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#the doctor comes out looking the worst in her section rip to him for not handling her leaving him in a normal and healthy way very well

quietwingsinthesky · 3 months

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of ten’s companions, if the doctor couldn’t handle losing them and crossed his own timeline to trick them into traveling with future!him instead of past!him so that he’d have a little more time with them:

rose would do it. first because bless her but she has the situational awareness of a rock, and legitimately would not realize this isn’t her doctor until his facade starts to break down and he starts bleeding grief-laced love for her at every turn. but once she does realize it, she’s both deeply sympathetic and a little scared that she could make him into this. it’s a lot to be confronted with having that much power over someone, to break them so thoroughly. rose would try to get back to her doctor, but while she’s with the future version, she tries to do what she can to ease his pain. (she also tries to figure out a way to subvert her fate. she fails.)

i think martha would be harder to trick. she can smell desperation on the doctor like a bloodhound. she is so tapped into the fact that this man wants to off himself so bad and that she’s 90% of his self-restraint, so present her with a doctor who is lacking that and she’s onto him immediately. however, assuming he gets her to come with him, explains why he’s doing this, there’s like. a minute where she’s kind of. not flattered exactly, but surprised, giddy with the realization that he’d come back for a little more time with her, especially if this is early season 3 martha. which would all come crashing down around the time that he reveals that he wasn’t pushed to this by losing her to some tragedy or her death or anything- but that she chose to leave. that is the point at which martha goes ‘oh i need to get the fuck off of this tardis right now’ and ghosts the past!doctor that she was also traveling with because holy shit, man.

donna, like rose, is easily bamboozled into following the wrong doctor home, provided that he shuffles her along into his tardis too fast for her to argue. but she catches on far quicker than rose does. like, three minutes tops of watching the doctor move through the tardis in a way that’s definitely not enthusiastic piloting and looks more like guilty panic. and then she yells at him for lying to her. and she yells at him for kidnapping her. and then she stops yelling because he’s gone sort of still and quiet and his eyes are just broken. and he doesn’t explain himself, he confesses. donna is going to try to stay with him after this btw. because how do you go back to looking your best friend in the eyes when you know he’d take everything you’ve become away from you, even to save your life? and this is still the doctor, he still did that to her, but he regrets it. regrets it so much that he can’t live with it, he’s breaking time and space just to hear her say his name again. and donna doesn’t want to lose him anymore than he wanted to lose her.

#i am so enthralled by this concept you have no idea #also like. i mentioned in rose’s section how this is a genuinely scary situation for her.#but to be clear. it is for all three of them the moment they realize that this Is Not Their Doctor #because theyre suddenly on a ship going through time ans space with. almost a stranger. and one who has proven that he’s break laws #fundamental to his worldview rather than let them go #doctor who #rose tyler #martha jones #martha girl get the fuck out of there oh my god #the doctor comes out looking the worst in her section rip to him for not handling her leaving him in a normal and healthy way very well #i think it would be very funny if the doctor said goodbye to her and then immediately went. ‘oh! right! martha is the only thing keeping me #from jumping off a cliff! brb i need to get martha back at whatever cost!’ sir go to therapy #donna noble #also also to be clear im not trying to insult rose in her section thats just how she is #remember that time her boyfriend turned into plastic in front of her and she. didnt notice. or that time the doctor was being strangled in #the other room and she. didnt notice.#rose tyler girl that you are. you never know what the fuck is going on around you and i love you for that. how are you still alive.#REMEMBER THAT TIME SHE GOT BACK FROM AN ALTERNATE DIMENSION AND DIDNT EVEN NOTICE THE DALEK ABOUT TO SHOOT THE DOCTOR IN THE FACE #ROSE TYLER. GIRL. LOOK LEFT AND RIGHT BEFORE CROSSING A STREET AT LEAST #donna’s here is the most fucked up i think because even if this situation is ‘resolved’ and she goes back to her doctor like. how does she #keep going with that fact in the back of her mind at all times. that he can and will do this to her. that he’ll take himself and everything #else away from her while she begs him not to.#angst <3

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stardewstardropthoughts · 1 year

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Hmmm... How would the bachelors react to F!Farmer going into labor/delivering their baby?

Ah man labour is a time and a half lol I’m gonna write this as like vag birth not c section just because it’ll be a bit easier to write that way, no hate on c sections obvi though, I had one lol. all births are valid! No birth discourse on my page please

Harvey:

He doesn’t like seeing you in pain

When labour first began he was timing the contractions and helping you walk around in-between or gently rocking with you back and forth, whatever you wanted

When they got to three to five minutes apart he’s helping you get to his office, offers you pain relief if you want it

Will have maru there to wipe sweat off your face, grab blankets, whatever you need

When it comes time to push he really wants to hold your hand but he also has to do his job has doctor and catch your child so maru more then likely holds your hand if you want her too

He’s sobbing when your baby’s born, a beautiful 8lb 10 oz baby girl with Harvey’s eyes and your hair colour

Lays her on your chest for skin to skin while you deliver the placenta and all but sobs at what a cute picture the two of you are, even if your hairs all matted down with sweat and your face is red from pushing

Loves his little family

Elliott:

It was probably like 1 in the morning and your water had just broken

You didn’t wanna panic your husband but also your literally in labour right now and there’s fluid all over the floor and your pants

You wake him up and he’s immediately out of the bed gathering the bags and making sure you have everything you need while you change into dry pants and a very thick pad

Man pretty much bangs Harvey’s door down

Harvey expected it though, being your primary care and all, offers you pain meds if you want them

You decide to get the epidural, Elliott almost gags watching since a needle in the spine doesn’t look comfy but god do you enjoy the pain relief

You get to have a few extra hours to nap while he paces nervously until it’s time to push

After about three hours of pushing you have a beautiful baby boy who weighs 7lb 5oz and has Elliott’s hair and eyes and your nose

Elliott could write a whole book on the emotions he’s feeling but he chooses to spend his time snuggling with you and your child

Alex:

Early on you decided you wanted a home birth so y’all have a dedicated room in the house for when it’s go time

Literally your water broke at the worst time, you were out weeding the fields dispite Alex desperately trying to get you to rest when suddenly there was a small gush of fluid going down your legs

Rip your overalls because now it looks like you peed your pants, you waddle your way back to the farmhouse and inform your husband who’s immediately drawing you a nice bath to wash the dirt off and clean up before having the baby

Calls Harvey while you’re in the bath and Harvey rushes over

Your on the bed in the birthing room currently trying to breath through contractions while Alex massages your back

He’s holding your hand while you push, he assured you he won’t be mad if you squeeze to tight or yell at him

After all is said and done you have a beautiful baby girl, weighing 9lbs 7oz (he was a big baby, you cursed at him a little while pushing out your daughter)

Sam:

Panic

Will offer to carry you to Harvey’s office (he will drop you accidentally, so you opt to walk lol)

Asking Harvey a million questions a minute, how many babies has he delivered, how much will it hurt, what do you think the baby’s eye color will be

You opt for pain meds and he passes out watching the epidural get placed

He wakes up a few minutes later to maru putting a cold cloth on his head lol, gets to sit in a chair and hold your hand while you push out the infant

You guys have a beautiful baby boy who weighs 6lbs 7oz, he’s small but he’s perfect and he has your hair and Sams eyes

Sams crying just a little bit while he cuts the umbilical cord, maru rats him out to you

Sebastian:

On the outside he’s very calm and collected while grabbing the baby bag, making sure your comfy for the trip to Harvey’s and making sure everything’s ready

On the inside? His brains screaming at him, panic and worry are a constant through the whole experience

He’s secretly glad maru is there to support him and you both even if it is just with wet cloths and breathing exercises

Harvey offers pain relief, you opt out cause needles in the spine sound absolutely terrifying to you

He’s rubbing your back, holding your hand, brushing your hair back out of your face, praising you for how well your doing

When the infant is born it’s a bit of a shock for you both since you end up with twins! Thank god for being over prepared and bringing like five different sets of clothes for baby

One beautiful baby boy who weighs 6lbs 1oz and one beautiful baby girl who weighs 5lbs 5oz, Sebastian is sobbing fully

Maru is calling robin to tell her to build a second crib lol

Shane:

Was probably half asleep when you woke him up to tell him your water broke and your in labour

Another home birth, you wanted a home water birth so he’s immediately up and filling the birthing pool while you call Harvey and waddle around getting undressed from the bottom down and into the pool of warm water

He will get in with you if you ask him to he doesn’t care how gross it’s gonna get, the only thing on his mind is how he can best support you through this

He’s rubbing your shoulders, your back, asking what he can do for you, if you need a drink or anything

When it comes time to push he’s holding your hand and helping you breath through it

You have a beautiful baby girl who weighs 7lbs 8oz and has Shane’s eyes and your hair

He’s smitten with her immediately and is sobbing over the little family you’ve created with him, he never thought he was worthy of any of this but now he’s here and he has it and it’s amazing to him

dresses her in a little onesie with cartoon chickens all over it, cannot wait to bring her around to meet everyone

#stardew fanfic #stardew valley #stardew farmer #stardew x reader #stardew headcanon #stardew marriage #stardew elliott #stardew harvey #stardew sam #stardew sebastian #stardew shane #stardew alex #stardew maru #sdv bachelors

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ecoamerica · 24 days

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v3nusxsky · 10 months

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I came from the comment section on the pt2 of housewife and as an angst fan and writer of Larissa please! I need a taste of my own medicine.

reader comes down ill with some sort of virus that can only affect outcasts- and because of that no cure has been made resulting in reader either hospitalised or dead 🙏🤭

or this can just be like a one shot on its own

To lose you now

*Authors note~ now for the flip side ending and I would just like to start off with and apology to those who wanted fluff... rip your feelings*

Trigger Warnings~ angst near character death illness needles etc

Prompt~see ask^^^^

✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿✿

The throwing up never stopped over the past three days. Larissa was growing concerned, nothing you ate or drank stayed in your system and your body was becoming weak. Your ability going mental a lot of the time. Rapidly flickering through different ranges of flowers and vines that you had no control over. All you could do is lay in bed or sit with your head over the bowl of the toilet. You were exhausted and desperately pleading with Larissa to make this stop now. Of course Larissa tried. But no amount of over the counter medicines seemed to help combat the illness, that's when she made the decision to take you to the hospital.

You always hated hospitals, the smells and noises and the annoying shades of white everywhere, it was all too much. But Larissa knew something was very wrong when you just resigned to your fate and slumped down into the uncomfortable bed before letting sleep claim you. All she could do is sit by your bedside and silently stew in worry your hand in hers as you slept, ignoring the steady beeping of the monitors.

Doctors and nurses were in and out of your hospital room doing all sorts of tests and inserting cannulas and IVs. All through this you never even stirred, your body limp allowing them to manipulate you however they needed to. That was concerning not only to your blonde wife but to the professionals. No amount of poking and prodding seemed to wake you up. Although that did mean you were obviously to all the tests they were running. Perhaps that's for the best. After all, the answers were either negative or inconclusive which would upset you. You just want to feel better but nothing helps achieve that for you.

Larissa was shocked when you groggily bolted upright and immediately try to locate the bathroom. However this isnt your room and everything is all discombobulated for you. So Larissa immediately jumped up to guide you. "Shh sweetheart it's okay, look it's this way my love" she murmured before scoping your hair into a makeshift ponytail as you did what you needed to. "Don't cry sweetheart it's Okay. We are in the right place now. They will fix you up okay my sweet girl" she whispered soothingly in an attempt to hush your sobs.

It wasn't too long before you settled back on the bed groggily picking at the items embedded on your skin. "Sweet girl you can't do that my love" she mumbled reassuring you that it's okay but also had her climbing onto the bed to hold you close and prevent you from doing the action. That's how you drifted back into a sleep unknowingly developing a fever.

The doctor reappeared a few hours later, where she principal informed him of the bout of sickness and the fact you felt uncharacteristically warm, so of course he wanted to check your temperature but to do so he needed Larissa to move from you for a moment. You immediately clutched onto her and whined, "no stay nerf you ris sooo mchs" with your eyes still screwed tightly shut. With a sad smile the doctor let Larissa stay with you and took your temperature. Upon reading it he knew what to test for next. Hopefully he would be wrong but with all the evidence backing the theory it was looking very much like a possibility.

An hour later a doctor and nurse stood in the doorway, the previous doctor having finished his shift so you now had another doctor. And they delivered the worst news Larissa could've ever imagined. The testing confirmed you'd some how contracted Wolfsbane into your bloodstream and it was now slowing your heartbeat and essentially killing you from the inside out. They could try to counteract it but the success rate was low especially with your ability.

Larissa knew she had to tell you, so she gently tried to stir you awake, "come on sweet girl, it's time to wake up" she murmured to you as you sleepily lolled your head to the side, "mmm?" A hand in your hair and her encouragement to open your eyes had you fighting your body to please your wife. "Darling have you had Wolfsbane?" Your poor groggy mind couldn't remember too much just that Marilyn gifted her a new plant and instructed her to tend to it like she would her other plants. So of course she allowed the plant to have access to her veins, without realising it could kill you.

That small bit of information was all you could offer before collapsing once more into a slumber. The doctors now knowing what they are treating, made them able to set to work on it. Because it was in your bloodstream they had to extract it and give you some blood transfusions. All of which took time and posed a risk of being too late. All Larissa could do is hold you during the process as you cried out during your sleep at the pain it was causing you. All she could do it try to reassure and comfort you, preventing you from ripping out the lines for your medication in a hope you'd recover from this. For now you were unable to leave the hospital as your condition remained critical. Larissa staying with you, there was no where else she would've rather been than holding her sick wife in her arms.

Word count~ 1025

#anon answered #v3nusxsky answers #fanfic #anon requested #larissa weems #principal larissa weems #larissa x you #larissa weems x reader #larissa x reader #principal larissa weems x reader #principal weems #weems #housewife series v3nusxsky

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captainjimothycarter · 3 years

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So silly image of sorts based on cousins, but Peggy and Steve vs other parents regarding their kid because their kid takes after serumed daddy and is big for his age. Someone giving them shit for being terrible parents cause their 'obviously' pre-school aged child is throwing a fit and the snap back that the kid is a year, 18 months, not pre-school don't expect a big kid just because he's tall/broad for his age, he's still a baby etc.

Okay maybe less funny but over protective Steve really wanted to showcase himself.

They knew that there was going to be problems down the road with Steve having the serum and he and Peggy trying for kids.

Howard had given his own input or two and it was nothing more than, “We simply don’t know what will happen, kid. It’s all guessing games. Peggy’s pregnancy could either be completely normal six, seven, eighteen months or she could have the kid in six and the kid be fine or worst.”

Peggy’s lips pursed slightly, taking Steve’s hand into her own. Their wedding bands gently brushed one another as she did. “First off, do you not know how long a woman is pregnant for, Howard? Nine months! Nine months. How…” She pinched the bridge of her nose and waved off anything he said in explanation.

“Second,” she continued with a huff. “What do you mean worse?”

Here now, Howard looked sheepish, more so for the worse than the lack of knowing how long a woman was pregnant for. “Well...when we first met Steve he did have that laundry list of problems and-”

“You mean our kid could be like how I was?” Steve interjected, interrupting an annoyed-looking Howard. “They could-could-”

“Hold up, before you start spiraling, Stevie.” Howard’s hands flew up, raised to defend himself and stop Steve from starting to panic. “I said could. If. Maybe. It’s a possibility, a slight possibility that we have to consider, even if I don’t think it’s possible. That serum coursing through your veins rewrites DNA. Genetics. Your little kid is more likely to have that serum than to have any laundry list of your problem.”

But it was still something they had to think about and Steve was struggling to wrap his mind around that.

All through Peggy’s pregnancy, that problem remained in the back of his head. It was a possibility. No matter how much he tried to reassure himself with the countless doctors and even Howard saying that Peggy was doing outstanding for her pregnancy, how big the baby was, and what naught.

It was still there, no matter how much he tried to drown it with optimistic thoughts.

It wasn’t until Chester Micheal Carter-Rogers was born at ten pounds and nine ounces, twenty-five inches in length did Steve breathe a sigh of relief. Even if Chest was three weeks early and Peggy had to have a c-section.

Peggy and baby were both fine and Steve was grateful, so, so, so grateful.

That’s when the problems began to show how it would be to raise a child with the serum. How much of the serum and if they’d later possess super-human strength, no one was sure. Not even Howard. It was all development.

At three months, Chester was already sitting up on his own and responding to his name with a toothless smile. At five months, he was holding his own bottle and loving to play with his parents. At six months, started the teething.

“Well, at least he doesn’t have your strength,” Peggy tried to joke as Chester chewed on the slushy-texture pacifier. “Else he would’ve bitten my nipple straight off with those three teeth halfway coming in. If he bites my nipple, we’re having a problem, mister.”

Chester just giggled at his mama’s finger and gripped at it, making Steve give that half-smile of relief.

Chester was eight months before he said his first word, “Broom!”

Steve dropped the broom he was holding, looking down at the heavy boy strapped to his chest. He’d dropped a glass earlier and was trying to clean it up, having strapped his baby boy to him so he wasn’t hurt. “Did you just…?”

Chester grinned a whole eight teeth in his mouth now. “Broom! Broom!”

“You just…” Steve swallowed, feeling faint and overwhelmed with pride as he picked the boy up and hugged him. “You spoke!”

It was near the year mark did Howard point something out over dinner. “You know...Chester has never been sick.”

Peggy shared a look with Steve, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth. Steve lowered his fork and looked at their baby that he was feeding mashed-up food. “That’s true,” she said carefully after a moment of thought. “Not even a fever, a cold. I wasn’t sickly as a child but I had my fair share of colds as an infant and Lord knows you did too, Steve.”

“I think it’s safe to confirm that Chester has Steve’s serum,” Howard mused as if no one had already thought about that. “Good for him.”

Other parents started to notice the developments too during their daddy and me! classes. There were some snide remarks on how big their boy was for a one-year-old.

“Thirty-two pounds!” Gretta hissed, glaring at where Steve was showing Chester and the other kids how to blow bubbles. “He said Chester is thirty-two pounds and thirty-five inches! Can you believe that? Look at how big he is!”

Steve huffed in annoyance and tried not to let the other gossip get to him. It wasn’t until Peggy stormed home one day after a grocery trip with Chester, the little boy sniffling like he’d been crying did it hit him how rude the other parents were.

“I ran into our darling neighbor today,” she noted, slamming the eggs down on the counter.

Steve flinched and hope they weren’t broken as he finished buttoning up Chester’s pants after he’d taken him to the bathroom. “Darling,” he warned, knowing how sensitive Chester was to emotions. “Which neighbor?”

“Oh, the wonderful and perfect Kelly and her perfectly normal daughter Jackie. Don’t you know how perfect they are?”

Steve watched as she half-aggressively put up the groceries, only stopping her when she almost dropped the barely-survived eggs. “Peggy,” he breathed, cupping her jawline. “What did they say?”

“Chester went to hug Jackie as normal - he’s fascinated with other kids and you know him, doesn’t know his own strength, and is just getting the hang of walking right. He fell into Jackie and pushed them both down and Kelly acted like he had punched her daughter. She told me to keep my monster of a child away from her and her family. I told her then she needs to keep her husband home and away from his mistress on business trips.”

Steve’s lips pursed and looked over to Chester playing with his blocks, sighing. Yeah, he got that. The neighbors were not the most polite about Chester’s rapid growth. It’s not like they could say he was Captain America and Chester had some percentage of the super-soldier serum.

“Well, maybe she’ll learn to keep her mouth shut,” he grunted, taking the eggs from her to safely put in the fridge.

In the two months since that incident, Chester was speaking more, learning new words every day. He was even speaking full sentences and could name objects. Now he was walking by himself, kicking a ball back and forth, and even sang songs.

Unfortunately, that meant that Peggy had, of course, taught their son The Man With The Plan.

Right now, none of that mattered. Not when Chester, his beautiful son with his downy soft blonde hair, and hazel eyes, was screaming in the buggy. Not that Steve blamed his son, really. The kid was hot and icky and tired and after several boosters from the doctor, he wouldn’t want to be in public either.

But grocery trips had to be had.

And it didn’t help that Kelly shouldered by them, dragging her daughter and loudly stating that Jackie wasn’t allowed to hug Chester or even look at him.

Now how do you explain that to a child who’s already in a bad mood? You don’t.

Steve had given up on comforting Chester beyond rubbing his back and whispering to him as he looked at the options of oatmeal. He was still sniffling and hiccuping loudly and screaming every so often, even if Kelly had insisted on staying on the aisle with them.

“If that was my daughter,” she droned on without anyone asking her, “I would’ve taught her right and told her tantrums to get you nowhere, especially at that age.”

“And what age might that be?” Steve challenged, standing up and laying a hand on the cart. Chester’s little fingers wrapped around his middle finger to try to suckle on. Poor buddy. Still had that tooth coming in.

“Four, isn’t he?”

Steve just blinked at her, scooping Chester up to try to ground him. God, he wishes Peggy was here. She wouldn’t keep her temper in check as much as he was, but her comfort was greatly needed.

“You know damn well that our kids were born the same year, just months apart, and your daughter, who’s now pulling open the boxes of grits, by the way, is three months older than Chest. And by the way, Kelly, Chest is only eighteen months old! He’s just big for his age and upset because you’re a terrible mother who insists that our kids can’t play together.”

“Well-well-” Kelly stomped to her child and ripped the box from her hand, jerking her up. “He’s too big! He’ll hurt her! He’s nothing but a m-”

Steve didn’t feel his feet moving him until he was in front of the woman about to call his child a monster. He cradled Chester closer to him and glared down at her.

