smile have him blushing from the roots of his hair to the collar of his shirt, his stomach squirming in discomfort. Old habits are hard to break, especially ones his momma taught him with a box to the ear.

“You’re allowed to swear, Mr. Barnes,” she says, reaching down to run her fingers through snow-white fur. “We’re all adults here.” 

“No, no, I know...” 

“Hm, anyway, his blood work came back and everything looks fine which is a good thing.” 

And it’s back to business like that, any hint of personality hidden behind cool professionalism that Bucky thinks even Tasha would admire. Except for the playful gleam in her eyes as she sneaks peeks at him while going over everything they did and what they found. 

“Struvite crystals are quite common in cats at low levels, especially males because their tract is longer and narrower.” She pauses, flipping to a new page. “Depending on the severity, they can clump together in the urinary tract and actually form stones. That’s where the true problem lies because get one large enough, and it can cause a blockage.”

He’s listening with rapt attention, soaking in the knowledge she’s imparting to him all the while, petting Alpine who keeps nuzzling him and making little sounds. Honestly, he could listen to her talk for hours even if he didn’t understand a goddamn thing. 

She’s so animated when she speaks, holds eye contact and makes sure he understands everything without making him feel like an idiot. He’s had so many doctors who talked at him rather than with him, staring through him without seeing, more interested in the paycheck rather than their patients.

But not her, she cares.

Deeply.

He can see it all over her face and it’s utterly enchanting. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little enamored, charmed.

Turning the tablet towards him, she shifts closer and a waft of whatever perfume she’s wearing tickles his nose as she explains what the x-ray of Alpine’s abdomen found.

“These are the stones but thankfully they’re relatively small,” she points to several hazy white ovals starkly visible on the radiograph, “We caught them in time before they became a really big problem.” 

Shit, she smells so good...

 “Now, we’ll send you home with a special diet and see how he does. Also, make sure to up his fluid intake as much as you can. The food can take several months to start dissolving the crystals so we’ll have to do everything we can to help. Sound good?”

Bucky hasn’t pulled his eyes away from her face once this entire time, and how fucking creepy is that?

Quickly looking down at Alpine, embarrassment gnawing at his belly, he nods and wishes for the first time since he cut his hair that he hadn’t so he’d at least have a passing chance at hiding the blush burning its way across his face. 

“Yeah,” he says, picking up the ball of white fluff to hold against his chest, a makeshift shield. “Is there anything else I should do?” 

“No.” She smiles, writing another note and tapping away at the tablet next to her. “I do want to see him again in about a month for a check-up.”

Fuck, he doesn’t want to leave so soon.

The irony isn’t lost on him either.

How does he make this last longer? What can he do? If Sam was here right now, he’d be kicking him in the ass and bitching at him to ask for her number already, Ice Pick.

The clack of the chart being set down rings through the room, bouncing off the walls and sounding so fucking final that he starts to panic. 

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. 

She’s already halfway to the door when she asks, “Do you have any questions?”

The word vomit spring from him, unbidden and sudden without any thought, more forward than he’s been with a woman in years.

“Can I have your number?”

As soon as the question leaves his lips, he curses, cringes and wishes he could snatch the very words from the air itself.

Great, I just hit on my vet.

No amount of backpedaling can salvage this but goddamn it if Bucky doesn’t try, stuttering out some half-assed excuse about wanting it just in case he thinks of something later.

When he glances up, he wishes he hadn’t. The vet tech is in near tears in the corner, biting her lips so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if they started to bleed.

But it’s the absolute surprised bafflement on the woman he just inappropriately hit on that does him in, makes him about ready to burn all forms of identification and run for the hills. 

Her brows nearly reach her hairline, her mouth slack, eyes startled. She gets ahold of herself before he does, and he barely stops himself from slapping a hand over his face.

Right when he’s thinking there’s no way he’s going to be able to show his face in the office again, her expression softens with gentle amusement and her lips twitch. 

Struck dumb, he can only watch as she writes something down on a slip of paper before handing it over to him. He barely believes the string of numbers and the cheeky little call me anytime :).

The wink she sends his way is there and gone, so fast he almost believes he imagined it. 

“For emergencies only,” she says, slyly. “Of course.”

