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20 questions for fic writers - tagged by the fantastic @frosty-the-killer-doll ☃️🔪🪆

How many works do you have on ao3?

13.

What's your total ao3 word count?

72,472

What fandoms do you write for?

The Flash, Glee, and Gossip Girl.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Flying Free (or Free Kurt - Emma Pillsbury Style) ((Glee obvs))

Heartless (Glee)

Smoke and Mirrors (Glee)

Maybe Our Real Soulmates Were The... (Flash/Arrow)

As Frightened As You (Glee)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

It depends. Direct compliments, yes, I'll reply to say thank you. I'll also answer questions, or drop little bits of behind-the-scenes info if there's something fun attached to a detail that a reader pointed out. If the comment is simply "wow!!" or "oof" or something else that doesn't really call for a response and that I don't have anything to add to, I'll just leave it as it is.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Toss up between two:

Heartless ends with Kurt getting hit with another wave of grief after having Finn's letterman returned to him, and while he's hugging it and sobbing, for a second it feels like Finn's hugging him back.

The Longest Distance Between Two Points Is Arm's Length ends with Cisco accidentally vibing a moment from earlier in the fic, and misunderstanding what's happening in it. If he'd had context, he would've realized he was seeing proof that his mom loves him, but instead he takes it as a painful reminder that he'll never be enough for her because he's not Dante.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably Alive Again. Just two dorks playing in the rain, on the brink of falling in love.

Do you get hate on fics?

None so far.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Absolutely not.

Do you write crossovers?

Not usually, but I have a few. Maybe Our Real Soulmates Were The... is considered a crossover fic by AO3 and FFN's standards, but not by mine. My most ambitious crossover (and the one I'm most invested in) is Preppy In Pink, which is gonna be so much fun when it's ready for posting.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I certainly hope not. Doesn't look too likely, though.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Pretty sure I haven't had that happen, either. It'd be cool though.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Smoke and Mirrors started as a few lines of dialogue that @kurtbastian-land had sitting in her notes app that she didn't have a full story developed for, and posted on Tumblr for anyone who wanted to expand on it. I wrote a very dramatic continuation (the majority of chapter 1), and then @jwmelmoth gave it a happy ending (chapter 2). But then she realized we left a couple loose ends untied, so the two of us collaborated on how it should end, and wrote a few more chapters together.

What’s your all-time favorite ship to write for?

I honestly don't know. I think I have the most WIPs for Kamisco at the moment, but Barrisco and Kurtbastian are both incredibly fun as well.

What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I started a crossover AU ages ago where Kurt Hummel ends up with Eric van der Woodsen. I don't think I'll ever finish it, but I like to reread the snippets I've already written every now and then.

What are your writing strengths?

Viscerally describing emotions, setting a scene, nailing characters' voices.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Titles, titles, titles, and titles. Oh, and also titles. They HARD!! Also, I'm very bad at following my own advice to write badly and edit later. I want everything to sound pretty immediately! This is how I get stuck on the same paragraph for weeks with a whole big chunk of the fic still unwritten.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Not something I'm going to attempt a whole lot of in the near future. I have already slipped a little bit of Spanish (+1 word of French) into a couple fics, but only like a single word/phrase at a time, spoken by bilingual characters in mostly English sentences. There are also a few spots where a character says more in Spanish, but I don't write the actual dialogue, I just imply a general idea of what they're saying. I'd love to include more, but I'm not about to make a fool of myself with Google Translate—I'm sticking to very minimal Spanish until I can speak it better.

First fandom you wrote for?

First fandom I finished a fic for was Gossip Girl. As for first one I started writing a fic for, it was either Gossip Girl (not the same fic) or Boy Meets World (a still unfinished Shawngela fix-it).

Favorite fic you’ve written?

I mean, A Little Help From Your Friends is pretty hard to beat. It's got everything—humor, angst, fluff, ambiguity, movie references, ROOMMATES!! And funnily enough, I gave it a title with a little help from my friend, @daftydraw (and by "a little" I mean she suggested the whole title and I ran with it).

And tagging: @starstruckpurpledragon @fictionandmusic @orangesunsets12 @thequeenofshebasays @queer-cheer @elledelajoie

june 1868.

but trust is a fickle, fragile thing.

pairing: joseon king!yoongi x reader genre: angst words: 1.2k contains: historical au, character death. historical context: “mama” is the korean equivalent of “your highness” & the proper address for a queen. a/n: this drabble is sponsored by a donation to Black Lives Matter.

moonlit throne index. this is drabble five. start from the beginning?

In the long decade since the night you swore utter allegiance to the crown prince, you have done everything within your grasp to uphold the heart of the commitment you’ve made. Even as the prince becomes a king, even as beloved companions submit to the passage of time, and even as the adolescent declaration of obedience itself matures into instead a steady, affectionate support, you keep your word on all but one occasion. But it is this exact decision, this single withheld secret, that shifts both your worlds irrevocably.

“You must tell my son that it is a common illness. A simple recovery, and nothing more,” the queen had commanded you on a somber day in winter the year before as you knelt beside her bed, wiping blood from the corner of her pale lips.

“Daebi-mama.” Your voice broke on the last beat. “How long have you been hiding this?”

“Please.” Though her elegant fingers were weak, she covered your hands with a warm, pleading palm. “He doesn’t need any more distractions. Not now. Especially not ones that don’t have… simple solutions.” She squeezed then, with what strength she could muster, silencing all your protests. “If you want him to succeed - don’t tell him.”

And so, you hadn’t.

But while you agreed with the queen’s intentions, you continued to fight against the inevitability in a way that only you could. The last six months have been a frenzied haze. You blistered your feet scouring the markets, begging foreign traders for rare or sometimes strange ingredients that you could incorporate into draughts. You sought documents written in symbols you did not recognize, paying translators to parse out a phrase or even a glimmer that could help. You can’t even remember all the nights that you spent brewing, steaming, straining until the sun came over the horizon. But with each subsequent draft you secretly delivered to her bed, the queen only grew weaker.

All of this, you kept hidden from man you cared for most, justifying the guilt to yourself whenever he inquired after his mother.

But now. Now, when the king is staring with unblinking eyes at the pure white cloth draped over his mother’s body, you find that you don’t know a damn thing about what’s right anymore.

You feel splinters in your chest as he takes one unsteady step towards the bed that you stand beside, hands folded in an act of repentance. His mouth opens, then closes, not a single noise passing between them for a century-long minute. All of your instincts urge you to turn away and allow him private space to grieve, but that’s your own cowardice at being faced with his sorrow, manifested in the quiver of his lip. You must put him first. You must be his witness, his pillar, even when your own heart tightens with grief.

“Mama.”

He stumbles forward, feet clamoring over each other until he’s close enough to draw back the cloth, just enough to expose her face. His short, forcibly-suppressed exhale hits the wall. Yoongi jerks his hand away as if scorched, lets it hang numbly at his side. It’s with an indescribable expression that he takes in the familiar, softly wrinkled eyes. The pink lips that were so often curved in a warm smile. The arms that were generous enough to encompass an entire nation, but never neglected the ones closest. “Mama,” he says, voice still so tight as he takes another unsteady step, as if he needs to be closer. He’d seen her just last night. He had left her alone, and now—

It’s when his knee knocks against the hard wood, when he can truly go no further, that he plummets to the stark floor and a lonely sob rips straight from his throat. Goosebumps shoot up your arms at the noise, the visceral howl and all you can do is watch as Yoongi breaks with a shuddering gasp, “Mom.”

In this moment, it’s not a king that kneels before you, but a son. Someone’s precious child, with no one to stay strong for any longer and so he throws the entire mask away. Lets the tears finally overflow, staining the bedsheets with salt and heartache before he crumples them in a weak fist. Yoongi cries like he has never done, not since he was old enough to learn how much the word responsibility weighed on his head and how many millions of lives his body, not him, is worth. A stray tear falls on the queen’s cheek and his red-rimmed eyes follow how it rolls down her face as if she weeps at the thought of leaving him too, and he cries. He just cries, with the delicate perfume of plum blossoms fast fading around him.

Uselessly, you wish you could do something.

You wish you could have found a cure, a miracle or anything that could have bought him more time, even if it was only for a season more, or a single day. Really, it’s your own failure. You remain so fucking inexperienced, even after all these years. You should have told him. You should have tried harder. And it’s this shame that makes you reach out for him before you can think better of it, wanting nothing more than to hold him to offer a whisper of comfort and to say he’s not alone.

But when you touch him, he startles. Shifts back. Shifts away from you and you think he gathers the pieces of his crown and stitches them back together before you even have time to blink.

“Jeonha—”

“Su-uinyeo-nim.” He cuts you off with the deliberate use of your full, formal title. He’s never called you such before, preferring your name during the weekly reports you made to him. The words feel sluggish on his tongue as if he thinks, as if he knows, you don’t deserve the role too. You find the strength to meet his watery, but no less intense stare, and hear him carefully ask— “Did you know?”

He doesn’t need to elaborate. Your fingers, lingering just an inch away from him, freeze and falter. Crumple into themselves, because you can’t give him the answer his darkening eyes say he hopes for. Or maybe that’s just you thinking too highly of yourself in his heart.

“Did you know?” He presses again, tone a little higher, voice a little more desperate.

But language is your next failure, and he is left to take your silence for the admission of guilt it is.

“Get out.” He stands, hovers protectively over the bed as if you are the danger, the outsider. “Your services—and you—are no longer required for her. You’ve done more than enough.”

Your legs shiver as you sink into a bow, quick. “Y-Yes, jeonha.”

Then your slippers are slapping against the hard floor, feet aching from the pace with which you flee from the suffocating room. Your chest burns with the want to scream that you loved her too. That you wanted to tell him so many times, almost did with a slip of a tongue, but wanted to spare his already overtaxed mind. That you tried your damned best but you just couldn’t save her, and so you lost her. And from that last glimpse of him through the closing door, hunched over alone and silently breaking, you know that you’ve lost him too.

Sweet Like Honey

A Haniri story

The repetitive pangs of Moonlight Sonata cascade from the grand piano as her fingers dance across smooth black and white keys, dadadadadada she hardly thinks about where to place her fingers because the song is so deeply ingrained in her memory. It was her mother's dream to be a pianist but then she'd come along kicking and screaming and that dream evaporated just like her father who was just a boy himself, both at the tender age of seventeen. He'd gone across town for work and just never returned, her mother never spoke about him but her sobs were more than audible at nights.

So she started playing the piano to drown out the sorrowful sound and eventually just to see that hopeful smile that would glide across her mother's tired face whenever she played. She was good, better than her mother had ever been. And when her mother would ask her if she wanted to be a pianist she would shake her little head in agreement, even though the book on coding she hid under her pillow pressed into her shoulder when she slept at night.

Vincenzo's sharp alpha scent knocks her from her reminiscing, the mafia member flooding her nostrils with his overbearing smoky scent it made her sniffle and wipe futilely at her nose. She could pick up Cha-young pungent vanilla scent cutting through the fire and smoke and creating an aroma that was perfectly them. She'd never met a double alpha pair before them, there were no regulations but most alphas couldn't stand the scent of another, and especially not enough to date. But the two seemed to gravitate towards each other on a level that defied logic. She'd caught them scenting each other several times so it was evident that contrary to science they enjoyed the other's smell enough to drench themselves in it. It was difficult sometimes for her to deal with but she had gotten used to their unusual mingling scent.

But then her nose twitches again. There's something else. Sniffing the air she stands up almost in a trance because there's another underlying scent that she's never smelled before.

Honey and oatmeal and something saccharine sweet that she can't explain, can't put into words but it's the most deliciously invigorating scent she has ever had the pleasure of inhaling in her life.

Walking quickly she tugs open the sliding door of her piano academy, urgently needing to know where that intoxicating scent is coming from and as the door slams open she comes face to face with him, the ex- fake Babel CEO turned Jipuragi understudy and the one that Cassano-nim has taken to calling "hyung". It isn't the first time she has noticed him, since the death of his brother he'd practically moved in. He was pretty, distractingly so with long curling lashes that covered huge siren eyes and those plush pink lips. She'd avoided him for that very reason. She didn't need any complications and that's all relationships were.

But something was different today, he had never smelled like that before. She would have noticed and probably jumped him or at least propositioned him. Begged him to left her do anything he wanted.

She looks over at Vincenzo, confused by her own thoughts and Han Seo's new scent but he gives her a sharp piercing look that does nothing to answer her question.

"Were you the one playing the piano? That was moonlight sonata right? That was one of my mom's favorite songs." The sweet smelling man speaks either truly oblivious or ignoring the tension between the two alphas as they stare each other down. For some reason Vincenzo standing so close to the wide eyed man makes her skin tighten, her alpha brain growling threateningly. She has to suppress a deep groan, barely containing the sound of warning. Reprimanding herself she takes a deep breath, she doesn't want to challenge Vincenzo despite what her body thinks.

"Are you okay?" Why are you both so quiet?" Han Seo tries again pouting now as both alphas ignore him.

"I'm fine." She chokes out faltering in the face of his displeasure, she desperately wants to replace that frown on his face so much it's making her head spin.

"You don't look okay. Do you have a fever? You're pretty red."

And the man must not know correct etiquette or how to interact with alphas because he reaches out a hand to palm her forehead, unconsciously offering his wrist and she can't help but scent him drawing in a nose full of that enticing aroma but at the first touch of his hand on her skin a current of lighting courses through her blood stream. 

Mate. Mate. Mate.

It punches the air from her lung. The longing is so immediate and visceral, she lunges for him needing to be closer, to hold him and taste him; makes him submit to her. But then another scent snuffs her in the jaw.

Fear. Bubbling rotting fear.

When her vision she sees his face scrunched up in terror, his hand drawn back against his side as he backs away from her.

But how could that be? He should have felt it too. I'm his mate, why is he scared of me?

She stares at him trying to make sense of everything that is happening. How could she have been the only one to feel that electricity? It was so powerful she was still feeling it.

"Miri-ah. I think you should go back inside. I don't want to hurt you." Vincenzo steps in front of her mate and her hackles raise instantly, the urge to fight overwhelming her and she takes a step forward in clear challenge. Vincenzo is strong, a true alpha but she has no doubt that she can take him in this moment. Her mating rage giving her newfound energy and boundless strength, she would do anything to protect her mate. Anything.

She bares her teeth viciously but then a soft whimper assaults her ears and it drains all the fight out of her body.

He's scared. She's scaring her mate.

Taking a deep calming breath she shakes off the fog, finally regaining control. Without a word she backs into her piano studio, proverbial tail between her legs. Staring at Han Seo the entire way unable to look away from his beseeching gaze, his quivering glossy eyes are watching her too. It takes very ounce of her control not to attack Vincenzo as he casually places a hand on the man's shoulder to steer him away, too far from her.

She watches them disappear down the long hallway moving to follow her mate. It's obvious from his gesticulating arms that he's asking the other alpha animated questions but she can't hear them.

Just as they reach the law firm, Han Seo suddenly stops and looks back at her over his shoulder. His eyes are searching and perplexed. She would hack whoever was necessary to help him find the answer to any question he ever had. Despite their circumstances not even a minute ago he unexpectedly smiles at her, a small confused thing before he disappears behind the doors.

What the hell was going on?

Apartment 307-8 (Grabbed by the hair)

Hi guys!! I'm so sorry it took me so long to update. School and work have been crazy but luckily I'm out of school next week so I'll have much more time and be posting more frequently! Apologies for the short chapter, I have no idea why but it just kicked my butt lol. I tried doing some cool multimedia stuff, I hope you enjoy! This is @sableflynn's BTHB request, grabbed by the hair.

TWs: Creepy, possessive whumper, mention of branding, also this chapter made me sad bc I love my mom and Elora's mom is sad so warning for that lmao

Elora was still lying there crying hours later. The tears had slowed from her initial keening sobs, but they still fell steadily down her face, accumulating in a small puddle on the tile by her head. She could see a bit of her reflection in the salty water; just her eyes, mostly. She saw green eyes that had once been so full of hope and life that were fading, the slow abandonment of hope almost making them gray out. She wanted to lie there forever, staring into her own eyes, until oblivion took her. If she cleared her head enough, she could pretend she was elsewhere, somewhere warm and loving; the blanket draped over her body did help with the fantasy, though she always knew somewhere in the back of her head that it was just that: a fantasy. She was still here. With him.

Clyde tried to give her time to recover, but his patience wore eventually. He began to get antsy after a few hours of watching her lie there, doing nothing but cry. Admittedly, he did enjoy it at first-seeing her so weak, so docile, because of him-but it eventually grew tiresome. Watching each tear drip down into the puddle became like watching paint dry.

He stood up abruptly. Elora was startled by the motion, flinching before stilling and watching him very carefully. What was he going to do?

“Get up,” he said simply.

Elora froze. She still felt sick, dizzy with pain and the lingering scent of her burning flesh in the bathroom. But why would he care about that? Why should she disobey him, when she knew what would happen?

Yet pride and pain got the better of her again.

“I can’t,” she whimpered. She felt weak. “I hurt. You hurt me.”

The piercing sound of a loud, sudden laugh began to echo through the bathroom. It reminded Elora of the laugh of a hyena. She winced.

“Darling, did you not think that was the point?”

Her expression hardened and her heart thumped in her chest. That was the point. She wanted to say something, but her mouth suddenly got dry.

The man simply grinned. “Get up,” he repeated, but she didn’t. She just laid there, dumbfounded.

He groaned angrily, rolling his eyes. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Be that way.”

