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bbcphile · 6 months ago

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In Memory of Kiah

cw/tw: death, medical assistance in dying

If you’re wondering why I kind of disappeared from the Mysterious Lotus Casebook tag and stopped posted WIP Wednesday things, here’s the explanation: One of my closest friends, who has been dying progressively and increasingly painfully over the last two years, told me about 3 weeks ago that they were going to pursue medical assistance in dying because it is legal where they live. It was originally scheduled for the end of July, then moved up to the end of June, and then on Monday, they moved it to Wednesday (yesterday), because their life was agony and they couldn’t wait any longer.

I’m lucky that I had enough advanced notice that I was able to say goodbye–both by sending them a message telling them in detail how much they’ve meant to me and thanking them for everything, and then in one last phone call the night before–so I’m glad they knew how much I loved them and that I could be there for them emotionally, even though I couldn’t physically be there for the end itself, because they live too far away. We met on Tumblr through the chronic illness community because we share the same genetic connective tissue disorder and many of its comorbidities, and I will always be so, so grateful to Tumblr for bringing us together.

I wanted to post about them here because it just felt wrong to keep going like nothing had happened, and because I wanted to do something to pay tribute to how good a person they were and how much I miss them. So, some words about Kiah:

Kiah was one of the kindest, funniest, intellectually curious, loving, and fiercely protective people I have ever met. I loved that we could talk about anything, including the terror of living in a failing body or how to come to terms with being disabled when you were always an overcommitted overachiever who defined yourself on external metrics of success, analyze media together during watch parties, and laugh together about literally anything (including during our last conversation, where we were both bawling our eyes out, but also somehow laughing about how absurd it is that you can’t really cry hard and talk at the same time and how that seems like a real design flaw). We didn’t share any fandoms, but we still had fun sharing details about our blorbos and fandom activities: I loved hearing about their cosplay adventures, and they always wanted to keep up to date on the metas I was writing. Even once they went blind and couldn’t read my metas on tumblr anymore because it wouldn’t work with their screenreader, they had me send them Google doc versions so their computer could read my posts to them because they didn’t want to miss any of my analyses. And when they were too sick to listen to the full posts, they asked for summaries because they still wanted to keep up as much as they could.

They were always so caring and compassionate: when they first called to tell me in January that they were going to do medical assistance in dying, and after I had told them I understood and supported them and we’d talked about how they felt about it, they asked me how I was. I had told them that while I was heartbroken, I would handle it, because I didn’t want to make them feel responsible for comforting me when they had their hands full with processing everything and feeling their own grief. They said that while they appreciated my not wanting to make it harder on them, they didn’t want me to feel like I had to be ok in front of them, because they wanted to comfort me and support me even in this if they could, since they didn’t have that much time left to be there for me and they wanted to make it count. (yeah, I’m sobbing right now.)

None of those descriptions could even begin to do justice to how much they meant to me, but I hope this anecdote will:

I couldn’t be with them at the end because I’m a country and an opposite coast away, but I hated the idea of not being able to say goodbye in person or hold their hand if they were scared during the injection. So I played piano and imagined they could hear it.

Most of you probably won’t know what that means or why it would be a big deal. Here’s why:

I used to be a musician. Music was my life and my most important means of self-expression, and was absolutely going to be my career. But in high school and college, an extensive series of very traumatic things happened that made me essentially have to give up performing. For the better part of the last 18 years, literally up until I sat down to play for Kiah, even just the idea of performing for someone or a neighbor overhearing me play was triggering enough that I would have a full-blown panic attack and dissociate so badly I would literally go from concert pianist level ability to mostly forgetting how to read music and having to count ledger lines. But my desire to do something so that maybe, just maybe, I could make Kiah’s final moments better apparently trumped my trauma, because I was able to do it. I had wanted to play some Rachmaninoff, Brahms, or Chopin, but apparently those are still too closely tied to Events and I started to have skill loss issues again (fucking dissociative amnesia), so I switched to a piece I had played long ago enough that it was reliably in my mind and fingers (and that I could sight-read if I forgot it partway through).

And I played it.

I hope, somehow, they were able to hear it.

I also recorded it.

And I’m going to share it here.

It kind of feels like serving my heart up on a platter, but that feels kind of appropriate for this tribute to them.

I think they’d be happy, knowing that I’m “doing it scared,” as Tumblr recommends, and that my attempt to give them the biggest gift of love and support I could think of, somehow, even if just temporarily, gave music back to me.

Also, I think they’d get a kick out of the fact that you can hear me giggle a little at one point in the recording when the sheet music falls on my hands, both because it’s a great middle finger to perfectionism, but also because laughing through the tears (and yeah, I was crying while playing this) is very much a chronic illness and disability thing, and feels like a good metaphor for much of the last few months.