“Of course,” he agrees, almost tripping over the cat carrier as he hurries to stuff Alpine back in. “Of course, thank you. I...appreciate it.” 

“Anytime, Mr. Barnes.” 

Bucky leaves the room in a stupor, the world sharply shifted to the left as he heads to the front desk to make the follow-up appointment, but not before hearing the whispered, “Girl, you’re lucky. He’s fine!” and the “He is, isn’t he?”. 

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

What's your ranking of Stephens in MoM (zombie and 838 included 😉)?

Oh the variants! It's completely unnatural how much I loved them considering they were only on screen for a short period of time. You know me, this got long. And needless to say, lots of spoilers ahead.

Defender is my #1, hands down, I loved him immediately. I love that side of Stephen where he's not your typical hero, he's prepared to do certain things that would be morally reprehensible but his job is to protect the multiverse. He can't always take the easy route or give himself the luxury of wondering whether what he's about to do is right or wrong, he sort of approaches that kind of dilemma like he used to operate on patients: there's something wrong and it needs fixing so he's almost clinical in its precision when it comes to making decisions. Doesn't mean they're always the correct ones though.

Clearly taking America's power (thus, killing her) was wrong but if that being had taken her power, what would have happened? It's a tough call and I get that. I also love that our Stephen solves that dilemma by surrendering control and allowing someone else to fix the problem (I can't believe there are people out there saying he has no development in this movie!). Also, since Marvel wants to keep our Stephen as a hero they had a little more leeway when it comes to Defender and they showed him doing something morally bad, I liked that.

838 is probably my #2. I'm not a big fan, in fact I always hate it when one character goes off the rails and the only resolution there is, is to kill him. I can somewhat understand from the Illuminati's perspective that they were all working together and Stephen went into it alone, knowing the risks and yet doing it anyway and causing the death of an entire universe in the process. That was obviously the wrong thing to do, but the greatest thing What If did was show us that another similar Stephen also destroyed an entire reality, his own, but he found redemption in the end. It would have made a lot more sense if that Stephen had acknowledged his mistake, learnt from it and he had been the one to tell our Stephen the story.

Also it's kind of hypocritical that Charles says that line about someone who stumbles is not lost forever when they doomed 838 Stephen after the use of the Darkhold. Did they even tell him about the Book of Vishanti? Because our Stephen thought it didn't exist (Wong knew about it, though).

Then Sinister Strange... he has so much in common with What If Stephen (he even says his line at some point) but it's not the same guy and that was a huge disappointment for me. Not his fault, that's just me. I love the way Ben portrayed him though, the things that man does with his voice... you could feel how old and tired he felt and how careless he had became. And I loved that he asked our Stephen if he had ever had a dream where he's falling from a tall building... because that's exactly how he dies. Premonition or not it sounded so creepy. They went for something similar to the confrontation in What If between "good" Stephen and "bad" Stephen but I just feel they failed in the execution. I liked him but... not quite, that's why he's my last one.

Oh and I almost forgot Zombie! My beloved. Well, he's basically our Stephen but in a dead body. I liked the poetry of MCU Stephen choosing not to take America's power while possessing the body of a variant of his that had tried to do just that. Making a cloak out of the souls of the damned was badass as hell (ha, pun) but there isn't much to discuss about him given that the poor thing was dead.

[squeamishdionysus]

Healer

pairing: Jet x Reader

TW: Heavy injury, near-death experience, discussions of trauma

Summary: The Freedom Fighters take Jet to a family of healers after his fight with Long Feng, where he begins a new friendship with the reader.

Notes: Hey everyone!! This was a request for a user on another platform who wanted a Jet x Reader. After many, many rewrites, I finally settled on making a two-parter, with this being the first part! I hope you like it and if you do, please feel free to leave a comment!!!

Masterlist

The sun had just risen over Ba Sing Se. The sky was an orange tint with only a few clouds in sight, the kind of day that always puts you in a good mood. You had opened the curtains wide, letting streams of sunlight fall into your living room, warming and brightening the space. You put a teapot full of hot water on top of the pot stand, using your spark rocks to begin heating it. Your parents hadn’t woken up yet, and you didn’t plan on waking them up any time soon.

