#palliative care doctor surprise | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

deaconwords · 9 months ago

Text

Look at It and Live

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

These are the words we hear today in our Gospel lesson.

And in our reading from the Book of Numbers we hear the scriptural story upon which Jesus bases this statement.

This Numbers reading is powerful and quite worthy of our consideration. For, after all, we are told that Jesus must be lifted up just as this serpent of Moses was lifted up.

Let’s consider the story. The children of Israel have been freed from Egypt and are wandering in the wilderness. They are unhappy. They’ve become impatient with their travels and have begun blaspheming God and condemning Moses for bringing them out of Egypt to starve. They also complain about the miraculously supplied bread from heaven (manna) saying: “We detest this miserable food!”

Well, a plague breaks out consisting of poisonous snakes that bite and kill the Israelites with their venom.

Now, If we resist the temptation to see the story as one involving Israel’s disobedience and God’s resulting punishment, I believe something much more insightful can be gained.

Impatience, dissatisfaction, wanting for things to be other than how they are, these comprise Israel’s mood, Israel’s attitude. And what arises out of this attitude? Poisonous snakes. A death-causing evil emerges that slithers along Israel’s pathways biting ankles and infecting souls. It brings death.

So, they ask for forgiveness, assuming they’ve done wrong and need external, Godly correction.

And here’s where it gets really interesting. God doesn’t just say, “Give me 100 push-ups, or sacrifice 20 goats, or paint the lentil over your doors with blood, and all will be well. No, it’s not that easy. What God has in mind, I think, is much harder. Here is what God prescribes in verse 8 and 9.

And the Lord said unto Moses, make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live. So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole, and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

Look at it and live.

You see, when we wander from God, we strive no longer to live into ourselves as God’s children, but rather, seek for things to be other than how they are; we want them to be how we would fashion them.

And from this self-promoting attitude, we bring pain and suffering upon ourselves, represented in our story from the Book of Numbers as poisonous snakes. They bite and kill us.

And how does God suggest we find healing and life again?

Look at it and live!

Become aware of the snakes of your own creation. Hold them up to see and look at them. Don’t hide them. Keep them high and gaze upon them, remembering your origin and identity in God. Anything else leads to death.

I sat in a palliative care family meeting at Norton DT Hospital some time back. A family was trying to decide how best to care for their loved one, their father, who was a patient in the hospital. They seemed confused about the medical condition of their father. During our meeting, the primary doctor was describing their father’s health status, when one of the family members just blurted out the question, “ Is our father dying?”

The doctor was somewhat surprised by the sudden question. She continued her description of their dad’s health, then stopped and simply said, “Yes. He is dying.”

The room erupted with emotional crying. But, in a few minutes every family member settled down and thanked the doctor. They all suspected that their father was dying and needed someone to say it out loud. To hold it up to see and accept as real.

Look at it and live.

In this way, this family’s blockage in moving forward in planning their father’s health care was removed. And while the reality of their father’s eventual death remained, their ability to face and live into whatever new life awaited them was made possible.

A few of us watched the film Southern Patriot recently shown at Christ Church Cathedral. I’ve seen the film several times but noticed something this time I hadn’t before.

What Anne and Carl Braden had actually done to anger folks was to help a Black couple, the Wades, buy the home they wanted, which happened to be in a white neighborhood. That was what they had done. Yet, they were taken to trial for sedition, because a search of their home had discovered books written by Karl Marx.

You see, the Bradens had broken an unwritten law that said Blacks can’t own homes in white neighborhoods. But rather than face the truth of the underlying issue prosecutors attempted to make it about sedition and related it to communism which at the time had the whole world in an uproar. You see, they didn’t want to lift up the snake and look at it! The snake of privilege.

People with privilege usually don’t want to name and identify the privileges in their lives. To do so is to risk losing them. And what is life, they think, if not the possession and maintenance of privilege over others.

No, for those with privilege it is better just to ignore it and find ways to silence those who speak of it by drawing attention away from it. For them, the Bradens were seditionists and communists and therefore, must be stopped and silenced. That way they needn’t consider what the Braden’s were actually doing: drawing attention to the fact of undeserved privilege in our world.

And yet, as with the children of Israel, failure to hold it up and look at it brings death.

Look at it and live.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

What do we see when we look upon Christ as he hangs from His cross? How do we spin it? How do we make what we see easier on our eyes? How do we turn Christ's ultimate gift for all humanity into a privileged possession for a few?

And what do we avoid? Do we avoid the fact that we put him there? And continue to put him there, again and again, whenever we drift away from God in order to place ourselves into more favorable, comfortable positions relative to others?

Let us be brave this Lent and decide to see things as they are and live into our true selves as God’s children, to do as our God commands: And, look at it and live! Amen.

—Offered at St. George’s Episcopal Church on 3-10-2024

0 notes

limerental · 2 years ago

Text

ficletober day 16 - steddie future fic

(but finished late and it's already on ao3 here and it's for a fandom i'm not in for a media i haven't really watched i was possessed ok i'm normal) It's ten years later. Steve's a hospice nurse. Eddie's got the virus. It's kind of weird and sad and strange and inevitable. Or something. And not as sad as it sounds. we interrupt our regular programming for whatever the hell this is. content warning for hospitals and death but no MCD beyond ruminating about it. also, disordered eating, illness, yuckiness, and grossness. explicit blowjobs and glow in the dark condoms. etc

One of Steve Harrington's patients dies on a Wednesday morning.

Which isn't unexpected, given he's a nurse at a hospice facility, you know, they're all bound to croak at some point. His job's about making it a little easier, a little quieter. Not saving anybody or saving the world, just easing the pain. It's not like he's head over heels for the job, but it beats his other options. College flunkee who doesn't dare give his rich asshole father the time of day, no matter what job opportunities making nice with him could buy.

Would rather change catheters and wipe old people's diarrhea his whole life than resort to that.

It's hospice. They don't get better. Sometimes they go home a while and come back, but they all die. Losing patients is a breath of relief. Their suffering finally over. His job– making dying seem easy –complete.

So, its not unexpected when he walks in on Wednesday and reads the night shift's notes. That the Turner kid's probably on his way out.

It's not a surprise at all. The guy's been lingering for a week now, barely conscious. He's an AIDs patient, riding the last wave of compounding infections and failed drug cocktails.

Palliative care is a strange sort of thing, like compassionate neglect. It's not a kindness to pump a failing body full of fluids as their organs shutter out one by one. Fluids restricted, no feeding tube, nothing but pain meds and the hush of the ward. Let them die of dehydration instead of drowning.

What's unexpected is walking into Turner's room and finding Eddie fucking Munson sitting in there with him, gripping Turner's hand.

"Munson?" Steve blurts. It's been years. It's been a damn decade, but the guy looks almost the same. Steve's living and working a few towns over from Hawkins and most anyone who meant anything to him there has moved away anyhow, so he's out of the loop in a way that feels nice but also means he's lost track of a lot of people. It's just weird that Munson's still kicking around here when Steve had pegged him for one of those who'd ditch the whole state the second he could.

His hair's a bit different, more mullet than shag and he's got something of a mustache going, but he looks the damn same. A touch of grey at his temples maybe. A wrinkle at the corners of his mouth.

"Jesus," says Munson, looking at him all bug-eyed. "Is that Steve fucking Harrington? In baby blue scrubs? In a hospice ward? In bumfuck Indiana? With a buzzcut?"

"Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with a candlestick," jokes Steve, and Munson keeps gaping at him. Maybe because he just made a dumb joke at his friend's deathbed.

"Geez, I never thought– you a doctor?"

"Nurse."

"Geez," he says again. "You're a sight for sore eyes. I can be here, can't I? They told me he's… you know."

"Yeah, sometimes it takes a while though," Steve says, but by the looks of things as he flips through the chart, scribbling down vitals, it's any time now.

What happens next is what always happens. Not that everybody's death here is the same, but that every patient he's ever had does it eventually.

Die.

Sometimes in a huddle of family, sometimes alone, but usually quietly, slowly, and suddenly. The dying man breathes and breathes and then doesn't.

None of it takes very long in this case.

Munson is sitting with both hands held over one of the Turner kid's when it happen, watching him die with all the somber sort of silence moments like this demand from anyone. He's sitting there more still than Steve ever remembers him being, but then again, it's been a decade. Maybe his theatrics have mellowed out. Maybe he has some normal, adult job now like. In finances.

Steve looks again at Munson, tattooed up his whole neck and wearing a jacket held together by safety pins.

Ok. Maybe a normal, adult job at a biker bar.

"Were you two close?" Steve asks in the quiet as he turns off the noise of the machines.

"No, he– I didn't know him. But there's this support group I'm in, and one of us tries to be there when– well. It was my turn. Or not my turn, my turn, you know, not like it was his turn but it will be. Someday."

"You–" It's like something big and cumbersome gums up inside his chest.

"Yeah," says Munson, shrugging. "Me."

"Shit, man," says Steve, because he's great with handling the dying and increasingly worse with the living, let alone the living dead.

"Yeah, very sad. Woe is me. You wanna swing by my place after your shift and drink some beer about it?"

And they aren't friends exactly, really never were, but Steve figures it's kinda just polite to accept an invitation from somebody you used to know who just roundabout confessed to being riddled with deadly disease. Or something.

And there's a part of him that remembers being eighteen and studying Eddie Munson like an unsolvable puzzle, thinking about him and his knobby weird wrists and long tangle of hair and the ridge of his Adam's apple and his tar-black eyes, sometimes at times he shouldn't have, at times he really really shouldn't have, and then burying all that and doing nothing about it and then a whole decade passing in a blur.

His teenaged self feels very, very far away, and now he knows intimately what happens to people who don't take that leap and be brave and cling to the shit that matters while they still can.

They die alone. Or with strangers sitting next to them, measuring their last vitals.

"Yeah, sure," says Steve.

Can't hurt, he thinks.

Famous last words.

Munson still lives in Hawkins in the same trailer park, but he's prettied his uncle's old trailer up some, a strangely grandma kitsch aesthetic for a man who has several visible gory skull tattoos, one with curled goat horns stamped high on his throat.

He's got a mosquito plant growing in an old sherbert container and a listing aloe. There's tomatoes and jalapenos in buckets and kitty litter containers. A half dozen bamboo windchimes and dangling bells cluster in the rafters of the old porch, and a painted rocking chair sits beside a six foot cactus, its reaching branches segmented into flat, spineless pads hung with leftover tinsel from Christmas, its pot used as a heaping ashtray.

"This is Henry," says Munson. "He's my roommate."

"The cactus?"

"Yeah, man, he's decent company. "

He pats the plant a bit too hard, and a piece falls off. Without comment, he fishes it off the porch and shoves it into a yogurt cup of dirt sitting beside a dozen others.

"I give these suckers away like candy," he says. "Everybody and their grandma loves a free cactus."

"Sure," says Steve, who is fairly certain even a cactus would die a miserable death in his care if he looked at it wrong.

There's a white plastic chair fallen on its side in the overgrown yard, greyed with mildew spots, and Munson tugs it up from the grip of the grass growing through the spokes of its backrest and plops it down beside the rocker on the porch. He swipes off the spider webs and dirt and gestures with spread arms to the shitty chair, bowing like it's a throne.