He gathered up her hair in his hand, locked his fingers in a tight fist, and pulled up. Elora yelped and scrambled to get to her feet to relieve the pain, but he didn’t give her the chance; he carelessly dragged her off, out of the bathroom, through the hallway, and into the living room. She screamed and thrashed wildly, her hands desperately trying to push him away as her scalp burned like fire. Again and again, her feet scraped the ground to no avail, kicking and kicking but never able to gain enough traction to stand as she was mercilessly dragged. The man finally dropped her on the floor at the foot of a worn leather couch, releasing his death grip on her hair. Her hands immediately flew up to her head, applying gentle pressure to her scalp to try to ease the burning pain as she looked around the new room.

The living room was barren, like the man had half moved into it then given up. There was a dusty box in the corner, the couch, a worn coffee table, a small stand, and an old TV. Other than that, it was empty, in an eerie way. The aged carpet spanned the floor like an ocean.

The pressure didn’t do much and Elora dropped her hands, still wincing as the man plopped himself on the couch behind her, the leather making a loud crackling noise as he sat. She whipped her head around as her shoulders raised up to her ears instinctively. The man made a sour face, his features twisting into an ugly frown.

“Relax,” he commanded, forcefully pushing her shoulders down. At first, she tried to wiggle away, but that idea was abandoned when he tightened his grip, clearly as a warning. He grabbed the TV remote from the arm of the couch and turned it on. It started on some history channel documentary about cars, but Clyde quickly flipped through channels until he found the local news station.

A grin spread across his face as he read the blue banner spanning across the bottom of the screen. They were just in time.

UP NEXT: CAPE COD GIRL GOES MISSING; DESPERATE MOTHER PLEADS FOR HER RETURN

His hands wandered to Elora’s scalp and began to gently card through her hair. She inhaled sharply, and it took everything she had in her not to immediately shove him off. Somehow the gentleness felt worse than the pain; the false sense of care disgusted her. He was a maniac. He hurt her, he branded her, and now he was sitting on the couch petting her hair, pretending like none of it happened. It didn’t escape her attention how he set her on the floor instead of the couch, below him, like a dog.

The banner was bad enough, but she felt sick to her stomach when the station cut to a reporter sitting at a desk with a picture of her on half of the screen. It was the picture her mom took of her at the orchard last fall. It was candid; she remembered it. She was intently focused on a butterfly off on a tree, ignoring her mom as she snapped the photo. It was one of her favorite pictures of herself. And now, it was plastered all over the news.

The reporter on the TV began to speak. “Tonight, a desperate mother pleads for her missing daughter’s safe return. Elora Larkin, nineteen, of Barnstable county, Massachusetts has been missing since Friday night. She was last seen walking home from her job at Agathangelou’s bakery, wearing khakis, a black t-shirt, and black sneakers. The police have opened a tip line and are offering an unspecified reward for any information that leads to Miss Larkin.”

Elora felt a lurching sensation in her stomach, so visceral she wanted to throw up. That was her. On the news. Gone. Missing.

Behind her, the man chuckled.

“Look at that, baby. You’re all over New England.”

“I’m not your baby,” she snapped, turning around. But her head was spinning. All over New England? It wasn’t the Cape Cod news station on the TV. It wasn’t even a state news channel. It was entirely unfamiliar, the reporter’s face one she’d never seen.. So he’d taken her across state lines, making her chances of being found lower yet.

The man shushed her and put a finger up to her lips. “Watch.” She almost bit him, but decided it wasn’t worth the inevitable punishment that would follow. Besides, they might say something useful, something that could help her. She needed to pay attention.

The screen changed, and a missing persons poster popped up. Hers.

It was up for a minute before it faded away as the reporter came back on the screen.

“Such a sad story. Everyone in the studio is hoping and praying for her safe return. Unfortunately, vigilance is so important in this day and age. Up next, we have a recording of a press conference with the girl’s mother.

The girl’s mother. Her mother. Elora felt her heartbeat thumping in her chest.

And there she was. Jodie was standing at a podium in a building that had to be a police station. Demetrios was standing by her side, offering support by merely being present. While Elora hadn’t seen him cry even once in all the years she’d known him, he now looked like he was on the verge of tears.

Her mom started to speak. She looked so sad. Withered, like the life had been sucked out of her, from fear and overthinking and sleepless nights.

“My daughter-My daughter Elora has been missing since Friday night. She’s got-she’s got blonde hair, and green eyes, and she’s real tall. I’m sure pictures have gone around by now. She was walking home from work and-and then she disappeared. We were supposed to have dinner Sunday and she never came. It was supposed to be her weekend off. I- If someone has her, please, I’m begging you, let her go. Bring her home safe. She’s a good kid, she works hard, she rescues cats in her spare time...she doesn’t deserve this. And Elora, if you’re seeing this, I love you. I love you so much, honey. If you chose to leave, please just tell us you’re okay. It’s okay. You can go see the world, just tell us you’re okay. And if something-something bad happened, we’re gonna find you. I promise, baby, I love you and we’re gonna bring you home. Promise.”

At that point, she set the microphone down and began to cry, tears streaming down her face as she hurried off to an exit, the cameras following her for a few moments. Elora’s heart twisted in knots. Seeing her mom’s face brought her so much joy, yet knowing how worried she had to be made her feel sick with guilt.

But she promised. She promised she’d find her.

“That your mom?”

Elora stilled. He already knew the answer.

"She’s kinda pathetic. Could barely keep it together long enough to tell them about you.”

She went cold. “Stop,” she seethed. Her voice was eerily calm, given her anger.

"Or what?” he replied, twisting her hair up in his hand and giving it another tug.

Elora was silent. There was no or what. She knew that.

The reporter came back on the screen.

“Well, folks, that’s all we have on the case for tonight. Remember to be safe and vigilant. This has been Hannah Brown with News12.”

The man released her hair, picked up the remote, and turned off the T.V.

“Notice how they only talked about you, not me?”

Elora turned her head around. She was crying.

“What?”

He scoffed. “I said, notice how they only ran their mouths about you the whole time. Never said a word about me. You know what that means? They don’t know jack shit about me. They don’t know who you’re with or where you are. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re in Connecticut. We crossed state lines twice. They’re never going to find you, you know that?

She tried to hide it, but he could see her expression falling with every word he said, hope beginning to seep out of her. She shook her head vigorously, her bottom lip trembling.

“N-no! No, they will, you’re just crazy! You’re just fucking crazy!”

A scowl formed on his lips. “No, they won’t.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but in a split second, his hand was gripping tightly around her throat, cutting off her air. Her eyes went wide.

“No one is coming to save you.”

Elora swallowed, fear bright in her eyes. She tried to rip herself away, but the man raked his fingers across the fresh brand on her collarbone, sending her to the ground, keeling in pain.

“We could’ve had a nice evening if you behaved. Listened,” he grumbled, standing and once again grabbing her hair tightly before dragging her off towards the bathroom.

Tags: @exploringspaceinpyjamas @all-whumped-out @badthingshappenbingo

It’s Too Much

Here’s 5.6k of empath!stiles, adopted!saac, abusive!sheriff, and sweet loving angst! 

Warnings for Gerard Argent and Parent Abuse.

Ao3: Link

It was easier on Stiles when he was a kid surrounded by other kids. Children are loud, wild little creatures, but they are also generally happy, excited, or at the very least usually content. Stiles tried to avoid physical contact with everyone except his calm but happy friend Scott for those reasons. It was hard enough to contain his own racing thoughts and emotions, but when bounced around the other children, all bursting at the seams with energy and undiluted emotions, it became almost impossible to control his thoughts, words, or actions. 

Some would think ADHD came with being an empath, but no. It was all just brain chemistry and Stiles’ horrible luck that gifted him with the ability to feel others emotions, but not the ability to sort and keep track of his own thoughts and emotions. Scott was a calm balm to that chaos in his mind, a happy anchor to ground himself when the excitement in the classroom grew so much Stiles could taste it despite not touching anyone. 

But things change, kids grow up, and learn new emotions. Some unfortunately learn dark emotions before everyone else. Isaac discovered fear at an age that everyone else around him only experienced spooked or startled. Nine year olds weren’t supposed to know that type of terror. Stiles had audibly gasped the day he’d smacked into Isaac on the playground, the visceral horror lingering in Isaac was a tidal wave. The only thing that kept Stiles from releasing the scream that had bubbled up in his throat was Scott’s joy, humor, excitement that had enveloped him as the other boy crashed into the two of them. He’d yelled that Stiles was now It, but Stiles only had eyes for the blonde boy now looking at them with a guarded expression and paranoia, wearines, suspicion, hope warring in his emotions.  

Scott and Stiles became Scott, Stiles, and Isaac after that. Isaac became a Stilinski a year later. Stiles soon had four buffers against the emotions of the world, Isaac giving him a soft type of content that he usually only felt on rainy days surrounded by his parents. The problem with relying on buffers was that one day they’d all eventually change so much that they no longer offered the haven they once had and Stiles would be left bereft in a chaotic world of other peoples’ emotions. 

The first to change was his mom. He started to feel emotions from her that didn’t make sense, but the most common one was confusion. His mom would suddenly stop in the middle of doing something and a burst of it would engulf the room so strongly he’d scrunch his face up in a mirror image of hers. Stiles was scared to tell his dad something was wrong, until Isaac had ran up from behind him and hugged him tightly trepidation, worry, fear fill Stiles’ senses instead of the warm  love that usually enveloped him when Isaac hugged him. He turned to ask the boy what was wrong, but a wave of confusion hit him as he locked eyes with his mother. She smiled and rubbed a hand down his arm, pleasant surprise this time filling him as she asked who the boy behind him was. She told Stiles he needed permission before bringing a new friend over, despite the fact that Isaac had been living with them for six months at that point. After that things had progressed too quickly. His mother was a less powerful empath than him, but at the height of her illness Stiles couldn’t be in the hospital wing she stayed in due to the emotions she couldn’t control, only project at full volume. Nurses quit or requested a different patient every few weeks, not understanding why they were so upset all the time, but knowing it had something to do with the screaming woman in 203. 

It was on one of those days that his mother’s unending terror had been too much, that Stiles had stumbled into a room and immediately screamed a feral, angry thing as pain, hatred, loss, wrath slammed into him without warning. Isaac and Scott hadn’t been far behind him as he ran away from his mother’s screams and pain, but at the sound of his anguished scream they’d burst through the door and did the only thing they knew would calm their friend. They hugged him with every ounce of strength they shared in their small bodies, unaware that the love, fondness, sympathy surrounding him was what actually calmed him down. It also helped that the wall of emotion had receded at the sound of his scream, and even muted itself. Curiosity, hope, and wariness flowed between the dark emotions as Stiles took in the bleak room around him. A man was laying on the hospital bed in the corner of the room, his body eerily still for the emotions Stiles could still feel coming off him. He wanted to ask if the man was okay, but that was a stupid question. Better questions flooded his mind, but his friends were feeling more and more worry by the minute in that dark, barren room. He blanketed the room in calm and peace, the boys on either side of him relaxed instantly, and the emotions filling the room eased instead of the muted feeling they had been after his scream. He asked Scott and Isaac to get him an apple juice, the boys reluctant to leave Stiles in a room alone with a comatose stranger, but ultimately giving in to his puppy eyes. 

Stiles approached the man in the bed, noting the burn scars traveling up his neck and face. 

“Something horrible happened to you. I’m sorry for the pain you have felt. The screams that fill this wing are my mom’s. She doesn’t remember me anymore and it hurts, it hurts like you hurt. I’m not ready to lose my momma, but neither is daddy. I’ve got to look out for Scott and Isaac so I can’t let them see me cry. I’m gonna cry now. I’m sorry.” Stiles apologized.

He truly was deeply sorry in his very being that anyone had to go through something that made them feel the way this man did. He was sorry that the man didn’t ask for three grieving boys to stumble into his room and couldn’t even tell them to leave. He was sorry that the man had to hear his mother’s screams. He was sorry that the man had to feel his mother’s fear when she had an episode and couldn’t stop herself from projecting. But mostly he was sorry all he could do for the man was fill the room with peace and cry at his bedside. He let himself cry for just a moment before grabbing the man’s hand and covering him head to toe in calm, content, peace. He hoped it lingered on the man for as long as possible. Scott and Isaac returned with his apple juice and more hugs as they left the room with the comatose man. 

In the wake of his mother’s death Stiles also lost his father. Not in the literal sense, but something was broken inside the man. He didn’t see the boys anymore. Didn’t greet them with smiles and hugs like he once had. Didn’t smile or hug at all. Isaac backed away, fear rising in him each day the newly appointed sheriff got closer and closer to the man he’d once saved Isaac from. His grip harshed on the back of Stiles’ neck, no longer the warm comfort it’d once been. Now a means to bodily move his son or reprimand him. It was in those moments that Stiles was struck still and silent by the overwhelming grief, pain, loss, hopelessness, devastation that was consuming his father. His father’s pain was not an excuse to treat his sons like the were ghosts in his home, one of whom looked too much like the woman he loved to stomach even looking at. He hurt Stiles sometimes on accident, but he didn’t even acknowledge Isaac’s presence in their home. The boys formed a bond in those months that would never break. 

Stiles spent his days sneaking out of the house while Isaac and Scott played video games and Melissa slept. He would sneak down to the police station and project love, hope, forgiveness, peace in alternating patterns and at varying degrees. In the end he wasn’t sure if his projecting helped his father or if the breaking point had finally changed things. The breaking point had been Isaac flinching away from Stiles’ father when the man had tried to ruffle his curls like the past few months he hadn’t been leaving bruises on his other son’s neck. Isaac had flinched, a whimper escaping him and fear bursting out of him so strong Stiles had pushed his father away from his brother and snarled at him. Melissa had come running down the stairs, sleep mussed hair and bleary eyed, Scott peeking out from behind her legs. She’d shouted his father’s name just as the man had wrenched Stiles away from Isaac by the neck. She gathered the three boys behind her and released a torrent of angry, scornful words that had hit his father like a train. Stiles had focused on his father’s emotions, reading them as they came to him in a flurry: anger, indignation, shock, pain, grief, fear, self-loathing, regret, remorse, devastation, guilt. 

“I know you’re in pain. I know you miss momma. I miss her too, but I don’t like you right now dad. And you scare Isaac, and that makes me mad. You’re not allowed to scare him anymore, okay?” Stiles stared at his father, the secret of how adeptly Stiles actually did know his father’s pain bare and raw between them. 

“And you can’t be mean to Stiles anymore!” Isaac demanded, though it came out much weaker than he had probably intended. 

“Yeah! No more hurting him!” Scott yelled, his twelve year old fists clenched by his sides. 

Stiles’ father dropped to his knees and sobbed. The sound earth shattering in Stiles’ ears when accompanied by the tidal wave of sorrow, grief, guilt, regret. 

“I’m going to keep the boys at my house until you get sober and get counseling.” Melissa said, her resolve strong in the face of his tears. 

While they stayed with the McCalls Stiles still sneaked out to project positive feelings to his father. 

The boys moved back in with their father after his three month stint in rehab with a grief counselor. Isaac was more wary than Stiles to return, but Stiles could feel the cleanse his father’s emotional state went through. They had bunk beds, but Isaac slept with Stiles most nights when they first returned. Stiles would wake up every time the other boy had a nightmare and he would project safe emotions to his brother until he settled. He would check in on his father’s emotions through the night too. Melissa called every night before bed for the first month to make sure the boys were truly settled back home and safe. Stiles was happy to be home and happy to see his father healing and healthy again, he would never be the safe haven he’d once been. Stiles still thought that one day, maybe even one day soon, they’d be a family again. 

Three years later, Stiles had his family whole again, but lost his last two buffers, Scott and Isaac. Together. All at once Stiles was alone in the ocean of emotions around him. The problem with both of your adopted brothers being werewolves when you’re an empath is that they get more tactile when you can no longer handle the emotions whirling through their minds at any given time. Supernatural creatures were louder than humans. Stiles had grown stronger over the years, but there was nothing he could do to stop the events of their sophomore year. Well perhaps he could’ve stopped the events if he hadn’t been the one to drag his sweet loyal brothers out of their beds in the middle of the night to go find the source of the overwhelming emotions coming from the preserve. They’d been heading towards the area Stiles had felt the spike of sorrow so sharp it’d brought tears to his eyes when he’d picked up on more emotions. 

Pain, hatred, loss, wrath, grief was approaching fast. Too fast to even warn his brothers to run before a massive angry alpha werewolf had tackled Scott, biting his side immediately. Stiles vomited as Scott’s pain and fear throbbed through him at the same time Isaac’s horror slammed into him from behind, all mixed with the creatures emotions. It was too much. He couldn’t shut out Isaac and Scott’s emotions like he could strangers’ emotions, they were as apart of him as his own. He couldn’t fight against the strength of the alpha’s emotions either. 

Stiles tried to breathe, tried to shake off everyone else’s emotions so he could focus. But the alpha reared back and snatched Isaac off the ground, its teeth sinking into his ribs. Isaac screamed. Scott cried out, too weak to scream. The alpha howled. And Stiles gathered every ounce of terror filling his brothers and himself and ROARED. 

The alpha dropped Isaac, his body bounced once on the ground before laying too still for Stiles’ heart, and passed out. Stiles took a moment to breathe and gather his strength again. He blanketed his brothers in safe, love, calm, peace before calling his father. 

“Stiles? Why are you calling me? We’re both home?” His father listened to his panicked, exhausted breaths for a moment before finishing, “Unless we’re not. Okay. Where are you? Why aren’t Isaac and Scott there to calm you? I’m putting on pants and coming to you kiddo, but I need you to find a way to tell me what happened and where I’m going.” 

“Alpha. Bit. Boys. Preserve. Hale House close?” Stiles was hyperventilating, the adrenaline morphing into panic as he realized the ramifications of the night. 

