#once i was in the waiting room of a specialist for over 40 minutes

[ur-stepdad]

would love to see in the tags/replies how people assert themselves when dealing with an inappropriately long wait and if you've ever gotten satisfactory results

[justepilepsy]

hi! i'm scheduled to see a neurologist to discuss photosensitive-ish symptoms, but the earliest they could see me is over a month away. it's hard to not get nervous while waiting! i was wondering if you had any advice for someone who's never been to a neurologist before?

Hi Anon, I hope my answer is not too late. I can recommend making a list of things you want to bring up with your neurologist! This can (but must not) include

Why are you going to them (e.g. seizure, seizure suspicion,...)

Examples of times you had a seizure/suspected seizure (if you can, include a date, when this happened, and how long this lasted)

include examples where other people noticed your symptoms

how you feel after your symptoms

any and all questions you have for them

other disabilities, mental health issues, neurological disorders

General tips:

if you don't feel respected, taken serious or well taken care of by your neurologist, consider looking around for another if you can.

ask if you don't understand something! Doctors sometimes forget that their patients don't know medical stuff!

If they prescribe you anything, write down the dosis/ when to take them (and ask your pharmacist later too, if these meds are okay to take with any other medications you already take)

Things your neurologist MIGHT do:

aside from asking you to describe your symptoms

they may schedule an EEG

they might also schedule an MRT

MRTs are to check if you have any visible reasons in your brain, for why you show neurological symptoms. The machine is loud and usually requires a different specialist to get it done. So this would mean getting an MRT and then returning to the neurologist with the results.

EEGs are usually done at the neurologist's practise/clinic. They are harmless, the only thing to beware of is the contact glue used to attach the electrodes to your head.

A lot of people have trouble getting it washed out of their hair. I have seen users on tumblr recommend using coca cola to wash it out completely without having to use endless amounts of shampoo.

My place doesnt use the awful glue any more and it's usually gone with one wash. So you might be lucky and not have that issue.

There are different types of EEGs. Depending on what you struggle with your Neurologist might schedule a different typ.

A standard EEG often lasts about 20-40 minutes.

A nurse or doctor will be present while the device measures you brain waves. The room will probably be dark or only with dim light. They MIGHT use a stroboscope (= flashing lights lamp) to see if these provoke unsual activity in your brain.

THey will warn you when this happens and it does not last long! (they usually dont do it not much longer than 10 seconds at once I believe).

They might ask you to open and close your eyes during the EEG at different times.

There are other types of EEG, some are done overnight or include sleeping intervalls. But it depends really on why you are seeing the neurologist and what they deduce to be the best step to go ahead.

Also- i recommend bringing a hat, because your hair will be messy after an EEG.

Anyone else have some tips for the first visit to the neurologist?

[everythingpuddle]

Deleted Scene

So this was cut from the assault on Red Fountain and chronologically would be between Chapters 40 and 41.

Also please note, this contains graphic depictions of a makeshift abdominal surgery. It is gory. There is extreme body horror. Please curate your internet experience appropriately.

After helping the Red Fountain nurses prepare the infirmary, there wasn’t much for the girls to do but wait nervously. The infirmary had been set out with all the beds available and Flora was anxiously fiddling with the empty potion bottles waiting to be filled from the cauldron next to her, across the room Mirta was rearranging the bandages for the umpteeth time. Neither of them were looking at Lucy and the other witches huddled by the far end playing with a deck of cards. Flora had tried to greet them all when they’d come in but she’d been ignored by everyone but Lucy, who’d shot her a dirty look. So she’d just kept to herself by the infirmary windows.

The small infirmary was not built to handle this type of situation. It was kitted out to handle sparring injuries and dragon burns, not taking in the wounded from a battle. Flora stopped her eyes from wandering towards the wide windows next to her that overlooked the concentric rings of Red Fountain. The infirmary was high up in the centre building, close to Saladin’s rooms, and the view of what was happening below was uninterrupted.

“It’ll be okay,” Mirta said, coming to stand next to her. “You heard Codatorta, we’re not expecting many casualties. We’ll mostly just be bored while they fight.”

Flora nodded silently, letting Mirta put her arms around her waist. She doubted that what Mirta had said would come true; no matter the opinions of the Red Fountain staff the Army of Decay was not so easily fought and defeated. As soon as they’d been told what the witches had summoned Flora had researched what they were with Tecna as they waited. They were a myth that her grandmother had used to scare her into behaving, and she had wanted to know how bad they really were.

What she had found had proved that for once her grandma hadn’t been pessimistically exaggerating. How they were going to stop the advance of a magical army was beyond her. She closed her eyes for a moment and went to pace around the infirmary so that she wasn’t stuck in the same place for too long. The witches shot her glares whenever she got too close but she ignored them.

After only a few more minutes of peace, the door burst open and a group of first years started carrying boys in. Flora followed the nurses’ orders as she got to work, her hands shaking. Her patient’s wounds were bloody, but thankfully not that serious. She administered painkillers and got work sewing him up. Her gloved hands were stained red by the time she finished and gave him some antibiotics.

She looked up when she was done only to find that the infirmary was swamped. There were more Specialists in here at that moment than they’d been expecting in the whole battle. Whatever Codatorta had planned, it had gone wrong. The nurse tapped her shoulder and Flora found herself sending the injured boy back to his dormitory so that they could have the bed for someone else.

Her next patient was bleeding heavily. More than the first. Everywhere Flora looked there was blood, and it wouldn’t stop.

She shouldn’t be doing this. She hadn’t been trained to do this. But both the nurses were working on other, more severely injured patients. There was no one else to do this.

This time she had to use her magic on him; the wound was on his thigh and it had nicked a major artery. Flora pushed her magic through his body as quickly as she could, speeding up his healing so that the blood vessels healed over before he bled out.

“What’s going on out there?” she asked him as she started to sew the gash closed. She didn’t want to know but she couldn’t help but ask.

“They can reform,” the boys whimpered. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Flora’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking as she finished her work on him. She kept washing her hands and changing gloves but the blood wouldn’t stop staining her. It was up her arms, sprayed across her shirt, dripping to the ground. It made her want to vomit but she held it in.

She heard screaming and then someone called her name. Another Specialist dumped in the bed and she struggled to hear what the boy who’d delivered him had to say. Something about ‘under his skin’ and an indication towards the bloodied bandages wrapped loosely around his middle, and then he disappeared. Flora grabbed the painkiller potion and tried to get him to swallow some.

“Please,” she begged as he shrieked in pain. “This will make you feel better! I need you to drink it!”

It was like he couldn’t hear her. Flora gritted her teeth, she wasn’t supposed to do this but there was no other way to keep him still enough. Vines unfurled from under the bed and wrapped around his limbs, pinning him down. She wrestled some of the potion into his mouth and he choked it down. A little was better than nothing.

“What’s your name?” she asked as his screams died down to rasping gasps.

“Miles,” he said faintly. “Please, I can still feel them…”

Flora froze, and lifted the gauze on his abdomen.

There were at least three dark purple insects, each like a short centipede chewing their way through his gut. They had entered through his belly wound and she could see them crawling under the skin further up his torso. Flora dry-heaved, forcing herself to keep the contents of her stomach down.

Okay, okay. Okay. She was going to have to cut them out, and she needed him to be calm while she did it,

“Drink more,” she instructed, offering him the potion and trying not to show the panic on her face. “I’ve got to get to work and I need you to keep talking to me while I do.” They were in trouble if he went into shock like this.

Miles obediently chugged as much of the potion as she would allow him. Flora knew roughly what was safe to give out but not exactly enough to risk giving him too much.

“I can still feel them,” he whimpered.

“I know and I’m sorry.” Flora waited with her tweezers until she was able to grab onto one of the creatures in the exposed flesh. It latched onto the muscle and she had to skewer it to get it to let go. As soon as the tweezers pierced the insect it disintegrated into dust and she tried to wipe it out of the injury. Flora took a breath and kept going; she’d been quiet too long. “Tell me about your home.”

“There’s not much to say,” he said, rasping through his quick breathing. “Mum, Dad, two younger siblings. It’s all pretty normal… my Dad’s an asshole but whose isn’t?”

“Yeah…” Flora laughed but it didn’t sound genuine. She could see two other insects wriggling around his intestines which brought the count up to four inside him.

“What’s yours like?” He asked. She was glad that he was lying flat and couldn’t see what she could.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said, grabbing onto a second creature and pulling it away as fast as she could. “Mine walked out before I was born. Tell me about your siblings.”

“Got a little brother and a little sister. I’m applying to be posted near them when I graduate so I can still see them.” He grunted as Flora had to move sections of his guts to the side to reach the third critter there.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said.

“What about you?” Miles asked, clenching his fist. Flora bit her lip in guilt; he wasn’t numb enough for this not to feel like torture. It wouldn’t help that the only anaesthetic she had needed to be orally administered.

“Me?” She paused in her speech, dumping the third creature into a bowl and spearing it with the tweezers. “I have a little sister, much younger than me.”

“And is her dad in the picture?” Flora tried not to judge him for asking such personal questions. Her hands were inside his abdomen right now.

“No,” she shook her head. “But he sends my mum money every month and she basically has three parents without him.”

“How so?”

“There’s my mum, but she’s away a lot on research trips so we live with my grandma… and then because I’m so much older I take care of her a lot. She calls our mum ‘Mummy Alyssa’ and she calls me ‘Mummy Flora’,” she laughed. Miele was convinced that any female caretaker was a ‘mummy’ and couldn’t be persuaded to not address her preschool teachers as such. “She wanted to call our grandma that too, but Gran put her foot down.”

Miles laughed weakly and Flora turned her attention to the last insect left; the one that was wriggling under his skin. She was going to have to cut that out.

She got him to talk about the jobs he was applying for and what he had learnt at Red Fountain while she sterilised a scalpel and wiped down the skin over the crawling bug. He was going to feel this, there wasn’t anything to be done about that. She steeled herself and drew the edge against his skin as carefully as she could.

[chefjarredjarred]

Anxiety. (excerpt)

People. “They're the worst,” Jerry once concurred with Elaine. And they are.

So I didn't really want a job as a verification specialist for a background check company,  making a hundred phone calls a day to anywhere in the country, but there was a time when it was a job I needed; it was remote so I could do it from my living room, it supplemented my main income from cooking and barbacking, and I was allowed to adjust my own schedule around that other work and my Tuesday morning therapy sessions.

But Jesus Christ, the people: the combative, the confused, the cavalier, the crotchety; the mousy, the crazy, the stupid, the lazy; the disgruntled, the bitter, the hateful, the bossy; the scammers, the liars, the paranoid; the unintelligible, or, through no fault of their own, the foreign; the mouth breathers, the assholes; the fast food workers, who are always a grab bag. I got them all, every day. And just one nice old lady from Florida, Ms. Charlene.

I got the job in part by cherry-picking some of my old chef experience and molding it all up into a wad of passable bullshit in the interview. Not lies, you know, just bullshit. I sold the personal importance of always speaking concisely and effectively, and of remaining cool and courteous and logical even when being angrily berated by the most ignorant, disrespectful know-nothings. Okay, so that one tiny lie. I made no mention of smashing saucers, slinging sheet pans, or every chef's favorite, smiting servers. (But come on, FOH, y'all know when you're asking for it.) I gave no indication that my rage, anxiety, and feelings of undeserved victimhood and exhaustion were a nest of coiled snakes, something every person who has ever worked in a kitchen around me could sense. Do your job, leave the attitude outside the kitchen doors, and speak only of pith and pertinence during service. Don't fuck with me, don't get fanged.

A bartender I worked with for years once called me unapproachable. It was in the same breath that she called me a dick, proving that the robotic personality of feigned professionalism and phony positivity (every company has their Stepford Wives, don't they?) on which she prided herself—loathed by so many in the restaurant—could be cracked, and I loved that I had been the one to do it. But the part about being a dick wasn't a bold quotable. My being unapproachable became a favorite running joke for years, perverted and perpetuated by me. Y'all think I'm unapproachable? I am. Fuck off.

But that's truncated, for effect and time. Fuck off, I have a job to do, is the real, full statement, and a linchpin tenet of my style of cheffing. I don't need loud voices, loud noises, disrespect, emotional clouding, confusion, excuses, etc., or that irritable anxiety snake could be disturbed. “Just the facts, ma'am.” There's just no time for the extraneous.

Don't disrupt the flow of food.

That's the principle I emphasized in the interview, just folded into the bullshit wad that made it applicable to phoning idiotic, ornery strangers—and Ms. Charlene. Obviously, I had to omit the venom, violence, viciousness, the vitriol. There was already a tiny stumble in there when the interviewer asked if I would describe myself as an introvert, and I, being honest to a fault at the most inappropriate moments, confessed that I would.

“You do know what this job is, right?”

I actually didn't, right up until about two seconds before that question, but I recovered gracefully, explaining some crap about being able to turn on the smiles and pleasantries when I meant business, something like that.

Fake smiles. Ugh. God dammit. I actively campaign against them. A fake smile is the opposite of Fuck off, of the pith and pertinence, the order and efficiency I expected, of just the facts. It's a capitulation, a white flag.

You know what I absolutely hate more than people? The expectation that I'm obligated to give them a fake smile. It's a banner that says you're willing to accept the extraneous, the unexpected, that whatever they are about to say and the way they will say it has some compelling power over you, and that you have all the time in the world to stand there and graciously let it be unloaded onto you. That your anxiety is not there and not real.

That you are approachable.

Fake smiles are blood in the water. That's right, when it goes from snakes to sharks.

“What we always say here is 'Smile and dial!'”

It was a virtual interview, and he couldn't see or hear my feet double-kick-drumming the floor. But what he did hear and what I couldn't believe was the fake laugh I forced through my fake smile. Jesus, Jarred, you're escalating? Allowance is support. “Sure, sure,” I said, as if I were a lifelong brown-noser. You're a disgrace.

“If you can run a kitchen, I have no doubt that you can do this.”

I didn't either. That's misinformation, that anxiety is simply fear. I wasn't afraid I would fail (literally anyone, barring anxiety, can be a verification “specialist”). In fact, I was totally confident I could succeed...theoretically. He said it: If I could run a kitchen, I could do this. The things that worried me were the scheduling, sleeping, caffeinating, eating, speaking, putting on my fake personality with my fake smile, and juggling and maintaining it all every day without falter, without letting on that there was any internal difficulty. I worried not about my actual job performance, but how I might struggle to simultaneously perform and hide my character flaws, i.e. the stuff that I left hanging out in the open when I was a chef. Does that make any sense?

Anxiety, not fear.

So the job was simple, but not easy, and there was a lot to make an anxious person anxious: the people, of course; the never-ending flood of calls; the quick navigating of the system when someone backpedaled or said something inaccurate or swung their mood in an instant; the software glitches; the hold music. Every second of the workday, even your coffee-caused poop break, was timed and factored in to your production average. You were judged and graded by making a ton of calls and/or closing as many cases as you could, which sounds fine, but is actually decided by chance more than some mathematical guarantee. That angered me the most, watching my closes and “touches” tabulated throughout the day, working against each other, my percentage of success being stretched thinner and thinner as I piled up calls that became mere touches rather than closes. It was the opposite of what we really wanted, and the secret little opposite of what we were trained to believe. The pessimist in me knew that the given goals were just out of reach, of course, so we would unknowingly meet the real goals and feel worthless at the end of the day, like we hadn't done enough. The realist in me hated the pretending that we had any control over it. The fatalist in me knew that it didn't matter, but could not force the crippled, anxious existentialist in me to just shut the fuck up.

...Oh, there is no optimist in here, if you were waiting for it.

I knew the fatalist was right after a sweet, timid childcare worker put me on hold to find something useful for me, which would only be a different number or a different person or, if life were easy, the name of a recognized third party verification website. This was 10:40 in the morning, in my first hour of the workday that was already a little too unfruitful. I watched the timer tick away, and when she returned, she had found...an unrecognized third party verification website. That meant I had to type a message into our Teams chat to request a supervisor's review and approval to put the name of the website in the little box and move to the next call.

Eight minutes had now passed as I waited for an answer. I had let the worker, Taylor, hang up already so she could get her eyes back on what wild heathens she may have had under her watch. It was a personal rule of mine to never hold restaurant workers or childcare workers hostage on the phone, because their work was more important than mine. I thought about the time my mom came to pick me up from one of these daycare facilities, walking in at the same time as another little boy's father, together to catch the perfect and precise moment that I socked that boy right across his jaw with full force, superhero super-spinning into that punch in defiance of his superior strength and grip of my head as he had tried to slam my skull into a wooden shelf for a second time. We were bloody, snotty, and sweaty in the throes of killer instinct, but I still caught the looks of horror on our parents' faces. Why the fistfight happened, I don't remember, but how? Well, because someone who was supposed to be paying attention, wasn't. Kids will go feral and push the boulder on Piggy as soon as your back is turned. I let Taylor off the phone for that reason. I waited for a supervisor's response in the chat, watching the seconds count on and that first hour, and thus the rest of my day and any hope of average achievement, drift away from me. They told me the site was no good and I needed to call poor Taylor back and try again. I sighed, copied the number and clicked the button, explained to her what was happening, and with real politeness she placed me, again, on hold. She came back with a phone number but the same uncertainty.

But in the chat, a supervisor had offered another phone number, different from what I was now taking down on the call. I was urged to try that one instead, so I let Taylor go back to the children a final time, and made my third phone call of the case. An automated message finally pointed me to a recognized third party verification website, and gave the particular employer code needed to access it. The anxiety snake and the rage snake were waking and knotted. I clicked the Other Automated Method button...and the system skipped on to complete the case, without letting me input the website or the code. “No, hell no.” I backed up and tried again. Same result, the skip. I went back to the chat and explained, and typed “Can someone please help me before my head explodes” with no punctuation.

A supervisor called me, and I shared my screen with her. “Let's see what happ—Oh, the client put it on hold, so just exit. It doesn't matter.”

It doesn't matter.

11:01. One close, 13 touches. I was white hot.

