#without feeling sidelined and shes got so many friends that its nearly impossible to do unless ive got someone else im close to

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Enies Lobby

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

this is still one of my very favorite nami panels. i think she’s really great through all of water 7 and enies lobby in general, actually, even though she isn’t really one of the characters in focus for a lot of it- like zoro and sanji, she stays pretty steadfast and very badass even though everything that happens, and never gives up on robin for a moment despite being one of the ‘weaker’ members of the crew. and it’s always fun to see her playing with lightning.

one of my favorite jokes from the first half or so of enies lobby is the strawhats both being completely unsurprised that luffy charges in ahead of them as soon as they arrive AND being able to find him immediately by following the explosions. they know him so well. 

luffy’s never been scared of dying, going all the way back to when he told coby he was fine with dying for his dream back in chapter two or three. that conversation is what his exchange with blueno here reminds me of- blueno asks him how long he intends to keep fighting, and luffy says until he dies, like there’s nothing to it.

it’s always been a trait of his to face death unflinching with a grin, so long as it’s for the sake of something he cares about, be it his crew or his brother or his dream, and i just really like that about him.  

i’ll go into it in the dressrosa post too, but i think it’s really impressive just how long oda held off on giving luffy any sort of significant power-up. he gets his first big power boost in the whole series here, forty volumes in. i’ve always liked that oda is very conservative with power boosts like this, because it both keeps the series’ powerscaling in check and makes the times it does happen much weightier. this is a monumental moment, and it feels like it.

also, i love the way gear two is drawn pre-timeskip, especially with the steam. it looks very cool and atmospheric.

i really like how united the strawhat crew feels throughout enies lobby, after all the internal turmoil and discord of water seven. even though the matter of usopp leaving the crew is still unresolved, they’ll all together once more, on the same page, and fully united in the goal of saving robin, whatever consequences it might bring. 

the tree of knowledge has such a cool design- it looks massive, and even more than that, it looks old. you look at that tree and you know its been there for easily thousands of years. its seen entire eras of history, and it would be priceless even without the countless books stored inside it.

and then it burns.

i’m so endlessly sad about the tragedy that is robin’s relationship with her mother. they never even got to see each other until their world was ending, and even then only for a couple minutes.

olvia is a very interesting character, because she’s someone who chose her dream over the people she loved. that’s not an inherently good or bad choice, but it is a choice she made, and it’s what led to the ending she and robin had to have. i’ve wondered a lot what might have happened if she chose the other way, if she never left or if she came back sooner or if she chose to flee the buster call with robin, and how different (and almost certainly better) robin’s life would have been if she had.

in a way, olvia reminds me a lot of kouzuki toki. they both die in order to fling a light of knowledge and hope into the future, and they both send their children away and choose to stay behind to choke on ash for the sake of a better tomorrow. 

i didn’t really notice until putting these panels together, but a lot of things burn in enies lobby. ohara burns, and the pluton plans and the world government flag, and enies lobby itself, and at the end, the going merry burns, too. if you extend it back to water seven, there’s the galley-la headquarters, too. in an arc that deals so much with the preservation and destruction of history and knowledge, it’s a fitting motif. 

the world government flag burning is still to this day one of the most striking panels out of a series full of them, in my opinion. in one act, the strawhats proclaim their absolute defiance against the world government, and their willingness to make enemies of the greatest power in the world for the sake of their friend.

it’s also another one of those moments that’s interesting to think about in the context of luffy’s past. it was a ship flying that same flag that shot sabo down, and while luffy wasn’t there to see it, i don’t think he’s oblivious to that fact, especially given how he says just before this he understands robin’s enemies perfectly.

dadan told him and ace that there was nothing they could do against the whole world, and luffy went and did it anyways.

sometimes i just think about how scary it must have been for robin, someone who’s been weighed down by the shackles of her past with no escape in sight for so very long, to open herself up and let herself hope, for life and freedom and a dream that’s always been out of reach. 

franky has a lot of really great moments between this arc and water seven- his conversation with usopp as usopp is working on merry and his talk with robin on the sea train are two others. it’s almost impressive how quickly he becomes an immensely likable character once we start getting to know him, given how he’s first introduced as an absolute piece of shit.

his burning of the pluton plans is a favorite of mine, and i think it might be because, like so many people before and after him, he’s choosing here to stake all his hopes on the strawhats, on luffy’s ability to pull off the impossible and on robin’s goodness. when robin’s only ever been chased and hated and called a demon by the world, franky chooses to trust her and luffy with the legacy his dad died for, and neither of them let him down.

monster point looks SO FUCKING TERRIFYING in enies lobby, and i LOVE it. look at that. franky is seven and half feet tall, and in front of monster point he’s tiny. monster point is huge, and dead-eyed, and a force of absolute destruction. i do kind of wish we got to see chopper go completely feral like this more often. he deserves to be terrifying!

i love how much FAITH all the rest of the strawhats continue to have in usopp throughout enies lobby. he left the crew and they really would have a right to be angry at him if they chose to, but it doesn’t even seem to cross any of their minds. they’re just happy he’s okay, and they include him again without missing a beat, because he’s still their friend and they know down to their bones they can trust him, even after everything. 

i’ve always really loved zoro and kaku’s little moment of post-battle banter here- zoro relays paulie’s message about cp9 being fired, kaku says he’s out of a job, zoro tells him to try the zoo, and kaku cracks up.

it feels very real to me for whatever reason, and i think part of it ties back into how well one piece handles morality with its characters- zoro and kaku are genuinely pretty similar people who get along decently, it just happens that they wound up on opposite sides. there are series where you’d never see moments like this due to the lines between good and bad being so firmly drawn, and i love how one piece blurs those lines so much they may as well not exist a lot of the time.

this is the other sequence, along with luffy climbing the drum rockies barehanded, that always makes me physically cringe to look at. it looks so painful. robin is so nearly powerless here, but not quite- she can still buy time for her crew to catch up, even if it’s only seconds, even if she risks shattering her teeth or even her jaw in the process. she’s spent so long giving up and has only just started daring to hope- she’s not about to go gentle.

there aren’t many panels that give me catharsis like this one. there really aren’t.

oda’s villains are usually complicated and awful and often a little admirable, if only for how clever or how terrifyingly powerful they are, but every now and then he comes up with someone who’s just pathetic and cowardly and pointlessly cruel. spandam is like this, obviously, and so is orochi, and the celestial dragons, and i’d argue flampe from whole cake island as well. and there’s nothing like seeing characters like them- weak, cruel people so assured in their own power and rightness- get obliterated.

one of the things i really like about enies lobby is that nobody really gets sidelined- everybody gets multiple chances to shine. luffy, usopp, and obviously robin are the most in focus, obviously, but zoro, sanji, nami, chopper, and even franky all get a bunch of individual awesome moments. oda’s ability to handle his cast satisfyingly is consistently really impressive (if sometimes strained in huge ensemble arcs like dressrosa or wano) and it really shows here, i think.

i just really love the entire climax of enies lobby. much like the arc as a whole, it just feels triumphant, even though the situation is extremely dire. luffy unlocking gear three, robin’s cuffs getting unlocked, usopp shooting spandam and the marines all the way from the tower of justice- it’s all just good, a long chain of much-needed victories and catharses, and it feels very good to read.

i’ll always be impressed by just how much characterization oda manages to give merry, a boat. she’s only really a character in water seven and the end of enies lobby, only about two chapters of which she actually speaks in. and yet i don’t think you’d find a single one piece fan who disagrees that merry’s death is easily one of the most heartwrenching in the entire series.

i love the reactions of the strawhats to robin’s thanks. they’ve just gone through hell to save her, most of them are beat to shit and they all risked their lives, and yet they all just smile, or brush it off, because to them there’s nothing else they could have done. it’s all worth it, so long as they got her back, so long as she’s safe and happy.

merry’s funeral just hits me in the chest every single time i read it. it’s tragic, of course, but there’s also something almost lovely about it, something peaceful about her getting to go out on her own terms, carrying her crew to safety one last time, defying every rule of the universe to do it. just like a strawhat pirate.

oda’s ability to communicate emotion through expressions really comes through here, too. merry has the only lines in this scene, fitting for her death in the limelight, but the shots of every other crewmate’s face let us know at a glance just what they’re all feeling and just how strongly they’re feeling it.

you know, i’d forgotten we only learn the name of the new world after enies lobby. we only get proper exposition about the revolutionary army and the yonkou here, too, despite them being set up since loguetown and jaya (or alabasta, or even chapter one if you count from shanks’s introduction) respectively. oda’s ability to parse out exposition and explanation so we always have just the right amount of information is really impressive- we always have more questions, but we also always have the feeling that those questions have answers, and that sooner or later they’ll be revealed.

points at shanks. i just think he’s neat.

it’s my opinion that one of the great joys of one piece is seeing luffy and the crew rise up in the world, and seeing them gain more and more notoriety. i love nothing they do ever happens in a vacuum- everything has impacts, and there are always outside eyes watching, and often those impacts are things that they never could have predicted.

ace and blackbeard is still, i think, definitely one of the coolest looking fights in the whole series. it’s not all that often we get to see two people with extremely flashy and showy abilities go all-out against each other, and the resulting fireworks are still really something to behold, despite how badly it all ends. 

[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCY vs TIME

June 22, 1973

The publicity photos, from the movie set of Mame were unrecognizable. Unrecognizable! Why, they were unbelievable. Either somebody had shot them through six layers of soft-focus gauze - or a time machine. 

Who was this frisky redhead hoofer kicking up her heels on the distant reaches of some resplendent soundstage, cannily avoiding a camera close-up?

Who was this svelte eyed lady fluttering from beneath a fringed rug of false lashes, not a wrinkle, sag or bag, not to mention even an expression line, sporting her famous face?

Well, clearly the lady was a star. And as star of Warner Brothers' new $8 million musical version of Mame, Lucille Ball had veto rights over all still photographs.

The trouble was that obviously nobody had had the nerve to tell her that if she could order reality rubbed out of a picture with a wave of the retoucher's brush, she couldn't pull the gauze over the eyes of an interviewer ushered into the Mame set to confront the living flesh, unretouched. 

Time has not been unkind to Lucille Ball. No, beneath a billowing wine velvet and cream satin lounge suit, the svelte one-time chorus-girl's curves are still obvious. Despite a badly broken right leg from a skiing accident that had left the shooting of Mame stalled and the star in a cast for nearly a year, the shapely former showgirl's gams had now already carried her through a dozen dance routines up on top of pianos and down banisters that would have taxed a tap-dancer half her age. 

At 61, Lucille Ball could pass for a dozen years younger. But only a dozen years. 

The outrageous, outsize eyelashes now stick like pine spikes out of a swamp of tucks, puckers and bags etched around her shrewd big baby-blues. Her plastic face is a relief map of over-made-up wrinkles, the big bright red Cupid's-bow mouth lipsticked in a smile outside her own spidery upline. 

But you don't survive 22 years on TV in the top ratings, get renewed once again this season when all about Bridgets and Bernies and Dean Martins (1) are falling to the network's chop, practically bear a baby and outlast a broken real-life marriage on the TV tube, take over a foundering corporation and build it into the single most powerful independent TV production house, without it showing in your face. 

One look at Lucille Ball's face and you don't doubt it for a minute when Hal, her make-up man for 32 years, says she used to limp on to the Mame set in excruciating pain. Then, the minute the cameras clicked on, burst into a dazzling and seemingly effortless song-and-dance. 

Not that the lady would admit it for a minute. "It was excruciating pain," she dismisses the subject airily. 

But then these days she's not admitting much. It was a lesson learned the hard way. One recent fateful February day, over perhaps one too many Pouilly-Fuisses on the rocks, she was admitting so much so freely to the New York Times that the story read like a Hedda Hopper monologue. 

On Desi Arnaz Sr., the Cuban bongo (2) player-bandleader she met and married out of a chorus line in 1940 and divorced 22 years later after a marriage that was even stormier off -screen than on: "He drank too much and he couldn't stand success."

On Desi Arnaz Jr., their 20-year-old son and his much-publicized romance with actress Patty Duke: "I had my doubts if the baby was Desi's at all. I said to him, "You feel responsible? Boy, you're all of 16 1/2 years old and you want to spend the rest of your life with this neurotic person?'" 

On Liza Minnelli, then Desi's current fiancée: "They took her for over a million and a quarter more than her mother's debt. Just for beginners..." 

One mention of the story now is enough to send sparks flying. "Why, that man should be..." she sputters over the reporter, "...spanked!" 

It's a first burst of spontaneity from a lady who, once burned, is now so careful that she sounds at times as if he's dictating to the Library of Congress. 

"I never thought I'd get this far, do so much, have such beautiful children," she says, chain-smoking in her dressing-room, all the wide-eyed telephone lineman's daughter from upstate New York. She knocks on wood. 

"All I ever wanted was to get to vaudeville and I never made it." 

When she hit New York to take acting classes at 16, the school sent back her mother's money, saying. "No talent." And now, refund in hand, 81-year-old DeeDee Ball, as the whole family calls her, sits in a front-row seat for every “Here's Lucy” show, just as she has done non-stop for the last 22 years. 