You were the child of a mixed couple, with your mother being a refugee from the Northern Water Tribe and your father being a local in Ba Sing Se. Your mother moved to Ba Sing Se a long time ago, after the man she was originally arranged to marry died fighting in the war. Being a waterbender and a healer, she became very popular among the locals, opening her clinic in the Middle Ring, where she healed anyone who needed it. That’s how she met your father.

Eventually, of course, they had you, and as fate would have it, you were a healer and waterbender, as well. Your mother taught you as much as she could, and as soon as you were old enough, you began helping her. Even with your help, though, business could still be tiring. That was why you were letting them sleep.

You sprinkled a few jade tea leaves into the water, looking out the window and watching the houses around you begin to wake up. Your neighbor, Mrs Yao, was out watering the flowers in her garden. A few stray cats sat out in the alleyway, their tails swaying patiently as a boy, the son of one of the other neighbor’s, left out a saucer of milk for them. A newlywed couple kissed each other goodbye as one of them began her commute to work, the other bouncing a small baby on her hip. A group of children chased each other down the street, giggling and playing as they slowly made their way to school.

It was rare you got to see such a scenic morning. Perhaps you would take a walk after breakfast, just to enjoy it a little more. The gardens around this area were always nice to walk through, and you were sure they’d be even nicer with the weather.

You continued looking out the window, thinking about all the ways you could enjoy this fine morning, eventually having to check on the tea. You took it off its stand, putting out the fire and pouring yourself a cup. You sighed, holding the cup up to your lips and breathing in the scent of hot tea. Jade had always been a favorite of yours

A sharp, urgent knock rang out, startling you. You couldn’t think of anybody who would be visiting this early, so you hurried over to the door. You opened it just enough to peek out and felt your heart drop. You felt panic wash over your body, the scenic morning turning all the more grim.

In front of your house stood two people, a boy and a girl, holding up an unconscious and seriously injured boy in their arms. The girl had clearly been crying, the paint on her face was smudged and you could tell just from the expression of the boy helping her that whatever had happened was not good. As for the boy they were carrying, he didn’t look good at all. His eyes were shut, he couldn’t stand and he could barely breathe.

“Please,” the girl spoke, desperation in her voice. “Our friend was attacked by an earthbender. We heard a healer lives here and we need to see her.”

You stammered, struggling to think. Panic was setting in, and you couldn’t get out a single sound. You didn’t know what to do, but you’d have to figure it out. You took a deep breath in, clearing your mind and beginning to think. Stepping to the side, you began to speak.

“Get in, go to the hall and find the guest bedroom. Lay your friend down on the bed in there.”

You watched as they entered the house, rushing down the hall of your house and into the guest room. You turned to the basin that sat in your kitchen, holding up your arms and bending a round bubble of water. You walked as briskly as you could to the guest room, walking in and kneeling beside the boy. You bent the water over his chest, feeling all of the broken and bruised ribs he had. You frowned.

“This doesn’t look good,” you said. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see the girl fighting back another stream of tears. The boy beside her hung his head just enough so that you couldn’t see his face. You stared down at the injured boy in front of you, looking at his face. His eyes were still closed shut, his breathing short and tense, but steadier now that he was on his back. What were you going to do? You could try and heal him on your own, but it would be incredibly difficult, especially at your apprentice level. It was unlikely he’d live. There was only one thing you could think to do.

You bent the water into a nearby vase, standing and furrowing your brow in a serious expression.

“I need you two to take off everything covering his chest. It’s the only way I’ll be able to heal him effectively.”

They both looked up at you, a hopeful look coming across their faces.

“I need to get my mother.”

~

“These injuries are serious. What happened to him?” your mother asked, looking up at the Smellerbee and Longshot. They had told you their names after your mother and you had begun your healing session with their friend, Jet. You had woken up your parents half an hour ago and explained the situation, your mother immediately going to help. Your father was currently making a special medicinal tea in the kitchen, hoping it would be of help to Jet.

“It’s a long story,” Longshot answered. “And even if we had enough time to explain, we aren’t in a safe enough position to say.”

Your stomach tightened. Were they involved with some kind of gang? That would explain their clothes and face paint, but they seemed too friendly to be in one. However, that didn’t dismiss the idea that they could’ve just been targets. Either way, you were worried.

Your mother nodded. “I understand. I won’t pry any further. How about you tell us more about yourselves?”