The anxiety, the rage, the pessimism, realism, fatalism, the whole nest of snakes was awake and wiggling, tossing, tangling themselves up like a... Well, you know. Like a rubber-band ball. I violently ripped the headset off of me, pushing breath through my teeth like the snarling little Jarred who punched that stupid kid in the mouth in the daycare brawl. I thought about that famed image of the snake eating its tail, whatever it's called. I thought about quitting. I thought about how two days before, my therapist and I had tried to come up with a suitable and available grounding technique I could try to prevent this exact, inevitable moment, this kind of anxiety attack. I thought about telling her how I thought that I was failing at everything. You're a disappoi— Shut the fuck up, Jarred—

It doesn't matter? I thought about that, that every moment of the day was part of the calculation of my performance grade for something ultimately shrugged off. That I spent 20 fucking minutes wasting my fucking time to get something that doesn't fucking matter but earns for me a judgment as if it does fucking matter.

But I thought about how I needed that little bit of extra money, and the other reasons for seeking and taking the job. Breathe, Jarred.

And that was not an isolated incident. Every day I fought for the energy and will to tether myself with the headset, log in, and hear the first ring. It came immediately, every single morning. I'd close my eyes and siiiigh through that first ring, just before being snatched along and pummeled by the frenzy.

I tried earnestly the smile-and-dial one time. I felt like Nicolas Cage in one of those especially wacky scenes of Face/Off. A total psycho, unhinged.

The calls were recorded and scrutinized, for quality and legality, and a handful a month were sent back to me to review whatever I had done wrong, or what I could do better.

Ah, yes. So there was another itchy, irritating thread of anxiety even on the less violent days.

Do you ever hear your own recorded voice and you hate yourself and wish you had never been born? Yeah, me too. So I only ever listened to one call and that was enough of that. I didn't want to hear myself. That voice wasn't mine, it was some cartoon-like, nasally Billy Bob Thornton's voice, reverberating somewhere way up high in the sinuses.

A hundred calls a day is a lot of talking. I began obsessing over how I pronounce—among many other things—the number four. There were fours everywhere, embedded, like chocolate chips in cookie dough, throughout almost every case number, and in our callback number I had to recite on dozens of voicemails per day. I wondered if I could trust my own ears in hearing the way I would say it, or if in reality I sounded like I was four. Fohwuh. Every day I ran this mental gamut of self-critique and insult, concentrating insanely on the most minute and deliberate flicks and curls of my tongue and lips. Any word becomes weirdly unnatural when you pay such specific attention to it. But I put so much (too much) effort into working on a competent phone voice not only so I wouldn't sound like a jackass, but so I could be efficient in my work and thus keep up with the production quota. I needed 20 touches an hour, not 13, so I needed people to understand me so I could get in, get out, and get on the next call. My strategy was to try and emulate the radio voice of Christopher Kimball—polite, proper, pronounced, professional. In my dirty pajamas, sitting on a lumpy pillow on a hand-me-down office chair as it was clawed to pieces by my screaming cats, I wanted to sound like I was wearing a bow tie. Like I was in a real office without cats, with a real college degree framed proudly on the wall. Polished and prepared.

It's hard work, if you can imagine. I'm not a talker. I don't like strangers. They're unpredictable. Any unexpected wrench in the routine could prove how fragile the facade is, that I'm actually a wobbly stack of quivering, anxious gremlins pretending to be a presentable person in, I guess, an imaginary bow tie.

It's hard work, if you'll let me say that again. But I thought I was doing pretty well. I hadn't cussed anyone out and I hadn't hurled the computer through the window, at least.

Then one day I called an office in Shelby, North Carolina. A woman answered, lazily, and I stated my reason for calling. She just said, “Hold on,” dismissively, with no practiced professionalism whatsoever. There's a lot of that out there. A rare treat then it was when I spoke with anyone trying to exude the same level of maturity as I, during business hours. My Kimball voice was for your benefit, lady. You didn't care. I know this because instead of really putting me on hold, instead of pressing a button to leave me in that telephonic waiting area listening to one of those overused cheap songs, like the one with the incessant MIDI claps that makes my toes tense and my teeth clench and jarringly reminds me that the anxiety is always bang-bang-banging at the door of the closet I locked it in, instead of just conducting two seconds of mundane business like a normal goddamn person, this woman just set the phone down on her desk and, evidently sickened beyond composure, blurted to her coworker, “God, I hate when someone clears their throat while I'm on the phone with them.” I did?

There I was, exposed, a bunch of phlegmy gremlins, collapsing and scrambling. Instantly I remembered the time my dad and stepmom asked me if I was on some kind of drug, because I cleared my throat “a lot.” Yeah, I don't know what they were talking about either, but apparently this involuntary habit is remarkably frequent. And a hundred calls a day I was doing this. How many of these people find me disgusting, inhuman, or think I'm on drugs? How about people in everyday life? Do my friends mock me? Who taught you how to function, Jarred? My mind spiraled, the snakes squirmed and seethed.

The rest of the phone call was stiff and clumsy, tears welling like a porn star's while I silently packed down the coughs and chokes congesting behind whatever ball of bile bottlenecking at the back of my throat, because I should die right on the living room carpet, sacrificial and blue, lest I irk this absolute cuntbag's social sensitivities, gurgling grotesque and oozing disease.

But am I crazy or...ahem...is that just trivially fucking inoffensive? If I had frog squatted on my desk and—“Verify this, bitch!”—farted into a metal basin full of Cracker Barrel gravy, then sure, be mad. Slam the phone down. Say to the guy by the copier, “Why me?!” and vow to get me fired. But if a natural, nonchalant throat-clearing infuriates you enough to comment on it, you're honestly just an asshole. It's not a frog squat gravy fart, it's not a rude personal affront. It's somewhere way below open mouth chewing, there around unfortunate but necessary nose blowing. I'm gross, you're gross, we're all gross. Get over it, and then, Fuck off, I have a job to do.

I did briefly wonder if maybe she's an anxious person too, a gremlin, maybe her facade is as fragile as mine, but I don't think so, because her attitude when she answered my call had already indicated to me that she never dressed up in a fake bow tie. She thinks she's a normal person: reckless, careless, unprofessional. No phone tone, no Kimball timbre. And because of that, she gave me another thing to worry about, to nag at me, something uncontrollable that I'd be trying to temper, something unconsciously mechanical now made noticeable and manual and clumsy. Thanks.

I was just worried about my goofy voice.

If you're thinking that it's all just a little silly and ridiculously minuscule, then congratulations, you're one of those “normal” people, like Ms. Shelby North Carolina. You make our lives worse.

[thebibliosphere]

*Sigh*.

Mum finally made it home, but not after being given the absolute run around by the Queen Elizabeth hospital.

Cut for medical abuse and just downright fuckery. I’d appreciate if this wasn’t reblogged but honestly I’ve given up on asking people.

Her surgery and subsequent care was carried out at Gartnavel, and while the plastic surgeon had been round to see her three times, the doctor who carried out the actual cancer removal surgery has yet to even check in on Mum once since her surgery last Wednesday. So, in order for mum to be discharged today, they told her dad could drive her to the Queen Liz over in Govan, where this breast specialist was supposedly working the weekend. So they tell her to get there between the hours of 10am and 11am. Gartnavel—where it has to be said, the nursing staff were quite literally live saving earlier this week when they noticed Mum’s blood pressure destabilizing—discharged her at 9am, and mum and dad drove over to the Queen Liz and are told there will be a 20 minute wait before the doctor will be able to see them.

Which, cool, fine whatever, do they want her to wait in an exam room? Nope. “the waiting room” which is basically a corridor with some seats jammed in. Right. Okay.

Twenty minutes come and go, and my mother is seriously ill feeling from all the meds she’s on, not to mention recovering from breast removal surgery, dad goes and asks the nurse if they can wait somewhere else. No can do guv, but here’s a sick basket. He asks if the doctor will at least be out soon, and the nurse rolls her eyes at him and says the doctor is very busy sir, and gestures to the empty waiting room. 20 minutes turns into 40 then 60. Dad goes and asks again, cause Mum is really not doing well. The nurse he spoke to first time around has gone for her lunch. The new nurse has no record of Mum, but she’ll tell the doctor they're waiting. Another 20 minutes pass and nothing happens. And then another. At which point dad goes and says “listen, we’ve been waiting for over an hour” and the nurse says “no sir you’ve only bee waiting 20.”

Dad politely asks to speak to someone else. He is informed there is no one else, but the doctor—the breast specialist who carried out my mother’s surgery, for which she has had many complications since last Wednesday—will be there soon. Another 15 minutes go by and the original nurse comes back, and the nurse on the desk goes away. Dad goes and asks her if there’s been any progress made, and the nurse looks at the screen and says “who are you here to see?”

“Dr. {Name},” Dad informs her tersely, and the nurse looks at the screen and says “oh, she went home at 9am, did no one tell you?”

At which point Mum who tagged along with Dad starts getting extremely upset. She gets so upset she faints. Miraculously several doctors appear from nowhere. She is put into an exam room and a surgeon registrar is found, and when Dad tells her how long they’ve been waiting she shakes her head and tells him no one informed her there was a patient waiting. She looks at Mum, and at the wound in her chest, and informs her seriously that the site is infected. Mum starts crying, she just wants to go home, she thinks she’ll die if she can’t go home. The SR prescribes a fourth set of antibiotics, and says Mum can go home, but if her fever spikes or if she starts vomiting to call and ambulance. She needs to go back to Gartnavel on Tuesday to get the wound checked and see if the infection needs to be drained. Then Thursday, she will find out the results of the biopsy with the breast expert who still hasn’t checked on my mother since last Wednesday when she removed her left breast. Dad asks glibly, will she be there? And the SR tells him to call first and make sure, which just, what the actual fuck. What in the nine circles of hell and damnation fuck.

Is breast cancer surgery her hobby? Is that what’s going on here? Is it me? Or are you supposed to check on your patients after you remove a sizeable chunk of their body? Did I hallucinate that concept of medical care?

Also, Dad took pics of the Queen Liz while they were there, it’s a £842 million quid state of the art hospital and it’s fucking manky. There’s dust balls on the floor the size of my hand, and considering they’re being investigated for deaths related to pigeon shit in the ventilation system, you’d think they’d be a little more careful about things like making sure the hospital looks clean? But apparently nah. £842 million and not a single bright spark thought to put pigeon wire over the ventilation intakes. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Anyway. Mum is home, and already feeling much better, simply by virtue of having her own bed to sleep in. She’ll have to go back up to Gartnavel on Tuesday morning to get her wound seen to. And who knows, maybe the surgeon will actually fucking be there. Either way, it’s 2am my time and Dad just texted me all the details I need to help him write a letter of complaint because he doesn’t know how to. Fortunately, Mum taught me the art of letter writing, particularity the art of flaying people alive via eviscerating politeness.

God fuck that hospital and all those people. Fuck those nurses and fuck the surgeon. I hope they stub their toes on the sharp edge of the coffee table from now until eternity. I’m so fucking angry I’m just sobbing. I thought I had a handle on it earlier when I first found all this out. Turns out I was just saving it up for the appropriate time to have a mental breakdown, which as we all know, is the allotted time between midnight at 3am. God fucking dammit.

[whiskynottea]

An Interruption in the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27,  Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, Chapter 32, Chapter 33, Chapter 34, Chapter 35,  Chapter 36, Chapter 37, Chapter 38, Chapter 39, Chapter 40, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, Chapter 44,  Chapter 45, Chapter 46, Chapter 47

AO3

@theministerskat , my Detroit airport and Ann Arbor specialist, thank you so much for your help!

Chapter 48. Closer

“Gimme a ticket for an airplane, I ain’t got time to take the fast train. Lonely days are gone – ”

“Lamb! Stop it!”

“What?” My uncle looked at me, with a most innocent face. “What’s wrong with The Box Tops? I’m trying to get you in the mood for your flight!”

“I am in the mood, I don’t need your singing to help me!” I huffed, looking out of the car window.

Will it be raining in Michigan, too?

Lamb was driving ridiculously slow, casually tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as he sang, when all I could think of was reaching the airport and getting on the plane that would take me to Jamie.

Well, I wouldn’t get exactly on that plane.

The first plane would get me to London. Then a second one would whisk me across the Atlantic to Chicago. And finally, after a third flight from Chicago to Detroit, I would finally get to see my Scot. Really see him. Run my hands through his red hair. Smell the spices of his perfume. Tickle him until he would beg for mercy. Kiss him until there would be no breath left in his lungs.

In twenty-two hours I would be standing in front of him - if I could still stand. I would most likely crawl to him, unable to move after travelling for so many hours.

I didn’t care. I would be in Michigan.

Total flying time was almost twelve hours. Total time of the journey, twenty-two. Cheap flights. Not everyone can handle it - or so I was told by Lamb.

Scot: Have you arrived at the airport?

Sassenach: Almost. You know how Lamb drives.

Scot: Tomorrow you’ll be here, babe.

Sassenach: I wish I could just apparate.

Scot: You haven’t taken an Apparition Test.

Sassenach: Since when do Gryffindors care about rules?

Scot: It wouldn’t do to get you here splinched, wee Ravenclaw witch.

I choked back a laugh that made Lamb shoot me a questioning glance. “I haven’t seen you so happy since you got your letter from Oxford. Which was almost a month ago, if I remember correctly.”

“More than a month,” I murmured. In retrospect, it seemed even longer.

The first day or two, I had spent the majority of my time on Google maps, mentally strolling around  Oxford via computer screen. Then, I caught up with a few TV shows Jenny and Joe had been raving about. I read books that had nothing to do with human anatomy and physiology and enjoyed staying at home, a cup of tea and a hardcover in my lap, the rain pelting down on the living room windows.

Joe and Gail had left for New York, their semester starting when Jamie’s had. Jenny and Ian remained in Beauly after the summer had ended. They had both accepted their offers to the University of Edinburgh and they would come back in September, which was exactly when I would be leaving for Oxford. Jenny and I talked almost every day, but I missed having everyone in close proximity. It felt as though I had been left behind.

The flight to London was less than two hours and I had resolved myself to watching a movie, when the tiny lady sitting next to me started talking. I smiled politely and nodded more times than I could count, and kept making attempts to insert my headphones while I silently prayed that she would get the message. She didn’t. Her son was graduating and then getting married and “Oh ye can imagine, dearie, how many things remain to be done!” Even if I couldn’t imagine, I didn’t need to. By the end of our journey, she had listed and analyzed them all, pausing only once or twice. Most probably to breathe, I had thought. Her enthusiasm made me smile. Her nasal voice, however, made my head buzz by the time we arrived at Heathrow. Mrs Macallan - “Like the whisky, ye ken?” - was sweet and kind hearted, but I felt lucky to be getting away from her on my next flight.

After retrieving my oversized rucksack, and bidding her farewell, I walked around the airport, absentmindedly looking at window displays and testing several perfumes. Finally, bored and tired, I searched for a quiet place to sit.

Sassenach: Seven more hours in Heathrow.

Scot: In thirteen hours I will kiss the hell out of you.

Sassenach: Oh really?

Scot: Yes. I can’t stop thinking about it.

Sassenach: Me or the kissing?

Scot: Both.

Sassenach: Hmm where are you?

Scot: Just finished up at the pool. We’re going to a place called “Fraser’s Pub”!

Sassenach: So you’re already THAT famous there?

Scot: Aye, restaurants open in my honor. I can’t help it Sassenach.

Sassenach: Snob.

Scot: Oh, is that you Ms. ‘I’m studying at Oxford, you common peasants’?

Sassenach: Ass.

Scot: THIRTEEN HOURS!!

Sassenach: Twelve and forty-five minutes 😛

Scot: I love you, got to go, the guys have started making fun of me. Ttyl?

Sassenach: Okay. I’ll be right here.

A ridiculous picture followed right after that, with Jamie’s lips so close to the camera I could hardly recognize them. Then another one, with him and John smiling broadly, heads bent together. I sent him a picture of me cuddled up next to my huge grey and purple rucksack and then tried to get as comfortable as possible, determined to get some sleep.

It seemed I was one of those people who can sleep wherever and whenever they want, not allowing anything to disturb them. Not the endless amount of people passing by, not their phone ringing, not even announcements calling their name.

When I opened my eyes, my phone had fifteen unanswered calls, nineteen unread messages, and two missed alarms. The most terrifying of all, however, was the time.

I had ten minutes to be at my gate and I didn’t even know which gate I was supposed to be at.

I picked up my bag, hoisted it unceremoniously over my shoulder and started running.

I had struggled to sleep the last two nights, the excitement of visiting Jamie making dozing off an impossible task. And now that I had a plane to catch, I fell asleep in the airport, and slept for more than six hours!

Seriously, now?

I was the last person through the boarding gate and I was the only one who went through it gasping for breath. When I finally took my seat, I checked my phone. All the missed calls and messages were from Jamie, all saying pretty much the same thing.

Where are you?!

Sassenach: Just got on the plane. OMG THAT WAS SO CLOSE! I almost missed my flight. I can actually hear my heart beating inside my chest.

Jamie replied immediately.

Scot: You scared the shit out of me, do you know that? First, I was afraid that you’d miss the flight, then I was terrified that something happened to you.

Sassenach: I’m sorry. 😞

Scot: You better be.

Sassenach: I didn’t do it on purpose!

I quickly calculated the time in Ann Arbor.

Sassenach: Are you still out?

Scot: No.

Sassenach: You’re at home? Still awake?

Scot: Yes, guess why! Because my girlfriend is crazy, and she sleeps in airports like the dead!

I saw the three dots appear, then stop. My heart thumped inside my chest.

Scot: You just scared me, is all. It took all the nerve I had to stop pacing back and forth in the room, and that’s mostly because I woke John up at least three times. I couldn’t handle it if something happened to you.

Sassenach: I’m okay. I’m sorry I scared you so. I love you. gtg! Plane taking off. ❤️❤️

Scot: I will kill you when you arrive. Even before kissing you.

Sassenach: That will make a fool of you. You’ll miss my kissing you back.

I spent my time during the flight watching movies and sleeping. No one talked to me, apart from the stewardess with the impossibly perfect makeup, who came passing by every ten minutes with coffee or tea, food, more coffee or tea …

I only had an hour layover at O’Hare International Airport and I didn’t even stop to look around. One last flight - and a short one, at that.

One hour later I landed at Detroit Metro, murmuring continuously, “I’m here, oh my God, I’m here!”