Still it wasn't till 1951, when the Amazes dreamed up the “I Love Lucy” show, patterned after their own lives, as a way of keeping their marriage together and bandleader Desi home from the road, that success came. 

But when it came, it was she who stole the show. 

By two years later, 68 per cent of TV viewers in America were tuned in to see her show-by-show birth to Desi Arnaz Jr., whose arrival vied with the U.S. presidential election results for front-page space under the headline, "Lucy's $50 million baby." 

Everybody, it seemed, loved Lucy except perhaps Desi Arnaz. Despite her insistence that "the series was happy there was no fighting. It was the greatest time of my life," she admits, "the trouble came much later. Only the last five years were hard." 

Which means that the greatest time of her life lasted only a scant six years. When their marriage broke up officially in 1962 (3), friends introduced her to a stand-up comic named Gary Morton, now her producer, vice-president of Lucille Ball Productions, Inc., official show warm-up man and for 11 years now, Mr. Lucille Ball. 

As her daughter Lucie, 22, and still a performer on the show, puts it. "She may be the king of stage 12, but at home she's queen Gary's the king!" 

She indulges his passion for golf and a garage full of classic cars, but with the warning: "If he ever looks at another woman, I'll kill him."

She says she never makes a business move without him, but when she was left to head up the giant Desilu Corporation after her marriage break-up, it was she who was known as the woman shrewd enough to snap up “Mannix”, “Mission Impossible” and “Star Trek” when they were apparently doomed pilots, a comedienne who was not so comical in the executive suite. 

But as for her much-vaunted business acumen, she is all denials and femininity. 

"Me? No way. Desi did the whole thing. He was a fantastic businessman. I only took it over to build it up and sell it. I mean, there was a certain amount of building up to do." 

When she took it over from Arnaz in 1961, Desilu had lost over $600,000. When she sold it seven years later, for $17 million in Gulf and Western stock, making her the conglomerate's largest stockholder and, some say, the wealthiest woman in Hollywood, the company had grossed $30-million and made a profit of ever $800,000. 

"But everyone in the know knew I wasn't tough," she says. "No, the men I surrounded myself with were." 

Still there a flinty glint behind the false lashes, a shrewd imperious purse to the painted lips, a ring to the wise-cracking whisky voice that's used to being heard. She moves around the Mame soundstage in queenly command, dispensing Norman Vincent Peal-doms, part star, part super-mother. 

When it comes time for a scene featuring co-star Bea Arthur, she practically takes over directing from Gene Saks, Miss Arthur's husband. "Now did you tell her what side of the camera to be on?" she asks Saks, who looks like he might explode. "Now honey, toe your mark," she fusses over Bea, who grows quiet, explaining later: 

"Lucy's really a dear. But sometimes it can get a little overpowering." 

She doesn't talk to people without picking lint off their clothes, and straightening their collars, a habit that comes naturally enough to a woman who has her whole retinue, hairdresser, secretary, make-up man and driver of the last two decades - even her little picket-fenced French-provincial dressing-room trailer, with its false shutters and plastic ivy - picked up and transplanted wherever she strays from Lucy Lane where she presides at Universal Studios, year after year.

With her kids, she was, as daughter Lucie says, "Strict - and you want to believe it. We were the only kids we knew who had to work around the house for whatever money we'd get." Lucie still gets paid only scale for her mother's show. 

But Desi Jr. wasn't exactly a natural. "He'd be asleep on the sidelines and I'd be ready to smack him," Lucy says, "When he said he was interested in serious acting, I said, 'Oh, really?' But he got out and worked. He surprised me. He surprised everybody. He even surprised himself." 

Still, for all her talk about the joys of getting away to her Colorado ski lodge where she does "the cooking, the washing, the socks, the things I miss - not to mention the leg breaking - there's not much chance that Lucille Ball is going to be sitting the next round out, wallowing in domesticity, In the old rocking chair. 

#   #   #

FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) “Bridget Loves Bernie” was a 1972 sitcom about a mixed marriage between a Jewish man and a Catholic woman. Like Lucy and Desi, stars Meredith Baxter and David Birney were also married in real life.  Despite excellent ratings (it was the highest-rated new show of the 1972-73 season) the show was cancelled after only one season. The official reason for its cancellation was that it was scheduled between two mega-hits, “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, and its ratings weren't strong enough considering its choice position in the line-up.  

Also, that same season, the long-running “The Dean Martin Show” (1965-1974) was cancelled. Lucille Ball had made three appearances on the show, and he also appeared on hers.  

(2) Conga drums, not bongos. It is slightly dismissive to call Desi Arnaz a bongo player. 

(3) The editor makes the error of assuming that Lucy divorced Desi and Married Gary Morton the same year. She divorced Desi in April 1960, and married Gary in November 1961, a year and a half later. 

This article was published in the Leisure section of The Vancouver (BC) Sun on June 22, 1973.  The article was written by Marci McDonald and illustrated by David Annesley. 

[cassandra-tangled]

Cassandra Appreciation Week Day 5: Happiness

Hey guys! Here’s my one-shot for Cassandra Appreciation Week day 5: happiness. So, I took a little bit of a liberty with this one, it’s a bit experimental and in first person. I’m honestly not too sure how I feel about it, but it was fun to play around with! Also, it does loosely connect to my one-shot for day 1 (here on AO3). Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy! Here’s the AO3 link 

The word count is 2,475

And a brief summary is: Cassandra makes good use of the journal that Rapunzel gave her as a birthday gift. 

The only thing of any concern is some light cursing. Enjoy!

Dear Diary, 

Dear Journal,

Wow. This is really not my speed. 

So, a journal. I don’t really know what to write, I’m not a...journal-ly person. Raps is, sure, but not me. This stupid, leather-bound book was a birthday gift from her, though, so I want to make sure I use it.

Not that Raps would ever snoop into my private life (at least not intrusively enough to read this) but if she did, I hope that last part wouldn’t hurt her feelings. I love the gift, really. It’s only stupid because it’s frusturating me that I don’t know what to write.

I guess I can start with where I got this journal. Like I said, it was a birthday gift from Raps. My birthday was a little under a week ago, now. I didn’t even know it was my birthday, but I turned twenty-eight. I feel old. Raps threw me a dinner. There was good food, cake, and alcohol. I fucking hate parties, but I love my friends, and it was only the five of us. Raps and Eugene got me this book, and a quill, and a knife, and some clothes and other fun things. It was really sweet of them, honestly. They didn’t need to get me anything, I wouldn’t have known the difference. Varian got me a bag of rocks, basically. Wait, that made me sound ungrateful. They’re beautiful rocks, and it was a cute gift. Or are they stones? Or gems?? Or crystals?? Fuck, I’m not a rock expert. But whatever they are, they’re pretty, and he found them all around the kingdom. It’ll be like having Corona with me when I leave again. Oh, and Lance got me a bag of Monty’s candy. Score.

So, I don’t really know what to use this for. I guess if I go back on the road I can...write or doodle in here like Raps did when we were younger. I mean, I’ll probably write, if anything. She’s all about doodles. I wonder how many notebooks she’s filled up by now.

When I asked her what she thought I should do with the journal yesterday, she told me to write about the things that make me happy. That’s a good place to start, I suppose. I’m not her, though. She could probably write a novel and a half on what makes her happy--but not me. Most things make me angry, and I could probably write a novel on that. Screaming children make me angry, although they’re cute when they’re quiet. Parties and social interaction make me angry. People who pronounce ‘vase’ as ‘vayhse’ make me angry (it’s ‘vahz’). Being awake makes me angry. Being asleep makes me angry. Freeloaders and thieves make me angry--reformed ones are okay, though. Most people make me angry. Especially Fitzherbert. Don’t get me wrong, I love him...sometimes. 

But I’m supposed to be talking about things that make me happy. Honestly, I’m hard pressed to think of many, but I can think of some.

My weapons make me happy. I could stare at them for hours, in all honesty--I have so many (thanks Dad), and they’re all beautiful. I love polishing them, and admiring them, and of course...using them. Not in a creepy killer way or anything. Dueling is just really, really fun, and let me just say--I’ve made good use of my Fitzherbert sparring dummy since coming home.

My favorite weapon is my halberd. I keep it well cared for, sharp, polished, and shiny. It was the first weapon Dad gave me, for my eighth birthday. At that point, it towered over me, but not anymore--I’ve had it twenty years now, and it’s rather proportionate. I mean, it’s taller than me because it’s supposed to be, but seriously...watching eight year old me trudge around with it was probably a sight to see. Anyway, he chose it as my first weapon because it’s the weapon of choice for Corona’s guard. I was eight when he started really training me with them. Before, I’d sat on the sidelines and watched, but by eight, I was a full-fledged trainee. People thought he was crazy for raising his daughter to be a guard from such a young age, but I’m glad for it. I wouldn’t be able to protect myself otherwise.

I love all my weapons, though. I couldn’t take my halberd with me on the road, so I took two of my daggers and my favorite sword instead. Oh, how I wanted to take my mace, but it was too heavy to justify. My favorite dagger, I’ve had since I was sixteen. I had a few before it, but my favorite one is absolutely beautiful. It’s probably the most valuable thing that I own. It was a gift, too, a blade carved of steel and the handle of beautiful gold. It’s badass--the handle is carved into this weird...I don’t know, dragon? Lizard? Sea serpent? Whatever it is, it looks cool, and my name is engraved on the blade. The sheath is encrusted with small gems. It’s not from my dad, but from an ‘anonymous castle staff’ or something who leaves me gifts every year. I don’t know why they bother or how they afford it, but I love it. It’s not the most practical, because of the handle, it’s more ornamental. I don’t usually use it in sparring or fights. I didn’t bring it on the road with me, as much as it pained me to leave it home, because of its obvious, glaring value. So, it was nice to see it again when I got back here.

Hmm...I’ve been talking about my weapons for a while. What else makes me happy?

Books. I love books. I grew up with them as, well, my best friends. I was privileged enough to be educated, and educated well. I was reading fluently by the time I was six or seven, and when I wasn’t training, working or otherwise helping my father, you could be sure to find my nose buried in a book. One of the biggest perks of growing up in a castle is the library. I mean, usually, servants can read the book if they please and are able, but aren’t allowed to take the books out with them, or anything like that. I guess Queen Arianna likes me, because I was allowed. My father said it was a special privilege, since I was a learning child, and she valued the concept of book-smart young girls. Anyway, since I started working, I don’t use the library as much anymore--not because I dislike reading nowadays, but because I buy my own books. 

Funny story, here. Growing up, I read a lot of fantasy books, about...you know, damsels in distress and princesses who were saved by handsome knights in shining armor. I used to think that maybe, just maybe, if I trained hard enough, I could be the one to bring the lost princess home, and maybe even…

Well, a rogue thief beat me to it. And it wasn’t even on purpose.

Anyway, back to happy--animals make me happy, too. It doesn’t matter what kind, although I am sort of biased towards a certain owl and two particular horses. I don’t know what it is about animals, but despite the fact that they don’t speak our language, they’re a lot more capable of love and empathy than most humans are. There are a lot of great Coronan horses, but two are particularly dear to me. I remember when Max and Fidella were born, actually. They’re pretty close in age, though I think Max is a tad older--he was born when I was fourteen, and she when I was fifteen. Max was fathered by my father’s previous horse, and by the time he was weaned from his mother, it was clear he’d be taking his father’s place as the Captain’s horse. Fidella was actually born to my childhood favorite horse. I learned to ride on her mother, so it seems only appropriate to me that she became the one to accompany me on my journey. Her mother was a beautiful mare named Eliza. Eliza was quite similar to Fidella in color and stature--she certainly takes after her mother, not her father. Eliza was my first equine love, if you will. For a kid without any friends, a faithful horse can fill the gap. We had a lot of fun together, but she got sick and died a year or two after birthing Fidella. It broke me, honestly. Horses can live to thirty years, and she was only twelve at the time of her death. 

Right, happy. Oh people, I guess. I mean, as I said before, a lot of people piss me off, but some of them are more than okay. Dad is pretty great, and it’s been nice to be back and see him again. I didn’t appreciate him as much as I should have in my childhood--but then, isn’t that the way it goes? Raps is amazing too, and so is the rest of the gang. I don’t know where I’d be today if it weren’t for their fighting so hard to save me and, honestly, I don’t want to imagine. I’d probably be dead. Despite my...occasional bitterness, especially before, I’ve had some of my best times by their side. Actually, I’ve had nearly all of my best times by their side. Before Rapunzel came back and, well, pretty much forced me to be her friend, I had no one. I’m glad she did. If it weren’t for her, I probably would have died without letting anyone in, without having a single friend outside my father, Owl, my weapons and my books. But Rapunzel is…Rapunzel is impossible to resist. I learned eventually that there was no use in even trying to resist her--and she ended up being the best thing that had ever happened to me. She’s the first person I let in, the reason that I know what it means to be a friend (and how to become one), and the sole reason my friendship extended to Eugene, Lance, and Varian.

I mean...I had some dark times. Some really, really dark times. Happiness was the furthest thing from my mind. Instead, I was enraged, jealous, bitter, cold, and most of all, I was hurting. At that point, if you’d asked me, Rapunzel was the worst thing that had happened to me, even though deep down inside I loved her and cared for her more than I ever would have admitted at that point. I did some bad things, some horrible things. In my greed, in my...selfishness and lust for power, I committed some fucking heinous crimes. I hurt all of the people who were most dear to me. I almost caused the downfall of Corona--and the entire world quite easily could have followed.  

