#had a doctors appointment AND walked two miles to a blood clinic to get bloods done

[butnotbubblegum]

i did so many Big Adult Things today and for that i deserve to be able to sleep forever and never do anything again

[mthollowell-writes]

Day 15: Needle

31 Days of Horror

I did it for the money. Of course I did. Why else would I spend up 5-8 hours of my free time every week getting the blood drawn out of my arm? It’s not painful, just draining (ha!). I used to be scared of needles. As a kid, I would scream and kick when the doctors walked in with the boosters. But when the rent needed to be paid and your job wasn’t keen on a raise in pay or hours, you did what you had to.

So on my off days, I woke up at the crack of 7 and hustled to the blood bank. I know every one in a 15 mile radius of my apartment and the workers there knew me by name. It was easy money and an easy meal. Every cracker bag and juice box a godsend. I usually hit up two to three places before the wooziness kicked in. Four or five come hell week (rent AND utilities due). The place on 12th and Grand paid the best. The workers there started to take a weird interest in me. When I sat down and drew up my sleeve, I could see a few of them whisper and look in my direction. Aw hell! Was I about to get banned? Do they do that to people when you sell your own sweet iron elsewhere? The woman who approached me looked warm and kind. She smiled as she settled next to me. She had my clipboard. She said my name. “Yes…” I acknowledged hesitantly. “I have a proposition for you.” And what a proposition it was. They wanted to see if I’d be interested in participating in a medical trial. I seemed relatively healthy and in the right age bracket, so I was an ideal candidate. The catch? They wanted to run a series of test on me: blood sugar, cholesterol, cat scans, MRIs. Essentially, free medical care! And of course, I’d be paid for my time. How could I say no to something like that? She handed me a collection of papers to sign and we were off. Testing would take place at a medical clinic in the iffy part of town. The address she left me was in the basement of what looked to be a rundown townhouse. I was sketched out, to be honest, and every instinct told me to run. I swallowed it down—it was hell week and my job cut my hours again—and made my descent, The other side of the red door had your standard clinic with a waiting area and everything. I was the only other person there besides the aide at the check in desk. After filling out some more paperwork, a nurse collected me and settled me in an examination room. She took my weight, vitals and ordered some blood tests before sending me on my way. “That’s it?” I said as I buttoned up my shirt. “That’s it!” Nurse Betty was a broad shouldered woman with a personable bedside manner. She laughed kindly at my confusion. “What were you expecting?” I didn’t know how to answer that without a rude reference to organ harvesting so instead I said, “This is a unique setup.”

She nodded in understanding. “This place has been around for a long time. Most of our patients are older and this place has been taking care of them since they were in diapers. We don’t get as much traffic as we used to so we lend out our services for testing.” Made sense. “What’s this trial for anyway? It wasn’t clear.” “Oh, I wouldn’t know that, honey. Above my pay grade,” she joked. “But we’re still vetting you to see if you’re a good candidate.” At the check out, the office aide handed me my payment before scheduling my appointment for next week. Rinse and repeat for five more session. Every week, they did a series of test before ordering others. It was the easiest money I ever made. So much so that I cut all the way back on my blood donations. During the last session, Dr. Smith reviewed my results with me. “Everything looks great,” he beamed. “You’re a perfect candidate.” He explained for the next week, I would be offered accommodations for the study. It shouldn't take more than two weeks. “Don’t eat or drink 12 hours beforehand and bring some extra changes of clothes. We will provide all necessary meals for your stay,” he explained. “At the end of it, you’ll get your final lump sum for your cooperation. Any questions?” It sounded good to me. When I came back for what was essentially a paid vacation, they had me strip down to a hospital gown and had me wait in the examination room. It was just like the start of every other appointment, but this time, nurse Betty gave me a pill and told me to relax. I laid down on the bed and must’ve fallen asleep at some point because I woke up under a harsh white light. My arms and legs were tied down by leather straps. A good dozen masked faces looked down on me. One held up a syringe filled with a dark mixture up to the light before injecting it in the hollow of my arm. Whatever it was burned through my veins and left me breathless. I kicked and screamed and demanded answers, but soon the drug did its work. My whole body went numb, but I was fully alert. Impossibly awake. Dr. Smith lowered his mask to reveal a ghoulish smile. “Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing, but we’ll need you awake for the procedure.” He picked up a scalpel which caught the operating room light overhead. “Breathe. And try to relax.”

Then the cutting began.

[softsnzstuff]

I’d love to see more Doctor Eddie sick but being all soft and vulnerable with his patients!

My friend, I love this idea so so much. I think I may have mentioned in earlier fics that Joyce Byers works at a different clinic or something like that - but for the sake of this story, we’re going to say that she also sees Eddie as her PCP. -🤍KB

*****

Letters danced around the computer screen that Eddie was staring blankly at, completely zoned out. A tap on the shoulder jolted him back to reality, the letters returning to their original placement - an email he’d been trying to answer for the last half hour.

“You okay Doc?” The freckles brunette asked, waving a hand jokingly in front of his face.

“Yeah, I’m-” he blinked at her before pulling his arm up to shield his face, “N’xxTCH! ii’xxtchu! H’isSHuhew! I’b fine.”

It was Robins turn to blink incredulously at him as he blew his nose gently a few times. He looked back at her over the tissues.

“Im fine Birdie.”

She sighed, holding out the blue folder with papers clipped to it, “Joyce is in exam 3 for her annual. Should be pretty straight forward. Steve says she’s in good shape.”

Eddie nodded his thanks, taking the chart from her and standing up. He punched at the bridge of his nose, hoping to ease away the tickle that had set up camp early this morning.

He knocked on the door and let himself in, seeing his smiling friend and colleague waiting for him. Although he occasionally worked with Joyce, she was more of a mother figure to the entire office at Hawkins Medical.

“Hi sweetheart, how are you?” She chimed.

He tried to clear his throat but had to turn to cough dryly into his elbow.

“Im doing alright, love. How are you?”

She furrowed her brows. Clearly her mom-senses were on high alert. Especially with two boys of her own at home, Eddie knew Joyce could spot a cold from a mile away.

“Im doing just fine, but you sound a little scratchy. Are you catching that cold that’s going around? Will says half his class is out with it.”

Eddie didn’t like to admit to being less than 100%, but he knew with Joyce there was really no point in trying to hide anything.

“Ugh, yeah. Steve had it a little over a week ago. Think it finally caught up to me. It’s not too bad though, really.”

She looked him up and down with her motherly gaze, “If you say so.” She commented warmly.

“Anyways! Let’s snff skip to the good stuff. Your labwork!” He pulled one of the pieces of paper out from her chart. “Labs look great, Joyce! Sugars are all snfsnff normal. Thyroid is in range. Blood pressure is a little bit high but I think for now we can chalk that up to the stress of the job. It’s not high enough to concern me.”

“That’s great to hear! Jim will be thrilled to know I passed.” She teased.

“You’ll have to tell him I said hhh hello. Excuuuse me- H’ESHuhew! eh’TSCHew! snfsnff ii’KSHiew!”

“Aw bless you, honey.”

Joyce had stood up and walked to the counter Eddie was leaning against. She handed him a tissue, using her other hand to rub little circles on his back.

“I know you love your patients, but you should really be home in bed taking care of that cold.”

Eddie squeezed his eyes shut, again pinching at the bridge of his nose as he sniffled.

“I k’dow. SNF It’s silly. It’s just… doctors can’t get sick. The patients will think I’m weak.”

He winced slightly, knowing it sounded more pathetic once the words had escaped his mouth.

“Sweetheart. No one thinks you’re weak.” Joyce cooed, “And doctors can’t get sick? I think you’re losing the argument against that one.”

“You’re right. At least it’s Friday. I’ll rest up this weekend.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” She smiled warmly before they wrapped up her appointment.

***

At the end of the day, everyone was heading out the back door. Robin was in the lead, but shortly behind her were Eddie and Steve.

The younger of the two was shouldering both their backpacks, arm around Eddie as they walked out together. His cold had truly drained him and all he wanted was to go home and sleep for 44 years.

Right before they made it to Steve’s car, Joyce came running up from her mini van. Had she never left? She answered her own question as she approached the two men.

“Hi boys! Glad I caught you!”

“Did you forget something inside? I can let you back in.” Steve asked.

“No actually, I was telling the boys at home about the appointment and Will insisted I drop this off with you, Eddie.”

She handed over a piece of paper folded hot dog style. On the front was a decent crayon drawing of what appeared to be Eddie sick in bed. It had scribbled on the front in Will’s handwriting:

DoctOrS gEt siCk tOo

Eddie opened the card to reveal another classic Will drawing. This one was of Eddie holding up a guitar standing next to what appeared to be Will in a wizards hat. The inside of the card read:

DoctOr RocKsTar,

I hoPe yOu fEeL bEtteR.

From Will tHe WisE

A sappy smile crept across Eddie’s face as his heart warmed. He blushed slightly, embarrassed that the whole Byers family knew he was ill, his cheeks matching the pink tone of his nose.

“Thank you so much Joyce. Please tell Will the Wise that he’s healed me! I’m all better now!”

He coughed into his shirt sleeve and Steve rubbed up and down his arm. “Alright Doc, time to get you home I think.”

Joyce nodded in agreement, smiling at them. “Feel better Eddie!”

The long haired man mouthed ‘Thank you’ one more time as he got into the car, holding the card tight to his chest.

Steve got in the car second, and looked over at his partner still staring at the card, smiling. He chuckled to himself.

“That make you feel better?” He asked.

“MmHmm.” Eddie nodded before quickly pulling the neck of his shirt over his face. “M’Ptsch! TsssCH! H’IKSHiew!! … snFF, m’buch better.”

[kickingitwithkirk]

Greetings From Austin: Part II

Pairing: Alpha!Jensen Ackles x Alpha!Jared Padalecki x Omega!OFC

Summary: Jensen and Jared are at odds over a monumental decision that changes their lives in a way they couldn’t have envisioned.  

Word Count: 3985

Warnings: a/b/o, bisexuality, angst, cursing, self doubt, depression/anxiety, married life/disagreements, medical stuff, sexual dysfunction, infertility, surrogacy

*Jensen acting out of character

*additional warnings to be added in future parts.

A/N: series Inspired by this art.

A/N II: For this part I did some research & delved into a bit of reproductive/genetic testing-please don’t dink me on details, I altered it a bit to fit A/B/O verse.

A/N III:  There is no intentional hate or malevolence intended towards any of the Ackles or Padalecki families. This is a purely fictional piece containing real and created persons/names/events set in the fictional  A/B/O verse. Some dates/events altered to fit story.

Part I

*no beta-all mistakes are mine

*photos found online

One hour later

Jensen sets two sealed cups in the small niche shutting its door and grabs his jacket sliding it on, his inner Alpha purring with satisfaction watching his husband's fumbling fingers working at a button on his shirt, “Need any help babe?”

Jared’s all dilated pupils and glowing cheeks above his thick beard, “I’m good, I'll be out in a few.” Jensen leans in for one more soft, lingering kiss before leaving. Locking the door behind him Jared leans against it, closing his eyes, savoring the last vestiges of his oxytocin high.

He can’t stop recalling that mischievous glint in those luminous green eyes as Jensen slowly licked his plush lips before diving in to kiss him stupid, his long, sinful tongue doing things that’s probably illegal in twenty states, hands with ooh, so thick, talented fingers capable all sorts of magical things.

Shaking himself out of the memory he crossed over to the sink and caught his debauched reflection in the mirror. Shit, he can’t out looking like this.

Turning on the tap cups his hand to catch some of the running water splashing his face to cool off when his phone starts vibrating in his back pocket. Drying his hands and face he pulls it out checking the text. Glancing up he runs a hand over his thick beard, smoothing it down before leaving the room.

Completely preoccupied typing a reply he rounds the corner heading for the doctor's office slamming into a woman knocking her off her feet, the contents of the bag she’s carrying scatter loudly across the floor.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry!”

From her seated position she looks up...and up, his long, long legs clad in low riding jeans barely held up by a loosely buckled leather belt, his shirts rucked-up, a bit of his treasure trail and toned abs flanked by the sharp V of his hip peeking out.

“FuckI’mfuckingsorryFuckdidn’tfuckingsee....”

Jared, embarrassed, keeps apologizing, laced with fuck every other word, squats down gathering scattered items, dropping them back into the bag continuously babbling until she bursts out laughing. “And here I be thinking I said fuck to much,” a subtle lilt in her voice making it sound like she’s saying fook instead.

They move around each other picking up the last of her stuff. Jared reaches for a scarf when the central air catches a few loose strands of her hair, lightly dancing them across his cheek.

He inhales sharply as her piquant scent travels through his system eliciting a rumbling purr deep in his chest, “Fuck..” She breathes out gazing directly into his kaleidoscope eyes, watching mesmerized as they bleed into red with arousal as her eyes flash gold in response.

“I..I..fuck..I’ve gotta go!” She sputters, scrambling to her feet, grabs the bag hurrying away, leaving him holding the scarf.

Lifting the forgotten fabric to his face Jared deeply inhaled her scent, reaching down presses against his cock chubbing up the second time that day. He morosely stares in the direction she fled in once more, a low whine of loss escapes before he tucks the scarf into his back pocket and resumes heading towards the doctor’s office.

Dr. Rodgers, standing just inside in a doorway observing unnoticed, makes a mental note.

***

Jensen watches amused as Jared sits down with a slight wince, a not unpleasant reminder of their recent interlude, teases, “Did I make that much of a mess out of you Jay?”

Jared shrugs with a nonchalant “eh.” Jensen lowers his chin leaning close growling his displeasure at the flippant response, Jared internally shivers knowing he’s gonna pay for it when they get home, much to his delight.

Jensen abruptly stops growling, “You stink like Omega!”

Dr. Rodgers comes in carrying a binder saving Jared from responding, “We’ll get your test results in about two weeks unless we see something that needs further investigation.” He sets down the binder in front of them, opening it to the first page revealing a dossier and picture.

“Now, the next bit is selecting an egg donor. I’m sure you're wondering how we select the donors. I rely on a protein compatibility test, similar to the markers blood test used when matching Alphas and Omegas, narrowing down prospective candidates.

All of our donors are Betas and Omegas. Several of the Betas are willing to be the surrogate too. If you choose to go with an Omega donor we will have the extra step of selecting a Beta surrogate but that’s something to discuss later if needed.

We also take into account your personal preferences when it comes to physical traits, personality, etc. I’ll introduce you to the top three that are the best matches. If for some reason none of them work out, we’ll try the next most compatible candidates.”

Dr. Rodgers clicks his pen, “Let’s get started shall we.”

***

Flipping off the light switch Jensen walks out of the bath to find Jared already asleep. Crossing over to their bed he stopped at his side admiring him.

How had he gotten so lucky to have Jared as his? Over fifteen years since that life changing meeting he was more in love with his mate than ever, the ups and downs in their relationship that could have torn them apart made their marriage stronger.

Jensen took hold of the book Jared had been reading, gently pulling it out of his hand, slid in a bookmark and placed it on the nightstand turning off the lamp.

Easing into his side of the bed he leaned over pressing a soft kiss to Jared’s bare shoulder, who only wore bottoms since he always ran warm. Shifting, Jared buries his face into Jensen's neck, draping a long arm across his chest snuggling close, “Thank you.”

“For what babe?”

“Helping me today,” he could feel Jared’s breath warm against his skin, “I know you're against having more but please don’t decide not to, I want to have pups with you.”

Jensen mentality sighed, he’d be forty-three before they were born and didn’t want to be the old dad. Jared had argued that he'd never be, they knew lots of people were having their families later, look at Reedus, fifty when his daughter came and JDM, he was almost fifty-two when George was born.

“I’ll make you a deal, I’ll say yes if we find one donor we both agree on,” he felt Jared’s emotions shifting more positive, “but if you like one and me another, I’m not doing it.”

Jared pressed several soft kisses to the side of his neck, “Okay Jen,” he agrees, shifting to lay his head on his shoulder, “we’ll find the one, I can feel it.” he sleepily finishes.

Jensen rests his cheek against the top of Jared's head, not fallen asleep for ages. How was he going to handle Jared’s inevitable disappointment, knowing it will happen since they have always had vastly different tastes in females.

***

Five days later

7:00 A.M.

Jared was up to mile three of his daily workout on the treadmill in his office. He usually ran outside this early in the morning but a surprise thunderstorm altered his plans for the day when his phone rang. He dialed the machine down to walking speed to answer.

“Hello, Mr. Page, this is Sissy from Dr. Rodgers office, I’m sorry to be calling so early. He would like for you to come back in for a follow up about your semen testing.” Jared’s throat tightened, closing off his ability to respond.

He stepped off the machine and sat down on the large leather couch, “Sorry I..what time can I come in?”

“We have an opening at 8:45, will that work?”

“Yes ma’am, I can be there then.”

“Great, we’ll see you in a bit Mr. Page.”

Jared sat back not caring he was getting sweat all over the leather and started his breathing exercise to calm himself, telling his brain to knock it off, surely it wasn’t anything major with how calm Sissy was on the phone.

Ten minutes later he was still anxious but able to handle it. He glanced at his watch and knew he had to get his butt in gear to make the appointment.

Walking into the bedroom he found Jensen softly snoring so he moved as quietly as he could grabbing some clean clothes and headed for the shower. He left a note by the coffee pot saying he had an errand and be back ASAP.

He pulled into the clinics parking lot with five minutes to spare. Tucking his hair into his ever present beanie, Jared slipped on his mask and dashed through the downpour into the clinic.

After being temperature checked, Sissy walked him to the doctor's office. Knocking on the door she opened it and Jared saw the doctor on the phone gesturing for him to come in as he finished his call.

“Hello Mr. Page, thank you for coming in. I wanted to go over a discrepancy the lab found with your test, I'll try not to use too much doctor jargon.” He layed three pages on the table in front of him, a color printout of a sperm DNA strand broke down into segments and the others Jared recognized as chromosome mapping. “These are part of the Alphas sperm DNA sequencing. Normally, this one has a wide band in this segment,” he pointed to a circled area on the right page demonstrating a normal sequence. “This is your sperm's DNA. What I wanted to show you is a variant in the same section,” he circled a column on the left page, “which contains a narrow band instead,” he highlighted one piece of the chain.

“What does it mean?” Jared asked nervously.

“I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know, I’ve never encountered this variant before. I looked at your previous testing from 2016 and it was also present on that test, not sure why it was overlooked. I’ve consulted with a few colleagues of mine to get their take,” he paused resting his arms on the desk watching Jared’s expression, “Mr. Page, I didn’t ask you to come in to upset you, I prefer to keep my clients in the loop if anything unusual does present with their testing. It’s possibly something that's genetically unique to you and affects nothing. I’d like to run a Tunel test, it’s a sperm chromatin structure analysis, it’ll give us more information to work with.”

Jared fidgeted, desperately wanting to chew on his fingers, “Umm…okay.”