My whole body ached from sitting for so long, and walking felt like an exotic exercise. I had been right in that I would be crawling once I got here.

But then, I wasn’t. I rushed off the plane and pushed my way to the tram, jumping into a car just before the doors closed. I followed the flow of the other passengers, feeling like herded cattle, and took the escalator down to the arrivals area.

The moment the escalator brought me low enough to see out across the great open space of baggage claim I saw him standing there, tall and beautiful, waiting for me. I felt a huge smile spread across my face and mentally urged the people in front of me to move faster. Finally, a kind of magic seeped into my muscles, pushing me forward, and the only thing I could do was run to him.

I dropped my bag just before I reached him and a moment later I was jumping into his arms, wrapping my legs around his body, relying on his strength to support my weight.

A crushing hug. And then we were kissing as if we were the only people in the whole terminal. Fierce and consuming, it was a kiss that tried to make up for all the lost ones, all those we had been sending to each other during the last month, vanishing somewhere in the space between us.

But this kiss was real and hot and powerful, filling our hearts with blood again, after more than a month when distance made their beating dull, normal.

“You’re here,” he whispered. “I can’t believe you’re finally here,” he added, echoing my thoughts. “I missed touching ye, Sassenach. My arms always feel so empty without ye in them.”

I looked at him for a long moment, my throat too tight to talk.

“Come,” he said, and bent to pick up my rucksack. “We’ve a bus to catch.”

His hand was warm when he took mine and we walked together towards the shuttle pickup area. It was silly, but even walking next to him felt different. As if I couldn’t discipline my feet and each step would be the first to start a dance.

We sat in the second to last row of the bus, desperate for some privacy. His hand perched on the inside of my thigh, drawing abstract lines that were driving me crazy. I leaned my head onto his shoulder, trying to be decent, but five minutes later I was biting and sucking his neck until I felt him shiver.

“What are the plans for today?” I asked, my voice low.

“Today we’re going back to my dorm and we’re not leaving the room at all.” He shot me a naughty glance, implying that I knew exactly what was going to happen in his room.

“What about John?” I asked, frowning.

“He won’t come back tonight.” Jamie’s owlish wink and the sly grin that followed suggested that he had taken care of everything.

“I’ve turned everything upside-down for him. Trust me to make a bad first impression.”

“Dinna fash, Sassenach. Ye’re doing John a favour,” Jamie said, his lip curling up as he looked out of the window.

“What do you mean?”

“Ye gave John the perfect excuse to stay over at another guy’s place. He’s on the team, too. And I think John was waiting for an opportunity to stay alone with Hector since the first time he saw him. He hasn’t admitted it yet, but I’ve seen the way he looks at him.”

“John is gay?” I asked when he finally finished. “You haven’t said anything!”

“What was I supposed to say, Sassenach? ‘Claire, let me introduce ye to my gay roommate?’”

“Well, no, but… Anyway. And how about Hector? Do you think that he returns John’s feelings?”

“He’ll be a fool if he doesna. John is amazing. It’d be like you giving me your number and I never calling you. Impossible.”

I laughed at that, shaking my head. My curls escaped from my unruly bun, but I didn’t care. Jamie liked them down. “Yeah, right. That being said by someone totally unbiased.”

He looked out at the winter landscape for a moment. Then, his eyes were back on me and he let out a long sigh. “I’m so happy ye’re here, mo chridhe.” He squeezed my hand and bent his head to kiss me.

I couldn’t get enough of his lips.

We got off of the bus and walked quickly towards his dorm, partly because we ached to be finally alone and partly because it was freezing cold outside.

“Why did you have to come here?” I asked, feeling my nose go Rudolf-red. “Hawaii is one of the States, too.”

“Oh, excuse me Sassenach for not getting a scholarship somewhere sunny!” Jamie smiled and pulled his beanie lower, to cover as much skin as possible.

“It would be a nice change to Edinburgh,” I murmured. He just squeezed me closer to his body.

As we walked, I was fascinated by how much of the campus was woven seamlessly into the city itself. Just off the main streets that were filled with restaurants and shops, were smaller homes all in a line, and then suddenly a university building would pop up with a distinctive blue and yellow sign out front.

We didn’t stop walking fast once we pushed through the entrance doors of Jamie’s dorm. He rushed me across the lobby to the elevators, only this time I was almost sure he was moving quickly as not to be stalled by any fellow Wolverines looking for greetings and introductions.

We reached his room unnoticed. Jamie tossed my rucksack into a corner and closed the door softly behind me. I stood still, looking at the room.

His place.

It wasn’t big, and the beds and two desks made it seem even smaller. But it was cozy and clean, and had something of him that made me feel comfortable. I turned to look at Jamie, and for the first time in a month, I felt like I was home.

“I missed you, you bloody Scot.” My whisper was more than a confession. It was the profession of the gift I had been bestowed. The gift of having him in my life. Of having a home.

“I missed ye too.” He smiled in his crooked way, the way I had fallen in love with. “More than ye’d ever imagine.”

And then his lips were on mine, tender and honest. The connection we had longed for, when all we could do was rely on a screen to see each other. Now, we could feel. Our love was tangible, filling the room as our breaths mingled, as our hands intertwined, as our hearts beat together, their own song.

It didn’t take long for our kiss to turn wild.

Jamie shed the outer layers of my clothing, murmuring that I was a wee onion or something. I smiled and helped him, taking off some of his own clothes as well. It was when his hand found its way underneath my sweater that I yelped.

“Cold! Freezing hands!” He looked at me with a pout that wasn’t nearly cute enough to make me relent. “Don’t even think about it!” I said, pushing against his chest with a pointed index finger.

Jamie laughed and swiftly took me off my feet, eliciting yet another yelp from me. He lay me carefully on his bed and took off my sweater.

“No hands,” he promised, raising them in the air as he bent to kiss my neck. His lips moved to my chest, teeth softly biting my nipples, and I slightly regretted keeping his hands off the game. I needed him to touch me.

I squirmed beneath him, making my intentions obvious.

“Oh, no,” Jamie said, sucking my breast in a way I was sure would leave a hickie. “I spent so much time this past month telling ye what I was planning to do to ye when I’d have ye close again. So much time, seeing ye touching yerself and wishing it would be my hand instead of yers. I mean to take my time, mo nighean donn.”

A soft bite and a wicked grin. His eyes burned in mine.

“I mean to lick ye, kiss ye, taunt ye, feel yer smooth skin against mine and leave my marks on ye. I mean to hear yer moans and whimpers fill the room. And then, Sassenach,” he paused for effect, and I ground myself against him. We were both ready. And all the talking during our video calls didn’t go to waste, after all. “Then, I mean to fuck ye and feel ye fucking me until we canna move our limbs anymore.”

Everything went according to the plan.

Chapter 49

[prorevenge]

Lazy mean worker has tables turned on him, and his friend.

Sorry for long lead-up, working in an auto factory is a different beast.

1) It's unionized, each job specifically spelled out. (So you can't be forced to do work that's not part of your job) 2) there were 4 types of jobs (in this story) that work to put the car together on the line

A SPECIALIST. if someone working on the Assembly line needs a bathroom break they step in and do the persons job (2 A's per supervisor one at each end of his zone)

B SPECIALIST. If someone calls in sick they do that job for the day (2 B's per supervisor, they should be able to do all jobs in the zone)

C SPECIALIST. If someone was on vacation for a week, they do that job for the week (2 C's per supervisor, again should be able to do all jobs within zone.)

LINE WORKER, has a specific job, such as puts the tire on the car and tightens 5 bolts, 500 times a day.

I got a job as a lift truck driver in first round of bidding when we hired a third shift. After 20 rounds all the good jobs basically were filled. During round 19 they decided they didn't need as many forklift drivers after all, and I now had to bid on the leftovers.

So I became a C Specialist, which suits me, I like doing different jobs, and it would mean I would need to learn 40+ jobs on this specific line. And then would be on each job for a week as the other person had vacation week. (Important info, no vacation weeks in July or August due to the fact the plant shuts down for 2 weeks then, so C SPECIALIST doesn't have to go on the line until the B's are used up)

Very quickly I noticed that the low seniority B specialist would show up to the boss's desk a minute before the line started. So if anyone had called in the supervisor would place the other B on the line. If no other people called in, the low seniority B would disappear, leaving the higher seniority B on the line, a big no no. But unless the high seniority B complained and the line ran, the supervisor couldn't care less.

So I'm on the line and need a pee, so I ask the Low B if he could cover me for 3 minutes.....and he replies with "nope, not my job" so he sits at table right in front of me reading paper, I ask again after 15 minutes, after all we're both specialists. "Nope not my job", ok then I ask "can you call the A SPECIALIST then so I can go?" "nope, not my job". He's a real class act as you can see.

So I use the grapevine, I asked the people on either side of me to pass the message down the line that I needed to go to the bathroom. Eventually the "A" shows up and gives me my break.

So now I'm really watching this scumbag "B" to see if while reading his paper if he'd help anyone, man or more likely woman. Nope, nobody. So I start planning.......

July comes, someone calls in sick and my supervisor asked me to go do job, and i say "no, the B's go on line first, and scumbag is hiding behind that rack of parts, so you can put him on line " I knew he hated this particular job a lot.

Supervisors yells at him to get over here and get on job.

Another call in from sick worker, and so the high seniority B gets put on line as well.

So I go get paper, some food, a can of pop, and sit right in front of the scumbag B, just waiting for the question I know he's gonna ask.

"Hey bro, can I get a quick bathroom break. "

Repeat after me......" nope, not my job. "

After a while a second request, which I again rebuffed.

Eventually the line goes down for a couple seconds and he runs over to supervisor desk to rat me out.

The supervisor comes storming down the line to find me sitting at the table eating a snack.

He yells at me "what's wrong with you, you aren't doing anything why the $@%#% won't you work together and give this poor guy a piss break?"

So I calmly look at the supervisor and told him the truth, on at least 3 different occasions I asked scumbag B for a quick break and he refused every time, telling me it's not his job.

Of course scumbag denies it.

So then I drop the hammer, "sir you can walk your entire zone, and if you find even 1 person he's given a bathroom break to, I'll be happy to give him one. "

Supervisor turns purple with rage (he was known for his temper) swears at the scumbag B that he deserves what he gets, gives him the finger and walks away.

But I'm not finished with him yet, I finish my pop, put on my work gloves and walked directly to him, but at the least second I turned to the woman working on his left and asked her if she wanted an extra break today.

She eagerly says"yes, it would be wonderful to be able to go to the bathroom"

She returns, I walk to him with his head hanging lower and lower, and pass him and ask the woman working on the other side of him if she'd like an extra break today, which of course she really accepts with a loud voice and big smile.

I gave every worker around scumbag an extra relief that day, except him of course, maybe he'd learn the definition of team work.

Sure I worked harder than I had to, but no reason except kindness prevented me from making each of those people's day a little nicer, especially since scumbag was despised for his year round behavior. The workers talked about their extra break all day long, especially when they were near a certain you know who. LoL

PART TWO same setup, same area, people, jobs. But this time I tell the story of Scumbags friend "Dirtbag" who was the "A" specialist in this area.

So from the explanation at the top an "A"specialist will give you a chance to go to the bathroom once a day, taking into account we have breaks every 2 hours when you can go as well. But there was this culture of we get an extra break every day had evolved in peoples minds. Most people want this break in the last 4 hours of the shift, you're tired, and just getting off the line for 10 minutes can be something to help you get through your day, or afternoon, or night.

So lunchtime of the day I pulled the rug out from under Scumbag's feet, he goes running to tell his buddy Dirtbag the "A" specialist that I had given everyone an extra bathroom break except him.

So in revenge when the first woman asks for her break after lunchtime, he comes out of the lunch room where he's eating and reading his book and he yells out "nope, I hear you all got your breaks today, I'm done for the day"

Cue the yelling and hollering!

I simply put my gloves on and gave everyone their second break of the day, and I can see Dirtbag laughing from the lunchroom door. I don't care, I just give out the breaks they'd normally get.

The next day I gather the workers from that zone, I tell them to all ask for their breaks in the first 4 hours, when Dirtbag normally leaves the area to go play cards with other "A" SPECIALIST that don't have anyone asking for breaks in the first 4 hours.

The workers are worried about the later break they prefer, I tell them that I'll take care of them.

So Dirtbag gets dragged out of cafeteria by a ticked off supervisor that has all these women asking for their breaks. Dirtbag gets in trouble for playing cards during running off the shift, gets in trouble for leaving his zone without permission, and has a bunch of angry women who he had tried to screw over the day before waiting for him.

For some reason, all of them had tummy issues and took much longer than usual, he ended up on the line all the way until lunchtime.

He yells out as he walks away for them not to expect breaks after lunch........

After lunch when Dirtbag is sitting at table waiting for the women to ask for their usual time so he can deny them, I come sauntering by with gloves on ready to work and ask..," hey would you like an extra break today? "

He loses his mind, goes running to the supervisor and tells him these people already had a break today.

When supervisor asks me why I'm giving breaks and that I don't have to, I respond with, "I have nothing to do for the next 2 months, I don't want to forget how to do these jobs, so I'm just keeping my skills sharp"

Scumbag and Dirtbag no longer ruled the roost!

The upside was that all the regular workers got double the breaks for 2 months and it drove the 2 idiot's crazy the entire time.

What goes around, comes around!

TL;DR. lazy specialist won't give bathroom break to line workers citing it's not my job. I turn the tables on him and turn up the heat. He then gets another specialist to refuse bathroom breaks but I was then in a position to thwart his plans.

(source) (story by shadowwulf-indawoods)

[jenroses]

Friendly reminder to people in the US that if you are on a brand name prescription drug with no generic, the drug company is probably happy to pay your copays. 

How do you do it?

1. Google the name of your drug and copay assistance. So today, I googled “Lantus copay assistance” because I had already hit my out of pocket max and didn’t care.

2. Scroll past the ads to the one that is “yourdrugname.com”, so in this case, the first result with “lantus.com” as the domain name.

3. Click through to the site. Read the fine print. If you have medicaid, medicare or certain other government funded insurance, you won’t qualify (you shouldn’t need it with medicaid.) If you have any sort of private/employer type insurance, you should. If you have no insurance at all, this may or may not be the best discount option, or they may have an assistance program that asks about your income. NOTE: MOST OF THESE KINDS OF COPAY ASSISTANCE THINGS DO NOT HAVE INCOME LIMITS. I’m on three vastly different brand name drugs, all of them have copay assistance that asks nothing about income to qualify. Fill out the stuff. Now, I did it on my phone.... and downloaded the card PDF to my phone... and showed my phone to the pharmacist about 5 minutes later and I’m not sure whether the drug costs $40 per month or $70 per month but this is going to erase that, which is great since I fill 3 months at a time. 

It’s usually that easy, depending on the company. 

Now, on the one hand, I’m glad these programs exist because it basically means that being on Xeljanz, Lantus and Xarelto means that my actual out of pocket expenses this year are going to be basically every time I go to the doctor and every lab test I get until, oh, probably April, when the copays on Xeljanz alone would be enough to wipe out my out of pocket costs, and Pfizer will “pay” every penny of that.

On the other hand, I hate the fact that they use these to make there be no consequences or consumer pressure about drug prices... because these programs allow them to inflate the price with no actual cost to the consumer, while milking insurance companies, who turn around and charge people $1600 to insure two adults and a kid. 

How does that work?

Let’s look at a drug like, oh, Simponi Aria, which has a program which will pay up to $20,000 of your infusion costs on a fancy credit card that they reimburse doctors with, leaving people like me with only the office cost at the infusion center and a $5 copay. One infusion might cost $10,000, your insurance plan might charge you a $2500 deductible and then pay 80% or 70% of the remainder, leaving you on the hook according to them for about $4000 total... only in steps Pfizer and covers all but $5 of that. Nice of them...  you’ve chipped 4000 off of your $8000 out of pocket max on the first infusion!  8 weeks later you get a second infusion, $10,000, Insurance pays 80%... and Pfizer pays $2000 of that (by pays I mean writes off, but it counts to the insurance company) and boom, you’re up to $6000 of your OOP max. 8 weeks later, you’re less than halfway through the year and you max out your OOP completely.... Pfizer paid out $2000 of the $10000 total....  And the next time? Because you get these every 8 weeks until you develop a sensitivity....  The next time Pfizer doesn’t write off a dime because the insurance company pays the whole thing. So Pfizer priced their drug so that the end cost is $10,000 per dose (I am actually low-balling this, my actual bill was over $10,000 before insurance touched it, insurance contract brought that down to $9600 or something, $10,000 is just easier math than the actual $10,461.)  And at about 7 infusions per year, Pfizer wrote off $8000 and made $62,000 for 7 doses of medication (minus doctor markup but whatever, if they’re only making $40,000 on this drug it’s still obscene compared to the $8000 they wrote off under the guise of being generous.) Anyway. So we need single payer healthcare for all and to not have to deal with this absolute bullshit, but in the meantime, these things not only diminish your immediate outlay for expensive drugs, but apply directly to your astronomical deductible and OOP max. 

Once you hit the max, you stop having copays for anything that is approved by your insurance company, and they are not yet allowed to put a max on what you need, like they used to. So once I hit my out of pocket max, I usually get any non-emergent labs and studies done, get new cpap supplies, and stop trying to avoid the emergency room on financial grounds, aka, why I didn’t check myself in when I was having a nervous breakdown in February because one hospital stay (which drug companies won’t help with) would result in a bill that we would have to pay out of pocket and the added financial stress was not conducive to furthering my mental health, whereas toughing it out and waiting until the inevitable $2000 per month that Xeljanz tosses at my OOP max builds up and I no longer have to worry about it, at which point my stress level will be lower anyway and I won’t need it.