“Finish that sentence, I dare you. You and I both know damn well that Paul isn’t the father of your child and unless you want him to know…” The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as he stepped back fixed Chester in his arms. “Come on, Chest. I know mommy is waiting for us at the house. Are you ready for our big move, huh? Away from judgemental neighbors who can’t keep themselves in check, yeah? We’ll find new friends for you to play with who don’t mind how big you are. Yeah, we will!”

It might’ve taken two months from moving from Brooklyn to DC and to finally get their house in order but Chester was a lot happier here.

More room to play around in, even having three play dates lined up in the last week with new neighbors who didn’t seem to mind their son was a little more advance.

It wasn’t until the four-month mark hit and Peggy came home from a doctor appointment within Shield did Steve feel the familiar dread hit him as she silently handed him a blank envelope.

Two sonograms were laid inside. One labeled baby a and the other baby b.

“Twins,” he breathed, looking over to Chester rolling his ball after the cat. “We’re having...twins.”

Peggy, seeing the familiar look pulled him in for a comforting kiss. “We are, but at least we have practice with Chester. And no judgemental Kelly around here.”

#Steggy #StevePeggy #Steve Rogers #Peggy Carter #CJC's story #Steggy Prompt

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inkberrry · 3 years

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Dim the Lights and Shut Your Eyes

A little Mass Effect fic, featuring Rosie Shepard and Kaidan Alenko. Read below or on ao3 @ inkberrry

Summary: Rosie Shepard is just finishing up in the medbay when Kaidan walks in. Instead of leaving him on his own, she stays with him through the worst of his migraine.

Rosie winced as she pulled the bandage from her arm. The tacky medical glue stuck to her skin, tugging at her hair and ripping out as much as it left behind. Beneath the layer of dried blood and quickly applied disinfectant her arm was raw and inflamed, angry where it had been torn open and nearly shredded.

Her barriers protected from the worst of a spray of bullets, but they didn’t hold up against the razor edged claws of the racchni. The creatures had sliced through her light armor like silk, finding their mark beneath. The pain had been blinding, and the warm spread of blood alarming in the chilled halls of the Noveria institute.

Now, safely back on the Normandy, Rosie had time to care for her wound properly. She twisted the cap from a tube of medigel and applied a liberal amount to her arm, mindful of the still tender and jagged incision. Relief was instant and welcome, and she sighed at the sudden release from pain. The wound would take time to heal, but the medication within the gel would speed along the recovery and lessen any discomfort.

Rosie took a moment to re-wrap her arm, this time with soft, cloth bandages unlikely to stick. Deeming her work done, she replaced the spare gel and bandages to their proper places. While doing so the soft mechanical whoosh of the medbay door opening caught her attention, and she turned to the sound.

“Commander.” Kaidan hesitated at the open door, changed from his tactical gear to something more comfortable, just as Rosie had done. He gave her a slight nod, though his expression read surprise. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“Oh no, of course not.” Rosie smiled in welcome, then leaned back against the supply cabinet. “Come on in.”

Kaidan stepped forward, the door quietly shutting behind him. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes scanning the otherwise empty medbay before settling again on Rosie.

“How’s the arm?” He asked, mimicking where her wound was by touching his own arm.

“Better now,” Rosie answered, and waved her arm slightly before letting it hang comfortable at her side. She pursed her lips together as she looked back at Kaidan, thoughtful. She was almost certain she was the only one who had suffered an injury on Noveria, yet here he was in the medbay.

“Did you need something in here?” She asked. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

A brief wave of discomfort marred Kaidan’s face, but was wiped away when he shook his head.

“Thankfully, no. I was just, ah… looking for some pain killers.”

Rosie’s posture softened, and she breathed out a knowing sigh.

“Headache?”

The discomfort was back as Kaiden nodded, and Rosie noticed the quick tightening of his hand into a fist before releasing. He hid the pain well, but not quite well enough to escape her practiced view.

“Yeah,” he replied, and managed a strained chuckle. “My implant seemed to like the cold about as much as Garrus did.”

Frowning, Rosie pushed herself from the cabinet and pointed to one of the empty beds lining the far wall.

“Okay Lieutenant,” she started, her voice taking on just a hint of the authority she used in the field. “Lay down and let me get what you need.”

Kaidan chucked again, this time more earnestly. “Is that an order, Commander?”

“You bet it is. Go on, lay down.”

Rosie stood and waited while Kaidan did as she asked. He settled onto the bed, head propped on the pillows and legs pulled up to rest. She had worked with the lieutenant for some time now, and as of yet he’d never shown any hesitation against her orders. He didn’t seem apt to start now, though despite what she’d said this was far from a command.

“Shouldn’t Doctor Chakawas be doing this, not the first human Spectre?” Kaidan asked just as Rosie turned back to the cabinet doors and opened them.

Cocking her head over her shoulder, Rosie fixed Kaidan with a playful grin. “She’s off duty. Why, are you afraid I don’t know what I’m doing?”

Kaidan opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again without answering. Rosie could sense uncertainty, like he was caught between teasing her back and remaining professional. To save him from any further anxiety she waved away the thought and turned back to the cabinet.

“Relax, Kaidan,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ve tended to a lot of wounded before. I grew up on Alliance ships, remember?”

Rosie knew well enough how to care for most minor injuries, and how to find the right medications if they were simple enough. She rummaged carefully through the shelves in the cabinet, pushing aside antibiotics and more specialized pills. When she found what she wanted she smiled to herself and poured two tablets into her palm.

Closing the cabinet for a second time, she headed to the sink and filled a nearby cup with water before walking to the bed Kaidan rested on. She held out her hand with the pills and set the water on the beside table.

“Take these, drink this whole glass, and close your eyes,” she said, satisfied only when Kaidan reached for the pills and took them from her hand.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and popped the medicine into his mouth.

While he worked on the water, Rosie walked to the room control panel on the wall and dimmed the lights until only a faint, cool glow emitted from the various machines spread about. The constant electronic hum of the overhead lights faded out entirely, leaving the two of them in soft silence and long shadows.

After her eyes adjusted, she made her way back to the bed. With a small hop she perched herself on the edge of the mattress next to Kaidan, his body close enough for her to feel the comfortable heat coming off of it.

“Better?” she asked, her voice quiet out of habit in the low light.

Kaidan nodded, his eyes now closed. Rosie took the opportunity to watch the lines of pain on his face smooth over, replaced by soft relaxation. His chest, broad beneath the loose tee shirt he wore, rose and fell steady, evening out as he lay still. In the quiet Rosie could hear the intake of his breath and the long exhales, slowly turning into a lullaby she herself felt the pull of.

He was a handsome man, she realized, not for the first time. This time, though, he wasn’t fighting for his life or wrestling with the stress of their missions. He was simply existing, safe and calm in the dim room. Rosie’s heart tugged in her chest while she sat by his side, a sensation that surprised her as much as it thrilled her.

“Do you take care of all your crew this well?” Kaidan’s bemused voice roused Rosie from her daydreams, his lips moving slowly and deliberately with his words.

“Only those that need it,” she laughed, keeping to herself that at that moment she would have done anything to make sure Kaidan was comfortable and at peace.

Kaidan’s lips curved to a slight smile at her response, then set again into comfort. The room was still for a while, Rosie content to let Kaidan rest and recover. Her thoughts wandered, traveling back in her memory to times spent much like this, except her role reversed.

“I used to get headaches, too,” she confessed softly. “When I first got my implant. My parents would send me to the medbay and this is what the officer there would do. They stopped after a few months though.”

Rosie frowned again, this time at the memory of the pain her biotic implant had caused. She couldn’t imagine a life where that same pain returned time and again.

“Lucky,” Kaidan said, and there was no contempt or jealousy in his voice. “Were you young when you got yours?”

“Eleven.” Rosie felt herself smiling in spite of the somber topic, her thoughts turning cheerful again. “My parents figured it was time when I used to my bionics to keep flinging stuffed animals across the room at my brothers.”

Kaidan’s chest rose sharply when he laughed, the deep rumbling replacing the silence of the room.

“Heh. Sure is hard to imagine you doing that.”

“Oh? Just you wait then, I've got a stuffed hanar in my cabin. You better watch your back.”

Still laughing, Kaidan opened one eye and glanced sidelong at Rosie. “I'll do my best, Commander.”

The use of her title caught Rosie off guard. Right now she didn’t feel like the Commander, and she didn’t want to, either. She wanted just to be Rosie, and for the man laying on the bed next to her to be nothing but just who he was.

“You can drop the titles when it’s just us,” she said, and playfully nudged Kaidan’s shoulder. “Especially when we’re alone in the dark.”

Color rose along Kaidan’s cheeks, partially hidden by the growing stubble.

“Uh, right. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Quiet filled the room again, and Rosie watched the faint blush fade from Kaidan’s face as he once again relaxed. Soon her responsibilities would come searching for her, and she admitted to herself she had spent enough time here at Kaidan’s side.

She was about to get up when his voice rang out again, stopping her.

“Rosie?”

“Mhm?”

“Thanks,” Kaidan said, and when Rosie looked down at him his eyes were open and fixed on her. Heat built in her cheeks, too, and she quickly fluttered her eyes to her hands before meeting Kaidan’s gaze again. “Means a lot to me that you took the time to sit here.”

Rosie smiled, the heat from her cheeks traveling through her to warm her chest. “Anytime, Kaidan. You know where to find me if you ever need anything.”

With that she slipped off the bed, her feet planting on the solid tiled floor. Without thought she reached towards Kaidan and brushed back a section of dark hair, smoothing it towards his neck. His head relaxed further into the downy pillow, and he again shut his eyes.

“Now get some real rest,” Rosie said, and finally stepped away from the bed. “I need you one hundred percent when we get to Virmire.”

Kaidan’s only answer was a returning smile, and Rosie left the medbay to the sound of Kaidan’s gentle sighing behind her.

#mass effect #mass effect fanfiction #shenko #mass effect fic #kaidan alenko #femshep #my writing #oc: rosie shepard

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nerdywalkingencyclopedia · 2 years

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Febuwhump 2022 Day 13

Read it below the line, or on here on AO3 (appreciate all kudos, feedback, comments)!

Magnum was close, tantalisingly close. He had been working through his bonds for what seemed like hours, and he knew that he needed to escape, to warn his client that he was in danger. And more importantly, ensure that he stayed alive another day.

A squeak of the unoiled door signified the end of his window of opportunity – he was too late. The man that he was after, the man that was after this client, had come back, hands soaked in blood.

“It looks like I no longer require services Mr Magnum. You’re no longer useful to me.”

Before Magnum could respond with a repartee, he heard the unmistakable sound before he felt the unmistakeable feeling. He looked down at his shirt, now adorned by three holes. Blood oozed from the, trickling down his jeans, turning them into an ugly shade of red.

There was nothing he could do; if he wasn’t able to free himself during the few hours he was alone, he certainly wasn’t able to do so with three extra holes in his body.

Already, he could feel his strength leaving his body, and before long, he slumped forward in the chair, still bound to it. His lifeforce was waning by the minute.

Now, luckily for Magnum, Higgins was also working the case on her side, and when she realised that Magnum was nowhere to be found and unreachable, she expected the worst, as the worst had already happened many times in her line of work.

Hours of searching had led her to the doorstep of the estate of The Man. She didn’t know it yet, but only a mere few feet below her was Magnum, hanging by a thread.

She entered slowly, gun outstretched, clearing each room meticulously. Then she made her way down to the basement, following the same procedure. Then she was down to the last room, and what she saw made her abandon all procedure.

Holstering her sidearm, she rushed up to Magnum, freeing him from his bonds, her hands grabbing for her cell phone to call for help.

Then she dealt with the problem at hand – she needed to quench the blood loss. She shrugged her shirt off, haphazardly ripping it into small sections, and tightly applying it on his wounds.

“Magnum. Magnum.” Her voice was shaky, and she struggled to keep her composure.

An agonising six hours later, Higgins was still beside Magnum, who had just been wheeled out of surgery, but was stuck on life support.

The doctor’s words – we don’t know when, or even if, he’ll wake up – rung in her head, affecting her so badly she couldn’t concentrate on anything else, but her partner in front of her. She clutched his hand speaking to him.

“Please wake up Magnum. I… I don’t know what I would do if I lost yet another person in my life.”

She got no response but for the steady beeping of all the machines surrounding them. She let the dam explode, and buried her head in his chest, not caring for anything else in the world.

And, unbeknownst to her, a single tear fell from Magnum’s eye, leaving a streaky path in its wake.

#febuwhump #febuwhump2022 #febuwhumpday13 #whump #magnum pi #magnum x juliet #magnum x higgins #juliet higgins #thomas magnum

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depressedacadamia · 3 years

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The Anatomy of the Sun- Chapter I

Edit- This is the first chap in a Percy Jackson/ Greys anatomy AU as well as my first fic! It’s going to follow the Grey’s anatomy plot behind the patients and the romances will be loosely based off it. I hope you do enjoy it! It was inpsired by @buoyantsaturn and their fic ‘Into you like a train’.

Summary: Dr Will Solace just transferred to the New York Presybetarian hospital to become their Head of Trauma. Dr Nico Di Angelo is a month fresh out of Med- school and is starting his internship at New York Presbytarian. Nico, excited to join his best friend and head of the neurology department- Percy Jackson, wants to prove that he is not just the legacy that his sister- Bianca Di Angelo, left. As the doctors battle to save lives, they also battle to save relationships- but some may say it's too late.

Chapter I- Work Work

Nico could feel his chest pounding as he drove. It wasn’t a good kind of pounding, not that there ever really is, but a -my heart is beating so damn fast - kind of pounding. Today was his first day at New York Presbytarian Hospital as an actual doctor. A surgeon. An intern.

He groaned as he remembered that he would basically be the servant of his bosses for the next year. He wished his sister was here- she’d tell him how awesome he’d be, all the cool parts of internship and how ‘the friends you make here are friends for life’. Nico wasn’t nervous about friends though- he had known the Head of Neuro, Percy Jackson, for almost his entire life. In fact, it had been Percy who inspired him to become a surgeon. Nico knew- As a surgeon, you either have what it takes to play or you don’t. Nico’s sister , Bianca, was one of the greats, Nico on the other hand was so screwed.

The first Nico noticed about the hospital was that it was very very bright. Maybe it wasn’t and Nico was panicking; it wouldn’t be so beyond him. He watched as several other cars pulled up with other newbies similar to himself. He noticed that some people had their own stethoscopes- would anybody notice that his was used? The stethoscope he wore had the initials B.D.A engraved into the side of the drum. Did it matter if someone noticed that his was old? He could easily afford a new one either way but he had wanted to wear his sister's one. He hoped it would bring him good luck because he had a good feeling that he was going to need it.

He walked into the Hospital where he was directed to a cleared Operating Room for the new interns who were having their introduction. He passed a group of attendings, all of whom he vaguely recognised but he noticed one in particular with curly blond hair. Of all the years he had tagged along with Percy to hang out at the hospital, he had never seen that dude- Why haven’t I seen him before?

“Every one of you comes here today hopeful, wanting in the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors- Today, you are the doctors. The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you- say hello to your competition. 8 of you will switch to an easier speciality. 5 of you will crack under the pressure, 2 of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line- This is your arena. How do you play? That's up to you,” A man with long brown hair and greying roots dramatically explained. Nico realised that this was the Chief of Surgery- Chiron! Nico was surprised to learn that he still worked here after all these years. He recalled Bianca talking about Chiron who had been her mentor.

Nico looked around at what was his competition- as he thought, he was so screwed.

As he made his way into the locker room, some faces became familiar. He recalled some of these faces- the people he had met at the mixer. Nico decided to focus on work and not making friends; if someone spoke to him, he’d reply but he was not initiating any conversations. He had diagnosed himself with the overall dislike of humanity. Just as he was contemplating wearing his white coat, ( he remembered Bianca telling him that everyone knows that the doctors with the cleanest coats are the newbies and he did not want people noticing) the girl to his left with cropped brown hair and a determined expression tapped him on the shoulder.

“You’re Nico right? Which resident have you got?” She asked.

“Yeah, I’m Nico and I’ve got Chase. What about you?”

“ Same. And it’s Meg.”

A guy from across the room turned around, excited to have something in common with others. His hair was short and blond but not the same colour as the new attending that Nico had noticed earlier. This guy's hair was almost a platinum kind of blond whereas the attending had golden hair- Like the colour of sunrise.

“You’ve got her too? So did I- You’re Nico, Nico Di Angelo right? I’m Jason Grace- we met at the mixer. You made a bold impression; black, skinny ripped jeans, Ramone T-shirt and skull rings despite the fact it was obviously a work event… Okay I’ll stop talking,” The man rushed out all at once.

“Grace, Mccaffrey, Di Angelo and June!” A voice called out into the locker room. Nico looked at what were supposed to be his future friends. If he was supposed to feel some sort of magical bond with them- he sure as hell was not. The girl in front (who Nico could only assume was Dr June) was almost hopping - okay, she’s a happy person, Avoid her at all costs- he put in a mental reminder. Nico watched as she approached the Blonde woman at the desk. Nico almost face palmed- Her surname was Chase- this had to be Percy’s girlfriend that he had been telling him about over the phone a while ago. June started talking only to be cut off.

“I’m Juniper June but most people just call me-”

“I have 5 rules, memorise them. Rule number 1- don’t bother sucking up, I already hate you, that's not gonna change. Trauma protocol, phone list and pagers-” Annabeth pointed to the desk behind her. There lay 4 pagers which all the interns, including Nico, scrambled forward to grab.

“-Nurses will page you, you answer every page at a run- you hear me? A run, Rule number 2- Your first shift starts now and lasts 48 hours. You’re interns, grunts, nobodies- bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, write orders, work every second night until you drop and don’t complain!” She called as she led them across the bridge and into the second section of the hospital. Nico, not being the tallest person, struggled slightly to keep up. They walked into a dark room that seemed to have bunk beds with thin mattresses and flimsy unmade covers.

“On call rooms- attendings hog them- sleep when you can, where you can, which brings me to Rule number 3. If I’m sleeping, don’t wake me unless your patient is actually dying. Rule number 4- the dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only will you have killed a person, you would have woken me up for no good reason. We clear?”

Nico was clear but he also wasn’t. He doesn’t remember Bianca telling him any of these rules and he also didn’t recall hearing the 5th rule. Did she already say it when he wasn’t listening? He didn’t think so but he also didn’t want to look like an idiot. He decided to ask, if he was going to fail at this hospital, he might as well fail knowing everything there was to know.

“That's only 4 rules. You said there were 5.” Nico slid in between Meg and Dr Grace, his head only up to the bases of their necks. Just Nico said those words, he heard a beeping which he could only assume came from someone's pager. Annabeth immediately looked down, grabbing the pager she had tagged into her waist.

“Rule number 5- When I move, you move.”

Hour 1

Nico slipped on his gloves as he stood in the elevator with the other interns. The second he heard its ‘ping’ he rushed forward, eager to learn. The wind blasted into his eyes and immediately, Nico raised his hands to cover his face. His hair flopped about as the helicopter descended in front him. He raised his head slightly and saw the same golden haired attending that he had noticed earlier- Nico took a guess that he was the trauma surgeon. He followed Dr. Chase who ran forward and helped lift the stretcher out of the helicopter. Nico perked his ears up as he heard the trauma surgeon recite her history.

“Katie Bryce, 15 years old, female, new onset seizures- intermittent for the past week. IV lost en route- Started grand mal seizing as we descended,” He shouted over the loud roar of the engine. Crap, Grand mal seizures, really? God really thought lets give me a hard case. They rushed to get her inside and Nico was trying to not panic as he heard Dr. Chase command the staff like it was her own mini army.

“Put her on her side. 10 Milligrams of diazepam. No, the white lead is on the right. Righty whitey, smoke over fire. Give her a large bore IV, Don’t let the blood hemolyze.”

A different doctor walked in, his hair was black and cut short. His skin was a creamy white and Nico recognised the second language under ‘Doctor Zhang’ on his white coat to be chinese.

“Dr. Chase, what do we have?” He asked, flipping through her chart.

“Right now, nothing.”

“Okay, let's shotgun her.” He raised his hands and took a step backwards, allowing for the interns to continue their treatment.

“Okay, you heard the man. Shotgun means every test in the book- CT, CBC, Chem 7, Tox screen. Mccaffery- you’re running labs, Grace- patient work ups and Di Angelo- take her for a CT,” Dr. Chase ordered

“Um, Dr. Chase, I think you forgot me,” Juniper piped up meekly. Annabeth turned around and gave her a firm look before telling her,

“Honey, you’re doing rectal exams.”

Nico couldn’t tell if he should laugh at the poor intern or console her.

Each intern was busy. Extraordinarily busy. Nico did not expect the line for the CT machine to be so long. This was the best hospital in all of New York! You’d think they would be much faster but no, here Nico was with his patient who he had recently learnt, loved to talk… about herself.

“I’m missing my pageant,” Kaite whined.

“You’re missing your pageant?” Nico had to physically restrain himself from snorting. So that's what non- doctors and people with normal lives did. Things like going to pageants.

“Yeah! And I was super excited because the judges were getting to the talents for the pageant- Mine is rhythmic gymnastics. I sprained my ankle and fell when I was training but now I was soo ready but then...” she threw her arms up slightly signifying everything around them and Nico understood- she had a seizure which stopped her from competing.

“Katie Bryce’s labs came out clear, nothing in the results that would explain her seizures,” Meg informed Dr. Chase who was currently peeking her head out of a surgery. Dr. Chase nodded and was about to return to assisting on the procedure when Meg started talking again

“I heard that the attending picks the most promising intern on the first to perform a minor procedure.”