It's over the top. It's weirdly familiar. Everything else has marched on, has changed, has aged or whatever, but Munson's the same fucking weirdo he was ten years ago.

"Sit down, buddy, stay a while. Though I can't say I'm the greatest host. Don't get paid until Friday, so it's just cheez whiz keeping me goin' mostly. Hell, half of this place might be held together by cheez whiz."

Steve thinks it's probably a joke, that all he's eating is processed cheese, but he wouldn't be surprised. Munson looks sallow and skinny. Not a lick of muscle on him, and he's wearing a pit-stained wifebeater and little denim shorts. Anywhere his skin's not sickly green with fading tattoos, he's so pale it's almost blinding and purple-veined under his red-rimmed eyes, and Steve's not stupid. He does this for a living, watching people hollow down to nothing and then snuff out, and he can see pretty clearly when someone's one foot in the grave. It's not even the virus that does it usually, it's the compounding trauma of it all, the drugs, the loss, the slow starvation both literal and spiritual.

He doesn't even like Munson much, doesn't know him too well and barely did back then, but it's--it's sad. It's heart-breaking.

He wonders if one of Munson's support group is already lined up to sit beside him at the end.

Steve's looking at him rocking in the rocker beside Henry the six foot cactus, little tinsel pieces blowing cheerily in the breeze, and can't even fucking think about it.

"Sit, Harrington, sit, sit," he insists when the silence stretches, and Steve's still standing on the stairs. "You're giving me the willies just staring at me all puppy-dog eyed. I'm not going to keel over tonight. Sit down! Sit!"

Steve sits. The plastic chair groans ominously.

"You've got a lot of plants," he says for want of something to say.

"This? Naw, this ain't anyhing. You should see what I have growing over the ridge in that cornfield."

He's high right now, Steve notices, hard to tell how wide his pupils are with eyes that dark, but he's got this molasses slurred energy to his movement that is unmistakable. Steve gets drug tested too often at work to smoke much these days, and it feels a little desperate to do alone anyway, like an admission that his life's shit enough to need to get high to escape. He thinks like, what do people do when they hang out anymore? What do people say?

"I like your… bell things," says Steve.

"Ah, they're handmade."

"Cool, cool. How's um… life?"

Munson laughs at him. More like cackles, rocking back and forth in the chair slapping his knees.

"I live in my dead uncle's falling down trailer," he wheezes. "I'm thirty whole years old and work washing dishes and have two bucks to my name. I sell coke to high schoolers out of a van. My best friend is a cactus. I'm dying of the virus one day at a time. You know man, it's peachy. How's your life, then? Successful, I bet, Mr. Bigshot. Fancy medical career. Cute little family. Picket fence."

It's Steve's turn to laugh, feeling the surreality of how off base Munson is.

"Naw man," he says shaking his head. "None of that. Life's just…" He shakes his head some more, runs his hand along his buzzed scalp. It still feels weird to skim his hands along soft peachfuzz. "It's lonely, I guess."

Munson makes a face, watching his hands.

"Why'd you buzz it?" he asks, and Steve grins, knowing he'll get a kick out if it.

"Started going bald."

"No shit!"

"Yeah, no shit."

Not too badly yet, but it had felt a little pathetic, watching his hair thin in the mirror and clinging to it as some kind of. Immutable piece of his identity. Some kind of symbol. What it symbolized, he's got no clue, but it's in the past now, it's over and done.

"Your mullet is really showing me up, Munson," Steve says and gets an eyebrow waggle and a dramatic shake of his hair in return.

"Read it and weep, Baldy."

Munson waves at a neighbor walking her dog, and she waves back cheerily. There's a mockingbird yelling out repeating bird calls from somewhere nearby, a pair of wasps flitting about in the eaves of the trailer, and a big, ugly thunderhead cruising the summer sky. The air smells like ozone and cut grass and the tar cooking in the asphalt, and Steve's realizing he doesn't really know how to talk to someone who's dying but not actively.

Not that it's always a death sentence. The virus.

There's plenty of treatments now, experimental and otherwise. No cure yet but maybe soon. Steve's seen it enough times to know the virus doesn't really discriminate either. It takes gay and straight the same way in the end.

He wonders about Munson. Is he–? But then, it's none of his business really. Still, he remembers being eighteen and thinking he'd like to bite down on the white pudge of Eddie Munson's inner thigh and chew on the taut tendon there like a chicken wing. And yeah, he thinks that's still as messed up as it was then. And he still wants to, probably.

"You heard from the kids lately?" Munson asks. It surprises him.

"Hardly kids anymore," says Steve. "You haven't?"

"Not really," he says, nabbing a Zippo from one of Henry's branches to light a cigarette. "Not in a while."

It surprises him. He figured, out of all of them, Munson had the biggest chance of keeping up with at least some of them. Half because he always acted like he'd stay a kid forever himself. Peter Pan to their lost boys.

"They're OK, I think," he says. "Moved on. It's been a while for me too."

Munson looks at him, and his big eyes are all sad and wet. Or he's just really high.

Steve doesn't know what he's doing here, not really. It feels like a fragment of another life. One where he's Eddie Munson's old buddy, catching up after years apart, and it's a Wednesdsy in July with evening creeping in and he's got most of his shit together and knows what he's doing with his life.

"You want me to go pick us up some food?" Steve asks, clearing his throat, and doesn't ask you been eating, man?

"If you're paying, I'll pick it up."

"You're trashed."

"Driven worse," Munson shrugs, and he's up, keys slinging around his fingers before Steve can protest. "I'll go to Skeeter's down the road. Gimme your wallet."

He makes grabby hands, and Steve, the idiot, slaps his worn wallet into his waiting palm.

"Just as easy as that?" he says, guffawing. "Give the broke, ailing druggie trailer trash your credit card?"

Steve just kinda figures Munson's decent. It's been a while, but he can't have changed too drastically and he seemed decent back then too. Steve thinks of Munson sitting quietly beside a dying stranger this morning and thinks maybe that's not something someone would do if they were a bad person, but hell, he could be wrong.

Maybe stealing someone's credit card when you're flat broke with some very expensive drugs the only thing keeping you alive has nothing to do with being a good or bad person. Maybe Steve's just kind of an idiot.

"Get a lava cake too," he says. "My treat."

"You're a decent guy, Nurse Harrington," says Munson. "Not too bright, but you're decent."

"I could be waiting to rob you blind."

"Oh," he coos like one would at a pig-tailed toddler. He taps with a long finger against Steve's forehead. "Lights are all on but no one's home. Good luck scrounging anything up in there. Like I said. Cheese whiz."

The beat up van squeals away into the settling evening.

The mosquitos have stormed out in force as dusk sets in, Munson's scrawny little plant not quite enough to hold back the hordes, so Steve lets himself into the trailer, hoping maybe because Munson said that stuff about scrounging around that he's not overstepping a boundary.

Munson wasn't lying about the cheese whiz.

Not that it's being used like glue to hold together bits of crumbling infrastructure or caulked along the baseboards or whatever but that a siingular can of the stuff, plus some assorted condiments and a weirdly fuzzy pickle floating in a half empty jar of brine, are the only things in the fridge. Plus, a handful of Budweisers in the door.

The trailer otherwise is atrociously cluttered, a loose spill of eclectic detritus. Dirty laundry and crusty dishes and a whole lot of loose cassette tapes and dog-eared books with wizards and unicorns on the covers. Prayer flags strung across the ceiling and posters slathered on the walls. A privacy bead curtain to the back bedroom. Some illicit drug paraphernalia intermingling with pill bottles.

He picks one up to read the label and recognizes it, then starts picking out all the little bottles from the clutter and setting them together on top of the magazines on the coffee table.

He's got most of the full ones arranged together when Munson busts through the door with a doggy bag.

"If you want some real fun drugs, I've got some in the back," he says. "Those aren't really any good to snort."

"Sorry, sorry," says Steve, pulling his hands away.

"No, you're fine. I do have a system but it's a bit. Chaotic. Probably would make a good little nurse like you cringe."

"Some of these are expired," says Steve. "Are you taking them? What's your viral load?"

"Buy a fella a drink first, golly!" Munson presses his hand to his chest in mock offense. "You don't have to mother hen me. I'm a big boy. I've had this thing for years, and it hasn't got me yet."

"Sorry," Steve says again.

They go back out onto the porch with dinner and some cold beers. Two dozen wings and a thing of large fries. Munson plugs in an electric bug zapper, immediately glowing and crackling with vanquished mosquitoes and moths and craneflies.

Skeeter's is a dive bar, but their wings are still as damn good as Steve remembers. Eating wings is messy as shit, and Munson forgot napkins but drags out some bandanas from some musty drawer in his trailer. After a while, they both get tired of playing polite and wipe their mouths with the back of their hands and gnaw shamelessly on the gristle of spent bones they drop to the weathered porch.

It's full night and it's summer and it doesn't quite feel like real life. Munson lights a cigarette, and the ember of it hovers like a glowing eye in the crook of his fingers, pulsating.

The flickering orange of the streetlight doesn't quite reach onto the shadow of the porch, and Steve looks at Munson leaning in the rocker with his legs sprawled out and thinks about his unrealized boyhood fantasy. Of slumping on his knees between the guy's legs and–

It's not hard to imagine that maybe it's still '86, and Steve's burning up with energy that has nowhere to go, untethered from whoever he used to be with no real way forward. Still pretty sure there is a way forward, a tomorrow, a next chapter where something good happens. Something not awful at least. No more monsters, no more bloodshed, just– a life. Love. Something fulfilling and peaceful enough and–

He slips down off the shitty chair and onto his knees on the porch. It hurts like a punch up through his joints. He's not even thirty, and he's old as shit and not even happy and well-adjusted. He wants to whine about it, scream about it. Munson's thirty, and he might not make thirty-five. He wants to scream. He wants to–

"Munson," he says, because the guy's got his head tipped sideways with the cigarette dangling on his lips, looking at him like he's insane. "Muns– Eddie," he says. "Eddie, is it chill if I– I don't know. I've always wanted to– Can I– you got condoms?"

"Steve," says Eddie and touches his buzzed head with his fingertips like he's checking if he's real. "Steve, did you really just ask if it's chill to suck my dick?"

"Yeah. I guess."

It's weird. It's like a dream. Eddie gets a condom and shimmies his shorts down his bony, weird legs and drops back in the rocking chair. Steve's been sitting there on his heels the whole time he scrounged through his trailer. Like a pet, waiting.

"Are you even gay?" Eddie asks.

"Are you?"

"I've got the virus, Steve-o."

"So? Lots of people do. It's not a gay disease. It's not the act of a vengeful God. There's nothing wrong with being gay. There's nothing wrong with either of us."

He kisses Eddie on the inside of his thigh just past his knee when he says it and the skin is so soft under the firm touch of his lips that he regrets how bad his fresh shave is going to burn.

"That's very sweet, Steve. Real cute. But you're sucking some random guy's dick in a trailer park, and I'm high enough that I'm feeling kinda nervous with Henry watching. There are a few things wrong with us."