The math on Xeljanz is a little different... my insurance company pays half, it doesn’t go to deductible. It costs a bit over $4000 per month, so that’s $2000 per month to the OOP max. It is March 2. In the past 9 weeks I have filled two Xeljanz 1-month supplies, 3 months worth of Lantus and 3 months worth of Xarelto. Janssen pharmaceuticals (Xarelto) paid all but $30 of the $180 my insurance company didn’t pay of the $1200 it cost. $10 per month is cheaper for me than generic coumadin (by a huge margin when you factor in PT testing!). Lantus will probably be $180 as well, but the company that makes that will pay all of that, my insurance company will pay $40, and so by the end of March, drugs alone will have put me at roughly $6700 out of my $7900 OOP max. When I factor in $80 per specialist vist x probably 6 specialist visits, $40 per PT visit at 6 PT visits, and IDK 5 times seeing primary care @ $40 and 1 time urgent care for $70.... that’s about another $1000...  So i’m guessing my OOP max will be met in early April, and that at that time I will have spent actually about $1200 on various doctor and therapy visits, and maybe $30 on labwork will go towards my deductible. If I can stay out of the hospital, which, because of the deductible not being met, would be a Financial Bummer. Because we’re already paying $1600 per month for insurance in the first place. Cheaper than the alternative tho. Because Xeljanz rings in at about $50,000 per year without insurance, and their assistance only covers something like $15,000 max.

It’s a drug that came out of taxpayer funded research in the US 25 years ago. Pfizer refused to develop it further until Congress changed the rules so that drugs developed with taxpayer funds no longer had a price limit.

TL:DR You can get help with your prescriptions, we need single payer universal, and the assholes that came up with “value pricing” are going to be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes. This is why the drug lobby needs to be stopped.

Fun times.

[ryewi]

When I’m With You I’m In Utopia [Chapter 12]

Summary:  9 years ago, the world split in two halves, Utopia and Dystopia. One of the laws allows citizens of both worlds to visit the other once in their lifetime, for a whole week, after which, they’re forced to return home. If by any chance, they don’t return, a death punishment is sentenced. Jeon Jungkook, a citizen of Dystopia seemed to be desperate enough to challenge that exact law.

Genre: Utopia!au, Dystopia!au, fluff, A N G S T, drama, to be added~~

Words: 1,6k

Warnings: none!

<Previous | Part Twelve | Next>

“Namjoon!” Faith screamed, hands gripping the damaged edges of the wooden table tight. It was a ten times more intense surprise than their last encounter. That moment was unexpected, but this one was unsought. Out of all people who have chosen forensic psychology as their specialization, it just had to be Namjoon who stood before her weak and trembling being.

The man refused to look up, eyes focused on an invisible, unidentified dot, somewhere in between the mess of documents he rejected to review again. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist, Namjoon would repeat to himself, completely abandoning the power of logic his strong mind contained. It can’t be real; therefore, it doesn’t exist.

But the truth is, those really were Faith’s documents and a clean criminal record with a huge, black LAW 506 written across it. Those two elements were enough for chills to travel down one’s spine. Although no description was ever provided when a person was accused of this crime, everyone knew what it led towards. Of course, how wouldn’t they.

“Namjoon, oh my god” Faith repeated, eyes shining under the uncomfortably bright light of a nearby flush light. She reached out for one of Namjoon’s still shaky hands, trying to divert some of his attention to her desperate form. While not so noticeably, Faith’s hands shook too, the tension of the whole encounter doing its job at upsetting the smaller.

“You have to help me, please” She sobbed, despair evident in slow words that flowed through her lips. Only on the strong tug of his sleeve, did the man finally look up and into the eyes of his friend. Faith couldn’t read them, that powerful and useful skill long lost.  

Namjoon broke the eye contact quick, head whipping in the direction of the dark glass Faith tried to somehow forget about. They seemed to waver, as if searching for a certain someone behind the material. Faith looked at the man in a questionable and troubled manner, last pieces of hope shattering like thin porcelain.  

“Please, you’re my last hope, Joon” If there was something Faith could still call herself skilled in, that would be persistence. Yet, one could argue that in a condition like this, distress played a bigger game in being tenacious than just a simple and pitiful trait like persistence.

“We expect nothing but professionalism Mr. Kim” The man’s earpiece buzzed, reminding him that they were listening, they always were. A few perfectly hidden microphones across the room now began to poke his peripheral vision. Namjoon felt sick, when did privacy become so expensive? When did it become an experience accessible only in the safety of one’s own apartment?

It was a taboo theme in Utopia, something everyone was aware of, but refused to accept. Their residence was called Utopia for a reason, every citizen had a perfect life, crime was in decline, poverty non-existent, happiness persistent. Why the need for constant control then?  

Cameras were planted on every corner, microphones hidden in bushes, trees, under cars. No one was safe from the eyes of Utopia’s government and while that piece of information was always present in their minds, they didn’t care. Probably because it didn’t affect them, or at least that’s what the citizens thought.

The recording devices did no harm, but also did no good to the general public. Purposely, they were deemed neutral and occasionally useful when it came to security issues. Yet, there really was no need for security checks in a world without crime, so once again, were they necessary?

The answer to that question is obviously positive. Control was requisite to the leadership, so disgusting acts like these happening right now were justified by a simple five second clip, or a minute-long sound recording.

Spectated from another perspective, were they as disgusting as Faith reckoned them as? One could argue that the administration was only looking over, making sure everything is legal and working. Just because those systems were doing their job at spotting illegal activities, didn’t make them bad. On the other hand, they were macabre, but only for those who dared to test their power and functionality.

“Please Ms. Keith, sit down” Namjoon finally managed to voice out a few words to the being currently clinging on to his left arm. He wasn’t sure what to say next, how to begin this horrendously short session, without giving in and crying together with the person currently awaiting death. What made it harder, was that those eyes that used to look at him with such adoration, now radiated nothing else but fear and vulnerability.

Faith slowly sat down, body completely relaxing on the wooden support, irises staring blankly at the way Namjoon’s hands fumbled through previously mentioned documents. There were so many questions currently laying on the top of his tongue, knocking and threatening to break out at any given moment, but it was too dangerous. Too menacing that even the slightest suggestion towards possible help, could be fatal.

Namjoon hated that, he hated them. Out of 26 specialists, he was the one chosen for the case of his friend. Back a few years ago, when a huge background check was done on each employee, there was no doubt that the government knew every single detail, let alone who were his acquaintances, friends, family. This was too great of a coincidence to be real.

“We will begin our discussion in a bit, I just have to check on something” Namjoon said, voice soft and hands moving in a reassuring manner, but the emotion he tried to portray, still hadn’t reached his eyes. Faith saw and she immediately knew Namjoon’s intentions. Even after all these years, she was familiar with the morals this man possessed, but also the kind of a person he was under great pressure. There was a slight chance, that Namjoon could walk out and demand to be taken off the case, deciding that this was too big of a bite for him to chew. Letting history repeat itself, he’d once again leave without any explanation.

Just like he did a few years ago.

“I’ll be right back” and with those four quick words, the man walked away and out of the room.

»»————-　♡　————-««

Jungkook still couldn’t believe his eyes, or specifically, what was currently sitting on top of his head. Previously dark locks turned hot pink, an unusual and quick transformation that will take time to get used to. Hand rushing through his voluminous hand strands, Jungkook inspected the decent job he has done. It wasn’t perfect, a couple tiny patches left out here and there, but with a bit more styling, they’ll be covered. What’s important, was what the hair will serve for, not how well it looks.

There was a small yellow post-it note left on the fridge, ‘wait for me’ messily written on it. The boy wanted to leave some kind of message in case that she magically returned before him, but nothing original seemed to cross his bothered mind. That’ll have to do for now, he thought.

He’s supposed to leave soon, in order to arrive at 7 to the “Department of crime and violation”, just in time for visits. Back a few years ago, Jungkook worked as a delivery boy, often carrying letters and gifts for imprisoners in that exact department in Dystopia. Their visits were on Thursday and Friday, 7pm to 9pm and he supposed it wasn’t any different in Utopia. Everyone had a chance for one visit a week, ranging from 10 to 40 minutes.  

The continuation of Jungkook’s plan was to (once he’s in) ask for Faith, who he’ll have a little “gift” for. Of course, the security check is necessary, but upon seeing that all he’s carrying in is a bag of clothes, they’ll let him go. Jungkook will then hand over the attire, in which he will push in three red pills from his pocket and a small note. On the note, he’ll be explaining that those are the pills she’ll have to take in order to complete his plan. Exactly three pills were enough for a moderate overdose (really, Jungkook was trying to save her here), although the pills were extremely dangerous That dose was sufficient enough to induce a strong reaction from Faith’s organism, after which she’ll be a must to take to AE, in which, she’ll hopefully buy herself enough time.

It was a sickening, but well thought out plan; Jungkook had to blame it on the regime of Dystopia for forcing its citizens to handle themselves however they could.

The only reason why Jungkook went this far with planning, was because of his intuition. There was no other cause as to why the discussions would start if they really weren’t to end it. The government wouldn’t begin such a touchy and important subject for no major reason. There was a high possibility for the plan to work, just if the odds worked as he needed them to.

With his whole ploy laid out and set, Jungkook took one final look at the mirror, breathing in a generous amount of air, trying to calm his wild heartbeat. A thousand times has he repeated “just hold on, it’s all going to be okay”, but this was the only one during which he slightly doubted that statement. Jungkook had to do this, there was no other way in which he could help with the interference.  

Pulling up his face mask and covering a relatively generous part of his gorgeous face, Jungkook grabbed his dark backpack (the only piece contrasting the irksome light attire) and headed out.

AN: Hi hello, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, it’s a bit laid back? Initially it was supposed to end on a big cliffhanger regarding Namjoon’s “departure from the case”. Yet, I decided that the next chapter couldn’t begin without this last bit of Jungkook’s narrative, so I didn’t go harsh with building up the tension higher than it already is. I’m publishing a fluffy Jimin scenario in 3 days (I’m going on an excursion with my class, so it might not be at midnight KST, but I’ll try my best), so do look forward to that!

[thoughts-and-more-sadness]

Yesterday, Monday, Anthony had his doctors appointment. Last December I forced him to go to his appointment she prescribed for him to do 5 x rays and lab work. He never did. So I made him go back. They did a ekg because of his chest pains. The doctor told him he couldn’t go to work until Wednesday which is his heart specialist appointment. So they can figure out what’s wrong. He refuses to miss work so much to the point he should marry it. Today I had lab work appointment scheduled for me and him for 7am. He didn’t wake me up. He kissed me goodbye and went to work at 8. I started to cry. In an hour at 9am we’d have to leave to my ultrasound anyways. He told me to get up and go do my lab work. My second biggest panic attack trigger is getting blood drawn. I did not want to go alone. But I did and I was easily an hour later and then some. But by then the wait was long as hell. I sat and waited and hoped. But once it was time that me and Anthony should be leaving to the ultrasound and he hadn’t even texted me. My shaking and general anxiety and constant noise of the stressful surroundings of the crowded waiting room. I had to wipe away tears and cry. I told them to cancel and I left. I cried very publicly sobbing all the way down the stairs and outside to my car. Probably 3 people saw me. I sat in my car and cried so hard I have a headache. Why would he do this to me. I felt so alone and unloved. He said he was going home and to be ready. At the same we were supposed to already be there. I cried and I could barely drive. I screamed at the top of my lungs just to release all that energy I had built up. My throat was hurting from screaming. I got home. Called the imaging place and said when my appointment was and that I was late and if I could take a later slot or should I still run by could I make it? He said I would make it. He picked me up I had been done balling my eyes out now. I kept my mouth shut. He said he was the only one in the shop. In my head I thought yeah perfect time to not fucking be there. Why would you show up, when your “wife” and doctor tell you not to work and your own fucking coworkers don’t even show up. For Christ sake the boss is on vacation right now. I kept my mouth shut. After 40 minutes of driving we got there, checked in. Waited maybe 20 minutes or more. Until they called me to the desk and told me we are rescheduling. She said it was at different location. She said she’d give me the address. The card she gave me ended up having the same fucking address that we were at. He was so mad. The first thing he said to ,e at the desk was. “I don’t want to miss more work.” He was upset because he’d have to miss work for another appointment. He immediately in the car told me it was my fault and I should have gotten the name of the man who said I could still make it to the appointment. He was mad. I don’t blame home 40 minutes there and back and the waiting time. Waste of gas. I told him not to come next time. Which honestly won’t bother me now. Apparently I ask for too much so I’ll stop asking. I hate going to labs by myself but fuck it and fuck him he left us hanging. We will find out tomorrow I think what’s wrong with his heart. He isn’t surprised all the men I’m his family die young from heart attacks. He was all smiling when he told me about it for the first time that the doctor said there were problems. My aunt is coming from Hawaii and asked Anthony what time is good to give him a massage. He doesn’t want to take the day off to see her. I swear at this point he should quit both fucking jobs. Having one day off every two months is getting ridiculous. So I had two things to get done today. My labs and ultrasound. Which I’ve been expecting to do today for over a month. I didn’t get shit done. For fucks sake. I kept wanting comfort or hand holding the whole time. He just looked at his phone and wanted to shop for snake things.

[pmtexts]

Tic Tic Tok

⤑ Prompt: Everyone is injected with two permanent watches on their arm. One is the time that they have left until they meet their soulmate. The other is the time that they have left until they die.

⤑ Word count: ~2k

⤑ Angst, Soulmate!Yugyeom

–

When I was born the doctors implemented this watch-band thingy to my wrist that told me how long I have left until I die. I basically have three more months at this point, and I’m only 19.

I was also given another watch-band thingy that told me how much longer I have left until I meet my soulmate. It hasn’t turned on yet bc my soulmate hasn’t gone to get his turned on. That’s the thing about the soulmate watch, you need to go to a specialist to get it turned on. So I guess my soulmate, whoever they are, either doesn’t believe in soulmates, or they just think I’ll be ugly. Ouch.

Ever since I was younger I had fantasized about my forever lover. “Maybe he’ll be a prince on horseback!” I wondered when I was 6. “Maybe he’ll be in some kind of band.” When I was 13 and boy-crazed for guys with instruments – I had always wanted the drummers. And now I wonder if I’ll ever even get the chance to meet him, since I have such little life left.

—-

Now here I am, 11pm and cramming in my Honors Biology homework for tomorrow and really wishing I had someone that I loved to help me with my stress.

‘I wish I was still 6 years old, because I really need my prince char-’

PING!!

Slowly and hesitantly, I looked down to where my soulmate band is, right under my life band.

3MO 2DAYS 01HR 00MIN 05SEC

Immediately my face went whiter than my bedsheets. My eyes shifted slightly upwards where I read my life band.

3MO 2DAYS 01HR 00MIN 04SEC

The two watches were in sync.

‘I meet my soulmate…at the same time I die?’

—-

“Your soulmate must be Jesus himself. Why else would your soulmate meet you at the same time that you die?”

For the next few weeks after my soulmate band lit up with the, now dreadful, numbers, this is the majority of comments I’d get from people. I get that they’re trying to make me feel more lighthearted about this whole ordeal, but I’d really appreciate if they would just shut up sometimes. I know now that this is probably a glitch in the system. I mean, why would my soulmate be the one who kills me? 

“Maybe we should go get it checked out, like, I’m sure there must be glitches in the system. After all, this only started about a year before I was born, so it was still fairly new when you were born. They must have accidentally programmed the same number twice.” Sometimes, my best friend Jackson actually has good ideas. “Okay yeah, that’s reasonable. Let’s go downtown next week to their regional headquarters and settle this out, because I don’t think Jesus would be that great of a match for me.” I responded back, with the last remark resulting in Jackson erupting in his ever-so contagious laughter.

So with that, next week has rolled around and we’re now standing in front of the ominous government building about 20 miles away from campus. I feel a hand reach over to grab mine with a little squeeze, and I squeeze back while looking up and giving Jackson a half smile. He could definitely see the hesitation lingering in my eyes, as he gave me an even bigger smile back. One that told me everything would work out alright.

Gulping, I look down at my two bands to get an update until D-Day.

2MO 15DAYS 10HR 42MIN 34SEC

‘Maybe they just got my soulmate day mixed up with my death day. It’s not like I’ll probably be terminally ill in two months.’ My mind reassured me. 

Taking in my last breath of fresh air, I let go of Jackson’s hand and entered the building.

The building looked like any other office building, you’ve got your waiting area, mass amounts of elevators, a big area for receptionists – probably one for each big area of business here – and there is also a few families crying on their way out, having just had to send their dead loved one away. We made our way over to the receptionist for the soulmate handlers, a very tall and handsome man with died blonde hair. 

Mark Tuan was what his name tag read. “Hello and welcome to the Soulmate Center. Do you have an appointment or would you like a walk in consultation?” He asked with a vibrantly bright smile. “Could we have a walk in?” I asked. “Sure thing, just sit on one of the couches and I will send a request for you two. Guess your match didn’t work out huh?” He responded, while looking at both of us and shaking his head. ‘Gross, he thinks I’m with Jackson!’ “Oh nono, I’ve already found my match, is her that has the problem.” Jackson referred to me and the receptionist nodded, mumbling a sorry out. 

“I just need your name to send out the request Miss.” Mark handed me a paper and pen to write out my name. Once I did so, I slid it back to him and Jackson and I took a seat on one of their fading red couches. “You’d think that for a place so high tech, they’d update their furniture every now and then.” I disgustingly whispered while pulling at a failing string attachment.

“Hey sugar relax, it’ll all be settled out in a little bit muffin. Just sit tight baby.” Mocked Jackson, alluding to the mix up. “Gross dude, I’d never go for you even IF you were my soulmate. I don’t want someone who does their laundry once a month.” I lightly hit his arm.

He started to defend himself, something about not wanting the colors to fade easily, when he got interrupted by a calling out of my name from a technician. I got up quickly and peered down at my wrist, seeing that I was supposedly ten minutes closer to both tragedies displayed. Taking another deep breath in, I strode over to the man who called out to me.

“Hello Miss Y/N, I’m Mr. Park. I understand you have an issue you would like to discuss about your soulmate watch?” He shook my hand and led me down the hall and took one right turn and then a left turn before arriving at the third door on the left.

“Hi yes, I think there must be something faulty in your system.” I raised my right wrist to show him the two identical countdowns and his face fell.

“Oh no, no no no there’s nothing wrong with our system. We’ve been trying to see if there’s any way that we could fix this, assuming our coding got messed up. I’m sorry to say this but there’s absolutely no way to fix this. I know it may sound crazy, but you will fall at the hands of your lover.”