Dr. Chase looked anything but impressed.

“Go away,” she deadpanned as she closed the door in Meg’s face and returned to her surgery.

“It’s just what I heard!” Meg mumbled exasperatedly as she left the scrub room.

Hour 7

The cafeteria was full. One would think the hospital cafeteria would be stocked with healthy foods but in reality it was quite the opposite. It was stacked with a bunch of doctors telling you to eat healthy food as they stuffed their faces with pizza. The seating arrangements weren’t much different from a high school. You sit with who you know and avoid the ones in charge. Meg, Jason, Juniper and a group of other interns were all grouped together not too far away from the group of attendings and 3 residents.

“You know Nico is inbred.” Meg popped the fact onto the other interns.

“Like it’s uncommon to be related to a doctor, my sister is Dr Thalia Grace.”Jason pointed his thumb to the girl with jet back hair and array of ear piercings who was currently smiling wickedly.

“No like royally inbred, his sister is Bianca Di Angelo,” Meg insisted.

“Shut up! The Bianca Di Angelo?” Juniper joined in.

“Who is Bianca Di Angelo?” Jason, as clueless as ever, asked. The entire table exploded into whispers and gasps.

“Where do you live, under a rock? The angel method? Where do you think that came from?”

“She’s a living legend!”

“She’s won 2 harper Averies!”

“Talk about familial pressure.”

“Um, incoming Nico Di Angelo,” Jason tried to speak over the food in his mouth unsuccessfully. Luckily, the other interns looked in the direction of him and shut their mouths up in time. Nico, with his 3rd cup of coffee that day slumped into a chair and slammed his head onto the table.

“Katie Bryce is a pain in my ass. If I hadn’t taken the hippocratic oath, I’d kevorkian her with my bare hands,” Nico groaned. Juniper, eager to get his mind off an annoying patient chirped in,

“I heard Chase and Jackson were dating- A resident and an attending!”

“They are,” Nico confirmed as the interns stole glances at the attending and the resident together, surprised that Dr. Chase had the ability to laugh or smile.

“Who wants to go for an attending? Bet ya none of you can,” Meg poked fun at them.

“I bet ya I could do Solace, he’s new apparently,” Nico hummed as he peacefully sipped his coffee, closing his eyes to enjoy the smell that drifted into his nose.

“Meg, you wanna go for Valdez?” Juniper curiously poked.

“Nah, he’s only a resident and besides- He’s totally making eyes at Calypso. Letting a resident try to get into an attending pants is way more fun. I wanna see him fall into a hole.”

All of the interns stopped and turned to Meg, a slightly horrified look growing on their faces.

“Okay, now that Satan has stopped talking, who wants to put down their bets?” Jason beamed as Meg sneaked a quick punch to arm which had him cowering for a bit longer than necessary. The interns were all mucking about until a new voice joined the conversation.

“Hey! I just transferred to Chase’s service, I don’t really know anyon-”

“-Hazel?” Nico’s confused voice echoed and his eyes shot open at the recognition of the soft voice.

“Nico?” Hazel raised an eyebrow. They had both agreed to go to work in separate hospitals to limit family drama. Ever since they had found out they were related, the family tensions had been higher than ever. Nico had assumed Hazel would go to a different hospital and leave New York Presbyterian for him and it seems Hazel had assumed the same vice versa.

“You two know each other?” A voice, recognised as Meg, called out.

“I’m Doctor Hazel Levesque. Newest Surgical intern under Dr Chase.” She reached out and gave her hand to Meg who shook it firmly. She gave another hand shake to Jason and a nod to Nico- both of them had ignored Meg’s question.

“Final call, who’s going in?” Jason reminded them.

“Me- Solace is new, hot, probably clueless and he’s the new Head attending in trauma.” Nico slammed his hand onto the table, indicating he was all in. It was easy, right? Seduce him and then manipulate. It couldn’t be too hard.

Around 2 tables away from the interns, the attendings and residents were chatting away. Will, who had only recently joined the hospital, was still getting used to the way people behaved here. Everyone was so much more nice than he had expected. He remembered how people warned him about New York folks but in all honesty, Will would say that he was having a pretty good time, especially if the Di Angelo intern stayed in his eyeline-

“-Solace is eyeing the interns!” Percy’s excited voice cut into Will’s thoughts. Horrified, Will managed to sputter out,

“I am not eyeing the interns!”

“I like the newbie, she seems nice- better than the rest at least,”Frank mumbled about Hazel as he sipped at his hot tea. Piper to his left admitted,

“Blond one’s hot.”

“That blond one is my brother,” Thalia grunted.

“Why doesn’t anyone call me hot?” Leo pouted as he rolled up the other sleeve of his shirt calling the attention of Calypso’s eyes.

I’d totally call you hot , She thought.

She only glanced once.. Maybe twice… okay she was staring at him. But ever since Leo had become a resident, she kept on thinking they had to potential to become what.. Well, what Annabeth and Percy had become. Sure, she had rejected all his previous advances but she didn’t want to. She just didn’t think the timing was right- She was very aware that simply telling him the timing wasn’t right was a much more mature thing to do than acting bratty every time he spoke to her.

“Valdez, go make sure none of the pre-surgery kids aren’t sneaking pudding. There’s always bound to be one.” Dr Reyna Ramirez batted her hand towards her resident who gave her a mock salute before walking off. Calypso, unaware that everyone was watching, had her eyes glued to Leo.

“Calypso is totally checking out Valdez- Mother Hen Reyna watch out- Calypso is after your chicks,” Percy snickered making a joke to the fact that Leo was Reyna’s resident- before Piper smacked him on the back of the head indicating a Shut it, hypocrite.

“No I’m not!” Calypso insisted, whipping her head, that only moments ago was glued to Leo’s ass. She ducked her head and sided next to Piper and Will.

“Calypso eyeing Leo is old news, please make sure you keep yourself updated,” Annabeth proclaimed, her head resting against Percy while his arm was snaked around her waist.

“I will tell you what’s new then, Solace watching Nico like he’s fresh meat. That’s my bro that you’re checking out man.”

“I am NOT checking out Di Angelo!”

“Zhang, who are you picking for the procedure?” Annabeth curiously asked and also slightly eager to move away from the current topic. In all honesty, Annabeth expected Frank to choose Di Angelo- He was clearly the most promising and most experienced if one could even call an intern that. Annabeth knew that Percy and Nico had practically grown up together and besides he was a Di Angelo- Surely if his sister could cut, so could he.

“I’m gonna go with Grace.”

“He is not ready for that. Not to be a terrible sibling but he gets flustered a tad easily,” Thalia butted in, trying to protect her brother. She loved him but Jason was a tad sensitive and rustling his feathers was almost too easy.

“Torture one and the rest will fall in line,” Frank admitted half heartedly. He didn’t want to Pick on Jason- he seemed like a great kid, But he also didn’t want to have to have a bunch of misbehaving interns who had egos too big for the hospital because nobody ever put them in line.

“Are you sure about Grace though?” Annabeth pushed, her voice slightly uneasy. Percy, who noticed this, squeezed her waist gently as a gesture of comfort, affection even. Percy was watching Nico’s table. The interns seemed to be having fun, no one was picking on Nico which was the most important thing and he figured soon the interns would realise Nico’s infamy- of being a Di Angelo of course. What he totally didn’t expect however, was Nico to get out of his chair and casually stroll over towards the group of attendings and residents.

Nico honestly did not know what he was thinking. Was he being bold? Absolutely. Was he acting on impulse? Most obviously. Was he regretting every step towards them? Definitely.

He saw Percy’s eyes widen ever so slightly before his face rested into a comforting, genuine smile- something Nico truly appreciated. If Percy was acting nice, the rest of the group were bound to follow his lead, right? Nico shuffled past 2 of the attendings, reaching behind them to gain access to the coffee machine.

Will didn’t know how to react. Did interns normally come and hang out with attendings here? He had no idea. Percy looked as if he knew Nico all his life and he did tell him earlier; That's my bro you’re checking out man. Were they actually related? Or did they just know each other for a long time? By now, all the attendings were settled at their own tables and Piper had unfortunately been rushed off for emergency surgery on one of her patients, leaving Will to sit by himself at a table. That was until Nico was standing by one of the chairs.

Nico took a deep breath and stood by the chair at Will’s almost empty table. It had taken Will a couple of seconds to notice that there was someone even at his table before he almost jolted backwards, alarmed by the shadow that had appeared on his table. Immediately, out of politeness, he gestured towards a seat.

“Do you wanna take a seat?” He offered politely. He watched as the intern hesitated. He could see how nervous he seemed and for a minute he really pitied him- It was no doubt stressful to be the brother of a famous surgeon, especially a Di Angelo.

“Are you sure? I mean, aren't you an attending, ya know, my boss and-”

“-Calm down, it's just a seat,” Will cut off Nico’s rambling and offered the man a seat. Gingerly Nico took it and looked down at his coffee.

Nico did not think making Dr Solace treat him so nicely was going to be so easy. All he had to do was give a shy look away and blabber a bit and the next thing he knew, Dr. Solace had his hand on top of Nico’s and was shuffling his chair closer to his. Nico realised it was now or never- he had to start sending the right message.

“I’ve always found trauma interesting- ya know? Never knowing what's going to come into those doors. Percy used to tell me how much he hated it,” Nico laughed gently, making sure he accidentally brushed his leg against Dr Solace’s.

“Trauma? Really? Lucky for you, I just so happen to be the new attending on that.”

“I think I’m much more lucky than you think I am, if you catch my draft,” Nico mummuered, smirking slightly, his eyes dropping to Will's lips causing Will to finally get what he meant. Will, slightly flustered by Nico’s onset attitude, flushed pink slightly. He was flattered greatly that someone as good looking as Nico found him attractive but he didn’t want to cause commotion or draw so much attention to himself so early either. He wasn’t gonna lie, he totally was into Nico but Will knew that he could be putting Nico’s job at risk, not to mention his own. But it wasn’t as if Nico was using him- Nico seemed too innocent for that and besides- he was a Di Angelo, people respected him and the holy ground he walked on.

“If all goes well in your first surgery, feel free to send that draft out again.” Will winked as he got up and threw away the remains of his terrible lunch before heading to the table with the remaining attendings.

“Impress him with your loving, then impress him with your healing,” Will heard Percy whisper, which earned Percy a punch in the arm from Piper, a dirty look from Annabeth and snort from Frank. Will, slightly sick of Percy’s teasing, stormed off to the department at the entrance of the hospital which all the staff here called ‘The Pit’ for some reason. Percy, as clueless as ever was trying to remain a straight face and Frank was struggling to keep on being the mature one.

Hour 10

Nico was adequately proud of himself- he didn't flirt with people often ( mainly because normally it was people flirting with him) but he couldn’t lie and say he wasn’t slightly nervous when he was walking towards the room of Katie Bryce and saw a man and woman at the desk- Nico presumed they were married due to the wedding rings they wore.

“Katie Bryce, Room 3604?” Nico asked the couple. They nodded eagerly and the 3 adults had a quick conversation where Nico informed them that he wasn’t Katies actual doctor, but still was a doctor, and that he would go and find said doctor. Nico, who didn’t actually know who Katie’s doctor was now, had to verbally tell himself to not panic and he managed to figure out that he should ask Dr. Chase (he prayed she wasn’t sleeping). Luckily, Dr Chase was charting at the nurses station and when she heard his meek footsteps approaching, her head snapped up and she raised an eyebrow.

“Katie Bryce’s parents want to speak with the head on the case. Shall I page Dr. Zhang?”

“Dr Zhang? No, this patient belongs to Neuro now- Dr Jackson, he’s right around the corner.” Annabeth flicked her pen towards her boyfriend who was speaking to two other attendings- who Nico recognised to be Dr Mclean and Dr Ramirez. He waved over to Percy who smiled and dismissed the two doctors before making his way over to Nico and throwing his arm around Nico’s shoulders while ruffling his hair. Nico did not allow the gesture from anyone but felt comforted by it from Percy.

“Percy!” Nico almost squealed as Percy rubbed his knuckles into Nico’s head keeping him in a loose headlock.

“Death! I haven’t seen you in ages! How has it been?” Percy smiled as he began walking them towards the hallway. Nico cringed slightly from the nickname. Death was not something you want to be called at a hospital, especially if you were a doctor.

“Oh you know, Chase is tough but she knows what she’s doing.”

“She better, she learnt from the best,” Percy said proudly, pointing towards himself. Nico took this as an opportunity to lower Percy’s ego and asked

“Chiron?”

“You smug little-” Percy was cut off by Nico’s shrieks and protests to stop as Percy tickled him. Was it evil of Percy to tickle Nico? Perhaps, especially since he knew that Nico was one of the most ticklish people to ever exist.

Hour 15

Interns filtered into the viewing box above the operating room- they were all excited to watch one of them perform the first surgery. Jason, however, was terrified. He was muttering the basics of the procedure again and again as the crowd filtered in above him. If he made one mistake, everyone would see it, everyone would know and he would become the intern who couldn’t cut.

“Open, identify, ligate, remove, irrigate, close. Open, identify, ligate, remove, irrigate, close,” he muttered continuously, his eyes scrunched shut in fear.

Meanwhile, in the overhead viewing box, interns started placing bets. Sure, everyone was excited that an intern was assisting but they were also bitter. It would be a lie to tell you that no one in that room had thought that they should be down there operating room instead of Dr Grace. As Nico came in, he was slightly surprised to hear people making bets- sure, Jason had taken the surgery from them but betting? Was that really necessary? Especially since they were betting on his demise rather than him succeeding.

“30 dollars if he can’t open the peritoneum.”

“35 if he faints, he seems like a fainter.”

“40 says he kills the guy.”

“50 says he pulls off the whole thing,” Nico, who was sick of hearing the interns bet, cut in, “That's one of us in there- where’s your loyalty?” Nico had grown up with a loyal best friend- Percy- so if he valued anything in a person it was loyalty. He watched as poor Jason moved his lips, mumbling the procedure. He really hoped Jason didn’t butcher this- he had kind of put his trust in him over here. Jason turned to the nurses as they performed the time- out- reciting the patient's name, sex and other vital information such as the actual surgery- an appendectomy .

“Scalpel,” Jason ordered his hand reaching towards the nurse. As soon as it made contact with Jason’s hand, the interns went wild. The interns were cheering, clapping and whistling. It was official, Jason was the first intern to pick up a scalpel on a live patient. Even Nico joined in on the cheering, leaning back slightly in his seat and clapping- that was until Dr Zhang turned towards the interns and mimicked silence. The interns understood- Dr Grace does not need distractions.

“That Zhang is trouble,” Hazel muttered, biting her lip gently. Nico, trying to resist a smirk, leaned over and whispered,

“Hazel’s got a crush.”

Hazel, as chill as ever (sarcasm intended), pinched Nico’s arm making him flinch, pout and then rub gently at his slightly reddened flesh. Jason was trying to concentrate- he had never thought that one would have to apply so much pressure to cut into human flesh so of course, he hesitated a bit. However, once he was through, he started to find it a bit easier.

“Pickups…. Clamps,” he ordered.

“Dammit, he got through the peritoneum, I’m out,” the intern who betted on Jason admitted defeat as Jason continued.

“Scalpel….. And Appendix is out!”

Despite Dr Zhang's previous warnings, the interns went wild. Jason did it, he actually did it. Nico could see all the interns freaking out and while he was truly happy for Jason, he knew that he hadn’t finished. He had to close and celebrating too early may jinx him. Dr Zhang, who didn’t mind the interns celebrating, began to instruct Jason on his remaining steps.

“Now all you have to is insert the stump into the cecum and simultaneously pull the up on the purse strings, but be careful not to-” Frank was cut of by the distinct sound of sutures snapping- a sound which caused the silence of everyone and echoed

“- Break them,” Frank finished his sentence, sighing. He wouldn’t lie and say that he didn’t expect this but he hoped that the intern would fix his mistake quickly. He watched as Jason struggled nervously. Jason himself didn’t even know what he had just done- all he could replay in his head was the snapping sound and the feeling of the suture breaking. The loss of tension in his hand as he accidently pulled too hard. Out of all the useful knowledge he had, it was that recent memory that just kept on replaying in Jason’s head.

“You’ve just ripped the cecum, you’ve got yourself a bleeder! What do you do now?” Dr Zhang tried to encourage him but it was no use. Nico watched as Jason froze.

Damn it Jason come on! Alas, Nico couldn’t help but think, Jason was like a deer in headlights- Bambi. Jason didn’t know how to react- what did he do now? He hadn’t considered the possibility if the sutures snapped.

“Think- You stop the suctions and start searching for those purse strings before he bleeds to death,” Dr Zhang instructed, his voice the only clear thing in the room other than the drastic beeping coming from the monitor. Nico could feel everybody in the room holding their breath- this moment was either going to make or break Jason.

“Give him a clamp,” Dr Zhang ordered.

“BP’s dropping,” a nurse warned. The interns watched with anxiety for their fellow intern- Jason was frozen, his hands stuck mid-air.

“BP is getting too low.”

Finally Dr Zhang had to make a decision and he held his hand out to the nurses,

“Move. Suction and Clamps.”

The interns all groaned, throwing their heads back or burying their heads between their hands. Money was passed around and Nico could only feel pity for the blond boy who looked like bambi in the operating room. As interns began to leave, people began to whisper.

“He’s a 007.”

“Yeah! Totally a 007.”

“What’s 007?” Juniper looked around, slightly confused. Nico, morbid as ever, kept his eyes trained on the surgeon operating as he told Juniper.

“License to kill.”

Hour 19

Jason sat in a wheelchair (that he most likely did not want to know where it had been) as he rolled the wheels back and forth complaining. He still couldn’t believe that he had frozen up like that. Not only that but he knew what the consequences of it was now.

“Everyone is calling me 007,” He complained, still embarrassed from his poor performance. Nico and Meg- both of whom were sick of his whining- answered at the same time.

“No one is calling you 007.”

“Really? A dude in the elevator whispered 007 and everyone started laughing!”

“007 is a state of mind,” Hazel called out as she waited by the old vending machine. It waited a bit too long for Hazel’s patience and thus she gave it a light kick to keep it going.

“Says the girl who finished first in her class at Stanford,” Jason retorted, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. Nico was enjoying this mindless banter, it was the first break he had in a while and it was relaxing to be able to not have to think critically for once. Of course, because fate hated Nico in particular, Nico’s pager beeped causing him to groan and accidentally bang his head as he pulled out his pager, causing his eyes to widen.

“Ah, fuck. Someone is paging me 911 on Katie Bryce, gotta go!”

Nico hopped off the spare stretcher he was on and practically ran towards the stairs desperate to get the patient's room. As Nico left, he let out a small snort of laughter for he heard Jason mumble,

“I should have gone into geriatrics- nobody minds when you kill an old person.”

Nico gasped for air as he walked into room 3604 and saw a perfectly healthy and fine Kate Bryce. What the hell? Did she lose the ability to talk? Because that wasn’t a 911, that was a thank the gods. He looked around for any crash cart or indicator that there was actually anything wrong with her.

“There’s nothing wrong with you?” He panted, feeling his anger bubble up. Katie simply shrugged, twirling her platinum blond hair that looked dyed.

“I’m bored.”

Nico gasped and face palmed- he just could not with this girl! Would giving her an early death count as breaking the hippocratic oath? Man, he really wanted to punch Hippocrates- making doctors swear a damn oath on Apollo!

“This is a hospital, people are dying, people who actually require a doctor's help! Go to sleep,” Nico explained, his voice raising slightly due to the interruption of his very calming break- he considered hearing Jason complain better than any sort of time spent with this patient. Katie, however, did not want to comply with what was being asked of her.

“I can’t sleep, my heads all full!” Katie whined slightly, throwing her head back softly against the propped up pillows.

“That's called thinking, go with it, maybe you’ll learn something new.”

Hour 21

Annabeth was happy right now. In this moment as she and Percy lay snuggled up against each other cuddling in the on call rooms, Annabeth was happy. She had to catch up on her sleep and Percy was a neurosurgeon- his surgeries were tiring and required him to be well rested (something that never happened either way) for him to perform at his best ability. She could hear Percy’s heart thumping under her ear as she lay with her head on his chest and one of her legs thrown on top of his. The sound and vibrations were comforting, relaxing, easing her to sleep- she was happy.

Juniper did not feel so happy right now. She was standing at the nurses station staring at the on - call room that she knew Dr Chase to be in. As she stood by the nurses station, a nurse leaning on the desk asked her what she wanted.

“Mr Anderson has chunky veins, he needs antibiotics and I should start a central line,” Juniper admitted, looking away. The nurse, not even glancing up from his chart simply told her,

“Then start one…”

Juniper's silence told him what he needed to know.

“...And you don’t know how to. You know what that means.” The nurse nodded his head towards the on call room where Dr Chase resided. Juniper had to physically restrain herself to stop herself from shivering. She was about to break Rule 3. She peeked her head into the dark on call room where she initially thought she was about to accidentally become scarred for life. However, what she saw surprised her. Dr Chase was soundfully asleep next to Dr Jackson. Their arms were intertwined with each other and Dr Jackson had one arm wrapped around Dr Chase’s waist. They looked so peaceful, Juniper was so tempted to walk out and just let Mr Anderson get a nice trip to the morgue but she didn’t want to end up being called something like 007. She took a deep breath.

“Dr chase, I don’t mean to bother you-”

“-Then don’t,” Annabeth snapped. She did not want to leave Percy, he was so warm and she wanted her damned sleep.

“It’s Mr Anderson,” Juniper started explaining.