“Good, it's not invasive at all, we just need some more sperm.” Dr. Rodgers says.

~~~

Jensen was stumbling around the kitchen working on his first cup of coffee when Jared walked in carrying a box from his favorite bakery.

“Those aren’t what I think they are?” Jensen asks as Jared sits the box down on the counter. He opens the lid inhaling the scent of decadent cinnamon roll goodness before pulling out one and taking a huge bite moaning pornographically, “Babe, whatever I did to warrant these remind me to do it again,” he says with his mouthful.

Jared chuckles as his mate continues making obscene noises before bending down taken a bit from the other side earning warning snarl.

“You are so not a morning person.” Jared chided sliding the box over to retrieve his own taking it setting down at the island bar pulling a chunk off.

“You wanna share what’s rattling around in that big head of yours?” Jensen inquires. Jared chews slowly before answering. “I got a call from the clinic, something showed up in my test.”

Jensen snapped fully alert, his roll forgotten, and sat down next to him, “Jared, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”

Jared fiddled with his roll, pulling it apart, “No, not that I’m aware of but they found something off and don’t know what it is. Dr. Rodgers said it’s probably nothing but wanted to run another test to see if he can figure out what it is what if something is wrong and turns out I was the reason Genevieve couldn’t get pregnant I don’t know if I can handle it the possibility of not being able to have pups I’ve wanted them for so long I can’t imagine our lives...”

“Jared,” Jensen sharpness interrupts Jared’s incessant rambling, making him go quiet, “I know you want to go to the worst possible outcome but let’s wait till all the tests are back. If it’s something, we’ll deal, we always do.”

***

August 3rd

“Jen, move your ass, were gonna be late!” Jared bellows from downstairs.

“I’m coming...dammit!” Jensen cursed as he tripped over the boxes left sitting by the bottom step. “You need to get the rest of this shit out of the way, about killed myself again!”

“I’ll stay up tonight moving the rest of this fucking shit if you’ll get a fucking move on!”

The sniping at each other had gotten worse since the house renovations were barely completed before heading back to Vancouver.

Jensen moved his music studio into the newly created space in the basement from the former guest quarters, now relocated to the spacious pool house. The empty upstairs rooms were converted into the eventual nursery/kids rooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom between them.

“You better start watching your goddamn language cause the last thing we need is for our kids to have a trash mouth like…don’t roll your eyes at me!” Jared threw his arms up in disgust before storming out to the garage getting in Jensen’s truck. They drove to the clinic in silence.

They were flying out tomorrow to quarantine for two weeks before resuming shooting on the eighteenth. Then the clinic called their tests were back and Jared didn’t want to wait till they got back for the results.

After their temperature check they were immediately escorted to the doctor’s office finding him already there. “Mr. Bonham, Mr. Page, pleasure to see you, please have a seat.” They sit next to each other not touching. “Is there something wrong gentleman?”

“Why do you ask?” Jensen barks, “Fuck man, don’t be rude!” Jared bit back earning a glare that makes most sane people back away from Jensen.

“Gentleman, no need to fight. It may surprise you but I actually see a lot of hostility between my clients. I’m sure the added stress of the quarantine while trying to start a family is putting your Alpha instincts more on edge, is it not?”

Jensen sighed, “I’m sorry sir, I was raised better.”

Jared gave an apologetic smile, “I’m sorry too sir, and you're right.”

“I’ve been doing this for a long time and understand the situation from your side, my wife and I had trouble conceiving. We ended up having two sets of twins within three years, now that’s stress.”

Jensen blinked, “And I thought mine were a handful.”

Dr. Rodgers laughed, “They are a blessing but honestly, it’s an absolute madhouse at times. So, let’s get back to you two. Mr. Bonham, everything looks good, you are in the top percentile when it comes to mobility and live sperm count for your age group. One of the advantages of being an Alpha, unlike us poor Betas who’s diminish with age.”

“Mr. Page, I also have your results and the Tunel tests which turned out to be something.. unique.”

Jared eyes widened as he paled, his breath hitching, feeling his stomachs spastic tightening making him about vomit. He knew it, he knew something was going to go wrong, his brain didn’t lie to him this time.

Jensen was out of his chair and utilizing his Alpha strength turned Jared’s towards him before kneeling between his legs reaching up to firmly grip the sides of his head forcing him to focus on him opens up his side of their bond he’d shut the other day when they were arguing to gauge how bad this one was.

“Hey Hey, concentrate on me, I need you to breathe with me,” he held Jared’s gaze for several minutes as their breathing cinqued up, feeling him relaxing.

“There you go big guy. It wasn’t that bad, focus on your breathing okay.” Jared nodded embarrassed as Dr. Rodgers sat a bottle of water in front of him, “Do you need me to get you anything else?”

“No, he’s fine, thank you,” Jensen answers, getting up retaking his chair as Jared took a long drink from the bottle, “he’s usually more aware of these attacks but since the damn lock-downs.” Jensen shook his head in disgust, “We're heading back to Vancouver tomorrow to finish our sh..job before his new one starts late October. I guess it’s really hitting us both that it's finally ending.”

“Mr. Ackles, you can say show,” Jared and Jensen stare at him in surprise, “my daughters are fans, I know more about the Winchester brothers than a man my age should.” Dr. Rodgers ruminates, “Mr. Page, are you ready for me to continue?” Jared nodded as Jensen wrapped both of his hands around his free one.

“After I received the results I spoke with a specialist in Alpha genetics. They looked at all your tests and came back with a conclusion I’ve never heard of before.” The doctor laid a printout on the desk, “This is a visual aid to help me in explaining.”

“Chemoattactants are what a female's egg releases to attract the sperm to it. You know how it works from there; sperm meets egg, sperm penetrates egg and viola, fertilization. Alphas sperm has evolved allowing them to inseminate all three sub-genders, whereas male Omegas sperm is sterile since they possess both sets of reproductive organs but only need to utilize one.”

The doctor sets all three of Jared’s tests and the normal example on his desk for them to see, “This chromatin structure you carry Mr. Page,” he points to the highlighted section, “has altered so that the eggs of Alphas and Betas are chemorepellent to your sperm, rejecting fertilization.”

Jared sat still-shocked, blankly staring at the results lying before him, vaguely feeling Jensen reaching across their bond again. “Does this mean he’s...infertile?” He can hear Jensen hesitant inquiry, like he's standing across a vast chasm.

“In conventional terms, yes. This is the reason you were unable to conceive with your previous spouse, being a Beta, and there is still no medical intervention available that would have helped. What’s unique is his sp...”

Jared was numb. His dreams of a little Padackles tearing around their home had literally been salt and burned before his eyes with those test results.

In the recesses of his attention he’s aware of the continuing conversation around him, the longer it goes on, the more his brain is tuning out.

~~~

The first thing he becomes aware of are fingertips caressing his face, softly wiping away wetness damping his cheeks. Slowly blinking the blurry shape in front of him comes into focus.

Jensen is sitting in front of him. More accurately, he’s sitting cross legged in between his own splayed legs on the floor. Jared frowns as his senses are coming back online.

He was sitting on the chair that’s now off to his right so how did he end up with his back against the desk?

“You passed out,” Jensen answers his unspoken question, “and scared the ever-living shit out of me! I thought you were having an aneurysm the way your eyes rolled back into your big head!”

“I..I..don’t know what happened, I was looking at the results, you were asking questions..then nothing.”

“Stress Jared, you are completely stressed out and it's fucking with your illness!” He opens his mouth, “No, I’m not done so be quiet.” Jensen’s voice dropped with his Alpha tone overlaying it,

“Between that final script having you nuts all year, this quarantine fucking up your meds, dealing with your businesses shutdowns, getting Walker started, you had to add pushing for pups, it’s no wonder you couldn’t handle the doctor explanation of...”

“Explanation of what?” Jared lashes back in own Alpha voice, leaning forward into Jensen’s space, his eyes flashing red, “That I’m infertile, sterile, shooting blanks..”

“Shut that fucking mouth for two minutes or I swear I’ll deck you.” Jensen’s normally warm green eyes bleed into a fierce red, becoming hard.

Jared’s mouth snapped shut in surprise. They had gotten into plenty of arguments over the years, gotten in each other’s faces a few times but this was a first. Jensen had never, ever threatened physical harm.

Well, somewhat that time Misha set him off during a panel and he went for him afterwards. Misha stupidly goaded him again before Jensen gave him a shove, ordering him to cool off before he had to do something.

Jensen’s jaw ticked as he mentally counted to ten, “Dr. Rodgers said that you couldn’t impregnate another Alpha or Beta right?”

“Right.”

“The part you zoned out is that your sperm wants to only fertilize an Omega’s eggs.”

Sighing heavily, Jensen crawls over a leg to sit against the desk next to him. Jared pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around them, resting his chin on his knees processing this information as Jensen reaches over and gently rubs his hand in random patterns over his back.

They had mutually agreed on a Beta donor. Now this threw a wrench in the plans.

“Maybe this is a sign we’re rushing into this again. Let’s take a step back and consider all our options.” Jared’s muscles stiffened under his hand.

“I’m not considering anything else and I’m not stopping.”

“Wait...what?”

Jared lifted his head, “I’m not considering anything else and I’m not stopping. I realize this isn’t what you want so don’t worry, I’m not gonna hold you to our agreement.”

Jensen exhaled sharply knowing when Jared spoke in that tone, that was it, end of discussion, mind made up.

Jared gets up, “I’m going to find Dr. Rodgers and see if he's still willing to help me. If you want to leave, go. I’ll get an Uber when I’m done.” He walks out quietly shutting the door behind him.

“Fuck!” Jensen closed his eyes thumping his head back against the desk. He knew he had screwed up and there was only one way to make it right.

***

Jensen asked Jared to let him stay, he was wrong for saying that and he'd be open to one of the Omegas as a possible donor too. Jared wasn’t completely appeased but he was happy Jensen didn’t take the out given him.

The three candidates were smart, attractive, lovely scented Omegas in their twenties that any Alpha looking for a prospective mate would seriously consider, leaving Jensen wanting something else.

“I like aspects of all three Jay, but honestly, I'm not feeling it with any of them.”

“Maybe you’ve reached the stage you’re looking for more substance, less aesthetic.”

“Did you just call me old?” Jensen gaped at his husband.

Before Jared responds, Dr. Rodgers enters, “I see from your expression Mr. Bonham that you haven’t decided on a candidate.”

“It’s not that I didn’t like any of them, there isn’t a..”

“Connection. It’s normal, just because your Alpha doesn’t mean you..desire every Omega you cross paths with. With some it takes time to find the right one.” He looks at his watch.

“We’re at the end of our appointment but I have one more donor I’d like you to meet today. She’s doesn’t exactly fit your personal physical preferences but this omega is...special..and she’s willing to be the surrogate too.”

The doctor opens the door gestures to someone. They stand up to greet her and as she enters they are enveloped by her piquant scent.

“Mr. Page and Mr. Bonham, this is Quinn.”

***

tbc

Part III

GFA: @babypink224221 @waywardjoy @let-me-luve-you @all-4-wincest

SPN: @donnatix @lyarr24

Sam/Jared @idreamofplaid

Dean/Jensen: @flamencodiva

[silverhandy]

House call

Pre canon. V being reckless and Viktor being worried.

It's hard to make a name for yourself in Night City, no matter who you are. Especially when you're a rookie ripperdoc trying to cover all the bases that Trauma Team doesn't give a damn about. He learned a lot back then - about other people, about himself, and about medicine, but the most important thing that came out of it was a simple promise to himself, a breaking point signifying that he has found himself a spot in the city's food chain - from now on, he won't be making house calls.

Luckily for Viktor, these days are far behind him, but when a call comes, he still packs the bag.

Read on AO3 

         When Viktor closed the deal with Misty on the space for his brand new clinic, he told himself he’d never go on a house call ever again. That was one of the reasons to finally get himself an actual clinic in the first place. It was hard enough to convince Misty that yes, what she called a ‘friend discount’ on rent really wasn’t necessary, but what turned out to be even harder was backing away from that statement after the first month of burning through the last of his savings to properly equip the damn place, every europenny of which he earned beating the living shit out of other people for the crowd’s entertainment, or, at the very end of his professional career, getting the living shit beaten out of him more often than he’d be willing to admit. He wouldn’t say he was surprised, but he’d still clench his teeth at how much of a money shredder equipment and basic setup was. Investing in cyberware to install without a baseline clientele was a stretch on his part, but worth it in the long run, or at least that’s what he was telling himself. In the beginning, he was a new face on the ripperdoc stage, without many people who could vouch for his skills or spread the word around Night City. He had to build that up over the years, from client to client, until he arrived at this ambiguous, albeit comfortable position he found himself at now - a bit too expensive for sex workers in dire need of a new leg, arm or face, but at the same time not fancy enough for corpos looking to spend their eurodollars on something extra their company-funded tech package didn’t cover.

He didn’t mind that, not really. The clinic was paying its own rent at this point, with more than enough still left for his personal needs. Most often he chose to invest it back into the clinic and get something like a brand new Kiroshi straight from a retailer without worrying whether the money would find its way back to him. He didn’t need the extra cash, didn’t need to go the extra mile, both figuratively and literally, to make a living. Just a few years back, right after finishing his apprenticeship, he found himself without a stable spot to practice his newfound profession and eventually resolved to the only way he could earn those killer fees back - responding to calls from patients too far gone to drag themselves to the closest ripperdoc. That added an additional layer of time and money, driving around the city from point A to point B, and then C and D and so on, playing those little fetch quests that required him to lurk in the parts of the city he’d rather avoid. That was the worst part - he had to grab his bag and go whether the patient needed him to be at that moment, be it next to a stinking, muddy trash container in a dark alley or a cockroach-infested megablock that had a mean-looking gang member at every corner, just waiting for shit to go down. In hindsight, Viktor would sometimes do more harm than good, dealing with emergency cases as a barely qualified ripper, but at least the patients didn’t die right then and there, whatever was left of their cyberware snatched by someone, a brand new owner who’s been eying a potential update. Fucking vultures, always lurking around, walking in simultaneous with risking getting a bullet as well, but he never let it scare him.

         His boxing training sure came in handy in times like this.

         Ah, how young he was back then. How inexperienced, mostly putting together the people and their technologies, salvaging what was left to salvage and removing everything else while trying to keep the damage to a bare, necessary minimum. At least one good thing came out of it - he had to learn damn fast and eventually installing new pieces of chrome seemed like a breeze compared to removing the twisted, shattered, or melted bundles of metal and wires that these tiny works of genius have turned into. It was a grisly job, one that made his current clinic in a run-down garage akin to a luxury. In many ways, it was. For one, it was much calmer, working within his own, controlled environment, with most appointments scheduled in advance. A real, damn luxury.

         And so he made use of that luxury and just as Misty gave him the keys, complete with a plush, aggressively pink charm and a small, hand-carved figurine of something he could never quite discern, to the rusty gate that opened his soon to be clinic, he promised himself he’d never do a house call again. But as years went by, he came to realize that where there are friends, there are exceptions and V was one of the few people he was willing to make exceptions for.

    It’s not like he expected it, either. Misty would later say that she knew something bad would happen that day, had a premonition or a gut feeling or whatever she called it, but he’d just shake his head and give her a grin. Sure, Mist. Sure.

         Viktor didn’t believe in things like this, has seen too much in too little time to give his faith to anything higher than his own hands, be it corporations, capitalism, religion, or fate. He didn’t need to, having built enough skill and life experience that there was no need to extend his trust beyond that.

       At first, V didn’t even call, she texted him instead, a scrambled collection of letters that must’ve lost their meaning at some point on their way from her brain to her fingers. One after the other, they kept coming and Viktor could swear that he could feel V’s agitation seeping through the screen. The doctor just frowned and found V’s number on the contact list, turning the volume up a bit on his interface before he unknowingly started to make a mental list of what he might need to put in his worn-out gym-turned-medical bag that he still kept somewhere on the bottom of one of his cupboards. The melody of an awaiting connection kept playing in his head, each note adding a drop to his slowly increasing pool of anxiety. Just as he thought she wouldn’t pick up, that a kind, robotic voice would send him straight on his merry way to voicemail, the music abruptly stopped, signifying an ongoing phone call.

         ‘V? You okay?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice casual, the way you’d ask a friend how they’re doing after an all-night bender. Maybe that’s what happened, maybe the merc just had more than a little too much booze and was drunk texting whoever was high enough on her contact list.

       All that answered him was dull silence, interrupted from time to time by a muffled sounds. As Viktor opened his mouth to ask again, V’s voice came, but not the one he knew, not the cocky blunder with curse words heavily woven into it, but a raspy, shaky whisper. If V’s portrait photo hasn’t been clearly visible in his open calls window, he could swear it must be someone else.

         ‘Vik, can...can you…’ a cough, much wetter sounding than a healthy person’s cough should sound. And something metal clanking on the floor. ‘Can you come? I’m…’ and another one, much longer than the other, followed by a few long, raspy  breaths.

     ‘Where are you?’ Viktor asked, already pulling his old bag from under the counter. There it was, just as he remembered it. Even the blood spatters and grease that just wouldn't come off, having bitten their way into the material, were still there.

         ‘My place’ she just said, or rather spat out as another coughing fit overwhelmed her.

         ‘Hang in there, okay? I’ll be there in ten” he said before realizing that she has abruptly ended the call before he could even finish the sentence. He didn’t care about such a minor offense at the moment, looking over his equipment and taking whatever he may need with him, filling the bag with all kinds of medical tools that might come in handy to the point where the zipper just barely closed.

         His initial anxiety was replaced by adrenaline, a familiar autopilot kicking in. V didn’t need him to worry his brains out, she didn’t need him panicked or unsure, what she needed right now was an experienced doc who could get the job done, even if he didn’t exactly know what the job was just yet. He put the bag over his shoulder, not letting its weight drag him down, and headed out, jumping two stairs at once. He didn’t go through the shop, not wanting to alarm Misty or be flooded by her questions, and took a short way out through the gate on the inner yard, finding himself on the busy street, full of people despite how late it already was. He didn’t stop to contemplate it, instead just hopped on his bike and slammed the gas handles, praying to a God he didn’t believe in that an NCPD patrol wouldn’t stop him for various traffic misdemeanors. He parked right outside the megablock where V’s apartment was in and practically ran up, navigating between the groups of people that were clearly enjoying their night out, chatting with neighbors or grabbing a bite from one of the many vendors that had their stall in one of the halls. The smell of old grease, fried fish and heavy spices hit his nostrils right along the nauseatingly sweet scent of weeks old trash and drying paint as he made his way through this labyrinth of a building.

         For a second he was afraid that he had made a wrong turn or run through one flight of stairs too much, but the familiar, greenish gleam of a travel station was enough of a confirmation that he was indeed heading the right way. He finally stood in front of V’s door, a steel imbued construction identical to any other, not even a number plate in sight, but an angrily red dot indicating that the lock was closed. He raised the hand to knock and when he heard no answer, not even a single sound from inside the apartment, he felt another tingle of anxiety, but he pushed it to the back of his head. He knocked again, harder this time, with more urgency, as if the door mechanism gave a damn since V apparently didn’t hear him. He cursed under his breath and then it hit him, a solution so simple that he’d burst out laughing if he wasn’t feeling so on edge.

         He still had it, after all. The first (and only) real piece of cyberware he got for himself, a simple lock opener that came in handy so many times in his early days, saved so many lives. He thought about uninstalling or even taking it out entirely so many times, after all, there were regulations about these things these days that he didn’t quite meet, but who cares. Flooded with relief that his sense of lawfulness has dulled into a table knife over the years, he started working the lock and after a mere few seconds he heard a familiar sound, identical all over the city in places like this. The dot changed to green and he waved his hand in front of it, triggering the mechanism opening the door. As he rushed into the pitch-black apartment, the blinds closed shut, V’s silhouette sprawled out on the floor, barely visible only because of the flickering light creeping in from the corridor, Viktor sighed.

        He hated doing house calls. But damn, the things he'd do for that kid.

[pipercheris]

The Beginning of a New Adventure: My MG Story

As I have mentioned before, I have Myasthenia gravis. I am what is known as Seronegative. I’ll explain all that in a bit; but, first, I just want to note that I am in no way an expert on this disorder. I can not even say I am an expert in my own body’s representation of this disorder. I am constantly learning how to deal and handle the symptoms, as well as the treatments. And, just FYI, no two MGers are the same. We all present differently, some of us even more so. 

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke –

1Myasthenia gravis is a chronic autoimmune, neuromuscular disease that causes weakness in the skeletal muscles that worsens after periods of activity and improves after periods of rest. These muscles are responsible for functions involving breathing and moving parts of the body, including the arms and legs.

The name myasthenia gravis, which is Latin and Greek in origin, means “grave, or serious, muscle weakness.” There is no known cure, but with current therapies, most cases of myasthenia gravis are not as “grave” as the name implies. Available treatments can control symptoms and often allow people to have a relatively high quality of life. Most individuals with the condition have a normal life expectancy.