Yet still, when it was all said and done, Rapunzel still saw the light in me. Eugene, Lance, Varian, my dad, they all still saw the light in me. Despite all the pain and destruction, despite all the fear and uncertainty and my horrid crimes...they forgave me. They loved me.

I hated myself, and I wanted so badly for them to hate me, too. Maybe it’s what lesser people would have done, or maybe it’s what they should have done. I’m still not quite sure. Either way, they didn’t. They chose the path of forgiveness.  

That’s what love is. 

Rapunzel likes to say that I was never a bad person, and that I just lost my way. I hope that that is true, but honestly, I have no way of knowing. When I think of that time in my life, I’m detached. The memories are vivid and yet blurred. I don’t see that woman as me. I don’t. I can’t believe what I did, that my own two hands committed such offenses. I see that version of myself as a lost, sad, broken woman, descending further and further down a dangerous, shadowy path that would have ended in nothing but pain and destruction. I’d given up on myself. But my friends? They never gave up on me. They saved me from that.

Whether I was truly bad or just horribly lost is beside the point, because that’s not me anymore. It haunts me every waking moment, but it’s in the past. It hangs permanently in the back of my head, but I try to push it away, to ignore it. I’ve changed drastically. I now realize that I have, and always have had, so much to be grateful for. I still yearn for more. It’s almost as if it’s in my nature. But if it’s destined to come to me, then it will be manifested through my hard work. If it’s not, at least I tried.  

Most of the time, for me, happiness is hard to come by. Honestly, it is--even now, even though I realize I have much to be grateful for. It’s not such a bad thing to me, though, because when I do feel happiness...it’s exhilarating. It’s life-altering, and the taste of it sticks to my tongue like Monty’s taffy. When I do feel happiness, it makes all of the pain and all of the suffering that I’ve endured worth it. 

So, what is happiness to me?

Happiness...happiness is sharpening my weapons on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. Happiness is curling up by the fire, nose deep within a book, reading like my life depends on it. Happiness is  dark, windy, winding roads far from home, and the shiver that runs down your back when you realize, ‘I’m deciding my own destiny’. Happiness is a Coronan stable. Happiness is flying from town to town on horseback, meeting new people. Happiness is hunting with Owl, and sitting by the fire with Fidella. Happiness is a cup of ale, a shot of whiskey, and warm food. Happiness is laughing with friends, and melting into their arms after years apart. Happiness is the fact that you converse as if you hadn’t been away at all. Happiness is taking the horses out to the wall with Raps, and bickering with Eugene. Happiness is helping a greasy-handed Varian with one of his many ambitious projects, or screaming at Lance for eating your lunch. Happiness is having tea with Dad, and the prideful joy on his face when he pulls back from a hug. Happiness is loving, whether things, animals, or people. Happiness is being loved in return. 

Most of all, happiness is being alive. 

If it’s true that we only get one life, I’m happy that I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to spend mine the way that I have. 

That’s all for today. It’s time for this girl to get some rest.

Until next time,

Cassandra

[artificialqueens]

colour me blue, chapter one (branjie) - holtzmanns

(read on ao3) | (tumblr: plastiquetiaras) | word count: 7422

Vanessa knows as much about the heart as any cardiologist in a hospital.

The four chambers and the valves that connect them. The way that they’re responsible for pumping blood around the entire body, spreading oxygen to where it’s needed the most and keeping the cells alive. How the heart is like the engine of a finely tuned machine, a ticking clock beating out a rhythm that the rest of the body falls into step with.

Vanessa also knows what happens when the heart begins to fail.  

AN: This fic started as a drabble to take a break from my WIPs but then turned into its own beast. It was…an absolute process to write but definitely pushed me in ways that helped me grow as a writer, which is always a good thing. CW in this fic for medical terms, hospital stays, uncertainties re: long term illness. I usually don’t like to give away spoilers, but I will say that there will no main character deaths in this fic, just to be clear. Writ is the absolute best - not only for giving me the prompt, but helping me brainstorm, pushing me to keep writing when I was ready to leave this fic in my google drive forever, and being the best encouragement one could ever ask for. They deserve the world <3

Vanessa knows as much about the heart as any cardiologist in a hospital.

The four chambers and the valves that connect them. The way that they’re responsible for pumping blood around the entire body, spreading oxygen to where it’s needed the most and keeping the cells alive. How the heart is like the engine of a finely tuned machine, a ticking clock beating out a rhythm that the rest of the body falls into step with.

Vanessa also knows what happens when the heart begins to fail.

Her dad keels over during Christmas Day brunch when she’s five, clutching the dining room table with a grip that loosens as he falls off his chair and onto the floor. Vanessa doesn’t understand what death means at the time, not really, at his funeral. The fact that her dad isn’t away on a work trip, that he isn’t ever coming back. That he isn’t going to walk in the door one night in his uniform the way that he always does.

That the stone in the cemetery bearing his name is a finality, a marker that takes his place in this world, now that he’s no longer here.

Vanessa is twelve and her lungs feel like they’re clawing their way out of her chest in gym class, when the teacher is making them run faster, damnit. She doesn’t know that she isn’t supposed to feel like she is going to pass out when she jogs, or as if her insides are collapsing inside of her ribs. She’s not supposed to be seeing white spots in her vision as some of her classmates carry her to the sidelines when her body can’t push her any farther. She shouldn’t be constantly lightheaded, grabbing onto tables and bookshelves and chairs just to keep herself upright.

There’s appointment after appointment and test after test, specialist after specialist because Vanessa’s mother is fiercely protective, overwhelmingly worried after their unit of three becomes a unit of two. She pushes and pushes and pushes until they get an answer, but it’s one that makes Vanessa’s mom nearly keel over, too.

It’s genetic. Autosomal dominant. Passed on from Vanessa’s dad, making the walls in the chambers of her heart stiffer, rougher. Keeping them from being able to properly pump blood to where her body needs it the most. Enough to create the possibility of heart failure at any time, when the well oiled machine will simply crumble under the pressure.

Vanessa’s told that she’s lucky that they’ve caught it so early. That this means they can test solutions and try different medications to maybe make it easier for her heart to pump, to reduce the strain that it constantly shoulders. When the medications don’t work it’s okay, really, she’s told, because there are less invasive surgical options. Ones to try that don’t put her under for that long or have an extended recovery period and will allow her to bounce back quickly.

Except that she never does. Her heart never heals, never reaches its maximum potential. Hell, her heart never lets her be a regular person, because it’s breaking down more and more no matter what the doctors do. No matter how many surgeries she has.

Vanessa’s twenty five and has to quit her job because she’s used up all of her sick days, and because getting up out of bed in the morning is impossible when her body feels so weak.

Her mother hopes, prays, lights candles for the possibility that things will get better. That Vanessa will bounce back, that she’ll get to go back to living without having it snatched away from her like it had been from her father.

Except life doesn’t feel like it’s being snatched away, to Vanessa. It’s being dangled in front of her, possibilities that she isn’t quite able to reach because she’s too weak and can’t exert herself because her heart can’t take it, and maybe, just maybe, another procedure will work. Another surgery.

Until she’s twenty six and lying in a hospital bed and in complete heart failure because nothing has worked, and she can’t walk the five steps to the bathroom without the support of a walker.

Because Vanessa needs a new heart.

Vanessa’s been in the hospital for three months and her current nurse on the cardiology floor is making her scowl.

“It’s not going to be forever. Probably just a few weeks. Then when the floor is less busy, they’ll bring you back.” Asia’s trying to explain why they’re moving Vanessa to another unit the best she can, Vanessa knows. Vanessa just doesn’t get why it has to be her.

“I’ve been stuck here long enough. Why are y’all moving me? Why not someone else on the floor?” Vanessa crosses her arms, careful not to tug on the various wires attached to her chest that are connected to the monitors behind her displaying her heart activity.

“Because apparently the universe wanted to make my day harder and give me a headache, like the one that I’m getting from this argument with you.” Asia lightly swats her shoulder before her features soften. “Look. They don’t move people to other floors unless they’re stable. Which must mean that the team needs to keep less of an eye on you, which is a good thing.”

“I guess.” Vanessa grumbles as she says it, because still. Being the one that gets booted off of the cardiac unit because it is too full isn’t a good feeling, not in the least. Instead, it makes her feel like she doesn’t matter to the team, not if they’re fine with pushing her somewhere else.

“Look on the bright side,” Asia tugs on Vanessa’s phone charger from where it’s hanging off of the side of her bed, blending in with the various wires that are protruding from Vanessa’s frame. “Maybe the room you’re moving to will have an actual working outlet.”

“It better.” The electrical outlet closest to Vanessa’s bed is sporadic, often failing to charge her phone when she plugs it in. She uses the call button more often than not to get the nurses to plug her phone into outlets that she can’t reach from her bed, ignoring their muttered comments of that’s not what the call button is for, Vanjie.

“Besides, you get to bond with a new crop of nurses.” Asia fiddles with the monitors above Vanessa’s bed.  “Aren’t we boring you yet?

“What are you talking about? I love kiki-ing with y’all.” It’s true. Being in the hospital for an extended period of time can be…lonely. There’s only so long that friends and family will continue to visit, before they realize that the hospital is Vanessa’s new normal. Before they get bored of her.

Before they stop visiting.

But she’s got nurses and therapists close to her age, ones that she’s trying her best to bond with. It’s worked with most of them, especially Asia. The cardiac nurses get her. They’re nice, they gossip with her about their lives and feel like coworkers, at most. Coworkers that give her medication and help her transfer out of her bed and try to keep her alive.

“I’ll miss your ass, that’s for sure.” Vanessa sighs as Asia fiddles with the electrode stuck to her collarbone.

Asia snorts. “Will you miss me prodding your arm at 7 a.m. to take your vitals?”

“Better you than some random whack nurse I don’t know.”

“Hey, don’t be mean to them before you even meet them. I heard the general internal medicine team is nice. Kameron is, at least.” Asia’s voice rises slightly as she says the name, and it piques Vanessa’s interest.

“Who’s Kameron?”

“No one.”

Vanessa narrows her eyes. “That sounded hella suspicious.”

“She’s a friend.”

“A friend, huh?” Vanessa nudges Asia’s side, laughing as she scowls.

“So goddamn nosy. Tell me why the other patients don’t needle me like you do?”

Vanessa grins. “‘Cause I know you love spilling shit too, that’s why. I’ll be sure to say hi to Kameron for you.”

Asia’s cheeks turn slightly pink. “Don’t you start.”

The general internal medicine unit is chaotic.

Doctors, nurses, family members running back and forth between rooms, instructions being yelled left and right, beeping machines that somehow did not seem as alarming when Vanessa had still been on the cardiology unit.

While on the cardiology floor, Vanessa had shared her hospital room with a pleasant enough elderly lady who slept for most of the day. So much, in fact, that Vanessa had never actually spoken to her.

Vanessa’s worried about who they’ll place her with now, as she’s wheeled into her new room. Someone in the throes of delirium who will be up at all hours of the night? Someone who turns the TV up way too high, not letting her sleep? Someone who has too much family that comes to visit, meaning that the room will never be quiet again?

But the girl lying in the bed closest to the window is none of those things. Her hair, albeit mussed, is pulled back into a high ponytail, and her makeup-free face is somehow the most beautiful thing Vanessa’s ever seen.

“Hi.” The girl waves at her, a tentative smile on her face and Vanessa realizes, coincidentally, that she has forgotten the entirety of the English language.

Vanessa’s normally bold, brash enough that she has the confidence to go after girls that she’s into. Except that it’s easier when she’s wearing more than a hospital gown, when she’s standing on her own two feet and not feeling like she’s weaker than a year-old baby.

Vanessa squeaks out something that sounds close to a hi, and wants to groan when it makes the girl’s brow furrow.

“You okay? Not in too much pain, are you? I can call the nurse with my call bell-”

“Nah, I’m fine.” Vanessa mumbles the words under her breath, trying her best to tame the mess of her hair with her fingers as discreetly as she can.

“Okay.” The girl shifts in her bed slightly to face her, and Vanessa notices the way that she flinches in pain as she does. “So, fellow inmate. What are you in for?”

The words make Vanessa let out a surprised laugh, make her feel less wound up. “Got a heart that’s been right messing with me.”

The girl raises an eyebrow. “Why, did someone break it?” Her expression is deadpan as she says it, and it makes Vanessa snort.

“Funny. What about you?”

“Appendix nuclear explosion.” The girl points to her abdomen, and Vanessa’s eyes widen at the sutures that criss cross it. “They didn’t get it fast enough and now it’s a mess that they’re still trying to clean up.”

“Damn.” Vanessa lets out a whistle. “So, Miss App-app-appendick, what’s your name?”

“Appendick?” The girl holds back a giggle.

“What?” Vanessa shrugs. “It sounds right, don’t it?”

“Close enough.” The girl’s smiles are reaching her eyes, and the sight makes the tightness in Vanessa’s chest lessen, if only a little. “Brooke. Yours?”