"Don't be nervous," Steve says and smooths both palms down his bare legs.

"Sweet as sugar, I'm telling you."

The hair on his legs is fine, barely there, but Eddie's pubic hair is coarse and thick and Steve's not too sure he's showered recently. Which should be gross really, should be a lot of things, but it mostly makes Steve want to pick him up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and wash him off under the trickle of the kitchen sink.

He hasn't really sucked a dick before, just thought about it a lot and he's watched a few pornos. It seems straight-forward enough. Eddie's penis is right there and not really that hard yet, nestled snug against his balls in coarse hair. He's uncut, a little shine of fluid hanging at the blunt tip pushing beneath the hood of his foreskin, and it seems like it would fit pretty decent against the roof of his mouth. It's cute even. A little tough to see in the faint light, so Steve plants his palms on Eddie's knees and spreads him wider to look.

He bends close enough that Eddie must feel his breath. In his old fantasies, he lapped at him in slow licks like a dog, savoring the taste.

Eddie flicks him in the center of the forehead.

"Condom, you ding-dong."

"Right, yeah, right."

Munson pulls at himself, a harsh, weird tugging in a way that hardens him up fast. Steve skirts his fingers along the back of Eddie's knuckles as he does it. It's fast enough that the condom goes on smooth in no time, and then Steve's fingers curl to take his place. Latex shifts under his grip, dulls the heat but not the weight of it, and Eddie sighs and shifts up and the rocker tips back.

Steve puts his mouth over his covered erection and tastes rubber, mostly. It doesn't fit as nice in his mouth as it would have flaccid, but he rubs the head back and forth against the ridge behind his teeth and a little further. Real careful.

"What's gotten into you anyway? Jesus."

Maybe Munson's sobering up. Steve looks up at him through his lashes, and Eddie swears a colorful string of really made up cursewords and then bites his own fingers to keep quiet.

It's barely 10PM. There's kids living nearby probably. Little old ladies. Or maybe there's worse stuff someone could hear past dark in a neighborhood like this one.

Steve takes Eddie's dick most of the way down his throat.

"You into death, Harrington?" Eddie gasps. "You into like. Dying people. You never looked once at me before. You into finishing the job? Because you are literally killing me right now."

Steve pulls off.

"It's not like that," he says. "I looked at you all the time. Before this. I wanted to do all kinds of stuff."

"Oh," says Eddie. "Like what stuff?"

"Like this."

Steve leans past his stiff dick into the shadow of his gaunt pelvis and presses his mouth against the crook of his thigh. It's as doughy and soft as he imagined, probably fish-belly white too beyond the wiry hair, and Steve opens his mouth and bites. Eddie rocks up, the tendon in his teeth flexing into a taut cord and his cock jumps hard against Steve's cheek.

"Holy Christ, you're a fucking weirdo," Eddie chokes out.

It makes Steve feel a little dizzy, like he's seeing double vision. His decade old fantasy of biting at some vital, thrumming, secret part of wild-eyed, crazy-haired, full of life Eddie Munson blurring with the Eddie who's cast in shadow on a warped porch, pantsless, bare ass on his rocker, sauce-stained wife beater shrugged up his little pudge of a belly, bright yellow condom glowing in the dark.

"I don't know why I wanted to do that so bad," Steve says, muffled as he kisses up Eddie's twitching belly. He twists his fingers around the base of his dick and rubs up and down a few times just to watch Munson arch his back against the chair. "Hey, the condom glows in the dark."

"You just noticed?"

"Looks a little radioactive."

"That's only how it looks in movies."

"You sure?"

"This place is not a place of honor," Eddie gasps, rolling his hips up against Steve's hand.

"Huh?"

"It's… nevermind. You're a weirdo, Steve Harrington. You're a real weirdo."

"Is this what dirty talk for losers is like?"

Eddie skims his buzzed hair with both hands. He holds them there and tugs his head up, looking. The orange streetlight glow catches in his black eyes and hides the dark bags under them, accentuates the groove of wrinkles at the frown of his lips. He's damn pretty. Steve wants to lap him clean and chew on him some more.

"Guys like me are shunned for a reason, you know. I'm worse than a freak now. I'm a ticking time bomb. I could take anyone who gets close enough to love me down with them."

"Oh I love you now?" Steve jokes, and Eddie doesn't laugh. He's sober.

"It's dangerous, Steve. You should stop."

"Are you telling me to stop?"

"No. I'm saying you should want to."

"I don't want to."

He wraps his lips back around Eddie's dick.

With his eyes open, he can blurrily watch the bright yellow glow of the condom dim and brighten as he moves. The light looks sickly against Eddie's soft belly and thighs. Steve thinks danger.

He wants to ask if he knows who gave it to him, but knows that's rude and also not very sexy. They're probably dead now. It's not a very sexy thought at all, but Steve pushes the heel of his hand against the front of his jeans and rocks into it. He's not sure what comes next in his old fantasy. Suckle at Eddie Munson's inner thigh and then– And then, he–

Like all his dreams, they evaporate into thin air before the end. He still doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. He still can't get a handle on what he even likes. Does he like nursing people through the very end of their lives? Is it just a thing he fell into by chance and keeps doing because he doesn't have any clue what else there is?

If he'd been braver ten years ago and actually got to sucking Eddie's dick when his knees still worked perfectly and nobody was sick, what would have happened? Would it have been just once, a quickie, a satisfying good time but that's it, that's that? Would they have have had some gross whirlwind romance, caught up in each other, acting like lovebirds, overflowing, sticky-sweet and disgusting? Would they have been lovers, calling each other baby and sweetheart and pookie, standing against a world that goddamn hated them like nothing else, but all of it a little more tolerable and meaningful together, maybe? Would they have crashed and burned, Steve too indecisive and scattered, Eddie too wild child and unstable and hungry for the whole world, for fame and sex and drugs and all of it boiling up and ending quick and bright and permanent?

None of that would have passed his mind back then. He'd only seen people die blood and messy and sudden, not slow and inevitable with a little breath of relief.

"Steve," sighs Eddie, fingers digging into his scalp like he's trying to grip at his hair. "Steve, Steve, Steve."

Steve hollows his cheeks and tries to make it good for him. He really hopes it's good for him even it never happens again. Not like. For truly morbid reasons, but he supposes that's always possible too. That Eddie just dies. That he conks out and snuffs it.

It sucks. It makes him pull harder with suction at the dick in his mouth, moving his tongue with more determined purpose, laving along the latex-covered condom. He imagines the yellow glow staining his cheeks and tongue and hands. He wants it to. It's silly.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," swears Eddie and bucks his hips and goes taut, riding out the wave of an orgasm. Steve feels it as a warm weight pulsing against the skin of the condom held against his tongue. It's weird not to taste it, feel it. He rubs his palm against his own cock trapped in his jeans, and it only takes a second before he's coming off too. Maybe it's been a while. He leans his forehead against Eddie's bare thigh and gasps his way through it.

Eddie pushes him back and pinches the condom off and ties it, flinging it away somewhere out into the grass. Steve wonders how safe or sanitary that is but doesn't comment. He doesn't think wandering stray dogs or raccoons can get HIV. Probably. It's maybe just as gross as anything else about Eddie's life.

"You good?" Eddie asks and cradles his head in his hand. His dick's gone limp and small and spent against his pale thigh.

"Lava cake," says Steve. His lips feel dry from the latex and the lava cake is still sitting at the bottom of the doggy bag and the porch is covered in scattered chicken bones and Steve's knees hurt something awful.

"It'll be cold. Just a big brownie."

"Still chocolate," he says. "I don't care."

"You're really weird," says Eddie. "If I haven't said it before."

"Life's weird," he says. Eddie Munson's eyes shine.

"Yeah," says Eddie, fishing the bag of lava cake off the porch, still pantsless and sweaty. "Yeah, you're damn right about that.

They eat chocolate cake together with the bugzapper zinging overhead and a dog barking somewhere over the horizon and the streetlight glow haloing their bent heads. They lick chocolate from their fingers and then each other's fingers.

It's July. It's past midnight in a nowhere trailer park in bumfuck Indiana. It's ten years ago and it's the future.

Maybe five years on, Steve's holding Eddie Munson's hand while he finally dies after weeks, months, years of wasting away to nothing.

Or maybe not.

#steddie #i didn't like. intend to write this the image of thigh chewing just gripped me so tight i couldn't... not #i still don't know what stranger things is about #i did enough of a deep dive to get the character voices down #sowwy #also someone was already rude to me on ao3 about this fic it's a new record #i waltz into a fandom late with starbucks and get booed out #i'm not tagging this too intensely either it's embarrassing someone should feel embarrassed for me #my fic #ficletober 2022 #sort of

12 notes · View notes

luc3 · 3 years ago

Text

Dear psychiatric suitcase,

So we are at a point here, where the doctors (puppeteers) ask us to put in room "alone" the people who have to - in view of their clinical state - pass in palliative care. We already have no more rooms alone. They seemed this morning to not understand. All rooms are occupied by - patients in palliative care. (SURPRISE)

It's Christmas, so as usual people will be even more depressed and will even more going to die. YAY!

Are they going to die next to each other? we are playing Alice in Wonderland and the walls are expandable ?

You note that I am still NOT even talking about covid which is in the process of submerging my colleagues in emergencies, intensive care unit and infectious medicine dpt. We are the next step. Cases are rising.

And we do not have time to work well, to disinfect properly, so if Omicron is as contagious as it is said, I wish it is not as dangerous as the previous ones (and no, it's not worth delighting in the pseudo studies that came out, about how vaccines are good (or not), we don't know nothing about Omicron, we have NO HINDSIGHT, because to have hindsight means to count the number of dead per day and our ability to treat them or not.

Strangely England does not communicate on this. PLEASE THINK WITH YOUR BRAIN ONE FUCKING TIME.)

SO ! If it is as dangerous as the previous ones, It will be a massacre, I think to make a - hecatomb, precisely - in the manner of the Ancient Greeks or to immolate the bull of my anger on the altar of Yahweh and bathe in his blood (and mine.)

youtube

#diary #dear psychiatric suitcase #nurse with wound #Venom #ghostemane #masks

24 notes · View notes

hopscotchandlemon · 4 years ago

Text

The Fight

A/N Mainly Angst with some Fluff

T/W Mention of illness and death

Rating: Teen

‘You promised you’d pick up my dry cleaning. Was it really too much to ask?’ you moaned as you put your bag down and kicked off your shoes.

‘Something came up,’

Of the few words Jethro uttered daily, those were said more than any others and you were sick of it; sick of being way down on his list of priorities. He was sat at his kitchen table, case files surrounding him. Every conversation you seemed to have with him these days seemed to be a fight or at least, the start of one; sometimes he just point-blank refused to bite. A quick look in the kitchen confirmed there was nothing ready for dinner, causing you to huff loudly. Jethro had seen you looking and deduced what the problem was.

‘I’ll go pick us up some food, go get a shower, I’ll be back by the time you’re ready,’ he promised, picking up the file and heading towards the door.

But you were too angry to listen to reason. To you, it was just another excuse.