“Is he dying?”

“No.”

“Then stop talking to me.” Annabeth rolled over so that her back was towards Juniper. Juniper cleared her throat slightly which caused Percy to jerk his arm. Annabeth huffed, clearly agitated.

“Next time you wake me, he better be so close to dead, there’s a tag on his toe.”

Hour 23

Nico was walking towards Katye Bryce’s room once again to check in on her. Hopefully, she had taken his advice and was soundly asleep by now. Yet, as Nico approached her room, he saw nurses running in and out of it- Nico picked up his pace until it was a run as he got into the room. Immediately, the nurses briefed him on what was going on.

“She’s having multiple Grand Mal seizures, now, how do you want to proceed? Dr Di Angelo, are you listening? We’ve given her diazepam, 2 milligrams of Lorazepam- we just gave a second dose- Dr Di Angelo, you need to tell us what you want us to do!”

Nico was frozen. What in the name of Hades had happened while he was gone? He began to filter his thoughts-find out what's in her system and proceed from there.

“You gave her lorazepam?” he asked.

“Yep, 4 milligrams.”

“You’ve paged Chase and Jackson?” He pushed.

“Lorazepam isn’t working!”

“Phenobarbital, 2 milligrams,” He blurted, remembering the drug from a chemistry quiz he had gotten completely correct due to Bianca’s old notes.

“Heart’s stopped!” a nurse called out. Nico’s brain called out Code Blue, Code Blue! But his mouth could not move. What was he doing? He normally acted on immediately in emergency situations- they were practically his reflexes. He had to focus. He closed his eyes for a second.

Focus Nico, focus- this girl is literally dead.

His eyes snapped open- he was still panicking but now that he had a second to think, he had a vague idea of what to do.

“Okay, start compressions- grab the crash cart. Charge the pads to 200.” Nico turned his head towards the nurse operating the charge value on the defibrillator.

“Clear!”

Katie Bryce’s jolted upwards, but her heart did not return to normal. The nurse opposite to Nico continued compressions on her body while the other nurse held an ambu bag to her face, squeezing it every 5 seconds to provide air for her lungs.

“Still V-Fib, no change,” the nurse commented.

“Charge to 300.”

“27 seconds since the heart stopped,” another Nurse informed.

“Charge to 360, C’mon Katie. Clear!” Nico waited to see if her heart would react.

“ Okay, restarting compressions,” He ordered as he tried to think of the next step in running a code.

“49 seconds since the heart stopped.”

“Charge again, Clear!”

Everyone in the room waited anxiously as the monitor returned to beeping normally.

“Sinus Rhythm.”

A collective sigh of relief was let out as people started filtering out.

at the hell happened?” Percy asked as he speed walked into the room. He couldn’t help feeling a bit useless as he found his patient that was dying only seconds ago, alive and well- only it wasn’t him who had saved her, it was Dr Di Angelo.

“She had a seizure and her heart stopped,” Nico explained, sighing gently now that Percy was here.

“You were supposed to be monitoring her.” Percy turned around to face Nico. Nico was not expecting the accusatory tone- sure he wasn’t expecting clap on the back either but a Oh hey for keeping her alive while I took ages to show up would have been nice. Nico had known Percy all his life but despite that, he had never seen such a cold, turned off side of him. Was this how doctors or surgeons did their jobs? Become cold to everyone around them? Nico tried to explain himself- the key word there being tried.

“I-”

“-Just go, I’ve got her now.” Dr Jackson batted his hand and Nico was dismissed. Nico felt dismissed. Was this the life of an intern? Being blamed for every small inconvenience so the attendings can feel less guilt on their backs? Nico didn’t do anything wrong- he followed protocol, just as he had been told. He ran the code and continually paged Dr Chase and Dr Jackson. Them not showing up was the issue here, not him. He had saved her life. Not them.

Nico’s mind felt dead. He was 23 hours into a 48 hour shift and already, he was feeling the pressure. Too much pressure- was there a point to this? Was there a point to any of this? Nico dragged his feet across the floor, trying to find the exit.

“When you get a 911, you page me immediately. If someone dies, it’s on my ass. You hear me? Di Angelo?” Dr Chase raised an eyebrow at the intern who practically ignored them as they walked to the exit door, ignoring everything around them. The interns, Jason and Hazel both noticed his abnormally pale face and dazed expression. Hazel, being the concerned sister she was, followed Nico as he started to gain speed towards the exit.

“Nico, are you okay?”She reached her arm out but Nico made no notice of her. He could feel his stomach become more and more uneasy. He leant against a pole with one hand and quickly threw up his lunch. He placed both of his hands on his thighs, remaining hunched over and trying to catch his breath. As he walked back towards the hospital, intending to go and wash his mouth out, he caught Hazel walking towards him with concern drawn all over her face.

“If you ever tell anyone…” Nico trailed off as he walked past her, entering the hospital again.

Hour 26

“You said it was a seizure disorder, now you’re saying it isn’t?” Mr Bryce, Katie’s father, asked with slight confusion. He stood by his wife's side, both his hands on his hips in a confrontive manner.

“I’m saying that I don’t know. For now, I don’t have an answer for you. Now that Katie is stable-” Dr Jackson started explaining only to be cut off by the father.

“-We came here because this hospital is supposed to be the best in New York. That's my kid in there and you have the audacity to stand here and say I don’t know. I want someone else , a doctor that knows what they’re doing. A doctor better than you!”

“Mr Bryce, I can assure you that I’m working hard on Katie’s case-” Dr Jackson tried to keep himself calm. He was working hard but sometimes the body did things that science couldn’t explain. He was a doctor, a surgeon, not god.

“- No, you’re not. If you were, you’d be able to give me some answers.”

Percy decided to leave the couple before he said something to them that he’d regret.

Dr Zhang was a calm, collected and highly skillful surgeon. He knew what he was doing as he explained the surgery to Mr Savitch.

“I put you on the bypass machine, which pumps blood for your heart, fix your ticker, take you off the machine- I’m done. Simple procedure.”

His wife -who was clutching her husband's hand so tightly her knuckles were turning white- asked Dr Zhang with a slightly relieved voice,

“So I have no reason to worry?”

“I’m very good at what I do but it’s still surgery- there are still some risks. I’ll see you in the Operating Room this afternoon Mr Savitch.” Frank waved his hand goodbye to the couple and left while Dr Grace stayed behind to reassure the patient.

“Dr Zhang is very good, you’ll be fine,” Jason confirmed.

“He’ll be fine right?” Mrs Savitch urged again, wanting a guarantee. Her eyes screamed Tell me my husband will live. Jason could not understand how she was feeling but he sympathised for her. He wanted to help her, he reminded him of his mother, a woman who worried often.

“Tony’s gonna sail through it- You have nothing to worry about Gloria - I promise.”

Hour 30

Nico had no idea why he was here- in fact, he had no idea why any of the interns were here. They had all been called to the briefing room for a conference yet at no point had he been informed what exactly it was about. He glanced to his right to see Hazel holding sutures with a banana laying on her lap.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m suturing a banana with the vain hope that it wakes up my brain,” Hazel drawled her hand raising up to tighten the perfectly spaced sutures together- something Nico too had the talent for. Their heads both shot up as Dr Jackson, with Dr Chase beside him, walked in. Dr Solace also walked in, catching Nico’s eye as he leaned with his back on the door frame.

“I’m gonna do something pretty rare for a surgeon. I’m gonna ask interns for help. Katie Bryce right now is a mystery- she isn't responding to medication. All the tests are clean but she’s having seizures, Grand mal seizures and we don’t know why. I need you to help me out,” all the interns sighed as Percy explained this.

“I know you’re tired, I know you’re busy which is why I’m gonna give you an incentive. Whoever finds the answer rides with me. Katie needs surgery- you get to do what no intern does. You get to scrub in to assist on an advanced procedure. Annabeth- I mean- Dr Chase will hand out the chart- The clock is ticking people. Let’s save a life,” Percy weakly smiled as he saw the eager interns scrambling for the files and gave Nico a wink as he left the room. Nico had to look down at his shoes to not blush- his crush on Percy had subsided years ago but what are you meant to do when people wink at you?

Will decided to tag along to the intern conference being held by Dr Jackson- he’d get a chance to see the interns working under incredible amounts of pressure and have a look at potential residents to take under his wing as trauma residents. At least, that's what he told himself. In reality, he had wanted to see the Italian doctor who had the guts to flirt with him and then invite him to bed. Was Will offended? Of course! Did this intern think he was that easy? While Will told himself that wasn’t easy, a small part of his subconscious told him that him showing up to the intern conference for one gorgeous man proved otherwise.

As Nico left the conference room, Hazel jogged to catch up with him- though Nico didn’t know why she was jogging, she had much longer legs than him.

“Hey, I want in on Jackson’s surgery- you've been the intern on her case since the start- you want to work together? If we find the answer, we have a 50/50 chance of scrubbing in ,” She offered.

“Sure, but I want in on the surgery.” Nico shrugged.

“So do I.”

“May the best surgeon scrub in,” Nico held out his hand for Hazel to shake. The game was on.

The locker room was full of several other interns- all of whom were re-reading Katie’s chart as if their lives depended on it. Hazel and Nico were hunched together by their lockers- which were co-incidentally placed next to each other. There were 6 empty cups of coffee- 4 were Hazels and 2 were Nico’s. Rainbow sweet strips, Nico’s pick of course, were also present- Hazel had to beg Nico for a pack as he had 3 to himself. Nico was so used to staying up for unnecessarily long hours that he didn’t need as much caffeine to keep himself acting like a live human being, unlike his sister.

“So she doesn't have anoxia, chronic renal failure or acidosis. It’s not a tumor because the CT was clean,” Hazel confirmed.

“What about infection?” Nico suggested as he savagely bit into a rainbow gummy strip, ripping it away from his face causing sugar sprinkles to fly everywhere. Hazel shot him a look as she brushed them off her scrubs.

“No , there’s no white count, she has no C.T lesions, no fevers, nothing in her spinal tap.”

“What about an aneurysm?”

“No blood on the C.T, no headaches, no drug use, no pregnancy, no trauma. Nico, what if this girl dies?”

“This is gonna sound really bad but I really wanted that surgery,” Nico confessed before continuing, “Her pageant talent is rhythmic gymnastics. What even is rhythmic gymnastics? I can’t even say it properly, I don’t know what it is!”

“Oh come on, they have pageant talents?” Hazel started snorting with laughter with Nico joining only a mere matter of seconds later. Rhythmic gymnastics- a totally odd and dangerous pageant talent. Why not go with knitting, there’s a less chance of falling.

A less chance of falling.

Nico’s brain raced- something about that was relevant- vital even. Why did that sound so important?

Nico shot up, grabbing his sister by the arm. He thought he knew what was wrong with Katie.

“Get up, come on. Come on!” Nico whisper- shouted as he grabbed Hazel who asked him what the hell he was on about. He told her about Katie’s fall during practise for rhythmic gymnastics when she had sprained her ankle- the chance of a small aneurysm to form.

“The only thing that she would possibly need is an angiogram,” Hazel realised as they both rushed out to find Dr Jackson. They found him in the elevator ,alone, and just as the door started closing, Hazel stuck her hand in the way of the door. Immediately she started talking.

“She has no headaches, no neck pain, her C.T is clean- there’s no medical proof of an aneurysm but what if she has one anyway?”

“How?” Percy questioned, slightly confused.

“You see she twisted her ankle and fell. Just a bump on her head. It was so minor that her primary care doctor didn’t think to mention it in her history but there's a chance, right, Perce?” Nico almost begged, using the childhood nickname he used to call Percy, that he used to call his best friend. That is what he was doing at that moment- asking for his best friend to listen, not Dr Jackson.

“You know there’s a one in a million chance of that, literally,” Percy sighed, shaking his head. The siblings hung their heads as the situations settled- their diagnosis was getting shut down or so they thought it was. The lift opened and there stood Percy smiling. He waved his hands, signalling them to follow him.

“Let's go find out if Katie is one in a million.”

Hazel and Nico were both silent as they waited in the cath lab- this was it for them. Either they become a pair of fools and Nico would tarnish the Di Angelo name or they get to be the first interns out of their year to assist on an advanced procedure. Percy stood with his arms folded, his black hair tousled and his jaw muscle ticking like crazy- Nico could also see that he was stressed although who for, Nico could not tell.

“I’ll be damned. It's minor but it’s there- a subarachnoid hemorrhage. She’s bleeding into her brain,” Percy gasped slightly as he pointed his pen to the small black blobs on the screen. As they left the Cath Lab, Hazel and Nico were ready. They wanted to know who was getting the surgery- sure, they had agreed that the best surgeon would win but secretly, they had both hoped that they’d both be able to scrub it.

“Uh, Dr Jackson, you said that the intern who brought the diagnosis would be able to scrub in,” Hazel gently reminded, her eyes hopeful and full of yearning.

“Unfortunately, I can’t have you both so Nico, you’re scrubbing in.”

Nico was over the moon- His first surgery was going to be with Percy and he was going to assist! However Hazel both looked and felt distraught. She knew she should feel more happy for her brother but she couldn’t help but feel a slight sliver of jealousy that he had only been chosen because Nico and Percy were childhood friends. As Nico turned around to apologise for her, he saw that she had already left without him.

Hour 34

Jason was in the scrub room waiting for Dr Zhang to finish up the surgery on Mr Savitch. Was he nervous? Of course, but he was also confident in Dr Zhang's skills as a surgeon. He was sipping a soda while charting, leaning with his back to the operating room- he didn’t want to get distracted by the surgery happening behind him. The door swung open with a Whack and Dr Zhang walked in, looking dejected.

“That was quick, wow!” Jason said admirably- he knew Dr Zhang was good, but he didn’t think he could complete a surgery like that so fast!

“He didn’t make it. His heart had too much damage to get him off bypass- I had to let him go. It’s rare but it happens. It’s the worst part of the game,” Frank confessed as he washed his hands and splashed water onto his face, making him feel slightly more alive. Unlike Jason who swore his extremities went numb.

This couldn’t be, right? Surely this was a prank- everyone would play a prank on him, he was the 007! He would walk into the operating room and see the nurses preparing to move him back to the ICU for post surgery care. Yes, yes that’s what this was- a whole prank. Dr Zhang was probably punishing him for almost killing a person in surgery and this was his equivalent of karma. Despite the idea, when Jason turned around, he regretted everything he saw. There was blood on the floor,the patient was still wide open, the heart monitor which was still attached to the patient showed no sign of cardiac activity. Jason could feel a lump in his throat, a lump that he just couldn’t swallow. Hos throat was dry and there were tears pricking at the corner of his eyes as he attempted to speak.

“B..but I told his wife Gloria that he would be fine- I promised her tha-”

“You what? The only person who can give a promise like that is God and I haven’t seen him holding a scalpel lately. You never promise a patient's family a good outcome!”Frank, in a rare moment of no self control, lashed out. Jason, who realised his mistake, decided to leave Dr Zhang to mourn what he considered his failure and inform the family of their greatest loss.

Frank slumped over the sink in the scrub room, rubbing at his head. He had never failed something so simple, how did he not foresee this? His fists clenched and relaxed as his mind went over the events of the surgery- he had never felt so much like a failure in his life as he did in this moment right now.

As Jason approached the family, he could see their cheerful, happy faces, completely unaware of the soul- crashing news that he was about to bring them. Gloria ,who noticed him on instinct, immediately smiled wider- she thought she was going to go see her husband now. His kids had no idea what was about to happen to their lives. Jason still had the lump in his throat that was only getting bigger. He had to swallow several times which was a struggle because of his dry throat.

“How is he?” Gloria rushed her words out and it seemed she seemed more excited than nervous. Jason swallowed heavily before starting.

“Gloria, there were complications regarding your husband's surgery. Tony’s heart had a lot of damage. We tried to take him off bypass but- there wasn’t anything we could have done.”

Jason’s hands wrung back and forth as he struggled to keep his eyes from watering. He could feel them stinging as he fought back the tears of his betrayal

Gloria’s face scrunched up before slowly falling. Jason could see how her face slowly morphed from one of pure happiness to one of panic and distraught but Jason could also see the hope in her eyes.

“What are you talking about?” Gloria’s voice broke slightly, her lip curling.

“Tony died. He’s dead… Gloria, I am so sorry.” Jason reached out to comfort her, his hand reaching to stroke her back only for Gloria to completely flinch away from his touch. Betrayal illustrated her face and Jason couldn’t bear to continue looking her in the eye.

“Please, go away.”

Jason had undergone a lot of tough, painful situations to become a doctor and yet, this is what broke him.

Hour 40

Percy was shaving Katie’s head, watching the blond tufts of hair fall off her face. Nico walked in, smirking as he leant against the door. On noticing Nico’s presence, he began to whisper,

“I promised to give her a cool haircut. Apparently it’s a scandal to be a bald beauty queen.”

“Ah, well, I would totally pull it off..” Nico reached towards his hair and pushed it back slightly. Percy laughed slightly and nodded in agreement before they fell into a comfortable silence- the only sound being the buzzing from the electric razor. Nico watched Percy with admiration in eyes and Percy would look up at him every once in a while with a genuine smile that made his eyes crease.

Will was watching Percy and Nico hanging out in room 3604, an odd feeling of spite towards Percy starting to form. He didn’t know why- Percy had always been a good friend to him, helping him earn the respect of his peers. He watched as Nico watched Percy and suddenly felt the urge to accept Nico’s offer.

“I do hope that you aren’t staring at Di Angelo,” Leo walking up behind him commented dryly.

“Lover boy, you can’t really talk. Last time I checked, you seemed to be physically unable to keep your eyes off Calypso,” Will muttered in response. Leo gasped in mock offense before laughing.

“Awww, are you two sharing ‘we are going to single forever’ moment?” Piper cooed. Will grunted slightly - while Piper defended Will in public she totally teased him when there weren’t as many people and as for her and Leo- well they had known each other since they were teenagers.

“I’d like to escape the single lot, thank you for the offer though, pipes,” Frank sighed as he joined the group of them. His mood was still down due to losing his patient- he couldn’t help feel overwhelming guilt for not saving a patient with such an easy procedure.

Percy came out of the room, chatting away with Nico before he spotted the group of attendings who were all staring at them. He raised an eyebrow at all of them, especially since they weren’t trying to be subtle in any way.

“Yall, get back to work.”

The operating room was a tad warm. Or maybe that was Nico sweating due to his nervous nature. He couldn’t afford to screw up here, he had made it so far in only a few hours and had worked hard. Dr Jackson walked in with his trident and sea print scrub cap on his head before he looked around the room.

“All right everybody. Are we ready? Okay, Scalpel,” He held his hand out as he ordered a scalpel into his hand. Nico who was on his tip- toes to see what was going on for he was not sure if he could come any closer- neurosurgeons were scary people sometimes. Percy, who was ecstatic and in a great mood, gestured for Nico to come closer.

“Nico, come take a look. Your sister would absolutely love this,” Percy gushed and for once, Nico completely agreed as he looked at a live human brain.

Hour 48

It was finally time to head out. Nico was relieved- his eyeliner ,which was perfectly done the morning he came in, needed re-applying and he wanted to put his heeled boots back on. He was sick of everyone being taller than him. He was in the locker room after finishing the surgery and quickly he changed. He felt much better once he was back in his own clothes. Black ripped jeans, fingerless gloves, Ramone t-shirt and his beloved heeled boots. He stood in the mirror finishing off his eyeliner as Hazel walked in.

“We don’t have to do the thing where I say something and then you do and then somebody cries and then there’s a moment-” she started

“Yuck,” Nico cut in. Hazel smiled ever so slightly but Nico noticed it, causing him to attempt to repress a smile. The key word there being attempt.

“Good.”

Nico was looking for Percy- he wanted to thank him for the amazing surgery and for picking him to scrub in. He was about to enter the on call room that he assumed Percy to be in when he accidentally walked into someone. That someone just so happened to be Dr Solace. Except he was shirtless.

Why the fuck was he shirtless? Is there someone in there with him? Oh my god, was I hitting on a straight dude?

“Ah, sorry about that. I was changing when I realised my clean clothes were in my locker,” Will confessed sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his head. But Nico wasn’t really paying attention to anything that came out his mouth but rather his lips. Wait, why was he shirtless again? Nico had an internal panic for about 2 seconds before he pulled himself together and remembered his objective around Dr Solace.

“If I’m correct Solace, that surgery went very well,” Nico smirked.

If your first surgery goes well, then feel free to send that draft out again.

Nice one Nico, you got this.

Will opened his mouth, slightly in shock that Nico had still remembered that by now- sure it was 41 hours ago but most interns just wanted to sleep by now. But This was a Di Angelo he was talking about- surgery ran in their blood.

“Well congratulations. I caught the draft. What are you going to do about it, Di Aneglo?” Will challenged quite confidently, Nico’s surname rolling off his tongue. Nico started walking towards him, backing him into the oncall room. The second they were both in there, Nico’s hand reached behind him and locked the door with a flick of his wrist.

“Copy me,” Nico told Will. He raised one of his arms and then the other, watching as Will copied, slightly confused by the random motion. He then put both his hands together above his head and the second Will copied, Nico pinned Will’s hands above his head with a single hand and smiled wickedly. Will, adequately impressed, leaned his head forward to kiss Nico who obliged.

Explosions.