Stiles heard his father stop shuffling and gasp and was glad he couldn’t feel his father’s emotions from this far unless he tuned into them on purpose. 

“Okay. Okay kiddo. We’ll deal with it. I’m coming. I need you to put pressure on the wounds and tell me if you see any black goo seeping out of them. You don’t have to speak other than that so try to focus on your breathing and on stopping the bleeding.” His father was much better in a crisis than he ever would be. 

Stiles forced his wooden legs to carry him to his brothers. Isaac had rolled relatively close to Scott, which made checking them both over much easier. He dropped to his knees between their limp bodies and, putting his father on speaker first, shined his phone’s flashlight onto Isaac’s unconscious body. 

“Oh god dad. His body bounced. It fucking bounced off the ground like a ball. What if he’s bleeding internally? How do I fix that? How do I save him?” He shined the light onto Scott and almost vomited again. 

He whimpered his oldest and closest friend’s name as he took in the sight of his torn side. 

“It bit them so violently dad. There’s more wound area than I have hand area. I can’t do anything. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t protect them. I can’t save them. Daddy please hurry. I can’t do this alone and I can’t lose them. I can’t.” Stiles muted his end of the phone and let out a sob so violent his entire body shook. 

He had long ago stopped letting anyone see him cry for fear that he’d project it and make someone else sad. He couldn’t stop the torrent of tears spilling out of him. He threw his head back and screamed through his grief and sorrow. He’d always felt better after being able to release the emotions inside him that way, even if it was a rather violent coping mechanism. 

He could hear his father saying his name and asking him to turn off the mute, and mechanically did so, the last of his scream still echoing around them. Then he heard a sound, a whimper he hadn’t expected to hear. His head whipped to the limp bodies of his brothers but neither stirred, and it was then that Stiles remembered he had turned his back on an unconscious alpha werewolf. The same alpha that had just violently attacked his family unprovoked. He stood as he spun around to face the creature, but there was nothing in the spot it had collapsed in. The alpha got away. 

-

High school was hell after that night. His brothers didn’t understand why he flinched when nothing was happening, why he would dodge their touch when he used to run headlong into it, why he no longer wanted to share a room with Isaac. Stiles could’ve told them about being an empath, but things were so complicated and he didn’t want them looking guilty every time they had a strong emotion. It wasn’t their fault supernatural creatures were loud, and it wasn’t their fault Kate Argent lured Laura Hale into the preserve that night and killed her. Peter Hale had been comatose until the moment the alpha spark slammed into him full force. He followed the scent of blood to the sight of his nieces’ murder and attacked the first foreign thing he came across. It was Peter’s grief Stiles had felt so sharply he’d bolted out of bed and raced to Scott’s house, Isaac in tow, so that they could go hiking through the woods to find the source. 

Scott and Isaac were the least to blame for their new found werewolf status, and the only thing Stiles felt as they had to deal with Peter Hale’s rampage and Derek Hale trying to force them under his rule was guilt. 

Peter had asked him if he wanted the bite that night in the garage, but Stiles had been too busy being relaxed by his muted emotions to be properly scared of his threats. Stiles could feel the fondness, intrigue, humor rolling off the man when they interacted, but every time he saw anger flash in those sapphire eyes he didn’t feel it as strongly as he suspected. Something about Peter seemed familiar and despite everything Stiles found himself fond of the man as well. Then he tried to attack Scott, Isaac, and Allison and Stiles had to stop him. No matter how much Stiles found the man curious and charismatic he had to pay for what he did to Scott and Isaac, and Stiles would not let him lay a single claw on an innocent again. He would overwhelm the man with whatever emotion it would take to stop him. As Jackson threw the molotov cocktail Stiles felt a blast of terror so strong he stumbled, but knew it had come from the man that had already burned once. Stiles granted him the only mercy he could in that moment. Numb. Sleep. Peace. Each emotion as strong as he could project them, and Peter’s eyes snapped to his just before the cocktail exploded and Peter’s eyes closed as he passed out. Peter would not live through this sleep, but he would not have to be aware of burning alive again. 

After Peter’s death, Derek became alpha and bit Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd. Gerard Argent became principal and made sure he threatened the fledgeling pack at every opportunity. Jackson somehow became a kanima just from Derek’s nail stuck in his neck, which: ew. The whole time Scott and Isaac were caught up in running and fighting, Stiles was distancing himself so that he could learn to mute their emotions. He could mute human emotions unless they were touching him, but supernatural emotions were more projected and harder to mute. 

Stiles found himself going on runs through the preserve more than was probably safe, but it was the only place in Beacon Hills that there was rarely people. And he’d sense a supernatural creature before it got close enough to attack, he’d grown in power since the night Peter had bitten his brothers. He had never thought he’d have to use his empathy as a weapon, but here he was with a blunt sword he had to sharpen as fast and as safely as possible. Out in the preserve he could practise putting animals to sleep or easing their fear of him enough to pet them without worrying about anyone seeing. 

He’d went for a run after Scott and Isaac’s lacrosse game, which was probably a bad idea since Jackson may or may not have died that night. There’d been so much fear and worry in the stands that Stiles had to escape to the peace of the preserve. Which is how he found himself surrounded by fifteen grown men armed to the teeth. 

“Woah! What do you need all those for? Mr.Jones killed the mountain lion a while back now, so there’s nothing out here nearly dangerous enough for you to need all that for!” 

They only stepped closer, silent in their menacing, and Stiles could feel the violence in their emotions. 

“Right? Cause if you guys think there is something dangerous out here I need to get the hell out of here!” Stiles was trying to keep his panic at bay. 

They were here for him, but none of them had the right combination of emotions to make him feel like they were going to kill him here. They were going to take him. Probably to Gerard. 

Why would Gerard want him? He was just a human as far as anyone knew. It didn’t matter at that moment, what did matter was soothing the itch for violence in these men. 

Stiles started projecting little tendrils of friendly at each man as they closed in on him. He was knocked unconscious, not by a pistol whip to the top of his head, but a punch to his temple. The last thing he thought was ‘At least my empathy softened the blow somewhat.’

Stiles didn’t stay unconscious long, the amount of hands on him as they carried him into a house and down the stairs into a basement torture chamber was enough to jolt him awake the moment they lifted him. They threw him down in a way that sent his body skidding across the harsh concrete ground and landing under two sets of bare feet. Stiles groaned as he felt not only his pain, but also the two above him’s pain and fear. 

He lifted his gaze away from the men assembled in front of him and to the teenagers hanging from the ceiling above him. Erica cried out when she saw him, Boyd thrashed against his restraints in an attempt to free himself. Stiles had to mute their emotions as best he could, though it was incredibly hard when those emotions were about him. Their fear was for him. He had felt the resignation on them when he’d been thrown at them. They were ready to die, but wanted to fight for Stiles to live. Stiles hadn’t even truly considered them friends until that revelation. He’d be damned if they were going to die on his watch. 

Gerard finally made his appearance, spouting racist bullshit and throwing surprisingly strong punches. Stiles could take it, would take it. He had to if he was going to get the ‘wolves behind him out of here. There was too many people and he didn’t even know where they were, but Stiles would figure it out. As Gerard picked him up by the collar of his track jersey and punched him back down onto the ground Stiles sent tendrils of wariness into the men behind Gerard. As the geriatric bastard stomped on Stiles’ ribs, Stiles sent a wave of guilt into the men. He noticed one slip out the back while Gerard was distracted by Stiles hacking up blood. 

Moments later Chris Argent came striding in and Stiles felt guilt, regret, worry as he looked at the brutalized teenagers. Good. Stiles couldn’t hear what son said to father, but Gerard spit on Stiles and followed his son upstairs. Stiles had leaned so heavily into Erica and Boyd’s emotions so as to avoid feeling even an ounce of Gerard’s that he gasped when he could pull his senses off of them. Stiles sent tired at the men watching them wearily and all but one left. Stiles simply projected sleep at the three other people in the basement and waited for them to sag. Once he knew everyone in his vicinity was sleeping he cast his awareness through the house, relieved to feel nothing. They’d trusted one man to watch a beat up human and two restrained werewolves, but they didn’t know who Stiles was. 

Getting Erica and Boyd down and into the car was the most physically painful hour of his life. When they woke Stiles told them the hunter left to guard them told him to take the other two and get out before he changed his mind. It was a lie, but they didn’t need to know that. What they needed at that moment was somewhere safe and somewhere comforting. Stiles could do that for them. He blanketed the car in safe, calm, peace, contentment, love and soon he could hear Erica singing along to the radio quietly from the back seat. Sometimes he really wished he could project onto himself. 

After that Stiles had more people’s touch to dodge. Erica and Boyd claimed Stiles with the brand of fierce loyalty he’d claimed them. With every dodge Stiles sent love back to make sure they didn’t feel rejected, his four puppies always smiled back at him like it was a game. Perhaps it was a game, one that Stiles wouldn’t handle losing very well. 

A plan was hatched to dispose of Gerard Argent, Stiles knew what Scott was like when he was planning something. After a little bit of snooping Stiles decided he needed to step in and help Scott with Not Doing That. 

“But I think it’s clever.” Scott defended, his brows furrowed. 

“It is clever. I’m honestly shocked you thought of something this devious, I’m usually the devious one.” Stiles laughed, his hand casually coming up to rest on Scott’s arm despite the overwhelming  flow of his emotions. 

Sometimes he really missed touching and being touched. Scott was his first buffer against the outside world, maybe Stiles could just take an aspirin after they touched and it’d be okay. Even if he did want to smile like an idiot and scrunch up his face in confusion, offended and cry from heartbreak and fight something. 

Werewolves were a tsunami of emotions and Stiles only had a raft made of touch starvation and devotion. 

Scott had to repeat his question twice before Stiles could focus on it, “So why cant I do it?” 

“Well buddy the thing is you don’t know a lot about werewolf culture yet, right?” 

Scott nodded. 

“And you know I’ve been researching the hell out of it at lightning speed? Well something I learned was that an alpha’s bite is precious and a gift. You and Isaac are different because Peter was drowning in lost pack bonds and need new ones immediately. But think about Erica and Boyd.” 

“Derek scouted them.” 

“Okay meat head. I would’ve said looked for them, but sure.” 

“Shut up, man. I’m telling you I understand.” 

“Fuck yeah! Okay so now that we’re on the same page of ‘Operation: Force Derek to Bite Gerard to Kill Him’ being not good, let’s brainstorm what to do next.” Stiles fist bumped Scott and they fell back onto his bed together. 

Isaac joined them soon after offering his own insights. Stiles called Erica and Boyd when the three of them came to another impasse about what to do. 

Soon Stiles’ bedroom was full of teenage werewolves, and he was starting to freak out. He opened the window for fresh air, but Derek launched himself onto his roof at the exact moment it opened. 

“Sweet Baby Yoda, you scared the hell out of me!” Stiles gasped, clutching his chest while Erica snickered. 

Derek frowned at him, “Why are you having a pack meeting without me?”

“We aren’t voting you off the island, alpha mine!” Erica chirped. 

“Yet.” Boyd followed gravely. 

“Well that’s reassuring.” Derek deadpanned back as he approached his four betas. He scent marked each of them before reaching out and placing his hand on Stiles’ head. 

Grief, self-loathing, guilt, worry, fear, pain 

It slammed threw him so hard Stiles could only stumble backwards as tears welled up in his eyes. Derek’s emotions were always muted unless they were strong, but this was the first time they’d touched when Stiles was too sensitive by everyone else to dilute what he took in. 

He hit the ground and dropped his head, Derek following suit to check on him.

“Stiles? What just-” 

“Stiles darling, come now. Up you get.” He didn’t know where Peter came from or how he was able to lift him by his shoulders without sending a single emotion to Stiles, but Stiles didn’t care. 

He let Peter guide him out of the room. He hadn’t felt anything from Peter except content, humor, interest, curiosity since the man had returned to the world of the living, but now he truly felt nothing from the man. He tried to slump back into Peter’s chest, but the man stopped him. 

“Not yet, pet. I haven’t perfected the full body charms yet.” 

Stiles hummed an inquisitive sound as Peter sat him on the couch. 

Peter sat beside him, close but not touching more than the hand on his leg. 

“It took me longer than I would’ve liked, but yes I did indeed say charm. I’m going to make full body mute charms and you’re going to gift them to the pack and your father, so that they will actually wear them. You don’t have to tell them what you are, love, but if you keep up like this you’re going to burn yourself out. I am not quite ready to say goodbye to the little boy that screamed when I could not.” Peter caressed Stiles’ cheek as he spoke, his thumb wiping away dried tears. 

“You know? How? They make mute charms? Will you show me how to make them?” Stiles’ mind was starting to whirl with the possibilities, “If there are mute charms, could I make singular emotion charms? So does that mean you only have a hand mute charm on? Is it the ring? That’s new right? I don’t want to tell them what I am. They’ll feel guilty for every emotion they have if they know it impacts me. Can the charm be any material or does it have to be silver? That is silver right? I wouldn’t burn myself out. I totally got this. But the charms are so cool!” Stiles took a big breath as his rapid fire inquires petered out. 

He smiled sheepishly at Peter’s calm, but amused expression. 

“Sorry they got excited and I was already excited, so a feedback loop kicked up. Add in the ADHD and it’s rough. You said I screamed when you couldn’t? When?” 

Peter brought his hand around and placed it on the back of Stiles’ neck, a warm comforting weight, before answering, “We’ll unpack all your charm questions later, okay? As for how I know and when you were able to express my emotions when I couldn’t, the answers are the same but slightly different.”

Stiles nodded, leaning back into Peter’s palm.

“You stumbled into my hospital room and screamed the minute the door was shut, I didn’t understand why this eleven year old was in my room or why his scream sounded like he felt every single thing I was feeling. I wasn’t very aware at that point, but the visceral emotion in that scream sounded like my own. And then you filled my room with such nice feelings I thought for a long time it was a dream.”

Stiles’ eyes are wet again as the memory of that day finally floods back in. 

“And then I felt Laura die and the spark pass to me. I was blind in my fury and grief. I found her body and howled with every ounce of grief within my tattered soul. I was searching the area to figure out who did it when you three stumbled into my path. I felt your sorrow for your brothers as if it were my own and I ran.”

Stiles remembers the whimper and squeezes the hand on his thigh with his own. 

“And then, my sweet sweet boy, I died. I was burned alive for the second time, but you saved me the trauma of experiencing it. I don’t know how I knew it was you who granted me the numbness that took over my body, but when I looked at you trying not to show anyone the emotion I saw in your eyes, I knew. I knew you were the little boy. I knew that once again you were here to save me from pain.” 

Stiles wiped his watery eyes viciously, mad at himself for tearing up in front of Peter. 

“I vowed that if I could make it back I’d repay you. And these charms are how I plan to do that, pet.” Peter moved Stiles hand away from his eyes before slowly moving in and kissing each sensitive eyelid. 

“Where do we go from here, Peter?” Stiles whispered, his throat too full of emotion, for once it was his own. 

“Wherever we want, sweetheart.”

Fuck

Okay y'all here goes:

This clip was everything. Like I can't get over just how visceral, how raw it all was but I'm gonna try and talk about this coherently so bear with me.

First of all martino, my sweetheart. Kissing niccolò outside in Milan, almost a way to make up for earlier outside school like he's saying 'I'm not ashamed of us, and this is how I wish it could be always'. Also, is it just me but the way they were walking made me think they were holding hands, Iudo you coward show us!!

That little bop nico does to marti's nose is just so precious; he's so happy to be there with him. Also the constant glances between the two of them, an unspoken conversation between them at all times.

Oh Niccolò, so full of energy and on such a high...'he's my boyfriend'- the pride in his face because he really means it (manic or not, his feelings are valid and real don't doubt that y'all)

When the boys are watching the city, and they look at each other and start laughing because 'this is so surreal, we really came all the way to milan' and it makes my heart swell because they're so content, so overjoyed to just be together...with no limatiations; no fear of people from school, no maddelena, no disapproving parents- just the two of them, against the world.

Oh my word this next scene...the way nico ever so subtly moves into marti's space as he's saying 'marti and nico' with that hushed tone is just so erotic and sensual to me- and the fucking lyrics (!!) right before niccolò kisses him 'when I put my lips on you'...poetic cinema!!

The red lighting, the outline of the two of them, fitting together so perfectly and the whole montage was stunning; the shared smiles, the pleasure on marti's face, the lustful desire...the need for each other was so fucking tangible my god. Also that pause in the midst of it all, where they're just smiling at each other, taking each other in just has me saying 'fuck they're so in love'. Quick shoutout to Fede and Rocco because their chemistry knows no bounds, I could see everything martino and niccolò were feeling and that truly is a testament to them so bravo boys.

Oh and that shot where nico is resting his head in the crook of marti's neck/shoulder...just feels so peaceful, so calming like he really is satisfied in the arms of the boy he loves.

Okay for the difficult parts of this clip:

'Why didn't you get those, uh?' You can feel that this is the shift, where we the audience, along with marti, start to feel that something isn't right. Nico's eyes look slightly crazed as he says this, and that erratic chuckle is a little different to the way we've seen nico before (Rocco you absolute genius).

What breaks my heart with nico talking about getting married and marti going along with it, is that it seems like they're on the same wavelength, but they couldn't be further apart right now. Marti just thinks he's humouring nico, playing along with the joke- not because marrying nico would never happen, no not at all, but because it's wayyy too early to even be thinking about these grandiose things.

'So unless you wanna marry your mom...I think I better find another way to ask you.' You can literally see martino force the smile, because he's not finding it nearly as funny as nico, or more so that he's not understanding why it's so funny whilst nico is uncontrollably laughing; something just isn't adding up. And then we see marti glance at nico when he's taking a sip of his wine because he can feel something isn't right, he just doesn't know what...yet.