‘Forget it, I’ll go home and get a shower,’ you spat, making your way back towards the door. Jethro caught your wrist, you struggled against it, but he held it firmly.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, calmly.

‘I’m fed up of being so far down on your list of priorities. I’m surprised you remember I exist Jethro.

‘Are you really this pissed-off that I forgot your dry cleaning?’

‘STOP TRVIALISING ME,’ you scream.

He looks you in the eyes, narrowing his own as he tries to locate the source of your anger. You exhale loudly.

‘What’s really wrong? You’ve been bitching about petty stuff for weeks now. Things that don’t bother you most of the time. C’mon, talk to me.’

You shake your arm free from his grasp and put your shoes back on. There’s a hitch in your chest that’s betraying your anger. You don’t think you can say another word, so you slam the door behind you and storm to your car. Throwing your bag on to the passenger seat, you fumble with the key and it falls on the floor. It’s enough to make you lose it. You grip on to the steering wheel as a massive sob leaves your chest. Resting your head on your hands, you’re not in control of emotions anymore. You’re crying so hard you barely register that Jethro has opened the door and is coaxing you out of the car and back into the house. He’s practically taking all your weight as he sits you down on the sofa. He stays with you, sitting beside you and stroking your hair as you bury your face in his chest. You both sit like that for an hour before you finally lifted your head and gave Jethro a weak smile. You’re almost too embarrassed to speak but he smiles back and makes you feel at ease.

‘I’m sorry,’ you mutter, looking at his now wet shirt.

He shrugs, gently running his roughened palm over your blotchy face, the very hint of a smile on his silent lips.

‘What have I told you about apologies?’ his smile more formed now.

‘Those are your rules,’ you quietly assert. ‘And I’ve not been honest with you these last few weeks.’

Jethro’s poker-face his legendary, but he still flinches slightly at your words, fearful that soon he’s going to have reason not to trust you. He stays silent, you know he wants you to do the talking but you’re not sure you have the strength. The problem is, you can’t walk away from this conversation now you’ve started it and following your complete meltdown; he doesn’t deserve that. So, taking a deep breath, you steal yourself to tell him what you’ve avoided telling anyone over the last few weeks.

‘My sister called me three weeks ago. Said our Mom dad been a bit poorly for a week. She’d taken her to the doctor for tests and well…’

You paused for a moment, swallowing hard at the lump in your throat.

‘It seems she has cancer. They can only offer her palliative care.’

Jethro exhaled loudly. ‘Don’t you wanna go and see her?’

You shook your head. You’d not really spoken about your family dynamics with him and given that he wasn’t really forthcoming with his own personal information, it was never something that had been questioned. All he knew was that you’d left Minnesota when you were 20 and you’d not returned since.

‘She doesn’t want to see me. We had a huge falling out when I was in my teens. I’ve tried to patch things up a couple of times, but she won’t. My sister tried 3 weeks ago and she still said no.‘

Those strong arms surrounded you and you let your head rest on Jethro’s shoulders.

‘I should have just told you instead of being horrible to you for the last few weeks but I couldn’t being myself to say the words and it’s just all so complicated.’

Running your hand along his arm, he puts his face closer to your ear

‘If you want to go. I’ll take you. If she won’t see you then at least you I’ll be there with you.’

The fullness in your chest lighted a bit with his words. You sank your face in to chest, feeling safe in his arms

‘And you are always on my list of priorities but sometimes you’ll have to come second to work, that’s just the way it is. But if you need me, I will be there for you. Always.’

#Leroy Jethro Gibbs #ncis fanfiction #ncis x reader #gibbs x reader #ncis #ncis one shot

63 notes · View notes

opheliadawnwalker3 · 5 years ago

Text

Siren *Part 3*

Author’s Notes: I just wanted to thank everyone for reading and reviewing my first multi chapter fic. Your feedback really means a lot to me and I hope to keep delivering! Thanks again :)

Synopsis: Reader is married with a young son and working as a waitress at a popular nightclub in the 1930′s. Her husband is fatally ill and his new treatments are swiftly draining their meager savings. Desperate, she struggles to make ends meet until she catches the eye of the son of a notorious crime boss. Loki Laufeyson is dangerous, powerful and very wealthy and isn’t used to being told no. He offers her a way out of her money troubles. But how far is she willing to go to save her husband?

Part Three: The calm before the storm. Reader gives Richard his final dose.

Part One Part Two

*****************************************************************************************

Loki was much rougher with you this time. Your thighs were still tender from when he pushed your legs up to your chest. You still smell like him. His cologne and musk clinging desperately to your used body. When he was done, Loki calmly lit a snipe and coolly slid a thick wad of money down the front of your dress. Thankfully, he let you keep your underlings this time.

After Loki was finished with you, you insisted on being dropped back off at Louie’s. You did not want him to know where you lived. It would only bring nothing but trouble. The rest of your shift flew by in a haze. You could feel several of your coworker’s eyes on you. Wondering why you would possibly leave with Laufeyson and his trigger men. Curious, yet no one had to courage to outright ask. You just played it off as normally as you could until it was time for you to leave. Inwardly, you were in absolute turmoil. The thick wad of cash tucked into your dress feeling more burdensome by the second.

In your bathroom, you stare in the mirror as you splash cold water on your face. You hardly recognize the woman staring back. With your features pinched together in silent judgment, you look several years older. You feel disgusted with yourself. You look down at your hands.The same malicious hands you pleasure Loki with, are the same ones that drips arsenic into Richard’s throat.

You’re suddenly overwhelmed with the crushing weight of your decisions on your shoulders and your fingers grasp the sink tightly. You squeeze your eyes shut as a wave of panic and nausea roll over you. You grit your teeth as the tightness in your chest increases. You struggle to control your breathing.

You are a whore and a murderer. But you can’t quit now. Not after everything. It will all be over in a few days and then you could move on. Start your new life with your boy.

Your eyes fly open. You needed to see him. You need to remind yourself who you’re doing this for.

You let out a shaky breath and pull yourself away from the sink and your judgmental reflection. You pass Richard’s door, comforted by his pitiful wheezing snores. One less thing to worry about tonight.

Johnny lay sleeping in his crib, unbothered and untouched by the world. His chubby fingers clutching onto his favorite stuffed rabbit. You reach down and softly brush his hair out of his face as silent tears slide down your cheeks. Your heart clenches tightly with unwavering love and guilt.

It will be worth it. To give him a good life, it’ll all be worth it.

*******************************************************************************************

You yawn as you stand at the kitchen counter, waiting for the toast to pop up. The rays from the sun trickle in through your kitchen window, bathing the apartment in rich golden light. You slide Richard’s glass of orange juice towards you as you lift the small clear bottle from your apron. Just a few more drops. Maybe one or two more for good measure.

It had to be today. You had prolonged the inevitable long enough.

Today was the day Richard would die.

You stir the mixture together, just as the toast pops up. You butter them, then add his favorite blackberry jam. A couple of slices of bacon sit on the side. You would rather avoid another steak incident if you could.

You take a deep breath and gather yourself as you pick up the plate and glass. Quietly walking down the hall so you don’t wake Johnny, you knock softly on the door.

No reply.

You turn the doorknob slowly and peak your head in. “Richard? I brought you some breakfast. I wasn’t sure how hungry you’d-”

You halt, taken aback at the sight of your husband. It had barely been ten hours since you looked in on him and yet here he was on death’s door. Richard slowly turns his head to look at you and his lips twitch with a faint smile you haven’t seen in months.

“Do I...look as awful as I feel?” He sputters out in a playful tone. You allow a fleeting expression of sadness to pass your features before crossing to stand by his bed.

“No dear, you still look as handsome ever. Do you...feel like eating today? Can you sit up for me?”

Richard winces as he attempts to sit up and you have to help pull him up the rest of the way. You push the glass of orange juice towards him.

“Here. I imagine your throat is sore from all that coughing. Freshly squeezed, just how you like it.”

Richard coughs wetly before picking up the glass, tired eyes looking over his small breakfast. Much to your surprise, his expression seems...grateful. His eyes meet yours as you move to sit on the bed next to him, placing a hand on his knee in a deceivingly caring gesture.

“You’re a good woman.” He rasps calmly as he takes a long pull of orange juice. Unwillingly, you feel a small tug on your heart. How long had you waited to hear any words of kindness from the man you married? For any sort of genuine warmth from the man you fell in love with? For years he controlled and terrified you. Beat you until there was hardly anything left. It was far too late now.

So why is there a pang in your heart now? Is it just guilt? Or is there some sick twisted part of you that still loves him?

You offer a small smile and a reassuring pat on his knee before you rise from the bed.

“Well I’ll...just leave you to your breakfast-” you’re cut off when Richard quickly reaches out and grabs your hand. You flinch at the sudden movement.

“No wait. Please...stay.” Richard pleads in an unusually weak voice. You look down at him, unsure. He withdraws and you feel his fingers trace the scar on your hand. His eyes briefly shimmer with what you could only describe as guilt. “I mean...I would really like the company.”

You nod complacently, sitting back down on the bed. You watch silently as Richard takes another gulp of orange juice and nibbles on his toast. After a couple of minutes, Richard finally breaks the silence.

“Do you...remember where we first met?”

You were taken aback and you place your hands in your lap to avoid squeezing the sheets nervously.

“Of course I do. At the Feed Rack Stand. You were there showing off with your Pallies.”

“And you were there with your parents. You stuck out in your bright pink dress. You saw a kid drop his ice cream cone and you gave him yours. I knew right then I was dizzy for a dame.”

“Richard...” You trail off softly.

“And that Fourth of July picnic out at the lake? You brought that Buttermilk Creme Pie that everyone thought was just aces. Then we watched the sailboats pass by and that family with the young twins? That’s when we decided to try for a baby.”

You remembered. You were originally going to wear your pretty white sundress, but the bruises on your arms still hadn’t healed. So you had to wear a drab blue dress with longer sleeves. The evening fireworks terrified you with their sudden booming.

“And when I saw you holding Johnny for the first time...you never looked more beautiful...”

“Stop this...you’re going to get better. The doctor is coming in two days with the new treatment.” You lie through your teeth. You were going to hell there was no doubt about it. To tell a man he would heal when you’re actively pouring poison down his throat will surely earn you a seat on Satan’s lap. But you needed to say anything to get out of that room.

Richard lets out a strained laugh and shakes his head. “I just...I know I didn’t always treat you right. My father...he wasn’t a very good man and I...guess I take after him.”

You feel a conflicting stab of both rage and empathy flicker through you. Your stomach feels knotted and heavy with conflicting emotions. None of this makes it right. Nothing he says now will take away everything he’s done. So why is it affecting you so?

Instinctively, you feel your eyes well up. No this is ridiculous. He’s treated you with nothing but cruelty and coldness for years but now that he’s showing you just a shred of decency, you were suddenly wracked with remorse?

You needed to leave. Now.

You slowly stand, struggling to keep your conflicting emotions from your face. Your eyes glance over the near empty glass of orange juice. You hated Richard with every fiber of your being. You wanted to cause him just a shred of the pain he’s caused you. But you didn’t want to watch him die. You couldn’t.