Your father walked in, a soft smile on his face as he placed a tray of tea down.

“Jet, Longshot and I have been together for a long time,” Smellerbee spoke. “Before we came to Ba Sing Se, we lived in the woods around a small village that had been taken over by the Fire Nation. We stuck together because the Fire Nation had taken something away from all of us. Both Jet and I lost our families, and Longshot's village was burned to the ground."

Your father gave her a sympathetic look as he handed her a cup of tea. “I’m so sorry. I lost my father when I was about your age. It’s something nobody should ever have to go through, especially a child.”

Smellerbee gave him a soft smile. “Thank you, sir. It was alright in the end. We formed a group called the Freedom Fighters, where we would fight back against the troops in our area and help people who had been hurt by them.”

You were impressed and intrigued, hanging off of every word she said. “That all sounds so exciting!”

She nodded. “It was. For a while, at least. We even got to meet the Avatar at some point.”

You gasped softly, looking up from the boy below you with wide eyes. “The Avatar?”

“Yes,” Longshot answered. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t under the best circumstances. The Freedom Fighters had become more about revenge than helping the Earth Kingdom. We made a horrible mistake that almost cost the lives of an entire village.”

Seeing the previous awe on your face beginning to sink, Smellerbee quickly interjected, “but we’re not like that anymore. We came to Ba Sing Se for a fresh start to move on from our past mistakes. Unfortunately, Jet had a harder time letting go than we did and got himself arrested for attacking a tea shop worker who he thought was a firebender.”

Your mother frowned, the water underneath her hands continuing to flow over Jet’s chest.

“I had a horrible feeling the Dai Li had something to do with this,” she sighed. Your father gave Smellerbee and Longshot a smile.

“And please know that we don’t judge you for your past. You have all been through so much, and it is completely justified that you feel anger towards the Fire Nation.”

You nodded, the conversation ending there as you began to focus intensely on healing Jet. You could feel the bruises and broken ribs in his chest slowly begin to heal, and his breathing was becoming more and more steady. You were grateful the group had managed to find you and your mother in time before any of his injuries could get any worse. If they had waited any longer, you probably wouldn’t have been able to make this much progress.

About an hour later, you and your mother had managed to heal Jet enough that he would be stable on his own; his chest was still injured, but not lethally, and when he’d eventually wake up, he’d be able to breathe, talk and eat normally.

Your mother grabbed a towel and wiped her hands, smiling softly at Smellerbee and Longshot. “Jet is going to have to stay with us for a few weeks, just to make sure he heals completely. He’s not quite ready to be walking all around Ba Sing Se just yet.”

Smellerbee smiled brightly. “That’s great! How much do we owe you?

Your mother chuckled, shaking her head. “No, no, you don’t need to worry about that. Just worry about taking care of yourselves. Just make sure you visit at least once a week. That should be enough.”

Longshot bowed his head. Though his expression was blank, you could see the grateful glimmer in his eyes.

Smellerbee stood, Longshot doing the same. "Thank you so much. We'll be sure to come back and check on him tomorrow."

Your father walked with them to lead them out of the house and to possibly offer them some food. You looked back at your mother.

"What now?"

She sighed, looking down at Jet with her brow furrowed. "We're just going to have to do regular healing sessions and keep an eye on him until he wakes up. That's the best we can do for now."

You nodded and let your eyes fall on his face yet again, relaxing at the sight of him peacefully sleeping. The pain must have been subdued with your healing. You could finally take a breath and feel good that you had helped a little bit.

You stood and wiped your hands on your clothes, walking towards the door. You needed to eat something, as that healing session was quite draining. Perhaps you still had some good peaches.

You looked back at Jet one last time. He looked quite handsome when he wasn't in pain.

~

The light from the window to the side was practically blinding to Jet, his vision blurry as he tried to open his eyes. It took a while for his vision to focus enough for him to get a good look at where he was. The room was a lot different than what he was accustomed to. The walls were nice, much nicer than what you’d be able to find in the Lower Ring, and there was a landscape painting hung up on the wall directly in front of him. The mat he was lying on was a lot more comfortable than he was used to, and the sheets were made with some high-quality fabric. He had no memory of ever being here before. The last thing he really could remember was excruciating pain in his chest.

