”Hey, look ‘ma, I made it.”
TW: internalized ableism, slight medical horror, body horror, insect imagery (butterflies), staring, eye horror kinda, kinda depressive tendencies, implied narcolepsy
Contaminated person #3: Cameron Corduroy Wilkins
Threat level: Extremely low
Hostility level: Extremely low
Cameron’s fine. He could be mad at you for leaving, or at McLean for letting this happen, or at his mother for folding to his wish for life, hell, even at himself for wanting to go in the first place, but he isn’t. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. It’s just the cards he was dealt.
This isn’t much different from his childhood before he arrived at this island. It wasn’t like he had much of a life to lose to orange wings fragile as paper, and eyes that turned the world into a mosaic mural. It’s fine. This is just what happens sometimes. He’s fine.
You won’t see him. But if he is awake, he will be somewhere. Watching. He often watches from a distance, trying to gauge any effects this island has on someone.
It’s a skill kept hidden by the shadow of his frailness: Playing the part of a clinician. Even when he’d believed that he was just going to a competition, he had prescription bottles, over the counter remedies, disinfectant and bandages packed into his belongings.
It’s nice, sometimes, to believe his faith that this can be even slightly mitigated as he hands me a package of ibuprofen. Sometimes.
Other times, though, I can’t tell if it’s just hollow words, or if he does think this could be understood. And I don’t know if I dare to take his word for it, when I barely even know what they mean.
When I try to ask him, he mutters something, before dozing off again. He has a word for that too.
He is always so, so tired. And when he is tired, he’ll think of his mother. He didn’t just want to prove her “wrong”. He wanted to reassure her that he could be fine.
But now she can’t know what’s happened, or where he is. She must’ve been right this whole time. But he seems to have come to terms with the fact that he won’t see her now, for her own safety.
That’s fine. Cameron’s fine. Adderall helps, he insists.
He’s fine, Dakota. And he doesn’t want help. Not your help, at least.
It’s evil to help people who don’t want help. You know that, right?
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