“Vanessa.” She’s not sure, really, why she doesn’t tell Brooke that her name is Vanjie, considering that most people call her that, anyway. But something about the girl makes her want to hold back on it, see what the girl thinks of her actual name.

“Vanessa. I like it.” A small smile builds on the edge of curve of Brooke’s lip, and for a second, Vanessa feels her regular confidence flow back towards her.

That is, at least, until a nurse bounds into the room, muttering about how it’s about time that Vanessa goes to the bathroom, since she hasn’t had a bowel movement since yesterday, and we can’t have that, can we?

Oh, well. She’ll get her game back, somehow.

Vanessa finds out that she likes having a roommate who’s actually awake for most of the day.

Brooke is fun to talk to, almost enough to sometimes make Vanessa forget that she’s stuck in a hospital bed. Almost. Vanessa learns that Brooke is a ballet dancer, part of the corps and working towards becoming a soloist. She’d been performing in a matinee when her appendix ruptured, managing to hold off from collapsing in pain until the curtain call, when she could safely bend over in the wings without any audience members seeing her.

Brooke’s form underneath her gown is toned, long, looking every part of the graceful dancer she is. Vanessa’s lying if she says that she isn’t mesmerized by the way that Brooke reaches over to grab water from her bedside table, especially with how it’s done with an air of delicateness, lightness.

“What about you? What’s your story?” Brooke’s propped up by pillows, turned on her side slightly when she asks the question. Her grey eyes aren’t cool but rather they’re warm, inviting, waiting for Vanessa to talk.

Vanessa, for her part, pauses.

“Oh, y’know,” she tries to keep her face light, her voice casual, “Some shit happening with my heart. Felt some weird beating the other day and they wanna look into it more.”

It’s a lie, maybe, but she doesn’t regret it.

Ever since she was young, Vanessa’s only been known as the sick girl. The girl who’s always in the hospital. The girl who had missed so much school when she was a kid that she’d had to be taught by a teacher in the hospital. The girl who is unable to keep a job for too long because she has to take off work again and again, days when she’s so weak she can’t get out of bed, other days spent in clinics and at appointments with specialists monitoring her useless excuse of a heart.

Vanessa hates it. Being defined by something that she has no control over, something that she wish could fix itself because it’s taken over way, way too much of her life. For once, just once, she doesn’t want it to be a big deal. Even though she’s in a hospital.

Brooke, for her part, buys it. “Wow. Hope they find out. Nothing too serious, you think?”

“Nah.” Vanessa shrugs. “I’ll be out of here in no time.”

God, she wishes.

“What do you do for work?” Brooke looks at her expectantly and it surprises Vanessa, almost, how fast she lets the subject change, because she’s not used to it. Her friends, her family draw out conversations about her shitty heart for ages, fake pitying expressions on their faces that Vanessa wishes she had the power to slap away.

“Makeup artist.” Vanessa grins when Brooke’s face lights up. “I work at MAC, and got a few freelance clients on the side.”

So what if MAC shifts are far and few between because she’s not a dependable employee anymore? She’s trying. It helps to be in a job where she gets to rest, sit down quite a bit. Her body wouldn’t be able to handle it otherwise.

“Is that why you still have mascara on while in the hospital?” Brooke’s smile is cheeky and it makes Vanessa snort.

“Maybe. Can’t ruin my brand and be fully makeup-free.”

“You’re still cute without it, though.” Brooke winks at her, or at least Vanessa thinks so, and the sight makes her heart do a little flip in her chest. Is she flirting with her? Vanessa can’t tell. But she’s absolutely going to play into it.

“So are you, you tall, leggy model.” The words leave Vanessa’s lips before she can stop herself, but Brooke is grinning, thank god, hasn’t taken them in a bad way.

“Leggy, huh? You can tell even under these blankets?”

Vanessa shrugs. “You can’t get up and show me, so a girl’s gotta assume. How tall are you?”

“Five eleven.”

“What?”

Vanessa’s mouth drops open and Brooke’s laughing, laughing at her, but goddamn. Brooke really is an Amazon.

“Why, how tall are you?” Brooke can’t tell from all the blankets that Vanessa is under, but she doesn’t want to answer, really, not after hearing that Brooke is five eleven.

“Five three.” Vanessa mumbles the words, scowling when Brooke claps a hand over her mouth. “What?”

“You’re tiny!”

“Am not.”

“Practically pocket-sized.”

“I’m tall in personality!” Vanessa huffs and crosses her arms. She’s not that short, she isn’t.

But Brooke’s still grinning. “So tall. Though I do like short girls.”

Vanessa’s brain is about to short circuit. Is Brooke flirting with her? Or is the extended time being cooped up in a hospital bed making her brain go a little bit loopy?

Vanessa normally has game. But right now she can’t do much more than stare at Brooke open mouthed, something that Brooke is clearly enjoying.

“You’ll let bugs fly into your mouth if you keep it open any longer.”

“Shut up.”

They’re eating shitty hospital food for lunch and Brooke is antsy beside Vanessa.

“Okay, what?” Vanessa turns to Brooke because she’s been tapping the railing of her bed for the last half an hour. Vanessa wouldn’t press the issue except for the fact that Brooke keeps biting her lip, clinking her fork on her plate, her eyes all shifty.

“Nothing.” Brooke looks away from her, down at the pasta on her tray that doesn’t appear to be very appetizing, from the way that most of it is still in the bowl.

“Doesn’t look like nothing.”

Brooke bites her lip. “They rounded this morning while you were asleep.”

“As they do every morning at 8 a.m., yeah.”

“They wanna do another exploratory surgery.”

“For your appendix?” Vanessa’s eyes widen. Brooke’s complications must be worse than previously thought.

Brooke pauses. “Hey, look at you pronouncing appendix correctly.”

“Shut up.” Vanessa sticks her tongue out at her. “We’re talking about you right now.”

Brooke sighs. “They wanna see if they’ve missed things. I mean, aside from the first surgery, I’ve never really had any, and I don’t want to go under again. What if things go wrong?”

“Hey, hey.” Vanessa wishes that Brooke were closer so that she could reach over, squeeze her hand. “They do tons of surgeries every day here. They know what they’re doing.”

“But what if this time, they don’t?”

“You don’t know that. But you gotta trust that they do without assuming the worst before it even happens.”

“I guess.” Brooke sighs, and Vanessa wants to tell her, she really does, about the various procedures that she’s gone through as a child to make Brooke feel better, but at the same time…

It’s nice not to be the focus of medical attention for once.

“When are they thinking of scheduling it for?”

”A week.”

“Does this mean I can film you coming out of sedation?”

“What?” Brooke looks over at her, lets out a laugh, the exact effect that Vanessa wants.

“Bet you’ll say hysterical shit.”

“You better not.”

Vanessa grins. “Sorry, didn’t hear you there. Can’t wait to hear all the crazy things you say.”

“Nooo.” Brooke whines, and Vanessa doesn’t want to tell her that she won’t come back to the unit until the sedation has worn off, because her reaction is making her crack up.

“Maybe you’ll spill all your deepest darkest secrets.”

“Absolutely not-”

“Maybe you’ll confess your love for your nurse.” Vanessa holds back a laugh at Brooke’s look of horror.

“Anita’s at least 60!”

“And quite the looker. Hey, maybe you’re into cougars.”

“Ugh.” Brooke makes a face but she’s grinning too, Vanessa can see it. “Definitely not my type.”

“So what is your type?” Vanessa meets Brooke’s gaze with a raised eyebrow, a challenge. Two can play at this game.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Brooke wastes no time in answering, winking again, and Vanessa’s definitely not imagined it this time around.

She’s glad that Brooke goes to take a sip of her coffee, so she can try to come up with at least something coherent. Sure, she’s become more used to being Brooke’s hospital roommate as the days go by, but her gay ass sure hasn’t yet.

Vanessa’s cardiologist and physiotherapist and nurse pop into her room one day while Brooke’s asleep.

“Bad time?” Nina’s holding a clipboard, rifling through the sheets in front of her. Vanessa’s known her cardiologist for long enough that she doesn’t have to call her Dr. West anymore. It’s both a great and terrible feeling.

Vanessa gives her a look. “You really think I got anything else to do right now?”

Her physiotherapist, Kameron, snorts, though tries to stifle it under Nina’s gaze.

“Fair enough.” Nina leans against the wall, peeking over at Brooke. “Are you worried about her overhearing? We can move you outside into the hallway if you want-”

“She’s asleep. Doesn’t matter.” Vanessa waves a hand. “So, any news on the waitlist?”

“Moved up a couple spots, though not by much.” Nina’s face is apologetic, and it makes Vanessa want to scowl.

“Why am I so damn low on it?” Vanessa doesn’t want to show how scared she really is about it. She’s been waiting for months, months, unable to do much or exert herself lest her heart give out on her. Waiting for the other shoe to drop and for things to go south. It’s like she’s walking on a minefield, about to step on explosives at any time that will finally take her out.

She wishes it could stop.

“You’ll move up soon enough. These things are dynamic, they fluctuate.” Nina’s words don’t even look as if they’re convincing to herself, which bodes well for Vanessa. “In the meantime, we’re thinking we may trial another medication. We’ll see if it helps with oxygenation a little bit more.”

“Sure, why not.” Vanessa’s resigned as she says it, because really, will it even make a difference? Will anything actually change for the better?

After so many years, she’s stopped hoping. It’s hard to hope when it feels like she has no fight left in her anymore.

Her situation has been the same since before she was a teenager, and nothing’s changed. She’s still living a half life, one that she can’t fully enjoy because she always has the worries in the back of her mind. Ones that keep her away from everything that she wants to be able to do.

But she has to tolerate it. She has no choice, not when her doctors and nurses are walking away, waving at her as they go to consult on another patient. Not when they have nothing left to give to her.

Vanessa and Brooke fall into a routine, of sorts. They binge shows, alternating episodes of Schitt’s Creek and 90 Day Fiancé because they can. They complain about the shitty hospital food, trying to bribe the nurses to get them something better from the cafeteria, a tactic that never quite works.

It’s another week before Vanessa meets Brooke’s family, arriving in a flurry of buttoned up peacoats to fawn at her bedside.

“Honestly, Brooke Lynn, why do you have to work so far away from home?” Brooke’s mother is smoothing her hair, tucking it behind her ears, and Brooke looks younger than Vanessa’s ever seen her.

“I can’t control which ballet company gives me a job, Mom.” Brooke’s eyes are happy, when her sister and her mom pull up chairs at her bedside. It makes Vanessa’s heart tug, just a little.

“Still, I wish you were closer and we didn’t have to take two flights to get here.” Brooke’s mother sheds her coat on her chair. “Though the food they gave us was quite nice.”

Brooke snorts. “You’re the only person who actually likes airport food.”

Brooke’s sister turns towards Vanessa then, and the sudden eye contact makes her freeze. Vanessa hadn’t wanted to bother Brooke and her family; she had wanted to look busy, but it’s too late, because Brooke’s sister is waving at her.

“B, you didn’t even introduce your room buddy.”

Brooke wrinkles her nose. “Room buddy?”

“Hey, it fits.” Brooke’s sister shrugs.

Vanessa finds her voice then, because Brooke’s family looks nice enough. “Vanessa.”

“Nice to meet you, dear.” Brooke’s mom has kind eyes and Vanessa feels a longing in her heart that isn’t being caused by her existing cardiac problems.

“Nice to meet y’all, too.” Vanessa grabs a book from her bedside table, buries her face into it while Brooke and her mom and sister continue talking, trying to ignore the realization that her own mom hasn’t visited in weeks.

It’s not her mom’s fault, it’s really not. Vanessa has to remind herself of that. She gets it.

The fact that her father died of the same thing makes it…eerie. Vanessa feels like a ticking time bomb, one her mom clearly doesn’t want to watch as she slowly reaches end of her timer, when history will inevitably repeat itself. Vanessa understands why her mom wants to stay away and avoid watching her daughter go down the same route. Save herself from the pain as much as possible and instead burying herself in her work.

It doesn’t stop Vanessa from feeling lonely, though.

She misses having people. Having her mom brush her hair out of her face, hold her hand while she’s getting tests done. Be there to listen with her with the doctors spew more and more predictions about how her heart is going to hold up.

It’s not that Vanessa can’t handle the burden, be the foundation on her own. She just misses having reinforcements, strengths around it.

She misses her mom.

Brooke’s mom and sister leave for the night, but not before bringing the two of them McDonalds. The sight of the bags, with the mouthwatering smell from the food inside wafting around the room, makes Vanessa pause.

Technically, she’s supposed to avoid foods with excess sodium, as the extra salt makes her heart work harder than it’s supposed to, wears it down faster. But at the same time, she can’t bring herself to care.

She picks up a burger.

“I haven’t had McDonalds in ages.” Vanessa’s missed burgers, she really has, because there’s only so much bland hospital food she’s been able to take.

“I’m more of a Swiss Chalet fan, myself.” Brooke’s still munching on her burger, but Vanessa tilts her head.

“The hell is that?”

“Food place in Canada. Lots of roast chicken and gravy.” Brooke’s eyes are already getting a wistful, a faraway look in her eyes as she’s thinking about it.