All that sounds incredibly complicated. Basically, as most of us who have MG have learned to explain that its very similar to Multiple Sclerosis (MS), except where your body is attacking the nerves in MS, our bodies attack the muscles. It’s a bit more complicated, but that’s the easiest way to explain it to where people understand it.

Some have *only* ocular MG, where it only affects those muscles around the eyes. I say *only* not to diminish its effects, but as a comparison to the generalized MG where your entire body is affected. Either way, its usually diagnosed by blood tests that are used to detect certain autoantibodies. I say usually. In an already rare disorder (fewer than 200K US cases/year according to the Mayo Clinic), a special few have no *known* antibodies detected. These cases make diagnosis and treatment a bit more difficult to attain. We lucky few are known as Seronegative.

To put that in perspective, one of my treating neurologists who had treated MG patients for over 40 years has only had two seronegative patients. That two includes me...

It all started about 5-6 years ago. I was living in beautiful Southern California. I was incredibly active (this was during the whole p90 craze). I was actually training for a 39.3 mile walk for charity in addition to my normal training. After some of my more intense training sessions, I noticed I would start to have trouble catching my breath, though I was getting plenty of oxygen, and I would just be incredibly tired, and not just the normal after-workout tired.

When I spoke to my family practice doctor, he suggested I had exercise-induced asthma. It sounded plausible, and it did not mean I had to stop my activity, just maybe relax on the high-intensity stuff. The albuterol treatment never seemed to work, but if it got bad enough, a course of prednisone steroids often helped. Something I would remember later.

Another thing I noticed around this time was that my right eyelid was starting to droop a little. And here’s where I am always reluctant to dive in because I have always felt a little vain, but I feel I must get over that. To be honest, my eyes have always been an attribute I have been quite proud of, particularly after my children were born. People would always say they had my eyes, and follow that up with saying they had the most beautiful eyes. So when people started saying I looked tired, or ask if something was bothering me because I was smiling like I used to, I started to worry a little bit.

What did I do at this point, you ask? You assume I went to the doctor, right? You see, that would have been the smart way to handle this. Nope! Instead, I did what I am sure every doctor hates. I googled “droopy eyelid”. What I read told me that insurances tend to think of it as cosmetic (I read vanity) and will not pay for repairs unless your lid droops enough to obstruct vision. So I thought, okay, I just need to stop being so “vain” (there’s that word again) and just deal with it.

Fast forward to Fall of 2017, we are now living in a small town in Florida. I am on my way to volunteer at our church one morning, driving into the sun, when my eye completely closes on its own and refuses to open back up. Now, luckily I was just around the corner, so it didn’t cause an issue driving. I actually did not panic. I have to be honest. I felt a little bit relieved. Inside, I was thinking, “Well, at least now I can get my eye fixed.”

My next step was going to see an ophthalmologist. I had recently attended a women’s health conference and remembered one of the presenting opththalmologists. He was really funny, and he had kind of reminded me of Seth Green a little. I had the hugest crush on Seth Green back in the Buffy the Vampire days, so that was apparently enough to spark confidence in this doctor. (My husband thought this was hilarious, but was willing to go along with it.)

In that appointment, the doctor, after doing his examinations, said he would be happy to help me fix my eyelid problem, but he wanted me to have some tests run first, just to rule out Myasthenia gravis.

I am sure my reaction was comical. At the time, I had never heard of such a thing, and remember feeling dumb with my immediate response, “Ummm, what is that?”

He actually reassured me so that I didn’t feel so dumb, but emphasized it was important that I get tested because, untreated, it could be life-threatening. At that point, I remember asking, hoping he would again help me not to feel so dumb, “So, I guess I should not have waited two years, huh?”

This time, he did not make me feel any better. “Yeah, probably.”

So off I went to get tested.... I recall all that new adventure in the next post.

1"Myasthenia Gravis Fact Sheet", NINDS, Publication date March 2020.

NIH Publication No. 20-NS-768

[rosethesongbird]

Untitled Tales from the Borderlands Fic

Hi friends-- I wrote this about a year ago, right after I played Tales for the first time. I hope you can enjoy it, it is very short and a simple excuse for me to stretch my writing muscles. 

Rhys lay on the ground in the wreckage of Helios.

No friends, no family, nothing. Life as he knew it might as well be over. Vaughn was probably dead. He betrayed Loader Bot. Fiona ditched him and left him for dead on a crashing space station. He just yanked the final remnant of Handsome Jack out of his damn head. He had one arm like some kind of circus freak. The space where his lovely Hyperion issue cybernetic arm connected to his body was now a bloody hole, key word bloody. In fact, the feeling of being face down on the floor was probably due to that. The overwhelming wave of dizziness and nausea would not stop, despite being completely still. Rhys closed his eyes and blacked out, giving up the fight to rest.

The newly-appointed Bandit King Vaughn climbed over the flaming wreckage of the space station Helios. His life, his work, his friends, realistically everything he had done since he had begun his career was now up in flames. He felt like this might be a futile exercise, searching for survivors of the crash, seeing as they watched all the escape pods crash to Pandora’s surface one by one--some with living people inside, crawling out like baby birds out of eggs. Some they didn’t dare open, knowing that if the person inside didn’t open it… well, they didn’t want to start burying bodies just yet. “At least make sure you found all the living people first,” he thought to himself.

“Damn,” he muttered, rounding a corner into what most assuredly was once a grand testament to Hyperion’s riches. Jack’s office. Now that he’s gone, and Helios is gone, and Hyperion is sort of gone by proxy, that must be the last remnant of Handsome Jack snuffed out. Well, except maybe Rhys’ cybernetics, but, well… as much as it broke his heart it didn’t seem like his childhood friend had made it safely down to the planet. He could be floating around in space in pieces for all Vaughn knew. Walking to what used to be where Jack’s desk was, he saw a body on the floor. Sad, he thought. That guy’s dead for sure. Totally limp and blood everywhere. Although what would you expect from falling out of space? But a familiar shine of yellow made his stomach sour. Is that a cybernetic arm? Rhys’ cybernetic arm? He picked up the pace and ran over to the beaten body.

The locks of brown hair, matted with blood and sweat, were all too familiar to Vaughn. His best friend for so many years. His partner in crime. Laying there, flat on his face, completely still. What a way to go. He found tears rolling down his cheeks as he thought of his friend--who had survived so much over the past weeks with him--dead on the ground with no dignity. He knelt down next to his friend’s body only to perceive the smallest bit of movement, rhythmic, up and down, almost like breathing...Is he alive?

-

The next several minutes were a blur. Vaughn called out for his friend. (In hindsight, Vaughn thought, it’s not like he would answer if he was out bad enough to not notice I was there.) He frantically opened his ECHO and called for someone to help him carry his friend out. After a few grueling seconds two other bandits appeared with a blanket to carry Rhys back to the camp. Vaughn couldn’t take his eyes off him the entire time they gingerly lifted him up. They didn’t know what was wrong, what was broken, if anything, where he had been, what had happened… and what were they going to do with him? He was an accountant, not a doctor--and he could guarantee that the medical treatment given by a ragtag team of bandits and former Hyperion employees was not exactly up to snuff for injuries this severe.

“I know,” said Vaughn, his bandit friends looking at him in confusion (he had been mostly thinking to himself at this point). “River."

-

Miles away, in a tiny hut in the middle of the desert, an ECHO starts going off.

A woman rolls over in bed, her hair starting to fall out of the braid on the top of her head.

“Vaughn? What’s up? Don’t you realize it’s like 4 in the morning?...A friend of yours? Helios crashed?! What do you mean crashed? Like, crashed crashed? I thought I heard a noise but I didn’t get up to check what it was. Yeah, where are you? Right, right, whatever. Just send me the coordinates and I’ll be there ASAP. In the meantime, is your friend conscious?” The woman climbs out of bed, pulling on her shoes. She looks outside. The wind is blowing, and hard. She pulls on her cloak and opens the door. “Well, keep a close eye on him. I’ll be there soon. Call me again if his condition changes, okay? You’re doing fine. Just don’t freak out.” The door closes behind her as she begins to walk across the desert.

“Okay, don’t freak out any more, then.”

-

Vaughn looked nervously out the window. They had finally gotten Rhys back to camp and really didn’t know what to do so he was just laying there on the most comfortable bed they could find. He was still breathing, at least, so that was good--and they had wiped off most of the blood from his face so at least when River came she wouldn’t think they were totally useless. He looked back at his friend, usually the masculine, confident, good-with-the-ladies one, and it still felt weird to see him so… vulnerable. He used to… well… detest him for it, always feeling like he was second fiddle--but that was a long time ago. Rhys never intended to make him feel like that. Plus, now he had found his niche. Rhys’ whole identity was the smarmy Hyperion suit, and that seemed like it was pretty much dead in the water, seeing as the entire headquarters and most of its employees were dead. Vaughn really hoped he was less vulnerable than he looked, because it kind of looked like he was dead too. He hadn’t made a single sound or moved a single muscle since they found him except the very, very slight motion of his chest, up and down.

His ECHO suddenly crackled to life, making him jump.

“I think I’m here,” said the female voice on the other end. “Is your camp the big pile of old burnt and broken stuff?”

“Yep! That’s us! We worked really hard on it, by the way, so thanks for that comment.”

“Hey,” she said, “isn’t that how a bandit camp is supposed to look? It’s nice, Vaughn. You know I’m just kidding around with you.”

Vaughn looked out the window and saw a tiny, cloaked silhouette walking towards the camp, her clothing whipped around by the intense desert wind. “Will somebody go out there and meet her? I’m not gonna lie, I feel kind of bad making her come on her own, like I should have sent someone, anyway--someone go get her and bring her up here, and quick!” he called out to his camp.

-

“Thanks for the warm welcome,” said River. “Your guys aren’t too bandit-y yet so I almost didn’t feel like I was going to get stabbed!”

“My pleasure,” said Vaughn sarcastically, walking up to the door of what was apparently now the medical bay. “Ladies first!”

“Always the gentleman,” said River, entering the small, yet cozy room. “Shit, you weren’t kidding. He really doesn’t look good. What happened to the cybernetics?”

“I have no clue,” said Vaughn. “We found him like this and he hasn’t woken up since. All I’ve been able to do is wipe some blood off of him.”

“Well, that’s alright. You did fine. Wanna stick around while I get started?” She removed her hood and cape to reveal a plain black long sleeved shirt and grey pants. Vaughn hadn’t noticed that she was carrying a large bag under her cloak, full of her supplies. Her hair was long on the top, shaved on the sides, yet the top was in a sensible, practical braid. Vaughn noticed for the first time how short she was. He was used to looking up to make eye contact with people, but she was even smaller than him. She seemed like such a kid, but she knew her stuff, that’s for sure.

“Yeah, I’ll stick around just in case you need any help. Plus, I could learn a bit from you, at least basic first aid and stuff. Anshin's kinda hard to come by here.”

“So I’ve noticed,” she said. “Although stuff like this usually needs a little bit more finesse.”

Vaughn watched as she sprung into a small flurry of action. Testing, scanning, writing things down on her pad, and muttering softly to herself. Vaughn twiddled his thumbs nervously. Somehow she always seemed like she had eyes on the back of her head, like she was judging him silently. He knew she wasn’t--or she would tell him she wasn’t, anyway--but she just had that kind of personality.

“Oh,” she said, after a few minutes of not speaking. Vaughn almost sighed in relief at the break in the silence. “Any remaining active bleeding in either of the cybernetic sites?”

“Uh, no, maybe some oozing but no like, puddles.”

“What’s your friend’s name, by the way?”

“It’s Rhys,” he said. “He’s the one I told you about-”

“Ohhh, your friend since you were little! Yeah, you’ve told me about him!” she interrupted. "Oh, um, I found this in his pocket." She handed Vaughn a small folded piece of paper.

"This deed hereby grants the owner control over the entire Atlas corporation..." Vaughn read aloud. "Huh. I'll have to ask him about that."

“Well, here’s what I’ve got so far on Rhys, and what I need from you.” River’s demeanor shifted jarringly from that of a warm, caring friend to something more clinical.

“Rhys has a bit of an infection in the site where the cybernetic arm used to be. The cranial implant and the, uh, remains of the ECHO-Eye seem to be okay, but we’ll keep a close eye on them, I can’t imagine they were removed with any sort of precision or cleanliness. Due to that infection he’s running a fever of 104 degrees, which I want to bring down ASAP. I’m gonna send for a blood pack, he’ll probably end up needing a transfusion, especially if I need to do some clean-up work in those cybernetic sites. So I’ve got all the stuff I need for IV fluids and antibiotics with me, but I’m going to need a bunch of rags soaked in cool, clean water. I also don’t want to freak you out but I’m definitely going to change his clothes, so if you’ve got a spare pair of pajamas laying around, that would be good too.”

Vaughn stood there for a minute, processing everything he was told. “So, what you’re saying is, he’s gonna live!”

River smiled, back to her usual self. “I certainly think so.”

“Then I’ll get to work!” Vaughn ran out of the room, eagerly gathering everything she needed to get his friend feeling better--excitedly telling a small crowd of onlookers outside the room “He’s going to be okay!”

-

River sat down by the man’s sick bed, carefully examining every fold of his face, counting respirations, admiring a surprisingly still well-coiffed hairstyle (all things considered). She began to remove his bloodied, torn clothing, first one shoe then the other, to see some charmingly gaudy striped socks.

“Cute,” she said. “I like your crazy socks, Rhys.” She often spoke to patients that were unconscious. Sometimes they could hear, and were listening more than people thought, so it was a good way to introduce yourself before introducing yourself.

“Sorry about this next part, I know it’s awkward,” she said while removing his belt and pants. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I figure I wouldn’t want a stranger silently removing my pants, so it’s only fair.” She cringed while she peeled what used to be his shirt and vest, now torn and bloodied, off of his pale skin--to reveal a multitude of scrapes and bruises in every color of the rainbow.

“Yeesh, what happened to you, sweetheart? Your friend is worried about you.” She noted the fascinating tattoos on his left shoulder going up to his neck. Definitely a better artist than the bandit stick-and-poke work she was used to.

Vaughn walked in, carrying a bucket of water and a pile of fabric, speaking more frantically with every word: “River? Is he awake? Rhys?”

“No, not just yet. He probably won’t wake up until we get that temperature down a bit. I just enjoy talking to myself, apparently,” she said, with a small, soft laugh. “Let’s get started getting you feeling better, Rhys. Do you mind if I start an audio log, Vaughn? It’s a little easier to keep a record that way than it is to write it all out.”

“Whatever’s better for you. You’re the expert, after all. Bandits don’t have a lot of classified information laying around anyway.”

-

The dated ECHO recorder crackled to life. Vaughn made a mental note to try to acquire a newer one for her.

“Audio log, patient: Rhys Strongfork. Chief complaint: Unclear. Observation has revealed 104 degree fever, mildly infected cybernetic port of what is assumed to be Hyperion make, scattered mild to moderate contusions, and mild blood loss. Heart rate and blood pressure on the low end, but both present. Patient is also unconscious, etiology unclear. Assumed to be febrile. Notably, patient has cranial implant for ECHO-Eye, but eye and implant are both absent, appearing wounded, but not infected. Patient’s right arm is absent, shoulder site shows remains of additional cybernetics. History provided by friend of patient indicates recent removal of in-shoulder site. No major arteries appear to be severed but moderate to severe blood loss can be assumed with possible damage to the axillary artery; of course, this depends on the type of cybernetic that had been applied which is still unclear pending further inspection. Removal of aforementioned implants appears non-surgical, whether self-inflicted or otherwise. First course of action is to place IV line, push fluids, NSAID to bring down fever, and antibiotics. Following, we will proceed to manually cool the patient with cool, damp rags at major circulation points--forehead, left armpit, and both sides groin area. Expected outcome is patient regaining consciousness, at which time we will re-evaluate needs. If patient remains catatonic we will proceed with extended trauma eval. Please send for universal blood pack and transfusion gear, arrival ASAP, any courier. Pause log.”

River sighed. “Alright, Vaughn, let’s get started. Don’t worry, I won’t expect you to place an IV line, but you should probably watch just in case.” She gently touched Rhys’ forehead. “Rhys, sweetheart, I’m going to place an intravenous line in your left arm. If you can hear me right now, don’t pull it out when you wake up, okay?”

Vaughn peeked around her as she chose a small needle from her bag, hung up a bag of saline--pierced the bag with tubing with one hand, searched for a vein in Rhys’ arm with the other--then, in one fluid, almost dancelike motion, the needle was in and out, and the tubing in place. A small flowback of blood appeared when the needle went in, which River explained was the way you knew you hit the vein.

“It’s actually a good thing,” she said. “It’s pretty much the only time that you’re happy to make your patient bleed.” There was the soft laugh again.

Vaughn was happy she felt comfortable in the camp. She wasn’t the biggest fan of bandits in general, but had become a good friend to their motley crew in recent weeks. He just hoped Rhys liked her. “The reason for the fluids is twofold--we want to make sure he’s hydrated, of course, and it’s pretty apparent even a sippy cup is too dangerous for someone completely unconscious. The other reason is even more important--we also want to increase his blood volume however possible before we receive the blood pack. He doesn’t look like any sort of severe damage is being caused by the blood loss, but you don’t want to chance it, and recovery is a lot quicker when you’re not struggling to get enough nutrition to bring yourself back to a normal blood volume.” Vaughn nodded. She was really good at saying things that seemed complicated but in easy words. He was smart, but not medical smart. Just number smart. The only experience he had with medicine was when he was 16 and got his wisdom teeth removed...so he wasn’t exactly a qualified surgeon.

“Okay, Vaughn, here’s the next step. Now that’s been placed, we’ve got to start bringing that fever down, and the quickest way is manually, like with something cool and wet, which is why I asked you for some cool water and rags. Of course, part of that is just comfort. You might hear people call it 'supportive care,' as well. After that’s gone down a little, we won’t let your buddy be naked. Although, I have to admit, I’m not complaining about the view--I just wish he wasn’t so beat up, poor thing.”

Yep, Rhys would like her just fine.

“I’m gonna have you go ahead and get all those little cloths you brought wet, but not too wet. Like, wring them out so they aren’t dripping. I’m going to apply them to major pulse points, so his armpit and the area where his legs meet his body, like by the groin. I’m also going to gently wipe down his body to make sure he’s clean of sweat and dried blood, and give him a little wet towel on his forehead as well.”

Vaughn nodded and soaked everything in the water. River gently placed the cool, soothing towels on Rhys’ motionless body to a sudden response. A soft groan escaped Rhys’ lips. Vaughn immediately jumped to action, calling out his friend’s name, not realizing he was yelling. River gently pushed him to sit down in a chair on the opposite side of the bed, near Rhys’ head. She motioned him to be quiet, slowly bringing her left index finger to her lips. Rhys started to stir, moaning again, opening his mouth, eyelids twitching, life returning to his lifeless body, although his pallid skin betrayed his poor state.

River looked up to Vaughn with a smile and whispered “He’ll want to see you first. Better to wake up to a friend than a stranger. It can be really disorienting. Don’t forget when he went out he was laying on the ground in Jack’s office, and that he’s still pretty feverish, so we might have to repeat ourselves or he might say stuff that seems weird.” Vaughn nodded. He had been worrying about what would happen when Rhys woke up. I guess they’d just have to wait and see.