Oh my god this transition from nico's high energy display to this eerily quiet energy is such a contrast-

'No one's here. It's just you and me now.' The theme of being alone is so prominent with nico; we know it's one of his biggest fears. But with the latter sentence, the look on his face as he turns around isn't one of despair, but almost one of content resignation like 'even though we're the last ones left, I'm so happy it's with you.' The way he keeps repeating 'just me and you', getting quieter each time. All of a sudden, Rocco is playing nico so much softer, so exposed that it's giving me an emotional whiplash...but I am so blown away.

Then, he's hyper energised again and it's almost exhausting to watch because you know that's what it feels like for nico. The background music that begins at this point because things are about to take a dangerous turn, a 'shit is getting real' turn, and it's fucking painstaking to watch. And when nico jumps up off the bed again, marti does this slight exhale that emanates 'I'm tired' because again...he has no idea what's going on.

'Where the fuck is he going, he's naked!' Fuck the way martino says this breaks my heart, he sounds so distraught. And 'what the fuck is he doing?!' has me clutching my chest because the emotion in his voice...the despair is so real it hurts.

Okay y'all can I just say, as much as it fuckin' kills me, I love the addition of marti shouting nico's name because marti truly feels lost right now; he's in a city he doesn't know and he's just had his boyfriend run out naked in the middle of the night. And Fede makes me wanna sob like a baby so there's that.

His eyes filling up with tears; he's so upset and there's that one point where he yells 'nicco!' after he spots him running and my god, it's like a punch to the gut because you can tell he's so emotionally and physically frustrated, to the point where he throws the clothes to the ground.

Then the 360 of marti as he stands there, the reality of the situation hitting him full force; the hopelessness he feels, and the realisation that's he's out of his depth so he calls the one person who might understand just exactly what is going on...maddelana.

His shaky exhales as the ambulance noise increases in the distance; I swear to fuckin god if anything's happened to nico imma riot.

Last thing I have to add; Rocco and Fede truly gave all of themselves to Niccolò and Martino in today's clip, they embodied them without filter, without hesitation and it really was spectacular...we are forever blessed to have these boys play our nicotino.

S2 episode 5 AKA ‘Human Trials’ AKA ‘Surprise Bitch I Bet You Thought You’d Seen The Last Of Me’

Abby and Clarke reunion!!!!

MY GIRLS oh my god Abby’s voice in this scene just breaks my fucking heart it took OVER A WHOLE SEASON TO GET THEM BACK TOGETHER AND IT HURTS SO GOOD

Byrne calling Abby ‘Ma’am’ is really sexy okay thanks bye

wow Clarke absolutely breaking down and sobbing in her mom’s arms because she thought she was dead is A Lot

god, I miss season two Jasper :(:(:(

oh shit sexy rugged season 2 Kane planting his mom’s tree ENDLESS TEARS

bless this season for having such good continuity and consistent characterisation <3

‘I have to believe they didn’t survive down here all this time by fighting’ I LOVE YOU MARCUS KANE also that is a very Abby line, also also this man’s absolute faith in humanity and the way he fights for a better future is very very important to me

GOD he’s sexy in this season too, honestly I know they’re my faves but both Kane and Abby are at Peak Babe in season 2

ABBY’S SMILE WHEN CLARKE WAKES UP

ABBY’S LITTLE SELF DEPRECATING  LAUGH WHEN CLARKE IS SURPRISED TO SEE THAT SHE’S SUDDENLY CHANCELLOR

Clarke and Raven and Bellamy god this episode is so full of beautiful reunions my heart can’t take it :’)

why is THIS episode not called ‘Many Happy Returns’ by the way

not to be salty but I genuinely, deeply miss the days when Abby Griffin was one of the main characters in this show, when she got multiple scenes per episode with different people, when her storylines were plot relevant and her character arcs were front and centre

bless u John Murphy, only you can make unbearable characters like Finn more watchable

oh hello Lincoln’s Abs, I feel like I would be more invested in these scenes if I were less Gay

don’t get me wrong I do love Lincoln

YASSSS INPROMPTU COUNCIL MEETING WITH CHANCELLOR GRIFFIN AND SINCLAIR AND MAJOR BYRNE WHAT A POWER SQUAD

‘Finn and Murphy are out there looking for your daughter with guns you gave us. And now she’s home you’re just going to abandon them?’ HOLY SHIT HELL YEAH PREACH IT BELLAMY look this may sound contrary, but as much as I adore Abby Griffin and would happily die defending her, I love it when she fucks up and acts selfishly because it adds such layers to her character

the conflicts she faces during her short time as Chancellor are so fascinating, as she’s torn between her duties to her people, her ethics as a doctor and her love for her daughter, also her voice when she says ‘I just got you back!’ just wrecks me

she’s such a complicated, human character and I love her so much for it

also shoutout to Byrne and Sinclair quietly talking in the background of this scene, CRACKSHIP AHOY I WILL GO DOWN WITH THIS SHIP etc etc

the whole Mt Weather storyline could have been so boring, but instead it’s this endlessly tense, creepy shit with this growing paranoia and Jasper and Monty stepping up to be such compelling protags, with Harper and Miller upgrading to regular beta characters

I’ve never really shipped Bellamy and Clarke, but I do love their developing relationship at every turn <3

NYKO I love you so much and miss you everyday, if there was one person who deserved to see the new world it was you

I am all about Jasper Jordan: Reluctant Hero

also Monty Green: Best Friend Ever And Vigilant Sceptic

urgh Abby slapping Raven :/ I do like things that show Abby as being less than perfect, but that moment still feels really out of character for her, and I viscerally hate it

bless season 2 Self Sacrificing Kane, who doesn’t give a shit about his own life and would do anything to secure peace, and just gets fucked over for it time and time again

and so begins the absolutely HILARIOUS trend of ‘People Being Really Shocked At Jaha Showing Up In The Weirdest Places When They Thought He Was Long Dead’

urgh just stop everything Finn, just...stop

Nyko is always and forever the real MVP

yeah I love Lincoln and all but he has a lot of action scenes in this ep that aren’t super interesting on re-watch

not to be Trash but I always kind of shipped Cage Wallace and Doctor Singh

also Dante and Cage Wallace are such GREAT and complex villains and season two is all the better for showing their inner lives and making them real characters with relationships and doubts and understandable motivations so that you’re with them every step of the way along with the protagonists

What The Fuck Finn is always a Big Mood, but never more so than in this episode

absolute elation

absolute elation by Nicholas Scena

For a while my mother was overcome with happiness. Now she must wear sleeves over her arms. She has on a snug sweater that isn’t exactly a turtleneck, but rather pulled up entirely too high. That without saying, the garment is two sizes too big and practically stretched all the way down to her knees. It’s an ugly sweater, looks as if it were once covered in vomit, the dry crusty residue still in tact. She’s wearing quintessential gray sweats with random grease stains scattered all over them. The bags under her eyes insinuate sleep deprivation. “So,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “How is…everything?” “Everything is okay”. She shakes her head lethargically, “No, no, nothing is okay…” I put my chin to my chest and stare at the gleaming tabletop. She flicks her cigarette at the ashtray and smiles, bearing all sticky yellowed teeth. “With you, nothing is ever okay”. I ignore her nagging and attempt to speak trivially, avoiding the reality of the situation. Mother grins and exhales smoke in my direction. “Don’t try to change the subject I know you’re upset with me…and…” I begin to wonder where I had gone wrong. If I had called her more often she’d have no time for the needle. If I told her I loved her, yearning for consolation would be nonexistent, on either sides of the spectrum. I think of what she used to look like, back when music was played on MTV. She’d dance about the living room, swaying her petite hips from side to side. Moonstruck, I’d leap from wherever I happened to be seated and bring with me a grandiose embrace. My arms wrap around her torso and humming to the melody, we’d both spin in circles, a big mess of person, mother and son, twirling till dizziness severed us away from each other. On the ground, we’d look up at the ceiling fan. The green carpet below us, like grass, the white ceiling, a melancholic sky. She hacks up a lung and speaks hoarsely, “Of course you are”. I take a sip of Whales and sniffle. The wool scarf is snug around my neck, but I’m so cold. If only the tea were boiling. It’d open up my sinuses. Mother looks congested, she’s pale and her jaw is twitching, of course a signal for something different, something worse. Mother needs a fix like I need her love. I wonder how she made it so far, away from her safe place. Even a child’s endearment couldn’t keep her away from the white horse. To think she was once the heroine amongst nostalgic unrest, those flashbacks that surface ever so often. “Don’t ignore me”, she spits. I shrug, and shake my head from side to side. Mother lights another cigarette, “I’m sorry…truly.” “You lied to me,” I retort inaudibly. Suddenly she’s sobbing, lips trembling, fingertips pressed against her temples. “Sometimes…sometimes…” “Sometimes what?” “…Sometimes parents lie to their children. It was for your own good”. My mother slams her balled fists against the marble, “I’M SORRY”. Her jaw is vibrating, black tears trickle down her white cheeks. “I accept your apology”. It was a mix between apathy and empathy; I really don’t know where I stood. It was as if my feelings for my bearer were merely rocks protruding from the sea, guiding me to yet another grassy knoll. I say it again, “I accept your apology”. She hides her face. I put a hand on one of her shoulders, but she pulls away. Everyone is watching. Mother raises her head, lax and unfazed. “Well that’s enough of that”. I smudge the inky droplets with my complimentary napkin. She wipes away what’s left behind. We take tissues from our pockets, and blow our schnozzles in unison. I crumple up the garbage and toss it atop my empty plate. I wasn’t going to eat any food, so tableware was useless. The sole meritorious item in my possession was a vest-pocket memo book I had been scribbling all over since I had gotten off the train. I purchased this little blue notepad at some diminutive shop just outside the station. I planned on writing my mother a letter, a deep and sentimental exploration of sappy hodgepodge. I knew mother didn’t like that specific exhibition of affection. I subsided my actions and watched the pretty girls walk about the platform. I hadn’t seen any of them on the train and was surprised to see so many depart without even acknowledging my presence. My mother takes another sip of Earl Grey, a long, earsplitting sip. “How was the trip?” She asks. “What trip?” I know exactly what she is talking about. “The trip…down here.” Her left eye twitches. “Oh, it was…nice”. “It’s good to be out of there”, she lights another cigarette. She was referring to the Rehabilitation Center. She’s been under care for what seems like a lifetime. I sit directly in front of her with my arms stretched out, palms facing upward. I want her to take my hands, but she doesn’t get the hint, not completely. She pushes a scrunched up piece of paper against my open hand. I think it’s a note, but I’m not entirely certain. “You know what”? She says rhetorically, “I’m scared.” “What are you afraid of?” I inquire half listening. She stares out the window, breaking eye contact. “Silence”. Neither of us knows what to make of her grim comment. “Open it”, mother insists. She pushes my elbows towards my chest, bringing the note closer to my heart. I know it’s going to be a simple statement. She isn’t exactly a wordsmith. I know this is a sign that despair awaits. I’ve been trying to write a lamentation. I want to say some parting words, but I can’t think of anything to say, not one thing. Death is ineffable. How can I sit here in front of the dying and try to think of something to say? Suddenly she’s standing up, and we embrace. She’s weak and can barely stand, so I’m holding her up and her chin lie slack atop one of my bony shoulders. Her arms, full of poison, pulsating–our hearts beat the same rhythm. I feel a gust brush against my ear and realize it’s a whisper, and mother says to me, inaudibly, “I’m sorry…for everything”. Tears stream down my face and form a single droplet at the tip of my chin. I’m sweating profusely, and my arms are shaking. I tell her, “I don’t want you to die.” She starts laughing; it’s a sympathetic chuckle. She’s reached complete euphoria—absolute elation. She wants to die, and I can’t take that away from her, it’s of the inevitable. I know it’s not her fault, but she’s so easy to blame. She sways hair out of my eyes and tells me I am handsome. The crumpled note rest in my palms, I put it in my front pocket, safe and sound, away from her, but attached to me. I wonder how much thought was actually put into the letter. I wonder if she’s saying her good-byes because she has to, something mandatory. I wonder if it’s apart of the program, another step towards salvation. I feel the audience watching, sobbing, and applauding when necessary. “Be happy”, she tells me. “I don’t want you to die”. I cast a hopeless expression. Our abysmal glances reflect one another. I think of the fifth grade, back when I was living with my grandparents and would visit either parent every other weekend. My mother was rooming with an ill-mannered black man who was paying her to babysit his six-year-old daughter. Whenever I’d call her on the phone, her host would tell me she was working. I wasn’t ever allowed to visit, and one day I had shown up randomly. I took a train, across states, from Delaware to Pennsylvania. I memorized the address and read street signs all over town until finally reaching my destination. The door swung open before I could grab the handle. The black man was hovering above me. “E-excuse me m-mister”. He spoke aggressively and was looking back and forth. Suspicion arose. “What do you want kid?” He thought the cops had sent me in, and wanted me off his property. “What do you want?” he asked practically slamming the door on my foot. “Is my mom here?” Bewildered, he scanned my demeanor and knew I meant business. I stood there with my hands behind my back, unaware of his sordid operations. He sensed my naivety, the innocence before him radiating so intensely that he wanted to die right then and there. “Come on in,” his limb arm gestured towards a raggedy old couch situated amongst ruble. His living room was full of trash, scrunched up candy wrappers, broken bottles, and syringes sticking out of the carpet. My mother was lying face down on the ground, her arms sprawled above her head. Her hair was dyed blonde, and the veins in her neck were pumping wildly. I asked if she was all right, and the black man told me she had a headache, and that was all. He offered me leftover macaroni and cheese. I poked my mother’s shoulder. She was unresponsive. The black man’s daughter approached me and wanted to know if I wanted to play with her. I said no. I was about four years her senior and was too distracted to even fantasize a little bit. “I think you should go,” the black man said to me. On a visceral level, I understood, and slowly backed out of his home. He lived in a rundown apartment complex and knew the area wasn’t suitable for a small child, especially one of my stature. He didn’t offer me a ride, but slipped two dollars in my pocket. It wasn’t enough for a bus ticket. So, now I sit, heading back from another unsatisfying visit, lips trembling, my fingers straightening the crumpled paper. I run my index across the uneven ridges and begin to make out the words. The letter reads, Come again before the end.