Vanessa wrinkles her nose, because it doesn’t sound that appetizing. “That’s some white people fast food.”

Brooke shrugs. “It’s good. The gravy is nectar from the gods.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it.” No wonder Brooke doesn’t mind the hospital food as much. Vanessa looks over at her, the way she’s tossing back some French fries. “Real nice of your mom and sister to bring me some food, too.”

Brooke smiles, her face all warm and Vanessa’s glad that she has support from her family, at least. “They’re great.”

Brooke pauses then, looking over at her, and Vanessa can tell that she’s figuring out how to word a question. One that Vanessa already knows is coming.

“So, I’ve never seen yours come to visit.” Brooke’s voice is light as she looks down at her food, clearly trying to avoid eye contact. “Do they live far, too?”

Vanessa bites her lip, takes a bite of her burger to give herself time before she has to answer. “Oh, y’know. My mom works a lot, that’s all. Besides, we talk here and there on the phone.”

It’s a lie, and Vanessa knows it, and Brooke does too, from the way Vanessa can see the gears turning in her head. “I’ve never heard you talk to anyone on the phone except-”

“It’s while you’re asleep, drop it.” Vanessa scowls, crossing her arms. She doesn’t mean to snap, she doesn’t, but she doesn’t want to talk about the fact that her mom doesn’t fucking visit and that her friends are too busy with their own lives and settling down and she’s been left behind.

She doesn’t want to.

“Okay, sorry.” Brooke holds her hands up in defeat and Vanessa almost feels bad. Almost. “Won’t bring it up.”

“Good.” Vanessa takes a bite of her burger, chewing with a little more force than necessary, and she wonders why she’s feeling a bit more out of breath than usual.

Kameron knocks on their door while Vanessa and Brooke are discussing the finer points of the latest season of Stranger Things.

“I’m just saying, the ending was a cop out-”

“Was not- ”

“Ahem.” Kameron’s grinning at both of them when Vanessa’s about to talk about the next potential season. “As much as I want to join in this discussion, I gotta take you one after the other for physio.”

Vanessa lets out a grumble that is mirrored by Brooke, and it makes Kameron snort. “Y’all are quite a pair. So, who’s gonna suffer first?”

Vanessa’s mouth drops open when Brooke immediately points in her direction. “Traitor!”

Brooke shrugs. “You snooze, you lose.”

Vanessa huffs but does her best to sit up nonetheless, letting Kameron bring her walker over to the side of her bed.

“Can I ditch this thing yet? I feel old as hell.” Vanessa hates the damn walker. It only serves to remind her of how weak she’s gotten.

“As soon as you can walk the length of the unit without near collapsing on me, it’s gone.” Kameron’s hand is on her back to steady her as she stands. Vanessa hates how much she has to lean her weight on the thing.

“Walkers are for the elderly.” Nonetheless, Vanessa clutches the handles to keep her balance.

“Technically, it’s a rollator.”

“Giving it a fancy Transformers name ain’t helping.”

Brooke’s watching them with a thoroughly entertained expression. “You always this much fun in physio sessions, Vanessa?”

Vanessa sticks her tongue out at her. “I’m a delight.”

“Not sure if that’s the word I’d use.” Kameron snickers, poking her shoulder when she begins to protest. “C’mon, time to walk and build up that strength.”

Vanessa’s drained after one lap around the unit, gripping the handles of the walker with shaky hands and Kameron’s hands keeping her half-upright. By the time they get back to the room, Vanessa’s bed feels like heaven rather than the prison that it usually is.

“You good?” Brooke’s brow is furrowed in concern as she sits up from her own bed, ready for her turn to walk with Kameron.

“Yeah, fine.” So what if the words come out in a slight wheeze? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything. “I’m good.”

Except that Vanessa feels like her body’s made of lead, pulling her down, down, down into the earth to never be able to get up again. Not with the way she’s exhausted from just one lap around the floor.

“That tired you out more than usual.” Kameron’s brow knits in concern as she lowers the head of Vanessa’s bed.

“I’m fine.” Still, Vanessa has to close her eyes, catch her breath as she says it. Not a convincing lie.

Thankfully, Kameron lets the subject drop, and part of Vanessa hopes that Brooke’s laps around the floor take longer so that she has a second on her own to contemplate how messed up her life really has become.

“So, she says it’s to match the ‘rainforest’ theme that’s been chosen for the party, right? Well, get this. She goes orange and green. Orange and green! Who fucking wants that for a look?”

Brooke’s laughing at everything Vanessa is saying and Vanessa can’t help the way she preens a little, embraces it. “What did it turn out like?”

“Oh, hideous.” Vanessa waves a hand, laughing when Brooke claps a hand over her mouth. “She looked like a fucking weird snake creature.”

“Oh my god. You’re ridiculous.” Brooke’s giggling, and Vanessa never, ever wants to stop hearing the sound of it. “Are you this indulgent with all your clients?”

“Only the crazy bitches who’d try and fight me if I didn’t do exactly what they wanted. Even if the final look was more scary than anything.” Vanessa pauses, remembering the client, along with every other person she’s done makeup for. “Didn’t want them to speak with no manager.”

“You should do my makeup sometime. It would be fun?” Brooke phrases it like a question, and her smile is tentative, but it makes Vanessa gasp, try and sit up, before falling right back down on her pillow.

“Are you kidding me? Absolutely. I’ll make you all banjie, fit my aesthetic.” She’s excited just thinking about it. Brooke’s high cheekbones, her eyes, her bone structure-

Vanessa’s only ruminating on all of it because of the possibilities for makeup, that’s all. No other reason.

Nope.

Brooke wrinkles her nose. “What’s banjie?’

Vanessa can’t help but grin. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”

Vanessa makes a mental note to her own body to get its shit together. To allow her to fucking sit up again without running out of breath, becoming light headed, feeling weak. She has a new client, after all.

The attending doctor and resident and nurses pass by for their evening rounds as Vanessa’s describing the kind of makeup look she wants to try out on Brooke. The attending frowns when he looks up at the monitors above Vanessa’s bed, a sight that makes Vanessa’s stomach churn in unease. She hates that look.

“Miss Mateo’s sats are getting pretty low, aren’t they?”

“Hello? I’m right here.” Vanessa stops just short of lifting up a hand, snapping it in the healthcare team’s faces. She hates the way they pretend to talk above her sometimes, as if she’s not privy to conversation about her own body.

The attending pays her no mind, turning towards her nurse instead. “I’d say lets try nasal prongs for the next couple hours, see if that increases her oxygen saturation.”

Vanessa tilts her head slightly, looking up at the monitor behind her. Eighty nine percent. She knows from years and years of being in the hospital that anything below ninety five percent is considered low, and that dropping saturation levels mean that she’s not getting the oxygen she needs, that her heart isn’t doing a good job of pumping the blood to where it’s supposed to go.

She doesn’t want a tube by her nose, though. It would make her look sicker than she already is.

“Don’t I get a choice?” She grumbles the words and only the resident hears her, sympathetically reaching out to pat her shoulder.

“It’s only to help you.” The attending doctor doesn’t even look up as he says it, and it makes Vanessa bristle.

The doctors to round on the next patient without much room for argument, and Vanessa’s nurse is apologetic as she brings over a set of nasal prongs.

“They’ll make you feel better, promise.” Scarlet hands over the tubing to Vanessa so that she can put it on herself, and part of Vanessa appreciates it, that someone at least is recognizing her competency.

“Don’t mean I gotta like it.”

Brooke turns to her as Scarlet leaves the room. “Gotta say, you pull them off well.”

“Don’t you even start with me.”

“Latest fall trend?”

Vanessa snorts in spite of herself. “I know what you’re tryna do.”

“What?” Brooke’s face is the picture of innocence, and it makes Vanessa feel a little bit lighter, with how she’s playing along.

“Tryna make me feel better.”

Brooke tuts. “I’m doing nothing of the sort. Just saying that you’ve started a new couture look. Might have to pick up a pair myself.”

Brooke winks at her, and Vanessa can’t help the small smile that’s growing on her face. “Still. Thanks.”

“I get how it feels, being stuck in here. It’s…not easy.” Brooke bites a lip. “I’m glad it’s you that I’m sharing a room with, and we have a blast, but I feel-”

“Powerless?”

“Yeah.” Brooke’s looking up at her, all traces of previous joking gone. “Like we’re disconnected from everything on the outside.”

“God, I get it.” Vanessa really does. Everyone’s moving on without them, getting farther and farther in life. Working, settling down, doing something with themselves. “Everyone’s doing things while we can’t.”

“At least this isn’t going to be forever. We’ll be back out there in no time.” Brooke’s smile is encouraging, and it makes Vanessa’s stomach turn a little, because Brooke will.

She won’t.

Though she doesn’t want Brooke to know. Doesn’t want her to worry.

“Yeah, we’ll get better before we know it.”

If only.

Their room feels just a little bit too empty to Vanessa when Brooke is whisked away for her surgery. It’s strange - back on the cardiology unit, she had relished the chance to have some peace and quiet. Now, though? She can’t stand the silence.

Their little micro-universe feels like it’s slipping away as Brooke begins to heal. She needs to stay in bed less, being less tired as the days go on, walking more and more with physio.

Vanessa’s happy for her, she is, because being stuck in a hospital bed is not something she would wish on anyone. The mundaneness. The feeling of helplessness. Watching everyone come and go, walking past their room without any inkling of how lucky they are just to be up and moving.

But at the same time, she wishes she was improving at the same rate. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to happen any time soon. Vanessa’s been needing the nasal prongs more often than not, no matter how much she grumbles as she wears them. She gets lightheaded, weaker, without them, closer to passing out the longer she tries to keep them off to prove that they’re not necessary.

Her stupid excuse of a heart is truly testing her patience.

Kameron doesn’t push her to walk anymore, something that makes Vanessa pissed, because she’s still gotta try, damn it. But at the same time, she’s grateful. She doesn’t want Brooke to see how weak she’s gotten. Hell, she doesn’t even want to know the whole scope of it herself. She doesn’t want to deal with it anymore.

She wants things to go back to normal. Well, as normal as they’ve ever been. For Vanessa, normal is being able to walk and talk and work and not be in the hospital. That’s all that she wants.

Brooke is dangling her feet from the edge of her bed one afternoon when they’ve finished a Jeopardy episode. “I’m still hungry.”

“We just had lunch.” Vanessa’s half right, because Brooke had her lunch. Vanessa’s not that hungry.

“You haven’t been out of bed in days. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s grab coffee from the cafeteria.” Brooke’s looking excited by the idea, standing up and slipping on her shoes. Without her walker, since she doesn’t need it anymore.

Vanessa’s only a little bit jealous.

“I’m tired as hell.” It’s not a lie, because Vanessa really is. Except that there’s not a time these days that she isn’t.

“Are you sure? Want me to bring you something back?” Brooke’s question makes Vanessa smile, just a little.

“I’m fine.”

Vanessa doesn’t want Brooke to know that Kameron downgraded her to using only a wheelchair, rather than the walker. It’s embarrassing. She doesn’t want to use it. So, she’s not going to. So what if she’s going to be in bed forever now?

Brooke is unfazed. “‘Kay. I’ll be back.”

She’s waltzing out of the room before Vanessa can even say goodbye, past the four walls that are slowly becoming the only part of the world that Vanessa is exposed to these days.

Vanessa tugs off the nasal prongs when Brooke gets back. Brooke raises an eyebrow as she does, but doesn’t comment. Hands her a muffin instead.

“I wanna get out of here.” Vanessa’s made up her mind.

Brooke takes a sip of her soft drink. “Thought you were tired.”

“I’m always tired. I don’t wanna be tired here.”

Vanessa doesn’t want to have to die while staring at the same four walls day in and day out. A prison of her body’s making, her heart the instigator that’s dooming her to a half, trapped life that may not even last that long.

If this is all she’s going to get, if this is the extent of her future? She doesn’t care anymore.

“Are you even allowed to leave the unit?”

Brooke’s question is valid, but it makes Vanessa scowl, tuck the red bracelet that denotes she can’t under her sleeve. “Doesn’t matter.”

Why should it even be an issue? Why does Vanessa have to spend her already shitty existence trapped where she doesn’t even want to be?

“Pretty sure nursing will ream you out if you try and go.” Brooke’s biting her lip now, and Vanessa’s starting to regret ever roping her into it. Someone who still has an inkling of self preservation left, someone who’s still trying to play within the rules.

Brooke deserves better than her.

“They’ll get over it. Come on, it’ll be fun.” She wiggles her brows, and she can see Brooke’s resolve beginning to break. “We can be like Bonnie and Clyde or some shit.”

“Okay, but didn’t Bonnie and Clyde rob people-”

“Irrelevant.” Vanessa waves her hand before pointing at the wheelchair in the corner of the room, still folded up and unused. Brooke gives in, walking over to grab it and bring it towards the side of her bed. Success.

Vanessa takes a deep breath before attempting to get up. Sure, physio and nursing had drilled the importance of having two people helping her transfer to and from the bed. Saying that she’s a falls risk, that she can hurt herself with the slightest of missteps.

But when Vanessa’s able to get her butt into the wheelchair with just a smidge of exertion, she smiles for the first time in days. Nursing and physio can suck it.