-

Rhys started to feel… present. His body felt hot, yet somehow cold. He ached all over. He could hear someone speaking softly, a familiar voice and an unfamiliar one. He tried to move and couldn’t. He strained to hear what was going on. It was pretty quiet. He could tell he was laying on his back, so he had to have been moved since he passed out after the crash. Was that a pillow under his head? He hadn’t laid on a real pillow since before his “promotion.” He suddenly felt someone removing his shoes. “This is it,” he thought. “Some crazy psycho cult is going to eat my extremities and harvest my organs. I lived through a space station crashing and I’m going to die because of some bandit.” His heart skipped a beat when whoever was touching him started speaking, it was the unfamiliar voice, clearer this time, clearly a woman... She likes his socks! He wanted so badly to respond. It seemed so ridiculous now, after his whole life had been uprooted, but a fun pair of socks were one of the last pieces of his individuality left after the demands of his job formed him into the kind of employee Hyperion wanted. He tried to say something. No words came out. He tried to move and still couldn’t. The female voice kept speaking, softly. He could feel her fingers touching his body, sweet and gentle but expertly firm where it mattered. She was strong, she could pick up the dead weight of his motionless body without much effort. Shit, did she just take his pants off? Well, at least it was a girl. Hopefully she was cute.

He laid there for a few minutes, wondering if the lady noticed his heart rate spike when she placed the IV, despite the fact that she didn’t really hurt him at all. She was honestly good at what she did. He still hadn’t caught her name, though. He was still kind of...drifting in a way, barely hearing the conversation going on between the unfamiliar woman and the familiar voice, which he could tell was a man. Who was it? Not like he had a lot of friends, but he knows a lot of people, and isn’t really sure who’s dead and who’s alive at this point. The woman started talking again, something about bringing a fever down--is she talking about him? Then a feeling of cool towels on his body. He tried to talk again, only resulting in a sound like “Mmhh..” but the male voice then yelled his name. He knew who it was now.

Vaughn. Vaughn saved him? Of course he did. Vaughn is his best friend. Vaughn is alive? Vaughn’s here? With this girl?What the hell is going on? He tried to speak again, tried to move, tried to do anything to let Vaughn know he was still there. Another groan and he felt some motion in his body but not near what he wanted to do. He tried desperately to open his eyes, as someone gently wiped his face with another damp cloth. He took a shuddering breath, and focused all of his energy on his eyes, his lips, his voice, his hand, anything he could move to say “I’m here! I want to wake up!”

-

River watched as Rhys took a deep breath. The clinical side of her noted to check his lungs for fluid later. That breath seemed a little rattle-y. She kicked herself for not checking that sooner. It was hard when your patient wasn’t conscious; usually they’re whining--er, complaining--about whatever is going on so much that you can’t miss it. His eyes opened slightly, and a small, masculine voice--raspy and atrophied from recent overuse followed by complete disuse--croaked “V-Vaughn?”

Vaughn sprung to life. “Rhys! I’m here! Are you okay? How are you feeling? What happened? Is there anything I can bring you? Do you need another pillow? Are you cold?”

“Geez, Vaughn, give him some time to wake up before all the questions! And maybe leave it to one question at once!” said River with a soft laugh. “Nice to meet you, Rhys. I’m River. Your friend here called me when he found you in the wreckage. I’m just about the only doctor this side of Pandora, and I’m the one who’s been taking care of you. Could you hear me earlier?”

“I-I think so,” said Rhys. “Please tell me you were the one that took my pants off.”

Vaughn frowned.

“Lucky for you, that was me,” she said, smiling warmly. She turned the opposite direction, looking at her watch, and said “ECHO, resume log. Patient regained consciousness approximately 3:15pm. Pause log.”

“Yeah, I definitely could hear you,” said Rhys. “I couldn’t really tell what you sounded like but now that you’re talking it was you for sure. I could hear Vaughn, too, and I knew that I knew him but I couldn’t tell who he was. Thanks for the compliment on my socks, by the way.”

“You’re welcome! I wear some of my own,” said River, taking off her boot to reveal a plain black sock with a separate compartment for each toe.

“Whoa,” said Vaughn. “That’s kind of cool and gross at the same time.”

“It’s so I can wear sandals with my socks if I want to!”

“Okay, it officially went to gross. Sorry River.”

“Yeah, that’s what people usually say. No one gets the practicality of toed socks!” she said, shaking her head.

“Okay, sorry to you guys get off on a weird sock tangent, but can I put some clothes on?” said Rhys, pushing himself up on the bed. He started coughing almost immediately.

“Oh, sweetheart, let me help you.” The tiny woman deftly pulled him up into a reclining position.

Vaughn frowned again. That cough was pretty deep, it sounded like it hurt. And for Rhys to need help… sitting? That’s not a good sign.

“Would you rather do your pants yourself or do you want my help?”

“Well, usually pretty girls end up taking my pants off, not putting them on, not that I’m trying to be gross about it or anything, just a joke--” Rhys immediately started coughing again. River sat gently rubbing his back in circles. She looked up at Vaughn with a look that said “Seriously?” Vaughn just shrugged. Sounded like he was going to be fine.

“Uh, anyway, w-what I meant was… yes-I-do-need-help-with-my-pants.” The latter half of the sentence came out all in one breath. Rhys looked down at the floor. River couldn’t tell if he was flushed because of the fever and coughing or if it was because he was one of those patients who act like every time they ask you for help, they’re inconveniencing you somehow.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be quick,” she said, starting to lift the blanket before flicking her head at Vaughn in a “it’s time for you to leave the room” motion.

Vaughn blushed. “Uh… oh! Got it. See ya in a bit, Rhys.” Vaughn swiftly left the doctor and her patient alone.

-

“So I’ve done my observations, as you might have heard,” said River, swiveling her chair to pick up the pajamas Vaughn had supplied. “How would you say you’re doing? Anything I should know about?”

“Well, uh…” Rhys looked at the ceiling, blushing. This was humiliating. She might not be showing any indication of this but he knew it was. Usually around women he was the one commandeering the conversation, making the jokes, making the passes, making the girls blush. Instead, this time, he’s laying in a bed half clothed while she’s just having her way with him, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

River cleared her throat. “Well?” She was finished helping him change, and had been waiting for his response for who knows how long.

“Oh, sorry, I was kind of��� lost in thought there.” She smiled silently. “Well, um, geez, where do I start?” he laughed nervously.

“Don’t be nervous,” she said, seemingly reading his mind. “I’m here to help, and trust me, I’ve seen and heard much worse.”

She was oddly disarming, and before he knew it he was spilling his guts, desperate to tell someone--anyone--about what happened with Jack. He told her about him being in his head. He told her about being threatened by Jack. It felt like Jack owned him. He told her about pulling off his mechanical arm. He told her about tearing out both pieces of the ECHO eye implant. Suddenly he was back to reality. She was sitting next to him, instead of across from him like she was before, and she was holding a small handkerchief. Was he crying? He made eye contact with her, reluctantly, expecting disgust, expecting pity, expecting an incredulous laugh, expecting shock and horror. What he found was kindness, concern, and empathy. That just made him cry more.

River reached out to gently stroke the man's arm. "That's okay, let it all out. Sounds like you've got a lot of pent up feelings in that pretty little head."

He chuckled humorlessly. "You could say that."

[capandbuckysgirl]

You’ve Left A Mark That Won’t Erase - 9

You’ve Left A Mark That Won’t Erase - Chris Evans x Reader

Yay for having access to a computer, am I right?! So glad to be writing again, it makes me feel good. Well, here’s the next part, and please, review if you can and let me know how I’m doing?

Warnings: Slight angst, foul language! Possible timeline discrepancies (hey, I don’t actually work with Chris… Fucking sad face, right?!)

This may be a bit of a filler chapter, but it’s needed!

Gifs used are not mine!

Chapter 9 -

“What do you need to go to the store for, Y/N? We have everything you need right here on set.” Scarlet was looking at me curiously, her eyes scanning my face like she knew what was going on with me.

I’d left Chris sleeping in the trailer, running to Scarlet’s trailer in a panic. I had to know for sure…

“I-I need to get a pregnancy test,” I said softly, my eyes clouding over with tears as I thought about the implications of that statement. Chris and I could have made a baby - there was no fucking way he was ready for this. Our relationship was still so new. Hell, we hadn’t even made it onto a red carpet together yet due to his filming schedule.

“Oh, honey. Okay, okay, let’s go.” She grabbed my hand in hers and led me out of the lot toward her rental car. “I take it you didn’t tell Chris anything? Y/N, he should know.”

“Scar, I don’t even know if there’s anything to tell him yet. Let me do this, please?”

She eyed me for a moment before pulling me behind her to the car. We both got into the car, my palms becoming more sweaty by the second. Buckling our seat belts, our eyes met once more as she turned the key and started the ignition. I didn’t speak as she drove down the streets of Atlanta, I simply said a small prayer in my head.

This wasn’t the right time for this to be happening. I couldn’t be pregnant, right? I’d taken my pills like I was supposed to, I’d done it all right. But my period had also never been late, never.

“Okay, Y/N/N, do you need me to go in with you?” Scarlet asked as she pulled into a parking spot and shifted the car into park.

“N-no, I’ll be quick.” I rung my hands together, my heart hammering behind my ribs so loudly, I was sure Scar could hear it. “Fuck.” I sighed, tears welling up once more as I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. Just go do this and then we’ll see if there’s anything for you to even be nervous about. You’re okay,” she shh’d me, running her hands soothingly up and down my arm.

I steeled myself, opening the door and straightening my too-big sweatshirt I walked into the small drugstore.

“Hello, miss. What can I help you with today?” The clerk behind the counter, a young man with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, stood and smiled at me.

“H-hi, I’m looking for the pregnancy,” I cleared my throat, feeling suddenly dry. “Pregnancy tests?”

“Sure, right down the first aisle, top shelf.”

I tried to smile, I really did, but all I could do was nod and mumble my thanks as I turned on my heel and walked down the aisle. Finding the tests, I grabbed a couple boxes and walked back to the counter.

“Do you have a bathroom that I could use?” I asked as I fished my credit card from my pocket.

“Yeah, back of the store. It’s employees only, but it seems important.”

Nodding again I looked up and let my lips lift a little, my heart still pounding. The blood was now rushing behind my ears and my hands started to shake.

This just couldn’t be happening…

“Miss, you can go on back.”

I hadn’t even realized the transaction was finished and I was just standing there staring off into space. Grabbing the bag with the tests in it, I walked toward where the clerk had told me to go. Every step toward that bathroom seemed like an eternity.

Finally getting to the bathroom, I closed and locked the door. Tearing into one of the boxes, I took a test out and opened it. The plastic wrapper sounding like a gunshot to my ears. Pulling my pants down, I sat and did my business.

I placed the test on the sink with the cap back on then wiped up and pulled my pants back up. Flushing the toilet then making my way over to the sink, I couldn’t bear to look. It may not even be finished yet anyway, but I just couldn’t do it. This test could change my whole life.

I washed my hands, probably for way too long, but I had to do something. My mind was running a million miles a second and I couldn’t stop to focus on anything in particular.

What would I do? What would Chris do? I knew if I was pregnant that I couldn’t have an abortion, that was absolutely out of the question. But I couldn’t ask Chris to stay with me if this was too much for him.

We weren’t ready for a baby, not yet. How could this have happened? And everything had been going so perfectly. I’d finally found the love of my life, someone I could absolutely picture spending the rest of my life with. Now what was I going to do?

Inhaling deeply, my eyes slowly made their way down to the stick sitting on the sink. A lone tear fell from my eye as I stared at it…

Scooping up the test off the sink and shoving it into the bag with the rest of them, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and walked out of the bathroom.

“Thank you again, I’m sorry if I bothered you.”

The young man behind the counter smiled at me and shook his head. “No bother at all, I hope you’re alright.”

“I’m going to be just fine, thank you. Have a good day.”

“You too, miss.”

I walked out toward where Scar was parked, my mind settled a bit now that I knew for sure. As soon as I opened the door she bombarded me.

“Are you okay? Oh my God, Y/N, what happened?”

Reaching into the bag I grabbed the test and handed it over to her. She took it and then looked back at me, her eyes meeting mine as she smiled.

“Oh, Y/N… what are you going to do? I mean, it’s great and beautiful and I’m so happy for you, truly. I love you, you know that. But aren’t you scared that it’s too soon?”

“Scar, I’m fucking terrified. But I also know that I will be keeping the baby. I love you, and I’m so in love with Chris. If this is what is being dealt to us, then we’ll figure it out.”

“Okay sweetheart, let’s get back to the set and get you to see a doctor. We’ll need to see that little peanut and make sure everything is okay.”

Nodding I settled into the car and buckled my seat belt. My heart was so full, I was scared and nervous - but now that I knew for sure, I was going to protect my baby and make sure that he or she had a good and happy life. And deep down, a side that I dared not think about too much at the moment, was happy and excited that I would be a mother to Chris’s baby.

Sure, it was way too soon and I had no idea how Chris was going to react to this, but I felt hope inside that things would somehow work out.

I once again lost track of everything around me as I thought about what this all meant. I was pregnant.

I’m fucking pregnant!

The smile that spread across my lips felt so good and honest. Scar pulled up outside the lot once more, the familiar trailers in the background with the huge sets built up behind it all like a breathtaking skyline. This was my life, my home - for now, anyway.

“Come on honey, let’s go and talk to the medics and see if they can get you into one of the clinics around the area.”

I followed her back onto the sets looking for our resident medics. Finally Randy walked around from the back lot and Scar waved him over.

“Randy, we need an appointment made at a local clinic. Can you get it as soon as possible?”

“What’s wrong, Scarlett? You know I’ll have to let one of the brothers know if there’s something wrong with you.”

“Not for me, Randy, for Y/N. And it’s not anything wrong per-se. She’s pregnant, but no one else knows yet so I’d appreciate discretion on this.”

“Sure girls, I’ll take care of it. I’ll try and see if I can’t get you in for tomorrow morning, okay Y/N?”

I simply nodded as I looked around the sets. My eyes clouded over once more as I thought about what it would be like to raise my first child on the road. I knew if Chris accepted this and was (dare I dream) happy about the news, we’d have plenty of help while out on the road. I also knew that I wanted to keep my career. I loved it too much to give it up completely.

My eyes landed on Chris then as he walked from the back where the trailers were.

“Hey baby, I woke up and you weren’t there with me. Is everything okay?”

I smiled at him before wrapping my arms around his neck and planting a kiss against his lips.

“Everything is good, just couldn’t sleep. We, umm, can we talk?”

“Yikes, that’s usually a bad thing. Sure, let’s go for a walk.”

“Thank you, Scar. I love you.” I hugged her tightly and inhaled deeply as I tried to center myself for what was about to happen.

“I love you, too. See you later you two.”

I grabbed Chris’s hand and we started walking around the back lot, my heart starting up the rapid beating and my throat began to feel dry. I could do this, I had to. Chris was the father and deserved to know and make his own decisions about what he wanted to do.

“Okay, you’re scaring the shit out of me. Is this too much? Are you dumping me?”

“Chris, it’s none of that. I love you. I love you so much and I’m not dumping you. I got worried about why I’ve been feeling off, so I had Scar take me to town.”

“You went to the doctor without me? Y/N, what’s wrong?”

“There’s nothing wrong, I mean, I don’t think. I just realized while I was lying in bed that my - I’m late. My period is two weeks late.”

Chris stared at me, his eyes looking deeply into mine as he waited patiently for me to get this out.

“I’m pregnant, Chris. I took a pregnancy test, that’s why I’ve been so off. Randy is making me a doctor’s appointment in town.”

He continued staring, not saying anything. My heart sped up quicker (which I didn’t think was possible) and my palms started to sweat.

“I don’t expect anything from you, Chris. I don’t know how this happened, I was still taking my pills. I’m keeping the baby, but you make up your own mind about what you want. I’m here if you still want me, but I won’t pressure you into anything. Please, say something. Anything.”

“Y/N,” his voice was so soft I would have missed it if I hadn’t been listening so closely. “We’re going to have a baby?”

My eyes closed as a smile pulled across my lips once more.

“Yes, we’re going to have a baby.”

“Oh my God, oh Y/N. I love you, I love you so fucking much.” His arms wrapped around me once more and his lips found mine as he whispered sweet nothings between kisses.

“I love you, too, Chris. I’m sorry that this is so soon, I know it’s…”

He cut me off with his mouth once more, his tongue finding mine as he pulled me even closer, his erection poking against my thigh.

“I’m so fucking happy, we’re going to have a baby. You’re having my baby. I can’t imagine anyone else to have this with but you. You’re my everything, I’ve told you that. I need you, right now.”

He pulled me behind him, back toward our trailer. I followed happily. As we reached our home away from home, he threw the door open and ushered me inside and closed the door behind us. He cupped my face gently in his hands, his lips seeking mine once again as we backed toward the bed stripping clothes along the way.

As my knees hit the bed he wrapped his arms down around my waist and lowered me gently to the mattress. I moved up the bed, my head against the pillows as I watched Chris crawl toward me on his knees. I opened my legs to make room for him, his cock finding my waiting pussy with practiced ease. He entered me, his eyes locked on mine as his right hand gently stroked my cheek.

“I love you, I can’t ever tell you how much.” He pulled back slowly, thrusting back in just as slowly. This pace was something I wasn’t used to. This was soft and slow and beautiful. “I’m not worried about it being so soon, because I knew from the beginning that this was what I wanted. You and me, a family, forever.”

My lips parted as I moaned, the feeling of him inside of me is something I’d never get used to. I loved the feeling of being so full and connected to him as close as two people could possibly be.

“I love you, Chris. Oh, I love you.”

“I love you, I love you so much. Thank you for giving me this, for giving yourself to me so completely.”

The rhythm continued, pushing, pulling. The softness of his breath against my face as he pushed me closer to the edge, my orgasm was so close I could almost reach out and touch it.

“A-almost there. Please, oh Chris.”

“Y/N, I love you. I can feel you, how close you are. Let go baby, I’ve got you.”

A few more slow, deep thrusts and I saw stars, my toes curling in the sheets as my hands went to his shoulders. I held on tightly as if I was trying to keep myself from floating away. Chris followed me over the edge, his moans of pleasure like the sweetest music to my ears.

As he pushed himself back, pulling out of me and sitting back on his knees, to look down at my face, he smiled once more and reached into the night stand beside the bed.

“I know this isn’t romantic, but I’ve known for a while now that this is what I want. What I mean is, I know we’re doing this all backwards, the baby first and all, but I love you and want to spend the rest of forever with you and our children. Y/N, will you be my wife?”

At first I wanted to laugh, because only Chris would propose after we’d had sex, but then I found myself crying. This was crazy, too much but just enough - it was us, our lives.

Looking up at him, into his beautiful eyes, at his gorgeous smile. I’d never loved anyone like I loved Chris. Pulling him back down and kissing him softly, I whispered against his lips.

“Y-yes, yes I’ll marry you.”

[stephenmccull]

Pandemic Highlights Need for Urgent Care Clinics for Women

SAN JOSE — Last spring, only weeks into the pandemic, Christina Garcia was spending her days struggling to help her two young sons adjust to online schooling when she got such a heavy, painful period she could barely stand. After a few days, her vision began to blur and she found herself too weak to open a jar.

This story also ran on Los Angeles Times. It can be republished for free.

Garcia’s regular OB/GYN — like most medical offices at the time — was closed, and she was terrified by the prospect of spending hours waiting in an emergency room shoulder to shoulder with people who might have covid.

By the time she stumbled into the newly opened Bascom OB-GYN urgent care clinic at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, clutching a pillow to her belly, Garcia was pale and dehydrated from blood loss and certain she was dying.

“If I didn’t get to the clinic when I did, I think, things could have ended up very different,” said Garcia, 34, who underwent an emergency hysterectomy for uterine fibroids.

Her story illustrates a long-standing gap in women’s health care. For years, many women with common but urgent conditions like painful urinary tract infections or excessive bleeding in the aftermath of a miscarriage have faced a grim choice between waiting weeks for an appointment with their regular OB-GYN or braving hours in an ER waiting room.

Urgent care OB-GYN clinics have begun popping up around the country in recent years, and the covid pandemic has increased demand. While no data is available on the number of urgent care clinics for women, they are part of a surge of interest in urgent care clinics in general and other alternative models like retail clinics and so-called digital-first health care startups. One of these, the New York-based women’s health startup Tia (“aunt” in Spanish), won $24 million in venture capital funding last spring and is opening physical clinics nationwide.