When Love Is Not Enough: How We All Failed My Sister

My sister had 765 “friends” on Facebook. I don’t think I even know that many people. But I can count on one hand how many of those friends came to visit my sister during her four-month hospital stay. So apparently they were friends, but not quite that close.I believe that if regret had a smell, it would be the smell of something burnt and visceral, and sharp in your nostrils. I think of that every time I listen to the last voicemail that my sister left me. It was so normal, absolutely nothing special about it, like the countless other messages we had left each other.“Hi baby girl, it’s me. Call me back. Love you.”Sometimes I listen to it just so that I can hear her voice, but often I find myself straining to hear something that I must have missed. Did she know that she was dying? Was there some sort of resolve in her voice? Or was that loneliness? But mostly what I hear is regret. Mine, of course, not hers. Because no matter how much I loved her, I couldn’t save her. I am painfully aware that I failed my sister. Sometimes I think that we all did.Malika and I were two years and 10 months apart, and about as different as two people carved from the same parents can be. She was always the pretty one, the free spirit, and she had the goofiest sense of humor. The boys simply didn’t see me when we were together—she shone that brightly—and we could fight like nobody’s business. But above all, she was amazing to me.My sister was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in high school, which apparently is a common age for that to rear its ugly head. We both shared a sort of rebellious streak borne out of a sometimes-tumultuous home life and an ugly divorce between our parents, but she never really grew out of hers. She had a self-destructive side but it was always directed inwards—she never set out to hurt anyone but herself. I can see clearly now that for years, she was self-medicating.There were many times over the last few years that I had no way of getting hold of her. She often changed her phone number, and she and her boyfriend moved around a lot, either by choice or necessity. That was the thing about my sister: when she was healthy enough and able to be around people, she was great. Absolutely great. But often, and particularly in the last several years, when she didn’t want to be found, she went completely off the grid. I had heard rumors that at one point she was seen in the city begging for money for drugs. Another time I heard she was staying in the house we had grown up in while it was empty and in foreclosure.I ask myself all the time what I could have done differently, or what I should have done. But you cannot save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, and you certainly can’t force them to get help. If you give them money, you know where it’s going to end up, but do you do it anyway? I’ve been on both sides of this, and I know that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And when you don’t, they hate you and disappear again—proving that it was the only reason they resurfaced in the first place.I don’t even know how many times my sister tried rehab over the years. I do know that she tried. She had been in a day treatment program and was on methadone when she was admitted to the hospital last August. She was confused, bloated, and had no idea where or who she was, and she didn’t recognize me when I first came to see her. She had every drug you can think of in her bloodstream. They said that the confusion was caused by a bacterial abscess on her cervical spine just below her brain that had developed from repeated IV drug use with a dirty needle, and they started treating her on a wide spectrum of antibiotics. About a week in, she started coughing up blood and spiked a fever. Despite being on so many antibiotics, the infection in her bloodstream had attached itself to a valve in her heart, and every time her heart beat, it scattered more of the infection throughout her bloodstream. She slipped into a coma at that point and ran a fever that ended up lasting for weeks.Watching her go through that was a special kind of hell, wondering if she was ever going to wake up. She went in and out of consciousness and agitation as the doctors wrote things down like acute respiratory distress (ARDS), MRSA, MMSA, endocarditis, pneumonia, and acute pulmonary edema. All the while her fever kept climbing and I sat with her completely helpless, watching the numbers climb and her cooling blanket sweating into a puddle on the floor. Eventually they had to do a tracheostomy because she wasn’t breathing properly on her own.At the end of October, they finally managed to keep her fever below 100 degrees for a full 48-hour window and were able to take her into surgery to replace the heart valve that by now had been completely destroyed. The surgeon very kindly and very gently told me to prepare for the worst because even in a very healthy patient, open heart surgery brings significant risks. In Malika’s severely compromised state, the odds were not at all good that she’d wake up from surgery.But true to form and consistent with her defiant and rebellious spirit, she did. Amazingly, I began seeing my sister come back to me. Despite all the odds, she started to bounce back and gradually brought her spunky personality and wicked sense of humor with her. I’ll never forget the day I walked into her room and she simply smiled and said “Hi Shawn,” like it was no big deal. I remember that I actually stopped walking and that when I tried to speak, I was so caught off guard that it came out in a strangled sob; just that morning, she was finally improving enough that the doctors were able to take her trach out, and she was able to speak for the first time in I don’t even know how many weeks.I wish I could say at this point that her story became a fairy tale and she walked out of the hospital and into a brand new life with the second chance she was given. But addiction is not all sunshine and roses. The truth is, the better she got, the more she simply wanted out, and all the talks we had about rehab gradually fell away. She made up her mind that she was fine and just wanted to be free of all the IVs and round-the-clock medical care. What everyone involved in her treatment overlooked was that during the entire four months she was hospitalized, there were no concrete plans being made for her recovery, no drug treatment, no 12-step program, nothing to work on the addiction that had been slowly killing her since we were teenagers.This realization fully hit me for the first time when she was caught by one of her nurses trying to drink the alcohol gel beads inside one of her ice packs. The nurse told me that she had been asking for them on a regular basis and had apparently been hoarding them for just this purpose. Up until that moment, I'd never understood why they took away perfumes and mouthwash and anything else with even trace amounts of alcohol when you check into rehab. Malika was not clean or sober during those four months she was hospitalized. She was simply separated from her addiction.Which is why, after seeing her nearly every day for those four months that she was in the hospital, she quietly pulled away from me after she was discharged at the end of December. She never did check into the rehab or residential facility that she promised she’d go to when she got out. Gradually, she stopped returning my calls and texts.So I wasn't that surprised when the hospital called on May 25, 2018, just five months later, to tell me my sister was admitted back into the ICU and that, as her healthcare proxy, they needed my consent to treat her since she was wasn’t coherent. This time, the doctor said that the spots on her arms were a sign of heart failure, and an MRI showed that the confusion was caused by scattered spots of bacteria throughout her brain. That beautiful, robust new heart valve that had given her a glorious second chance at living just a few months before was now infected from a dirty needle again. And when the doctor said that her fever this time upon admission was 109 degrees, I was sure I heard him wrong. I didn’t even know that was possible, and that was while she was wrapped in a cooling blanket. They watched her around the clock for seizures and told me she would likely have brain damage when she woke up. When her fever finally broke and she came to a couple days later, I remember thinking that the light in her eyes had dimmed. She never really bounced back this time.When I went up for my daily visit with her at lunchtime on June 5th, we had one of the best visits we'd had in months. I remember very clearly telling her how much I loved her hair short, and how she was sitting on the side of her bed swinging her feet like a little kid. I remember her telling me that she was so sick of being in the hospital and that there was never anything good on television. But for the life of me, I cannot remember how we ended that visit. Every single time I left the hospital after spending time with her—every single time—she made me promise that I’d come back to see her. And I’d always laugh and tell her of course I would, I always do. It had almost become a ritual: I knew she’d say it, childlike and sweet, and she knew exactly how I’d respond. Maybe it was reassuring to her and she just needed to hear it. Or maybe I just wanted to remind her that I’d always come back. But I have replayed our conversations from that day over and over and over again, and I cannot remember her asking me to make that promise to her on that afternoon, or what I said to her when I left. And it haunts me.That night, just before midnight, I was woken by someone banging on the front door and the dog flipping out. My husband opened the door bleary-eyed. A friend of my mom’s stood there, frantic, saying that we had to come right away to the hospital; they had been trying to call me and couldn’t reach me. She said my sister’s heart had stopped and she was dying. I couldn’t comprehend her words. I told her I'd just seen my sister that afternoon and we had a great visit and she was fine. We don't have time, she said. Just come. When I grabbed my phone, I saw I had seven missed calls from the hospital. Seven. We got to the hospital in record time; a nurse was waiting for us and waved us to her room.Malika died a few minutes before we got there. Minutes. I will always believe her death occurred after one of those seven calls, and that I was too late to save her, again. They told me that the overnight nurse came to check her vitals and found her in bed, unconscious with foam on her lips. They think she must have had a seizure, and her heart, which had already been through so much, finally gave out. One of the nurses rode the gurney doing CPR all the way up the elevator and into the intensive care unit, but they were never able to bring her back. She was 43.Most of that night is a blur, stretched out unnaturally long in some places and disjointed and quick in others. But what I remember most clearly is the look on my sister’s face, and I carry that image with me, especially on the hardest days. I had come into her hospital room countless times when she was sleeping, and sometimes I just sat with her while she slept, while other times she woke up to talk with me for a while. But in all of those times, she kept this tiny wrinkle in her brow while she slept—like she was trying hard to remember something important. That night, though, that little wrinkle was gone, and she looked relaxed, peaceful, even. I realize that sounds so cliché, but it’s the only way I can describe it. She was finally, finally free of the demons she’d been running from for most of her adult life.These are the ugly, dark parts of mental illness and drug addiction that no one talks about, and by not talking about it, it stays hidden, and shameful, and powerful, and deadly. And I am not ashamed of any of this—just unbearably sad for what my sister went though—and I am so angry at myself for not having done better. For not knowing what to do, or what she needed, and believing that she wanted me to stay at an arm’s length when she must have been in so much pain. In all the days since my sister passed, I’ve promised her that I would do something on her behalf, so that what she went through wasn’t in vain. I am still working on this.But for now, I will continue to take my sons to the memorial bench that we bought for their Aunt Malika in the middle of a wildflower garden at a nature park near our first house, and I regularly talk to them about their goofball aunt who loved them more than life itself. I want to be sure they remember her at her best, while also understanding in no uncertain terms that if she could have beaten this horrific addiction, she would have, and she’d still be here to watch them grow up. I want to share her story because she was so much more than the addiction that claimed her life in a horrific and painful slow-motion free fall.Malika was beautiful, wickedly smart, funny, kind, and free-spirited. I want people to remember her as the girl who followed Phish for a month one summer with her old boyfriend and their dog in a piece of crap van that they took across the country. Or the girl who wore her long, curly hair in pigtailed knots while she danced with my sons in the kitchen to Christmas songs in July and would do absolutely anything to make them laugh. Or the girl who could talk to and make friends with anyone, absolutely anyone, with ease.It is that girl that I remember when I sit on her bench with the sun on my face and my eyes closed, remembering the sound of her laugh. I hope she knows how sorry I am that I didn’t do better for her, and how much I love her. And that even though I sat with her every day, I was ultimately no better than the 765 friends who did not. Because I didn’t know how to fix this.

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When Love Is Not Enough: How We All Failed My Sister

My sister had 765 “friends” on Facebook. I don’t think I even know that many people. But I can count on one hand how many of those friends came to visit my sister during her four-month hospital stay. So apparently they were friends, but not quite that close.I believe that if regret had a smell, it would be the smell of something burnt and visceral, and sharp in your nostrils. I think of that every time I listen to the last voicemail that my sister left me. It was so normal, absolutely nothing special about it, like the countless other messages we had left each other.“Hi baby girl, it’s me. Call me back. Love you.”Sometimes I listen to it just so that I can hear her voice, but often I find myself straining to hear something that I must have missed. Did she know that she was dying? Was there some sort of resolve in her voice? Or was that loneliness? But mostly what I hear is regret. Mine, of course, not hers. Because no matter how much I loved her, I couldn’t save her. I am painfully aware that I failed my sister. Sometimes I think that we all did.Malika and I were two years and 10 months apart, and about as different as two people carved from the same parents can be. She was always the pretty one, the free spirit, and she had the goofiest sense of humor. The boys simply didn’t see me when we were together—she shone that brightly—and we could fight like nobody’s business. But above all, she was amazing to me.My sister was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in high school, which apparently is a common age for that to rear its ugly head. We both shared a sort of rebellious streak borne out of a sometimes-tumultuous home life and an ugly divorce between our parents, but she never really grew out of hers. She had a self-destructive side but it was always directed inwards—she never set out to hurt anyone but herself. I can see clearly now that for years, she was self-medicating.There were many times over the last few years that I had no way of getting hold of her. She often changed her phone number, and she and her boyfriend moved around a lot, either by choice or necessity. That was the thing about my sister: when she was healthy enough and able to be around people, she was great. Absolutely great. But often, and particularly in the last several years, when she didn’t want to be found, she went completely off the grid. I had heard rumors that at one point she was seen in the city begging for money for drugs. Another time I heard she was staying in the house we had grown up in while it was empty and in foreclosure.I ask myself all the time what I could have done differently, or what I should have done. But you cannot save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, and you certainly can’t force them to get help. If you give them money, you know where it’s going to end up, but do you do it anyway? I’ve been on both sides of this, and I know that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And when you don’t, they hate you and disappear again—proving that it was the only reason they resurfaced in the first place.I don’t even know how many times my sister tried rehab over the years. I do know that she tried. She had been in a day treatment program and was on methadone when she was admitted to the hospital last August. She was confused, bloated, and had no idea where or who she was, and she didn’t recognize me when I first came to see her. She had every drug you can think of in her bloodstream. They said that the confusion was caused by a bacterial abscess on her cervical spine just below her brain that had developed from repeated IV drug use with a dirty needle, and they started treating her on a wide spectrum of antibiotics. About a week in, she started coughing up blood and spiked a fever. Despite being on so many antibiotics, the infection in her bloodstream had attached itself to a valve in her heart, and every time her heart beat, it scattered more of the infection throughout her bloodstream. She slipped into a coma at that point and ran a fever that ended up lasting for weeks.Watching her go through that was a special kind of hell, wondering if she was ever going to wake up. She went in and out of consciousness and agitation as the doctors wrote things down like acute respiratory distress (ARDS), MRSA, MMSA, endocarditis, pneumonia, and acute pulmonary edema. All the while her fever kept climbing and I sat with her completely helpless, watching the numbers climb and her cooling blanket sweating into a puddle on the floor. Eventually they had to do a tracheostomy because she wasn’t breathing properly on her own.At the end of October, they finally managed to keep her fever below 100 degrees for a full 48-hour window and were able to take her into surgery to replace the heart valve that by now had been completely destroyed. The surgeon very kindly and very gently told me to prepare for the worst because even in a very healthy patient, open heart surgery brings significant risks. In Malika’s severely compromised state, the odds were not at all good that she’d wake up from surgery.But true to form and consistent with her defiant and rebellious spirit, she did. Amazingly, I began seeing my sister come back to me. Despite all the odds, she started to bounce back and gradually brought her spunky personality and wicked sense of humor with her. I’ll never forget the day I walked into her room and she simply smiled and said “Hi Shawn,” like it was no big deal. I remember that I actually stopped walking and that when I tried to speak, I was so caught off guard that it came out in a strangled sob; just that morning, she was finally improving enough that the doctors were able to take her trach out, and she was able to speak for the first time in I don’t even know how many weeks.I wish I could say at this point that her story became a fairy tale and she walked out of the hospital and into a brand new life with the second chance she was given. But addiction is not all sunshine and roses. The truth is, the better she got, the more she simply wanted out, and all the talks we had about rehab gradually fell away. She made up her mind that she was fine and just wanted to be free of all the IVs and round-the-clock medical care. What everyone involved in her treatment overlooked was that during the entire four months she was hospitalized, there were no concrete plans being made for her recovery, no drug treatment, no 12-step program, nothing to work on the addiction that had been slowly killing her since we were teenagers.This realization fully hit me for the first time when she was caught by one of her nurses trying to drink the alcohol gel beads inside one of her ice packs. The nurse told me that she had been asking for them on a regular basis and had apparently been hoarding them for just this purpose. Up until that moment, I'd never understood why they took away perfumes and mouthwash and anything else with even trace amounts of alcohol when you check into rehab. Malika was not clean or sober during those four months she was hospitalized. She was simply separated from her addiction.Which is why, after seeing her nearly every day for those four months that she was in the hospital, she quietly pulled away from me after she was discharged at the end of December. She never did check into the rehab or residential facility that she promised she’d go to when she got out. Gradually, she stopped returning my calls and texts.So I wasn't that surprised when the hospital called on May 25, 2018, just five months later, to tell me my sister was admitted back into the ICU and that, as her healthcare proxy, they needed my consent to treat her since she was wasn’t coherent. This time, the doctor said that the spots on her arms were a sign of heart failure, and an MRI showed that the confusion was caused by scattered spots of bacteria throughout her brain. That beautiful, robust new heart valve that had given her a glorious second chance at living just a few months before was now infected from a dirty needle again. And when the doctor said that her fever this time upon admission was 109 degrees, I was sure I heard him wrong. I didn’t even know that was possible, and that was while she was wrapped in a cooling blanket. They watched her around the clock for seizures and told me she would likely have brain damage when she woke up. When her fever finally broke and she came to a couple days later, I remember thinking that the light in her eyes had dimmed. She never really bounced back this time.When I went up for my daily visit with her at lunchtime on June 5th, we had one of the best visits we'd had in months. I remember very clearly telling her how much I loved her hair short, and how she was sitting on the side of her bed swinging her feet like a little kid. I remember her telling me that she was so sick of being in the hospital and that there was never anything good on television. But for the life of me, I cannot remember how we ended that visit. Every single time I left the hospital after spending time with her—every single time—she made me promise that I’d come back to see her. And I’d always laugh and tell her of course I would, I always do. It had almost become a ritual: I knew she’d say it, childlike and sweet, and she knew exactly how I’d respond. Maybe it was reassuring to her and she just needed to hear it. Or maybe I just wanted to remind her that I’d always come back. But I have replayed our conversations from that day over and over and over again, and I cannot remember her asking me to make that promise to her on that afternoon, or what I said to her when I left. And it haunts me.That night, just before midnight, I was woken by someone banging on the front door and the dog flipping out. My husband opened the door bleary-eyed. A friend of my mom’s stood there, frantic, saying that we had to come right away to the hospital; they had been trying to call me and couldn’t reach me. She said my sister’s heart had stopped and she was dying. I couldn’t comprehend her words. I told her I'd just seen my sister that afternoon and we had a great visit and she was fine. We don't have time, she said. Just come. When I grabbed my phone, I saw I had seven missed calls from the hospital. Seven. We got to the hospital in record time; a nurse was waiting for us and waved us to her room.Malika died a few minutes before we got there. Minutes. I will always believe her death occurred after one of those seven calls, and that I was too late to save her, again. They told me that the overnight nurse came to check her vitals and found her in bed, unconscious with foam on her lips. They think she must have had a seizure, and her heart, which had already been through so much, finally gave out. One of the nurses rode the gurney doing CPR all the way up the elevator and into the intensive care unit, but they were never able to bring her back. She was 43.Most of that night is a blur, stretched out unnaturally long in some places and disjointed and quick in others. But what I remember most clearly is the look on my sister’s face, and I carry that image with me, especially on the hardest days. I had come into her hospital room countless times when she was sleeping, and sometimes I just sat with her while she slept, while other times she woke up to talk with me for a while. But in all of those times, she kept this tiny wrinkle in her brow while she slept—like she was trying hard to remember something important. That night, though, that little wrinkle was gone, and she looked relaxed, peaceful, even. I realize that sounds so cliché, but it’s the only way I can describe it. She was finally, finally free of the demons she’d been running from for most of her adult life.These are the ugly, dark parts of mental illness and drug addiction that no one talks about, and by not talking about it, it stays hidden, and shameful, and powerful, and deadly. And I am not ashamed of any of this—just unbearably sad for what my sister went though—and I am so angry at myself for not having done better. For not knowing what to do, or what she needed, and believing that she wanted me to stay at an arm’s length when she must have been in so much pain. In all the days since my sister passed, I’ve promised her that I would do something on her behalf, so that what she went through wasn’t in vain. I am still working on this.But for now, I will continue to take my sons to the memorial bench that we bought for their Aunt Malika in the middle of a wildflower garden at a nature park near our first house, and I regularly talk to them about their goofball aunt who loved them more than life itself. I want to be sure they remember her at her best, while also understanding in no uncertain terms that if she could have beaten this horrific addiction, she would have, and she’d still be here to watch them grow up. I want to share her story because she was so much more than the addiction that claimed her life in a horrific and painful slow-motion free fall.Malika was beautiful, wickedly smart, funny, kind, and free-spirited. I want people to remember her as the girl who followed Phish for a month one summer with her old boyfriend and their dog in a piece of crap van that they took across the country. Or the girl who wore her long, curly hair in pigtailed knots while she danced with my sons in the kitchen to Christmas songs in July and would do absolutely anything to make them laugh. Or the girl who could talk to and make friends with anyone, absolutely anyone, with ease.It is that girl that I remember when I sit on her bench with the sun on my face and my eyes closed, remembering the sound of her laugh. I hope she knows how sorry I am that I didn’t do better for her, and how much I love her. And that even though I sat with her every day, I was ultimately no better than the 765 friends who did not. Because I didn’t know how to fix this.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8241841 https://www.thefix.com/when-love-not-enough-how-we-all-failed-my-sister