Right. He had that fight with Long Feng and had his chest crushed. The Avatar’s friends were there, as well as Smellerbee and Longshot. He must’ve blacked out some time after Aang left because he couldn’t seem to remember anything after that.

He tried to sit up, groaning as he moved his fatigued body for what seemed to be the first time in days. His chest didn’t hurt as bad as he recalled, but it was still very sore. He had to keep his back somewhat straight otherwise it hurt to breathe, not to mention his head was killing him. Overall, Jet was not comfortable in the slightest, and he still had no idea where he was.

When the pain toned down enough for him to be able to think and focus, he tried to observe his surroundings. He had already determined that he was most likely in the Middle or Upper ring, given how nice the interior was. There was a large vase beside his bedding, one he figured was filled with water. Other than that, not much was going on decorating wise.

He looked down at the sheets that covered his chest, hesitantly pulling them down to see the damage Long Feng had done to his chest. He winced. Large purple bruises were scattered across his chest. They weren’t severe, at least not as severe as he was thinking, but there were a lot and they were very sensitive. His mind went back to the feeling of being struck with the rock. It was horrible and it felt like it completely collapsed. The more Jet thought about it, the more it occurred to him that it was only a miracle that he wasn’t dead.

“Oh, great!”

Jet’s eyes immediately darted up to the doorway, just as a stranger walked into the room holding a tray of tea.

You gave him a smile, kneeling beside him and placing the tray down.

“Mother told me you’d be awake by now.”

Your voice was soft and reassuring, but Jet still eyed you with caution.

“Where am I?” he asked, his voice hoarse from going so long without use.

You took a cup of tea from the tray and handed it to him, smiling.

“You’re in my house Jet. Your friends, Smellerbee and Longshot, brought you in here a few days ago, because you were attacked. My mother and I are healers, so we’ve been taking care of you for a bit.”

He hummed, taking the tea from your hand and watching the steam rise from it. You shifted slightly, moving your feet from under you and crossing your legs.

“I’m sorry if you’re not a fan of jade tea, it was the only kind we had.”

Jet gave you a small smile of reassurance.

“It’s alright. I don’t drink tea often enough to have a favorite anyway.”

He took a sip of it, a sudden insatiable thirst awakening inside him the moment the tea touched his tongue. It had only just occurred to him how long he had gone without water, or food for that matter. He tilted his head back, chugging the tea until there wasn’t a drop left in the cup. He took a deep breath, looking back over at you, suddenly wide awake.

“How long was I out?” he exclaimed, panic in his voice.

“About a few days,” you said, handing him another cup that was on the tray. “And I wouldn’t call it ‘out.’ You were in and out of consciousness all day yesterday. I was able to make you drink a little water here and there, but not a lot.”

By the time you were finished talking, he was already done with his second cup, tea dribbling down his chin.

“Where are Smellerbee and Longshot?” He asked, wiping his face with his wrist.

“I don’t know, to be honest. They never told us where they lived.”

“And where’s your mother?”

You took a pause, pursing your lips together silently. You reached out and gently touched his chest, pushing him back a bit.

“Please lay back down. There’s a lot I have to tell you.”

He hesitated, giving you a questioning look, before slowly laying flat on the bed.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.

You gave him a smile and nodded, whispering your name to him as you raised your hands and looked towards the vase in the corner. You began to move them in slow patterns, water bending out of the vase and over to where he lay.

“Move the sheet out of the way so I can begin healing your chest,” you said, clear and stern.

He did as you asked, pulling the sheets out of the way to reveal his bruised abdomen. You smiled and muttered a small thank you, before bending the water over his wounds. The water began to glow dimly and left a cool sensation on Jet’s wounds. He hissed slightly, feeling the water begin to heal his wounds.

“You know,” he said raspily. “I’ve actually met another healer before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah… her name was Katara.”

You grinned. “Katara’s a beautiful name. What tribe was she from?”

“She and her brother were from the Southern Water Tribe. She was the only waterbender they had.”

You hummed, recalling what your mother had said about the Southern Water tribe.

“I assumed so. My mother told me that the Fire Nation captured all of the South’s waterbenders. I guess they missed one."

“Must’ve. She was travelling with her brother and the Avatar to the North when I first met her.”

You grinned excitedly, perking up at the mention of the Avatar.