“It’s clear that access and convenience are increasingly more important to consumers than seeing a specific provider,” said Rob Rohatsch, chief medical officer at Solv, an app that books urgent care appointments.

The Urgent Care Association has reported steadily increasing visits by people who use its members’ walk-in clinics as an alternative to hospital emergency departments. Traffic to these clinics has surged during the past year, according to Solv.

The Bascom clinic had been a nearly decadelong dream of Drs. Cheryl Pan and Anita Sit, two obstetrician-gynecologists at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, a sprawling public hospital that serves as the regional trauma center, treating critical cases like car accident and gunshot victims and relegating people suffering less life-threatening problems to long waits.

“Women — perhaps pregnant or bleeding — could be sitting there 12 to 14 hours, depending on the time of day,” Pan said.

After the onset of the pandemic, doctors worried that women with serious or even deadly issues like Garcia’s might avoid seeking treatment for fear of contracting covid. ER visits plummeted an unprecedented 42% in the early months of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A June CDC report noted that, while the number of ER visits for heart attacks had increased, visits for nonspecific chest pain had decreased, suggesting that people might be risking their lives by avoiding the ER.

“You can imagine that a woman with three kids at home might be even more scared,” Sit said. “We just couldn’t keep sending women having miscarriages to wait hours in the covid tent.”

Instead, women can now be triaged over the phone and seen within a day or two at the Bascom OB-GYN urgent care clinic — much the way they would at their local Planned Parenthood branch for contraceptives or a sexually transmitted disease screening. Bascom is equipped to treat conditions from severe morning sickness to ectopic pregnancies that require emergency surgery. In its first year, the clinic has treated some 1,300 women and served as a backup to local clinics that provide basic reproductive health services in counties hundreds of miles away.

It’s still in its pilot phase, however, operating weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., which “leaves a big chunk of off-hours that we cannot serve women,” Sit acknowledges.

A handful of other clinics have taken the concept of urgent care for women a step further. Dr. Miriam Mackovic runs Complete Women Care, a chain of four clinics in the Los Angeles area that also has an emergency care center in Long Beach, which is staffed 24/7 with a nurse practitioner and equipped with a lab and a pharmacy. Women who walk in are typically seen within 30 minutes, according to Mackovic, and every patient receives a follow-up call the next day.

One woman who turned up at a Complete Women Care clinic said that, after desperately seeking treatment at an ER one Saturday night for a nasty yeast infection, she got a bill in the mail for $1,500.

“In the middle of the night, urgent care centers are closed. OB-GYN offices are definitely closed. So, what is her option except the ER?” asked Mackovic, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also has an MBA.

Mackovic ticked off cautionary tales of patients who’ve arrived at her clinics from as far away as Arizona and Nevada after suffering for weeks while trying to schedule routine operations for uterine cysts or twisted ovaries.

“The medical advances are here. Most emergencies can be resolved on an outpatient basis — a woman can have a hysterectomy with just a fine incision and be home the same day,” Mackovic said. “But a woman who has a miscarriage calls her OB, who says there’s no openings for weeks, so she goes to the ER, and the physician says: Are you dying? No? Then follow up with your OB-GYN.”

Fees for the uninsured — around 20% of Mackovic’s clientele — run from $100 to around $600, she said.

Women in the United States have for years lagged behind those in other rich countries in both their access to health care and their health status. America has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations.

Some women see a doctor only in an emergency.

“We have diagnosed so many cancers in the last few years because women walked in for another reason,” said Dr. Adeeti Gupta, founder and CEO of a chain of open-daily clinics in New York City called Walk In Gyn Care that provides comprehensive care without appointments.

Gupta’s three clinics have grown steadily since she opened them seven years ago, largely out of frustration with the months-long wait for an appointment at her own Queens OB-GYN practice. But after the coronavirus hit the city hard, she has seen an uptick in patients — 40% in one location.

The country needs more accessible, comprehensive women’s health care to treat everything from the menstrual pains of adolescents to the hot flashes of postmenopausal grannies, Gupta said.

“The thing about women,” she said, “is their problems never stop.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Pandemic Highlights Need for Urgent Care Clinics for Women published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Pandemic Highlights Need for Urgent Care Clinics for Women

SAN JOSE — Last spring, only weeks into the pandemic, Christina Garcia was spending her days struggling to help her two young sons adjust to online schooling when she got such a heavy, painful period she could barely stand. After a few days, her vision began to blur and she found herself too weak to open a jar.

This story also ran on Los Angeles Times. It can be republished for free.

Garcia’s regular OB/GYN — like most medical offices at the time — was closed, and she was terrified by the prospect of spending hours waiting in an emergency room shoulder to shoulder with people who might have covid.

By the time she stumbled into the newly opened Bascom OB-GYN urgent care clinic at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, clutching a pillow to her belly, Garcia was pale and dehydrated from blood loss and certain she was dying.

“If I didn’t get to the clinic when I did, I think, things could have ended up very different,” said Garcia, 34, who underwent an emergency hysterectomy for uterine fibroids.

Her story illustrates a long-standing gap in women’s health care. For years, many women with common but urgent conditions like painful urinary tract infections or excessive bleeding in the aftermath of a miscarriage have faced a grim choice between waiting weeks for an appointment with their regular OB-GYN or braving hours in an ER waiting room.

Urgent care OB-GYN clinics have begun popping up around the country in recent years, and the covid pandemic has increased demand. While no data is available on the number of urgent care clinics for women, they are part of a surge of interest in urgent care clinics in general and other alternative models like retail clinics and so-called digital-first health care startups. One of these, the New York-based women’s health startup Tia (“aunt” in Spanish), won $24 million in venture capital funding last spring and is opening physical clinics nationwide.

“It’s clear that access and convenience are increasingly more important to consumers than seeing a specific provider,” said Rob Rohatsch, chief medical officer at Solv, an app that books urgent care appointments.

The Urgent Care Association has reported steadily increasing visits by people who use its members’ walk-in clinics as an alternative to hospital emergency departments. Traffic to these clinics has surged during the past year, according to Solv.

The Bascom clinic had been a nearly decadelong dream of Drs. Cheryl Pan and Anita Sit, two obstetrician-gynecologists at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, a sprawling public hospital that serves as the regional trauma center, treating critical cases like car accident and gunshot victims and relegating people suffering less life-threatening problems to long waits.

“Women — perhaps pregnant or bleeding — could be sitting there 12 to 14 hours, depending on the time of day,” Pan said.

After the onset of the pandemic, doctors worried that women with serious or even deadly issues like Garcia’s might avoid seeking treatment for fear of contracting covid. ER visits plummeted an unprecedented 42% in the early months of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A June CDC report noted that, while the number of ER visits for heart attacks had increased, visits for nonspecific chest pain had decreased, suggesting that people might be risking their lives by avoiding the ER.

“You can imagine that a woman with three kids at home might be even more scared,” Sit said. “We just couldn’t keep sending women having miscarriages to wait hours in the covid tent.”

Instead, women can now be triaged over the phone and seen within a day or two at the Bascom OB-GYN urgent care clinic — much the way they would at their local Planned Parenthood branch for contraceptives or a sexually transmitted disease screening. Bascom is equipped to treat conditions from severe morning sickness to ectopic pregnancies that require emergency surgery. In its first year, the clinic has treated some 1,300 women and served as a backup to local clinics that provide basic reproductive health services in counties hundreds of miles away.

It’s still in its pilot phase, however, operating weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., which “leaves a big chunk of off-hours that we cannot serve women,” Sit acknowledges.

A handful of other clinics have taken the concept of urgent care for women a step further. Dr. Miriam Mackovic runs Complete Women Care, a chain of four clinics in the Los Angeles area that also has an emergency care center in Long Beach, which is staffed 24/7 with a nurse practitioner and equipped with a lab and a pharmacy. Women who walk in are typically seen within 30 minutes, according to Mackovic, and every patient receives a follow-up call the next day.

One woman who turned up at a Complete Women Care clinic said that, after desperately seeking treatment at an ER one Saturday night for a nasty yeast infection, she got a bill in the mail for $1,500.

“In the middle of the night, urgent care centers are closed. OB-GYN offices are definitely closed. So, what is her option except the ER?” asked Mackovic, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also has an MBA.

Mackovic ticked off cautionary tales of patients who’ve arrived at her clinics from as far away as Arizona and Nevada after suffering for weeks while trying to schedule routine operations for uterine cysts or twisted ovaries.

“The medical advances are here. Most emergencies can be resolved on an outpatient basis — a woman can have a hysterectomy with just a fine incision and be home the same day,” Mackovic said. “But a woman who has a miscarriage calls her OB, who says there’s no openings for weeks, so she goes to the ER, and the physician says: Are you dying? No? Then follow up with your OB-GYN.”

Fees for the uninsured — around 20% of Mackovic’s clientele — run from $100 to around $600, she said.

Women in the United States have for years lagged behind those in other rich countries in both their access to health care and their health status. America has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations.

Some women see a doctor only in an emergency.

“We have diagnosed so many cancers in the last few years because women walked in for another reason,” said Dr. Adeeti Gupta, founder and CEO of a chain of open-daily clinics in New York City called Walk In Gyn Care that provides comprehensive care without appointments.

Gupta’s three clinics have grown steadily since she opened them seven years ago, largely out of frustration with the months-long wait for an appointment at her own Queens OB-GYN practice. But after the coronavirus hit the city hard, she has seen an uptick in patients — 40% in one location.

The country needs more accessible, comprehensive women’s health care to treat everything from the menstrual pains of adolescents to the hot flashes of postmenopausal grannies, Gupta said.

“The thing about women,” she said, “is their problems never stop.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Pandemic Highlights Need for Urgent Care Clinics for Women published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[canaryatlaw]

OKAY. so my entire day post is going to be put under a cut because the entire thing is WAY TMI, but there’s way too much shit that happened that I need to process and I already gave the sanitized language version of it on twitter but I can’t fully process it without getting into details. you have been warned- WAY TMI. 

okay, so. backstory, I woke up on Tuesday with stomach pain and ended up spending most of the day on the toilet. By the time I finished (like 7 hours later- yeah it was BAD) I noticed there was something weird going on down there, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Wednesday morning I was having a lot of pain and it occurred to me that maybe because of Tuesday I had a hemorrhoid (it only gets worse from here, so if that makes you squirm you should bail out now), but like, idk because I’ve never had one before and idk what they look like, so I googled it and shit and did their home remedy stuff, sitting on a ice pack helped, I did a “sitz bath” (which is basically sitting in four inches lukewarm water for 15 minutes), aloe vera, and really nothing helped. Woke up this morning and it was still bad. I showered because the warm water did help a bit, but I was getting suspicious at this point that something else was going on here, so I asked my mom to look at it and she was like WOW OKAY WE’RE GOING TO THE DOCTOR. And here lies the problem of trying to diagnose and treat your injuries off google, because I wouldn’t have known that other than my suspicions that hey there’s this giant bulge in my ass crack and it probably shouldn’t be there. my primary care couldn’t fit me in today but they recommended we go to the walk in clinic, so we do that and the doctor takes one look at that and is like “yeah this looks like a rectal prolapse and a hemorrhoid and you need to go to the ER right away” OH JOY. so if you’re not up on your scientific vocabulary, a rectal prolapse is basically when part of your digestive tract comes outside of your body and usually requires surgery to fix. wonder-fucking-ful. Thankfully we’re close to the local hospital that’s like, the number one trauma center on LI (it’s like two miles from my house so that’s always been convenient) so we go there and the urgent care people gave us a letter to give the triage people, but we still ended up waiting in the hallway for like an hour and a half, during which I was in pure misery, but the male nurse who drew my blood was sweet though and slightly flirty but in a nice and not a creepy way so there’s that at least. he left the needle in my arm because it sounded like I’d be needing it at some point. So eventually we get called, and taken into a section called the clinical decisions unit, where I guess is where they figure out if you need surgery or not. So I get in there and someone comes to look and is like OH YEAH LEMME GO GET THE DOCTOR because everyone seemed to agree this was high key bad, so they got doctors, and more doctors, they even took pictures and sent them to the head guy of the department, but the consensus was oh yeah, this needs surgery to fix. and at this point I’m just like fine, just get it done. they did give me some pain medication around 3 or so, which ended up by 5 mg of morphine, which took pretty much all my pain away and I only felt slightly woozy lol but that perked me up significantly and I was actually like talking and stuff instead of lying there looking like death. there was a bit of a wait for the OR so we had to chill for a while, then eventually I get brought in there and the surgeon comes and like, I had been thinking all day about watching The Resident and just how ridiculously easy it is for them to just straight up kill patients in routine surgeries and they have the one chief of surgery who’s got a hand tremor and is just like slicing organs open, and then in comes this guy who’s like the #1 in the department and has gray hair and I’m just like FUCK MY LIFE I hope I survive this lol (I know the show isn’t very realistic when it comes to that subject). So we’re getting ready, their general idea is that they’re just gonna cut the damn thing off because it looked infected and shit, so they go to check and the doctor is like “oh, uh, it’s gone” and I was like......”really? are you sure????” cuz apparently it slipped back in because that’s a thing that can happen, but they were like well we should still probably go ahead with the surgery because the hemorrhoid is still there and could pop back out, so we go for it, they decided to not do general anesthesia but do sedation, whatever the difference between those two is, so I was out anyway and I woke up after and they were like “yeah so turns out it wasn’t a hemorrhoid and he didn’t have to do any cutting or stitching” and I was like “....so then what did he do?” haha and I’m still not 100% sure about that one really, but they were more than happy to send me home which I was very thankful for because I did not want to spend part of my spring break in the hospital. so they got me out of there pretty quickly with a giant bandage on my butt that I’m not sure is serving any purpose at all really, but they told me to leave it on there until I shit again so I guess that’s what I’ll do. We got home, my mom went to pick up the percocet they called into the pharmacy for me but they were closed, a little while after my dad and my brother got home, my dad was speaking at this big thing tonight that he’s trying to launch at churches across the island about understanding the opioid epidemic and how to prevent it, and he said not quite as many people showed up as he would’ve liked but it was still good so that was good to hear. As far as how all this craziness started, I’ve in the past had episodes of like scathing stomach pain that make me feel like I have to go to the bathroom, but I usually end up cowering in pain on the toilet with nothing coming, until eventually something will give and it’ll all just pour out as liquid (again, I told you this is TMI) and like, it used to happen a lot more frequently when I wasn’t eating much and my regularity was thrown way off schedule (like once a week) but I don’t do that anymore and I take a fiber supplement every day because I’m on a high dose iron supplement thanks to me being super anemic, so it’s usually not an issue, it happened the night of my sister’s sweet 16 at the end of October but I think it’s only happened maybe once in the four months between then and now? And I did bring it up at my last gastroenterologist appointment but he didn't seem to think much of it and said it was probably just another muscle spasm (because he had just said my chest pain issues were probably caused by a muscle spasm). The doctor from the hospital tonight apparently recommended I get a colonoscopy done at some point to make sure everything is alright and in place, but idk if I’m gonna do that because I have a pretty good idea of just how this happened, plus I have a lot of like, traumatic memories about that stuff from when I was little and they thought I had Crohn’s disease (when it was actually just nightly cramps for an entire year before my period showed up) and being subjected to a bunch of really invasive stuff that I was not at all comfortable with so that’s not exactly gonna be on the top of my to do list. Other than that they said not to strain when going to the bathroom and eat a lot of fibre, so I’m gonna try harder to eat actual fiber and not just the shit in caplets, and try to make that work out better. and yeah, that is about it, after all that I chatted with friends for a bit then started getting ready for bed with this absurdly large bandage on my butt 😂 We’re supposed to go out to dinner to this super schmancy place (because my parents have a gift card to it) tomorrow to celebrate my brother and I’s birthdays (his was today but because of all the crazy we’re gonna celebrate this weekend) so hopefully that will work out. And oh yeah, since I turn 26 in 11 days, if this happened 11 days from now I would’ve totally FUCKED because I would’ve had no health insurance thanks to getting kicked off my parents plan at 26!!! Lovely *sigh*. And as much as it does suck to get sick on vacation, I am at least glad I was with my family and not in Chicago where I had nobody except like, Jess (and no offense to her in the slightest, because I’m sure she would’ve been great, but with this kind of thing a mom is just better suited for it), and that sounds kinda miserable. Okay, that’s the end for real now, I took my pills a while ago and now my eyes really want to shut and I’m going to listen to them. If you made it all the way through, thank you for suffering through all that TMI to find out how I’m actually doing, though I kinda doubt many of you will actually reach this far, lol, but I cannot blame you for that. Goodnight my dear friends. I hope your Thursday was a hell of a lot better than mine.

[unsettlingshortstories]

The Ash of Memory, the Dust of Desire

Poppy Z. Brite (1992)

Once, I thought I knew something about love.

Once, I could stand on the roof of the tallest skyscraper in the city and look out across the shimmering candyscape of nighttime lights without thinking of what went on down in the black canyons between the buildings: the grand melodramatic murders, the willful and deliberate hurt, the commonplace pettiness. To live is to betray. But why do some have to do it with such pleasure?

Once, I could look in the mirror and see the skin of my throat not withered, the hollows of bone not gone blue and bruised around my eyes.

Once, I could part a woman’s legs and kiss the juncture like I was drinking from the mouth of a river, without seeing the skin of the inner thighs gone veined and livid, without smelling the salt scent and the blood mingled like copper and seawater.

Once, I thought I knew something about love.

Once, I thought I wanted to.

Leah met me in the bar at the Blue Shell. It was six o’clock, just before dinnertime, and my clothes were still streaked with the dill-cream soup and Dijon dressing we had served at lunch. The fresh dill for the soup had come on a truck that morning, in a crate, packed secure between baby carrots and dewy lettuces. I wondered how many highways it had to travel between here and its birthplace, how many miles of open sky before the delivery man lugged it up to the twenty-first floor of the posh hotel. “The Blue Shell on Twenty-one” read the embossed silver matchbooks the busboys placed on every table, referring not to avenue number but to floors above street level. Way up here they kept it air-conditioned, carefully chilled . . . except in the heart of the kitchen, where no amount of circulated air could compete with the radiant heat of a Turbo Ten-Loaf bread oven. In addition to the residue of lunch, I felt sheathed in a layer of dry sweat like a dirty undershirt gone wash-gray with age.

The bar on ground floor was as cool as the rest of the hotel, though, and Leah was cool too. As cool as the coffee cream when I took it out of the refrigerator first thing every morning. For her appointment today she had dressed carefully, in the style affected by all the fashionable girls this year. Leah was one of the few who could get away with it: her calves were tight and slender enough for the clunky shoes and the gaudy, patterned hose, her figure spare enough for the sheath-snug, aggressively colored (or, for a very special occasion, jet black) dresses, the planes of her face sufficiently delicate to sport the modified beehive hairdo, swept up severely in front, but with a few long strands spiraling carefully down the back. “There was a long waiting line,” she told me, toying with the laces of her shoestring bodice. I imagined her sitting in one of the anonymous chairs at the clinic, hugging herself the way she did when she was defensive or less than comfortable—an unconscious gesture, I was sure. My cool Leah would never have chosen to do something that so exquisitely exposed her own vulnerability.

I was supposed to feel guilty. I was supposed to feel neglectful because I hadn’t been able to get anyone to work lunch for me; thus I had sent fragile Leah into a dangerous situation unprotected, into a situation of possible pain without the male stability she craved. Something in me cringed at the accusation, as if on cue. Until now I had only sipped at the boilermaker I’d ordered; now I drank deeply, and was vaguely surprised to see it come away from my lips half-drained. The taste was good, though, the sour tangy beer washing down and the sweet mash of the whiskey lingering. Bushmills. The kitchen staff drank free after getting off a shift, and the bar brands were damn tasty.