When Love Is Not Enough: How We All Failed My Sister

My sister had 765 “friends” on Facebook. I don’t think I even know that many people. But I can count on one hand how many of those friends came to visit my sister during her four-month hospital stay. So apparently they were friends, but not quite that close.I believe that if regret had a smell, it would be the smell of something burnt and visceral, and sharp in your nostrils. I think of that every time I listen to the last voicemail that my sister left me. It was so normal, absolutely nothing special about it, like the countless other messages we had left each other.“Hi baby girl, it’s me. Call me back. Love you.”Sometimes I listen to it just so that I can hear her voice, but often I find myself straining to hear something that I must have missed. Did she know that she was dying? Was there some sort of resolve in her voice? Or was that loneliness? But mostly what I hear is regret. Mine, of course, not hers. Because no matter how much I loved her, I couldn’t save her. I am painfully aware that I failed my sister. Sometimes I think that we all did.Malika and I were two years and 10 months apart, and about as different as two people carved from the same parents can be. She was always the pretty one, the free spirit, and she had the goofiest sense of humor. The boys simply didn’t see me when we were together—she shone that brightly—and we could fight like nobody’s business. But above all, she was amazing to me.My sister was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in high school, which apparently is a common age for that to rear its ugly head. We both shared a sort of rebellious streak borne out of a sometimes-tumultuous home life and an ugly divorce between our parents, but she never really grew out of hers. She had a self-destructive side but it was always directed inwards—she never set out to hurt anyone but herself. I can see clearly now that for years, she was self-medicating.There were many times over the last few years that I had no way of getting hold of her. She often changed her phone number, and she and her boyfriend moved around a lot, either by choice or necessity. That was the thing about my sister: when she was healthy enough and able to be around people, she was great. Absolutely great. But often, and particularly in the last several years, when she didn’t want to be found, she went completely off the grid. I had heard rumors that at one point she was seen in the city begging for money for drugs. Another time I heard she was staying in the house we had grown up in while it was empty and in foreclosure.I ask myself all the time what I could have done differently, or what I should have done. But you cannot save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, and you certainly can’t force them to get help. If you give them money, you know where it’s going to end up, but do you do it anyway? I’ve been on both sides of this, and I know that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And when you don’t, they hate you and disappear again—proving that it was the only reason they resurfaced in the first place.I don’t even know how many times my sister tried rehab over the years. I do know that she tried. She had been in a day treatment program and was on methadone when she was admitted to the hospital last August. She was confused, bloated, and had no idea where or who she was, and she didn’t recognize me when I first came to see her. She had every drug you can think of in her bloodstream. They said that the confusion was caused by a bacterial abscess on her cervical spine just below her brain that had developed from repeated IV drug use with a dirty needle, and they started treating her on a wide spectrum of antibiotics. About a week in, she started coughing up blood and spiked a fever. Despite being on so many antibiotics, the infection in her bloodstream had attached itself to a valve in her heart, and every time her heart beat, it scattered more of the infection throughout her bloodstream. She slipped into a coma at that point and ran a fever that ended up lasting for weeks.Watching her go through that was a special kind of hell, wondering if she was ever going to wake up. She went in and out of consciousness and agitation as the doctors wrote things down like acute respiratory distress (ARDS), MRSA, MMSA, endocarditis, pneumonia, and acute pulmonary edema. All the while her fever kept climbing and I sat with her completely helpless, watching the numbers climb and her cooling blanket sweating into a puddle on the floor. Eventually they had to do a tracheostomy because she wasn’t breathing properly on her own.At the end of October, they finally managed to keep her fever below 100 degrees for a full 48-hour window and were able to take her into surgery to replace the heart valve that by now had been completely destroyed. The surgeon very kindly and very gently told me to prepare for the worst because even in a very healthy patient, open heart surgery brings significant risks. In Malika’s severely compromised state, the odds were not at all good that she’d wake up from surgery.But true to form and consistent with her defiant and rebellious spirit, she did. Amazingly, I began seeing my sister come back to me. Despite all the odds, she started to bounce back and gradually brought her spunky personality and wicked sense of humor with her. I’ll never forget the day I walked into her room and she simply smiled and said “Hi Shawn,” like it was no big deal. I remember that I actually stopped walking and that when I tried to speak, I was so caught off guard that it came out in a strangled sob; just that morning, she was finally improving enough that the doctors were able to take her trach out, and she was able to speak for the first time in I don’t even know how many weeks.I wish I could say at this point that her story became a fairy tale and she walked out of the hospital and into a brand new life with the second chance she was given. But addiction is not all sunshine and roses. The truth is, the better she got, the more she simply wanted out, and all the talks we had about rehab gradually fell away. She made up her mind that she was fine and just wanted to be free of all the IVs and round-the-clock medical care. What everyone involved in her treatment overlooked was that during the entire four months she was hospitalized, there were no concrete plans being made for her recovery, no drug treatment, no 12-step program, nothing to work on the addiction that had been slowly killing her since we were teenagers.This realization fully hit me for the first time when she was caught by one of her nurses trying to drink the alcohol gel beads inside one of her ice packs. The nurse told me that she had been asking for them on a regular basis and had apparently been hoarding them for just this purpose. Up until that moment, I'd never understood why they took away perfumes and mouthwash and anything else with even trace amounts of alcohol when you check into rehab. Malika was not clean or sober during those four months she was hospitalized. She was simply separated from her addiction.Which is why, after seeing her nearly every day for those four months that she was in the hospital, she quietly pulled away from me after she was discharged at the end of December. She never did check into the rehab or residential facility that she promised she’d go to when she got out. Gradually, she stopped returning my calls and texts.So I wasn't that surprised when the hospital called on May 25, 2018, just five months later, to tell me my sister was admitted back into the ICU and that, as her healthcare proxy, they needed my consent to treat her since she was wasn’t coherent. This time, the doctor said that the spots on her arms were a sign of heart failure, and an MRI showed that the confusion was caused by scattered spots of bacteria throughout her brain. That beautiful, robust new heart valve that had given her a glorious second chance at living just a few months before was now infected from a dirty needle again. And when the doctor said that her fever this time upon admission was 109 degrees, I was sure I heard him wrong. I didn’t even know that was possible, and that was while she was wrapped in a cooling blanket. They watched her around the clock for seizures and told me she would likely have brain damage when she woke up. When her fever finally broke and she came to a couple days later, I remember thinking that the light in her eyes had dimmed. She never really bounced back this time.When I went up for my daily visit with her at lunchtime on June 5th, we had one of the best visits we'd had in months. I remember very clearly telling her how much I loved her hair short, and how she was sitting on the side of her bed swinging her feet like a little kid. I remember her telling me that she was so sick of being in the hospital and that there was never anything good on television. But for the life of me, I cannot remember how we ended that visit. Every single time I left the hospital after spending time with her—every single time—she made me promise that I’d come back to see her. And I’d always laugh and tell her of course I would, I always do. It had almost become a ritual: I knew she’d say it, childlike and sweet, and she knew exactly how I’d respond. Maybe it was reassuring to her and she just needed to hear it. Or maybe I just wanted to remind her that I’d always come back. But I have replayed our conversations from that day over and over and over again, and I cannot remember her asking me to make that promise to her on that afternoon, or what I said to her when I left. And it haunts me.That night, just before midnight, I was woken by someone banging on the front door and the dog flipping out. My husband opened the door bleary-eyed. A friend of my mom’s stood there, frantic, saying that we had to come right away to the hospital; they had been trying to call me and couldn’t reach me. She said my sister’s heart had stopped and she was dying. I couldn’t comprehend her words. I told her I'd just seen my sister that afternoon and we had a great visit and she was fine. We don't have time, she said. Just come. When I grabbed my phone, I saw I had seven missed calls from the hospital. Seven. We got to the hospital in record time; a nurse was waiting for us and waved us to her room.Malika died a few minutes before we got there. Minutes. I will always believe her death occurred after one of those seven calls, and that I was too late to save her, again. They told me that the overnight nurse came to check her vitals and found her in bed, unconscious with foam on her lips. They think she must have had a seizure, and her heart, which had already been through so much, finally gave out. One of the nurses rode the gurney doing CPR all the way up the elevator and into the intensive care unit, but they were never able to bring her back. She was 43.Most of that night is a blur, stretched out unnaturally long in some places and disjointed and quick in others. But what I remember most clearly is the look on my sister’s face, and I carry that image with me, especially on the hardest days. I had come into her hospital room countless times when she was sleeping, and sometimes I just sat with her while she slept, while other times she woke up to talk with me for a while. But in all of those times, she kept this tiny wrinkle in her brow while she slept—like she was trying hard to remember something important. That night, though, that little wrinkle was gone, and she looked relaxed, peaceful, even. I realize that sounds so cliché, but it’s the only way I can describe it. She was finally, finally free of the demons she’d been running from for most of her adult life.These are the ugly, dark parts of mental illness and drug addiction that no one talks about, and by not talking about it, it stays hidden, and shameful, and powerful, and deadly. And I am not ashamed of any of this—just unbearably sad for what my sister went though—and I am so angry at myself for not having done better. For not knowing what to do, or what she needed, and believing that she wanted me to stay at an arm’s length when she must have been in so much pain. In all the days since my sister passed, I’ve promised her that I would do something on her behalf, so that what she went through wasn’t in vain. I am still working on this.But for now, I will continue to take my sons to the memorial bench that we bought for their Aunt Malika in the middle of a wildflower garden at a nature park near our first house, and I regularly talk to them about their goofball aunt who loved them more than life itself. I want to be sure they remember her at her best, while also understanding in no uncertain terms that if she could have beaten this horrific addiction, she would have, and she’d still be here to watch them grow up. I want to share her story because she was so much more than the addiction that claimed her life in a horrific and painful slow-motion free fall.Malika was beautiful, wickedly smart, funny, kind, and free-spirited. I want people to remember her as the girl who followed Phish for a month one summer with her old boyfriend and their dog in a piece of crap van that they took across the country. Or the girl who wore her long, curly hair in pigtailed knots while she danced with my sons in the kitchen to Christmas songs in July and would do absolutely anything to make them laugh. Or the girl who could talk to and make friends with anyone, absolutely anyone, with ease.It is that girl that I remember when I sit on her bench with the sun on my face and my eyes closed, remembering the sound of her laugh. I hope she knows how sorry I am that I didn’t do better for her, and how much I love her. And that even though I sat with her every day, I was ultimately no better than the 765 friends who did not. Because I didn’t know how to fix this.

DEAR, MS. ( PHOEBE JEON )

We are pleased to have you back for another year as an UPPER THIRD YEAR STUDENT at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We sincerely hope your classmates in HUFFLEPUFF treat you well.

2003

“Failure,” David huffs, wiping away the sweat that glistens at his brow. “Is the first step to success.” It’s peak summer in Essex and the heat is brutal, merciless in the way it beats down in waves. In the afternoon, it’s all that on top of being stuck in Grandma’s garage for three whole consecutive hours, the hood of the classic Cola Red Rolls-Royce popped up, the engine humming listlessly. Phoebe is on standby as his designated assistant, and she’s armed with double duty: monkey wrench held in one tiny fist, her dad’s wand in the other.

Earlier that week, the mention of vacation had conjured a completely different set of pictures in the back of her mind: a bluer landscape for one (ideally sitting poolside with a line of artificial palm trees or even kayaking off of Loch Sunart), and activities that don’t require having to be around the smell of motor oil and paint. but that’s what it seems to mean for David Jeon who, like his wife Grace Jeon, spends 250 days too many abroad as a curse breaker that anything that resembles pure, physical work is the perfect medium to detox.

The family two doors down, on the other hand, seem to have a better grasp on how to spend their day. Emily had invited her over for a bowl of homemade Rocky Road and Looney Tunes, both things Phoebe would rather be doing than whatever…this is supposed to be. Muggles have their shit together in that sense, you’ve gotta give them that.

Dad motions for the wrench, which she reluctantly holds high for him to take. He continues to talk in circles, and is back to point A: “Because it’s important to remember that failure is the first step to–?”

“Disaster.”

Mom walks into the garage, balancing two glasses of pink lemonade on a tray. Hair tucked into a low chignon and fingernails immaculately polished, Phoebe can’t recall a single day when she didn’t look as though she’d stepped right off the pages of some high-end magazine. Those who don’t know any better would assume she’s no stranger to vanity; Grace prefers to call it being prepared. A consulting job at one of the most lucrative magical trade firms in Europe entails a high tolerance for unpredictability. It’s happened before, last summer, matter of fact: a two week long trip in Manila cut short when Grace was unexpectedly called in to handle an emergency at work. But today’s not one of those days, it looks like. “The correct answer is disaster.” She sets the tray down and pulls Phoebe to her side, though not before casting David and his failed handiwork a withering glance. “Please don’t give her any stupid ideas.”

2008

Older brothers aren’t worth shit.

Having three of them? Only triples the amount of done Phoebe feels within their vicinity. The second they’ve arrived home from Platform 9 ¾ the Jeon residence has been in a constant state of turmoil, whatever calm that’s once resided long turned to dust.

“Phoebe baby, what are you doing?”

Scowling, she moves away from the window to join her grandma in the kitchen. Annoyance is the obvious adjective, envy perhaps somewhere in there. Maybe they aren’t worth shit to her, but for Hogwarts, it had clearly been a different story. Per tradition, the Sorting Hat had placed all three of them into one house. Red and gold seems to run in the family, and it holds true to Philip, Peyton, and Paul; distinct in their respective paths, but aiming for better, brighter things nonetheless.

And then there’s Phoebe. Eleven, miserably knee-deep in the widening gap between herself and the boys, her Hogwarts letter yet to see the light of day.

“Can’t I stay with you, halmae?” There’s hard boiled eggs in the bowl, which she begins to peel.

“But you like it here.” Grandma continues to slice beef into thin pieces. Jangjorim becomes a staple at the lunch table only whenever she makes the trip up north to visit them.

“Not when they’re around.”

Chuckling softly, she gathers the rest of the meat to braise. “Maybe so, it’ll be different when you’re a little older. Now go grab some peppers for me, please.”

Maybe is only a suggestion at best. Such changes in the end turn to be neither for the better or for the worse but rather never turn out, at all. Her contempt remains, stagnant and ever present, and will last well into her twenties.

For now, sitting outside on the patio with the meal underway, her single point of satisfaction is when none of her siblings can last a bite into any of Grandma’s infamously spicy dishes. As they sit sniffling and near-weeping through a bowl of jjamppong, she can’t help but grin, smile girlishly toothy and wide.

2012

She’s doing just fine.

Even if the initial shock had been well, shocking. The plan had been if not the house where dwell the brave of heart, then perhaps where the emerald gleams and glows is the next best fit. She could be snarky, scornful—traits that are shared in equal measure between the two.

Evidently, that hadn’t been the deciding factor in the end.

“You just don’t have the sob story for it, Pheebs.” A shrug. “Sorry.”

Weirdly, she hadn’t felt very sorry, if at all.

In fact, this might’ve been the start she’d looking for. Underneath the seemingly aggressive, prickly, almost-always-glaring exterior resides a discernible amount of compassion. Tough love, perhaps, maybe too literally. Defiant. A tad too bold. Forgiving at times. Love that looks more like resolve, if anything. Which she has (looking at you, Mom, Dad, resident asshole trifecta). Plenty of it.

Admittedly, there’s also a sense of comfort in being the middle. Badgers have a knack for that kind of thing, claws out, searching for that soft belly of earth. Making the best of it is the path she takes, right down to the bumble bee stripes that are, to her surprise, actually supercute.

It’s not long before a couple of things come around to her in no time: the Chaser spot on the Quidditch team, her hand at Potions and DADA, and the painful dichotomy dictating what precedes her every step: the severe case of RBF that speaks for itself before she can, or the Jeon triplets’ own legacy that threatens to loom over like a shadow. Any sense of puzzle piece compatibility is at odds with her very psyche: almost, but never there, or a simply relegated to being a carbon copy. Sticking in, sticking out, a sore, blunt thumb no matter the context.

If there’s any source of solace to be found within the castle walls, it’s in the kitchens with the house elves. It doesn’t hold a candle to Grandma’s house, with its smell of sesame oil and green chives, but it’s something. Between places where potential is the buzzword and she’s gestured to as “the sister,” Phoebe is a force to be reckoned with here, a budding talent that is hers.

Mom writes her back a couple of days later. Skimming the letter brings the same old: Dad’s over there, I’m here, your brothers are scattered elsewhere. There’s one thing that’s worth nothing, however:

Paul doesn’t seem all that interested in going pro, anymore. This is followed by mention of the other two, both unsure of their future endeavors in their new, post-graduate state.

Phoebe folds up the letter, thinking. A new possibility begins to bloom.

Okay. Fine is okay for now, she decides.

In fact, that’s all she needs to be.

2016

“So he’s rich now.”

She and Mickey,a fellow Huff, are sitting at the front porch, a little ways away from the party that rages on inside. This time it’s for Paul. Just last week he’d been tapped to be the new Seeker of the Wigtown Wanderers.

“Who, Phillip? Yeah.”

He’d had a stroke of luck just seconds before the ball drop, an innovative breakthrough with one of his experimental potions. He’s still in NYC, having sent his congratulations through a video call. Peyton’s situated himself in London, a high-ranking Auror at the Ministry of Magic, and both of their parents are traveling more than ever, by now experts at their individual fields. Naturally, they’ve made time for today, for the festivities.

The taste of Butterbeer is savory sweet, caramel and cane sugar melting soft on her tongue; with the sun about to set, there’s a faint sense of melancholy that washes over her, featherlight. Earlier that day she had looked at the corner of the room where her Nimbus used to stand. Phoebe’s given it away a long while back: a particularly nasty fall during tryouts that kept her out of the game for the rest of the year; the decision to quit right after kept her out then for good.

Serves her right, really.

“Well you can’t get mad at someone for trying.”