“I need to go tend to Johnny. He should be waking up any minute.”

“I want...him to remember me. Can you do that for me? If nothing else, Just make sure my son remembers me.”

Your throat suddenly feels dry and you swallow hard. Johnny will never know you. I’ll make sure we both forget. You nod solemnly before turning to leave.

“Wait...please.”

You pause, looking down at the shell that used to be Richard. The face that had looked down at you with such animosity and scorn in the past, now just looked pathetic and frail.

“It wasn’t...all bad was it? Our life together?”

You take a deep breath and lean down to kiss his forehead. The stale smell of approaching death clings to him. You decide to answer truthfully. To offer him this small modicum of mercy before he dies by your hand.

“No, Richard. It wasn’t all bad.”

And then you turn away from him forever. Leaving him all alone to await Death.

**********************************************************************************

You gently sit Johnny down on the ground as you sit down on a bench. The city park is only two blocks from your apartment and not very much to look at. A couple of swing sets, a slide and a set of monkey bars. A big open field on the other side of the playground for ball games or free frolicking children. But Johnny always loves watching the other children and you had to get out of the apartment.

You try not to think about Richard wheezing his last breathe as you observe Johnny quietly playing with the few toys you brought for him. But by a cruel twist of fate, Johnny looks just like your soon to be late husband. But you will make sure he will turn out nothing like his father.

Johnny will be better than Richard. Far better than you.

Your thoughts are interrupted when a flustered mother sits beside you on the bench, wrestling with her own toddler. Her light blonde hair lays free and unfixed on her shoulders, her cheeks are flushed with exertion ,and you can make out a subtle roundness to her belly.

“My goodness Alice, calm down. Let Mama sit down before you try to jump out of my arms.”

The tiny girl continues squirming and flailing her limbs on her mother’s lap. “Down! Down!”

The woman turns to you with an exasperated sigh as she puts her daughter down on the ground next to Johnny. She then turns to you with a wide friendly grin as she fans herself.

“Whew, it’s as hot as the dickens out here!”

She holds her hand out and you can’t but notice the Southern twang in her voice. Hesitantly, you reach out and shake her hand.

“Hi there. I’m Lorraine and this little spitfire here, is Alice.”

You introduce yourself and gesture to Johnny whose shyly playing with the many pink ruffles on Alice’s dress.

“This is my son, Johnny.” You state. You didn’t feel much like socializing but it would be a welcome distraction at least. Lorraine leans over, peering down at Johnny.

“Well isn’t he just the cutest little thing. So well behaved too! Unlike mine.” She gushes, pointing to Alice, whose already digging her fingers deep into the dirt. Johnny watches her with pure fascination.

“Thank you. You’re daughter is very cute too,” You say truthfully. Alice and Johnny had to be close in age yet she is the mirror opposite. Talkative, outgoing, with long straight blonde hair and an impish smile. You assume she gets that from her mother.

For the next several minutes, the pair of you exchange pleasantries. You make sure to keep things purposefully vague on your side, but manage to keep her talking. Not that that was very difficult. Lorraine, it seems, could talk your ear off.

“Have you lived here long?” You ask, genuinely curious. She lets out a pleasant laugh as though you just told an amusing joke.

“Not at all. Moved here about two months ago all the way from Charlotte. My husband got a promotion and we had to relocate. Drove all the way here just for the car to up and quit on us. But, I suppose that’s what we get for driving an old Napier. And Norman, bless his heart, has to take the trolley to work. Can you imagine? But until we can afford a new one, we have to make due.”

You nod, watching Alice pulling Johnny’s hands into the dirt next to hers. Looks like he’ll need another bath tonight, you muse silently.

Lorraine adjusts her skirt before leaning in slightly. “Well hey, forgive me if I seem too forward, but I would just love to get together again. Truth be told, I haven’t had much luck makin’ friends here. And hey, even our kids get along! Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll give ya a dil-ya-ble whenever we’re free?”

You pause and bite your lip, initially unsure how to respond. Lorraine seems perfectly lovely, but you don’t know if you need yet another person in your life right now. Your eyes drift over her wide doe eyes and down to her growing belly and relent.

You return her smile. “Sure. That’d be keen.”

The pair of you trade numbers and you stand to grab Johnny who toddled a few feet away with Alice. His toys lay forgotten by the bench. You bend down to pick him up when something catches your eye. A familiar face that makes your blood run cold.

Blonde hair. Steely blue eyes. It’s only for a split second, but you know you saw him. He is standing by the sidewalk outside of the park, with his hands tucked into his suit jacket. His mouth tilted in a troublesome smirk. His eyes focused on you.

What was he doing here of all places?

“Steve?” you mutter quietly, your heart skipping a beat as you hug Johnny closer to you.

“Mm? You say something honey?” Lorraine questions, kneeling down to knock the dirt off of Alice’s dress.

You turn to look back where Steve was standing but he was gone. Melted into the passing crowd as though he were never there.

Is it a coincidence? Did they have business nearby? Or was he sent to watch you?

Whatever the reason, you didn’t want to linger and find out. You quickly gather all of Johnny’s toys and bid a quick goodbye to Lorraine.

“O-okay honey, I’ll be seeing you soon right?” There’s a subtle edge of desperate hope in her voice.

“Yes. Yes absolutely. I’ll give you a ring soon,” you assure with a strained smile. Maybe one day you would call her. But not anytime soon.

Without another word, you spin and practically run back to the apartment with a wriggling Johnny in your arms. Checking behind you every few steps to make sure you’re not followed.

*****************************************************************************************

When you walk back into the apartment, there is an unearthly stillness. The air feels thicker and there is a heavy silence. You quickly lay Johnny down in his crib with a bottle to help him nap before turning towards Richard’s door.

You had to see. You had to know.

You take a few shaky steps towards the door. A subtle tingling sensation travels down your limbs and you can hear your pounding heartbeat in your ears. You raise your hand to hesitantly knock on Richard’s door. There was nothing but silence. Your stomach drops and your fingers wrap around the doorknob tightly.

Maybe he’s sleeping. But maybe he’s not.

Slowly you open the door and step in, freezing in the door frame. Even in the dim lamp light, you can make out the glassy unfocused look of his eyes. His plate knocked carelessly on the floor with cold half eaten toast on the rug. Glass empty and laying on it’s side. His mouth is open and you can see a thin trickle of drool trailing down the corner. He’s still. Very very still.

Gathering your wits, you move to stand at his bedside. Looking down at him like he’s done for too many years. Was this how he felt? This raw power of putting someone in their supposed place?

You reach down and touch him, quickly retracting when you feel his cold dead flesh.

For a moment, you just stand there silently. Observing every feature. Committing it to memory. Before you even realize what you’re doing, you raise your hand and it strikes Richard across the face. His head snaps to the side. You want to strike him again. Over and over again until his flesh is marred just as yours once was. But you force yourself to back away, hands twitching at your sides. You need to calm down. You turn and leave the room, closing the door swiftly behind you.

In his crib, Johnny reaches up to you with dirty hands. His curls unkempt and mashed against the side of his head. You smile and pick him up lightly bouncing him on your hip like you know he likes. He gives you a sleepy smile and you move to the rocking chair in the corner. Johnny curls up into you and you cradle him to your chest. You start singing an old tune that your mother used to sing to you. You hadn’t heard it in many years yet the words return to you effortlessly.

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,

Go to sleepy little baby.

When you wake, you’ll have cake,

And all the pretty little horses.

Black and bay, dapple and grey,

Coach and six little horses,

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry

Go to sleepy little baby.

When you wake, you’ll have cake,

And all the pretty little horses.

Way down yonder, down in the meadow,

There's a poor wee little lamby.

The bees and the butterflies pickin' at its eyes,

The poor wee thing cried for her mammy.

Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,

Go to sleepy little baby.

When you wake, you'll have cake,

And all the pretty little horses.

Johnny sags against you and you know he’s fast asleep. You carefully lay him back down in his crib, tucking his arm around his rabbit. Closing the door behind you, you walk back to the kitchen and eye the telephone. You had a few phone calls to make. You take a deep breath and pick up the receiver.

******************************************************************************************

About thirty minutes later, you let Mabel into your apartment. The doctor is due within the hour to confirm Richard’s condition and deliver the death certificate, but you needed Mabel’s support more than anything.

She wastes no time, pulling you into a tight hug and petting your hair soothingly.

“It’s going to be alright,” she croons in your ear. You sink into her loving embrace. “Thank you. That means so much.”

Suddenly, she pulls away and looks back at the closed door warily. Before you could question her, she moves purposefully into your kitchen without a word.

“Where is it?” Mabel asks, beginning to carefully look through your cabinets. You raise your brow. “Where’s what, Mabel?”

She pauses and looks at you. Her face uncharacteristically serious. “The arsenic you borrowed from me months ago. We need to get it out of your apartment, less they suspect something.”

You feel your blood pounding at your temples and you cross your arms nervously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mabel gives you a sad smile. “Dear, I’ve been in your apartment enough times to know you don’t have any rats. Well...not anymore.”

You shake your head and it feels as though ice flows through your veins. “Mabel, what are you saying?”

Mabel stands there for a moment and the silence is tense and suffocating. Then she shakes her head and places a hand on a nearby wall.

“These are nice apartments. Decent prices, it’s near the grocery store and the park is right down the street for the little ones. But the downside is the walls are very thin.” She gives you a knowing, melancholy smile. “You don’t have to pretend anymore. I heard...how he really was.”

Your heart seizes as you choke out a sob. You feel your knees threaten to buckle under you as you lean against the counter top. Mabel takes careful steps towards you, her eyes glistening with fresh tears.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you then. Please...let me help you now.” Mabel says softly with her hand outstretched. You feel the tears slide down your cheeks as your hand slips into your apron pocket and you hand over the small clear bottle to her. She lets you collapse into her arms as you both cry huddled on your kitchen floor.

***********************************************************************************

Next Part

@sherrybaby14 @flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash @lucifers-trash-stash @theatricalbride@imanuglywombat @ne-gans @darkficsyouneveraskedfor @cherienymphe @rinkashirikitateku @searchforanotherway @amor67figment-love @justvnash @mcudarklibrary @remilupin22 @chaoticfiretaconerd @threeminutesoflife @jessiejunebug @mizcaptainphoenix @marvelfansworld @darkandinvitingfics @xoxabs88xox @hurricanerin @smollest-soybean @awesomerextyphoon @polyamorous-winchester @readsalot73 @almostpurelysmut @gothgirlmahi @cherienymphe @amor67figment-love @beenheresinceforever @justvnash @backoff-imreading @pinkzsugar @startrekkingaroundasgard @hurricanerin @erinlaufeyson @different-type-of-hell @readsalot73 @alexakeyloveloki @cltex84 @sadwaywardkid @tenaciousnerdbucket @caffeindqueen @rantsalon @thefangirllife @is-it-madness @gothgirlmahi @princessofdarkwinter @fatefuldestinies

337 notes · View notes

santeofsurprise · 2 years ago

Text

Santé of Surprise provides the best Skilled Nursing Facility in Surprise AZ. We strive to provide a safe and comfortable environment where our residents can receive the best possible care. Our team of experienced medical professionals are committed to delivering compassionate and personalized care to each resident.