“They hurt me,” she said next. “I don’t see why I had to have a pelvic. Jilly didn’t have to have a pelvic when she went to her private doctor. They just tested her pee, and when they called her on the phone later, the nurse already had an appointment set up for her.”

“Jilly’s boyfriend designs software,” I told her. “Jilly can afford to see a private doctor.”

“Yes, but listen.” She spoke excitedly, mouthing her words around the various straws and skewers they’d put in her drink. She drank fruity, frothy stuff, drinks you couldn’t taste the alcohol in, drinks that more properly belonged on a dessert plate with a garnish of whipped cream. A dark red maraschino cherry bobbed against her lips. “Cleve went with me today. He says he’s got some money saved up from his last gallery show. If you help too, I’ll have enough. I can have the operation at a private doctor’s office—the clinic’s going to call and make me an appointment.” Her hand set her drink down on the bar, found mine, tightened over it.

I noticed the way she said operation before I thought of anything else. Casual, with no more pain in the twist of her mouth than if she were saying new dress or boyfriend or fuck. Like something she was used to having, that she couldn’t get used to the idea of not having whenever she wanted it. It wasn’t until my next swallow of whiskey that I registered the name she’d spoken.

“Cleve went with you?”

Again the casual twist of the lips, not quite a smile. “Yes, Cleve went. You couldn’t get off work. I didn’t feel like doing it alone.”

I remembered standing in the kitchen two days ago, slicing a carrot into rounds and then chopping the rounds into quarters. I kept my eyes fixed on the big wooden cutting block, on the knife slicing through the crisp orange meat of the carrot, but in the corner of my vision I could see Cleve twisting his battered old hat in his hands. Between his long fingers, the hat was like an odd scrap of felt. Cleve’s hands were large enough to fit easily around my throat; Cleve stood a head and a half taller than me, and his arms might have been strong enough to throw me half the length of the kitchen. But I knew he would let me kick his ass if I wanted to. If I was hurting so bad that I wanted to pound his head against the floor or punch him in the face until his blood ran, then he was prepared to let me. That was how deep his guilt went. And that was how bad he still wanted Leah.

“I can’t work for you Wednesday,” he’d told me. “Any other day I’d do it, you know that. I’ve got to see this gallery owner, it’s been set up for weeks.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. I thought he was just upset at the idea of me having to run the kitchen alone, having to make the thousand little decisions that go with the lunch rush while all the time I worried about Leah . . . imagining her getting off the bus at the last stop before the clinic, having to walk through blocks of the old industrial district. Other parts of the city were more dangerous, but to me the old factories and mills were the most frightening places. The places where abandoned machinery sat silent and brooding, and twenty-foot swaths of cobweb hung from the disused cogs and levers like dusty gray curtains. The places that everyone mostly stayed away from, mostly left alone with the superstitious reverence given all graveyards. But once in a while, something would be found in the basement of a factory, or tucked into the back room of a warehouse. A head, once, so badly decomposed that no one could ever put a face to it. The gnawed bones and dried tendons and other unpalatable parts of a wino, jealously guarded by a pack of feral dogs. This was where the free clinic was; this was where certain doctors set up their offices, and where desperate girls visited them.

And while Leah was making her way through this blasted landscape, while I was slicing goat cheese for the salads or making a delicate lemon sauce to go over the fresh fish of the day, Cleve would be ensconced in some art gallery far uptown. I pictured it like the interior of a temple: lavish brocade and beaded curtains, burning sachets of sandalwood and frankincense, carpet lush and rich enough to silence even the tread of Cleve’s steel-toed cowboy boots. There Cleve would be, kicking back in some cool dim vast room, trying to say the right things about the colorful paintings that came from some secret place in his brain, about the sculptures he shaped into being with the latent grace of his big hands. I liked the idea of Cleve bullshitting some spotless hipper-than-thou gallery owner, someone who attended the right parties to see and be seen, someone who had never been to the old industrial district or any of the rough parts of town except for a quick slummy thrill, someone who never got mustard all over his shirt or scalded his hands in hot dishwater.

But Cleve hadn’t been bullshitting anyone except me.

Leah extricated her hand from mine and adjusted the hem of her skirt over her knee. Her fingernails were painted the cool blue of a blemishless autumn sky; her movements were guarded and deliberate. I caught the glimmer of her frosted eyelids, but in the semidarkness of the bar, I could not see her eyes.

I took a long drink of my boilermaker. Warm rancid beer; the flat taste of whiskey settling spiderlike over my tongue.

One of Cleve’s passions was his collection of jazz and blues records, most of them the original pressings. No digital techno-juju or perfect plastic sound, just the old cardboard sleeves whose liner notes told the stories of entire lives. Just the battered vinyl wheels that could turn back time and rekindle desire, just the dark sorghum voices. Billie and Miles, Duke and Bird . . . and more obscure ones. “Titanic” Phil Alvin, Peg Leg Howell. I had given him a bunch of them, and he knew I loved them too. One night he willed them to me over a case of Dixie beer. (Cleve had made a special trip to New Orleans when the Dixie brewery finally closed, and there were still a few cases stashed in his studio closet; I had helped him drink another five or six.) “Jonny, if I got jumped by a goddamn kid gang on my way home—” he paused to light a Chesterfield “—or if I walked in front of a bus or something, you’d have to take ‘em, man.” He gestured around the room at a series of little jewel-box watercolors he was doing at the time. “My paintings could go their own way—shit, they can take care of themselves. But you have to take the records. You’re the only one who loves ‘em enough.”

The records were Cleve’s sole big indulgence. The rest of his extra money went to buy paints and canvas and an occasional luxury like groceries. He never collected them out of any kind of anal retentiveness, and desire to possess and catalog. It was just the feel of good heavy vinyl in the hands, the fragrant dust that sifted from the corners of the dog-eared cardboard, the music that spun you back to some grand hotel ballroom where you danced beneath a crystal chandelier . . . or some smoky little dive renting space in the basement of a whorehouse. The records were magic rabbit holes that led to the past, to a place where there was still room for romance. And I loved them as much as Cleve did.

And right then, in that moment at the bar as Leah withdrew her hand from mine, I could have taken a hammer and smashed the records all to bits.

We walked the four blocks from the hotel to the train tunnel half-staggering, almost drunk off our one drink apiece. Leah had not eaten because of her appointment; I, after wracking my brain to concoct delicious menus day after day, could hardly eat at all. Forsaking a free dinner at the Blue Shell meant we would go to bed hungry. Our refrigerator at home was empty of all but the last parings of our life together: an old rind of cheese on the shelf, a vegetable or two that neither of us would ever cook withering in the drawer, a flask of vodka I had stashed in the freezer.

As we left the hotel behind, the street grew shabbier. The buildings along here were old row houses of brick and wood, once fashionable, now unrenovated and nearly worthless. Children and teenagers sat on some of the stoops, hardness aging their faces, their grim eyes urging us past. Most unnerving were the houses that stood vacant: I could not imagine what face would look out from the dirty darkness behind the windows. Leah pulled my arm around her. I felt her skin and muscles moving under the thin dress. I thought of that strength moving with me, around me, like snakes wrapped in cool velvet. We had not had sex in three weeks, had not made love in so much longer than that. Whenever I was not with either Cleve or Leah, I imagined them together, drowning in ecstasy, dying their little deaths into each other.

Cleve had told me first, as soon as he realized that Leah didn’t intend to. Away from the kitchen, away from work, in a neutral bar with a fresh beer in front of me, he confessed in a hesitant voice, telling me what a dumbfuck he was and how anyway there was only lust between them, no love, not seeing how that would hurt the worst. He bought me another beer before I finished my first one. Maybe he just wanted to know where both of my hands were.

Leah was in bed but not asleep when I went home. She’d heard me coming up the stairs and fumbling with my key, and rolled over when I came in. Some nights she slept naked; tonight she was wearing something as sheer and weightless as ectoplasm. I saw the line of her shoulder silhouetted in filmy silver-white, somehow more erotic than the curve of her hip or breast. I sat on the edge of the bed.

“I waited up for my story,” she said. It was our custom for me to tell her a tale before we fell asleep at night: sometimes just a shred of hotel gossip or a memory from childhood, sometimes a dream, one of the plans I only told her and Cleve, one of my schemes to get away from the kitchen and into a grander, larger, more leisurely world. These were made of the finest ego-spun gossamer and collapsed in the telling; nonetheless it was pleasurable to tell her, like placing a drop of my heartblood on her lips.

“I’m not telling you a story tonight,” I said. “Tonight it’s your turn.”

She didn’t move then, only looked up at me with her eyes dark in the darkness of the room: she knew I knew. And four weeks later she finally came up with a story to tell me in return for all the ones I’d given her. She was carrying a living, breathing, bloodsucking piece of meat inside her, and it might be Cleve’s meat, and it might be mine.

***

Leah always liked to feel passive when she had sex. No, it wasn’t just that she liked to: she needed to feel passive, needed to feel she was being acted upon. I could kiss her anywhere, manipulate her knees and elbows and the strong curve of her back, pretend she was a department-store mannequin I was posing for some pornographic window display. She would press her face into a pillow and whimper, enjoying the power of pretended helplessness. I could dine on her tangy juices all night if I wished, I could stay inside her as long as I pleased, come when I wanted to. Only when I asked her what she wanted would Leah get angry. She had to be the little girl; she had to have someone take control.

Not on the morning of her operation. I woke in the still, stuffy light of predawn, unsure what had caused me to surface. I thought I had heard a distant sound, something separate from the intermittent cacophony of voices and sirens that punctuated the night. A train whistle miles away, or a telephone ringing in a far-off room.

Then, before I even knew Leah was awake, she sat up and in one liquid movement was straddling me. I had not felt her body close to mine in so long that it startled me into immobility. Even when I pressed up against the urgent sharpness of her nipples, up into the syrupy heat of her crotch, I wasn’t ready.

She tensed above me. In the waxing light I saw surprise on her face, and faint annoyance. She began to grind against me. In the unfamiliar position I could not think how to respond. Leah hardly ever got on top—maybe five or six times in the three years we had been together. It didn’t fit her penchant for being acted upon, and it played up the fact that she was almost as tall as me. She had told me that one of the things she liked best about Cleve was his bigness. His hands could enfold hers as if her hands were baby birds. Her bones felt more delicate when she pressed them against the solid bulk of him.

My overactive imagination served me up plenty of Leah-and-Cleve snapshots, plenty of inevitable intimate moments, generous helpings of feverish speculation. I was helpless to push these out of my mind once they held sway, but that was not the worst thing about them.

The worst thing about them was that occasionally—usually when I was feeling low and tired and ugly—these thoughts would give me a moment of masochistic excitement.

I thought of Leah’s flower-stem spine pressed flush against Cleve. I thought of him kneeling above her, his back covering hers, his big hands cupping the tender weight of her breasts. I knew Cleve preferred to fuck doggy-style. He was a confirmed butt man, loved to ride between those sweet snowy globes. I thought of him just barely entering her, the petals of her opening for him, slicking him with her juice. Cleve had a thick penis, heavily veined and solid-looking; he told me the only time a girl had blatantly propositioned him was once when he had been modeling for an art class.

Imagining it going into Leah, searching out the fruit of her heaven, I began to get hard too.

She grabbed me and then suddenly I was deep inside her. One thrust upward and I felt I was pushing at the heart of her womb. She came the way women do when they only need one good deep touch: quick and hard, with an animal groan instead of the little feathery noises she often made. I thought of the lump of meat that grew inside her, thought of bathing it with my sperm, melting away its rudimentary flesh, melting away the past few months and their caustic veneer of pain. Then I did come. The sperm didn’t reach far enough: it pulsed out in long, aching spasms that flowed back down over us, into the sticky space between our thighs. The months of pain did not melt away. The lump of meat remained—it would have to be scraped away, not drowned in the seed of sorrow.

As she was pulling away from me, the telephone did ring. The noise jarred something in me, a faint, grating edge of déjà vu: I wondered again what had woken me. Leah hunched over the receiver. “Yes,” she said. “Wait—let me get something—” She grabbed a pen from the bedside table, a glossy magazine from the clutter on the floor. Her breasts hung ripe as eggs when she leaned over. She scratched something on the cover of the magazine. I rolled my head sideways on the pillow and looked. 217 Payne Street, she had written—the doctor’s address, which the clinic wouldn’t divulge until the morning of the abortion. An address in the disused industrial district of the city.

“Thank you,” said Leah, “yes . . . thank you.” Gently she placed the receiver back in its cradle. The weak light was growing brighter behind the dirty curtains. Leah got out of bed and hurried to the bathroom. I was still lying there when she came out thirty minutes later. She did not look at me. She pulled fishnet stockings the color of smoke up over her long smooth thighs, fastened a wisp of a garter belt around her waist, zipped up a sleeveless, black-lace shift. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and cried.

I held her hand and touched her face with all the tenderness I could summon. Her mascara did not run—some new waterproof kind, I supposed. Her lipstick was perfect. I tried to comfort her, and all I could see in my mind was Leah lying back on a stainless steel operating table, some black-rubber vacuum-tube apparatus snaking up into her. Her labia were stretched wide as a screaming mouth and she was wearing nothing but the lacy garter belt and the fishnet stockings.

It was an image Cleve would have appreciated.

***

“Yes, Jonny, I know you try to be sweet to me. You’re a saint, Jonny. But you know what you have? Only that damned little-boy sweetness. You can’t take care of me. You could cook me a million gourmet dinners and when I finished them I’d still be lonely. Cleve has a special kind of sweetness—”

“I know, I know. Cleve’s sweet the way a dumb dog is sweet. You like ‘em big and stupid, right?” When I was with Cleve I could not hate him. Only my arguments with Leah could convince me that Cleve had ever meant me any harm, and only then could I say cruel things about him. We had started arguing on the way to the doctor’s office. Walking through the abandoned factory district made me tense—the landscape was falling to waste, long stretches of broken glass gleaming dully here and there like quicksilver sketched onto a monochromatic gray photograph. The silence in the empty, shabby streets seemed deafening. Leah mistook my own silence for indifference: I wasn’t listening to her gloomy prattle, wasn’t even thinking of the ordeal about to happen to her.

The buildings here loomed low and oppressive, blotting out the sun. Years ago this place had been a toxic hell of factories and mills. We passed smokestacks blackened halfway down their towering stalks with soot and char. We passed burned-out lots that made me think of cremation grounds. The smell of death was here too—the odor of burning crude oil is somehow as humanly filthy as the odor of corrupted flesh. These places had been abandoned over the past twenty or thirty years, as the heart of the city’s industry gradually moved north to the silicon suburbs. Out there you could live your whole life shuttling between a superhighway, an exit sign, a gleaming building made of immaculate silver glass, a house and a yard and a wide-screen TV and the superhighway again.

More frightening to me than the empty lots, more oppressive than the huge corrugated-steel Dumpsters that overflowed with thirty years’ forgotten trash, were the dead husks of the buildings. Some of them went on for blocks and blocks, and I could not help but imagine what it would be like to walk through them—endless mazes of broken glass and spiderweb and soft sifting ash, with the corners laved in shadow, with the pipes and beams zigzagging crazily overhead. I thought of a poem I had written once for some long-ago college class, in some idealistic day when the city was far away and I only cooked the food I wanted to eat. A few lines came back to me: When the emptiness in you grows too large/You fill its vaulted chamber with the ash of memory/ With the dust of desire.

“I don’t want to fight,” Leah said suddenly. “There’s not enough time, it’s too soon. Hold me, Jonny. Help me—” She pressed me back against a wall and covered my mouth with hers. Her lips were lush, her tongue was moist and searching, and again I was reminded of loving her. Not the sterile and functional fuck this morning, but the real love we had once shared: the soft friction of skin, the good long thrusts, the liquid sounds of pleasure. But these memories were receding rapidly. Soon they would be just a point of brightness on a dark horizon, and I knew now that they could never return. As I kissed Leah I became conscious of the rough bricks at my back, of the vast empty space behind me. I grasped her shoulders and gently pushed her away. “Come on,” I said. “You can’t be late. What are we looking for—Payne Street?”

She nodded, didn’t speak. We kept walking. In all the blocks since we’d gotten off the train, we had only seen two or three other people: sad silent cases who walked with their heads down, who looked like they might vanish from existence as soon as they turned the corner. Now it seemed we were alone. The streets grew ever shabbier and emptier; a few of them had signs whose letters were half-obliterated, spelling out cryptic messages, pointing to nowhere. None of them looked like they might have ever said Payne Street. At one corner, a long spray of dirt lay across the sidewalk. Leah could not quite step all the way over it, and when we were past I saw a dark crumb stuck to the heel of her shoe. The delicate tired lines around her mouth and eyes seemed etched in dust. I began to feel that the landscape was encroaching upon her; she would leave here forever marked.

If it could erase the mark of Cleve from her, or rather the mark of her love for Cleve, then I would bless this blasted landscape. Maybe then I could love her again.

I thought I wanted to.

Soon, it was obvious that we were getting to the fringes of the industrial section. The buildings here were more cramped and ramshackle. If anything walked here, it would be the wraith of a drudge worked to death in the sweatshops, dead of blood poisoning from a needle run through her finger. Or perhaps a tattered ghost, a hungry soul mangled by machinery from a time that knew no safety regulations.

The sidewalk was fissured with deep cracks and broken into shards, as if someone had gone at it with a sledgehammer. I saw weeds sprouting at the edges of the vacant lots, leaves barely tinged with green, as furtive and sunless as mushrooms. “You think the doctor’s office burned down?” I said.

The look from beneath Leah’s eyelashes was pure sparkling hate. Leah disliked getting around the city, and when she had to find a place by herself, she got panicky and sometimes mean. “He said we should come out of the tunnel and turn left. It was supposed to be three blocks down past the cotton factory.”

“They had cotton mills, Leah, not factories, and any one of those buildings we passed could have been the one you want. By the time we walk all the way back there, we’ll be a half hour late.” A little flame of rage snapped in my chest. If she didn’t have her directions straight, and if we arrived too late, we could miss the appointment. Appointments with a private doctor who would perform this particular operation were difficult to get, so difficult that if Leah missed this chance, she might be too far along by the time she could get another.

Without a word, she wheeled and started walking back the way we had come. I had to hurry to keep up with her; despite my anger, there was still the old reflexive fear that she might twist her ankle in one of the cracks or break into a run and escape from me or fall into a giant hole that would open like a mouth in the ground beneath her feet. You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.

We walked quickly for a long time. Leah was sure we had turned at a certain corner; I didn’t remember, and we argued over that. Somehow she managed to bring Cleve’s name into it. “If you were with Cleve,” I said furiously, “you wouldn’t be bitching at him. You’d be all contrite and saying how stupid you were to get lost. You’d whine until you tricked him into taking care of you.”

Leah spun on her heel. “Well, Cleve isn’t here, is he? He had to hang his stupid gallery show today—he couldn’t come! I’m stuck with you!”

“He was never going to go. He said you and I should go alone—said maybe that would help you decide. Make you quit stringing me along, I guess he meant.”

“Yes, that was what he said he told you. But Jonny, I was going to meet him this morning. I was going to tell you I wanted to go by myself, that I’d decided I had to do it alone. Then I was going to meet Cleve at the train station. But when I called him this morning, the bastard backed out. He decided to spend the day playing with his damned pictures.”

Only the fact that I was still somehow pitifully, stupidly in love with Leah allowed me to do what I did then. I turned and ran from her. If I had stayed I could not have kept my fingers from round her throat; in my head I would have been choking her and Cleve at once. Never mind the total illogic of it; never mind that both Leah and Cleve knew I would never have let her go off alone; never mind that I did not really believe Cleve would betray me so completely, not even for Leah, not even though I knew he was pitifully in love with her too. Something had woken me up this morning at the first pale light of dawn; it could have been a cry down in the street, or a jet plane arrowing through the smog far overhead. Or it could have been Leah murmuring into the phone, cursing her conspirator in a whisper when she realized he wasn’t coming. Then replacing the receiver ever so gently—wanting to slam it down—and flowing over on top of me. Making love to me to spite Cleve, even if only in her head.