Tears immediately started streaming down my face as each word he said was like a knife jabbing into my heart, which was ironic given the situation at hand. “The day that your soulmate came in, our servers immediately sent out red signals and sirens in my office after I turned on his timer. I checked into the system to see what went wrong, and I found you. Now, with this visit I was hoping you were requesting to shut off your timer and forget about this whole situation.”

At this point he was rambling on and on, trying to better asses the situation. However, all I could hear and feel was the world slowly going numb. I’m never going to have my prince charming. I’m never going to have my drummer boy in some punk band. 

At least I’ll get to see him. Once.

—-

Everyone talks about wanting to live up their last moments in life by throwing massive ragers or breaking petty laws to run from the police. I, however, have spent the last two months cooped up in my apartment with only my roommate and Jackson to keep me company, and it’s generally been just Jackson.

“Y/N, tomorrow’s the day. You can’t spend today just in a ball surrounded by your blanket’s and pillows.” Jackson wined, trying to pull my blankets off of me. “If I never get up though, maybe I won’t have to face him ever and I can just continue living my life, never needing a soulmate and dying at a normal age. Or even a car crash when I’m in my 40s.” I barely made out, as my face was buried in some pillows.

“Fine, whatever. Just don’t die thinking I couldn’t have done anything.” Jackson spit out while throwing the blanket part he had in his hands back onto me.

As soon as I heard the front door slam, signaling Jackson’s leave, warm tears filled my cheeks. The next few hours of the day were filled with different scenarios running through my mind of how I’ll die tomorrow.

At round 5pm, I finally got up. Not from some sudden want to go out and live my life, but purely because of hunger. I went into the kitchen to make some ramen, when I heard the news on in the living room. Putting the pot set to boil, I left the kitchen and sat on one of the chairs in the living room to watch what the people speaking had to say about my city.

“A string of breakins have been occurring in the apartment complex near the mall. An armed robber has been breaking into apartments and attempted to shoot some of the owners while raiding anything that they can. If you live near or in the complex, we suggest leaving the premise immediately and seek other shelter tonight and the rest of the time until the authorities catch the robber.”

The only thing that brought me out of my trance was hearing the boiled water spill over into the fire, singeing. I hopped off of the chair, turned off the water and ran into my room to grab a pair of clothes as well as other necessities and drove myself over to Jackson’s apartment complex, a 20 minute drive away.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNO-

“What do you WANT?!” Jackson threw open the front door and I squeezed under the available space under his arms. “Jackson I need to spend the night and I changed my mind I want to do something tomorrow night I don’t care where we go but I need to live for my last night we can go downtown and go drinking or we can completely go to another city I don’t care I just need to get out tomorrow night” I rambled trying to catch my breath in between words.

—-

The morning and afternoon went normally, I crashed on Jackson’s couch last night. Now, it is 8pm and we’re both getting ready to drink the night away. Last night, when I recovered my breath and my sanity, I better explained to Jackson the situation and that I might miss him tonight if he planned to come to my apartment. Plus, my room mate is out of town visiting her family so he won’t possibly get her either.

However, my life band never changed it’s time. It kept ticking. So I decided that it must just keep running no matter what so I forgot about it and continued getting ready for tonight.

“Ready?” I looked over in the mirror to Jackson’s resting body on the door frame. I put my last swatch of lip-gloss on my lips and nodded, moving through the door frame Jackson had just resided in.

I took a fresh breath in when I stepped outside, and made my way behind Jackson towards the Uber he had ordered us. 

“Let’s spend one of my possible last nights right by getting shitfaced.” I reached out to Jackson’s hand, giving it a quick squeeze before getting in the backseat.

—-

I could barely walk on my own two feet now. I lost count of how many shots I had after five and how many bottles of beer after my third. I didn’t realize, but I accidentally left Jackson alone in the club when I stumbled out of the doors, almost falling flat on my face and thus shattering my almost empty bottle in my hands.

On my way back to standing straight, I caught a glimpse of my band. 

0MO 00DAYS 00HR 00MIN 10SEC

Drunkenly, I started counting down as if it were new years eve. “10..9..8HIC7..6..5..4HIC3..2..1!” I took my last swig of beer in my hand.