That's what Nico felt. He wasn’t expecting Will to be such a good kisser. The kiss was soft at first, their breath dancing across each other's lips but became more heated as Will tried to shift his hands out of Nico’s reach. Nico, being stubborn as he was, refused. Will bit Nico’s lip gingerly, teasing him as he pulled his lip back slightly between his teeth- the second Nico groaned gently, Will used all the momentum he had to flip them and press Nico against the door, holding one of his wrists in his hand. He reached to grab the other and hold it above Nico’s head as their lips smashed. When Will finally pulled back for air, he started making light butterfly kisses onto Nico’s jawline, making his way down to Nico’s neck. He gently sank his teeth and lightly sucked on the flesh there, making Nico throw his head back and let out a light moan.

Nico decided that he could thank Percy for the surgery later.

Hazel was waiting for Nico. She was outside the hospital and was watching as all the other interns were leaving and finally he arrived. His clothes were a mess- crumpled, his t- shirt was completely inside out and there was a bruise on his neck. Hazel had no idea what had happened and honestly, she didn’t want to. Nico waved to her, pulling out a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it.

“Finally! Gosh, we need to go if you want to get there on time!” Hazel fussed.

Annabeth and Percy were holding hands as they chatted away with Piper and Reyna- their faces all in an animated conversation despite being awake for 48 hours.

“And then I totally clipped that aneurysm,” Percy boasted, swinging Annabeth's hand up in the air with his.

Frank was meant to be paying attention to the conversation he was supposed to be having with Leo- who was excitedly talking about the life saving surgery that he did with Calypso as the Peds and OB department had to team up for that case. However, Frank was actually looking at Hazel as he started telling off Nico for the smoking near a hospital.

“It was a really cool case- the mother was teen in the third trimester which meant Peds had to work with OB. The baby had a tight nuchal cord so the delivery had to be performed by C- section so we could safely clamp and cut off the umbilical cord,” Leo ranted.

Thalia was rustling the blond hair of her younger brother as they got into a car, talking about their days.

“Who cares, 007 was totally badass!” Thalia told her brother as she started the car. Piper waved goodbye to Percy, Annabeth and Reyna, and leaned against one of stumps while she waited for Will. When Will finally arrived, his hair was an absolute mess and he had a few buttons of his shirt undone which gave view for a bruise blooming on his collarbone. Piper decided not to make much comment of it as they both started walking away. Will turned his head to see Nico one more time, only to see him laughing and kissing the head of a girl with dark skin and beautiful curly hair. Terror and unease immediately set within him.

Did I just help him cheat on his girlfriend?

Will decided to push the thought to the back of his mind as he left the hospital.

Nico was stalling. He knew it and so did Hazel. She had pulled up at the nursing home but he was still drumming his fingers on his lap as he sat in the car. After 10 minutes of pure silence, Nico got out of the car, the only sound made being the soft closing of the car door. He walked up the steps before entering the home. It was well lit, elegant and classy- he knew if Bianca was lucid that she’d love it here. He walked towards the window seat, knowing that she always loved to sit there. He took a gentle seat next to her, waiting for her to notice him nearby. When she finally acknowledged him, she looked at him and up and down, slightly confused.

“Are you the doctor?”Bianca asked, her eyes wide.

“No, I’m not your doctor but I am a doctor,” Nico attempted a smile but it failed with corners of his lips falling slightly. Biance wrung her hands back and forth, fidgeting with them subconsciously. The nails that used to be flawless were now chipped and bitten at.

“What's your name?”she turned her head towards him, tilting it slightly as she looked her brother in the eye.

“It’s me, sis. It’s Nico,” He said half heartedly, his voice cracking as his eyes followed hers, trying to somehow get to her lucid mind. He saw her eyes. He saw her how they looked at him, how she didn’t recognise him. Her eyes, they weren’t the same golden brown that gleamed, they were glossy- as if there were clouds covering the clear sky.

“I think I used to be a doctor,” Bianca mused as she continued to rub her hands aggressively. Nico reached out to stop her, hoping she wouldn't flinch or become aggressive. He held her hand in his, enveloping his hand over hers and she accepted the gesture. Just for a second, Nico could see his sister again.

“You were a doctor. You were a surgeon.”

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spencersglasses · 4 years

Text

Blood Type: B Positive

A/N: *GIF ISNT MINE* sup y’all! i literally haven’t written since middle school (i'm going into junior year). i just wrote this based on my experience a few days ago, i’m terrified of needles and getting blood taken. i did a little puny spin on it to make it a little better :) hope y'all enjoy <3

Couple: Spencer Reid/Reader

Category: FLUFFY FLUFF

Warnings: Lots of Bad Puns, (Fear of) Needles, Getting Blood Drawn, Hospital/Clinic Environment

Word Count: 1,493

--------------------------------------------

“I don’t know if I can do this, Spencer.” I continuously looked back at him and down at my lap. I was obviously nervous, judging by my bouncing leg and constant fidgeting.

I have to get my blood drawn today and even though my day job surrounds me with blood and tears, the moment someone mentions a needle coming anywhere towards me, I feel like passing out. Spencer could see how obviously this was bothering me. I felt his hand on my now profusely shaking thigh as we sat on the most uncomfortable clinic lobby chairs to exist.

“I’ll be there with you every step of the way alright? I've already let the doctors know about how you’re feeling today and they’ve allowed me to stay with you when it happens.” Spencer pulled me out of my thoughts as he gave me a small squeeze on the thigh. I shoot him a soft, slightly fake smile before returning to my thoughts involuntarily.

All I can think about is how the foreign object is actually going to be inside my skin, the needle, inside me. What if they can’t find a vein immediately, what if they just keep jabbing into my arm to find a vein and they accidentally rip open one of them and I bleed out right there? What if-

“Y/F/N? Y/F/N Y/L/N?” a nurse called out from the front desk as I felt my heart drop. Spencer could clearly see the absolute terror in my eyes so he took one of my fidgeting hands in his as he helped me up. I complied, no matter how badly I wanted to just run out the door.

As we entered the back room, I felt Spencer give my hand a squeeze of reassurance, earning a small, more genuine, smile from me.

The room was painted white, sectioned off into 3 different areas, 2 were occupied with other patients getting their blood drawn. The sight of someone getting their blood drawn made me weak at my knees, knowing I’m next. The floor was mostly tiled, alternating between green and white-colored tiles. The walls were speckled with small posters, some identifying the different uses and bottles of blood that could be taken, others with generic quotes. The area that we were taken to was the farthest away from the little lobby we were in before.

“You can go ahead and sit right here,” the lady nurse motioned at the light brown cushioned chair attached to the floor, the arms being the type that would curve inward towards the person sitting down, used for these exact scenarios. “You can stand beside her if you want.” She smiled towards Spencer. Spencer sent her a nod and quick thank you as she walked off to go grab, what I presumed, were supplies.

As I sat down, my damn leg started bouncing again, gaining a sympathetic look from Spencer. I looked up at him, seeing the cogs in his brain turning before his mouth turned into a slight grin.

“Did you know that research from YouGov Omnibus reports show that about 59% of Americans enjoy puns?” Spencer spoke, averting my attention away from the 5 blood canisters on the table beside me. I let out a slight chuckle, understanding, and appreciating his new method of distracting me.

“I’m guessing we fall into that category?” I questioned back, earning a small grin from him. “Tell me your worst pun,” I add, giving in to the distraction. It looked as if he was deep in thought for a second.

“What did I say to the boiling pot of water on the stove?”

“I don’t know Spence, what did you say??” I say sarcastically, although I was eager to hear his response. He chuckled to himself,

“Rest in peace water, you will be mist.” We both erupted into a small fit of laughter, making sure to cover my mouth to not bring too much attention towards myself.

“That physically hurt to listen to, oh my god,” I say as I’m slowly coming down from my laughs. “But I’ve got a better one.” Spencer cocked a single eyebrow at me, waiting for my response.

“What do you call a classroom lesson on serial killers?”

“Criminology?” Spencer joked, earning a glare from me. “I don’t know Y/N, what do you call a classroom lesson on serial killers?”

“A Hannibal Lecture!” We erupted once again, a bit louder than before. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the nurse making her way back to me. I lightly smacked Spencer’s arm to signal him that we need to calm down. Thankfully, we somewhat calmed down by the time the nurse returned.

“I see you’ve calmed down a bit.” The nurse pointed out, smiling sweetly at me. I returned the smile with a small yeah, eyeing Spencer. He was still quietly giggling to himself. I shot him a playful glare to get him to calm down because if he was laughing, I was bound to start laughing as well. “I’m just going to tie this around your right arm, by doing this, I’m making your veins pop out so I don’t have to go digging in your arm to find one.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, I felt my stomach drop slightly. I gave her a nod and I felt Spencer give my left hand, which was currently intertwined with his, a little reassuring squeeze.

“Okay, I’ve found a vein,” she stated calmly. I felt my blood pressure rise a bit. “I’m now going to disinfect the area. I’ll let you know when I’ve inserted the needle into your arm, alright?” she stated again. I sent her another nod as I averted my attention to Spencer. He’s smiling down at me, finally calming down fully from his little giggle attack. I sent him a little squeeze, signaling him to distract me as the lady entered a huge needle into my arm.

He took the hand that he was holding and carefully laid a kiss on top of it, making sure not to make me move my other arm. The grin I gave him then was probably one of the biggest and most genuine smiles I’ve given him today. This man really knows how to calm someone down.

“I’m inserting the needle now.” The lady states. I immediately closed my eyes, feeling a tight pinch on my arm. I involuntarily let out a small ow, making Spencer chuckle again. As my body begins to adapt to the tight fabric around my upper arm and the obvious needle inside of me, I send Spencer another glare. He just gives my hand another kiss and holds it against his cheek, our fingers still intertwined. We sat in a weirdly-comfortable silence for another minute or so.

“That’s it, you’re free to go!” the lady exclaims, causing me to open my eyes to see the 5 vials of my own blood. “I’m going to remove the needle from your arm now,” she states again as I watch her remove it, feeling calmer and a bit embarrassed at my anxieties that melted away so quickly. She then asked me to hold a small cotton ball over the puncture, causing me to let go of Spencer, putting a small amount of tape over it to secure it. I already felt my arm becoming sore. She then led us out the little corridor, to the lobby door. I waved and said a quick thank you before speed walking out.

“Wow, you really wanna get out of here, don’t you?” Spencer questions, mockingly. I send him a quick “yup” before walking out of the clinic. I then turn around and throw him the keys of the car, prompting that he should drive because of my already sore arm. Although Spencer’s kind of a smart ass sometimes, he was a complete and utter gentleman, coming over to open my door for me. I say a quick thank you before making my way into the car carefully.

As he enters the car, he doesn’t start it immediately, instead sits down and stares at me, lovingly, for a quick second. I mimicked his early gesture, cocking an eyebrow at him not starting the car. He looks me up and down and says,

“You know what you are Y/N? You’re copper tellurium.” He says nonchalantly, as he then starts the car. It takes you a second to realize what he said, knowing that chemistry has never been your strong suit.

“Copper tellurium?” you say out loud. As you buckle your seat belt, it hits you. “Oh! I’m cute? Awe Spence.” You feel your heart warm at the small pick up line Spencer just used on you. As Spencer pulls out of the parking spot, a slight blush covers his face.

“Well, Iodine Lutetium Vanadium Uranium” I responded, sheepishly. Spencer once again chuckles before intertwining our fingers,

“I love you too.”

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thejolexgroupchat · 3 years

Text

the one where they met in med school - part twenty-four

early morning surprises and shots fired

hi everyone! sorry we’ve been a bit MIA lately. life caught up with all of us and we are struggling to get back on the writing train. hopefully this short update will get everyone excited for the next few sections.

———

(April 2009)

Jo was a doctor. She was used to blood and tragedy and death. It happened all around her, every single day. It was a normal occurrence if she happened to witness the worst day of people’s lives. But watching her coworker get gunned down in front of her and lie in a pool of her own blood was almost too much for her, an uncomfortable swell of nausea rising in her throat as she watched the scene before her unfold.

Jo stared at nurse Angela and rushed over to her side along with Lexie to look for any signs of life. Lexie let out a whimper as she realized the shot had been fatal. Mark crawled across the floor to where they were and pulled them away from Angela’s body.

“Come on you two, we’re getting out of here,” Jo let Mark rest his hand on her back and press her head against his chest as he ushered her and Lexie away from the chaos of the lobby and towards the elevators.

“Wait! Alex. I need to call Alex,” Jo swallowed down the vomit that was slowly making its way up her esophagus. “I need to hear his voice.”

“Once we get somewhere safe you can call Alex and make sure he is okay,” Mark answered. “But right now we need to get out of here so that we’re alive enough to call him.”

The elevator doors slid open, and Jo felt momentary relief before a horrified scream left her. There in front of their very eyes, Alex was lying in a pool of his own blood on the elevator. Heart racing, she slid across the floor and pressed her hands against Alex’s chest, attempting to stem the blood flowing from the bullet wound there.

"Oh my God," a strangled cry ripped from Jo's throat as she felt Lexie's arms wrap around her, pulling her off of Alex's bloody frame. "Stop! No. Let me go! I have to help him. I have to—"

"Jo. You need to get off of him," Lexie urged, trying to keep her friend from witnessing the scene before them. “You shouldn’t see this.”

"No! Please, he can't die. We have to help him," Jo shouted as tears streamed down her face. "Alex! Please. Please…"

"Jo, look at me. We're going to help him, but I need you to calm down so I can check him out," Mark bent down and took Jo's place on the ground next to Alex. He pressed a couple fingers to Alex's neck and let out a sigh of relief. "I feel a pulse. It's faint but it's there. Let's get him out of here."

Earlier that Day…

She’d planned on being discreet. When Jo walked into the third floor supply closet in search of the one thing she’d needed, she hadn’t expected to be seen. Instead, she found herself reaching for the same item as someone else, fingers brushing in contact.

It was almost comical, the looks on each of their faces. Each individual being the last person they expected to catch in this predicament. So, it was quite shocking when Jo found herself reaching for a pregnancy test at the same time as Meredith Grey.

The both stared at each other in horror and confusion, not knowing what to say. Finally, Jo cleared her throat and brought the test close to her chest, avoiding eye contact with her friend.

“Does Alex know?" was the first thing that came out of Meredith's mouth.

"Does Derek?" Jo countered. She was met with silence. “I'm guessing your answer is the same as mine."

"I'm going to go take mine now. Do you want to do it together?" Meredith asked.

"Sure," Jo replied, shrugging.

The two women made their way to the bathroom and each proceeded to pee on a stick that could very well determine the course of their lives. They washed their hands and waited quietly for the recommended three minutes before looking at the tests in their hands.

“Two lines means…”

“Two lines mean your uterus is occupied,” Meredith looked over Jo’s shoulder at the plastic in her hand. “Well, that makes two of us. I can’t believe you let Alex knock you up.”

Jo stared in disbelief at the pregnancy test in her hand, not believing for a second that what it said was true. She blinked a few times before looking back to it, the two lines blaring up at her brightly.

When Alex and her had decided to let nature take its course, she didn’t think it would happen this quickly. They’d only just gotten engaged last month… A breathless laugh left Jo as she realized exactly when this baby had been conceived. Her hand flitted down to her stomach, pressing against the flat area as a grin appeared on her face.

“Oh my god,” Jo turned to Meredith who was eyeing her curiously. “You were trying! You wanted to get pregnant!”

A blush spread across Jo’s cheeks as she avoided Meredith’s gaze. She laughed awkwardly, "We weren't trying, so to speak. We just weren't… preventing."

Meredith raised her eyebrows, "You and Alex talked about it. You guys wanted a baby."

"Yes?"

"Is that a statement or a question?" Meredith asked, an amused chuckle slipping her lips.

"A statement? I just didn't think it would happen so fast," Jo laughed brightly and felt a couple happy tears prickle at her eyes. "I'm pregnant. Meredith, we're both pregnant."

"We're gonna have babies," Meredith grinned and did something very out of character and enveloped Jo in a hug. "I still cannot believe Alex is going to be a dad. He's going to freak out."

"I know," Jo giggled. "He's going to be a hovering pain in the ass for the next nine months, but he's going to be so happy."

"Are you going to tell him right now?"

"Not yet, I think I'm going to wait until tonight when we get home," Jo shook her head with a smile. "I'm going to tell Lexie, though."

Meredith nodded in understanding, "I'm going to tell Cristina."

"You'll tell me what Shepherd says?"

"As long as you tell me all about Alex's reaction," Meredith winked and placed her positive test in her pocket. "Okay, I'm going to go find Cristina. I'll see you later."

#the one where they met in med school #jolex #jolex fanfic #jolex fanfiction #jo wilson #alex karev #meredith grey #lexie grey #mark sloan #grey's anatomy #grey's anatomy au #grey's anatomy fanfic #grey's anatomy fanfiction #shots fired #mass shooting #pregnancy reveal #unplanned pregnancy #semi-planned pregnancy

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malikmata · 3 years

Text

Notes from a Brown Boy - Kansas Diaries

*Author’s Note: Some people’s names have been changed to protect their identities

The rain was the first thing to greet me when I landed in Wichita. Overhead the gray clouds loomed, shadowing the farmland that yawned in the distance. Distance. At first glance, the city seemed like one long stretch of prairies and cracked parking lots, occasionally punctuated by billboards of grinning injury lawyers and lit up restaurant road signs.

If you spend enough time here amid the crumbling old buildings, watching the weeds sway in the vacant lots, you’ll feel the slow, inevitable creep of dread or something like it.

It’s easy to feel lonely here.

But, if you’re receptive enough, you’ll run into many friendly folks. Sometimes too friendly.

For example: During my first week, I went to Freddy’s, a local fast food chain, and ordered a crispy chicken sandwich with fries. The cashier, a young woman with glasses and short blonde hair, suddenly started confessing her fear that her 8-year old chihuahua wouldn’t live a long life.

“I still think of him as a teenager,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s a chihuahua. They live long lives.”

Out here, in the most middle-of-the-road cities, you sometimes get a chance to show an act of passing kindness. While waiting in line at one of the hip, new cafes downtown, a place called Milkfloat, a tall elderly gentleman recommended which coffee and pastry to get.

“My wife says this place has the best cold brew in town.” Afterwards, grabbing his pastry and coffee, he wished me a good day. Most folks here always do and you better hope it comes true. Because here, like elsewhere, a day is filled with ordinary heartbreaks.

I will simply call her “Tita.” She works as a tailor at a department store, the only tailor working there, hemming and tapering racks full of suit pants under fluorescent lights. The nature of the job requires exact measurements and a keen eye for detail. She works hard, often skips lunch, and comes home dead tired. Her husband is recovering from 4 broken ribs after a car repair job went awry. Nothing can be done but wait until he gets better.

They live in a languid suburb on Wichita’s east side, a street with few sidewalks but plenty of lawn.

And noise. Plenty of noise. The neighborhood sits next to a car dealership. The skies overhead rumble continuously with airplanes and thunderstorms. Dogs bark at anyone who gets too close. A pickup truck blasts a corny country song as the cicadas and frogs belt out their lonely mating calls. Occasionally, a child’s laughter rises above it all.

Gossip is one of the great pastimes in towns like these. Even if you shut yourself up in your home, stories trickle in.

The neighbor across the street shot himself in the head.

The elderly couple that used to live next door got committed to a nursing home.

A fellow around the corner is on his third attempt to grow weed.

A college student starves himself morning to night so that he can save money for college.

Down the street, a kid lifts weights and punches the heavy bag hanging on his front porch.

Here, dumb luck seems, more so than in the big cities, the providence of God.

A man told me he got a job installing new carpets at a friend’s house. He was in desperate need of money, having sent most of it to his mother back home, who proceeded to gamble it away. When he ripped out the old carpet, he found a bundle of $10,000 dollars just lying there. His co-worker said, “We should split it.”

“No, no, we can’t take it.” the man said. He gave the money to his friend.

Sometime later, he went to the casino and couldn’t stop winning jackpot after jackpot. He brought home close to $16,000 in one night.

“So, if you do something good,” he told me, “God will remember that.”

Many people have come to live and die here, all of them wrapped up in the melancholic churning of faded ambitions and familial obligations.

Some people here have found something that returns them to the placidity they once felt in their youth. Sometimes that’s enough to keep them going.

For example:

I met Phil Uhlik, the namesake of the music store on E Douglas. He heard me playing an old Martin acoustic in one of the rooms. He shuffled in slightly hunched over, wearing a blue paisley shirt and brown shorts. He looked at the sunburst guitar in my hands and said, “It’s got a little beauty mark there.” He pointed to a small nick just above the sound hole. “All girls have beauty marks.” He pointed to his cheeks and smiled.

Uhlik started this music store 51 years ago and enjoys every moment of it.

“When you go to work for Boeing, that’s work,” he said. “But this, it doesn’t feel like work.” He motioned to the instruments all around him.

“How’d you get started?” I asked.

“I started off playing one of these,” he said, taking one of the accordions off a nearby shelf. As he strapped it on, all the years seemed to disappear. With a big crooked-teeth grin, he breathed life into the old accordion, his hands dancing up and down the keys. The smile never left his face as we bid farewell to each other.

I wish everyone in this world were as lucky as Phil.

I’m always seeking indie bookstores when I travel. Eighth Day Books provides much needed shelter from the summer heat. The shop was built 33 years ago and used to be located about half a mile east, in Clifton Square Village. About 17 years ago they moved to their current location, a 1920 Dutch-style colonial house on the corner of E Douglas and N Erie. Its blue trimmed windows peek through the foliage of neighboring trees.

When you walk in, you’ll see shelves of books on Christianity and Theological studies, most notably in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. I’ve never seen a bookshop with a section dedicated to Iconography.

Wichita, despite its size, feels like a small place. And with that cramped spaciousness, you’re likely to run into someone you may remember or who may remember you. Here I ran into my girlfriend’s 8th grade English teacher. A bald, bespectacled man with a gentle demeanor. After a bit of catching up, he said to us with a smile, “I hope all your dreams come true.”