I had the spreading cancer of jealousy in me; it had been eating away inside me for a long time. Now at last I thought I was in its death throes, suffering its final agony. And, like any dying man, I tried to run from it.

We had already lost the way we had come by. Now I ran deeper into the maze of streets, not looking or caring which way I went. For a few moments I sprinted, desperate to get away, wanting nothing but to run and run. Then the sound of Leah’s heels ticking frantically behind me began to slow me down, began to pull me back to here and now and what I thought I wanted. I walked fast, jogging when she got too close, not letting her catch up with me but not completely losing her. I was afraid I might never find her again; I was afraid of having nothing to crawl back to.

Then I turned a corner and didn’t look over my shoulder soon enough. When I did glance back, Leah was gone.

I froze. How could I have lost her, not meaning to? I waited a few seconds to see if she might follow. If I ran back around the corner and she was still coming, my game would be up—it would be as good as admitting that I hadn’t wanted to run away at all. But if she’d gotten disgusted and started back to the train station, I had to catch her. I had to get her to that appointment if I still could. If she needed dragging there, I would drag her.

I came around the corner and the sidewalk was empty. For a moment I vacillated between anger and the stark terror of abandonment. But farther up the street, at the mouth of a narrow alleyway, I saw a smudge on the sidewalk—darker than the drifting ash, and shiny. I walked back to it. The smudge on the sidewalk was blood, twin patches of it ground into the cement. A few feet away, half-hidden beneath a blackened flake of newspaper, lay a tube of scarlet lipstick.

Leah had tripped over her heels, fallen, spilled her purse, skinned her knees brutally on the broken sidewalk. But where had she gone after that?

I looked down the alleyway. No one there. Nothing—

—except a sign.

I hadn’t seen it at first. No one walking quickly past would have noticed it; it had been placed only three or four feet up the wall, at waist level instead of eye level. And it was so faded, the edges of the letters seeming to blend into the dusty brick, that it could hardly be read. But I imagined Leah sitting up after her fall, her smoky fishnets torn and the raw ganglia of her kneecaps screaming, her eyes filling with tears. She would have sat there for a moment, dazed, not quite able to get up. And the sign might have caught her eye.

Pain Street, it said.

The alleyway led between two empty factory buildings.

Suddenly the sky seemed too wide and bright and heavy, the silence too big. A fragment of sidewalk shifted under my foot. I saw little drifts of refuse piled against either wall of the alley—soot and ash, more bits of charred paper, the razor confetti of broken glass. I did not know if I could set foot in the alley; I did know, however, that I could not go home alone.

One wall was blank and featureless all the way to the back of the alley, where more trash was heaped. At my approach, a bottle rolled lazily down but did not shatter. I thought I had walked into a cul-de-sac until I came to the end of the alley. There, set back in an alcove of crumbling mortar, was a heavy steel door wedged open with half a brick.

Someone had taken a nail or a shard of glass and scratched the number 217 on the door.

The door made a gritty ratcheting noise as I pulled it open, but there was no trash in front of it, and the hinges swung easily. Someone had opened it before me. I paused for a moment, drinking in what little dirty sunlight managed to filter into the alley. Then I stepped inside. It was easy. Leah always led me to the places I feared most, and I always followed.

The air inside the building was as cool and dim and stagnant as the air in a sarcophagus. In the dark rafters and pipes of the ceiling it hung like a cloud of bats waiting to fly, rustling their parchment wings, exuding their arid spice smell.

The ash of memory, I thought dreamily, the dust of desire. Walking in this air was like moving through a syrup of fermented ages; the silence in here could wrap you up like cloth and preserve you for a thousand years. As my eyes adjusted to the light, shapes began to resolve themselves around me: a huge mesh of Gigeresque machinery, cogs hanging in the air like dull toothy moons, rubber belts and hoses gone brittle with dust, steel spires soaring up to the apex of the great vaulted chamber. And a row of hooks as long as my leg, sharp metal hooks that looked oddly organic, as if they should be attached to the wrist-stump of some enormous amputee.

I walked a few steps into the chamber, and my foot punched through something dry and papery. A giant vegetable bulb, I thought, like an onion or a shallot kept too long in a root cellar, rotten and desiccated from the inside. Not until I pulled my foot back did the fragile rib cage crumble, collapsing the swollen shell of the belly and exposing the scrimshaw beadwork of the spine.

A younger woman than Leah, almost a child, half-buried and half-dissolved into the grime and ash of the factory floor. Most of the face was gone. I saw scattered teeth gleaming in the dust like fragments of ivory. But the curve of the cheekbone—the tiny hand—surely she could not yet have been sixteen. And I wondered why she had come at all, with the once-ripe swell of her belly; she had been too far along in her pregnancy to have hoped to live through an abortion.

I could go no further. I could not walk that gauntlet of machinery, not even to find Leah. I could not turn my back on it either. I stood over the husk of the young girl, and the machinery stretched out mutely as far as I could see, and time hung motionless inside the old factory, not disturbed by me or Leah or anything in the city. It seemed impossible that just a few miles away the trains were still running, the drugs were still changing hands, the endless frantic party went on as if time could not be stopped.

Very nearby, magnified by furtive echoes, I heard the click of a high heel.

“Leah,” I called, not knowing if I hoped to save her or if I wanted her to save me. “Leeeeah . . .” When she walked into the far end of the chamber, I could no longer be ashamed of the pleading note in my voice. Her face was smeared with tears and makeup. The blood from her scraped knees had begun to cake, gluing her torn stockings to her legs. Her face twisted with relief and she started toward me, her arms out as if in supplication. In that moment Cleve might never have touched her, never have tasted her. We might have gone home together, might have slept in each other’s arms again. I might have rested my cheek on the burgeoning mound of her belly, and found peace.

Then the machinery kicked on.

It had not been used in a long time, long enough to let the young girl fall away nearly to bare bones, and it filled the air with dust as thick as whipped cream.

Only dimly did I see the first hook lifting Leah up and away from me, as if she had raised her arms and flown. I stood there dumbly for several minutes, unable to grasp what had happened even as her blood fell upon my face and my out‑stretched hands. A high-heeled shoe dropped to the floor in front of me, missing my head by an inch. I did not move. I stared up, up at the swirling clouds of dust, up at the figure that hung suspended like an angel in black lace. When the dust cleared, Leah was slumped over limp, her head hanging upside down, her hair like a bright banner in the dusk of the room. The hook had punched into her back and out through the soft flesh of her abdomen, but her face was perfectly calm. I was calm, too, an absolute calm like the equilibrium of particles in a solution. Should I have been frightened? Perhaps. But somehow I knew that even if I walked up to one of the machines and touched it, I would not be hurt. They did not want me.

The metal of the hook was beaded with bright blood. On its sharp tip was a thick gobbet, darker than the rest and more solid-looking. It looked like nothing but a piece of meat—meat that had ceased to live or breathe or suck.

I no longer thought I knew something about love.

Now I knew what love was all about.

***

I have described the scene to Cleve as well as I could, and asked him to paint it for me. When he has captured it as closely as possible in the jeweled watercolor tones that he loves—the soft gray dust, the banner of her hair, the red so clear and vital it hurts the eye to see it—he will mat and frame it and we will hang it on the wall.

Cleve’s work has become somewhat fashionable among the gallery crowd, and he has begun getting shows uptown, where the art patrons don’t think they’ve gotten their money’s worth unless they pay upwards of five hundred for a piece. We have both cut back to half time at the Blue Shell. Whenever we have a night off, we try to work our way through the last of the Dixie beer, and we listen to Sarah Vaughan or Mingus or Robert Johnson, and when the music ends we sit and stare at each other, and a thousand secrets pass between our eyes.

I hate to look in the mirror. I hate to see the beginnings of an old man’s face. I hate the loose skin of my throat and the hollows around my eyes. But I know what Leah’s eyes must look like by now.

Sometimes we talk about magic.

In a city of millions, an ancient city overcrowded and mean enough, a kind of magic could evolve.

Ancient by American standards isn’t very old. Two or three hundred years at most . . . and the abandoned mills and factories are no more than sixty years old. But I think of New Orleans, that city mired in time, where a whole religion evolved in less than two hundred years—a slapdash recipe concocted of one part Haitian graveyard dust, one part juju from the African bush, a jigger of holy Communion wine, and a dash of swamp miasma. Magic happens when and where it wants to.

In a great, cruel, teeming city, one could create one’s own magic . . . intentionally or otherwise. Magic to fulfill desires that should remain buried in the deepest pit of the soul, or just to get through the desperate hustle of staying alive from day to day. And out of the desperation, out of the hunger for bread or love, out of the secret hard bright joy at the madness of it all—out of these things something else could be born. Something made of bad dreams and lost love, something that would use as its agent the abandoned, the forgotten, the all-but-useless.

The obsolete engines, the rusted cogs . . . and the steel hooks that stay honed sharp and shiny. The machinery of a forsaken time.

The love that no one wanted anymore.

I go up to the roof of Cleve’s building and I look out over the city, and I think about all the power waiting to emerge from its black womb, and I wonder who else will tap into this homegrown magic, and I howl into the wind and rejoice at the emptiness within me.

And nowhere else on the horizon have I ever seen so many billions of lights . . . or so many patches of darkness.

[paumeranian]

User Test #7 with Donato (59 y/o, technician for Chorus)

Icebreaker

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Such as, what’s your occupation, what are your hobbies?

A: I work for Chorus, I’m doing fibre and copper installations. My hobbies are listening to music, breeding fish, cycling and singing.

Q: Tell me about what comes to mind when I mention the word “doctor”

A: Medical checkups, someone’s sick or a master in a certain field

Q: Do you currently have a GP? If so, are you satisfied with the cost and distance to get there? If not, have you ever thought of switching to a more suitable one for your needs?

A: I have a GP at Waitakere Union Health. I’m happy to go there and it costs me nothing. I wouldn’t say I’m getting enough care but it’s well above my expectation. They constantly monitor my heart condition, physical wellbeing and they keep in touch with me from to time with regards to my laboratory checkup - from blood tests and yeah. I’m happy with where I am because if I switch to another GP there wouldn’t be any differences with the analysis, they’d just get my medical records passed to them, follow the same routine that I’m having now. It would be the same procedures and diagnoses.

Key Takeaways

Homepage:

“A General Practitioner would always monitor me”

“Address? Would that be the GP’s address?”

“I wouldn’t mind driving to the GP cause I drive”

Started talking about own situation with own GP, brought up some interesting insights about decision making - how he wouldn’t switch to a GP where he’d have to pay like $30 and get the same services when he gets them for free now

“This would be good for people who aren’t happy with the GP’s they have. Seeing reviews made by others would be a bonus so they have an idea of what would suit them. Most people review a certain service, product or person on the internet nowadays. Right now with doctors it goes around by word of mouth, but if there’s a website it’d be much easier cause nowadays everything’s done on the internet”

This section got a bit tangential as he said he wouldn’t drive 12km for a GP. 

“I got confused with your question” At this point I had to rephrase the task and started talking in our language, explain the idea further e.g. what the distance and cost sliders are for, insisting he clicks around

Talks about when finding a GP you usually look for someone you feel at ease with, some GP’s go the extra mile like give you advice on things you could do without extra cost. Most GP’s nowadays just ask about how you’re feeling, blah, blah - some recommend you to specialists once you’re diagnosed e.g. with a heart problem you have to see a cardiologist (I was relating this back to other users’ suggestions of including what the doctor specialises in on the website so this was good insight)

Wasn’t clear to him that address field is for typing in your own address, thinking you type in the GP’s address

Pointed out that max distance of 40km would be too far, would be in like Manukau going to Papakura, “I don’t think I’d be driving that far for a normal consultation. I mean think of the traffic, time consumed and petrol. You have to take leave from work, and if you had an appointment in the morning or afternoon you could miss it. So the nearer the better. If it’s walking distance then even better. It depends on the person.”

*started clicking around, went through GUI’s from left to right rather than top to bottom

I had to probe for him to click Search after applying those, he asked about the address again - at this point I was thinking the impression that the fields aren’t all filled in makes it seem like it’s not yet done and can’t move forward

I ask: “What’s next?”

“What’s next? Then I have to search”

Results page:

“The first thing I saw is the star, I’m normally used to reading reviews like Trademe or if I want to buy or know about a product or service. The more positive reviews the better. It’s like word of mouth, someone I know giving me advice. Some reviews can be biased or manufactured though like for example if a friend of a doctor reviewed them, then it wouldn’t be totally reliable. So my next determinant would be the distance, but then I’d think if it’s in the city where would I find parking? Whereas if I go to Grey Lynn for an extra 2 minute drive, it’d be easier cause Auckland CBD would only have parking for staff.”

“Parking is a must e.g. in town there are only a few like Victoria, SkyCity, Civic, Wilson is expensive which costs would go on top of your appointment fee so adding this would be a great solution”

“If I’m budget conscious I would choose the cheapest one”

Clinic info page:

“The map stood out to me first cause clicking on the map would give me an idea where to go, where I’d park or my travel time, I have to add time for finding parking you know? Circling around the area and walking since I drove all the way to that place, I’d still be walking a bit - so why would I choose it?”

“Cost is cheap, phone number, appointment time, normal business hours, they have 1 GP, 2 nurses"

Asked how to scroll with the Mac which made me think, I don’t know anyone who’s older that uses a Mac which might affect how they perceive the prototype if they’re testing on one

“Dr Mckay’s the expert”

Doctor info:

“Would I go to them straight away? I’m used to shopping around, it’s what Kiwis do even for services which means finding other options. So I would compare her with other GP profiles. I don’t just jump to the availability and compare it with my schedule.”

“Languages - added value since language barriers exist. If they can’t understand clearly the way you talk.. I would prefer to see someone who speaks the same language as me.”

“Nothing I’d add”

Changing filter parameters:

“I would expect the page to refresh if I change what’s on the filter automatically rather than going two pages back”

Sort by feature:

Noticed sort right away and assumed rearranging the list should be done through it

“That helps a lot for someone comparing options. I’d rather use the drop down than the three big options at the top to organise them. I use it a lot on Trade me e.g. cheapest, closing soon”

Comparison table feature:

How I said the scenario here was a bit confusing

The idea of adding to a comparison table was initially confusing so I had to intervene and probe

Clicked add to button and immediately went up to the (1) comparison table tab

“Having a comparison table would be beneficial for the user”

“It’s easier to do, more user friendly to have a comparison table that’s one click away”

“the term comparison table makes sense, I can’t think of what else to call it”

“I’m more than happy to use it”

Reflections

Q: How would you describe the prototype to friends?

A: If a friend asked me to recommend a reliable GP I’d suggest for them to go on this website ... tangent “Everything is computerised nowadays. You have to have at least some sort of grasp on how websites work since it’s a huge part of our daily lives. The older generation who have limited knowledge on how this works would be lost. You wouldn’t recommend this website to seniors who have no idea how to use a computer, you’d struggle to recommend it really. They’re probably just get information by word of mouth and you have to explain it well.. some get grumpy over not knowing how to use something and saying they don’t need it in the first place. It’s not an excuse to be too old, everyone’s capable of learning. Patience is key when explaining stuff to grumpy old people. You have to find a strategy to convince them to use your product or service, saying it in a nice way without insulting or touching their ego... It’s hard to change behaviour cause most [old] people don’t like change. Everything changes and you have to cope with it.”

Q: Is it something you would use?

A: Yes. It’s convenient, user-friendly.

Card sorting

Distance - Cause time is important to me e.g. if I got half the day off to go to my GP I’d need to utilise that time wisely. Most GP’s are closed on weekends and holidays. I work on weekdays so my first basis would be the distance. I work in the field so I’m everywhere but even if I worked in an office and I had to travel from Massey to Greenlane it’s quite far, my boss only gave me half day o

Appointment availability - Say I’m only available from 12-3 and there’s no GP available in that time so what’s the use? So I think it’s more important

Cost - If I’m on a budget e.g. I’m paying insurance, mortgage.. For someone who’s paying too many bills, cost would be a big factor especially if you’re just earning wage. Comparing $25 and $40, the extra $20 could be spent on petrol instead

Gender - I’m more at ease asking questions from a man, having a man to man talk I can open up anything under the sun

Reputation - 

Duration - Doesn’t matter that much as long as I was able to express what I’m feeling, how long it’s been going on etc. regardless if they’re a specialist that’s what they ask and it’s up to you to explain it further. Some doctors also get irritated about appointments that go overtime cause they have other patients to see. And [I think] they’d wanna see more patients to get more money. Getting to that profession costed them a lot so they have to get something out of what they shed off while studying unless the doctor is already well-off and genuinely want to help.

Reaction words

User friendly - Because I have a bit of an idea how computers work, clicking and switching between options was easy

Annoying - First impression *scratches head* if you don’t understand what you see and just cause it’s foreign and intimidating.. If you’re using a new website you’re obviously gonna have averted feelings.. Older people tend to just let someone else do it for them, especially if they’re busy

Convenient - As soon as I grasped the idea I found it valuable

Efficient - Synonymous to convenient, like this would be beneficial and it’s easy

Valuable - I thought this website would have value

Behaviour

has a good knowledge of technology, uses phone and laptop everyday for various things like work, buying and selling and social media

Very detailed and expressive

Likes to give examples

Because of this he tends to really put himself in the situation instead of seeing information as placeholders e.g. I wouldn’t drive to Auckland CBD Medical Centre cause parking would be a nightmare but he brought up a really good point that it would be good to include parking information

Can go off on a tangent

Used fingers to point at things on the website instead of using the trackpad

Would attempt to touch screen and scroll down with fingers

[metalbluebird]

4/12/17 Trigger Warning

Ultrasound showed no heartbeat I was pregnant. There was no heartbeat.

If I say it enough, maybe I’ll eventually stop crying when it comes up. I had a miscarriage. I had no idea anything was wrong when we went in for our first ultrasound appointment. They used a vaginal probe and I saw the little body. The technician mentioned fibroids and went on to measure and document the growths. There were none in my uterus, just in the surrounding tissue. Apparently they are benign and just make me pee more. She went back to the fetus and my heart jumped. The little body clearly had a head, legs, and arms. That was our little baby that my body had been growing. I started to tear up right when she started talking to me. “I’m sorry. I have bad news. There is no heartbeat.” The tears which had been welling up because of astonishment and awe started flowing due to disbelief. “You should be measuring at 10 weeks and the fetus is showing 9 weeks.” My math for when we conceived was right around 9 weeks, but in any case. No heartbeat. It doesn’t matter. Something something chromosomes. The doctor came in and gave me pamphlets on procedures, scribbled some medications and told me to contact them to schedule a follow up appointment. We went to lunch at my favorite place that happened to be near the clinic. I cried any time I was left to my own thoughts. We stopped at a nursery and bought some pretty potted flowers and planted some trees later that afternoon. It was fine to dig in the dirt, since I didn’t have to worry about killing my baby by picking up microbes from the dirt. It was already dead.

That weekend was the longest weekend of my life. What ifs ran through my mind at all waking hours. I hadn’t been sleeping well for the past week anyways so that led to more fitful nights starting at the ceiling, empty of everything but disappointment and nagging doubt.

I decided to trust the doctor figuring that I would have seen or heard the heartbeat the entire time the tech was checking out my uterus for fibroids. Also figuring she knew right away but got some work done before I was reduced to a pile of sad lying on the exam table.