A deafening shot rang through the air. I fall back on my back. I look up to see the most handsome man with equally stunning eyes and hair. His black attire fades into the surrounding black of the night.

~~~~~

Oo my first story on here! I hope you guys enjoyed it and didn’t want to kill me the whole time :) please send feedback about my writing and maybe request something along the way ;))

[takeeachdayonebookatatime]

Triple f  day  [flashpoint fanfiction friday]

 

(Sometimes you wonder if this attack was planned)

Staring the whole team.

Greg : pov  the new guy on team 4 is weird, the way he stares at jules, he always seems so angry around her to me. The other team leaders/Sargent's are talking about him since Donna is out for a few weeks for her honeymoon Carl has never been around another woman officer, only Jules. We think it might be a woman he does not like, we are not sure. Spike and Wordy are restocking the self while Sam and Jules exercise together. We decided to watch him closely from now on.

Wordy : pov me and spike are restocking the shelf and telling jokes. We talk about family and I told him the girls made get well soon cards for his dad, and I would drop them off tomorrow so he could give them to his dad.

Sam : pov I had to pee so bad but I did not want to leave jules alone that one officer Carl is weird around her. Since no one was in the gym, jules told me she would be fine. and to go pee 2 minutes after, on my way back to the gym I hear her scream really loud I manage to pull him of off her. Since he was choking her he ran off,  while I caught her before she fell onto the floor. I laid her down then checked her vitals. She was not breathing and unconscious. I managed to call winnie, and have her call medics and have wordy bring a medical kit. A few seconds later and wordy arrived with the medical kit I opened it. And grabbed the resuscitation mask i had wordy slowly pumping air into jules. I felt around her neck and put an ice pack on it, to try and keep the swelling  down. spike was by the door waiting for the medics.

Jules : pov I was working out with sam while he was in the bathroom. Carl came into the gym and started yelling about how women are worthless, useless and have no place on an sru team. He accused me of hoarding the work out equipment for myself. All of a sudden he started to attack me. He was choking me but I managed to scream before Sam came and everything started to turn black it was so hard to breathe.

Ed : pov we were not fast enough and that sob attack jules now we need to go find him, sam is taking care of jules we are looking in every room for him even in the closets. He was not on the main floor of the building. His car was still in the parking lot so he could not have gone very far.

Sam : pov I found an epi pen in the medical kit and decided to try it to see if it would help open up her airway. Once the medics arrived they took over, I told them her vitals and what happened.  A medic named Terry tilted her head back and inserted a number 5et tube since her airway was closing, he went with a smaller tube. Once it was properly in place he secured it and then inserted an iv in her arm. He also hooked her up to some monitors. I rode with her the whole way to the er. A dr and a specialist were waiting for us in triage room one. They gave jules some pain meds since she was starting to stir a little. Once she was back asleep a dr named Jerry did an ultrasound of her neck while dr Jen felt around she said everything feels okay, but she wants some scans to be sure. 40 minutes later and she came back to talk about the results. She said it is very severe bruising of the airway with some soft tissue that is injured/inflamed it will be at least 3 days before the breathing tube can come out. Maybe more he went to tell the team the update on jules while she was moved to the icu.

Spike : what happened to jules was so scary. I'm so glad Troy and Greg thought to look in the woman's bathroom because they found him hiding in there. Sam gave us an update on her injury; it does not sound good at all. The dr told Sam a few more seconds and she would have died. He really did save her life today. We visited her every day for 5 day.

Sam : pov it has been 5 days  since the attack the dr said we could try and wake her up just slowly. At noon jules woke up and was trying to pull her breathing tube out.  The specialist dr Jen came in and checked jules's vitals then started to take the tube out. Once it was out she switched her to an oxygen mask. She told her no talking, swallowing will be hard and hurt alot. A nurse wheeled in a cart with some  supplies on it, dr Jen said it is for her feeding tube jules was not happy with that at all once the dr placed the feeding tube down jules's nose she taped it in place and started administering the tube food.

Jules : pov ugh the feeding tube is ruff, swallowing hurts, breathing hurts. I'm just plain miserable, I fell asleep until 6 then the team came by. They talked with me About their day and how the new recruits are working out. I wrote my sentences down on a dry erase board so I could be included in the conversation. The team left at 7 except for Greg who stayed a little while extra so Sam could eat, it was awesome Greg stayed with me for a bit, we got to talk about stuff so he talked I wrote what I wanted to say afterwards me, and Sam went to bed. In the morning I got transferred to a regular room. Then Sam showered while my dr checked my vitals and stuff she said I could shower if I wanted to.

Sam : pov Dr Jen said jules could shower but the oxygen mask goes back on immediately after. A shower chair was put in the bathroom for jules 15 minutes later and jules was back in bed and asleep. I went down to the cafeteria for lunch. It was now 1pm and Jules was up and we watched a movie. Jules signed to me that she was thankful I saved her life. Yesterday shelly had stopped at jules house in the morning and got her some clothes which jules was wearing now. Tomorrow jules had physical therapy and a form of food therapy. The team came to visit for 1 hour, Wordy talked about his kids and so did ed they even had get well soon cards from their kids. After we went to bed. It was the 7th day jules had spent in the hospital, jules did not get her morning feeding.  A guy from Food therapy came to see jules, Dr Jen switched her to nasal oxygen, he checked her throat and cleared her to try liquids. Water was the first down it was ruff but it went down, her breakfast was a protein drink. After the physical therapist came to work with Jules she had her walking around and doing some light exercises. Lunch was some chicken broth. Dr Jen cleared jules to not need oxygen one step closer to getting released. Sam played a few board games with jules she showered, so did sam dinner was a smoothie for jules and a sandwich for him. The team came by and talked about their day and how jules was doing. They talked for an hour while jules signed/wrote down what she wanted to say after Dr Jen came in and gave jules her medicine for her throat. She pulled Sam aside to talk about jules and how she was making good progress, she said if everything looks good tomorrow they can start to talk about  a release plan for her.

Jules : pov

It was the next morning my breakfast was a protein shake, the lady from pt was ruff everything was so sore I guess a week of not moving does that to you. Lunch was more broth this time it was beef flavored. Sam had a roast beef sandwich then we both showered. I was taken down for some neck/throat scan which made me scared Dr Jen said everything was looking better. She said I could try and talk but to not use my voice too much it will hurt a lot. I tried to talk but nothing happened. I was then taken for more test and  scans afterwards a speech therapist came by to see me. She said it might take time and hard work but I would talk again. Later After dinner which was a smoothie for me and pasta for sam. The guy from food therapy came by and talked about solid foods I can have starting tomorrow. 

Sam : pov the team came over at six, I told them the good news jules could have solid starting tomorrow I also told them the not so good news that jules could not talk yet The dr cleared her for it but no sound came out when she tried she thinks it is temporary. In the morning jules got her feeding tube taken out it was not pretty. Breakfast was apple sauce which went down dr Jen said jules would need to eat soft foods for a week and then go from there at her follow up appointment. Jules was so excited she signed does this mean I'm getting released and dr Jen said after lunch if all looks good. I called Greg and told him the good news jules had oatmeal for lunch. I had some eggs, wordy called and asked me if jules needed anything food wise because shelly is at the grocery store and can pick it up so when you get home there will be soft foods available for jules. Sam thanked wordy and told him what jules could eat he said shelly could pick up some baby food. Since that is very soft and comes in a lot of flavors. Sam asked Jules, she said it was okay with her. 40 minutes later and jules was getting released dr Jen handed jules her speech therapy scheduled. The speech therapist had handed to her she was cleared for light workouts and exercising and to not over do it. At home shelly had left a note, jules napped until dinner which was banana baby food jules, signed it tasted good. We showered and went to bed. In the morning I got jules showered and my self her breakfast was a protein drink. We made it to her therapy appointment on time. Since they had run some tests at the hospital they knew all about her medical history the slp named Jessica did some manual  circumlaryngeal techniques on jules. She also showed us some stretches and self massage techniques. After we went home and jules ate mashed potatoes, she then fell asleep until dinner which was more baby food peas and carrots yum. Tomorrow she had more speech therapy. To be continued........

[jahmusicandlive]

SubWoofers: It’s Showtime

The day was here. The day we had been building up to for seven months. The day that had caused endless stress, documents, and spreadsheets. The day that pretty much represented my input and effort of second year (I would say roughly 85% of any of the work I have done this year has been towards this event).

One thing I had already agreed with myself about a week prior to the event was that I was going to stay happy and positive. Generally I find this fairly easy, I tend to have a positive outlook in day to day life, however, I also know that once I allow my stress to work me up into a mess I struggle to get out of that spiral. I like to think that I did a pretty good job of staying happy, which doesn’t really sound like a job at all, but I think as a leader, if you’re smiling your team are more likely to, like a sort of reassurance that things are on track.

As requested I arrived later than the first group. My mum was generously offering her photography services to us and so she picked me up and drove me in for 8:30. Though I had offered, we both knew that her staying at my house wasn’t the best idea as my only downtime (sleep) needed to be comfortable and having another person to focus on wasn’t going to help that. I cannot explain how incredible it was to have my mum at the event, getting to see me in action. I am very close with her and always keep her updated on uni work, so she has been a part of this journey too. I also know from the past 20 years of my life that if I make my way into that stress spiral, there is one person who can ALWAYS get me out of it. Shout out to you mum, you are a living legend.

Anyway, I arrived at 8:30 (though that hadn’t stopped me being up since 5:30 checking documents and communicating with the early team to make sure everything was going according to plan) and went straight out to the field. The site actually looked like a festival site and I was BUZZING. This was also the first day that the whole team would be on site and I would be coordinating approx. 40 people. One of the tasks that I had an active influence on was the build and break roles, and basically deciding who needed to come to the site on which days. This is definitely something I would have changed in hindsight. We knew we would need people that were actually going to turn up and put the work in, but a few more bodies would have definitely made the process quicker and easier.

When security arrived on site I became two radios Jessie (see flattering picture below). At this point, I really had to get my head in the game, as not only did I need to focus on communicating with people in person, I also had two radios to listen to. Oh and not to forget my phone ringing every five minutes with calls from members of the team without radios. The staggered arrival times of team members meant the radio protocol had been mostly swept aside. Thought this didn’t cause any major issues there were definitely hiccups involving people cutting into other conversations or just speaking rather than using a call and response system (“Jessie to X”, “Go ahead”). One item mentioned in the debrief was that everyone should have arrived at the same time, with one briefing for all including health and safety, radio protocol, and any other information necessary.

The rest of the team arrived after 10 and were given the health and safety briefing. Then came the moment that made everything real… Alan (our course leader) turned to the group and said “Jessie is the event manager, Jessie is in charge, any questions go to Jessie and she will either answer them or send you to a person that can answer them”. In that moment I realised how much responsibility I had been given and how much was relying on me, but funnily enough it didn’t send me into a panic, instead, it got me pumped. It also reassured me that people would listen to me, as the day before I felt I struggled a little with enforcing instructions, so for everyone to have been told clearly (by someone of authority) that my instructions needed to be followed was a relief.

Though the arena was not due to open to the public until 1pm, myself, Jess (H&S coordinator) and Michele (THD CEO) were scheduled to carry out a final walk around at 12pm to ensure that all structures were safe and everything was in place ready to open. At around 11:50 I started running around, knowing fully well that there were still bits to do, however, it turned out that most of these tasks were reasonably small and could be achieved in a short time with the help of many hands. One aspect that was an issue, however, was the security. In the build-up to the event I had been responsible for arranging and liaising with security. When I met with the boss of the company I felt assured that they were event specialists and since the event target audience didn’t pose any major threats we chose to use their services. The reality was that, although the boss fully knew what he was talking about and the industry, most of his team didn’t. One or two of the on-site team were great, fully communicative and on top of it… the other were simply bodies. They didn’t have any clue about what was going on and within that there is definitely room for improvement on our part as their briefing clearly needed to be more in-depth, potentially even held a day or two before the event so that it didn’t clash with the madness of the on-site tasks. There was also an inability to follow simple instruction and in the end, it took the CEO going down and shouting at them for them to actually follow instructions. I understand that with it only being a one-day event, by the time you have your head around it, it’s almost over, however they felt very separated like they were their own little group and only their team leader would communicate with me, it didn’t feel like a coherent collaboration.

It was showtime! Generally, most things within the arena were running smoothly, the two areas that were a bit hectic were the box office and arranging the stewards. Though I was event manager I had fairly little to do with the box office as there were box office assistants, who were managed by the box office manager, who was managed by the logistics coordinator, and so there were already people capable of making the decisions and adjustments necessary to improve the situation. When it came to arranging the stewards Remely (staffing coordinator) was on boss mode. Having made the stewarding rota I knew what the plan was, however as we found out, rotas completely change on the day when volunteers drop out and problem areas need more help and attention. There were a handful of times that Remely called me asking for assistance or advice on who to move where, but other than that I felt comfortable in the knowledge that she was on top of it and props to her because it’s an insanely difficult job.

Once most people were through the gates the day was in full swing and everyone seemed to be really enjoying themselves. I’ll set the gif (below) speak for itself. I ended up making multiple radio calls along the lines of “does anything need doing, are there any issues anyone needs help with” because my team were doing their jobs so efficiently.

As the final act performed everyone managed to find 10 minutes or so to experience the show. Some of the team went on the rides, others just sat down in the sun for a bit. I was walking near to the main stage as saw my mum dancing to Ska Souls - This may seem like nothing to some people, but I usually have to drag my mum onto the dance floor and build up her confidence to let go and have a proper boogie, so to see her doing this by herself made me unbelievably happy - and so I had no option but to go and join her for a dance. Little did I know that Dan captured a few seconds of it (and probably doesn’t realise how much this footage means to me).

Once that moment was over I had to round everyone up in the production office to go over breakdown roles. Before I could start, Remely got everyone’s attention and ended up giving me a little thank you speech. My production team got me two bottles of spiced rum (my drink of choice) and a card. I cannot put into words how thankful I am to have been blessed my team members. Though some struggled to find motivation at times, we all came together and smashed it! Thank you to all my production gals (that includes you, Michael) for making my life so much easier, I couldn’t have coped without you guys. And while I’m here thanking people, let’s chuck a thank you over to the other team leaders. Without our weekly meetings and communal stress rants, I don’t think we’d have pulled off this event. You guys were my stability through this rollercoaster and I can’t wait for us to work together in the future, cause I know that whatever we do together, we’ll smash it!

Now I am aware this post is getting fairly long now, so it’s lucky that the breakdown on the day was a fairly swift process. Once everyone’s roles were allocated it was GO! GO! GO! (This was definitely helped by the fact that once we were finished we knew we could rush home and go out to the final night of Festiball). During this time I was pretty much just overseeing everything. The main issues involved the vehicle egress. Because so much planning had gone into the placement of stewards during the event, the post-event placement had been given less attention. In reality, more stewards were needed throughout the exit route, as well as more signage (In a larger font size). Within this egress route, more attention should have also been given to traders, as it was a one-way system it became difficult for them to get back onto the field from the parking area. All problems were solved but we were all so focused on the show itself and the breakdown that the egress definitely should have been looked at in more detail.

Though there were many other highlights and hiccups, this post is already longer than anyone wants it to be, so I will finish up here. One last thing I must write is to Alan. Alan dropped the bombshell on us a few days before the event that he would be leaving the university at the end of this term. Now, if you had told me this a year ago, I would have been concerned for the future of my course, but I wouldn’t have been particularly personally affected. Over the past year (the past 5 months in particular) I have grown to have the biggest respect for you and I am truly gutted that you are leaving. You have done so much for this course and this event and I know that in the future I will look back knowing that you will have had a major impact on my work ethic and my career, so again, thank you so much.

[imjustthemechanic]

The French Mistake

Part 1/? - A Visitor Part 2/? - The Kulturhistorisk Museum Heist Part 3/? - Cutscene Part 4/? - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Part 5/? - Breathless

Saving the world will have to wait a few hours - there are pick-ups to film.

The most obvious solution, of course, was to do exactly the opposite of whatever it was Loki had done to get them here.  The obvious problem with that solution was that they had no idea how to do that.

“We’ll need the rune stone and the tesseract,” Steve observed.  “The rune stone will be in the museum, probably, but if the Avengers are just a movie in this universe, then where’s the tesseract?”

“Maybe in storage with SHIELD,” Nat suggested.  “Maybe in Asgard.  Maybe at the bottom of the ocean, there’s no way to tell from here.”

None of those were comforting possibilities.  “Once we have them, we’ll have to figure out how to program the rune stone,” Steve went on, remembering how Loki had worked with the gold pieces he’d inserted in it.

“Loki obviously knew how to do that, and Thor might, too,” Nat said.  “I don’t think even Loki is foolish enough to do something like universe-hopping without a fallback plan, so we can probably assume he can get us back even if Thor can’t.  We just have to find him.”

“And make him,” said Steve, who suspected they’d have a hard time making Loki do anything.

“But if they’ve ended up where their actors were, like we did,” Nat held up the notes she’d made, “then we have their names.  That’s a good start.”

“Then let’s not waste any more time,” said Steve.

He closed the laptop and stood, but just then, Dodger began to bark.  A moment later, somebody knocked on the trailer door.  Steve glanced at Natasha, who shrugged, so he got up and went to answer it.

The caller was as tall, thin man with a mustache, who immediately leaned down to give the dog a head rub.  “Hey, Dodger!” he said with a smile, then straightened up to talk to Steve.  “Thought I’d let you know, it’s almost two.  Ridley needs you two back in makeup.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Steve.  “Tell him we’ll be right there.”

He shut the door again and went to the closet to grab something more weather-appropriate than his track suit – but when he happened to look out the bedroom window, he saw that the stranger had not left.  He was standing at the door, waiting for them.  The trailer had only one door, and the windows didn’t open far enough for Steve to climb out.  He momentarily considered just knocking the guy out and fleeing, but as Natasha had said, these people really weren’t a threat.  They were just trying to make a movie, and had no idea that their stars were no longer their stars…

… and, Steve realized, he still couldn’t tell them.  In their own universe, Steve and Natasha would have been arrested if they’d told anyone their real names.  In this one, they would probably be considered insane.

“You got any ideas?” he asked Nat.

“Bide our time and wait for an opportunity,” she replied.  “When we get a chance to leave without having to make a big production out of it, we’ll leave.”

“So we just go on set?  And do what?” asked Steve.  “We don’t even know what movie we’re making.”

“It’s called Breathless,” Nat replied authoritatively.  “Ridley Scott is directing.  It’s loosely based on an incident on the Space Station Mir in 1997, when there was a fire and explosion.  I read the script pages they gave me,” she added.

Of course she had.  Nat never missed an opportunity to learn something.  “You’re taking this very well,” Steve observed.

“Believe it or not, this isn’t my first alternate universe,” said Nat.  “Last time, though, we had an open portal home whenever we needed it.”

The man with the mustache, who said his name was Henry, led them into another trailer parked just outside the building.  This one was much more utilitarian, boxy and windowless, and inside was a row of mirrors and makeup tables, separated by cubicle partitions.  Henry got Steve and Natasha settled at two of these, and the woman named Maddy returned with cups of coffee to pass out.

“Okay,” she said, handing one to Steve.  “Since the Russian doesn’t meet ScarJo’s high standards, instead we’re gonna grab some extra close-ups.  Chris, we’ll get you into a pre-fire EVA helmet on greenscreen two, for the first cargo bay sequence.”  She gave him a couple of pages, and then moved on.  “Scarlett, you’ll be in a post-fire B jumpsuit for Olga’s message to her brother.  Tabitha!” she called out.

“Already on it!” a voice replied from just outside.

Henry got to work, wiping old makeup off Steve’s face and dabbing a new layer on.  Meanwhile, a woman with dark hair in a pixie cut, who turned out to be the previously unseen Tabitha, brought in the costumes.  Steve’s was a big cumbersome thing that he recognized as the upper half of a spacesuit.  She hung it on a hook on the wall, and went on to deliver costumes to the rest of the cast.

Steve looked down at the pages he’d been given.  These ones had bent corners and multiple corrections in blue pen, as if they’d been used before.  His eye caught the highlighted words Rankin gazes in awe at the blue vista of Earth, and he felt his stomach turn inside-out all over again.

This was no good.  Steve could do a lot of things, but acting wasn’t one of them.  He couldn’t even tell little white lies, much less simulate gazing in awe at anything.  If he couldn’t make I don’t know sound convincing, what the hell was he supposed to do with it’s like you could reach out and touch it?

Maddy came back to look over Steve’s shoulder while Henry worked on his face.  “Any questions?” she asked.

The first one that sprang to mind was can I be excused?, but Steve suspected he already knew what the answer would be.  “Where’s Dodger?” he asked.  Who looked after the dog while the owner was filming?

“Relax,” Henry assured him.  “Paulette will take him for his walk, on schedule.”

Through the partition, Steve could hear Natasha laughing at something one of her own assistants had said.  “Oh, that sounds just like Mark!” she said delightedly.

Steve wondered who Mark was.  Then he wondered if Natasha knew.

The makeup took an awfully long time.  Steve had seen both Natasha and Peggy do their faces up inside of ten minutes and come out looking fabulous, but this took nearly forty-five, and as far as Steve could tell from his reflection he looked no different at the end of it than he had at the beginning.  Next, Tabitha and Henry helped Steve into his half-a-spacesuit, which weighed far more than it looked like it did, and led him back into the studio building.

The long process had at least given him time to look at the lines he was expected to say, and it looked as if all that was happening in the scene was Matt Rankin looking at the earth and talking about how cool it was.  Steve was starting to tell himself that he could do that.  When he’d done the Captain America movies in the 40’s, he’d been playing himself – it hadn’t been very good, but when filming a scene he’d been able to look back at the real events it was based on, and try to imitate what he’d said or felt at the time.  He’d never actually seen the earth from space, of course, but he could remember the awe of watching the Chi’Tauri vessels come through the wormhole or something like that.  If he just got himself into the right headspace, it couldn’t be that hard…