Brooke giggles as she pushes Vanessa’s wheelchair into the hospital’s atrium, past the piano and the front desk and the small garden. “I feel like we’re fugitives.”

Vanessa cranes her neck to look up at her. “Does that make me precious cargo?”

Brooke snorts. “You’re priceless.”

Vanessa can’t help the way that she peeks around the hallways as the walk, eyes out for any nursing from their unit, any therapists or physicians that could spot them and wonder why she’s not on the unit.

It’s fine. She’ll be fine. She can go without her nasal prongs for twenty minutes. She can handle being up in the chair for the length of time it takes to get a fucking coffee.

At least, that’s what she’s trying to tell herself as Brooke pushes her up to the Starbucks.

Brooke’s debating between a London Fog or a latte, and Vanessa’s never noticed, really, how pretty Brooke’s eyes are. How her face lights up while she’s scanning the menu, how delicate her movements are as she goes to pay. Even as a patient in a hospital, Brooke manages to glow. Vanessa’s not sure whether to be jealous or infatuated.

But by the way she can feel her own cheeks heat up as Brooke passes her drink to her, she has an inkling of which one it could be.

Vanessa’s breathless as they head back, dropping her head to rest on her hand. She’s still giggling over the pianist’s song choices in the lobby, and can hear Brooke doing the same as she pushes her chair.

The elevator ride back up to the unit feels final, as if they’re reaching the end of something. Vanessa tries to ignore the feeling and push it away, to focus instead on how she and Brooke had people watched in the lobby, giving every passing by patient or doctor or nurse an outlandish backstory. How Brooke had given her a sip of her drink, taken a sip of hers in return. How Vanessa hadn’t felt like a patient for once, ignoring the aches and pains in her body and the straining in her chest so that she could focus on the way Brooke beamed at her, eyes alight and full of so many possibilities.

Except the lightness in her chest drops, pulling her back down deep into the earth like an anchor as soon as the doors of the elevator open back up.

Because there’s a gaggle of nurses. Doctors. Her cardiologist. Her… mom?

A group of people looking very, very, mad.

Vanessa shrinks in the wheelchair as she hears Brooke gulp above her.

Whoops.

[authorbrandondion]

The Black Locust

The wind blew and there it was.

Every insect in the forest came alive in that moment, and whatever was said was deafening.

I took a step backward. Maybe two. The trail was narrow, and there was little space to move. Drops of rain began falling steadily yet lightly. If the sky had turned grey before then, I hadn’t noticed. Whimsical tails began to descend from the clouds in peculiar fashion, much like when threatening circulation before a tornado. The temperature had dropped noticeably. I was shivering, but not from the cool air.

In my visions, it was a snake that I would encounter. A thick black one. It would come upon me suddenly like this, but far less conspicuously. I was conscious of the fact that I was still standing before it in all its inhumanity. Each time I considered how I would react to the snake, I also considered how I would be able to keep myself from fleeing in fear. Now here I was, facing something far more terrifying, and not one fiber of my being demanded I run.

“Why are you here?” I finally whispered.

It didn’t flinch. Cloaked in darkness, I couldn’t make out any of its features, but I could almost see its face through sheer imaginative force. Somehow, I knew it heard me. It understood me. It understood much.

“Do you think you’re the only one?” I asked myself in my own head.

Staying fixated on the being in front of me, I grew immediately suspicious of my question to myself. It was in my head, and in my voice, but the tone was foreign. I quickly realized I was being communicated with telepathically.

“The only what?” I responded audibly, perhaps to ensure that it was by my own accord that I spoke and not the will or whim of this thing in front of me. Without a point of reference by which to identify it, my internal dialogue began referring to it as “the darkness.” That was all it consisted of at this point. The embodiment of darkness. I couldn’t even get a voice with which to identify it. Just a transference of thought that allowed it to stay ambiguous.

It answered me again, but this time in images as opposed to my own voice. I saw women in labor. Women holding just-birthed infants of a peculiar nature. Nothing visible made the babies different, but their fatigued mothers could feel it, and so could I. There was a difference in nature surrounding and inhabiting these infants. Hundreds to thousands of these images flashed through my mind in a matter of seconds.

“But how many of them are standing in front of you at this moment?” I asked the darkness inflicting me with these images. I had no idea what pushed those words out of my mouth. With time to think, I would surely have decided against provoking it with boldness.

Without a motion or sound, the darkness erupted in fury. It remained as still as a statue in front of me, but inside of itself, it had lost control. The light rain quickly escalated, and the wind blew it sideways with great force. I squinted to keep it from pelting my eyes, but with little success. Opening them from a hard blink, I searched for the darkness in front of me, but I could not find its image anywhere in the immediate area. As quickly as it had come, the wind died down, and with it the rain. The darkness was gone.

I had once seen a demon possession and subsequent exorcism twenty-five years prior to this moment.  When I was fifteen years old, I had been sent to a summer camp for juvenile delinquents. Having been caught shoplifting, among other behavioral issues, I was on an impossible trek of trying to fit in with kids that weren’t like me. My dad had exhausted his known options and finally discovered “Camp Awareness.” The next thing I knew I was on my way to a remote location three and a half hours from the safe familiarity of my small hometown. I would be there for a month with roughly three dozen other misfits and derelicts.

When we first pulled in, it seemed like a very desolate and uninviting location. It was just off a rural road, and there were only three unimpressive buildings to behold. The first was a trailer to the left. This was the medical facility for any potential emergencies. I would find out that given the violent nature and background of most of the attendees, this was not all that uncommon. During the next weeks I would witness someone being stabbed with a pitchfork, another individual getting the top part of his ear bitten off, and lastly someone receiving an intentional nine ball to the head from a pool table.

Set a little behind the medical trailer was a larger building that upon further inspection proved to be a former horse stable and exercise area. The grounds the camp sat on had apparently at one time been used as a ranch. Where once animals slept and galloped, activities such as dodgeball among heathens now transpired.

To the right of the entrance was a large square establishment. This was the dining hall. It was here that the only person who expressed a dislike of me put his sentiments on display. Frequently ridiculing me in front of the others, he never missed an opportunity to make me miserable, which often simply consisted of squirting ketchup and mustard on my food. From what I could gather, he was the son of an important person, the art department chair at a university or something like that. He was much taller than I, and there was something about his personality that warned me not to push back.

Each day dragged slowly by. I was the only one there that hadn’t been sent as the result of a court order. The camp had a reputation as being an effective, albeit gentler, alternative to many programs the state had to offer for young perpetrators. Due to the nature of the camp as a rehabilitation center, we were handled rigidly and firmly. Each cuss word resulted in ten pushups, and when attendees got out of hand or unruly, they quickly found several much larger counselors lying on top of them pinning their arms behind their backs. This was more common than not. No one wanted to be there, and we certainly didn’t want our routines and behaviors messed with. Vocal dissent that carried on past an initial warning was a one-way ticket to the sidelines for any activity that we might actually consider “fun.” This could be anything from basketball to canoeing.

My counselor was the largest of them all. Howie had been in the Air Force, and much of his training regimen carried over to the way he handled us. Every morning at 6 a.m. we were outside running laps around our cabin nestled deep in the woods. Howie was stern and forceful, but also compassionate in a guarded way that sometimes unintentionally revealed itself. He once found himself telling us a story about how he had accidentally killed his sister. While driving a boat on a lake as a teen, his sister had protested the speed in which he was traversing the waves. Ignoring her pleas, he turned to see she had fallen out of the boat and was floating motionless in the water. As he jumped in and grabbed her body, his hand sunk into the back of her head. It had hit the propeller of the motor as she fell. For years after, I wondered if he had made that story up or exaggerated it. Early in my adult years, while revisiting the camp experience through research, I would find the validity as I stumbled across a newspaper article recounting her passing.

After we’d been there a couple of weeks, everyone had become somewhat acclimated. It seemed like months, and I would cross the days off on a piece of paper that hung on the wall at the foot of my bed. I was like a prisoner carving marks on the bricks of his cell. Every fifth day went diagonal across the previous four. I had made a few close friends by then, but got along well with everyone except for the art administrator’s son. We passed the days in activities set forth by the camp director. This ranged from swimming in the lake across the road to visiting a prison. The intent behind taking us to places of incarceration was to scare us back into being productive and orderly members of society. For the most part, it hadn’t seemed to be very effective.

One night around this time, halfway through my stay, the director and counselors began to address us after supper. It was at this point that they stepped completely out as being a Christian-run operation. What proceeded was a very lengthy and powerful lesson and testimony, with an invitation at the end to commit one’s life to that faith. Whatever they said during that time was effective, because only about three of the thirty kids didn’t make an outward proclamation in response. I’d had a Baptist upbringing, so these types of situations were all too familiar to me. On a lesser scale, they followed nearly every sermon on every Sunday throughout my youth. I always found them uncomfortable. This night, however, it was a powerful sight to witness from any perspective. Twenty-seven of the roughest kids I’d ever met stood simultaneously to at least express an initial interest in something seemingly intangible.

Later that night, after the lights had been turned out, I lay in the darkness considering the evening’s events. Our old rusty bunkbeds were lined up one beside the other on the outside wall, with a doorway in the middle. My bunk was the next to last one. A partition separated us from another counselor and his group on the other side of the cabin, with an open doorway between us. There was an outside door on their side too, which led directly out to a trail that wound back through the woods toward the main buildings.

I don’t remember exactly what was going on in my mind, but I was staring blankly at a window on that outside wall. Suddenly there appeared an iridescent glowing red face. It came out of nowhere and stayed for no more than a second. Before I could yell, two other kids simultaneously beat me to it.

“Howie!” they exclaimed.

“I just saw a face in the window,” one of them finished.

“I saw it too,” I added.

Clearly annoyed, Howie got up to address us. Given our track record at the camp and all the events that led us there to begin with, it was understandable why he was suspicious of our behavior and claims. Reluctantly he listened, then went to the other side to converse with the second counselor. After a few moments they agreed to take a look around outside. Shortly after Howie left the cabin, a couple of the campers turned their flashlights on, which did not go unnoticed through the window.

“Give them to me,” Howie demanded, walking back in. “Everyone.” Grumbling, we did as we were told. He collected the flashlights one by one and then laid them in a pile on his own bed, which was on the wall across from ours and in the corner down by my end. With a stern warning, he went back outside.

Several minutes went by, and I began to grow restless with anticipation. I knew what I saw. The face had very distinct features and was glowing inhumanly--not like someone was shining a light on it, but a glow that was being generated internally. In addition, the window sat a good height off the floor, and the cabin itself was a foot or more to step up into. There was no gradual appearance of the face. It was there, and then it wasn’t.

The kid in the top bunk in the corner beside me was friendly. He wasn’t terribly bright, but his overall attitude and demeanor more than compensated for his lack of intellect. He and his brother had been brought from a state or two away. Dean was his name, and we got along well.

“Dean, this is crazy, isn’t it,” I whispered into the dark in his general direction. Oddly, there was no answer. I repeated myself louder. “Dean. This is crazy, isn’t it!” Still no answer. I got up and stumbled my way over to Howie’s bed, retrieving a flashlight and turning it on. As I walked up to his bunk, I found him sitting cross legged with his fingers intertwined, save for the index which met each other at his lips. His knees were at about my eye level. Softly he was chanting something I couldn’t make out. Stunned, I stood there holding the light on his face. Several other campers saw what was going on and quietly made their way over, standing bewildered behind me.

“I thought I told you guys no lights!” Howie came storming back into the cabin, making his way toward Dean and me. Getting close enough to reprimand me, he saw what was happening. Slowly he made his way behind and around me, fixated on Dean. Positioning himself directly in front of Dean, he studied him for a moment before deciding to act. Gently, he placed a hand on each of his knees and shook gently, speaking his name. This happened a couple of times before all hell broke loose.

Facing my direction, Dean’s eyes suddenly popped open. He was staring directly at me. There was something missing, or maybe something present in his glare. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were hollow or filled with the unknown, but it was enough to send me staggering back a step or two. From there he turned directly to Howie, their faces inches apart, and began yelling in what I can only describe as a language I’ve never heard. I say language, but I don’t believe the sounds were something that a human could accidentally or even intentionally replicate. It was unearthly sounding, but had a definitive structure and flow to it. He was saying something.

At this, Howie’s body jolted, a backward motion. Even though I didn’t understand at the time what was going on, it wouldn’t have taken much to realize that he was overcome or inhabited by something at that moment. Immediately following this, he began yelling back at Dean in an equally foreign, yet completely different sounding tongue. This went on for a few moments before several of the campers decided they’d had enough. Without any thought, they ran into the pitch black wilderness, escaping whatever was going to happen next. I and two others stayed. While I can’t remember for sure, I always assumed when I retold the story that they were the other two kids that saw the face in the window. We weren’t going out into that long winding trail without giving it more thought. Who knew what else was out there?

After a few more moments, Dean’s body flew off the bed and landed on the ground. Howie and the other counselor converged on him, pinning his arms behind his back. With little to no effort, Dean pushed his arms out, flinging one of the men against the wall and the other across the floor. He was half Howie’s size alone. Scrambling, Dean took off toward the door. Collecting themselves, the counselors got up and drove their bodies into him, pinning his face against a bunk rail on the other side of the cabin from where it had all started. Dean became uncontrollably angry at this point, but they had the leverage. His body was stomach down on the bed and his face lifted against the rail.