“Your friends mentioned you had a run-in with the Avatar!” you beamed, continuing to heal him. “Tell me, what was he like?"

“He was a great kid. Friendly and always eager to help. He can be a bit naive, but he’s gotten smarter since I last saw him. I’ve run into him two separate times.”

“Weren’t you with him when you got attacked?”

His face fell a bit, his brow furrowing as he averted his eyes from you.

“Yeah. I was helping him find his bison.”

His tone was cold and distant, a total one-eighty from a few moments ago. You bit your lip softly and turned your head towards him.

“How did you get attacked, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He sighed, looking back up at you with a slight smile.

“How much time do you have?”

You grinned.

“All the time in the world.”

[inkweaver22-blr]

Here’s chapter ten! I do believe this is the first chapter with absolutely no dialogue! I hope you enjoy it regardless!

AO3 Link

<Previous | First | Next>

Scattered Cicadas - Chapter Ten: Soft Shadows

Redemption is a hard process. Yet the cycles seem to make it easy for one particular demon.

----------

Redemption was a tricky thing. It required so many different events to happen in a certain order that it rarely occurred.

The first step was to commit some form of wrongdoing.

This was unfortunately the easiest part to do and most people never moved on to the next.

The second step was to realize and acknowledge your actions as wrong or harmful.

Many had justified their own actions over the course of existence and never saw themselves as doing wrong. Worse, many knew their behavior to be cruel and simply did not care or relished the feelings of power it gave them.

The final step was perhaps the most difficult to achieve.

One had to feel genuine remorse for their actions and wish to change.

Very few actually made it this far in the process as it usually required a catalyst of some sort. A personal revelation after going too far or someone laying your actions out clinically so you couldn’t justify them. Even a single act of unconditional kindness and trust could make someone wish to change.

Then came the truly hard part: actively changing your actions.

The path to redemption was not a short one. It took a lifetime of pursuit and dedicated work to not slip into the temptation of reverting back to who you were before.

Closing yourself off and pretending you didn’t care was easy, after all. What was difficult was being honest with yourself and allowing yourself to feel.

It helped if you had people around you to offer support and love. If it was from the same people who you had harmed originally, all the better.

But earning forgiveness wasn’t the goal of redemption. Some would refuse to give it, and you would have to live with that as it was their right to do so. It may hurt, but you had hurt them first and have no right to demand it even if you had changed.

Being redeemed wasn’t for the benefit of one’s victims. The hope was that you could grow into being a better person. It was for your own personal peace of mind. Whether others choose to accept that you’ve changed was not up to you, but you must continue onward regardless if you were to ever live with yourself.

Tang was intimately familiar with this process. The amount of cycles where he had been some sort of villain was not small.

The first three steps came easy to him. Feeling remorse for his wrongdoings and wishing to change were simple for one stuck jumping through time.

He could even spot a suitable catalyst for his potential ‘redemption’ fairly quickly. MK’s kindness and belief of the good in most people had certainly been useful on many occasions.

Having the whole process down to a science himself, Tang was even able to pull others into changing their ways sometimes. The Demon Bull family were commonly caught in his actions whenever he was a part of it.

(Having Red Son as a younger sibling had been interesting.)

What was bemusing to the scholar was that throughout the cycles there was one person who would constantly be redeemed, even without his meddling.

The Six Eared Macaque was an interesting puzzle.

He seemed to fit into the group that knew their actions were harmful, but did not care. Yet time and time again, he would become one of their allies.

Tang hadn’t known much about the demon early on in the cycles, but the knowledge about him came inevitably.

Macaque had been a “beloved friend” of Sun Wukong in the past. At some point, they had a falling out, Macaque seeing it as being left behind by Wukong.

The scholar had actually experienced part of that tension back in that cycle with the time traveling cactus.

So it seemed feelings of betrayal, jealousy, and abandonment were Macaque’s main motivations.

That last one was eerily similar to MK’s insecurities.

Macaque was very much like both Wukong and MK when Tang stopped to think about it. All three had repressed emotional trauma and coped with them in wildly unhealthy ways. Usually by pretending they weren’t there.

Macaque channeled those repressed emotions into schemes of revenge. He used lies and illusions to get what he wanted. He was condescending and sarcastic to his enemies, seemingly cruel and uncaring.

And it was all a facade.