Henry and Tabitha showed him into a room where there was a green wall, and positioned him in front of it.  A camera rig rolled right up to his face, making him lean away involuntarily.

“Okay,” said a woman standing next to the camera.  “Let’s start with the wordless ones.  Awe at the blue vista, please.”

Steve blinked and looked around.  “Where is it?” he asked.

“Where’s what?” said the woman.

“The blue vista,” he clarified.  “What am I supposed to look at?”

“Same as last time,” she said, as if this were reassuring or even comprehensible.  “Right there.”

She pointed at the ceiling.  There was another green panel up there.

Steve felt his moment of confidence drain away.  How was he supposed to express awe at the blue vista when all he was looking at was a green panel?  “It’s not even blue!” he protested.

“You’re an actor,” the woman replied.  “Use your imagination.  “Lights!”

The ambient light in the room went out, and a huge cluster of blue-white bulbs came on overhead.  In the heavy spacesuit costume, Steve immediately felt like he was overheating.

He tried, though.  The best thing he could come up with to imagine was the opening sequence from the Planet Earth documentary series, which definitely featured a blue vista rolling by.  He could sort of imagine actually being in space with that looming over him.  Before he could really get into it, though, the camera moved even closer, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking directly into the lens.

“Cut!” said the woman.  “Try it again.”

It was no good, though.  The camera was right there.  He couldn’t not look at it – if he tried, he became paranoid that it would run right over him.  Then there was the inescapable knowledge that he was being watched.  That was what Steve had always hated most about the War Bonds ads, or any television appearance, the constant presence of the staring audience.  He’d had to take Peggy’s advice and pretend there was a one-way mirror between them.  The whole thing just made him feel so silly.

Eventually the second-unit director got fed up and decided to try something else.  One of the grips read out what was supposed to be dialogue from mission control, while Steve, in the role of Mission Specialist Matt Rankin, replied.

“How’s the view, Rankin?” the script-reader asked.

Steve took a deep breath.  “Spectacular.  It’s like I could reach out and touch it.”

“Can you see your house from up there?”

“I can see everybody’s house from up here,” said Steve.

“Cut,” sighed the second-unit director.  “Try it again.  A little passion, Chris?  This isn’t Captain America’s Fitness Challenge.”

Steve wanted to retract his head into the spacesuit costume like a turtle into its shell.  Why couldn’t he have landed in an alternate universe where people didn’t remember Captain America’s Fitness Challenge?

At last the second-unit director gave up in disgust and told everybody to take a break.  Henry and Tabitha helped Steve out of the heavy spacesuit costume and gave him a bottle of water to re-hydrate after standing under the hot studio lights.  As he stood there chugging it, wiggling uncomfortably in a shirt practically pasted to him by sweat, Ridley Scott entered the room.

“How’s it going?”

“We’re having an Off Day,” the second-unit director said, looking at Steve out of the sides of her eyes.

“I’m… just not feeling it,” said Steve.  “I need to go look at some space pictures or something.”

“Apparently we used up all our good work in that stunt this morning,” Scott grumbled.  “Scarlett’s suddenly having trouble deciding what a Russian accent sounds like.”

From out in the hall came Natasha’s voice.  “Russia has the surface area of the moon,” she said.  “If you want a ‘Russian accent’, you need to be more specific.”

Steve finished his water and wiped his forehead.  “Could I get another one of these?” he asked hopefully.

There was a cooler in the makeup trailer with water and sodas in it.  Steve dug a second bottle out, and downed it while Natasha lounged in one of the chairs examining her fingernails, seemingly having a great time playing the spoiled starlet.

“How’d you do?” she asked Steve with a smirk.

“I’m not sure I’m speaking to you,” said Steve.  He mopped his forehead with the edge of his t-shirt.  “I don’t think I need to, anyway, you were probably watching the whole thing.”

“Actually, no,” said Nat, “but I’m hoping we can see the dailies!  Anyway.”  She sat up and held out her phone.  “I didn’t learn anything about the tesseract, but that’s not surprising.  I did manage to learn, though, that Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, is currently on sabbatical with his family in Australia.”

The picture she’d found was of a smiling man in a jacket and tie, with short blond hair and beard stubble.  He did look like Thor, although it was strange to see him with his hair cut.  “I thought I was Chris,” said Steve.

“Apparently there’s a lot of Chris around here,” said Nat.

“Any sign of a chance to escape yet?” Steve asked.  It couldn’t come fast enough.

“A little more bad acting from you ought to do the trick,” Natasha said.  “Sooner or later they’ll just give up.”

“I’m glad I’m good for something,” said Steve.

There was a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer, another studio employee leaned into the makeup trailer.  This was a thin young woman with long, limp blonde hair under a pink knitted hat.  “Excuse me, Scarlett?” she said to Nat.  “Your husband’s here.”

[stone-man-warrior]

Duplicate because the account is hijacked again, cannot make necessary editing because of terror hijack of the account:

===================================================

February 5, 2021: 4:33 pm:

I have been placed into the Jesus Gauntlet, it's been underway for three days now, since Tuesday night when the initial assassin attacked me in my driveway. That one is believed to have been Sean Sparacino. The assassin was wearing Pixel Suit electronic invisible, wearable video screen costume that operates with an array of built in cameras that are arranged to display the area that is towards the back of the suit, onto the front of the suit, such that a skilled assassin is able to hide within brush, or anywhere in such a way the when the victim approaches the area, there is nothing to see other than the items or brush that is present in the area where the suit is worn. Usually, the assassin crawl on the ground to achieve maximum stealth camouflage, then the (they) stand up at the moment of the attack, or, simply extend a sword such that the victim will trip over it while the assassin is crouched low, near the ground, blending in, not casting a shadow. The sword or any other items the assassin has is visible, but are camouflaged differently. Head, hands, and feet remain visible, but are camouflaged differently for maximum stealth.

Sean Sparacino, or who ever it was that night lost his head when I saw the sword, still in the scabbard, grabbed it, turned it around and cut the assassins head off, then thrust the sword into the assassins neck, and placed his head onto the handle of the sword.

Sean became a Joe Biden Bobble Head Doll.

His nitrous oxide tank ignited, and launched to the other side of my yard, nearby 520 Jackpine in the woods, when I lit my lighter after defending. After that, I went to check my mailbox, and wrote about the conditions of the neighborhood, and some other stuff about Shane Welsh.

I needed to go to Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon on Wednesday, and they are the people who initiated and set the Jesus Gauntlet into motion.

The ride to Medford was filled with obstacles and many terror soldiers were positioned along the route to Medford. Once I arrived at the Pain Center of Southern Oregon, I had to knock on the door to be allowed to go into the clinic after I said who I was and that I was there for appointment with Paul Leppert. There was confusion as I entered the office to check in, as one by one the staff came into the waiting area to look at who I was, and one by one all of them said: “That's not Sean” and “But where is Sparacino?” and a small frenzy of activity took place behind the wall in the exam room area.

Once I was inside of the exam room, room #2, after the 450 pound male nurse took my blood pressure (151/93), that is when a sword came through the wall from exam room #3, down low, in the far right corner of the room, behind the chair I was seated in while waiting for the doctor to arrive. That is the fourth time I have encountered the sword that gets thrust through the wall at the chair where I was seated. It comes through and is moving around a little, to my right. So, I have a way of dealing with just exactly that kind of attack, I can't say how for my own safety in the future, but I was able to take the sword, make a slightly bigger hole in the wall, and pull the sword through the wall completely. I set it down on my coat and waited for the doctor while listening carefully to activity in the adjoining room and hallway, and I lit my Bic Lighter often while doing that. Paul Leppert thought he had stuck me with the sword, since it went all the way through the wall, so, he comes in saying: “So! How bad is it?” referring to the sword wound that he thought I had.

The sword was in my coat on the exam table, out of view. I showed Leppert that rash I have, and he refused to treat that, said I need to go to a different doctor, or hospital, or urgent care to have treatment remedy for that rash, which is worsening at rapid pace.

The appointment only consisted of Paul doing electronic prescription to Walgreen's for one medicine that I have been seeing him regularly for about six years at regular intervals, and that only serves as a means to alert other assassins to come to my home to do a “Kill & Replace” because I am a Medicare patient and have a fixed income that can be perpetuated after the kill, and when the kill is successful, my health records then would be used to furnish SAG members with “MAX Medicare Part D” into a terror system of a “drug pool” they call “Club Med” as I have documented about in great detail.

During the appointment, Paul Leppert began to play role of both doctor and patient, he asked some questions, and then answered the questions he had asked. He was in contact with others outside of the exam room with use of hidden communications device. Paul was in contact with that very large 450 pound male nurse, and was also in contact with others, I could hear some of the sounds of the voices whispering back to him.

I had forgotten about the sword that came through the wall by the time Leppert used the in room computer to do the proscription. After that, and begging for treatment of that very painful rash I have and being refused to have treatment provided for that, he was ready to leave the room, about fifteen minutes had passed, so, I went to put on my coat, saw the sword, remembered all of the other times the fucking sword has come through the wall, and Paul asked: “where is the sword?”, so, I picked it up, and ran him through with his own sword, vertically, from sternum downward, and that ruptured the nitrous oxide tank he carries rectally holstered, the gas was thick in the room and hallway after that.

Paul announced: “I am going left” as he exited the exam room with the sword lodged in him.

That is the seventh time I have defended against Paul Leppert with his own sword, I have run him through with his sword in defense on six previous occasions, some of that is documented in this account here on Tumblr. The son of bitch keeps healing to attack me again later on, he has his own private little hospital next door called Crater Lake Surgery Center, and he and other terror soldiers are able to get the very best medical treatment there is, while the US Citizens are exterminated at the Asante Hospitals. Asante has taken control of all of the medical clinics and hospitals. Asante is the leading murderous terror cell in Oregon currently.

In the hallway, Paul went to Exam Room #6 while saying that he had been run through, and some nurses went in their to treat his wound.

I waited to get my new appointment for next time there at the back office nurse station, and that very big male nurse came out of Exam Room #4 directly behind me as the nurse in front of me ducked under the service counter, and that big nurse shot me in the head with a .25 caliber gun, the ones I have written much about, have no barrel, the bullet brass is the barrel. So that bullet bounced off my head, and the other female nurse began to sign my name on some documents that I was supposed to sign.

She asked me why I did not fall over when that nurse shot me, and she explained that she had signed the documents for me because she thought my hand had been cut when I grabbed the sword that came through the wall in the exam room.

I was told I needed to provide a urine sample, so I did, and was shot again by a female who went into the opposite restroom after taking the shot. The bullet bounced off my coat, and I just went into the restroom to do the urine sample wishing that national security would show up to see what kinds of poisons show up in the urine sample.

There was much activity on the way out of the Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon, a whole bunch of Canadian terror soldiers and SDA fake patients showed up there by the time I left the building, and when I did leave, the exit was locked, no one could leave, so I had to wait for a receptionist to unlock the door so I could go to the pharmacy, and then go home. Two special assassins in a black late model pick up truck w/crew cab dark short hair and short beards each about 40 years old, had just arrived as I was leaving out of the office door.

The ride home was filled with obstacles, there was at least two state police in shoulder of the freeway on the way back to Grants Pass … they were not interested in me or what happened at the terror doctor. Every time I defend and kill terrorists at the terror doctor, I wind up passing by at least one State Police car on the return trip home.

I went to Grants Pass Walgreen's on William's Hwy. There, more terror happened, and at least one terror soldier ignited and burst into bits in the pharmacy behind the service counter, it was one of the Pharmacy Technicians, but was not, instead, it was a special assassin operative, I think I know who that was, a woman by the name of Chey Bickers, if so, she is white, about 58 years old, blond shoulder length “Bob” haircut, about 5'4' tall, about 150 lbs, has a very gravelly voice, used to drive a older white Toyota truck w/shell and bumper sticker that says: “If this truck is speeding, it's stolen”. Ms. Bickers is associated with the County Courts terror cell, and also is close with Sean Sparacino as a Li'l Pantry terror cell special operative. Chey used to own a clothing store called “Chey Boutique” next to Li'l Pantry in Merlin Oregon next to Mikey's Video Rental.

At Walgreen's, they sell some small 1/32 scale toy cars that I have been collecting, and I bought three of them along with my prescription, one of the toy cars is made by a different manufacturer than any of the others that I have seen, it's a 1960's Batmobile, made in Vietnam, rather than China like the others are, that one has a hidden camera inside of it, so, I put that one on my kitchen window long enough to see that BBC news on Twitter was making some Tweets that seemed to be in response to having put the car camera in the window, so I moved the Batmobile Camera car to a different window, and again, BBC news seemed to have made a comment about the car camera in the window, this time, after moving the car camera to a window by my front door, they seemed happy about that location, so, I put the Batmobile car camera into the refrigerator where it is looking at a jar of Olives.

Since the Walgreen's visit, a whole bunch of terror soldiers have come to my home, today they were on the roof of my house blowing poison gasses into my chimney. There were others on Jackpine using a tractor in my driveway, and the truck & trailer for that was parked at Chartrands 376 Jackpine, was a brand new unlicensed Ford F-350 (or F-250) with crew cab, dual wheel, black, and had a tilting tractor hauling trailer attached to it when I went to Walmart earlier today.

I don't want to talk any more about Walmart right now, conditions are the same, the place is filled with Canadian terror soldiers who fog the aisles with nitrous oxide so that the victims will be primed for take out at the checkstand, same as has been the case for two decades.

The Jesus Gauntlet is still underway, however the assassins are coming to my house, I don't need to go anywhere to run this part of the Gauntlet.

All in all, I estimate that twenty terror soldiers have been killed as a result of this weeks Jesus Gauntlet so far, I only wrote about the highlights.

No help has come, there are no signs of helpful people anywhere.

Please send help.

Please send US Military.

Bring your own Hospital.

Be prepared for poison gasses, study this account, be prepared for 50,000 armed terror soldiers in Josephine county, and additional 75,000 armed terror soldiers in Jackson county. Their weapons are concealed, and small,  mostly is airborne gasses and .25 caliber guns, but they have an air force and rail road systems, and trucking services that can bring and deploy many soldiers, various airborne gasses, and larger weaponry on very short notice.

Millions of terror soldiers throughout the state of Oregon.

Millions more are in California.

(Millions = 1,000,000 plus more ... )

I am the last remaining US Citizen in the state of Oregon. All of the others are either dead, or are held captive as slaves.

Please bring medical services.

There is no US national Guard any more, all of the US Guard were killed in around 2002-2004, the bases are occupied by Canadian impostors, the officers there are Screen Actor Guild trained actors who are able to fool other military officials.

Please send help. Study this account first. You must remove Twitter from the internet before the help is deployed or else the help will be fooled by a vast army commanded from Twitter.

(this entry written in external text editor)

===============================

6:54 pm:

At least four of the terror soldiers killed I suspect were California State Police Highway Patrol fake officers that are called “pigs”. It’s not a derogatory statement, “pig” is a rank among the terror army, and has been since it’s first use in reference to police.

On Twitter, the news stories this week about a “Chipageddon“, or a shortage of computer chips, is coded stories that are in reference to those CHP that were here at my house last night and the day before. There may still be some CHP terror cell members at Chartand 376 Jackpine, Clyde Baum’s at 333 Jackpine, at 315 Jackpine, and at Strong’s at 3747 Russell Road. They have been attacking from 520 Jackpine, and from “Donkey George” terror cell one house south of 3701 Russell Road.

I suspect at least two of the terror soldiers who were killed, to have been people from Arizona, specifically from the Arizona Mohave County Tax Assessors Office.

I also suspect some were from Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon and Walgreen‘s Pharmacy terror cells.

Many have died, killed in defense since Tuesday.

=====================================

7:19 pm:

(see previous post)

This is the rash that the terror doctor refuses to treat. This is caused by repeated exposure to poisons I am subject to that are blown into my house by the neighboring terror cells. This rash started out about the size of a dime five years ago at the same time when the Monroe’s moved in next door, and they brought with them a Nissan Quest Van, a black one with the logo for “A-1 Exterminator’s and Pest Control” on it. A-1 Exterminator’s is located on 7th St. in Grants Pass, and to my knowledge, no one who lives at Monroe’s works at A-1 Exterminator’s, yet the A-1 Van has been parked there for five years in the evenings and on weekends.

If you get a rash like this one on my ankle shown below, it is very painful, and it is the kind of rash that itches such that you keep scratching at it right through to the bone. The desire to scratch at that, is overwhelming.

They will poison you with gasses that make you have uncontrollable coughing fits, and a rash like that one, then someone will say you have Corona Virus, they will tell you to go to a hospital after the (they) poison you, and at the hospital is where the exterminate you permanently so that a Canadian SDA Terror soldier Christian Crusade Pirate can take your place at your own house, to prey on all of your family. Then, the bastards vote while using your name and voting status, for the shills that Screen Actor Guild puts on the voting ballots for every elected office there is, from County Water Master, to Parks & Recreation Director, to City Mayor, to County Sheriff, to State Governor, to US President.

It’s all fake voting. The Corona Virus is a mass murder scenario played out against the citizens by SAG news media, and the government elected officials that SAG already arranged into the offices of government by killing and replacing tens of millions of US Citizens over the past fifty years.

US Voters are all Canadians now.

There are no more real US Citizens any more, and if one shows up somewhere, the terror bastards track them down, and kill them.

==================

7:55 pm:

The CHP assholes are nearby right now, they have a remote control that can operate the courtesy lights and other electronics of vehicles that are equipped with on board engine computers that are California Emissions Control Compatible. The car does not have to be a “California Car”, just one that the factory installed a computer this is compliant with the special California Emissions rules. Part of what the CHP terror bastards can operate is to remove two cylinders from the firing order of the ignition system, with a remote control, to make your car run bad, and you will take it to a COVID take out exterminator service provider.

The courtesy lights just came on in my car in the driveway, by a California State Police Murder Pig, with a remote control, who is within about 500 - 1000 feet away from where I am. I have to go disconnect the battery, while down range from a murderous terror soldier who’s day job is as a California Highway Patrol.

I am in Oregon, yet the CHP came all this way to kill me, by orders from Joe Biden terror cell at the White House.

===========================

8:12 pm:

I remember learning about the two cylinders that are removed from the firing order in the electronic ignition system of California Emissions Compatible Vehicles from a CHP officer back when my family was held captive in 1998 - 2002 or so.

There is a radio controlled application called “Two in the bank of the heads” because the feature is secret knowledge, and every time someone is targeted and they make the six cylinder car run on only four cylinders, or an eight cylinder car run on only six cylinders, with use of a remote control pointed at cars that are fitted with California Compliant Onboard Engine Computers, the bastards make a lot of money when the car is taken to service station, and the terror CHP treasonous mass murderous CHP Pig kills the victims at the service station, and, the children and females are kept as sex slaves to please the terrorist California Canadian CHP Pig. The CHP terror Pigs empty the victims bank account, take all of the victims valuables,  while the victims real estate is handed over to SAG terror HQ so a terror family cell replacement can move into the victims house.

The (They) take the women and children as slaves.

My car is 2002 model, has a California Compliant onboard computer from the Ford Factory installed when it was new, for the purpose of mass murder of US Citizens that long ago. My guess is the CHP Pig remote that works the vehicles has been part of “California Emissions” ever since the time the California Emissions was mandated.

That’s a long time, and a lot of dead US Citizens, because the baby is on fire, and there is no one watching the baby.

Who was California Governor at the time when the CA Emissions was mandated? Find him, give the son of bitch the Spanish Inquisition, Pronto. Then, take all of the US State governors and US Congressional members to Easter Island, and drop them off permanently. That is too good for them, but, something has to be done, and that is a humane and appropriate remedy given the circumstances and the shear numbers of terror bastards that will be taken to Easter Island once the truth is fully known.

That is why the application on the remote control is called “Two in the banks of the heads“. It’s for “Kill & Replace”, for a profit.

====================================

9:40 pm:

Today at the Grants Pass Oregon Walmart, was the same as every other time I have been there over the past twenty years, the same exact people, saying and doing the same exact things as the last time or other time I was there. The same people in the same places, dressed in the same clothing as the last time I was there, or other time. Today, the lady that hangs out in the coffee aisle and stands in the way, while looking at me and pointing at the largest size of Folgiers Coffee, and she says: “This size costs exactly the same at Costco as it does here. it’s $10 here and at Costco too, I don‘t drink coffee, but I am gonna get some just because it costs the same here as it does at Costco ... and because I live in Glendale”

That, happens often. That same lady, that same story about $10 Folgiers at the Costco, and that she lives in Glendale.

Same... same... same... same... same... saaaaaammmmmeeeee...

That is only one of many. The are all Canadian terror soldiers.

There was the young fat guy who looks exactly like the driver of the “Bekin’s Cross Town Movers Truck” that I reported about not long ago. I saw the Bekins Cross Town Movers Truck while on my way to Walmart, then, that guy who looks like the driver of that truck, is young, is fat, has a short black beard, is always staring at his smart phone, he follows me into the store, follows me to the Deodorant aisle, while staring at his phone, then continues to follow me around the store. That happens often, same guy, arrives at the same time I do, walks through the parking beside me about 30 feet away.... same, same, same, same...

There was the lady who shows up in the place where the Gold Bond is supposed to be, but is not on the shelf, so, she comments about what I am looking for, and I always say “They saw me come in the store, so they took everything I want to get off of the shelves” then she says “That is the same thing that happens to me when I come in to the store”. So, I point out: “Look, you can get ‘Monkey Butt Foot Powder, but not the Gold Bond” then she laughs about the Monkey Butt Powder product.

Same, same, same as the last time or other time I went to the Walmart.

I went to buy a camera in the electronic department, the same one that has been on display for years, I keep going there to the camera aisle to buy the non-wireless Canon Sure Shot for $129, but when the associate opens the case, that one is never there, the associate usually says the other Canon Sure Shot is there, the one with the Wireless feature, and I can buy that one, but today I cut him short, I got angry and told the terror bastard exactly what is happening and that he knows everything there is to know about the built in wireless spy device in all of the wireless capable cameras, that is what the wireless feature is put there for, to listen to what you are doing, all of the terror soldiers have a smart phone app that accesses the wireless from the cameras that are wireless equipped. The bastard tried to play innocent, says “We have not had this camera on display for as long as you say.... blah, blah.,, Christian terror innocent blahabababalalalala...”