Completely terrified and in shock, the two remaining campers and I stood in the doorway on the other side, watching helplessly. Then something ridiculous sounding happened. One of the counselors looked at us and said, “Start chanting na na na boo boo, Jesus loves you.” You could have told me to do or say anything in that moment, and I would have done it. So I did. Dean began screaming as if his flesh were melting. However, it was working, it was, so we kept doing it. His screams escalating, I finally decided that I’d had enough to take my chances outside. Running through the cabin, I raised my hand to push the screen door open to leave, but it wasn’t there. The kids that had run out earlier did so in such panic and terror, they had literally run the door straight off its hinges and onto the ground, stampeding over it.

Other than images of dark trees and my own heavy breathing, I remember very little of the trip back to the front of the camp. As we got near, we noticed a light on in the cafeteria, so that became our destination. Stumbling in, I saw that not only were the kids from my cabin inside, but so were the campers from the cabin on the other side of the woods. The camp director was present and busy fielding demands from scared kids to call their parents. What had been the roughest bunch of teenagers that I’d ever met had quickly become something else. With the help of the other two counselors, the director assured us he would honor our requests, and then the three of them left to see what was going on back in my cabin.

Much time passed before the others finally became irreconcilably stir crazy. One by one they filed out the door and down the country road on which the camp was located. For some reason, I stayed, perhaps because I had no idea where I or they would be going. I was three hours from home, and it was the middle of the night.

Finally, after sitting alone for what felt like an eternity, I decided to leave the safe confines of the cafeteria. There was a light on in the medical trailer and I headed for it. The door was barely open before I noticed Dean sitting to the left, his face buried in his hands. I began to walk backward and pull the door closed.

“It’s ok,” a voice said from inside. Cautiously I pushed the door open further and saw three of the counselors sitting there keeping a watchful eye on him. Howie was among them. Dean slowly lifted his head, his hands keeping their position. I noticed that whatever had been in his eyes was gone. He looked pale. Fatigued. Emotionless.

“He doesn’t remember anything,” Howie informed me.

The rest of the events that happened are hazy, but I do remember that they didn’t let us call our parents. My mother still has the letter I wrote her the following day. More than two decades later and well into adulthood, I still couldn’t look out windows at night. There were other events that transpired at Camp Awareness, but for now we’ll leave that subject alone until it is relevant again.

Years passed, and I underwent many personality transformations. Following my awkward early teenage years, I developed into a decent athlete. I won many events in high school and received awards and scholarships. This thrust me into years of battling narcissism, which I never truly won or overcame willfully. Beyond athleticism, my mind took a more intellectual route in the years following my higher education. I became helplessly philosophic. Books were my obsession, and I consumed them carnivorously. At some point, my interests turned to parapsychology. I was looking for explanations. A series of supernatural and paranormal events had presented themselves to me, and while I couldn’t convince others of my experiences, I knew they were legitimate. One in particular took me from being curious to actively pursuing research and practice.

My maternal grandmother had developed Alzheimer’s disease. I loved the woman dearly. When I was in elementary school, I would stick my finger down my throat until I vomited so I could trick my teacher into thinking I was sick on the days I knew she was coming to visit. This way I could get sent home. She was that important to me. Every minute with her counted.

After sliding for several years into dementia, the decision finally had to be made to put her in assisted living.  By then in my mid-thirties, I went to the home to help decorate her room with my mom and aunt. Both were single and had invested the majority of their time into caring for my grandma until it had gotten to this point. I knew they were struggling with guilt over the situation, but she was beginning to forget who they were. On one occasion, she had gotten up in the night and started to call the police on my mom, thinking she was an intruder.

My grandmother had been at her new home in the care facility for several months when one night I fell asleep on the couch at about 2:30 in the morning. That wasn’t atypical for me, as I had always been a night owl, and didn’t have to work until late afternoon the next day. When I woke, I was slightly disoriented by a dream I’d had involving my grandmother, but I quickly shrugged it off. My dreams were vivid and realistic as a rule, so I got up and a short while later I went to work.

I was standing alone in a room when I received a text from my mom. It wasn’t often that she texted, since she hadn’t had a capable phone for long and was still learning how to use it. Opening the text, I was even more stunned to see it was a picture. She hadn’t to this point used her phone that way, at least that I knew of, and had never sent me a photo before this. It was a picture of my grandmother with a stuffed dog under her arm. Shortly after the picture came through, so did an accompanying text. It said something to the effect of: Rough Night. Mom was up and causing a disturbance. Joan had to be called up there at 4:30.

I could feel the color leave my face as my legs became weak. My heartbeat was audible in my ears as I started furiously communicating with my mother.

The dream I had the night before corresponded with the timeframe when my grandma was causing issues. Joan was my aunt. They had called her up there to help handle the situation.

In my dream the night before, my grandma and I were walking the halls of her assisted living building, our arms linked the way a couple does when walking arm in arm. I was telling her in some unconventional way why she had to be there. It wasn’t like a foreign language, and it wasn’t as simple as metaphors. Going to great lengths, I was somehow helping her understand, because she had lost that ability to listen and discern in real life. We did this for a while, when the next thing I knew we were outside of the building, and I was sitting in the backseat of a car on the passenger side. She was outside, looking at me with her arms crossed. I was telling her that I had to go now, and she nodded as if she understood, but she wasn’t happy about it. The car left; when it eventually came to a stop, I got out and was greeted by my mother. She proceeded to tell me that my grandma and aunt had a rough night. I told her that I had just seen my grandmother and she looked better than I had seen her in years. My mom reiterated her point, and soon after, the dream ended and I awoke.

One of the first things that struck me upon this revelation was the fact that my mom had said in the dream that my aunt had a rough night too. She hadn’t appeared anywhere in my dream, yet in reality she was with my grandmother in the wee hours, trying to calm her down. Additionally, the way Grandma was holding the stuffed dog placed her arm in the same position it was in as we were walking the halls in my dream, arm in arm.

A month or two later, my mom and aunt came to visit for Christmas. My aunt had taken video of the incident with my grandmother and insisted I watch. I was reluctant, simply because the whole thing had freaked me out. Eventually I agreed. You could hear my aunt on the video from behind her phone, asking my grandmother who she was talking to. My grandma never answered her, but I hadn’t up to that point realized she was talking to someone or something that no one could see. The assumption was probably that she was talking to the stuffed dog, but she never looked at it or spoke in its direction. What finally sent me over the edge and into tears was near the end of the video when my grandmother walked over to an empty chair in an otherwise empty hallway. She then proceeded to stand in front of it and take the same posture and body language that she had in my dream when she was standing outside the car.

My reality was fractured as a result of this, among other lesser events in my life around this time. In a sense, I was being awakened to things I was unaware of and couldn’t explain. My thirst for knowledge moved from the philosophical and psychological into arenas that I was generally incapable of grasping or understanding, such as physics. I wanted to know if I was in spirit with her at the assisted living, or if she was with me telepathically in my mind and dream. What had happened? How did it happen? Who or what was behind it? Slowly my life began to unravel.

(This is Chapter 1 of the book “The Remote Generation.” To find out what happens next, order it using the link below, or stop in at your local independent bookstore and ask if they carry it.)

https://www.amazon.com/Remote-Generation-Brandon-Dion/dp/1548664359/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1529026756&sr=8-5&keywords=the+remote++generation

[tyranttortoise]

Fam. Fam. Why must you hurt me with the soulmates thing? CAN YOU IMAGINE IF IT WERE FRISK AND SANS THO YEAH WELL I DID & now I dislike myself ._. Ples imma just think of the two as soulmates T_T

I’ve had this drabble in my drafts for a week now, and I just realized I never posted it.  So have some Frans soulmate happiness-with-a-dash-of-angst.

Frisk is gendered and aged-up.  If that’s not your cup of tea, keep scrolling.

The first time he felt the Resonance was when Snow Drake had Confronted her on the path to Snowdin, calling out the floating red SOUL into existence.  The moment he saw the color, he balked, momentarily caught off-guard.  None of the other humans he’d seen possessed a SOUL of pure Determination.  

Her SOUL was the most powerful in the entire Underground, and yet… she chose to laugh at Snow Drake’s ice pun, making him feel validated enough to continue on with a sharp smirk on his beak.  The human waved him farewell and continued forward, while Sans pressed the heel of his palm to his sternum.

There was a pull between their SOULs… but that was impossible.  She was a teenage girl, someone who he had promised to protect.  But even with that promise hanging in the air, he couldn’t bring himself to let her out of his sight.  He consoled himself with the constant reminder of the promise, of the fact that Toriel was a name that carried considerable weight (even if the old lady had never admitted her royal standing out-loud), of the fact that he was doing a favor for a dear friend by watching over this human as she joked, flirted, and hugged her way through Confrontation after Confrontation.

He told himself that he was watching her progress as a Judge–that he was waiting for her to slip-up, to reveal her true nature as a human and attack one of them.  

It had nothing to do with the ache in his chest whenever she progressed without him.  Nothing at all.

The first time he acknowledged the possibility of the Soul Resonance being real was when he was staring at her across from the table at the MTT Resort restaurant.  The candlelight flickered between them, casting shadows on his face, emphasizing his hollow sockets while he idly threatened her.  It also made the tears rapidly gathering in her gaze look like glitter.

He felt a pang in his chest, one that had him clenching his jaw and tightening his fists in his pockets.  He tried to play it off–even tried to allude to the fact that he knew of the power that existed in her SOUL–but it still made him feel like garbage.  

“i’m rootin’ for ya, kid.”

He winked and took a short-cut, even as he could hear her chair scraping across the floor, her voice calling out to him, cracking on his name.  Sans stood in the alleyway, his fingers balled in the front of his T-shirt, and clinked the back of his skull against the brick.  

Soulmates with a human?  A human that could bend the rules with Determination alone, no less, and one that was also Determined to go home.  One that would probably end up killing their king and using the power of his SOUL to pass through the barrier and out of his life forever.

Yeah, Sans had that kind of luck.        

The first time he admitted the Resonance was actually real–that they were actually soulmates–was when she smiled at him while they stood on the cliffs, gazing at the setting sun of the Surface.  It had been the first time any of the monsters had seen the sun, the first time their sight had to adjust to something other than fire magic, magical crystals, luminescent foliage, or lava.  Sans couldn’t believe it; after so many failed experiments, so many timeline loops (which he couldn’t remember much of, other than the fact that they gave him a general distrust toward flowers), so much Hopelessness…

A single human teen had managed to befriend nearly every monster in the Underground and subsequently break the barrier to release them from beneath the mountain.  

She looked so radiant, features cast in hues that he’d never even seen Underground.  Her smile was bright, spread even wider than his own grin, and while Toriel proudly set a paw on the human’s back, Frisk reached out and gripped the sleeve of his jacket.  

“You’ve got a weird expression on your face, Sans,” she murmured, trying not to be overheard by Toriel as the goat woman conversed with her ex.      

Sans tried to amend his expression.  "heh, guess you could say something just dawned on me.“

Frisk laughed, her fingers still lingering on his jacket.  Did she feel it, too?  Could humans feel the connection like he could?

“Pretty sure the sun’s setting.”

“welp, that’s a downer.”

She laughed harder, and he finally gave in and let himself feel the Resonance without trying to fight it.  This human–his human, the possessive part of his mind whispered–had managed to do the impossible.

She’d given him HoPe again.

[ R E S E T ]

Does she remember the life they had together on the Surface?  The years they spent together– gone?

Is she even in there?

The hardest thing Sans ever had to do was to watch her stride through the Underground, wearing that empty smile.  It didn’t belong on her face.  She didn’t laugh at his jokes, and even though he tried so hard to get her to turn back, she refused.

She was Determined.

He didn’t want to stop her.  

But once she went through Papyrus, he knew that wasn’t her.

Like a coward, he watched her until the end, grieving the loss of both his soulmate and his brother.  He should have stopped her.  One bone straight through the chest, before her LOVE was too high…

But he couldn’t.  Not when his SOUL felt like it was being ripped in two.  

Bathed in golden light, he stood across from her, just as he had before.  The last time, he had been so proud of her, so amazed at her progression, but this time…

He warned her; he searched for any sign of the girl he loved in those crimson eyes.  She twirled the knife in her palm, her skin caked with grit and dust.  

“c'mon, frisk.”

MISS

“do you remember me?  please, if you’re listening… let’s just forget all of this.”

MISS

Over and over, he watched that little crimson SOUL shatter.  He begged.  He pleaded.  He lost track of the times she was impaled or incinerated.  

“i know you feel my soul.  there’s no way you don’t.”

MISS

The bite was gone from her shoulder, wiped clean from the RESET, but the Resonance was still there.  And every time he watched his soulmate’s SOUL shatter, he felt like he lost a piece of himself.  It became a gnawing pain, one that made his voice raw, his bones rattle, his wit crumble.

“please come back to me.”

The knife flashed, and a bone jutted through her shoulder.  The tip of the knife dug between two of his ribs.  He was grimacing, tempted to just rock forward on his heels and give up entirely, but…  

The expression she was wearing…!