At least, most of the time. There were a few cycles where Macaque was genuinely a despicable person who showed no remorse.

As much as he tried to hide it, Macaque was actually a very emotional being. It was quite easy for him to get attached to one or more of their group and slowly his cruel streak would fade.

Macaque’s catalyst for change was usually a person. It differed from cycle to cycle, but someone would show him some kindness or trust and before Tang knew it they would have another sarcastic immortal monkey as a part of the team.

MK was obviously the most common person to get the demon to change. Macaque was not lying when he called him a good kid. Having four father figures in those cycles seemed to be good for MK.

Wukong, while usually not the initial catalyst, tended to play a big part in Macaque’s redemption. Being old friends, they knew each other extremely well. While that tended to lead to a lot of arguments, it also led to them picking up where they had left off their previous relationship.

It didn’t really bother Tang that said relationships were often romantic in nature. Watching the two monkeys cuddle when they thought no one was looking was just too cute.

Mei was an interesting choice for Macaque to become attached to. He often ended up becoming her mentor, teaching her how to properly wield the Dragon Blade. Both of their sarcastic natures worked surprisingly well together.

The biggest surprise had been Pigsy.

That cycle, Macaque was basically under house arrest as ordered by Heaven. Pigsy, not wanting the manipulative demon to be anywhere near MK, forced him to stay at their apartment. It was some time later when Tang had woken late in the night to some loud noises and had left his room to complain.

Only to find Macaque pressing a kiss to Pigsy’s cheek before fleeing his room, pursued by a flustered and angry pig demon soon after.

It was strange, but Pigsy’s gruff and silent compassion meshed really well with Macaque’s easy going and nonchalant attitude. The scholar found their affection towards each other endearing.

Tang supposed it was only a matter of time before he himself acted as Macaque’s catalyst.

The cycle had started early, about a year before the original events. While working at the library, Tang had been approached by what he immediately recognized as Macaque in his human disguise. He had requested help on learning more about The Journey to the West for a school assignment. Tang, deciding to play along, offered himself up as an expert on the story and they began meeting weekly to go over it.

Macaque truly did not know the full events of the Journey in this cycle and seemed upset at several points, such as learning about the fillet used to inflict pain on Wukong. Over time, the pair began to meet up more often and discuss things other than the famous book.

He really should have expected falling in love.

Macaque was still sarcastic as ever, but never malicious. He made jokes and comparisons that had Tang’s side aching from how hard he laughed. He was quick to pick up Tang’s quirks and preferences, surprising him with his favorite foods or a nice new set of bookmarks.

He was still Macaque, but this softer side of him made Tang’s chest flutter.

As he lay in bed with his partner, (who had still yet to reveal himself to Tang, but he was patient), Tang couldn’t help but feel a new place in his heart open up for the shadow demon. He had already been considering adding Macaque into his family due to the many times he had joined them, and this just solidified that decision.

Oh Tang knew the cycles where he never changed would be painful. Watching as someone he loved went down a path of self destruction wasn’t easy. But he held onto the knowledge that there would always be the cycles where Macaque did become a part of their family.

As long as the possibility existed, there was hope that the same could happen in his own timeline.

If he ever got back that is.

Tang shoved that increasingly reoccurring thought away and closed his eyes, letting the soothing sounds of Macaque’s breathing lull him to sleep.

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A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES!

Macaque is the fandom’s darling bad boy, so of course I had to have a chapter discussing his many, MANY redemption’s over the many fics and AU’s.

In particular, (Teach Me to Be) Tougher Than Leather, Softer Than Silk by *checks notes* HOLY SHIT! I had no idea this was by @ninja-knox-ur-sox-off until just now! *ahem* Anyway it is an AMAZING fic with a practically never used pair and I highly recommend it.

Tang seems to have a type doesn’t he? Demons that seem emotionally distant, but are big softies at heart. It’s probably the purring that gets him. ;P Also does Tang/Macaque have a ship name? If not I'm dubbing it InkyPages.

Don’t worry Tang! I’m sure those intrusive thoughts will go away all on their own.

Important notice! I’m probably going to be putting this fic on the back burner for a bit because I really want to write about the cycle mentioned here. Not as part of Scattered Cicadas, but as its own thing. So keep an eye out for that!

Until next time!