She makes a face. “I’m not mad, piss off.” Far from it, actually. Phoebe’s come a long way with her character development (or so she likes to believe). In place of the juvenile envy there’s a pang of guilt that throbs beneath the skin.

“Let’s go back. It’s freezing out here.”

But even as they head back inside, there’s one thought that stays stuck. The angle has shifted, a new scope split open. Inexplicably so. But that’s just the mystery of epiphanies, isn’t it.

Trying?

That can’t be all there is to it.

2017

Three friends, one summer. Behind them, a waiter carries a sizzling entrée over to the adjacent table. Fortunately, they’re plenty occupied: green papaya salad and shrimp ragoon on their plates, the rest of their meal full to the brim with all the stories they’ve left until the school year was over to tell face to face. Glasgow has always been home, the notion shaped by none other but those that knew her best. Here, it’s namely the two women that sat across from her, eager to tease and indulge in ways that are viscerally familiar.

Remember when

“There was that cute server Phoebe was trying to hit on, but when he came by all she did was awkwardly hand him a Groupon for free flying lessons.”

“Wait, hold on just a sec–”

“Poor guy didn’t even know what to do ‘cause she didn’t even say a thing.”

“Guys please!”

Don’t tell me you forgot that

“I’m going to Morocco in the fall. First assignment as a curse breaker.”

That

“My internship at the Ministry starts then too, wow.”

That

“Pheebs?”

“I’m going to stay here.”

She grins. “But I’ve got an idea.”

2018

To be a grown up is to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say:

This is enough.

This is enough.

This is enough.

She’s close.

She’s getting there.

<p>The incredible story of baby Eva Grace: the superhero who never lived.</p>

My wife Keri and I went in for the standard 19-week anatomy scan of our second child. As a parent, you think that appointment is all about finding out boy or girl, but it’s about a whole lot more.

In our case, our daughter was diagnosed with a rare birth defect called anencephaly — some 3 in 10,000 pregnancies rare. The phrase our doctor used in explaining it was "incompatible with life," which looks as terrible in words as it sounds. The child fails to develop the frontal lobe of the brain or the top of their skull. The chance of survival is 0%. We sat in a doctor’s office, five months before our daughter was to be born, knowing she would die.

The options weren’t great. There was (a) inducing early, which in effect was terminating the pregnancy or (b) continuing the pregnancy to full term.

Within a minute or so of finding out, Keri asked if we could donate the baby’s organs if we went to full term. It was on her heart and mind, but we left the doctor and still spent the next 48 hours deciding what we were going to do. It was excruciating. We considered terminating. We had to. Were we capable of taking on the weight of the 20 weeks ahead? In our minds, we were intentionally taking on the loss of a child, rather than the loss of a pregnancy. And, yes, there is a difference.

We decided to continue, and we chose the name Eva for our girl, which means "giver of life."

The mission was simple: get Eva to full term, welcome her into this world to die, and let her give the gift of life to some other hurting family.

It was a practical approach, with an objective for an already settled ending point. We met with an organ procurement organization called LifeShare of Oklahoma and found out we’d be the eighth family in the state to donate the organs of an infant.

There wasn’t much of a precedent or process in place because, until only recently, most parents of anencephalic babies didn’t know it was an option. There’s this weird gray area involved because, even without a brain, these babies can’t be declared brain dead. Her heart would need to stop beating, leaving a finite window of, let’s call it, "opportunity," to recover her kidneys, liver, and maybe pancreas and heart valves. We asked about other things, like her eyes or corneas, but LifeShare told us they’d never done that before, even with an adult.

All photos by Mitzi Aylor/Alyor Photography. Used with the permission of Royce Young.

Part of the difficulty of the decision to carry on was the physical pregnancy and the mental burden of carrying a baby for 20 more weeks knowing she would die. The kicks and punches to Keri’s bladder served as a constant reminder of what was inside. (Yes, Eva kicked like any other baby; her brainstem was complete, which is what controls basic motor functions. I know, we had a hard time wrapping our minds around it too.) She feared people asking what she was having or the due date or if the nursery was ready.

What we unexpectedly found, though, was joy in the pregnancy. We happily talked about our sweet Eva, and day by day, our love for her grew. We got excited to be her parents.

I think a big part of that was connected to the decision we made to continue on, which was empowering. She had a name, an identity, and a purpose. The idea of choice in pregnancy is a complicated one, and one I kind of want to avoid here. Wherever you fall, just know, we were empowered by our decision, our responsibility to be Eva’s mom and dad for as long as we could. We went from seeing the pregnancy as a vehicle to help others to looking forward to holding her, kissing her, telling her about her brother, and being her parents.

The time we’d have was completely unknown, with it ranging anywhere from five seconds to five minutes to five hours to, in some more optimistic estimates, five days.

We decided to have a planned c-section. We wanted to maximize our chances of seeing Eva alive and be able to control as many variables as possible.

There wouldn’t be any surprise labor in the middle of the night. We could have our first child Harrison there to meet his sister and grandparents ready to hold their granddaughter even if she was only alive for an hour or so. We wanted to do what was best for our girl. That’s what parents do.

As the date neared, the meetings and appointments cranked up. We had what everyone called the "Big Meeting," a gathering at Baptist Hospital of about 30 people that included multiple people from LifeShare, NICU nurses and doctors, neonatologists, and other "Very Important Hospital People." We were the first infant organ donor ever at Baptist, and they were developing a protocol on the fly. There were plans and contingency plans and contingency plans for the contingency plans.

The process was going to be delicate, and to be frank, it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would work. There were a lot of things that were going to need to go just right, even with the intricate plans that were being put in place. It was made clear to us over and over and over again how if Eva’s kidneys or liver didn’t go directly for transplant, they would go to research, and infant organ research is incredibly valuable.

But I wanted a tangible outcome. I wanted to be able to meet and hug and shake the hand of the person my daughter saved.

I couldn’t dream about what my daughter would grow up to be, so I fantasized about the difference she could make.

What if the person who got her kidneys became president? What if her liver went to a little boy and he goes on to win the Heisman Trophy? I was writing the "30 for 30" script in my mind every night as I went to sleep. It was something to hold onto; it was the kind of hope I wrapped up with both arms. Research was nothing more than a fail-safe to me, a Plan B that I didn’t want any part of.

There were some concerns from the hospital's ethics team about Eva and our plans. As I explained to them — and to anyone else out there who has this idea that we grew a daughter just for her organs — Eva was a terminal child. And as her parents, we elected to make her an organ donor. That’s it. She would be born, live an indefinite amount of time, and then we were choosing to donate her organs.

Then suddenly, we were in the two-week window. In two weeks, we’d be prepping to welcome our baby girl into the world and preparing to say goodbye to her.

I planned on sitting down that day to write Eva a letter, like I did before Harrison was born to give him on his 18th birthday. She’d never read it, but I was going to read it to her. Keri didn’t feel Eva move much that morning, but we both brushed it off and went to lunch. We came home, put Harrison down for a nap, and Keri sat down in her favorite spot and prodded Eva to move. She wouldn’t.

We started to worry. Keri got up, walked around, drank cold water, ate some sugary stuff. She sat back down and waited. Maybe that was something? We decided to go to the hospital. We held on to hope that we were just being overly anxious and didn’t take any bags.

We arrived, and a nurse looked for a heartbeat on the doppler: nothing. Not unusual; it was sometimes hard to find because of the extra fluid. They brought in a bedside ultrasound machine and looked. It seemed that maybe there was a flicker of cardiac activity. They told us to get ready to rush in for a c-section.

I just remember repeating, "I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready." I was supposed to have two more weeks. What about the plan? What about Harrison? What about Eva’s aunts and uncles and grandparents? What if they couldn’t make it in time? What about her letter?

They brought in a better ultrasound machine. Keri and I had seen enough ultrasounds to immediately know: There was no heartbeat. Eva was gone before we ever got to meet her. The brain controls steady heart functions, and Eva’s finally gave out.

Keri rolled onto her side and put both hands over her face and let out one of those raw, visceral sobbing bursts. I stood silently shaking my head.

We had tried to do everything right, tried to think of others, tried to take every possible step to make this work, and it didn’t. No organ donation. Not even for research, our fail-safe. We felt cheated.

The word I still have circling in my head is disappointment. That doesn’t really do it justice because it’s profound disappointment. The kind of disappointment that will sneak up on me at different times, like when I’m mowing the yard or rocking Harrison or driving to a game.

Since there was no reason to control variables anymore, the doctors induced Keri into labor. The rest of Sunday and into Monday morning were the darkest, most painful hours of our lives. We had previously come to terms with the outcome and had almost found a joy in the purpose of our daughter’s life. We had looked forward to meeting her and loving her. We knew we’d hurt from her loss, but there was hope in the difference she was making. We had heard from recipients of organ donation that were so encouraging and uplifting.

But the deal got altered. It felt like we were letting everyone down. (I know how ridiculous that sounds.) I felt embarrassed because all that positivity about saving lives wasn’t happening now. (I know how ridiculous that sounds.)

On top of it all, the ultimate kick in the gut: We wouldn’t even see her alive. I struggled with the idea of Eva’s existence and her humanity all along, about whether a terminal diagnosis made her dead already. I clung to knowing her humanity would be validated to me when I saw her as a living, breathing human being. I wanted to watch her die because that would mean I got to watch her live. I longed for just five minutes with her — heck, five seconds with her. All of that practical stuff about organ donation was irrelevant to me now. I just wanted to hold my baby girl and see her chest move up and down. I just wanted to be her daddy, if only for a few seconds.

Eva came surprisingly quick on Monday. Keri forced me to go get some lunch  —  a sad, lonely lunch featuring me taking bites of chicken fingers in between sobs  —  and I got back to the hospital around noon. Keri sat up and felt some pain. Then she felt another shot of pain ring through her body. Our photographer had just arrived and was setting up. Keri started to panic and asked for nurses to come in. They checked her, and it was time to have a baby. I still wasn’t ready.

At 12:20 we called our family and told them to hurry.

At 12:30, our doctor, Dr. Pinard, arrived.

At 12:33 and 12:35, Laurie from LifeShare tried calling Keri.

At 12:37, Eva Grace Young was born. I cut her umbilical cord at 12:38.

My phone rang at 12:40 and 12:41, and then a text came. It was Laurie from LifeShare. "Hey Royce, it’s Laurie . Will you give me a call when you get a chance? I think I have some good news for you."

Keri and I held each other and cried as the nurses cleaned Eva, and Dr. Pinard called LifeShare for us.

Then, she walked up to the foot of the bed.

"I’m on the phone with LifeShare," Dr. Pinard said, a smile cracking through on her face. "They have a recipient for Eva’s eyes."

It’s weird to say that during probably the worst experience of my life was also maybe the best moment of my life, but I think it was the best moment of my life.

The timing of it all is just something I can’t explain. It wasn’t what we planned or hoped for, but it was everything we needed in that moment. I buried my head in my arms and sobbed harder than I ever have. Keri put her hands over her face and did the same. Happy tears.

This was our reaction when Dr. Pinard told us about Eva’s eyes.

As the nurses handed her to us for the first time, much of the dread and fear was lifted from us and replaced with hope and joy again. Here comes Eva Grace Young, the superhero she was always meant to be.

None of it went as we planned. We’re trying to rest on knowing we did the best we could. We always said we wanted to limit our regret, and I think in 20 years or so, as we reflect on this, there’s not much we’d change.

We’re proud to be Eva’s parents. We’re thrilled with the impact she’s made. People from around the world have sent us messages telling us they’ve signed up to be organ donors because of Eva.

Eva’s the first ever —  not baby, but person — in the state of Oklahoma to donate a whole eye, and she donated two.

Because of her, LifeShare has made connections in other states to set up eye transplants for the future. They have an infant organ donation plan they now are working with sharing with other organ procurement organizations in Colorado and Texas. They call it the Eva Protocol.

I keep thinking about looking into her eyes some day, but more than anything, I think about her eyes seeing her mom, dad, and brother.

We always wondered things about Eva, like what color her hair would be, if she’d have Harrison’s nose, if she’d have dimples like her mama, or what color her eyes would be. In the time we spent with her, one eye was just a little bit open, and I fought the temptation to peek. I can’t ever hold my daughter again. I can’t ever talk to her or hear her giggle. But I can dream about looking into her eyes for the first time one day and finding out what color they are.

This story first appeared on the author's Medium and is reprinted here with permission.

The unbelievable story of baby Eva Grace Young: the superhero who never lived.

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/16/the-unbelievable-story-of-baby-eva-grace-young-the-superhero-who-never-lived/

The unbelievable story of baby Eva Grace Young: the superhero who never lived.

My wife Keri and I went in for the standard 19-week anatomy scan of our second child. As a parent, you think that appointment is all about finding out boy or girl, but it’s about a whole lot more.

In our case, our daughter was diagnosed with a rare birth defect called anencephaly — some 3 in 10,000 pregnancies rare. The phrase our doctor used in explaining it was “incompatible with life,” which looks as terrible in words as it sounds. The child fails to develop the frontal lobe of the brain or the top of their skull. The chance of survival is 0%. We sat in a doctor’s office, five months before our daughter was to be born, knowing she would die.

The options weren’t great. There was A) inducing early, which in effect was terminating the pregnancy or B) continuing the pregnancy to full term.

Within a minute or so of finding out, Keri asked if we could donate the baby’s organs if we went to full term. It was on her heart and mind, but we left the doctor and still spent the next 48 hours deciding what we were going to do. It was excruciating. We considered terminating. We had to. Were we capable of taking on the weight of the 20 weeks ahead? In our minds, we were intentionally taking on the loss of a child, rather than the loss of a pregnancy. And, yes, there is a difference.

We decided to continue, and we chose the name Eva for our girl, which means “giver of life.”

The mission was simple: get Eva to full term, welcome her into this world to die, and let her give the gift of life to some other hurting family.

It was a practical approach, with an objective for an already settled ending point. We met with an organ procurement organization called LifeShare of Oklahoma and found out we’d be the eighth family in the state to donate the organs of an infant.

There wasn’t much of a precedent or process in place because, until only recently, most parents of anencephalic babies didn’t know it was an option. There’s this weird gray area involved because, even without a brain, these babies can’t be declared brain dead. Her heart would need to stop beating, leaving a finite window of, let’s call it, “opportunity,” to recover her kidneys, liver, and maybe pancreas and heart valves. We asked about other things, like her eyes or corneas, but LifeShare told us they’d never done that before, even with an adult.

All photos by Mitzi Aylor/Alyor Photography. Used with the permission of Royce Young.

Part of the difficulty of the decision to carry on was the physical pregnancy and the mental burden of carrying a baby for 20 more weeks knowing she would die. The kicks and punches to Keri’s bladder served as a constant reminder of what was inside. (Yes, Eva kicked like any other baby; her brainstem was complete, which is what controls basic motor functions. I know, we had a hard time wrapping our minds around it too.) She feared people asking what she was having or the due date or if the nursery was ready.

What we unexpectedly found, though, was joy in the pregnancy. We happily talked about our sweet Eva, and day by day, our love for her grew. We got excited to be her parents.

I think a big part of that was connected to the decision we made to continue on, which was empowering. She had a name, an identity, and a purpose. The idea of choice in pregnancy is a complicated one, and one I kind of want to avoid here. Wherever you fall, just know, we were empowered by our decision, our responsibility to be Eva’s mom and dad for as long as we could. We went from seeing the pregnancy as a vehicle to help others to looking forward to holding her, kissing her, telling her about her brother, and being her parents.

The time we’d have was completely unknown, with it ranging anywhere from five seconds to five minutes to five hours to, in some more optimistic estimates, five days.

We decided to have a planned c-section. We wanted to maximize our chances of seeing Eva alive and be able to control as many variables as possible.

There wouldn’t be any surprise labor in the middle of the night. We could have our first child Harrison there to meet his sister and grandparents ready to hold their granddaughter even if she was only alive for an hour or so. We wanted to do what was best for our girl. That’s what parents do.

As the date neared, the meetings and appointments cranked up. We had what everyone called the “Big Meeting,” a gathering at Baptist Hospital of about 30 people that included multiple people from LifeShare, NICU nurses and doctors, neonatologists, and other “Very Important Hospital People.” We were the first infant organ donor ever at Baptist, and they were developing a protocol on the fly. There were plans and contingency plans and contingency plans for the contingency plans.

The process was going to be delicate, and to be frank, it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would work. There were a lot of things that were going to need to go just right, even with the intricate plans that were being put in place. It was made clear to us over and over and over again how if Eva’s kidneys or liver didn’t go directly for transplant, they would go to research, and infant organ research is incredibly valuable.

But I wanted a tangible outcome. I wanted to be able to meet and hug and shake the hand of the person my daughter saved.

I couldn’t dream about what my daughter would grow up to be, so I fantasized about the difference she could make.

What if the person who got her kidneys became president? What if her liver went to a little boy and he goes on to win the Heisman Trophy? I was writing the “30 for 30” script in my mind every night as I went to sleep. It was something to hold onto; it was the kind of hope I wrapped up with both arms. Research was nothing more than a fail-safe to me, a Plan B that I didn’t want any part of.

There were some concerns from the hospital’s ethics team about Eva and our plans. As I explained to them — and to anyone else out there who has this idea that we grew a daughter just for her organs — Eva was a terminal child. And as her parents, we elected to make her an organ donor. That’s it. She would be born, live an indefinite amount of time, and then we were choosing to donate her organs.

Then suddenly, we were in the two-week window. In two weeks, we’d be prepping to welcome our baby girl into the world and preparing to say goodbye to her.

I planned on sitting down that day to write Eva a letter, like I did before Harrison was born to give him on his 18th birthday. She’d never read it, but I was going to read it to her. Keri didn’t feel Eva move much that morning, but we both brushed it off and went to lunch. We came home, put Harrison down for a nap, and Keri sat down in her favorite spot and prodded Eva to move. She wouldn’t.