Santé of Surprise 14775 W Yorkshire Dr. Surprise, AZ 85374 (623) 246–7454

My Official Website: https://santecares.com/locations/sante-of-surprise/ Google Plus Listing: https://www.google.com/maps?cid=14499861869697107153

Service We Offer:

skilled nursing facility short-term rehabilitation outpatient rehabilitation palliative care hospice care work injury treatment

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sante_of Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/SanteofSurprise/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/santeofsurprise/

#skilled nursing surprise #short-term rehabilitation surprise #palliative care doctor surprise #work injury treatment surprise

0 notes

npr · 5 years ago

Photo

"I'm not anti-hospice at at all," says Joy Johnston, a writer from Atlanta. "But I think people aren't prepared for all the effort that it takes to give someone a good death at home."

Even though surveys show it's what most Americans say they want, dying at home is "not all it's cracked up to be," says Johnston, who relocated to New Mexico at age 40 to care for her dying mother some years ago. She ended up writing an essay about her frustrations with the way hospice care often works in the U.S.

Johnston, like many family caregivers, was surprised that her mother's hospice provider left most of the physical work to her. She says that during the final weeks of her mother's life, she felt more like a tired nurse than a devoted daughter.

According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, seven in 10 Americans say they would prefer to die at home. And that's the direction the health care system is moving, too, hoping to avoid unnecessary and expensive treatment at the end of life.

The home hospice movement has been great for patients, says Vanderbilt palliative care physician Parul Goyal, and many patients are thrilled with the care they get.

"I do think that when they are at home, they are in a peaceful environment," Goyal says. "It is comfortable for them. But," she notes, "it may not be comfortable for family members watching them taking their last breath."

Still, when it comes to where we die, the U.S. has reached a tipping point. Home is now the most common place of death, according to new research, and a majority of Medicare patients are turning to hospice services to help make that possible. Fewer Americans these days are dying in a hospital under the close supervision of doctors and nurses.

Patients Want To Die At Home, But Home Hospice Care Can Be Tough On Families

Illustration: Maria Fabrizio for WPLN

#health #NPR #WPLN #hospice #health care #family caregivers #caregivers

202 notes · View notes

kathleenseiber · 4 years ago

Text

You may have missed…

New dinosaur named ‘the one who causes fear’

The discovery of a new dinosaur has been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeonotology. The dinosaur has been named Llukalkan aliocranianus, meaning “the one who causes fear”.

About 80 million years ago, Llukalkan was believed to be among the top predators in what is now Patagonia. It could grow to up to five metres in size, had an extremely powerful bite with sharp teeth, huge claws and a keen sense of smell.

The dinosaur is part of the Abelisauridae family, and it features a rougher and shorter skull than its other abelisaurid relatives. This probably gave it better hearing.

Its full name comes from both native Mapuche (Llukalkan, “one who causes fear”), and Latin (aliocranianus, “different skull”).

“This is a particularly important discovery because it suggests that the diversity and abundance of abelisaurids were remarkable, not only across Patagonia, but also in more local areas during the dinosaurs’ twilight period,” says lead author Dr Federico Gianechini, a paleontologist at the National University of San Luis, Argentina.

Mummified scarlet macaw recovered from Pica 8 in northern Chile. Credit: Calogero Santoro, Universidad de Tarapacá, and José Capriles, Penn State

Mummified parrots hint at ancient trade in the Atacama Desert

A study of mummified parrots from the Atacama Desert has shown that communities there traded with the rest of South America for at least 350 years between 1100 and 1450 CE.

Live scarlet macaw from the Bolivian Amazonia. Credit: Carlos Capriles Farfán

Parrots and macaws appear in other parts of South America, but they’re not native to the arid Atacama. The research, published in PNAS, examined mummified parrot remains found in that area with radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA testing and isotopic dietary analysis. They found the original birds belonged in the eastern Amazon, at least 500 kilometres away.

“The fact that live birds made their way across the more-than-10,000-foot-high Andes is amazing,” says José M. Capriles, assistant professor of anthropology at Penn State University in the US. “They had to be transported across huge steppes, cold weather and difficult terrain to the Atacama. And they had to be kept alive.”

Detail of mummified blue-fronted amazon recovered from Pica 8 cemetery in the Atacama Desert. Credit: Calogero Santoro, Universidad de Tarapacá and José Capriles, Penn State

The birds have mostly been associated with human burials, but the haphazard way samples have been collected – through salvaging, museum archives and archaeological digs – makes the data patchy in some areas.

“We have absolutely no idea why they were mummified like this,” says Capriles. “They seem to be eviscerated through their cloaca (a common excretory and reproductive opening), which helped to preserve them. Many times, they were wrapped in textiles or bags.”

Shakespeare could help medical students empathise with patients

An article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine advocates for study of William Shakespeare’s plays in medical school. The paper, written by palliative care doctor David Jeffrey, suggests that the empathetic approach of the playwright can improve the doctor-patient relationship.

“Shakespeare speaks through times of crisis, underlining the centrality of empathic human relationships,” writes Jeffrey.

“Medical humanities are often on the fringes of medical education but should be central to medicine culture change. A special study module would be one way of introducing Shakespeare studies to the undergraduate curriculum.”

Grizzly bears find hiking trails ideal

Grizzly bears seem to be attracted to human hiking trails in North America, with a disproportionately high number of bears encountering hikers when they have the rest of a park to roam. New research by The Company of Biologists explains why, showing that the maximum gradients set by the US National Park service are ideal for bears as well as humans.

The researchers examined captive grizzlies in a specially designed enclosure, with treadmills that could be adjusted to different gradients. “Grizzly bears are amazing animals to work with,” says Anthony Carnahan, lead other on a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “As long as you respect what they’re capable of, don’t surprise them and give them space, they’re actually pretty predictable.”

The team tracked the oxygen consumption of the bears as they plodded along the treadmills, encouraged by the occasional apple treat, administered through a wall to protect the researchers. “The most stressful part of rewarding them was ensuring that the apple slice didn’t fall resulting in the bear turning around on the treadmill to go after it,” says Carnahan.

They found that the bears needed a lot of energy to ascend and descend steep slopes, and tended to select paths with a gradient of no more than 10% – much like humans.

Mice hold venomous potential

Hidden inside our genome is a genetic foundation for oral venom that we share with snakes.

The Taiwan habu is an invasive species that has become well established in Okinawa. Credit: OIST/Steven Aird

Researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and the Australian National University published a paper in PNAS that details the molecular link between venom glands in snakes and saliva glands in mammals.

The venom used in the study was collected from the Taiwan habu snake and compared to mice.

“Many scientists have intuitively believed this is true, but this is the first real solid evidence for the theory that venom glands evolved from early salivary glands,” says lead author Agneesh Barua of OIST.

“And while snakes then went crazy, incorporating many different toxins into their venom and increasing the number of genes involved in producing venom, mammals like shrews produce simpler venom that has a high similarity to saliva.”

You may have missed… published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

2 notes · View notes

arterwich · 4 years ago

Text

CW/TW - DEAD BODY, DEATH OF A LOVED ONE, DEATH, CANCER

I truly do wonder if my mum's death will get any easier. Like, it's been about 8 and a half months now since she passed, but it still feels like a dream. It still feels like she'll walk through the front door with another bloody plant or something that she found whilst out kerbing/buying things off of fb marketplace - but I know realistically she won't. It's still so weird to see what would be her body in the bottle-urn container that the funeral home gave us with her ashes in it.

I honestly thought that it would be easier to acknowledge the fact that she's gone and never coming back. That I'll never be able to take her out to dinner for her birthday & mother's day presents. That we'll never go to visit England together, despite having made plans to do so in 2020 (thanks covid for fucking ruining them btw - oh and fuck cancer). She'll never be able to help me out when I start house hunting, or when I go furniture shopping. She won't get to see my older sister get married to the love of her life. She won't be here for any of it.

I honestly regret the fact that I was so chill with her being in hospital for those two weeks before she passed. But, considering that mum basically had her own bed/room at RPH, due to how often she was a patient there (and at 2 other hospitals as well) due to her many illnesses/health problems she had, it was kind of the normal thing for her to be in hospital. I just wish that the cancer had been found sooner than it was (or sooner than we were told at least - cause I still remember overhearing her phone convo with the specialist and the words "it's possible that the cancer has come back" and having a very bad feeling about everything), cause it's just not fair that she, my mum who has beaten ever single medical/health problem that appeared in her life (3 strokes, bell's palsy that left her with permanent muscle damage/weakness to the right side of her face, kidney disease, liver problems, (possibly genetic) breast cancer (she was 4th gen in my fam to have it), diabetes, COPD...) to the point where she could live with it with only minor struggles, was once again dealt the sgittiest fucking hand by the fucking universe and given another set of obstacles to cross. Unfortunately, the lung cancer (which turned out to be metastatic and had found it's way to her liver) was the one thing that she truly could not overcome.

Seeing her in hospital the day before she passed away was truly horrifying as well as terrifying. This woman - who I had always seen with a stiff upper lip who didn't let her emotions out nor did she ever show anyone how much pain she truly was in - was reduced to... fuck I don't even know the words to describe how she was, but watching her head loll around and her eyes roll around her head, whilst her hands had to be mitted so she couldn't scratch herself or rip her drip/lines out, and her mouth being so clenched shut that she could barely speak... it was honestly the day I knew that she truly was never going to ever get better.

The morning before mum passed, we all went in to see her and she had managed to tell us, through clenched teeth, how much she loved us kids, and dad as well - which was a surprise (but not really) considering their marriage had fallen apart. The doctors had taken us all aside to talk about how we wanted to proceed with her (mostly talk of palliative care, DNRs, that sort of thing) and after coming to a decision, we all went back to my Auntie's house. It was there that we got the phone call from the hospital that mum had passed away at 3.40pm that day. I've never seen my family so torn apart, and we have had many of our family members (older half-brothers, aunt, cousins, mothers/grandmothers, and fathers/grandfathers) pass away - but it was heartbreaking and wrenching to watch/experience.

We went in to say our goodbyes in the hospital before the funeral home would come to take her body away and honestly - it was the most peaceful and relaxed I had ever physically seen her. Alive, she was always in pain, but when I saw her body laying on the bed? I never realised how much pain she truly must have been in until I saw the relaxed state of her body and of her face in particular.

Honestly, the one thing I truly want to know about the afterlife, and with her and the test of my family that have passed on - is that she's no longer in pain and is finally comfortable. That she can finally breath without having a coughing fit that would leave her bedridden because her lungs were dying and nobody knew. Ngl, I thought when mum got closer to the 'dying age' - you know, late 80s/90s - that she and dad would be living in granny flats on acreage that I owned so that she could have her little garden and independence, and dignity that wouldn't have been given to her at one of the local nursing homes. Whilst I could still take care of her and keep and eye on her. If she's reading this over my shoulder as I'm typing it with tears in my eyes and the hope that autocorrect does right by me, I only have one thing to say:

I'm so sorry mum. I'm so sorry that the last months of your life were spent trying to motivate and encourage a house full of unmotivated, and severely depressed people who had truly given up on life (yourself included) - to actually live their lives and do something for themselves.