So. All that to say:

Kiah, I love you. I miss you so much already.

Here’s Robert D. Vandall’s “Lakeside Retreat.”

#about me #personal post #my music #Kiah

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voidwhump · 1 year ago

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Day 4, Alt. 1: Betrayal

Behold! A guy with a name! This is Kiah, who you will see later under the title Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

Ingredients: Environmental whump, fucked up workplace

Despite how nice it felt to be wearing half decent equipment, Kiah couldn’t shake their nerves. They were looping over the sequence that had been laid out for them as their partner led the way into the thickening smog.

They were only paying just enough attention to avoid tripping over their own feet, jutting flakes of sharp, volcanic rock jabbing them through their heat proof pants whenever they looked up for too long. Get there, let your buddy watch your back, leave quickly. They hadn’t been given much to do, despite this apparently being some sort of skill test for them. It was probably just the environment then.

The heat was already suffocating, even through the layers of protection they wore, and the smoke was getting so thick they could barely see their partner only a few feet ahead. Kiah squinted, rubbing some grime off the outside of the glass shielding their eyes, and briefly sped up, hoping to close the distance a bit. This proved to be a mistake.

They barely registered the bruising pain in their shin before they went down hard, almost smacking their face on another rocky shard that probably would have shattered the lenses in their mask. Groaning, they got back to their knees, blinking reflexive tears out of their eyes.

“Wait up, would you? I can’t see fuckin anything,”

Their voice sounded muffled, as if the smoke absorbed the sound. No one responded.

“Hello?”

They stood up, shifting their weight around and finding that they could stand fine. Probably just a bruise. The cavern was dead silent. There wasn’t much water down here anymore, and not a lot of things liked to spend much time in temperatures this extreme. Before, they could at least hear the footsteps ahead of them, slightly out of synch with their own, but even those were gone now.

“If you’re messing with me just because you think I scare easy, you’ll be fuckin sorry when you don’t get any credit for the haul I’m about to get. By myself.”

Still nothing. Even though it wouldn’t be out of character for their lovely coworkers to try to haze them or something, there was also a chance that he just hadn’t noticed them fall and kept walking. They palmed the cibite compass they’d been provided, just in case, and felt the weight shift in their hand as the small, drained crystal inside rolled towards the closest charge it could find. They could do this, even if they had been abandoned they should probably be where they were expected to be anyway. They set off, holding the route shown and described to them in their mind as vividly as possible.

Or maybe they couldn’t do this. The heat had gotten steadily worse as they walked, which they were expecting to a degree, but the air cleared suddenly, all the smog trapped at the ceiling, and they rapidly retreated from what was clearly a set of active heat vents. They didn’t expel anything but heat, and some light, but the air shimmering around the cracked, rocky mounds made them look almost malevolent.

Even the split second of being within ten feet of the thing had them pressing their hands through their gloves, checking to see if they’d still managed to burn themself somehow. It didn’t seem like it, but this route was absolutely not the right one. They backtracked in their head. They had been hoping for a straight shot, but that wasn’t working out. They hadn’t been paying much attention to the forks they passed, so they turned around to check again. It’s not like they wouldn’t be making the walk anyway.

Kiah passed up the first few, their educated guess being dead ends or more vents, but finally they stopped at one and considered. It was hotter at the entrance, but the passage dipped down very slightly. It could be that the path itself would be a bit cooler, and the more they thought about it the more they felt like they recognized a few features that their supervisor had been talking about earlier. If those features actually described when they should make a turn was up in the air, but they figured this was an alright choice. They chipped a visible slice out of the fragile layers of rock around the fork with their chisel, marking it as already traveled and which direction was out.

Luckily, it seems that the route they picked was a pretty straight shot. After a little ways of tunnel and a weirdly circular cavern, the heat returns and they enter a relatively narrow crevasse packed full of cibite. The crystals refract the light from their lamp hundreds of times over, lighting the whole area with a flickering, yellowish glow.

There’s still no sign of their partner, or anyone else. Kiah rolls their eyes and gets to work anyway. Time is still of the essence, as their supervisor put it. These tunnels are unstable, and waiting around might mean the difference between your way out still being there when you get back and your route being blocked. They start chipping away at the crystal, breaking thin spines of it off at the base and sliding them into the set of insulated tubes they’d been given to transport them.

It’s not fast work, but they’ve never been a slacker. They’ve wedged themself a ways into the crevasse at this point, two thirds of their containers filled. It’s an extra 40 pounds, or just about, but the walk back won’t be too long now that they know their route for almost sure.