I resisted reading the pamphlets until the end of the weekend. I went to work and had bad luck. Staying busy kept my mind mostly off the dead weight I was carrying. I called the clinic on Monday and cried throughout the entire call. I have said “im sorry” so many times the past two weeks for incoherent conversations and guilt over the situation. I scheduled an appointment to prepare for surgery to get my perscribed cocktails needed to undergo the MVA/D&C. I had to wait an hour. I asked the doctor if he was 100% sure. He was. I was too. My body was acting different. I’m still unclear of what procedure I had. I called my mom. She Chris treggored it. My baby was in a better place. It was for the better if the baby wasn’t healthy. She was honored I told her. In my mind, how could I not tell her? She’s my mom. I’m going into surgery. Not the most serious but complications can arise. I called my dad and sister. They both told me that sucks. Sorry. I was more comforted by them. But it makes sense. They are the people I spent more time with growing up and any visits back home. I didn’t eat anything the morning of except my cocktail of pain pills and anti anxiety meds. They put us in a waiting area full of giant pictures of happy babies and a new mom. I was fighting back tears when they pulled me in the room for the surgery. I got to listen to music during The procedure. I chose daughters. Figuring the anger wouldn’t let me breakdown in sorrow and that it could survive being the soundtrack to my miscarriage. I blasted it. It was over in 10 minutes and only felt a little pinching before the sensation of something getting pulled out. They told me it went well. Wear pads. Call or seek medical care if fever or gushing blood.

I felt relieved. And hungry. And sad. I had a biscuit with scrambled eggs and pimento cheese. It was delicious. The next day I spent in bed recovering. Bad luck continued with an instrument that got blown around while it was out in the sunshine drying and the wind had really picked up. I went to work the next day. Things are less horrible but still sad. I’ve been having dreams that make me horny but I don’t want to do anything about them, feeling so gross from the bleeding and failing because of the miscarriage, and broken and empty since the surgery, scared to move because what if i injure myself because I think I can take it, but really I just had surgery. I have only been walking 2 miles every other day.

Yesterday, I got up from bed and practically ran to the bathroom. I was dropping clots on the floor around my soaked pad and underwear. I felt like I had an entire period in one the span of a minute. About a cup or more of clots? I was so scared. My legs and feet were covered in blood. I was crying while sitting on the toilet. When will this be done? I think I’m on the other end and it keeps hitting me with surprises.

While I was freaking out my husband looked on pregnancy loss boards and found a thread filled with women that had a similar experience. One theory was that it was because the uterus was shrinking back to normal size and pushing the unneeded lining out.

I called the doctor. They’re 40min away and we couldn’t make it that day and they weren’t available on Thursday, my day off and ended up just pushing the appointment to next week when the follow up should have been scheduled for in the first place. If anything else surprises me, I’ll go to the er. I took the day off freaked out and worried that it would happen again, but in a public space. My bleeding has been much less since yesterday. Maybe finally I am through the thick of it. I don’t know how much more my psyche can take right now.

I’ve been thinking of my mentors and grandparents that I have lose since I’ve been going through the grieving process. If I can recover and heal from losing their presence, I can heal after the loss of a person that wasn’t even fully formed and I have never met. I understand that nature is great at filtering out what will not survive and it’s for the best, especially if the fetus didn’t have all the chromosomes it needed to be a healthy baby. I’ve been going to work. Staying distracted. Telling people I have to interact with that I am having a bad week, but I will be ok and to not take on my bad mood, or any negative energy I might unknowingly put out there. I have been trying to talk to my husband without pushing it and making him even more worried and sad, and when in doubt, just make sure he knows I'm actively not trying to pull away. I’ve been trying to carry my share of the burden without putting more on him. Anyways, What more could be said? We would have been due around Halloween. It would have been perfect.

I was pregnant. I’m not alone.

[such-an-almighty-sound]

you go to the fog place yourself this time. it’s like turning to the side suddenly, a narrow periphery only open for a second. 

although you did not coordinate this, cm florence is already there, as though waiting. you register that she is wearing the white dress, patterned in vertical lines of embroidered flowers. it splits open at the knee and petals around her. cotton or something, vaguely soft. 

have you made up your mind?

i think so.

mm. i just want to look at your face for a moment before we go. here. you are already quite close in the fog. she takes your head between her hands and looks not really at you, but- you’re not sure what. her eyes flick back and forth for a moment, and then she makes a soft ohh in the back of her throat and smiles, lets go. i think we’re ready then. we can talk once we get there. the fog starts thinning out this way. 

and just like that, you’re walking after her, slightly behind, noticing once more her particular certainty about where her feet will fall. 

the fog begins to change color and then smell and then the ground shifts under your feet and turns both soft and compact-

the trees make a cathedral around you. 

the light falls down slowly through the canopy, softened and diffused by layers and layers of intersecting green boughs. a feeling of depth. under the vast scale of the red cedars, the muted light makes you feel as though you are deep deep underwater, peacefully swimming in something infinitely larger than yourself

florence’s bare feet stepping forward ahead of you, the tattoos on her ankles too fast / for freedom winking as she moves through patches of shadow and sunlight

your feet are bare too. the duff and compacted needles are cool and springy, slightly resilient underfoot. you do not leave footprints.

the clearing itself is held in the lap of an enormous redwood cedar. an irregular oblong framed with ferns, the edges slipping back into the paths that snake through the woods. park benches in a single line mark the far boundary of the space. the iron has grown almost green with sea patina, all fogged over and glassy. 

do you remember being here?

you raise your face, feeling the scent of sea and cedar, the soft light sifting down. all the bracken and ferns and ridges of earth where older trees used to be create a bowl around you, like being in a cupped green palm

yeah. it’s gentle but pungent, the smell of the cedar all around you, the cedar earth a fragrant dark rich red under your feet. red as old blood. the smell is like a prayer. you have pressed your face to it a hundred thousand times, in sickness and in health. 

you came back here? afterward, to this memory?

i think it was the last place i really felt safe, for a long time. something about being so ill and such beauty still existing in the world. it made sense to hold onto that. 

she nods. i thought it might be a good place for this. you have it in common between you.. you were here after bandon. you were so raw, and this was a calm eye in the middle of all that... you don’t have many of those. a wry, but gentle smile.

and i was alone here.

you were. which also makes it special, gives it that space we need, for our work. you are both quiet for a moment, having circled back around to your purpose, your reason for being here at all. forest noises fill in the space between you; calling birds, the distant thrush of waves.

are you ready? florence asks. i can go get her, but you can take as long as you need. she’s not touching you, but her hands want to: they halfmove, fold and unfold. wanting for a shoulder, your face, your own hands to touch. a hesitancy you’re not sure of. 

yes, you say. 

she looks as if she wants to say something very much, but begins to turn away, just brushing your shoulder with the verymost tips of her fingers. while still within distance she abruptly turns back and gathers you up, tightly. her hand, firm on your jaw, guides your face to look at her.

no matter how this goes i am very proud of you. a kiss on your left temple, a kiss on your right, and she’s gone, picking her way out of the clearing. 

you do not watch her walk away because you do not want to see the point when these trees become else, the vanishing point, that bridges between here and there. in your heart you would like these woods to continue on forever without ceasing, a green echoing that goes on and on. 

instead, you sit on one of the benches and wait. 

it is not long before florence walks back. an almost perfect echo of the night of the 27th: arms, blanket, body. the sunlight is behind her, slanting through the dense trees, throwing her silhouette into perfect relief. 

she sits down carefully near the far end of the bench, arranges them both. come around here to the other side, bucky, where there’s room for you. 

there’s room, but only enough. enough that it gives you only two choices, to sit or not. no edging away, no hiding. intimate, your leg against hers, your shoulders touching, you sit so close. 

florence holds the head of your younger self in her lap, body lying down the length of the bench. she sleeps, as you still do, curled tightly into herself, hands knotted under the blanket in the same way. and the distance, the years, the long and twisted miles of anger and tears and fighting and grief, folds up between you. two fuses, inches apart.

you feel your panic stir in your chest, the wet overwhelming one, like a hole bored clear through flesh. you take a breath, and take another, and realize that you can smell cedar and nurse logs and florence and cloth and very faintly the salt of the sea but you cannot smell the hospital on her skin. 

florence begins to resume the small rituals of tending. tucking hair back, tracing lines with her thumb and forefinger, making the blankets neater. light continual contact. she glances at you, then back down to her lap. i worry about her being cold. i know this… doesn’t change anything, but i do. i worry. she reaches down and parts the side of the blankets, takes the unconscious hands out and looks at them. covers them up in her own. so cold. you’re not sure you have the right to the pain on her face, but it’s there, all the same. 

small hands that used to be yours.

slowly, you reach out and lay your hand over your younger self’s. gently. deliberately. and nothing happens. her hand is cold, and bony and bruised, the fingernails shredded, joined to an arm lax with exhaustion that goes deeper than sleep.

you wait and nothing happens. something should, something catastrophic, something cataclysmic. you keep your hand there, half-tensed. almost unable to move for anticipating a blow that doesn’t come.

florence leans against you right then, her eyes half-closed. warm, calm.

is she breathing? you blurt, panicked. everything has always ended before here, and you don’t know how to go on

florence sits up, half-surprised. yes of course, look. she lays her hand flat between four electrode stickers.

i don’t know what to do. 

her hand rises and falls.

you don’t need to do anything. just keep breathing. keep holding her hand. remember you’re here and not there. 

where’s her telemetry unit? you keep noticing details you couldn’t remember in a dizzying influx of information. this body you can only remember clearly as someone else’s. there’s lanugo beginning on her arms. 

florence looks at you patiently. there’s no risk in her being here with us. you know how this goes. 

you are scared but you can only feel its current tugging at you, not pulling you down. there is further to go still.

what can you remember about that day? florence asks.

i remember i thought i would be in and out in an hour or so. there was an advertisement for the clinic on the radio as we drove there. it wasn’t a surprise. i always knew where we were going. the initial appointment took five hours. most of which was sitting in a cold sterile room alone waiting and losing track of time. i had never had to talk with a doctor one on one like that before. there was always someone else i could use as a distraction, a foil to bounce things off of and this time.. there wasn’t. i thought a lot of things but i didn’t ever think i would be going to the hospital that day. when doctor m. told me she apologized. and then...

and then? florence asks. 

and then i walked myself across the street into the hospital. and the programs took over from there.  there’s a lot that was frustrating because i had lost control of being able to do things for myself, because of protocols and just because.. i couldn’t do them. like not being able to walk anymore. being unable to get out of bed, having to page someone to do absolutely everything for me. not being able to be alone, ever. not being allowed to have the bathroom door shut. the very thing that saves you be the one that traps you.

everything was like that. the telemetry unit being an effective tracking device, refeeding... everything was so grounded in there being a body, in keeping myself in that body that i had tried for months and months to escape, to turn into something else 

and i didn’t want to be there but i didn’t want to be dead either, not really. although at the time i thought about bandon with this perverse kind of angry jealous longing. 

and all those doctors and nurses and cnas and mas working so hard to keep me rooted in a body i didn’t want to be in anymore

there’s what feels like a dichotomy between being angry and being scared and i.. i think i always chose angry then, too. 

-you were angry at yourself then, too?

yeah. i guess i was. you feel like you’ve opened a box that used to hold something important, and found it empty. all this time. 

sometimes you need time, bucky.

it’s just been this cycle, going on and on. endlessly perpetuating self-hate. you’re staring out, into the clearing as you speak. years and years of it.

but you’ve gone through and you’ve seen there’s no way you could have avoided- what happened happened. trauma is like a circle, she’s not free until you are and you had to see these things to be able to let go of blaming her, of blaming yourself.

the ouroboros, you say.

well, that’s one way of putting it.

you both (all three) sit for a moment, silent. then florence speaks

i think our time here is almost up. i’ve got to walk her back. she looks at you, that kind of gold light in her eyes. is there anything else you want to do before-?

you look at the face surrounded in blankets, imagine running your hand over it like she does. some things are still too far out of reach.

no.

okay then. 

a reversal of the night of the 27th. you’re walking behind them both, into the fog. it changes color and scent and becomes denser and more regular. you reach a doorway full of light and florence nods at you, walks through. there’s still the imprint of a smaller hand in yours. 

you wait the long minutes in the busying fog until florence comes back and grabs you up. she’s holding your head against her chest, rocking both of you back and forth.

i am so proud so proud of you. you’ve left her an opening. a way out!

i did. you mutter, unsure. i did. a pause. can we go somewhere else now?

-of course.

[underwish]

two years since D.C.

this is very long but it kind of just poured out of me (tw for eating disorders, mental illness)

My life-changing moment occurred several weeks and also many months before my life changed. Let me explain.

 It was the crispest, coldest morning as I made way across the town and in and out of lyrics and past the most important House in our country. Breathless, I arrived as the sky was turning from pink. Within seconds it was steel blue, cold gray, and my blood, which had been churning to the rhythm of the newest Kendrick Lamar, began to freeze.

It was 6:00 a.m. at the Washington Monument, and I got in line behind a dozen or so people who had somehow arrived even earlier than I did. I had relished the long walk from my apartment over a mile away – my parents and younger brother were in town, visiting me at the close of my work-study program in the nation’s capitol, and I was petrified that their presence would keep me from my daily gym visits. Each day, I’d run on the treadmill to the point of dizziness – and then run some more.

My desire to be thin wasn’t at its peak. That had occurred several months earlier, while I was still studying at my main university and had nurtured a full-fledged eating disorder that I was only partially “recovered” from. Well, in my own eyes I was recovered; I now fed myself, at least, although with a meticulous obsession that kept me right toeing the line between healthy and “underfed.” Hence, the daily dizzy attacks on my local YMCA’s treadmill.

And here I was, bundled up within an inch of my life (or so the California girl in me thought) waiting to get tickets for the Washington Monument as part of a full day of D.C. adventuring with my parents. The ticket office didn’t open until 8, and I whiled away the next hour and a half while my body slowly numbed.

I was frantic, overwhelmed by the cold, when I finally obtained four tickets. I was starving, having devoured a single Kind bar while in line (another aspect of my diet was this measure of control: if I knew I’d be out and about all day with no access to food, I’d purposely pack very little, therefore forcing myself to spend a day on single granola bars or a piece of fruit.)

At this point, families of tourists were beginning to arrive in throngs around the miles of Smithsonian museum grounds, and I hurried past people in an effort to get someplace warm. I ended up in the quaint Smithsonian House, essentially a visitor’s center, and took refuge on a bench in a large hall.

I slowly took stock of my body. I couldn’t get warm, and yet I was sweating profusely. My heart was racing. My feet and toes were tingling, and not out of cold – in fact, this was something that had been happening to me regularly over the past several months, in addition to bouts of insomnia, night sweats (and on one occasion witnessed by my poor roommate, night screaming) and migraine headaches. All of this had begun to pile on top of the constant exhaustion I’d felt for years, despite regular nights of 14-hour sleep.

And so, sitting in the middle of the visitor’s center, I pulled out my phone and resorted to one of my favorite games: Web MD. I frantically Googled my symptoms (dizziness, tingling hands and feet, racing heart) and my eyes landed on hyperglycemia. Pre-diabetes, I read, high blood sugar – all of my symptoms checked out.

I’m going to jump the timeline here and interject: I was not, nor have I ever been, hyperglycemic or pre-diabetic. But during that March morning, I was so determined to ignore what was right in front of my face, my body’s cry for help, that I was more willing to think I had become pre-diabetic than realize I was suffering from intense anxiety and depression (combined with my newfound eating disorder, of course.)

My family wasn’t due to meet me at the Smithsonian until 9 (and they, of course, were also running late), and so I spent the next hour or so combing the Internet for more information on hyperglycemia. 

It was then, however, that – despite my actual lack of this serious medical condition – I had a breakthrough. In trying to understand how I could have let me body get into such a condition, I read an article discussing how eating disorders and restrictive eating can lead to diabetes.

Oh my god, I thought, in only a year I’ve already wreaked incurable damage on my own body. 

I believed that I was pre-diabetic and that this was the result of the days without any food, of the hunger pains and the excessive exercise. And I was floored, absolutely terrified. The fear increased as I read about diabetes, about what I thought I had done to myself.

And it was then I decided, with sudden, startling clarity, to eat. A tiny voice spoke logic, for once: you need to eat.

It wasn’t that simple, of course. First, I had spent months (and, I later realized, years on a more subtle level) obsessively controlling everything that went into (and occasionally out of) my stomach. Trying to flip the switch and give myself permission to eat was anything but easy, and the next week was spent fighting off small panic attacks with every calorie.

I “allowed” myself an ice cream cone on a freezing day in Virginia; I ate the bread put out on a restaurant table; I even swallowed a spoonful of honey, one night before bed when my heart was racing and I was positive my body was shutting down. The honey, I read online, would hopefully stop me from slipping into a diabetic coma overnight.

In retrospect, it’s so obviously ridiculous. Not only my sudden confidence that I had this particularly complicated medical issue, but the fact that I was silent about it – to my friends, my boyfriend, and most of all my parents, who didn’t see my ribcage through my heavy winter coat and who saw me eat bread and ice cream like any other 21-year old girl. 

And my symptoms, as you may have guessed, did not disappear. I returned to Los Angeles, my home, with my family about a week later. I was officially finished with college. As our taxi pulled away from LAX, I rolled down the window and inhaled the humid air, positive that now, in the warm embrace of my home, I could begin to cure myself. 

I made a doctor’s appointment. Sitting on the papered examining chair, I confidently explained my symptoms and subsequent self-diagnosis with a nurse, and then my doctor. I asked to have my blood tested, and they obliged. I was so excited, in a way, to have confirmation of a physical defect in my system that had caused all of my aches and pains.

Instead, the doctor returned to tell me that my blood sugar was totally fine. All of my other vitals, in fact, were great. There was nothing physically wrong with me. 

My doctor sat down and asked me, gently, if there could be something else going on. The discussion is a blur now: I remember the spike in my heart rate, fighting to keep tears from my eyes as the doctor asked me if I’d been feeling depressed. If anxiety ran in my family. If I was battling an eating disorder.

In the past year I’ve seen a crop of articles addressing the stigmatization of mental illness. People are starting to become more outspoken about their struggles. But I, an already intensely secretive and uncommunicative person, was barely able to nod along with my doctor at the time. I had hardly addressed my mental illness in my own head; saying it out loud felt like the world would crumble all around me.

 But I’ve always communicated best when forced to answer a direct question, and my doctor’s clinical, straightforward nature allowed me to finally admit and accept what had been hurting me for many years: I was extremely depressed and I had very high anxiety (both of these sparked the night sweats, the headaches, the tingling and the sleep problems) and I was battling an eating disorder.

I was prescribed Lexapro, as well as Xanax to help with my intense anxiety before the anti-depressant kicked in. I was referred to a therapist. My second breakthrough, this clarity of the fight I was up against, had occurred -- several weeks after my initial breakthrough that led me to feed myself.

It’s very much worth explaining that after this wasn’t suddenly a sunny, fixed world. In fact, it’s been two years of figuring out the right meds, the right doses and the right therapist. And it took a long time for any of my symptoms – physical symptoms caused by my depression and anxiety – to go away.

I still get bouts of tension headaches or migraines when I have stressful or anxious days. I am constantly working on my communication, my honesty with those who matter to me. I still have a difficult relationship with alcohol, and a difficult relationship with food and exercise. And I still battle the stigma that comes with acknowledging mental illnesses and the drugs used to fight them.

But I have come so far in the past two years. Exactly two years ago, in late March 2015, I was suffering on a level that seems incomprehensible, foreign to the girl I am today. I’m happily on a low-level of antidepressants (Cymbalta finally did the trick for me), and I still need a Xanax in certain anxiety-inducing situations (hello, crowded, dark, loud movie theaters!)

And that is okay.

I’ve reached the point in writing this piece where I’m not sure how it ends, but I suppose I want to leave whoever is reading this with some hope for their future, if they’re going through anything similar. I very much understand not wanting to speak up about mental health struggles – which is why it took an almost-stranger, my very professional doctor, to pull the truth out of me. So if you ever need some anonymous advice or help, please feel free to ask me.

I don’t remember his exact words, but my doctor wrapped up our conversation that day by explaining that anxiety and depression were a physical, medical condition. He affirmed my right to seek help and told me it would get better. There have been many times since then where I did not believe him, but turns out – he was right. I got better.