And one other thing, as terrible as it sounds: I'm truly happy that I'll never have to come out to you as a trans nonbinary person, cause I know for certain you would definitely tell me that I'm faking it (like you said about me behind my back to the family about me lying about being bi and that it was only a phase), kick me out of the house, or never talk to me again. You honestly made me feel like a piece of shit and treated me like shit after I came out to you initially as being bi, and I know for certain you'd have done the same, if not worse had I ever gotten the chance to come out as being nonbinary - especially after the transphovic comments you made at that clan dinner evening - you know exactly which one I'm talking about.

#personal #please dont reblog #tw death #cw death #tw dead body #cw dead body

2 notes · View notes

shinra-makonoid · 2 years ago

Text

Today I switched doctor and she had a different approach, and I saw her write on her computer for a new entering patient and all. I appreciate that this is an important part of being a doctor and I also like that part of it. She was very "if you feel uncomfortable or anything you can step out of the room etc" which was nice but I don't think I'm embarrassed by anything organic by that point (and it's not like I saw much of anything).

She was surprised I'd know about a few things in regards to palliative care and explained to me a couple of stuff more. It's just super rich.

I feel sad it's gonna stop tomorrow afternoon. 😭 I just had a great time (is this something I can say?) But it's probably for the best because there's a few covid cases in the unit now (that are making patients uncomfortable unfortunately) and I wouldn't want to catch covid again.

I had my first internship day for palliative care and it was really interesting. Because they're less under pressure to deal with patients, the doctor had time to explain to me each patients, their issues, their meds, and understand better the function of the structure.

It was also very interesting to be on the side of doctors, dealing with (often ngl) very unreasonable families of patients (which is very understandable). And the communication issues between structures and inside the structure. Palliative care is social by nature so there's a lot of actors playing inside of it.

#long post

11 notes · View notes

ravenwritesstuff · 5 years ago

Text

Best Laid Plans (8/?)

Fandom: Frozen (modern AU, no magic) Pairings: Helsa, established Kristanna, Rapunzel/Eugene, lotsa frohana Rating: T for now, M later almost for sure A/N: I write what I want to write. Fuck. Someone take this away from me.

It had not exactly been World War Three, but it had not gone over lightly when Elsa realized exactly what Hans had managed to negotiate Rapunzel into allowing. Or not so much allowing as thinking it was the best idea - the only idea - Elsa’s idea - and that somehow she had authorized Rapunzel to clear Tuesday’s entire schedule.

Each appointment, call, and workflow had been reassigned to appropriate corresponding dates leaving the entire day clear for - well - him. What he wants, what his event calls for, and she more than slightly miffed that he still failed to truly explain just what his event - initiative - whatever - entails.

But whatever the result - Elsa should have known better than to leave the trusting Rapunzel in the room with someone with the charisma and bravado of Hans Westergaard.

Looking at the paperwork before her she is wondering just how much - well - bravado one man could have.

Staring at the zeros, written with Rapunzel’s trademark flair, on the intake form for the proposed budget is the only thing keeping Elsa from calling the entire thing off.

That and the niggling curiosity in her chest that scares her as much as it intrigues her.

She is only just now starting to realize that it has been years since she really felt - well - anything. This has been by design, and she is entirely certain that it is a mistake to indulge this, but something in her just cannot walk away.

Perhaps it is because she knows she is nearing the end of any kind of semblance of normal. That soon her life will be nothing more than phasing out of it between medical exams and palliative care. That when Anna gently presses her towards a different choice - though impossible - she secretly wishes for it.

She looks at the forms, facts, and figures on her desk and wonders if somehow this is the silver lining in this entire thing.

Thirty-nine days.

She has already started gradually removing herself from all main client contact roles, not wanting anyone to feel jilted if she needs to stop attending to their every call. Anna and even Rapunzel have stepped up to every other occasion, but this is her project.

This one is on her. Well - that is if she is to get them to where the company needs to be before she - well - leaves.

She pinches the bridge of her nose.

Everything about this is wrong.

Everything about this is right.

Both realities cannot exist without shades of gray and it has been over a decade since she has thought in such muddied terms. Black and white is easier. It makes the inevitable easier to swallow. Things either are yes or no; up or down; simple or complicated; living or dying; but never both.

That is, apparently, unless Hans Westergaard is involved.

Her heart gives an unsettling, queer beat as she reviews the calendar and the schedule Rapunzel had built for them. She has read and re-read it for what feels like the eleventh time before she finally gives up.

No.

This will not be easy. This will not be ideal, but it will hopefully be what the company needs.

She does not have time to give a second thought about what she needs. This is not the time or place. Especially when it is everything they have worked for. Especially when she will not be here much longer.

She lets her damp head rest back against her very practical office chair and almost laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. She wonders if her condition is what is making her want to be reckless in this moment. The doctors had not mentioned that as a possibility, but then she is an anomaly.

She has already broken all the rules.

Maybe that is why she has tried to follow them so strictly outside of her diagnosis.

That is what one of her therapists had suggested anyway. She fired them before their third meeting.

Or really she had just stopped going to prove a point.

She had ignored the calls from the office to reschedule missed appointments. She did not have time. She was not someone who was called to evolve into her highest self. She didn’t need to make peace with her diagnosis. It wouldn’t change it. So she chose to focus instead on what was right in front of her, on the here and now, while never really being in the moment.

It is easier to ignore the inevitable if she doesn’t have it shoved in her face for an hour every week.

She does not have time for that. She was not going to make it that far enough to make time for that.

So she moved on to a therapist who just listens, nods, and gives her what she needs for her nerves - her lack of sleep - her restlessness.

She is not looking to be healed. She knows she is beyond that . Still: she opens her eyes and looks at the project before her and feels - for the first time in forever - a spark of something.

She will never admit it, not even to herself, but the feeling in her chest is something all too similar to hope and she cannot have any of that.

She pushes that sensation down and focuses on what she always has: the practical.

Like how in the hell is she supposed to prepare for a meeting she doesn’t want with a man she cannot afford to get close to when that is exactly what she must do?

She crosses her arms on the desk in front of her and plops her forehead down with a groan.

She is going to regret this - already does. She supposes the only unanswered thing about this that matters is just how much she will regret this in the end.

….

She does not lose sleep over the event, the meeting. At least no more than she normally would before a big meeting.

No.

She is too sensible for that (plus she took a sleeping pill at the absolute last minute before it would leave her sick and groggy the next day). She knows she needs to be sharp, well rested, and on high alert through this entire day. You don’t go into a battle without your wits fully in tact and she has been mentally girding herself ever since she gave Rapunzel the okay to send over the approval of terms and preliminary proposal with room for addendum.

He sends back an address and a time, but not to Rapunzel’s email. He texts it to her personal phone again and Elsa is quickly realizing that fighting this particular part of this game will be a loss. She needs to laser focused on the battles that matter - the battle at hand.

She is holding her armor tight as they all pull into the marina’s general parking lot in Anna’s car, trying to convince herself that her stomach is not in knots. Even though it is.

Her mind races with possibilities of what this day could entail, trying to plan for any outcome, but there are too many trajectories and not enough information. She can figure most likely scenarios but nothing so far has been most likely when it came to this entire situation so she must keep herself vigilant. She cannot let herself slip even a fraction of an inch or she knows she will regret it.

Mister Westergaard had told Rapunzel to clear the entire day - to make sure they came prepared for a day of sea and sun - and Elsa wasn’t quite sure how to take that. So she came in a sensible wrap dress in her traditional navy and flats. In her bag she also packed swim attire with a cover that could also double for any of her standard dresses. She is not taking any chances.

She had briefed her staff on the seriousness of this meeting - even though she did not need to. She knew they would exhibit absolute professionalism like they always did, but she also knows that Hans Westergaard is a different type of beast than their usual. Only the main staff comes: herself, Kristoff, Anna, Rapunzel, and Eugene. Pascal and Sven, interns, had stayed behind to man the office. Her trust in them was the only reason that she even considered leaving the office today with other projects on the line. She trusts them, but….

Still there were so many ways this could go wrong.

Not because of her trust in them but more so the need to prove that she is not afraid of anything this Hans Westergaard can bring against her.

She has the mounting dread of a feeling that she is not only building her own coffin, but nailing it shut.

Rapunzel could not elaborate on what may be considered appropriate for this all day meeting so she had the perky brunette call his contact number for clarification. He did not answer, but Elsa listened to the message - but a single text from him to her personal phone (she really needs to get Rapunzel to stop giving out her personal number) gives her just enough foresight to warn them all to be prepared.

I hate spoiling surprises but come prepared to get wet.

He had texted with the address to the marina and a berth number. She had blushed at what she hoped was unintentional innuendo.

In order to best serve you and keep your event professional please contact me on my office line only.

She had replied with the contact that she knows he already has. But he had not used it and she has a feeling that he probably never will outside of that first call he made to her office, not when he knows where to find her in a way that feels just a little too close. A little too intimate. A little too raw. Just like that dance that never should have happen, never should have become two, never -

She shakes her head, ears burning in embarrassment of how far she had let that go. She will not be making that mistake again. She can run this event, elevate her company, and stay unattached even if the butterflies in her stomach are working hard enough to lift her up off the ground at the moment.

Her group does not seem to notice, however. Nor had any of them lifted an eyebrow when she had instructed them to dress expensive business casual but to also pack swim attire and accouterments. Perhaps it is because their destination includes the marina and a berth. She prefers to entertain that idea as opposed to the concept that they are placating her, giving her space, not asking questions because she seems fragile in any way. That is something she simply cannot abide.

She should have had Rapunzel call, ask clarifying questions, taken control like she would have with any other client, but she had not. She had not and she is not prepared to follow through the logic that if she had failed to respond to this like she would for any other client that perhaps he is not just another -

Elsa’s thoughts and steps slow as they approach their destination.

She has been on boats. She has been on yachts. But if what she is looking at is the boat they will sail on that day - it takes everything within herself to not drop her jaw to the floor.

It does not look quite like any other ship she has seen. There are no sails or anything of the like, but there are three levels of windows curving along an immaculate white bough. The bow is almost needle shaped, long and contoured to an exact point beyond any cabin that gives it the looks of a swordfish, or dolphin, or any of those more majestic water bound creatures. The shape, the arch of the body, the way it rises from the water - it is exceptional from stem to stern. She can tell from the design that it is built to be large, and to show it.

This, she knows, is a ship built to impress people.

Did that mean Mister Westergaard was trying to impress them? Or maybe just intimidate.

Her sweaty palm tightens on the attache case containing their more formal documents, her heavy duty tablet.

She had finished them the day before after devoting the whole of her energy to them. She had them sent over by three but had not heard anything about the few gaps she needed filled before she felt comfortable moving forward formally. Perhaps he wants to negotiate in person. For the money he is willing to pay she is more than happy to go over everything in person, or at least she would be if he wasn’t completely capable of robbing her of almost every shred of common sense she possessed.