Frisk was crying, her trembling fingers unfurling from the knife’s handle.  Its clatter was deafening as it echoed in the Judgement Hall.  

“I’m…s-so…sorry, I… I couldn’t…”  She could barely speak, but Sans hushed her by dismissing the bone and cradling her against his chest.  

“shh.  shhh, it’s ok.”

They both stayed like that, huddled in the corridor together, openly sobbing.  An eternity stretched before Frisk finally wiped her blotchy face on his hoodie and pulled back.  "I’m going to RESET.  If I… If it’s not me this time… Please…“

Sans nodded slightly; he knew what she was asking him to do.  "i’ll stop it before snowdin if i have to.”

She sighed in relief and cradled his cheekbone against her palm.  He could smell the dust. She pressed her lips to his teeth, and he could taste the saltiness of her tears.  Her hand began to tremble, so he reached up and covered it with one of his.  

“see ya soon, kiddo.”

“See you on the other side, Sans.”

[ R E S E T ]

“don’t you know how to greet an old pal?”

He could feel his bones rattling as he held his breath, waiting for her to turn around.  Would she be covered in dust and wearing that smile?  

Frisk whirled around and bypassed his extended hand to throw her arms around his neck, clutching onto him like a lifeline.  His arms wound around her, just as tight, and she could hear the sound of the whoopee cushion deflating against her back.  Her giggles were watery, and she shook her head against his neck.

“You know how to kill a mood, huh?”

She winced as soon as the word kill registered, but Sans just grinned and winked.  ”farting is such sweet sorrow, kid.“

Frisk snorted.  "You dork.”  Her tone was affectionate as she hugged him again, burying her face in the side of his neck.  He lowered his head to her shoulder, grazing his teeth lightly over where his mark would soon be. 

She went through the familiar motions, befriending everyone while he watched over her from the sidelines.  With every Confrontation, he felt that familiar fear well up in his chest… a feeling of deja vu that made him wonder if that last timeline had happened more than once.  

He didn’t threaten her at the MTT restaurant; instead, they had a meal, and he even got on stage to tell a few jokes.  Her smile (the genuine smile he knew, not the one that didn’t reach those empty eyes) made his SOUL soar.  They skipped the Judgement Hall altogether–Sans took her through a shortcut instead.

Then, they ended up standing on top of the mountain again, watching the sun set.  Uncertainly chilled him, even as the sunlight cast a warm, orange glow over his pale bones.  This was the second time she had done the impossible.

(No, the third.  The second time she did the impossible was when she caused them to end up Underground again.  He was too terrified of the answer to ask her why she did it yet.)

And then a hand brought him out of his somber thoughts.  Finger slipped down his arm, into the pocket where his fist was buried.  Like so many times before, Frisk laced her fingers with his, and Sans’s eyelights shifted over to her.  The sweater slipped away from her shoulder slightly–just enough for him to see the healing bite there, marking her as his.  

“gotta hand it to ya, frisk.  you know just what to do.”

The stirring in his SOUL quelled as he squeezed her hand.  

Her grin was lop-sided.  “I can’t quite put my finger on why, but it dawned on me that should touch you.”

“c’mon, i set you up for that one, and you recycled my garbage joke.”

“I’ll give you that.”  Her smile brightens, and Sans chuckles.  After their amusement dies down, he searches her gaze, but sees no trace of the other entity.  He decides it doesn’t matter.  Their SOULs are bound, interwoven too tightly for that threat to break them apart.  If he has to relieve the same loop over and over, he’ll do it.  

It’s worth the uncertainty if it means he’ll get to keep spending these moments with her, forever.

*Mobile Imagine Masterlist

[junker-town]

The recovery of Jasiel Favors

High school football, crowdfunding, and a family's battle for healthcare in the heart of Texas.

Jasiel Favors was motionless on the ground for 20 minutes. In the stands, classmates kept their hands over their mouths, fingers pressed together above their noses. On both sidelines, players went down to a knee; some bowed their heads. Someone prayed loudly, her voice lifting above the heavy silence while Jasiel lay prostrate on the field, waiting for an ambulance and a diagnosis.

It was Sept. 2, 2015, but there was no sign of autumn. At 7 p.m. it was still 89 degrees. Jasiel was playing special teams on a kickoff for Stony Point High that night. The ball went up then down, and Jasiel, a scrappy member of the junior varsity team, aimed for the Harker Heights player carrying the ball. “I remember every moment of that play,” Jasiel says.

He remembers running down the field, the ball in the opponent's hands. He remembers making it to the ball-carrier ahead of his teammates and doing his job, bringing his opponent down to the ground to stop the play. “The tackle wasn’t the best,” he says, “but I made it, and then I couldn’t get up.”

Debra Favors, Jasiel’s mom, didn’t realize just how serious her son’s injury was until well after he came out of the first surgery. She hadn’t been at the football game where he was injured; she was at home sick. The football coach called her, and she met them at the field. Jasiel was still on the ground by the time she got there.

Her 16-year-old son, a sophomore, had a broken spine. Jasiel was in surgery for six hours, and the surgeon had found three broken vertebrae. He had been immediately paralyzed.

“The day it finally hit me was probably three weeks after we got there,” Debra says. While she was at the hospital with Jasiel, a stranger asked her if her son was dying. “All I had been thinking about was that most kids survive this injury. I was thinking about how he was just gonna walk out of there.”

Jasiel made it through the surgeries, but that was only the beginning of the Favors family’s struggle. There was still the recovery, the return, and several transitions to come. All of those things take stamina and grit and determination, but they also cost money: money no one in the Favors family expected to spend.

The Favors live in Round Rock, Texas, a conservative city just north of Austin in the middle of a conservative state that continues to slash programs that help families pay for healthcare. That’s put Texas, and the Favors family, in the same position as a growing wave of Americans who turn to crowdfunding medical care. The effort to give Jasiel a normal life has been costly. Even with insurance and crowd-funded support, the Favors family hasn’t been able to make ends meet on its own. Debra's son’s life is worth everything to her. Sometimes that feels like exactly how much she has had to give.

There are few things a 16-year-old wants more than a set of car keys. The car that thrilled Jasiel was a 2015 Dodge Caravan: a giant black van with a ramp for his wheelchair.

After the surgeries and the hospital, Jasiel still felt stuck. He was immobile on his own and dependent on live-in assistance to help him recover. He couldn’t just get into a friend’s car and zip off to the mall. If Jasiel — whose friends call him "Jay," an abbreviation of his name which is pronounced Jay-zel — wanted to go somewhere, even to the hospital for physical therapy, the family had to call a company a couple of days in advance to transport him.

At home, Jasiel has nurses who help him. “Before the injury, I cooked my own meals,” Jasiel says. “I used the restroom by myself.” That’s been the hardest thing, Jasiel says: dealing with that reliance on other people.

These inconveniences are annoying for Jasiel, but they’re also expensive.

Texas is proud of its conservative values. As a state, Texas generally votes for small government. Williamson County, where Jasiel lives, stayed red in the 2016 election, going 51.3 percent for Donald Trump. According to a poll done by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, 52 percent of surveyed Texans think the Affordable Care Act should be repealed, and 30 percent think it should be repealed and not replaced at all.

After Trump’s election, the state government was emboldened to cut $1 billion in state funding for Medicaid, a program that the family says would have served Jasiel. In doing so, they forfeited another $1.4 billion in federal funding. Texas’ cuts removed $350 million from Medicaid pay for therapists, including physical and occupational therapists like the ones Jasiel would need.

Everything to make Jasiel healthy again cost money. Ninety days in a hospital cost money. So did the tracheotomy, the heart monitor, and the nurses who attended to him. When the Favors found themselves out of options, they turned to crowdfunding. A family friend had already set up one crowdfunding page to help his family pay for medical bills before the complication when Jasiel first got injured. As of publication, 143 people, including the Round Rock Football Booster Club, had donated $7,758 to that cause.

According to Gridiron Heroes, a Texas-based nonprofit foundation helping high school football players with spinal cord injuries, Texas high school football players (including Jasiel) have suffered 26 documented paralyzing injuries since 2003. Many high school athletes who get injured in Texas turn to fundraising sites.

Grant Milton, a senior at The Woodlands High School near Houston, set up a page to pay for life-saving surgery after suffering an on-field injury in Nov. 2016. There are GoFundMe pages for high-school-sport-related spinal injuries, dislocated knee caps, torn shoulder tendons, brain bleeds, and more.

Those pages are part of a national trend to use crowdfunding for medical care payments. NerdWallet found that nearly half of the $2 billion raised by GoFundMe campaigns over a studied period were medical-related. For YouCaring and GiveForward, that number jumped to 70 percent of their combined $800 million in donations. A University of Washington Bothell study found that personal medical campaigns were more likely to come from states that chose not to expand Medicaid under the ACA, Texas especially. Via Bloomberg:

"We had a huge number of campaigns from Texas, which is often recognized as the state where it's most difficult to qualify for Medicaid and other public insurance," Professor Nora Kenworthy, co-author of the study, said. "A lot of the campaigns are really using GoFundMe as a safety net," asking for "help with lost wages, help getting basic health-care services and support."

The help is significant, but it’s not always enough. Debra says the medical bills she has left to pay are currently hovering close to $100,000.

Jasiel is her youngest of four, and money wasn’t the easiest for them. But she says they were managing before his injury. Debra was working as a team leader for Schlotzsky's Deli, a sandwich shop. She had health insurance, and her ex-partner also had insurance. And yet, according to Debra, their bills from Jasiel’s treatment were almost impossible to pay. “My insurance barely paid for half of the medical bills,” she says. “Much less anything else.”

“They wanted me to make a decision: my son or them,” Debra, Jasiel’s mother

Debra took unpaid time off from her job to stay with Jasiel the 90 days while he was in the hospital, showing up to work at the end of every week to make sure she could keep her job after he was released. Jasiel's father quit his job in Dec. 2015, and Debra lost her job in March 2016 when she took time off to be with Jasiel when he was re-hospitalized due to complications. Jasiel’s parents, separated and never married, were without insurance at the same time.

(Debra doesn’t know why Jasiel’s father quit his job, and he was unreachable for comment. Jasiel says his father claims that they were never without insurance; that it was a miscommunication.)

“They wanted me to make a decision: my son or them,” Debra says about her employers. “Obviously I chose my son. I needed to be there with him no matter what.

“It felt like a dead end.”

In July of 2016, another GoFundMe was set up, this time to raise money specifically to transport Jasiel to his appointments and sometimes even to the mall to hang with his friends. The family raised just under $25,000 and then a local construction company, Wheeler, generously agreed to cover the remaining $29,000 to buy the Favors family the Dodge Caravan.

Local news sites showed a rally for Jasiel held in the parking lot of the school right behind the football stadium — students crowded around the shiny new van. The story was, after all, heartwarming: a community rallying around one of its own to make sure that he could have independence and freedom.

“(The fundraiser pages) have helped pay for rent and the lights and helped pay for the medication,” Debra said. “I’m not sure how we would have made this all work without them.”

The Favors have been fortunate. In a piece for Esquire, Luke O’Neil wrote about how these sites became major players in the healthcare world and how biased those campaigns can be against people of color and people who haven’t built a relatable and personable story. Whether or not your story goes viral, he argues, can determine whether or not a family can pay its medical expenses and (in some cases) whether or not a patient survives.

The van gives Jasiel freedom. “It was a relief,” he says. “Knowing that so many people are willing to help me and my mom.”

Jasiel doesn’t remember much about what happened after he was put into the ambulance and driven to the hospital. All he really remembers is that he went into surgery, and when he woke up all of his friends were there. Time, he says, moved unbelievably slowly when he was awake and too fast to count when he slept, which was often. “That time was the roughest,” Jasiel says. “I was still in good spirits, but I just wasn’t myself. I was just thinking why did this happen to me? Will I be able to return after this?”

Almost two years since his injury, Jasiel is at the beginning of what is still looking to be a lengthy recovery process. The doctors are hopeful, and so far, Jasiel does seem to be returning to normal. Hopefully this summer, after he takes the Texas standardized tests, Jasiel will go to a rehab facility to work on his range of motion. That too will cost money, but Jasiel needs it. He says he’s excited because he’s starting to get “a tingly feeling” a little bit at the bottom of his feet.

Jasiel has just started his senior year of high school. He will probably have to do some form of physical therapy for the next 10 years of his life, at least. If recovery goes as well as he hopes it will, one day this injury will be a distant memory.

“He can move his fingers if he thinks about it,” Debra says. “But we’ve still got a long way to go. I have no idea how long this is gonna take, but he’s trying.”

It’s uncertain how long the Favors family will have to think about what it cost them. Jasiel says he is back on his father’s insurance, which is helping a lot to pay for his medical expenses and his rehab. But even though Debra says it’s “good insurance,” there’s still a lot left to pay. She can only ask for so much charity. And as generous as Texans can be, they continue to vote to repeal programs that could crowd-fund Jasiel's recovery through taxpayer money.

Jasiel still needs lots of tests, caregivers, and attention. “I never know how bad the bills are going to be until I open them,” Debra says. But they’re never as cheap as they need to be.

Jasiel gets a little bit better every day. That debt also gets a little bit worse.