They’re scoping out their next target when a distant scratching, clicking sound they’ve been ignoring abruptly shifts and echos in the space behind them. Kiah turns, holding their light behind a nearby cibite spire to amplify the light without pinpointing their location to whatever is approaching. It doesn’t sound like earth moving the way it did from a distance.

A shadow on the wall appears, a many legged, flat backed omen of the creature casting it. Kiah doesn’t stick around for the real thing. They force their way into the crowded space ahead of them, counting on this crevasse not to put the dead in dead end.

Smaller cibite spines break off and shatter around them as they force their way deeper. Whatever’s behind them is still moving after them, hardened limbs creating soft chimes as its steps impact the crystals. There’s a branching tunnel up ahead, and Kiah takes a gamble on a tight but direct squeeze. They lose. A hidden cibite spike catches the treated fabric of their suit and punctures it. It misses their skin by inches, but the heat of the environment invades their protective coating. The crystal itself burns against their skin, making a sharp line of heat across their side and back that brings them one step closer to real panic.

The creature behind them speeds up, encouraged by their predicament. They pull to the side, yanking the crystal out of their suit, away from their body. One of the cylinders they’re carrying is lost in their rush, catching on the same spike and rolling out of reach. Pushing past, tight to the crystals on their other side, Kiah sprints down the tunnel. They can’t move as quickly as they’d like, those familiar shards of rock impeding them, but they can move fast enough. The thing behind them didn’t have an easy time getting to this path either, but the rhythmic tapping behind them has resumed. It’s getting louder, they likely couldn’t see it through the fog even if they checked, but it’s probably gaining on them.

The temperature starts to rise, and despite the situation they slow. They come to a stop as the pervasive fog starts to thin, and once again they are face to face with a set of heat vents. Kiah’s stomach drops. The thought that they actually might end up dead hadn’t really sunk in until right that second. Then, they recognize the vents. They’re the same ones they ran into earlier, and now that they’re looking from the other side they can see it’s only fifty feet or so until they’d be out of the heat. With their suit punctured though…

The steps of the creature speed and stop, and as they feel the air move behind them through the hole in their suit they realize the thing just jumped at them. They don’t have a choice. Kiah runs all out, not caring about getting closer to the vents than they technically have to. They’ll get burned either way. Even the parts of their body still protected are prickling in the oppressive heat, their chest hurting with every inhale. The area exposed to the heat started blistering the second they cleared the fog, and they can only hope they clear the vents before there’s permanent damage.

And then they’re through. They immediately trip again, over a fog obscured rock shard, landing hard on their knees before taking the rest of the impact more gracefully on their side. Kiah just lies there. The rocky floor digs into them through their suit, aggravating the minor burns that probably cover any part of their body where the suit fit even a little bit tight.

Their body aches, the strain of the actual work they did compounding with the burns and bruises. They’re sweaty, blistered, and still don’t know where the fuck their partner went. They get up, slowly. On top of it all, they’re actually crying a bit now. They can’t wipe their face through their mask so they just blink until their vision clears somewhat. There isn’t any real emotion behind it, so they’ll probably stop soon. They’re just tired.

It’s a long walk back to the company checkpoint. It probably takes them twice the time on the way back, hurting and weighed down with the cibite. Eventually the bright lights of the little underground shack go from distant blurs to defined lamps, and as they approach they see not only their supervisor, waiting as she said she would be, but also their alleged partner. They aren’t even upset anymore, nothing to be done about it now.

“Did I miss something?” Kiah sheds the cylinders into the racks placed just inside the shack, metal clanking on metal as they separate the filled containers from the empty ones.

“It looks like you didn’t miss much, you filled more than half of those all by yourself?”

Well at least they’re impressive.

“Sure. Wasn’t expecting to though, what happened to him?” They gesture at the guy who was supposed to be with them.

“Oh, this was all you! Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated accordingly, you just never know what’s going to happen in the field, you know?”

Oh. That manages to ignite the last fuck they have to give.

“If something else like this happens, I’ll make an educated guess and straight back. I don’t see why… messing with me like this would make for good training.” Kiah looks around for somewhere to sit. Their body is done for the day. Probably done for the next several days.

“You’ll get it once you’ve gotten some rest. Come on, lets get you back to first aid, looks like you need it,” She takes their arm on their less burned side.

They glance over their shoulder at the collaborator in this stupid scheme. He doesn’t look particularly apologetic. He’d better not be getting paid for this.

#whumptober2023 #no. 4 #betrayal #altprompt #OC #writing #environmental whump #abusive workplace #blood sweat and tears #Kiah #burns #whump #whump writing

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