But even if he had not signed anything yet, neither had she - her company. If this day proved too much, too disagreeable, there was nothing to keep up the facade.

Still she is sure that if she just focuses she can get what she needs from him and nothing else. The challenge of drawing up the proposition she had sent him, of rustling vendors and calling in favors, orchestrating a careful network of details and factors and creating the perfect documents for this event had given her a thrill. She knew he would not understand, appreciate, all it took to put together a proposal like this. How could he? He was a privileged son of a man of unimaginable wealth. He had no need to work, to strive, to fear.

The initiative, or so he called it, seemed a pet project that the wealthy elite all had. His was ocean related and that made sense considering his love of sailing. Though Mister Westergaard had been short on details of exactly what this all entailed Elsa had still managed to come up with what she felt was a perfect framework for a successful soiree. It was fluid, adaptable, and when she got the rest of the details down in writing, allowing her to draw up the final paperwork�� and followed by his signature… well. Just focusing on what that meant for her sister, their friends, the company was enough to put aside the tight braid of apprehension winding down her spine at the logistics of what that meant from a practical perspective.

Once the ink dried that meant she would be bound to him for thirty eight days. Thirty eight days of closely working alongside him, communicating with him. If she is lucky he will be uninterested in attending vendor meetings, that he will trust her judgement and simply allow her to select what she feels is best as many of her clients do. After all - that is why they pay. They don't want to invest the time or effort into each minutia that came with an event of any size, but she thrived within it. Would she be able to do so with Hans Westergaard thrown into the mix?

But she'll think about that tomorrow. Right now all she can think about is putting one foot in front of the other until they are at the gangplank.

She isn’t sure when Anna comes up alongside her and loops an arm through hers, but she realizes it is there when Anna squeezes it with her own.

“You okay?” Her sister’s voice is low and Elsa gives a tense nod.

“Of course,” she replies. “I’m - I’m just fine.”

She stumbles a bit as Mister Westergaard appears at the top of the gangplank. He is in fitted khakis and boat shoes with a navy sweater pulled over a crisp collared shirt. His hair styled back with its natural wave and his smile broad as he waves them up from his place at the top of the long, metal-railed ramp. Anna’s grip tightens.

“Come aboard!” He calls, keen green eyes flashing to each person in their party. Though she could not prove it she feels like his gaze lingers on her just a fraction longer than the others.

She quickly shakes the thought.

Paranoia will not help her focus on her mission.

She shrugs off Anna’s supporting arm. It will not do to seem like she needs help, that she is weak in any way. She pulls her shoulders up and back as she strides up the gangplank to meet their host.

“Mister Westergaard,” she crosses her attache case in front of her body, lasering into his gaze with more force than necessary. “Thank you for having us. We have many aspects of the event to cover. Should we get started?”

His smile does not falter.

“Of course we should,” he cradles her elbow (thankfully covered by the extra billowing length of her sleeve) to pivot her so the rest of her party can finish their ascent. “But first we need to attend the briefing from the crew. We will be pushing off soon.”

He drops his touch as soon as he had started it, attention moving to Anna and the rest and leaving her flummoxed. Pushing off? She knows they are on a boat but that meant…

He continues without dropping a beat, addressing the whole of his guests. “We will be setting sail in the next ten minutes. The crew will brief you on the safety functions of the vessel on the aft.”

The group hesitates, at least slightly perplexed, and Elsa knows she is not the only one who not as apt at ship terminology as she might be. They weren’t the types to sail regularly, but Mister Westergaard seems to note his mistake with equal speed. His smile broadens as he gestures behind himself to the sleek walkway that edges the ship.

“You will have to excuse me. I’ve spent more time on ship than on land lately and developed certain habits. This way place,” and there is a silent, collective breath of relief at his gracious response.

Somewhere in the depth of her heart she cannot help but wonder if this was some sort of test that she had failed. Or if he had staged the entire thing to make himself seem like some sort of savior, like somehow he would deliver these Cretans to their designated location by his own benevolence and -

“May I have the honor of escorting you?” he offers his arm and she flashes to the deeply slow stroll up the walk to the wedding venue. She remembers the heat of his touch, the conversation, and while she is not interested in actively offending him:

“The passageway is a bit narrow, don’t you think?” She keeps her tone professional, the butterflies in her stomach pressed down. “Why don’t you go ahead and lead us?”

His eyes flash and she is not quite sure what it means but he makes no moves to press the issue. Instead he lifts his gaze from her and addresses the entire group:

“Of course," his smile wolfish, like she just set the tone for the day - like he anticipated it. "This way. Follow me!”

They do.

Elsa lags a bit, letting Anna and Kristoff take the lead and falling back with Rapunzel and Eugene. In the middle of the pack she feels a bit more secure, a bit less like she is walking into a trap, but then he looks over his shoulder and winks at her and she is back to the wedding with sweating palms and shaking knees.

She considers his smile, his heat, the curve of his brow and - no.

That was not why she was here.

This is business, just business. She had made that clear, but as they reach where the walkway opens to a spectacular seating area complete with firepit all those zeroes on the proposal invoice she knows this is nothing like the business they have done up to this point.

It doesn’t even feel like she is on a boat.

There is plush furniture, all royal blue with stainless steel and arranged in a horseshoe that takes advantage of the ocean view. A marble and metal coffee table that she swears is as big as the kitchen in her studio apartment is decorated with a planter holding a dozen white iris in perfect bloom and a spread of finger foods that rival Tiana’s inventions.

Her stomach cramps even as her mouth waters. She has hardly eaten, but given her inexperience on a boat she hardly thinks it prudent to indulge in case sea voyage doesn’t agree with her.

She looks past the food and the seating arrangement she is certain they will fill briefly, out beyond the shadowed overhang of the upper deck they are beneath, and there are half a dozen white loungers surrounding a sunken pool. The railing alongside the ship falls off beyond the pool and at this angle she knows when they are at sea that it will seem as if the pool could continue right into the ocean, an endless pool of blue.

The sight rattles something inside of her. The visual somehow mirrors an intangible understanding she has for what is about to happen. The idea that this may seem like it can go on forever but she knows that cannot be true. Nothing lasts forever.

Mister Westergaard ushers them to sit. She goes, noting the finely polished blonde wood planks beneath her feet. She positions herself at the end of one of the furniture pieces facing away from the unsettling infinity pool and looks up for her sister in hopes to have her sit beside her but she is not quick enough.

Mister Westergaard settles himself next to her just close enough to be disconcerting, but clearly with no room for anyone to sit between them. He isn’t touching, not even in the slightest. He doesn’t even look her way when he sits and that somehow makes it worse. His legs spread wide, his back straight as he leans forward onto his elbows as if he is ready to pounce on any unsuspecting passer, but not giving her the slightest attention.

She knows he is playing some sort of game, but he keeps changing the rules. She does not appreciate it and she pulls her case up onto her lap to insure the forced distance. Whatever he is playing she will not join.

But she will set some rules of her own.

She tries to not sit too straight, to lean too hard against her armrest away from him, to too obviously look anywhere but him as she takes in the surroundings. She tries to focus on the expectation that if this is the informal lounge area on his yacht just how lavish the expectations will be on this event. How there are only thirty eight days to pull off something even grander than this. How there cannot be any mistake.

It simultaneously excites and terrifies her.

She thinks of all the connections this will yield, how it will catapult E&A Events into the stratosphere if they do it right. An event for people of this caliber is not a challenge to take on lightly but she knows she is up to the task. She is built for things like this, has set up E&A events for success long after she is gone if they decide to go on. This is simply the next step.

Hans Westergaard is the next step.

It is easier to think of him in this way, so she does.

Not more than a few seconds have passed since they say before a trim crew member appears from what she assumes to be a luxurious space inside, but is denied a glance by the reflective glass. The crewmember starts going through the basics of the ship’s safety protocol. Elsa remembers one of the few times she had been on a plane where the flight attendant had pointed with two fingers towards doors that Elsa hoped she would never use, but she had memorized every step regardless.

It never hurt to be prepared.

As the crew demonstrates proper life vest procedures and what to do in case of some unprecedented catastrophe she feels him lean in closer.

“If the ship went down, why do I feel like you wouldn’t flinch?” She can feel his breath tickling the shell of her ear.

She keeps her gaze focused on the crew, but turns just enough to send her words directly to him and not the rest of the group. “I won’t have to flinch. I’ll know what to do because I was able to pay attention to this presentation.”

He breathes a laugh. She feels it down her neck, entire body heating without objection. She doesn’t dare look to see if the others notice, if he is nearly as close as she thinks he may be. When he is silent for a moment she thinks that he might be done, that he has returned to an appropriate distance and she almost chances a glance. She is glad she does not because she feels it almost as much as she hears it:

“But what if you needed saving? Who would you want to come to your rescue?”

She is certain he is even closer than before now, the heat of his body bleeding into her side without even touching and she remembers what it is to touch him. She remembers how the very touch of him burns down her defenses, but what she hadn’t counted on were his words, the probing questions that always caught her off guard.

Even though she hardly knows him she knows if she looks his way she will see that same heartfelt sincerity that has undone her from the start.

She watches as a robotic crew member straps a lifesaver onto their chest. There is a flirtatious way to approach this, to stroke his ego, to make things go more smoothly but the stage has been set. She has no time to spare for such frivolity and honestly no idea how to even go about it. So instead she tightens her spine, pulls her jaw tight, and never once diverts her eyes towards him.

“I’m not the type that gets saved,” she speaks the language of strange half-truths she has grown accustomed to in her condition before letting the darkness bleed through. “I go down with the ship.”

She senses the change in him at that statement, the distance increasing between them even if he had not moved an inch, but there is no victory in it. There is only an all too familiar hollow feeling that she fights all too often.

Then, strangely despite the distance, she feels him closer still.

His shoulder touches hers and even through their respective clothes the heat of him creeps through. Her heart rate accelerates. She thought she had done her job but apparently…

“I’d save you,” his voice is low, tight and tickling. “I’d save you if it was the last thing I did.”

Her mouth goes dry at the conviction of his short speech, at the way her heart races at his words, but not because she is uncomfortable. No. It is worse than that. It is because she believes him - this near stranger.

The crew member is saying something she is sure is important, but she cannot hear it. She cannot focus beyond her own breath filling her chest, rasping in her ear. She wants to trust those words, to lean into them, but she cannot. It would be unfair for them both. So with every last ounce of will that hadn’t been scorched by his proximity she musters her courage and:

“You cannot save me, Mister Westergaard.”

The words taste bitter in her mouth without context, but she is certain the surprise she senses is real.

It feels good to catch him off guard, to let him be off balance for once. She revels in it, but not for long.

He does not move a fraction. She would have felt it, known it, all of her senses heightened towards him. Still his next words break upon the shore of her mind with relentless regularity.

“Hans,” there is something raw, low, in the way he speaks that nearly hurts. “My name is Hans, and when I save you that is what you will call me.”

[ previous ] [ next ]

#Best Laid Plans #Helsa #IceBurns #Kristanna #eugene x rapunzel #Rapunzel #Euguene #frozen #Tangled #I like messed up shit okay #Raven Writes Stuff

24 notes · View notes