We started to worry. Keri got up, walked around, drank cold water, ate some sugary stuff. She sat back down and waited. Maybe that was something? We decided to go to the hospital. We held on to hope that we were just being overly anxious and didn’t take any bags.

We arrived, and a nurse looked for a heartbeat on the doppler: nothing. Not unusual; it was sometimes hard to find because of the extra fluid. They brought in a bedside ultrasound machine and looked. It seemed that maybe there was a flicker of cardiac activity. They told us to get ready to rush in for a c-section.

I just remember repeating, “I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready I’m not ready.” I was supposed to have two more weeks. What about the plan? What about Harrison? What about Eva’s aunts and uncles and grandparents? What if they couldn’t make it in time? What about her letter?

They brought in a better ultrasound machine. Keri and I had seen enough ultrasounds to immediately know: There was no heartbeat. Eva was gone before we ever got to meet her. The brain controls steady heart functions, and Eva’s finally gave out.

Keri rolled onto her side and put both hands over her face and let out one of those raw, visceral sobbing bursts. I stood silently shaking my head.

We had tried to do everything right, tried to think of others, tried to take every possible step to make this work, and it didn’t. No organ donation. Not even for research, our fail-safe. We felt cheated.

The word I still have circling in my head is disappointment. That doesn’t really do it justice because it’s profound disappointment. The kind of disappointment that will sneak up on me at different times, like when I’m mowing the yard or rocking Harrison or driving to a game.

Since there was no reason to control variables anymore, the doctors induced Keri into labor. The rest of Sunday and into Monday morning were the darkest, most painful hours of our lives. We had previously come to terms with the outcome and had almost found a joy in the purpose of our daughter’s life. We had looked forward to meeting her and loving her. We knew we’d hurt from her loss, but there was hope in the difference she was making. We had heard from recipients of organ donation that were so encouraging and uplifting.

But the deal got altered. It felt like we were letting everyone down. (I know how ridiculous that sounds.) I felt embarrassed because all that positivity about saving lives wasn’t happening now. (I know how ridiculous that sounds.)

On top of it all, the ultimate kick in the gut: We wouldn’t even see her alive. I struggled with the idea of Eva’s existence and her humanity all along, about whether a terminal diagnosis made her dead already. I clung to knowing her humanity would be validated to me when I saw her as a living, breathing human being. I wanted to watch her die because that would mean I got to watch her live. I longed for just five minutes with her — heck, five seconds with her. All of that practical stuff about organ donation was irrelevant to me now. I just wanted to hold my baby girl and see her chest move up and down. I just wanted to be her daddy, if only for a few seconds.

Eva came surprisingly quick on Monday. Keri forced me to go get some lunch  —  a sad, lonely lunch featuring me taking bites of chicken fingers in between sobs  —  and I got back to the hospital around noon. Keri sat up and felt some pain. Then she felt another shot of pain ring through her body. Our photographer had just arrived and was setting up. Keri started to panic and asked for nurses to come in. They checked her, and it was time to have a baby. I still wasn’t ready.

At 12:20 we called our family and told them to hurry.

At 12:30, our doctor, Dr. Pinard, arrived.

At 12:33 and 12:35, Laurie from LifeShare tried calling Keri.

At 12:37, Eva Grace Young was born. I cut her umbilical cord at 12:38.

My phone rang at 12:40 and 12:41, and then a text came. It was Laurie from LifeShare. “Hey Royce, it’s Laurie . Will you give me a call when you get a chance? I think I have some good news for you.”

Keri and I held each other and cried as the nurses cleaned Eva, and Dr. Pinard called LifeShare for us.

Then, she walked up to the foot of the bed.

“I’m on the phone with LifeShare,” Dr. Pinard said, a smile cracking through on her face. “They have a recipient for Eva’s eyes.”

It’s weird to say that during probably the worst experience of my life was also maybe the best moment of my life, but I think it was the best moment of my life.

The timing of it all is just something I can’t explain. It wasn’t what we planned or hoped for, but it was everything we needed in that moment. I buried my head in my arms and sobbed harder than I ever have. Keri put her hands over her face and did the same. Happy tears.

This was our reaction when Dr. Pinard told us about Eva’s eyes.

As the nurses handed her to us for the first time, much of the dread and fear was lifted from us and replaced with hope and joy again. Here comes Eva Grace Young, the superhero she was always meant to be.

None of it went as we planned. We’re trying to rest on knowing we did the best we could. We always said we wanted to limit our regret, and I think in 20 years or so, as we reflect on this, there’s not much we’d change.

We’re proud to be Eva’s parents. We’re thrilled with the impact she’s made. People from around the world have sent us messages telling us they’ve signed up to be organ donors because of Eva.

Eva’s the first ever —  not baby, but person — in the state of Oklahoma to donate a whole eye, and she donated two.

Because of her, LifeShare has made connections in other states to set up eye transplants for the future. They have an infant organ donation plan they now are working with sharing with other organ procurement organizations in Colorado and Texas. They call it the Eva Protocol.

I keep thinking about looking into her eyes some day, but more than anything, I think about her eyes seeing her mom, dad, and brother.

We always wondered things about Eva, like what color her hair would be, if she’d have Harrison’s nose, if she’d have dimples like her mama, or what color her eyes would be. In the time we spent with her, one eye was just a little bit open, and I fought the temptation to peek. I can’t ever hold my daughter again. I can’t ever talk to her or hear her giggle. But I can dream about looking into her eyes for the first time one day and finding out what color they are.

This story first appeared on the author’s Medium and is reprinted here with permission.

#Baby #Eva #Grace #Lived #Story #Superhero #Unbelievable #Young

<p>The unbelievable story of baby Eva Grace Young: the superhero who never lived.<br></p>

[ad_1]

My spouse Keri and I went in for the common 19-7 days anatomy scan of our 2nd youngster. As a parent, you imagine that appointment is all about discovering out boy or female, but it is about a full whole lot more.

In our scenario, our daughter was identified with a scarce start defect referred to as anencephaly — some three in 10,000 pregnancies scarce. The phrase our medical professional employed in detailing it was "incompatible with daily life," which appears as horrible in words and phrases as it appears. The youngster fails to acquire the frontal lobe of the mind or the top rated of their skull. The prospect of survival is %. We sat in a doctor’s workplace, five months right before our daughter was to be born, realizing she would die.

The choices weren’t terrific. There was A) inducing early, which in impact was terminating the being pregnant or B) continuing the being pregnant to full phrase.

In just a moment or so of discovering out, Keri requested if we could donate the baby’s organs if we went to full phrase. It was on her heart and brain, but we remaining the medical professional and continue to invested the following forty eight hrs choosing what we had been heading to do. It was excruciating. We viewed as terminating. We had to. Ended up we capable of taking on the weight of the 20 weeks forward? In our minds, we had been intentionally taking on the decline of a youngster, instead than the decline of a being pregnant. And, indeed, there is a difference.

We made the decision to continue, and we chose the title Eva for our female, which implies "giver of daily life."

The mission was uncomplicated: get Eva to full phrase, welcome her into this environment to die, and allow her give the reward of daily life to some other hurting family.

It was a practical method, with an objective for an previously settled ending level. We fulfilled with an organ procurement corporation referred to as LifeShare of Oklahoma and found out we’d be the eighth family in the state to donate the organs of an infant.

There wasn’t considerably of a precedent or system in spot simply because, until only not too long ago, most dad and mom of anencephalic babies did not know it was an selection. There is this odd grey place concerned simply because, even without the need of a mind, these babies cannot be declared mind lifeless. Her heart would require to quit beating, leaving a finite window of, let’s contact it, "option," to recuperate her kidneys, liver, and probably pancreas and heart valves. We requested about other points, like her eyes or corneas, but LifeShare advised us they’d hardly ever performed that right before, even with an grownup.

All shots by Mitzi Aylor/Alyor Images. Employed with the authorization of Royce Youthful.

Element of the issues of the choice to carry on was the bodily being pregnant and the mental stress of carrying a little one for 20 more weeks realizing she would die. The kicks and punches to Keri’s bladder served as a consistent reminder of what was inside of. (Certainly, Eva kicked like any other little one her brainstem was full, which is what controls basic motor capabilities. I know, we had a challenging time wrapping our minds around it much too.) She feared men and women asking what she was owning or the because of date or if the nursery was all set.

What we unexpectedly found, nevertheless, was joy in the being pregnant. We happily talked about our sweet Eva, and working day by working day, our really like for her grew. We obtained fired up to be her dad and mom.

I imagine a significant part of that was related to the choice we made to continue on, which was empowering. She had a title, an identification, and a objective. The notion of alternative in being pregnant is a complicated just one, and just one I sort of want to steer clear of in this article. Where ever you fall, just know, we had been empowered by our choice, our responsibility to be Eva’s mom and dad for as prolonged as we could. We went from observing the being pregnant as a motor vehicle to assistance other folks to wanting ahead to holding her, kissing her, telling her about her brother, and staying her dad and mom.

The time we’d have was completely not known, with it ranging any where from five seconds to five minutes to five hrs to, in some more optimistic estimates, five times.

We made the decision to have a prepared c-segment. We preferred to optimize our odds of observing Eva alive and be equipped to management as several variables as achievable.

There wouldn’t be any surprise labor in the middle of the night. We could have our 1st youngster Harrison there to fulfill his sister and grandparents all set to maintain their granddaughter even if she was only alive for an hour or so. We preferred to do what was most effective for our female. Which is what dad and mom do.

As the date neared, the meetings and appointments cranked up. We had what every person referred to as the "Huge Assembly," a collecting at Baptist Medical center of about 30 men and women that integrated a number of men and women from LifeShare, NICU nurses and health professionals, neonatologists, and other "Very Crucial Medical center People." We had been the 1st infant organ donor at any time at Baptist, and they had been building a protocol on the fly. There had been designs and contingency designs and contingency designs for the contingency designs.

The system was heading to be delicate, and to be frank, it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would get the job done. There had been a whole lot of points that had been heading to require to go just suitable, even with the intricate designs that had been staying set in spot. It was made obvious to us in excess of and in excess of and in excess of once again how if Eva’s kidneys or liver did not go straight for transplant, they would go to analysis, and infant organ analysis is extremely important.

But I preferred a tangible final result. I preferred to be equipped to fulfill and hug and shake the hand of the person my daughter saved.

I couldn’t dream about what my daughter would increase up to be, so I fantasized about the difference she could make.

What if the person who obtained her kidneys turned president? What if her liver went to a small boy and he goes on to earn the Heisman Trophy? I was composing the "30 for 30" script in my brain just about every night as I went to slumber. It was a little something to maintain on to it was the sort of hope I wrapped up with equally arms. Study was nothing more than a fail-protected to me, a Strategy B that I did not want any part of.

There had been some problems from the hospital's ethics workforce about Eva and our designs. As I described to them — and to anyone else out there who has this notion that we grew a daughter just for her organs — Eva was a terminal youngster. And as her dad and mom, we elected to make her an organ donor. Which is it. She would be born, reside an indefinite sum of time, and then we had been picking to donate her organs.

Then quickly, we had been in the two-7 days window. In two weeks, we’d be prepping to welcome our little one female into the environment and preparing to say goodbye to her.

I prepared on sitting down down that working day to publish Eva a letter, like I did right before Harrison was born to give him on his 18th birthday. She’d hardly ever examine it, but I was heading to examine it to her. Keri did not come to feel Eva transfer considerably that early morning, but we equally brushed it off and went to lunch. We arrived residence, set Harrison down for a nap, and Keri sat down in her favored location and prodded Eva to transfer. She wouldn’t.

We began to fear. Keri obtained up, walked around, drank cold h2o, ate some sugary things. She sat again down and waited. Maybe that was a little something? We made the decision to go to the clinic. We held on to hope that we had been just staying overly nervous and did not just take any baggage.

We arrived, and a nurse looked for a heartbeat on the doppler: nothing. Not unusual it was sometimes challenging to come across simply because of the excess fluid. They brought in a bedside ultrasound machine and looked. It seemed that probably there was a flicker of cardiac activity. They advised us to get all set to hurry in for a c-segment.

I just bear in mind repeating, "I’m not all set I’m not all set I’m not all set I’m not all set." I was intended to have two more weeks. What about the program? What about Harrison? What about Eva’s aunts and uncles and grandparents? What if they couldn’t make it in time? What about her letter?

They brought in a better ultrasound machine. Keri and I had seen more than enough ultrasounds to immediately know: There was no heartbeat. Eva was long gone right before we at any time obtained to fulfill her. The mind controls regular heart capabilities, and Eva’s last but not least gave out.

Keri rolled on to her side and set equally palms in excess of her face and allow out just one of people raw, visceral sobbing bursts. I stood silently shaking my head.

We had tried to do almost everything suitable, tried to imagine of other folks, tried to just take just about every achievable move to make this get the job done, and it did not. No organ donation. Not even for analysis, our fail-protected. We felt cheated.

The term I continue to have circling in my head is disappointment. That does not seriously do it justice simply because it is profound disappointment. The sort of disappointment that will sneak up on me at distinctive periods, like when I’m mowing the yard or rocking Harrison or driving to a recreation.

Considering the fact that there was no explanation to management variables anymore, the health professionals induced Keri into labor. The rest of Sunday and into Monday early morning had been the darkest, most agonizing hrs of our lives. We had earlier arrive to phrases with the final result and had nearly found a joy in the objective of our daughter’s daily life. We had looked ahead to conference her and loving her. We understood we’d damage from her decline, but there was hope in the difference she was creating. We had heard from recipients of organ donation that had been so encouraging and uplifting.

But the deal obtained altered. It felt like we had been permitting every person down. (I know how preposterous that appears.) I felt embarrassed simply because all that positivity about preserving lives wasn’t happening now. (I know how preposterous that appears.)

On top rated of it all, the supreme kick in the intestine: We wouldn’t even see her alive. I struggled with the notion of Eva’s existence and her humanity all together, about no matter whether a terminal diagnosis made her lifeless previously. I clung to realizing her humanity would be validated to me when I noticed her as a living, breathing human staying. I preferred to watch her die simply because that would suggest I obtained to watch her reside. I longed for just five minutes with her — heck, five seconds with her. All of that practical things about organ donation was irrelevant to me now. I just preferred to maintain my little one female and see her upper body transfer up and down. I just preferred to be her daddy, if only for a handful of seconds.

Eva arrived remarkably brief on Monday. Keri pressured me to go get some lunch  —  a unhappy, lonely lunch featuring me taking bites of rooster fingers in amongst sobs  —  and I obtained again to the clinic around midday. Keri sat up and felt some pain. Then she felt yet another shot of pain ring by her system. Our photographer had just arrived and was placing up. Keri began to panic and requested for nurses to arrive in. They checked her, and it was time to have a little one. I continue to wasn’t all set.

At twelve:20 we referred to as our family and advised them to hurry.

At twelve:30, our medical professional, Dr. Pinard, arrived.

At twelve:33 and twelve:35, Laurie from LifeShare tried contacting Keri.

At twelve:37, Eva Grace Youthful was born. I slash her umbilical wire at twelve:38.

My cellphone rang at twelve:forty and twelve:forty one, and then a text arrived. It was Laurie from LifeShare. "Hey Royce, it is Laurie . Will you give me a contact when you get a prospect? I imagine I have some very good news for you."

Keri and I held every other and cried as the nurses cleaned Eva, and Dr. Pinard referred to as LifeShare for us.

Then, she walked up to the foot of the bed.

"I’m on the cellphone with LifeShare," Dr. Pinard reported, a smile cracking by on her face. "They have a recipient for Eva’s eyes."

It’s odd to say that during probably the worst encounter of my daily life was also probably the most effective moment of my daily life, but I imagine it was the most effective moment of my daily life.

The timing of it all is just a little something I cannot demonstrate. It wasn’t what we prepared or hoped for, but it was almost everything we necessary in that moment. I buried my head in my arms and sobbed more challenging than I at any time have. Keri set her palms in excess of her face and did the similar. Content tears.

This was our response when Dr. Pinard advised us about Eva’s eyes.

As the nurses handed her to us for the 1st time, considerably of the dread and panic was lifted from us and replaced with hope and joy once again. Right here will come Eva Grace Youthful, the superhero she was generally meant to be.

None of it went as we prepared. We’re making an attempt to rest on realizing we did the most effective we could. We generally reported we preferred to restrict our regret, and I imagine in 20 a long time or so, as we reflect on this, there is not considerably we’d modify.

We’re happy to be Eva’s dad and mom. We’re thrilled with the influence she’s made. People from around the environment have sent us messages telling us they’ve signed up to be organ donors simply because of Eva.

Eva’s the 1st at any time —  not little one, but person — in the state of Oklahoma to donate a full eye, and she donated two.

Mainly because of her, LifeShare has made connections in other states to established up eye transplants for the foreseeable future. They have an infant organ donation program they now are doing the job with sharing with other organ procurement companies in Colorado and Texas. They contact it the Eva Protocol.

I hold imagining about wanting into her eyes some working day, but more than everything, I imagine about her eyes observing her mom, dad, and brother.

We generally questioned points about Eva, like what colour her hair would be, if she’d have Harrison’s nose, if she’d have dimples like her mama, or what colour her eyes would be. In the time we invested with her, just one eye was just a small bit open up, and I fought the temptation to peek. I cannot at any time maintain my daughter once again. I cannot at any time discuss to her or listen to her giggle. But I can dream about wanting into her eyes for the 1st time just one working day and discovering out what colour they are.

This story 1st appeared on the author's Medium and is reprinted in this article with authorization.

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