The short story writer, Raymond Carver, once wrote: “Dreams… are what you wake up from.”

Wichita is a land that hypnotizes you; it makes you dream, dream of something beyond the miles of strip malls and airplane factories, beyond the shocks of wheat and windswept plains, beyond the doldrums and ennui. But it also shakes you awake, reminds you that you’re in it, that you better stop dreaming.

I’m not the religious sort anymore, having survived the regime laid down by my Catholic parents. But there is something enthralling, maybe even inspirational, when I look at the rows of beautifully painted portraits of saints and martyrs. Such solemn faces surrounded by golden halos. According to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, such paintings transcend art; they’re supposed to be windows through which you can glimpse the divine. They remind me of my grandparents with their judging eyes and moral seriousness.

My book haul for the day:

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

The Diary of Anne Frank

Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries by Marina Tsvetaeva

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

In that last book, I found this lovely little passage:

…”in the Revolution, as always, the weight of everyday life falls on women: previously--in sheaves, now in sacks. Everyday life is a sack with holes. And you carry it anyway.”

From Earthly Signs, P. 40

According to the 2019 United States census bureau, 15.9% of Wichita's population lives below the poverty line. That’s higher than the state average, which hovers around 11.4%. That’s not the lowest nor is it the highest in the country. As befitting its location, Kansas is right in the middle.

The minimum wage in Kansas is still $7.25 despite efforts to increase it to $15. When Covid-19 hit, city and service workers bore the brunt of the impact. You can keep all your empty slogans like “We Love Our Frontline Workers.” Congratulate me all you want for my hard work but where’s my pay?

When you see that business here has returned to normal--people freely walking around without masks, no longer socially distancing--it still feels all too strange; we spent an entire year under lockdown. There’s still a pandemic by the way.

Loved ones fell ill, died alone, hooked up to ventilators in closed off hospital rooms. I believe every interaction now carries the weight of all those deaths. My family, like so many others, didn’t escape unscathed from the pandemic. My grandpa, Amang, caught Covid. Since he was an elderly citizen (and suffering from emphysema to boot), he was among those considered most at risk. We all feared the worst. Somehow he survived. The doctors called him a “trailblazer.”

Now, with businesses back to 100% capacity, I’m afraid that, just like the 1918 Flu epidemic, the past will fade like a nightmare upon waking. But it was so much more than that; it was an avoidable tragedy.

If you want to know what this pandemic has done to people and their livelihoods, is still doing to them, take a ride through downtown.

Things were already going bad before Covid hit. Back in 2004, the writer Thomas Frank wrote,

“There were so many closed shops in Wichita… that you could drive for blocks without ever leaving their empty parking lots, running parallel to the city streets past the shut-down sporting goods stores and toy stores and farm implement stores.”

What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, P. 75

What led to all this blight? Frank attributes the decline to:

“the conservatives’ beloved free market capitalism, a system that, at its most unrestrained, has little use for smalltown merchants or the agricultural system that supported the small towns in the first place.”

-P. 79

The same story happens in a lot of places. A megacorporation keeps eating everything around it and leaves nothing else at the table.

The people are left hurting, a pit in their stomachs, and some asshole somewhere profits off of it.

While at the DMV, I overheard this:

“You have a good day now,” the security guard said.

“I’ll try my best,” a woman said.

My girlfriend heard them too and laughed.

“You really do have to try your best in order to have a good day here.”

At some point, we hit the town with a couple friends: Monica, and her boyfriend Will. Both are musicians trying to carve out their niche in a place that, on the surface, seems apathetic to creative pursuits.

It’s impossible to not be captured by their energy. As soon as we walk into their house, Monica, with her dark blonde hair draped over her shoulders, reached in for a hug. Will, a tall and bearded fellow with a bear-like presence, also went in for the hug.

“Ready to experience some Wichita nightlife?” Monica asked.

What is the nightlife here like? A group of high school punks wanted to fight us over a couple movie theater seats. Bored kids play rounds of “Chinese Fire Drill” at stop lights. I heard a nazi biker gang rolled into town at some point during my stay. Regular things like that.

At a low-key bar downtown called Luckys, I met a guy named Cory. He told me how he met a 15 year old kid loitering here, looking lost and forlorn.

“I don’t know what kind of advice I can give you but I’ll do the best I can,” Cory said.

This is the spirit I’ve often come across during my stay: A sort of slightly intrusive compassion. For a cynical Californian like me, the behavior seems a little strange, maybe even a little annoying. But I’ve come to appreciate the candor of it.

“Guaranteed we’ll know half the people here,” Will said.

Right away, he shook hands with the bartender—a high school friend of his—and asked him how his band was doing. Afterwards, we sat down and talked. Talking, after a year of pandemic lockdown, has become a lost art to me. But a little alcohol loosened the lips and suddenly I talked as though I’d known these people my whole life.

Will sipped his whisky on the rocks and told me:

“If everything in this world is meant to break down eventually, then any act of creation becomes an act of defiance.”

It may sound naive but to me, it’s true. I think about the words of the writer, John Berger:

Compassion defies the laws of necessity. To forget yourself and identify with a stranger has a power that defies the supposed natural order of things.

--The Shape of a Pocket, P. 179

Making art has to be, in some way, a compassion act, because it involves letting the environment and the people you meet speak for themselves, allowing a collaboration.

“When a painting is lifeless it is the result of the painter not having the nerve to get close enough for a collaboration to start… Every authentic painting demonstrates a collaboration.”

--The Shape of a Pocket, P. 16

You need to open yourself up, feel what someone is saying behind their words, and hopefully, feel what they feel.

Art, like Compassion, is defiant.

Among the 4 or so Asian markets here, you can find all the ingredients you need to cook up something good. During my first week, I stopped at a place called Grace Market. Like a lot of small Asian markets, it’s family run. A father from Taiwan. A mother from Korea. The son usually helps out when he can. Today (June 23), On this warm Wednesday morning, the son is manning the cash register.

“You’re from California? I’m from there too,” he said.

“Where at?” I asked.

“Sacramento. How about you? So Cal?”

“Nah, Bay Area.”

“Funny. That’s where my parents met.”

“Small world.”

On a different day, we met the father, a jovial man who never fails to say hi when you walk in. He came here over a couple decades ago from California, doing work for the US Army in Garden City. Once his service was over, he decided to stay in Kansas.

“I think you know why,” he said.

More and more young folks these days are leaving California. The high cost of living is presumably what’s driving this exodus. I told him I was also thinking of leaving the Golden State, as much as I love the place.

“Well, a town like this has a lot of potential if you want to save money,” he said. “If I tried to start this business in California, I don’t think I could’ve done it.”

The summer heat can, with the suddenness of a lightning flash, give way to thunderous storms. Speaking as someone from California, whose home has gone through excruciating periods of drought and wildfire, these nightly downpours are a startling yet relaxing sight.

The distant boom of thunder in the distance reminds you of how much of our lives depend on the weather, how small we are in comparison, how we are never separate from the goings-on of nature. The rain doesn’t come down lightly here. At night, it smacks and drums against the window pane with all the force of an animal trying to get inside.

But I don’t find myself frightened by it so much as awed by the combined power of wind and rain colliding against our rickety old house.

Kansas lies in the Great Plains, where layers of cool and warm air often combine into a low-level jet stream. Unimpeded by any natural obstacles on the wide flat plains, the wind roars across the expanse. Thunder growls over the prairie. And lightning flashes on the horizon in a fearsome red tinge.

The storm rages throughout the night, the only source of light in an ocean-sized plain.

“In general, the gods of the Wichita are spoken of as "dreams," and they are divided into four groups: Dreams-that-are-Above (Itskasanakatadiwaha), or, as the Skidi would say, the heavenly gods; and (2) Dreams-down-Here (Howwitsnetskasade), which, according to the Skidi terminology, are the earthly gods. The latter "dreams" in turn are divided into two groups: Dreams-living-in-Water (Itska-sanidwaha), and the Dreams-closest-to-Man (Tedetskasade)”

From The Mythology of the Wichita, P. 33

If you go downtown, you’ll see a sculpture called “The Keeper of the Plains.”

It’s almost 9 o’ clock when I get there, so large crowds have gathered to watch the ring of fire lit around its perimeter.

The statue was designed by indigenous artist and craftsman, Blackbear Bosin. Born in Cyril, Oklahoma, but living much of his adult life in Wichita, Kansas, Bosin was of Comanche and Kiowa descent and almost entirely self-taught as an artist.

When you come upon the Keeper of the Plains, standing tall on the fork of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers, you can’t help but feel a mix of admiration and sadness. It’s a striking statue, especially when set against the beautiful orange and lavender hues of the setting sun. But monuments like these end up reminding you of the Wichita peoples who were killed, displaced, driven from their land, and left to die in reservations, forgotten. The tribes that once lived here along the southern plains still show traces of their culture but now, you’ll see it mostly as a memory in a museum or as art hanging on the walls of a library.

I learned from a video by the Wichita Eagle that the last speaker of the Wichita language, Doris Jean Lamar, died back in 2016. It must be indescribably lonely to be the last speaker of a language. There is no one to have a conversation with, no one to whom you can confess your hopes or your regrets. But in the video, Lamar, even knowing that she is the last speaker, expresses hope that future generations will know what the language sounded like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ScPkN_xGRI

Is forgiveness even possible when injustices are still committed today against native peoples everywhere?

Not enough can be said about the skies here, which seem at times so brilliantly marbled with peach and lavender colors that you begin to walk with your head perpetually craned upwards.

It’s this aspect, the overwhelming sense of the sublime, that will probably stay with me long after I’ve left Kansas.

I think again about the nature of dreams. It isn’t such a sin to dream about things, about things that haven’t happened yet, and about things that have happened. To quit dreaming seems too cynical, like admitting from the outset that everything is screwed, that you should stop trying.

During my stay here, I’ve met many people who aren’t so irony poisoned yet, people who are achingly sincere and kind. They haven’t stopped trying. There isn’t much room for cynicism here. I appreciate that a lot.

Farewell to you, Kansas, you and your clumps of cumulus and vast fields of cows and grass. I’ll see you again.

Check out Will’s music! It’s gloomy, melancholy, and LOUD!: https://teamtremolo.bandcamp.com/album/intruder

#diary #photoblog #photo diary #midwest #kansas #travel diaries

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colonel-insomniac · 3 years

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Symphony

Hey geeks, this is my first time writing for miraculous ladybug, but i think this is a good debut piece. This was written to the song “I Hear a Symphony” by Cody Fry, so do with that what you will. Anyways, this is dedicated to @pawsomelybuggy. Onwards friends.

TW: CHARACTER ILLNESS AND TERMINAL ILLNESS

“I used to hear a simple song…”

Sure, Luka was considered a “villain,” but he felt it was a classic “right reason executed in the wrong way” sort of thing. He wasn’t a villain because he wanted the Earth to shatter and crumble. And if people knew how guilty he genuinely felt when he stole the snake miraculous behind Ladybug’s back, their opinion on him might change.

He shoved his hands in his pocket, head downcast as the grey sky above released its crystal drops. Luka scoffs, because why should the universe even be surprised at this point? He would assume that the universe was detached from all the second chancing he’s done as Viperion. He hates the black suit he’s currently wearing, and the uncomfortable pointy shoes he walks the streets of Paris in. But for Adrien Agreste, he would do anything. Basically almost has done everything. Nothing’s worked.

Adrien had been sick for a while. At first, no one was sure what was wrong, not even Adrien, who brushed it off as a cold. But things progressively got worse, to the point where he was consistently fatigued and weak. He became a shell of what was the model of good health, frail and bony. It all came to a head when he was at the Couffaine residence, practicing in Kitty Section, when tiny red spots covered his skin, bruises littering the spaces in between. No one should be able to bruise that much unless something severe was going on. Everyone had thought maybe Mr. Agreste had overstepped a boundary and gotten physical in some fit of rage, so no one was prepared for the verdict they got.

“Leukemia.” The doctor said. Instantly, Luka felt as though the air was knocked out of him, and would have fallen to his knees if it weren’t for Marinette and Alya standing on either side of him.

He had both wanted to see Adrien, and desperately wanted to turn around and run, jump in the Seine, hide in his room. Something so that he wouldn’t have to face the fact that Adrien had this terrible sickness. Luka had resurfaced to hear the grim news—Adrien hadn’t been diagnosed in time to stop it. The doctor’s said the most they could do would be to make what time he had left comfortable.

Then came the one time Gabriel Agreste has probably ever been kind to his child. He immediately abandoned his work to come to the hospital, his face still stone cold and blank as he threatened the hospital if they didn’t at least try to help Adrien.

He thinks back to when Adrien started losing his hair. He had been so upset that he wouldn’t let anyone in the room, had his bodyguard see to it that that stayed true. Luka still doesn’t understand how he’d managed to get in that day, but he remembers walking in quietly, seeing the side of Adrien’s head, his hair nearly gone. A look of desperation was etched on his face, with a mixture of hopelessness as he stared out the window.

“That was until you came along…”

He’d been mad at first, and Luka had felt guilty about disrespecting Adrien’s wishes. But he knew, more than anything, that being alone was worse than disobeying what the boy wanted. Luka had given him his first beanie that day, the first of many to come. He’d also given Adrien a rose, white with a black ribbon.

Long after the rose had wilted and been thrown out, Adrien had kept the black ribbon, and had it tied to his wrist like a bracelet. The gesture had made Luka’s heart skip a beat, and so he kept bringing Adrien roses, if only to bring a smile to the boy’s face.

Through this, no one had seen Chat Noir, which on a whole was not an issue, Hawkmoth hadn’t really created any new akumas. Mostly, they had seen the return of Mr. Pigeon, who was an easy person to best, someone Ladybug could defeat on her own. Chat had attempted to show up the first couple times, but upon seeing his pale tone and unatural sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, Ladybug had promptly told him to go home and rest. He’d had to be pushed off the scene, but after the third or fourth time, had stopped showing up. Ladybug had voiced her concern to Alya as the author of the Ladyblog, but no one had seen any trace of the cat themed superhero.

“Now in its place is something new, I hear it when I look at you…”

Luka numbly walked on, not paying attention to his surroundings. There was no point, in all honesty, not when he knew where he was heading. It played out this way dozens of times now, so he figures he can afford to be absorbed by his thoughts, at least until he reaches… he shakily inhales, unable to admit even to himself where he was headed. The rain fell faster, the universe seemingly weeping with him, mourning the loss of a soul that definitely did not deserve their allotted fate.

Luka was barely able to bite back sobs, his brisk pace halting to a complete stop as he hugged his sides. The world felt permanently grey, endless and hopeless.

Those last days with Adrien the first time were the worst. They were cast in a golden glow, the spark that had always lived in Adrien’s eyes had dimmed. He seemed tired, but scared. Luka stayed by him practically 24/7, the boy leaning into the warmth that Luka’s body provided. “I’m scared.” He whispered, and Luka bit his lip hard enough to bleed. What were you supposed to say to someone who’s dying? “It’ll all be okay, except that it won’t because you won’t be here?” Absolutely not, instead he opted for “I’m scared too.” Days later, and Adrien would succumb to the cancer, leaving Luka in what felt like a vacuum devoid of all happiness.

Much to Luka’s torment, the boy had passed while Luka was asleep, and assumingly was asleep as well. At least, that’s what Luka had convinced himself so he could find some sort of peace. He had woken up to a voice, pleading for Adrien to not be gone, but when he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see anyone. He’d soon find out that Adrien was Chat Noir, and it was Plagg who had been begging for Adrien.

“With simple songs, I wanted more, perfection is so quick to bore…”

Plagg had loved the boy dearly, it was evident in the way he didn’t want to part with the boy, and would have rather been buried with Adrien over getting a new holder, Luka, having been Viperion previously, knew exactly what Plagg was, and scooped him in his hands, gingerly slipping Adrien’s ring off as nurses rushed in to try and resuscitate Adrien. Soon, Luka found his way to the roof, and sat dangling his legs off the roof, silently crying and sharing the pain with possibly the only other being to understand what fully loving Adrien felt like.

That’s where he first had gotten the idea to go rogue and steal Sass to save Adrien. Plagg was quick to discourage the idea, but his hesitance was enough to push Luka in the opposite direction. Getting Sass was easier than he thought it’d be, and that was when he rewound time for the first time. He was back to holding Adrien, and quickly rewound again, to get to a couple days before. This is where he’d start again.

For the first hundred times, he quickly realized he was dancing on a thin line of morality. Attended Adrien’s funeral about a hundred times. Rewound time dozens more. Nothing changed besides Ladybug realizing the missing miraculous and declaring Viperion an enemy. People grew to hate him time and time again, and not once had he bothered to try and clear his name, he just took it. Over and over again, publicly fighting Ladybug at one point and barely hanging onto his sanity through the fight.

“You are my beautiful, by far, our flaws are who we really are…”

And now he walks again, failed again, Plagg and Sass peeking out of his breast pocket with sad eyes. By this time, he’d told Adrien several times that he was in love with him, kissed his cheek dozens of times, and just held the boy to comfort him many more times. Nothing ever changed and Luka was getting to a point in his frustration where he wanted to throw something, and being a generally mellow person, that was saying something.

Getting lightheaded at the thought of being in that field again, he sat down, putting his head in his hands and trying to regulate his breathing. Luka glanced at his wrist, at the snake miraculous ready to pull him back again whenever he decides to. Normally, he’d rather stand and get through this feeling, but he simply just does not care anymore. If it’s going to rain on him let it rain. The only thing that matters anymore is saving Adrien. And that’s all he can think of doing anymore.

He can’t make it to the funeral, he knows that now. He might have forced himself through the torture of it several times before, but it’s worn him down. Luka looks down at the kwamis, mutters a monotonous “sorry,” and pulls the bracelet.

“I used to hear a simple song, that was until you came along…”

The feeling of light ripping through his body is impossible to get used to, but he soon opens his eyes to find himself in the middle of a hospital courtyard dappled in sunlight falling through the trees. Adrien sits beside him, had begged Luka to let him sit in the grass and not the wheelchair, so now the both sit in the grass. The blonde haired boy leans against the tree behind him, eyes closed and a peaceful smile gracing his face. It brought Luka a hollow joy to see his love smile, if only for a little.

“Luka.” Adrien cracks open an eye, a hint of a mischievous glint residing in them. He patiently waits for Luka to muster the courage to respond. When he does, Adrien swiftly pulls two blades of grass to his lips and blows, creating a piercing whistle. Luka jumps, startled, but mulls over the resonating melody that it creates in the world. Perfectly descriptive of Adrien as always, and that never ceases to baffle Luka.

Adrien laughs, the sound pulling a smile from Luka. Later, he gets scolded for giving into Adriens pleas to sit in the grass. “What harm can it do,” he snaps. “He’s dying and we all know it. Why shouldn’t he be able to enjoy what little time he has left.” That gets the nurse to stop and nod. Maybe it’s just the tears in Luka’s eyes coupled with the desperation and sorrow in his voice.

Adrien holds Luka’s hand in his after the blue haired boy convinces Adrien to eat some food. Luka has some bright green nail polish on the bed tray per request of Adrien, who had conveyed to Luka he at least wanted to be rebellious in his dying moments a couple days prior. Luka had withdrawn after, much to Adrien’s displeasure, and had then found how affected Luka was from all this. Breaking out of his trance, Luka feels the weight of Adrien’s head on his shoulder, and Luka turns to press his cheek against his head.

Luka stares at the bottle of green polish before raising his knee to put Adrien’s hand on it. “Hold still so I don’t mess up,” he warns Adrien, but has a feeling the other boy will do something to mess him up anyways.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Adrien responds, just minutes before he jerks his hand, resulting in a bright green streak across his hand.

“You took my broken melody, and now, I hear a symphony…”

Days later, and the outcome doesn’t change. Luka resets time again.

Adrien cups Luka’s cheek in his hand, his cool palm causing a stir in Luka, who subconsciously leaned into the embrace. “You look tired, dear.” Adrien mumbled. Luka squeezed his eyes tight so Adrien wouldn’t have to see him cry.

With a shaky inhale, Luka leaned down, resting his head against Adrien’s shoulder. ‘I’m so tired. Please, stay with me this time.” He pleads, knowing it’s not up to Adrien to decide.

“I promise I won’t.” Adrien whispers, wrapping his arms around Luka.

Many times later, and the doctors finally find a viable solution.

“And now, I hear a symphony.”

#miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #chat noir #ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #alya cesaire #miraculous ladybug and chat noir #prompts #rena rouge #nino lahiffe #does it hurt #please #feedback #Yknow #I #lukadrien

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annewritesfic · 3 years

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Happy Endings Don’t Exist

y’all i’m so attached to this au-

anyways! based on chapter 58 of cress by marissa meyer!

tw: discussion of blood, violence, chess has a pretty gorey nightmare in the first section (you can skip the first few paragraphs and pick up at “Chess opened her eyes with a gasp” to miss it), blades, pain medication, mention of attempted murder/murder, hallucinations

word count: 2275

In Chess's dreams, she was being chased by a wolf.

She was running through a field of crops with thick mud that sucked at her shoes, fog soaking her jacket and leggings, her lungs burning and her eyes stinging and her heart thundering. Dry leaves crunched underfoot, quickly being swallowed by the mud, and something in the back of her head dimly registered that she was being chased through the sugar beet fields on the Benoit farm back home. Even as she thought it, something began to glow in the distance - the lights of a farmhouse. Her house. The house she’d grown up in, the house that had always been safe and warm. If she could just make it to the farmhouse, then everything would be okay.