Asshole.

Same, same, same as last time I got angry about the camera that you cannot purchase, and it was the same Walmart vested terror bastard who lied to me about the camera as last time I got angry about it.

There was more examples of Same, Same, Same..... same, as last time terror soldiers in the store today as there always is.

So at the checkout, I asked the yellow vested Walmart terror bitch if she could explain to me why every time I come into the store since 2002, the same people are saying and doing exactly the same things in the same places as was the last time I went to the Walmart... and it was innocent Christian terror bitch “I don‘t know what you are talking about... blahbalallalballalblahhhh” all over again.

That is when three terror Walmart yellow vest terror bitches all rushed at me real fast, came out of nowhere, surrounded me, and a fourth one was not far away... all they could do is keep interupting my question about the terror army fake shoppers, insisting that I put my mask back on, and then one of them gave me a paper mask...”You have to wear a COVID Mask,,, put the mask on...”

Assholes.

I am convinced that part of the mask mandate is to make sure national security cannot access the radio control capable cameras at the checkout register, so, they force the mask on everyone so the terror army cannot be identified positively. So, I am going to keep taking off the mask when I get to the Walmart Checkout while wishing for some help to come, maybe the nsa will stop jacking off soon, and access the radio controlled wireless cameras that are installed in the checkout registers at the Walmart, then, they will at least what I look like, and that I am not going to hide like a candy ass terror pansy,

I suggest all of the slave soldiers to remove the mask at a Walmart Checkout camera, so that nsa will see who you are to help everyone.

=============================================

10:29 pm:

“Greek Alphabet White House Terror Cell” Identification Update:

Greek alphabet update 2-4-2021:

Alpha = Donald Trump

Beta = Melania Trump

Gamma = Mike Pence

Delta = Karen Pence

Epsilon = Mike Pompeo

Zeta = Susan Pompeo

Eta = Kamila Harris-Emhof

Theta = Doug Emhof-Harris (suspect associotion to Asante Health Three Rivers Medical Center Emergency Room Dr. Janet Eoff and address at 598 Jackpine Dr. Grants Pass OR 97526)

I was able to determine that Kamala Harris and her husband are Greek Alphabet terror cell members.

Study this account and my suspended Twitter accounts to learn more about the Greek Alphabet WH terror cell, I think they call it: “Grecian Formula 16″, where “Grecian” is reference to “Grease”, not “Greece”.

Formula is reference to Medazolam/nitrous mixture.

and 16 is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.

==========================================

11:40 pm:

(there still is a Centuryink terror bastard from the Google/Centurylink/Tumblr internet terror consortium terror cell fucking with my computer over the internet. The Norton Symantec 360 LifeLock is used to for continuously turning off my number pad on the keyboard, I have to push the “num/lck” button every time I need to use a numeral.

The letter M is somehow interesting to the candy ass pansy at the Centurylink/Google terror cell, they are making it such that the M won‘t make an M unless I hold down the M and keep pushing the fucking thing until it makes an M.

All of this bullshit makes it very difficult to stay focused on the small, complex details I need to help you to save your own lives, so, please send help.)

At the Walmart Electronics special check out counter area there are three cash registers there and a large L shaped counter for service. There are some home security products there within view behind a wrought iron gate of a shelving unit, you can see the home security products are right there in front of you at the Walmart and that they are in stock. I challenge a national security officer to go into the Walmart without saying who you are, and you have to show up to Grants Pass completely secret for you to learn anything, you would have to come by car from a thousand miles away, otherwise they know who you are and you won’t learn anything. I challenge you to try to purchase a home security camera system at the Walmart in Grants Pass.

Heck, I challenge you to make an attempt to contact FBI to report terrorism in Oregon, but again, you would need to be completely one hundred percent anonymous and use a phone that is not a smart phone, just a regular cellular phone. You need to answer all of their questions honestly, and be at a location where you say you are when the FBI On Call Duty Agent answers the call at the FBI Field Office. You can call any of the five Oregon FBI Field Offices to learn this way, but, if you and your team look or behave in any way as if you might be real police, the terror scout children they send to cruise around where you are at will know, and they will report back to the FBI field office about who you are, and bring all of your vehicle ID to the terror FBI field office. You would need to absolutely be a real citizen, and, one who just fell off the bus so to speak, because there are no US Citizens in Oregon, and the terror bastards at FBI know that I am the last one, so, good luck with the challenge if you choose to accept it, there really is no way that it can work in such a way the real police could learn anything, unless you could arrive stealth, and as a US Citizen in every way.

I double dog dare you to use movie style makeup, to look like me, and go anywhere in Oregon, I’ll wager you last two hours before they capture you and cut your arms off to make you have sex with a horse.

What I wanted to say about the Walmart electronics counter is that at that counter there is a big sign that says: “Wireless” vertically, is a display banner at the corner of the L shaped service counter attached to a post. Also attached to the post is a smaller sign that says: “We card everyone for alcohol... etc.”

The thing about that is that it’s the only place in the store that has such an “We card for alcohol” sign, and, the only sign is at the electronics department checkout cash register.

What kind of bullshit do you suppose could happen when there is advertised “Wireless” and “We card for alcohol” at the same corner post at Walmart electronics department?

I wonder how many US Citizens the national security has wrongly arrested and thrown into the fake county jail in Josephine county? That jail is not a jail, it’s a extermination center, and anyone that nsa sent there because some asshole at Walmart pretended to be at a liqueur store claiming the customer was drinking and drove away drunk. That is standard Josephine county terror, where the nsa is weaponized against the citizens they are supposed to protect.

I’ll wager that nsa are the ones who are responsible for killing my children, with some kind of lie told to them by the Walmart and Sheriff, and they were taken to the jail by the people who said they would help... nsa... US national security.

They may as well be on the terror army pay role.

Offensively useless.

[renwritesstuff]

bird's opening

A collaboration fic/art story with the lovely @fishbone76​

It started as just a friendly game of chess between the Normandy’s two resident geniuses. But then their significant others got involved and almost ruined it.

Also on AO3. Approximately 3,487 words.

Hand at her chin, Samantha Traynor studied the chess board in front of her. The glowing interface was looking a bit blurry around the edges, her mind swimming as she gave a few long blinks. Sam’s spot at the Skyllian Five table in the Port Observation Deck was surrounded by a collection of empty liquor bottles, her other hand gripping a half-consumed cocktail.

Her opponent purred from across the green-topped table. “Are you sweating, Specialist Traynor?” Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy drummed a pair of fingers impatiently.

“Not at all,” Sam retorted as she reached forward to nudge a pawn. “Just trying to decide if I want to win this in 10 moves… or 15 to give you a little boost of confidence.” Her smile was lazy and—admittedly—a bit drunk.

“Big talk,” the quarian slurred, her inflection a little lower than normal. “Considering you said this was ‘in the bag’ four moves ago. What does that even mean?”

Well, right now it actually means “drunk.”

“It’s just a silly idiom that—forget it. Your go, Admiral.”

There was a dull tapping sound on Sam’s right that she ignored with another sip of her drink.

Tali’s white eyes flicked over to the side before returning to the chess board. “Should we let them back in?”

“Absolutely not,” Samantha said with an emphatic shake of her head.

The quarian gave an apologetic shrug at the glass panels that made up the entrance to the small poker cubby of the recreation room.

A muffled “Oh come on!” could be heard from the other side of the glass.

Hovering there, faces pressed up against the locked doors, was Commander Jane Shepard and (General?) Garrus Vakarian. Also perched on Jane’s shoulder was her hamster, Lil’ Dude. All three looked positively pathetic standing around unable to enter.

Garrus scratched a digit against the glass again for another pleading tap. He lowered the rumble in his voice. “…come on… We’ll behave. It was just a little friendly wager between significant others.”

He nudged an elbow at Shepard, who nodded in agreement. “Sure. Yes. Friendly. We were just really excited over how friendly we all are.” She gritted her teeth in a grin. “…and how much you’re going to win, Sam!” Her palm slapped drunkenly on the wall in encouragement.

“Hey!” Garrus squawked back in outrage. A heated argument started (continued, rather) just on the other side of the glass.

“I was so close, Shepard! Then you had to open your big, fleshy mouth!”

No you weren’t even close, Garrus.

“You’re the one who got us kicked out in the first place! Because, and I quote, ‘Tali is gonna wipe the floor with that squishy Comms nerd.’”

“Well she is! All humans are squishy! …except you, of course.”

…I mean, he’s not wrong but it still hurts…

“Is not! Did you see Samantha at that Kepesh Yakshi tournament? No! You were dicking around in the arena. She was incredible!” Shepard gushed as she waved a threatening fist at Garrus.

Oh, thank you, darling. I knew I kept you around for a reason, Sam inwardly smirked as she sipped her drink.

The two chess players shot each other a withering look and rolled their eyes in sync.

…Earlier that same day…

Samantha had laid a kiss on Jane’s cheek as she finished zipping up her uniform. “Don’t wait up, Shepard.”

Shepard looked up from where she was playing with her hamster on her desk. “Unh? Where are you off to?” Lil’ Dude sniffed the air in Sam’s direction with a curious head-tilt.

“Oh, just a little chess game,” Sam said airily. She waved the holo disc in her hand for good measure.

“You’re cheating on me?” Jane asked, eyebrows arching and lips pursing in mock-offense.

Sighing, Sam dropped her shoulders. “There’s no tactful way to say this but: you’re rubbish at chess. A quick learner? Absolutely. But still rubbish.” Waving the holo disc again, Sam gave Shepard a reproachful stare. “I just wanted to have a few drinks and play a few rounds with an opponent who promised a challenge. Your pawns can resume toiling under my regime tomorrow, darling.”

The hamster in Shepard’s hands gave a few squeaks. Jane nodded. “I agree, buddy. That still counts as cheating. …Who is he? Or she? Or they?”

“She,” Samantha confirmed, “…is a fellow brilliant tactician in need of some girl talk. And to cut loose a little. She spends way too much time in the drive core.”

Donnelly and Daniels are starting to think she lives in there.

“Ohhhh,” Shepard intoned with a nod. “Tali. Well, don’t get hammered or anything. She’s gotta liaise with the quarian fleet in the morning. And she really can’t hold her liquor.” She kissed Sam’s cheek back and returned to her hamster, who had resumed stuffing his cheeks with food pellets.

“I promise I’ll return the Admiral to you in one piece,” Sam promised as she strolled out of the cabin.

I can’t promise the same for her ego. Because I am going to destroy—

—whoa whoa whoaaaa. Calm down, Traynor.

Inhaling a few breaths through her nose, Sam centered herself as she tapped the call button for the elevator. The familiar tingle of excitement ran down Sam’s spine: the thrill of competition. Of battle. Of potential victory.

She met Tali in the Port Observation Deck with a polite handshake. Sam took up behind the bar to make them some drinks, her mental catalogue of cocktails decently adaptable to dextro-compatible liquors.

Within a few minutes, she had assembled a dextro-equivalent drink to a Long Island Iced Tea for Tali and a Seaside Sunrise for herself.

“It feels like forever since I had a night off,” Tali remarked as she fumbled with inserting a straw through her mask port.

“I know the feeling,” Sam concurred. “Seems like it’ll just fall apart if you’re not there keeping an eye on things, hm?” She clinked her glass against Tali’s in polite toast.

“Oh Kee'lah, tell me about it. If it’s not the fleet, it’s all the fine-tuning the stealth drive needs to stay ahead of the Reaper suites. Or Garrus wanting…” Tali trailed off, her eyes dimming in what Samantha assumed was a blush.

“Oh, right,” Sam chimed in knowingly with a wicked smile. “You and Garrus. How is that going, by the way?”

A rumbling voice interrupted just behind them along with the sound of doors swishing open. “How's what going?” Garrus asked, his mandibles twitching in a grin. The turian was dressed casually for a change, a blue and gold-trimmed suit hugging the hard lines of his carapace.

“Nothing, you bosh'tet,” Tali quipped back amiably. “Don’t you have a big gun to calibrate?” She checked her Omni-tool before tilting her head sarcastically at Sam. “I mean, it’s probably been 30 seconds since it was last calibrated.”

Sam chuckled. “Possibly even 40. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Garrus scowled and crossed his arms. “You’re one to talk. You fuss over the drive core like you birthed it yourself.”

“We both have our favorite children,” Tali purred with a smirk. She clinked her glass against Sam’s once more.

The Comms Specialist breathed a mock-irritated sigh. “Please, please. You're both pretty.“ …Tali is prettier… “…By which I mean: pretty good at your jobs.”

Both aliens made scoffing-exhale noises at the same time.

Sam gestured over her shoulder to the empty room across from the Port Observation bar. A green-topped poker table took up most of the glass-enclosed space. She drummed her fingers on the chess holo disc in front of her at the counter. “Shall we, madam?”

“We shall!” Tali chirped back as she slid off the barstool and sauntered her way over to the table. She settled into one seat with Sam following close behind. Garrus remained at the bar, the lanky figure scratching a finger on his chin while he perused the collection of liquors.

The pair assembled at the table and logged in to the glowing interface, a familiar eight-by-eight grid populating with pieces.

“Do I need to give you a refresher on the rules?” Sam asked, her eyes twinkling in challenge.

“Please,” Tali said with an eye-roll. “This is a children’s game on the flotilla. Along with some number game that the volus play. I forget what it’s called.”

Hmph. “Children’s game.”

I will destroy you, Vas Normandy.

Studying the board layout, Sam sighed in pleasure at the cool familiarity of her favorite game. “What about Kepesh Yakshi?” She offered.

A sputtering noise through Tali’s straw followed a cynical squint of the woman’s eyes. “That holo game the asari are obsessed with? It must be nice to have so little to contribute to your people that you can play a game for a living.”

Nevermind. You have redeemed yourself. You’re all right, Tali'Zorah.

A deep laugh rumbled in Samantha’s belly as T'Suza’s defeated face flashed in her mind.

…T'Suza…

Sam nodded in agreement. “It’s an interesting game, I’ll give the asari that. But yes, some of us have little things like military service to do while saving the galaxy.”

“Hear hear,” Tali cheered with a slurp of her drink.

The game started off well enough. Tali was an aggressive opponent with surgical precision for picking off Sam’s pieces. It was exciting, actually. The quarian had a quick, adaptive mind and was keen on heading off some of Samantha’s best strategies while offering some interesting twists of her own.

Meanwhile, Garrus was rather useless milling around in the background. Apparently, he had taken the “you calibrate too much” jibe a little personally because the turian refused to leave the Port Observation Deck. He took up post at the bar for a little while, sampling liquors and making mixtures of his own until he found something he liked. Then he lounged at the low couch, absently thumbing through a datapad while throwing surreptitious glances over at Samantha and Tali while they played.

Eventually, the turian groaned in boredom and ambled up to look over their shoulders.

It was a tense final showdown. Tali had the better coverage but Sam had made an aggressive push into her territory with the white King on the run.

“Checkmate,” Sam announced with her last move. Ironically, a pair of black pawns managed to pin down the King in a corner.

The quarian swore a “bosh'tet” under her breath as she slapped a hand on the table. White eyes flicked up to Sam with a warm glow. She made a measuring motion with her thumb and forefinger. “I was this close. One more move and you would have been at my mercy.”

Chuckling, Sam attempted a sip of her drink but only ice rattled in the empty glass. “Oh I saw that. Well done, by the way. Really kept me on my toes. I took a huge gamble and lucked out, frankly.”

…I wish I was being kind. She very nearly kicked my arse.

“Did you lose?” Garrus rumbled next to Tali, his mandibles flaring.

The quarian’s head tilted in offense, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Yes! It happens!” She glanced over to Sam and jostled her own empty drink. “Shall we make this more interesting with the next game?”

Sam grinned back and stood up. “I like the way you think, Zorah.”

A game within a game was proposed. Mainly involving drinking (a lot of drinking). Garrus volunteered to bartend, though he gave his girlfriend a shoulder-rub along with a peptalk.

“We gotta show these levos who’s boss, Tali. The fate of turians and quarians everywhere hangs in the balance.”

“You mean, beyond the whole Reaper thing currently holding our fate in the balance?” The quarian’s voice trilled with dry sarcasm.

“Sure sure,” Garrus said with a dismissive hand-wave. “That’s really bad. But this! Tali! A chance to show the galaxy what we’re made of!” His grin was lazy under waggling eyebrow plates.

An explosive sigh before Tali’s voice vibrated with amusement. “I'm pretty sure we already did that. At the Citadel. Four years ago. And a year ago. At the Collector Base. And right now. …But sure, Garrus. This chess game will finally solve, once and for all, that dextros are the best.” She shot Sam a head-shake and a wink.

If I wasn’t already taken, I might be in love.

Sam took the time to direct message Jane regarding this development.

[ says: “I’m feeling left out. Tali has her own cheerleading squad while I just have a liquor cabinet. Care to join me and keep Garrus at bay, darling? Because apparently this is now the battle to end all battles between levo and dextro DNA species”]

There was no response. 45 seconds later, Commander Jane Shepard strolled through those swishing doors. She stood in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, hamster on her shoulder.

“Step off, Garrus. Samantha is gonna wipe the floor with Tali’s hood thing,” the woman announced as she made a finger-wiggling motion at Tali.

The turian barked with delight. “Sheparrrrrrd!”

Oh God. I’ve made a horrible mistake.

Trading shots for chess pieces wasn’t as great an idea as it seemed. Especially without any food in their bellies. Perhaps if it had been speed chess it wouldn’t have turned out so badly.

But it generally took Tali close to 30 seconds to “chug” her shot through her “emergency induction port.”

Still a straw, Tali.

Plus, Shepard and Garrus insisted on helping them select liquors for their shots in an effort to be supportive. A dangerous mixture of drinks were sloshing in their bellies ranging from bourbons to vodkas to an almost-ryncol that Garrus managed to stop before Sam puked her guts out.

“Are you trying to kill your girlfriend, Shepard?”

“What?! I would never!”

“Just because you can drink that krogan shit doesn’t mean anyone else can.”

Almost-poisoning aside, Sam was teetering dangerously in her seat and had to stave off a warm feeling in her belly with willpower alone. She made a terrible mistake about a third of the way into the match and struggled to correct it with pure aggression.

If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.

The second game took close to an hour to resolve… and the winner ended up being Tali.

Fist-pumping the air, the quarian bounced out of her seat and did a flourishing dance to celebrate. “Yes! Evened the odds!” She stumbled slightly and made a drunken pointing motion at Sam. “I’m on to your tricks, Specialist. Clever round that time.”

The peanut gallery was also looking unsteady as well. Garrus and Shepard had taken to linking shoulders and whispering to each other about their girlfriends. They had become downright buddy-buddy… up until the game had ended.

“In your face, Shepard! Tali kicked Traynor's ass!”

“Lucky break! Sam won the first game!”

“Beginner’s luck! Tali just needed a chance to learn all her tells and then clean house!”

“That’s Skyllian Five, you jackass! There aren’t ‘tells’ in chess!”

The two actual players just exchanged sighs while their significant others bickered.

And bickered.

And bickered.

Finally, both women stood up and shouted in harmony. “Enough!”

Garrus and Jane shrank back. Even Lil’ Dude, who was just hanging out on the coffee table, flattened his ears and hid behind an empty glass.

Jabbing an accusing finger into Jane’s collarbone, Samantha growled at her girlfriend. “You’re both being ridiculous! This was supposed to be our evening to enjoy ourselves without the pressure of the galaxy on our shoulders! Any idea what that’s like, Shepard?!”

Tali headbutted Garrus’s chest with her hard mask before she shoved him backwards. “And you! Not everything needs to be some turian crest-measuring contest! If you want a fight, go wrestle with Shepard or Vega in the Shuttle Bay!”

It took some doing, but both women managed to hustle their crestfallen mates out of the poker table lounge area with a couple of well-placed pokes and shouts. Luckily, Garrus and Shepard were so stunned by the accusation that they were already outside the glass partition before they realized it had locked in front of them.

“EDI! Privacy lock! Maximum override!” Sam shouted at the ceiling.

[“I am pleased to assist.”]

Breathing heavily, both women exchanged looks with each other before they burst out laughing.

“Did you see Garrus’s face?”

Tali giggled and held her side. “Shepard looked like a kicked puppy, Traynor! How can you resist that sad face?” She cooed as she waved a finger at the glass.

“Oh believe me, she's well-versed in that.” Sam waved a dismissive hand. “The more she uses it, the less effective it is.”

Gesturing to the board, Samantha smiled warmly. “Shall we break this tie we’ve ended up in?”

“Absolutely,” Tali confirmed as she settled back into her seat.

“You’re the one who got us kicked out in the first place! Because, and I quote, 'Tali is gonna wipe the floor with that squishy Comms nerd.’”

“Well she is! All humans are squishy! …except you, of course.”

“Is not! Did you see Samantha at that Kepesh Yakshi tournament? No! You were dicking around in the arena. She was incredible!”

Rolling their eyes, Sam and Tali did their best to ignore the bickering outside the room.

“Thank you for agreeing to this match, Tali. In spite of…” Sam trailed off as she glanced over where Jane was shaking a fist at Garrus. “…in spite of our children fighting over us.”

Glowing eyes thinning to pleased slits, Tali nodded emphatically. “It was my pleasure! We should do this again sometime!” She shot a glance of her own at Garrus, who was pointing and growling at Lil’ Dude on Shepard’s shoulder. “…though, perhaps without our two biggest fans.”

“Hear hear,” Sam echoed as she clinked her glass against Tali’s on the table.

Exchanging a pair of moves, both women sighed contentedly in the peace and quiet.

Just outside, Jane and Garrus had reached a stalemate of glares.

Lil’ Dude was also in on the stare down, locking eyes with the turian with a scowling “Meep!”

“I hope you’re happy, Garrus,” Jane drawled out with a scowl. Though she looked over at Lil’ Dude and grumbled under her breath, “I can’t believe I’m locked out of my own ship.” Swiping over her Omni-tool, Shepard again tried her Commander credentials.

[“Access denied. Sod off, you pair of gits”] was the angry red message that appeared.

“Okay,” Garrus hummed back after running his hand over his crest in an agitated motion. “Let’s just relax and calm down… I’ll start… I’m sorry I called Traynor a 'helper monkey.’”

The Commander slapped at the turian’s shoulder. “Yea, what the hell, Garrus?”

“I'm sorry! Javik would say that and I thought it was a term of endearment! Like Vega calling Tali 'Sparks.’”

Sighing, Jane crossed her arms and mumbled an apology. “Okay, well, I’m sorry I said Tali couldn’t checkmate her way out of a paper bag. Tali is the best.”

The two begrudgingly shook hands before pressing back up against the glass.

“Can you tell what’s going on?” Garrus asked. “I’ll be honest: I don’t understand this game.”

“I’ve played it before and I don’t even understand what’s going on,” Jane admitted with a sigh.

“Keelah but you do have a talent for mixing drinks!” Tali exclaimed as she drained the last of her beverage through a straw. A rattling-sucking noise could be heard. “You missed your calling, Traynor.”

“Oh no,” Sam retorted with a headshake. “I already attempted this calling in university. I very much enjoyed the mixology part. Less so the 'customer service’ part.” She wrinkled her nose at the memory of too many rowdy drunks to count. “I created some excellent precision mixes back in the day, but so rarely did anyone want to recreate them down to the hundredth of a decimal place in fluid ounces.” Feigning a scowl, Sam tossed her hair theatrically. “Philistines.”

The quarian chuckled. “Don’t they understand that quality comes from calibrating exactly the right amoun—?” She froze and shook her head. “—Oh Keelah, I’m starting to sound like Garrus.” Her shoulders dropped fretfully.

Winking back, Sam nudged at the woman’s hand. “You are. But I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

Garrus’s muffled voice shouted through the glass. “What’s happening? Tali? Why are you looking so sad? Are you losing? Did you lose?”

Shepard pounded on the door with a slurred cheer. “Yea! Go Sam! Kick her ass! And not just because Garrus called you a 'helper monkey!’”

He said what?! He called me a what?!

That sonofabitch!

Eyes flicking back to Sam, Tali asked in a bored voice while feigning interest in the game. “Should we tell them it’s a draw?”

“Absolutely not,” Samantha replied. She guzzled down her drink before smacking her lips. “I’d rather enjoy the quiet for a few more minutes. Don’t you agree?”

“Hear hear, Traynor.”