But no matter how hard and fast Chess ran, the farmhouse didn’t get closer. It almost seemed that for every step she took, the farmhouse was three steps farther away. She might’ve been running for hours or days or months or years, but the farmhouse got no closer. Eventually, the fog closed in and swallowed the farmhouse, the warm glow blinking out of existence.

She tripped, landing on her hands and knees with a shout of pain, mud sticking to her clothes and caking her braid. The damp wetness soaked into her bones, making them ache from the cold. She looked up, and just a few feet away was the wolf, crouched low to the ground, eyes flashing with hunger and anger. Her hands desperately searched for a weapon on the ground, something, anything, as the wolf got closer, and closer, and closer…

There. Something smooth and hard under her fingers. It was surprisingly easy to yank from the mud. She barely had time to look at it, to register the blade glistening in the moonlight under the layer of mud, the sanded wooden handle - an axe - before the wolf leaped in the air, jaws unhinged, sharp teeth reflecting in the axe blade. Chess lifted the axe reflectively, bracing herself, just moments before the wolf would’ve landed on her chest and ripped her to shreds.

The axe cut clean through the wolf, slicing it in two pieces from snout to tail. Its blood splashed all over Chess’s face and chest, and she heard twin thumps as the two halves fell on either side of her head. A choking sob fought its way up her throat, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, sure she was going to throw up.

Then the two halves of the wolf began to move, shifting beside her into two human-like shapes, each wearing half of the pelt. The fog began to clear as two hands reached towards her, and Chess stifled a cry - her grandmother and Cairo, welcoming her home.

Chess opened her eyes with a gasp.

Instead of her grandmother’s old military jacket and Cairo’s shining eyes, all she saw were steel bars. The air was filled with the scent of ferns and moss. The chatter of birds was so overwhelming she almost covered her ears.

A soft yip came from somewhere to the side, sounding concerned - the white wolf. Chess rolled over to look at him - on the other side of the pathway, the wolf sat, watching her. He tilted his head a little bit, and it struck her how much he almost seemed like the neighbors’ dogs back home.

Home…

It wasn’t the first time she thought it, but Chess was still shocked by the near-physical pain in her chest, the longing for the rolling fields and blue skies and familiar faces. She wanted to go home.

“He likes you,” said a voice.

Chess inhaled sharply and sat up, eyes searching wildly for the source of the voice. A girl about her age was sitting in her cage, hands folded in her lap, watching her curiously, close enough to touch. Chess tried to move away, but pain shot through her hand, and she fell back to the ground with a hiss of pain. Her hand was wrapped in bandages, but her pinky was the worst of it - during her trial, Levana had forced her hand to pick up a hatchet and use it on the pinky finger of her other hand, taking it off at the second knuckle. The pain had been bad enough that she’d wished to pass out, although she hadn’t. But while that was the worst of her pain now, it wasn’t all of it - there were scratches and cuts and bruises all over her entire body, some from the scuffle on the satellite and some from that awful Lunar boy she’d stayed with for several days and most of the aches from sleeping on hard floors for more nights than she could count.

The strange girl didn’t react to Chess’s fear. She sat quietly against the wall, her back straight, looking interested and curious. She clearly wasn’t another prisoner - she wore a pale pink dress that looked out of place against the dark regolith Chess’s cage was carved from. Her honey-brown hair tumbled around her shoulders in healthy, shiny curls, half of it tied up in a ponytail. Her eyes were a pale blue, sparkling with excitement, and Chess realized that her left eye had three scars below it, cutting in straight, parallel lines down her cheek - almost like perpetual tear tracks.

She was the most beautiful person Chess had ever seen.

And it was that beauty that made Chess realize she was wearing another glamour - another trick.

“Ryu and I were wondering if that was a very good dream or a very bad one?” the girl asked in a sweet voice. “You were mumbling to yourself quite a lot.”

Chess pushed away the lingering memory of the dream, the image of Cairo and her grandmother smiling at her. “Who the hell are you? And-and who’s Ryu?”

The girl smiled. “Ryu is the wolf, silly!” She turned to look at the wolf across the path. “Haven’t you been neighbors for four months now? Ryu, why haven’t you introduced yourself?”

The wolf blinked big yellow eyes at her.

The girl looked back at Chess and leaned forward, like she was sharing a big secret. “And I am your new best friend. But you mustn't tell anyone, because all the guards think that I am your master and you are my pet - they don’t know that my pets are my dearest friends of all! We will fool all of them, you and I.”

Chess struggled to comprehend what the girl was saying. None of it made sense, or answered Chess’s question.

The girl reached for a basket beside her that Chess hadn’t noticed before. It seemed like a picnic basket, lined with some soft, silvery material. “I thought that today, we could perhaps play doctor and patient! I’ll be the doctor, of course. You seem in need of some care.”

Chess sat up and pressed herself against the opposite wall. “You’re not a doctor.”

“I know. That’s why it’s pretend.” The girl smiled wider. “Aren’t you having fun?”

“No, actually, I’m really not.” Chess’s fingers pressed against the rough stone floor. “I’ve been mentally and physically tortured, I’m starving, I’m thirsty, I’m locked up in a cage in a goddamn zoo-”

“Menagerie.”

“-and I’m hurting in a thousand different places. And now some crazy girl comes in here and wants to play make-believe? Like we’re best friends or some shit?” Chess scoffed. “I’m good. Go away.”

The girl sighed and leaned her chin on her hand, resting her elbow on her knee. “You shouldn’t call me crazy. The guards don’t like that. Even though it’s true.”

Neither of them broke the silence for a moment.

“I know it’s true. You want to know how I know?” The girl leaned forward again. “The palace walls have been bleeding for years, but I am the only one who sees.”

More silence.

“No one believes me, no matter how many times I say it,” the girl continued. “Sometimes I can’t help but step in it, and then I track bloody footprints everywhere, and I worry that perhaps a wolf soldier will smell it and come for me. But if the blood was real, don’t you think the palace maids would clean it up?”

Chess tried and failed to think of an answer.

The girl pulled a small box wrapped in ribbon. “These are for you. Doctor’s orders are to take one pill twice a day.” She handed Chess the box with a wink. “It isn’t real medicine, of course. It’s just candy. Sour apple petites - they’re my favorite.”

“I’m not eating one of those.”

“Why not? It’s a gift.” The girl opened the box and held it out to Chess - four small, round red candies, shiny and smooth. Chess didn’t move, and after a moment, the girl set the open box down on the floor between them.

“What do you want from me?” Chess asked.

“I want to be friends.”

“A friendship based on lies?” Chess laughed sharply, humorlessly. “Of course you don’t mind that. You’re Lunar. Lying is all you know how to do.”

The girl looked at her lap. “I’ve only ever had two friends - two human friends. One became a pile of girl-shaped ashes when we were very little, and the other has gone missing. I don’t know if he’ll ever return.” She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. “But I asked the stars to send me a sign that he was all right, and the next day was a trial like any other trial, except standing before me was an Earthen girl who’d seen him.”

“Can you make sense? Please?”

The girl leaned forward, closer than she had before, close enough that Chess could almost feel her breath across her face. “Is he all right? Sybil said he was still alive, that he probably was supposed to be piloting that ship, but she didn’t say whether he’d been injured. Do you think he’s safe?”

“Who?”

The girl smiled again, almost wistfully. “Clark Winslett. Sybil’s guard. The man with the blond hair and the kind eyes and the smile that holds the sun. Is he all right?”

Chess blinked, baffled. She didn’t remember much from the fight on the Rampion, and what few memories she did have were blurry. But while her focus had been mostly on the thaumaturge, she did faintly remember a blond guard.

But the smile that holds the sun? Bullshit.

“I remember two people that tried to kill us,” she muttered.

“And he was one of them?” the girl pressed, seemingly unconcerned with the killing part.

“Yeah, I guess.”

The girl smiled gleefully. “Did he look okay?”

“He looked like he was trying to kill me,” Chess said. “But I bet my friends killed him first. That’s our typical procedure for people who work for your queen.”

The girl’s smile vanished. “You’re lying.”

“Nope. And he deserved it.”

The girl began to shake, almost hyperventilating. The wolf - Ryu - pawed at the bars of his enclosure, whimpering. Chess tamped down her guilt and told herself she wouldn’t call for the guard’s help.

The girl got her breathing under control and sat up, her hand resting on her basket. “I see. Well, I-I should go.” She moved as if to stand, but then stopped. “I wasn’t lying about the bleeding walls. Soon, the palace will be so soaked with blood that Artemisia Lake will be so red, even Earthens will see it.”

“I don’t care,” Chess said. “And I’m not going to feel sorry for you. Your glamours and your mind control - you people have built your entire civilization around those lies, and I don’t want anything to do with it.”

The girl crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at Chess, but said nothing for almost a minute. Chess lifted her chin and looked the girl in the eye, refusing to be afraid.

“I haven’t used my glamour since I was twelve years old,” the girl said at last. “That’s why I have these visions. Why I’m going mad.”

Chess didn’t show her surprise as the steel bars of the cage opened and the girl ducked out, taking her basket but leaving the candy. “Your Highness,” said the guard as he closed and relocked the cage door.

Chess listened to the footprints retreat down the path, staring at the candies, her heart thundering in her ears.

Your Highness.

Princess Annleigh.

The queen’s stepdaughter.

Annleigh was rumored to be more beautiful than Levana herself - which was why the queen had given her those scars. Even Earth knew about her, about her unspeakable beauty, about her scars… though Chess had never heard about the girl going mad.

The candies lay in front of her still, tempting her. Chess had no reason to trust her, but she’d finished her one small meal hours ago, and she wouldn’t be fed until the next day. Her stomach began to ache, and her head spun, and while she was proud of how long she made it, eventually she reached for the box and lifted one of the candies from the shreds of paper it was nestled in. It was smooth as glass between her teeth and cracked easily, the warm, melty center sweet and sour on her tongue. Nothing, nothing, had ever tasted so good.

But it was nothing compared to the sensation that expanded through her chest, down to her legs and into her fingers. A feeling of warmth, of comfort, that took her pain away with it.

Chess managed a smile up at the glass ceiling, at the stars beyond it. Perhaps the princess wasn’t so cruel after all.

#we are the tigers #chess watt #annleigh o'daniel #blood tw #violence tw #nightmare tw #drugs tw #murder tw #ask to tag #clarkleigh #the lunar chronicles

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f4irymxri · 3 years

Text

- 𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘬𝘢 𝘹 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘧𝘦𝘮! 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 -

chapter 19.

Y/N

MAJOR TW !!

I was listening to ILOVEITWHENTHEYRUN and Bowser while writing this so like i very much recommend.

Angie had her hand over her mouth and Jemila had just woken up. The doctor said she would have to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks so her situation wouldn't get worse. Angie had come with me back to the bakery since I didn't want to go alone. The pain in my thighs was actually decreasing and I could walk somewhat normally.

I unlocked the bakery door and we stepped inside, locking the door behind us. "Angie, what do we do?" I asked her. "I don't know," she said, looking down. "Okay I know we're in a crisis but my ass is hungry," I said, getting up. I went to the freezer and got two cherry cheesecakes. I got a couple of plastic forks and went back to Angie. I gave her a fork and the cheesecake and we ate in silence. As we were eating, a call came to my phone. I read the contact name and it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

"Hello?" I said. "Hello, Y/N," Jamal said on the other line. "What are you doing with Tanaka's phone?" I said, the panic in my voice very easy to notice. He didn't say anything but I could hear muffled sounds which made me assume the worst. "Jamal, if you lay any of your grimy ass fingers on him, I swear to god I'll have your body spread across Mexico," I said. "Don't test my limits, Y/N," he said. "And don't test mine bitch," I said. "Watch that b-word," he said. "I'll watch what I want, bitch," I said. I heard him take a deep sigh.

"Get over here or I'll kill him," he said, hanging up. "Wait, where are we supposed to go?" Angie asked. "He didn't say," I said. "But I know exactly where to go," I said, getting up. Angie and I both got back in her car but this time I drove. I drove us back to the house and parked on the road. Then I called the police and told them to come in exactly 40 minutes. I already had a plan set up and hopefully, it would work. I told Angie to stay in the car and only come out when I give her the signal.

I got out of the car and put the knife in my bra. I tied my thick braids into a bun and carefully put a few needles in different sections just in case. I'm not ruthless but I will not hesitate to kill a bitch if they hurt someone I love. "Angie, in the case that I don't make it out, take Jemila and leave. Please. Take Amie with you and go back to Atlanta. Go to this address and ask for Amelia," I said as I wrote down the address and gave her the paper. Tears started to flow down her face but I wiped them away. I took off my hoodie and tied my shoes. I started walking towards the house and stepped inside. Even though it was super bright outside, the whole house was dim and depressing.

I carefully stepped over the shards of glass and made my way back to the basement. I carefully went down the stairs and when I did, I saw Tanaka in a chair, covered in bruises and chains. I covered my mouth and ran up to him. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. This is my fault," I said as I examined his body. Tears began flowing down my face as I took the tape off his mouth. "It's not your fault, Y/N," he said. His clothes were all ripped and he was just left shirtless with black jeans that were torn. Tanaka looked into my eyes and raised both his eyebrows, giving me the exact look I needed. I swiftly moved to my left, pulled out the knife, and stabbed the knife into Jamal's thigh.

He was right behind me and if it weren't for Tanaka, I'd probably be dead right now. He screamed in pain and I quickly grabbed Jamal's dreads and dragged him up the stairs by his hair. I took the same chains he tied me up with and tied him to the counter. Then I looked for my baby. "ALMOND," I yelled as I looked around the house. I ran upstairs and found Almond in my room but she had a small scratch on her face. "He did this to you didn't he?" I said. "It's okay," I said. I carried Almond outside and she ran towards Angie, giving her the signal.

I then went back to Jamal and crouched down in front of him. "Give me the fucking keys," I said. "Suck my dick," he said. "Okay," I said and took one of the needles out of my bun. I took the needle and slowly pierced it through his nose. "FUCK. ITS IN MY POCKET" he said. I took the keys out of his pocket but left the needle in his nose. "Nice piercing," I said and ran back to the basement. I unlocked Tanaka's chains and gave him a huge hug.

"Oh we're not done yet," I said. I took his hand and led him to where Jamal was. I got a chair and sat the chair right across from Jamal. I sat a confused Tanaka down on the chair. I got my speaker and played When we by Tank as loud as I could. I then tied Tanaka's hand behind his back while he was sitting on the chair. I then slowly sat down on his lap and started grinding on him to the beat of the music.

I grabbed his throat and sang the lyrics while looking into his eyes. I turned around and faced Jamal and whined my hips on Tanaka's lap while not losing contact with Jamal. Tanaka couldn't touch me which is the main reason I tied his arms up. I then got on the floor and slowly arched my back until I was in the ground. I glanced over at Tanaka who was in awe as he was seeing a side of me he's never seen before.

The song finally ended and I turned off the speaker. I went back to Tanaka and sat straight down on his lap as I faced Jamal. "So, how did you find me?" I said, pulling my knife out. "Laila helped me," he said. "The fake Koharu?" I said. He nodded his head and I did the same. "So I'm assuming y'all killed the real one?" I said, getting off Tanaka's lap. He nodded his head and I crouched down in front of him again.

"So you kidnapped my boyfriend, hurt my cat, hurt my best friends, killed my aunts friend, and stalked me and Jemila all the way back to Japan, and for what?" I said, lifting up his shirt. "I want you, Y/N," he said. "Sorry but you can't have her," Tanaka said. "She's mine," he said. I smiled to myself and opened the knife. "So Jamal, you got anything you want to say?" I said. "I'm not going to kill you, if that's what you're thinking. But you're going to wish I did," I said.

I then took the knife and took my sweet, precious time carving the word 'BITCH' in big letters. "Dayum," Tanaka said. Jamal yelped our in pain and his legs were shaking. "Well you won't bleed out to death but I'm not done," I said. I went to the kitchen and got some gloves. I got the salt and slipped the gloves on hands. I got a blindfold and put it over Tanakas eyes. He doesn't have to see what I'm about to do. I got the salt and poured a handful into my hand.

I then took the salt and rubbed it all over his wounds. He screamed out in pain and tears started flowing down his face. "If you would've just stuck to me, I would have gone easier on you. But you went as far as to touch the people I love, that's the line for me," I said. I then brought hydrogen peroxide from the bathroom and poured the menacing liquid all over his body as it burned his skin. "That's enough for now. Now you'll either bleed in pain to death or spend the rest of your pathetic ass life in jail. Bye babes," I said.

I took the blindfolds off Tanaka and untied his hands. I took a cotton ball and poured a little bit of hydrogen peroxide and dabbed his wounds. He winced as the burning liquid touched his skin: "I know, baby," I said as I examined his body. "Damn how did this even happen to you," I said. "I came over here to find you and then this suspicious ass dude told me he was your brother. Then he knocked me the fuck out," he explained.

"Bruh I'm so sorry," I said. "I already told you it's not your fault," he said. "Y/N, did you tell him we fucked?" Jamal said. "Uhm we very much did not. You're such a failure you had to force yourself into me to get some pussy," I said. "He forced himself into you?" Tanaka said, getting up. "No, don't" I said, putting my hand on his chest to stop his from stepping any further. "Nah let him go," Jamal said. "Nigga, I'm trying to save YOUR life," I said. "ANGIE COME AND HELP ME OUT," I screamed. Angie immediately came running inside and looked confused. "Take Jamal the hell out of here, and if you lay a FINGER on her, I will fucking burn you," I said.

Angie picked up Jamal and dragged him back to the basement. "Y/N, you should've let me beat him up," he whined. "You would've killed him," I said. "Exactly," he smiled. "Stop," I laughed as I shook my head. "Y/N, you just went through hell and back. How can you laugh?" He said. "At least I'm alive right? I'll probably suffer even more after all this ends but I'll be okay," I said. I hope.

#haikyuu x black reader #haikyuu #tanaka x black reader #blackyn #haikyuu tanaka

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illuminated-cowboy · 3 years

Text

Stag Serenade

Chapter 2

Wildfire

Arthur shoved his hand into the dirt, feeling absolutely nothing as he phased right through it. He pulled through, trying to dig up at least a small amount of the loose soil, but he couldn’t manage.

An idea occurred to him, maybe he couldn’t dig up his body, but if he could get to his body, maybe he could dig himself out?

He reached in again, attempting to pull himself through while not being able to push off anything. He just floated in place in the dirt, kicking his feet as he tried making sense of the physics of being a ghost.

He realized there weren’t any.

“Come on, there’s gotta be a way to do this.”

“Are you still trying to get to your body?” a disembodied, yet not unfamiliar, voice embarked.

Arthur groaned, knowing it was his immortal curser again, “Yes I’m still trying to get to my body, dumbass!”

“Here, I’ll make this a bit easier for you.” With the sound of a finger snap, Arthur found himself face to face with his own body, cold dirt surrounding his almost fresh corpse.

“There you are, you ugly fool.” Arthur rolled over and held his own hands, what was left of the right one at least. Like a glove, he slid himself in, relaxing until he felt a click, a bump, something. He really wasn’t sure how he’d know when he was truly back in his own body again.

“I’d like to warn you of something, Arthur.” The strange man’s voice called out again.

“And what might that be?”

“Once you’re in your body again, you will not be able to die. But, you will feel like you are dying.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Because so far feeling dead has just frustrating.”

“Just a warning. I felt like it would be wrong not to warn you.”

“Right, but you didn’t feel it would be wrong to offer a dumbass like me immortality only for me to think you were joking, did you?”

“Oh come on now, there are so many possibilities ahead of you. You could become the smartest man in the world by the time you’re 1000. You’ll witness firsthand all major events going forward, even the end of the world most likely!’

“Right. So how long until I-Argh!” A sudden jolt of pain made its way through Arthur’s body, his lungs felt crushed and scarred, his torn arm began bleeding heavily as every nerve began to gain feeling again and his heart started pumping his old cold blood throughout his veins.

“Fuck! You son of a bitch, fuck you!”

“Good, you made it before there was too much nerve damage. I’ll leave you to it then.”

Arthur fought against the uncomfortable feeling of dirt entering his nose and eyes, the earthy taste and unpleasant crunch filled his mouth as he screamed in agony. Realizing he could only use one arm, he reached up above his face, trying his best to angle himself in a way that he could lift himself up without packing the dirt down on his lower half.

I will kill that bastard if I get the chance, I will rip his fucking throat out for doing this to me. I just wanted to be dead already, fuck!

He felt himself moving upward, a positive result for sure. He felt a spiritual power surge through him, it helped him to keep going harder and harder despite feeling weak and exhausted.

Finally, he reached air with his hand. A couple more breaths and one final pull, and his head emerged, like a mangled newborn baby. He screamed and cursed at the world as he burst through, dragging his revived corpse away from his grave and over to a tree to rest. His arm was done for, once he had his strength back he’d have to cut it off completely.

He spit out particles of dirt and blew black snot from his nose, coughing up far more than blood in-between. He struggled to breathe, every breath felt like eternity and the satisfaction of an oxygenated lung was far from grasp. He looked to the moon to take his mind off the pain and misery he was feeling, it illuminated his dirty, dampened features and reflected off his eyes gloriously. He couldn’t see himself, but he was sure he looked like a dead man walking.

Once he was sure he had hacked up every bit of dirt and blood left in his body, he reflected on the coming sunrise, realizing an entire day had passed since he had died. This was a sunrise he was never meant to see, and he wasn’t sure if that made him feel like a badass for cheating death, or a miserable man cursed to walk a world he was never intended to walk.

He finally felt recovered enough to rise to his feet, a dull ache radiating through his body and intensifying with every step. He wasn’t sure where he was even going, but he was sure if he walked long enough, he’d end up at a lake where he could wash up eventually.

He performed a dance of dragging his feet, groaning to himself, and taking large, unplanned steps in one direction or another. Sometimes he caught himself going in a small circle, and he’d have to recalibrate and jolt himself to the opposite direction.

The sun began to beam down on his dirt coated head, so he raised an arm up to shield the sun and happened to see the movement of an animal somewhere in the distance.

The whinny of a brown filly filled Arthur’s heart with a bit of relief, finally something besides a tree to stare at as he hobbled along.

As he approached the horse, he could make out a dark brown saddle on her back.

“Oh girl, please tell me your rider owns a bathhouse.”

The horse turned, noticing Arthur’s hobbling out of the corner of her eye. He reached out a hand and looked around for her owner, “Hello!” he called out as his hand touched the filly’s velvet nose.

She gave out a content snort at his presence, at least he knew that if her owner didn’t come around soon she’d likely be friendly enough to let a strange zombie man ride her.

A familiar voice called out from the woods, effeminate and soft, “is someone there?!”

“Yes ma’am,” Arthur looked around, unsure of where the voice was coming from and unable to put the name on his tongue, yet sure he had heard this voice before, “don’t be frightened by my appearance miss, I’ve been through one hell of a night.” His gaze settled on a woman approaching from the woods, a rifle in one hand and a dead rabbit slung over her shoulder.

She looked frightened and readied her rifle. “Who are you!?”

Arthur raised his hand and lifted a brow as he realized who the woman was, “Charlotte?”

She lowered her rifle and smiled in relief, “Arthur? What happened to you?!” She ran over to him excitedly, concern and worry overtaking her face as she realized just how torn up he was.

“Boy am I happy to see you.”

“I would say the same if your arm weren’t hanging off, what happened to you Arthur?” She gently touched just above the ripped section, trying not to let her shock overtake her ability to offer help.

“Wolves. Lots of ‘em.” Arthur chuckled painfully. “Only took one of ‘em to do this though.”

Charlotte cringed in second-hand pain. “Please, let me take you back home, you’ll die like this out here.”

“Kinda wish I did die, would hurt a hell of a lot less.” Charlotte shook her head, preferring to not think of her savior rather dying than being alive. She gently turned him towards her horse, assisting him up as much as she could before attaching her catch to the saddle and lifting herself up onto her filly.

Arthur held the woman gently with his living hand, steadying himself on the mare, “So, when did you get a horse?”

“I figured she was a necessity. Bought her in town one day, she’s been very loyal. Named her Wildfire.” The filly kicked up her hooves and began transporting her riders down the trail.

“She’ll be good to you til’ her last breath. My ol’ boy died about a day ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Was he ill?”

“No, no… It was, well, a rat. In a way.”

“A rat?”

Arthur tried looking for a way to describe what he meant without tainting her image of him. “I’m not a good man, Charlotte.”

“You keep saying that. But actions speak louder than words. And we are always our own worst critics.”

“It’s possible I have a chance to begin again,” he sighed, “but I’ve tried that so many times, always ends with someone getting hurt.”

“Well, you didn’t hurt me. You helped me, you saved my life. I will forever consider you my friend for that alone.”

“I was in with some bad guys. For a long time. The only ones who didn’t betray me in the end either died or left to make their lives better. And for that, I will never blame them. I should have left too.”

Charlotte slowly began to understand. “Well, it looks like you did leave. So now the question is, what will you do now?”

“I dun’ know.”

“Well, you can stay with me as long as you need to. I have an extra bed and you won’t be imposing.”

Arthur considered being stoic, denying her offer with something along the lines of “That’s alright Mrs. Balfour, I’ll get on just fine.” But instead, he sighed, and nodded to himself. “I think I could use the comfort of an indoor bed, thank you Charlotte.”

“I’m happy to hear it. I could use the company too. Maybe you can teach me some more survival skills as well!” She said cheerfully, looking behind her to catch a glance of the war-torn man. “Once you’re all fixed up, that is.”

The brown filly gave out a whinny as a fox crossed her path just a gallop away from the old cabin. Charlotte road her over to a fence post and dismounted, holding out a hand to assist Arthur down.

He chuckled as he oriented himself, attempting to first dismount alone. “In a normal world, I’d be helping you down, Mrs. Balfour.”

“Well, I’ve lost sight of whatever a normal world would be considered.”

With a shot of pain through his body, he winced, and grabbed for her hand reluctantly, trying not to fall or put too much pressure on the woman.

He tumbled down, buckling to his boots as Charlotte reached out to grab him, keeping him from falling far.

“This arm, Charlotte, it’s gotta come off.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened in response. “Shouldn’t a doctor make that determination?”

“Well, the last time I saw a doctor he told me I was dying, so I’d rather make the calls from here on out.” Charlotte wrapped an arm around him and assisted him as best she could, steadying him through every stumble and trip he endured as they made their way to the cabin.

“I don’t want you bleeding out on my watch.”

“I’ll be fine, Charlotte. I just need a good bath and a knife.”

She looked at him with pain in her eyes as she opened the door. “Well, if you think it’s for the best, I trust you.” She guided him inside to a chair, and he let out a moan of both pain and relief as he sat down.

“I feel like I could sleep forever, just right here.”

“I’m going to go get you a bucket of water and some soap and we can wash you up.” She gently patted his shoulder and grabbed a large wooden bucket by the door before heading outside to the well.

Arthur sat in silence for a moment, looking around her home. The home of a widow who, Arthur figured, was surely sufficient enough to have survived on her own.

Or maybe not. Maybe in another world, Arthur hadn’t helped her, hadn’t seen her when she needed him. And maybe nobody else had helped her either.

Maybe she was only alive because of him. The opposite of many, many people Arthur had come across in his life.

Arthur began undoing his shirt with his one good arm, getting down to the last button but finding it a struggle to actually get it off his shoulders, a mixture of pain and the lack of a second working arm being the culprit.

Charlotte walked back in; a bucket full of fresh water by her hip. “Oh, let me help you, Arthur.”

He leaned forward a tad, and she came around the backside of the chair, pulling as tenderly as she could at the blue button-up. One arm down, the healthy one at least. Coated in bruises but other than that, usable and strong.

His other arm was a different story, sticky blackened blood coating the ripped and worn fabric, she contemplated whether pulling it quickly was the right decision or pulling it slowly and possibly prolonging his pain.

He winced and turned away as she pulled it off, the blood pulling at his hair and torn skin. Fresh blood pooled on the floor in small amounts as she was careful to avoid touching the exposed flesh. Once it was off, he looked like half man, half bloodied beast.

“I’m so sorry, Arthur.”

“Hey, you didn’t attack me,” he mustered a grin as he took a good glance at his arm. The skin was completely torn away, the bone entirely dislocated from the rest of his skeleton, the forearm only hanging on by the thinnest strands of red threads, “I’d be real impressed if you did though.”

“Right. Well, I think you should get nice and clean before attempting major surgery on yourself.”

“Of course.”

Charlotte brushed her hair behind her ear before twiddling her thumbs for a second and asking, “do you need, help?”

“I do believe I might, but uh,” Arthur reached for the bucket with his good arm, “to save you the trauma, I’ll take care of the nasty bits later.”

Charlotte let out a relieved sigh. “I’ll go get something to scrub you with and a bar of soap.”

Arthur nodded in agreement. “Wouldn’t you rather we do this outside though?”

“It’s fine, I’ve been meaning to give the floor a good cleaning anyways.”

“Yeah but, this is gonna be a lot of blood and all, I don’t wanna-“

Charlotte came back from her room with a bar of soap, a hunting knife, and a couple towels. “I really don’t mind. It will be more comfortable for you in here.”

“Alright.”

Charlotte dunked the soap in the bucket, working the lather into a hand towel and taking Arthur’s good hand, rubbing the mixture up and down his arm.

Their eyes caught each other; hazel meeting blue. She refused to admit her heart skipped a beat at the sight, because despite his worn appearance and his dirt coated features, his eyes had so much more life in them than they did the last time they met.

She smiled, reaching a hand to gently touch his chin, pulling him slightly towards her as she gazed closer into those suddenly piercing eyes, “you’re healthy again, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“You were sick when you were here last time.”

“Well, you cure one thing, you end up with a lost arm I guess.”

She chuckled as she released her tender grip and continued to clean him up, handing him the towel and reaching for a new one to wash his face with, dabbing it under his eyes and behind his ears before wetting down his untrimmed hair and scrubbing it between her fingers.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly happened? I know you said it was wolves but, you look like you were buried underground.”

“Do you want the truth or do you want a lie?”

“I would prefer the truth, but if you’d rather be creative and keep the details to yourself, I’m still curious.”

“Well, I got the shit kicked out of me, died. God or Satan or whatever, he told me I was immortal now, but my body got attacked by wolves. I got buried then had to claw out of my own grave with one arm.”

“My, you are quite creative. I’ll have to keep you around for story ideas from now on.”

He smiled, “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You know, even on Cal’s deathbed he was still telling jokes too.”

He looked to her with awe. “Any man lucky enough to have you as their wife would die happily regardless of the circumstances.”

She grinned, her eyes almost tearing up. “That’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever been told.”

“It’s been a good long time since I’ve been treated to a nice bath as well.”

“This next side will probably sting.” She said as she grabbed another clean towel and came round to the destroyed arm.

“I’ve felt worse, do whatever you need to do.”

She squeezed the towel, dripping cool soapy water down into the open wound. Arthur groaned in pain, his chest tightening as his teeth gritted against the feeling. He turned away, appearing to physically try and remove himself from the troublesome arm.

“Fuck,” he muttered through his teeth, struggling against it but knowing it had to be done, “give me the knife.”

She continued to rub down the arm, “I’m not even nearly finished getting all the dirt off-”

“Whatever is in there is in there, get me the goddamn knife!”

The woman reached for the hunting knife she had grabbed earlier from the table behind her, handing it to Arthur in one swift motion.

“Get my belt and tie it around my arm, as tight as you can.”

She hurried in front of him, kneeling and undoing the brown leather belt from his hips. Wrapping it around his arm and pulling it as hard as she could manage, blood squirting from the bottom, Arthur held the knife tightly before making one final request, “you got any alcohol?”

“Um, I have some rum in the cabinet.”

“That’ll work.”

She nodded, running for the container, and bringing it back to him. He placed the bottle between his legs, popped the top off, and took as many swigs as he could until the numbing feeling kicked in.

“I’m gonna need your help here, darlin’.”

“Anything, Arthur. I’m right here with you.”

“I’m gonna need you to hold this arm here as high as you can.”

She blinked twice. “You need me… while you…”

“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t need you to but it’s gonna go a lot smoother if you do.”

“Okay.” She grasped his hand, cold deadened fingers between her own, and pulled the arm vertically, moving down to hold it by the length just before the wound.

Arthur stuffed a towel in his mouth, readied the knife, and began slicing into the flesh, screaming muffled into the towel as his entire body contracted in pain.

Charlotte held strong, looking away as blood splattered on her blue dress. With one final push, the arm came off, and the stump that remained poured with red liquid as Arthur tossed the knife and held the stub up as high as he could, pulling the belt tighter around it.

He spit out the towel onto the floor. “Candle!” he shouted, nodding to a candle that happened to be lit in the corner.

Charlotte dropped the arm and ran for the candle, handing it to her wilderness survival man without putting it out. He rubbed away as much of the blood as he could with a towel, then held the stump to the candle flame, trading his stinging pain for a burning pain.

The worst was over as he finished his self-surgery, laying back in the chair as Charlotte took the candle away. She returned to offer him more rum, to which he nodded and opened his mouth, silently begging that she pour it in and not stop.

With a bloodied arm on the floor, pools of suds and human liquids leaking from Arthur like a dripping pipe, he took one final moan and relaxed his eyes. “Thank you, Charlotte.”

“It’s no trouble,” she looked to the arm, the mess, the bloodied beautiful man in her chair, “I’ll go bury that in the back before it decomposes. Please, call for me if you need anything.”

And with that, Arthur was armless. He took one last look at the cold, bluish body part as Charlotte wrapped it with a towel and walked it out the door.

He picked up the rum and took another swig, the pain dulling his drunken state, yet still feeling the need to smile and say to himself, “I’m unarmed!” He giggled like a madman, trying to continue holding his brand-new stump above his arm, taking more sips in-between uncontrolled laughter, the majority of the rum dripping onto his beard and chest rather than his mouth.

By the time Charlotte returned, Arthur was far gone, flying high and performing a mixture of moaning in pain and giggling in pleasure.

“My angel!” He shouted at her. She took the bottle from his hand and rubbed some suds out of his hair.

“Do you want to keep bathing tonight or-”

“I will tell you,” he hiccupped and pointed a finger up, “what I want.”

Charlotte looked at him concernedly. “And what might that be?”

“I want for you to just give me the gentlest of kisses, right here,” he pointed to his forehead, “because women’s lips, they heal all wounds.”

She smiled, and kindly humored him, pressing her lips tenderly to his forehead. He pulled her close, his one good arm wrapping gently around her waist and pulling her in for a hug. She held his head under her breast, fingers trailing his cheek as she further indulged his desires for human touch.

“It’s been a while, darlin’.”

“Since?”

“Since I was loved.” He looked up at her, eyes looking even more pained than when he was cutting off his own arm. “I loved only so many women, and they didn’t love me, Charlotte. They used me, they used me and they left me when I couldn’t be what they needed. And that’s on me, I’m a horrible bastard.”

“No, Arthur, that’s on them honey.”

“No it ain’t, Charlotte. I hurt them bad, and I’d hurt you too if you got too close, but, I wanna be close to you. And I ain’t never wanna hurt you.”

“That’s enough of that,” she pulled away with kindness, holding his hand with both of her own in an effort to guide him somewhere to lay down, “come to bed, sleep this off and we’ll figure out the rest when you’re feeling better.”

He stumbled to his feet, holding her hands like they were precious jewels, looking at their every detail through his blurred, drunken vision, “I don’ wanna hurt you, Charlotte.”

“Don’t you worry about any of that right now, come with me.” She wrapped her arm around his back and assisted him into her guest bedroom, laying him down gently on the bed, holding his arm up and resting it on a pillow by his head.

She pulled out a blanket and laid it over his bare chest, keeping him warm for the rest ahead.

She kissed his forehead once more, wishing him a goodnight without words, then closing the door behind her to give him some privacy.

Arthur came in and out of a blacked-out state, desiring to go wander the halls and find Charlotte again to continue his self-deprecation, to show her and prove what an awful man he is, and why she would be right to toss him out and let him suffer. But she wasn’t going to do that, and he wondered if he really made such an impression on her that she would now trust him like this.

He could easily hurt her, maybe not physically but surely emotionally. That’s why Mary left him, right? He couldn’t change. He wasn’t redeemable.

But either she didn’t believe he would hurt her, or she didn’t care. Maybe she had been through the same pain as him, enough so that she didn’t care, just like he didn’t. Or at least, just like he kept trying to convince himself that he didn’t.

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emeraldgenevieve · 3 years

Text

Okay so birth story...

We went to bed about 11pm on the 10th August not really thinking much about labour for the first time in weeks. We'd had a few bad night's sleep in a row and that night we just wanted to get to bed early and rest, but baby had other plans! I woke up shortly after midnight to this gush and quickly realised my waters had broken in my sleep! Even though it was obvious, I still had that fear of maybe I've just wet myself but we called the community midwife and she arranged to come out and check. Once the midwife got to our house she decided to do a vaginal examination just to see where I was. At that point I was 2cm so she gave me a little sweep. She was so lovely and stayed with us until about 3:30am to do checks and see if any contractions would kick in but when they didn't, she left arranging to come back at 6:30am to check me again. We headed up to bed, thinking that nothing would probably happen, but then I woke up around 6:15am experiencing a painful contraction. From that point my contractions started around every ten minutes and they stayed that way until about 10:30 when they were getting closer to one every 5 minutes and then they pretty much stayed that way. I was on the ball, I tried having a bath to ease the pain but nobody considered this to be real labour by any means.

As my waters had ruptured, I was required to go into the hospital after 18 hours to be assessed for any signs of infection so we began to discuss whether or not we should just book into the hospital to deliver there. By this point I had switched to a different midwife, who was also very lovely and very supportive of our decision, whatever it would end up being. She decided that she would leave again and come back at 2:30pm to assess us again and get our final decision about where to birth. We talked it over and decided that maybe by that point a hospital birth was our safest option. We were already concerned at the ambulance service had pulled their support of home births and now that we weren't low risk anymore, we couldn't justify staying at home. When the midwife came back we told her we'd like to book into the hospital and just stay there after 6pm to deliver.

My contractions were still about every 5-7 minutes as we waited for 6pm, slowing down a little during the journey to the hospital but picking up soon after we arrived. I was admitted to a fetal assessment unit were they wanted to continuously monitor the baby for a while, which I was happy with at first. For the first few hours of our time in the hospital, we mostly we're just waiting for then to take me to the delivery suite, but they checked me again and I was only 4-5cm. My contractions were getting stronger but still only every 5 minutes. By about 10pm I was beginning to really struggle with the pain. The midwife had changed at 9pm and decided to monitor me again, which meant I was immobile for all my contractions. She told me it would only be for 45 minutes but ended up leaving me on there until 11:30pm. I was struggling with my contractions pretty much this whole time. I was at the point of crying and shouting during the worst of them. It wasn't even the pain from the contractions, it was this horrible, consistent pain that I was having at the front of the very bottom of my uterus which was becoming unbearable during the strong contractions. I kept telling the midwife that something was wrong, my uterus felt like it was going to rip and tear at the front but she just thought I was having a normal labour. By 11:30pm I was in so much distress that she let me off the monitor and checked me again. I was 6cm and she finally decided to consult the doctor, who agreed I could be allowed to move to the labour ward.

By this point I was in agony. I just wanted some pain relief and I felt so disheartened as everyone kept telling me it wasn't real labour and made me feel like I was just being dramatic. I've given birth twice before, I know it wasn't normal but still no one believed me. By the time I got into the labour ward I just wanted some gas and air. I was in so much pain. The ache was constant and just building and with each contraction it felt like my baby's head was going to rip through my stomach. Still no one believed me but I didn't care. By 1am the midwives were concerned. I wasn't letting up about the pain I was having and it was just getting worse. They started to listen and began to think I was maybe having a bladder issue and so, called the consultant in. I was very lucky in that the consultant had actually been seeing me in the last few weeks of my pregnancy and had been supporting my home birth and was well aware of the kind if birth I wanted. He at first suggested an epidural, as he thought I was struggling with contraction pains. After I refused he examined me and we finally found the cause of the problem.

I was 8cm but baby was not in the correct position. It turns out baby was back to back and forehead presenting. The consultant had to have his hand inside me for about 7 minutes feeling around, waiting for contractions etc. to be sure, which was agony. At this point everything changed. He pretty much told me we have three options. Either I try mobilising and changing positions (I was being monitored continuously), he could try to manually turn the baby from the inside, or I could have a C-section. I was dead set against a C-section so I decided to get on my knees on the bed and try different decisions. I was in so much pain at this point but I'm terrified of having a C-section after I had three failed epidurals in my first labour. Once I changed position, I began to feel like I needed to push. I could feel his head coming down and and I was not coping well. The nurses didn't believe me and basically just told me I was wrong. I kept insisting but they weren't having it.

Finally after about another 10 mins they decided to examine me. This time they said I was 6cm and that my cervix was still thick on one side and there was absolutely no way I was ready to push. They wanted me to flip on to my side in the hope it would fix my cervix and maybe relieve some of the pressure. At this point that midwives switched and the new midwife must have glanced at the notes and seen that I was 6cm and still only contracting 3 in 10 and she was trying to be a real hard ass about it. She kept trying to take the gas and air off me, telling me I was delirious and I'd had too much and there was no way I was ready to push. At this point I'd been fighting my body for about 20 minutes thinking that if I let myself push I could do damage to the baby as I still thought he was in the wrong position.

Once this new midwife came in and started fighting with me it was like a switch flipped. My husband started telling her to leave me alone and listen to what I had to say. He was telling her I wasn't delirious I was in pain and I knew my body, I'd done this before. Finally hearing someone validate what I was feeling must have just let me relax that little bit and my body literally started trying to expel the baby. I can't even describe it I still wasn't actively pushing because I didn't know if I should but my stomach was convulsing it was like I was vomiting I couldn't control it all.

Finally the midwife looked and saw head! She told me to start pushing. Two minutes later I was crowning. Another two minutes and the head was delivered with the body following one minute after making a whopping 5 minutes of active pushing.

Once baby was delivered, they placed him up on to my chest immediately. I'm not going to lie I don't remember much of it. I remember Evan crying and getting emotional and he just kept saying, "you did it" but I wasn't even sure it was real. It all happened so fast I kind of thought that I was dreaming it and I still had to go through it. I was shaking so uncontrollably that I almost thought I would have to pass the baby to my husband to hold. I was just broken. The midwives still had to deliver my placenta, which only took another 10 minutes but I was definitely more aware of the pain this time, I was still using the gas and air to cope. Once the placenta was delivered, they began to check if I needed any stitches. Surprisingly, I didn't but they did find a large blood clot which they had to remove and it was so painful! It just felt like the pain was never ending.

After this, they finally left us alone for a while. I finally started to process what had happened. I had done it, it was real he was here and perfect. All 8lb 13oz of him. I couldn't believe the doctors were ever concerned about his size, it just goes to show how wrong the ultrasound can be.

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