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raaorqtpbpdy · 2 months

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Team Phantom's Official-Unofficial Medic

Thanks to seeing how football injuries are treated, as well as a general interest in first-aid, Dash finds himself incidentally helping out an injured Phantom. After a while, Phantom starts to seek Dash out when he needs first-aid. But eventually he comes to Dash with injuries way beyond the scope of Dash's first-aid knowledge, and all he can do is his best.

Based on the prompts: Thanks to seeing how various injuries are treated as a member of the football team, Dash actually has a decent background in first aid and anatomy. He gets adopted into Team Phantom when circumstances keep leading him to be the one patching up Phantom after fights. [from Cake], and Identity reveal. Dash finds out Danny is Phantom. What happens? Could be swagger bishie or not, either or is okay. [from @q-gorgeous]

As per the second prompt, this fic could be interpreted as swagger bishie, or as platonic. It just kinda happened that way lol.

Also, not gonna lie, Dash is a bit of a freak in this one.

Read also on AO3

[Warnings for blood, injuries, gore, suturing, medical procedures, mild romanticizing of the aforementioned, implied dissection, near-death experiences, and Dash's shitty father]

Dash... wasn't really sure how it happened, honestly. One day, he'd been one of a hundred people who supported the town hero, Phantom. Basically nothing more than a fanboy. And the next he'd seemingly become Team Phantom's go-to guy for first aid.

He guessed it started when he happened to pass by an alleyway biking home from football practice, and doubled back upon seeing something glowing green in the shadowy space between two buildings. He'd thought it was some ghost lying in wait to attack and wanted to be sure. It wasn't.

In the alleyway, Danny Phantom was sitting on an overturned crate with the top half of his jumpsuit pulled down, bleeding badly from a wound on his side. Manson and Foley, Fenton's loser friends, were next to him—though Fenton himself wasn't there. The two of them looked to be holding a couple rolls of bandages and some antiseptic, but they were arguing quietly about how to use them while Phantom kept cursing and asking them to please just do something to stop the bleeding already, because he couldn't keep losing ectoplasm like this.

Dash didn't exactly consider himself to be a good Samaritan, and he wasn't the most compassionate guy in general, but he did like to show off, and he wasn't going to leave his celebrity crush bleeding out in some dirty alleyway. Luckily, he kept a small first-aid kit in his back-pack because Manson and Foley did not have all the materials they needed to patch up a gash like that.

"Hey," Dash called out, first-aid kit already in hand. "You two losers obviously don't know what you're doing. Give me the bandages and get out of my way."

"And a meathead like you is gonna know any better than us?" Manson jeered, obviously skeptical.

"I'm a football player," Dash scoffed back. "I've seen injuries a lot worse than this get patched up, and I know how it's done. Just give me the bandages."

She raised an eyebrow, but handed over the roll of bandages she was holding. Dash started by quickly cleaning his hands with hand-sanitizer. It wasn't as good as a proper wash, but it would do. His own first aid kit had alcohol wipes to properly clean the wound, something Manson and Foley hadn't thought to get, apparently.

"This'll sting," Dash said. "I mean, if you feel pain. From what I've read, there still doesn't seem to be a professional consensus on whether ghosts feel pain, but you would know better than I would."

Phantom hissed through gritted teeth when Dash started to wipe away the excess ectoplasm and clean the wound. Dash wasn't sure if that meant he actually felt pain, or if he was just habitually mimicking pain, like those G.I.W. releases said that ghosts tended to do. Phantom didn't seem keen on clarifying, though, so Dash chose not to ask.

Once it was clean, the wound was still leaking ectoplasm, but not quickly. It would probably have been best to stitch it up, but Dash didn't have a needle and thread, so butterfly stitches would have to do. He snatched the disinfectant out of Foley's hand and sprayed the wound.

Then he put it down on the ground and used one hand to press together the two sides of the wound and applied the adhesive butterfly stitches with the other. It took fourteen of them, leaving Dash with only three left in his kit. Yeah, it definitely should have gotten actual stitches. Finally, Dash used hand-sanitizer to clean his hands again before carefully wrapping a roll of bandages around Phantom's torso.

"There, all done," he said. "The bandage isn't too tight, is it?"

Phantom shook his head. "No, it feels fine."

The whole time he had worked, Phantom and the two losers had watched him in rapt silence.

"You... actually do know how to do this stuff," Foley observed.

"I told you," Dash said. "Football players get injured a lot. I learned."

"No need to get snippy, jackass," Manson sneered.

"Jackass?" Dash repeated, genuinely offended. "I just stopped your buddy here from bleeding out. I think a little gratitude might be appropriate." Normally, he wouldn't care about insults from dorks like these, but given the circumstances it just felt uncalled-for.

Manson's nose scrunched up in anger and she opened her mouth like she was about to argue, but Phantom cut her off.

"You're right," he said. "Thank you. We were just... surprised. I guess we never really thought about what sort of skills football players might have outside of, well, playing football."

"And bullying nerds," Foley tacked on, though he snapped his mouth shut when Phantom elbowed him in the side.

The truth was, most of the football players Dash knew weren't as good at first aid as he was, but they all knew the basics. Dash just had a particular fascination with seeing injuries and especially watching them be methodically patched up. It was something he would never admit, because he knew how weird and low-key fucked up it sounded to say that he liked looking at people's injuries, but it was true.

Any time someone got injured enough to call the school nurse, but not enough to call the ambulance, Dash would come over to watch how she fixed them up. He'd even taken a few first aid classes. And his friends had even noticed enough to tease him for it when he paid more attention than usual during the human anatomy units in biology and Phys. Ed.—although, predictably, they seriously misinterpreted the reason for his interest.

"Can you move?" he asked Phantom. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

Phantom stood up, stretched, winced, tested his movement. "No, Skulker only got me the once. Looks like I'm good."

"Good," Dash said.

He packed up his first-aid kit while Phantom pulled the top half of his suit back on. It was then that Dash realized he'd been so focused on patching up the ghost's injury, he'd completely missed out on his chance to ogle Phantom with his shirt off. Stupid!

"Well," he said, much more loudly than he'd meant to, as if he was trying to talk loud enough the other's wouldn't hear that last thought he'd had. "I should get home and take my dog out. Glad you're okay, Phantom. Later, dorks!"

And with that, Dash hurried out of the alley, got back on his bike, and pedaled home as fast as he could.

That hadn't been it, though. After that incident occurred, Dash had no reason to think it was anything but a one-time deal. He'd gotten to meet his hero, and even provide some actual, tangible assistance to him, and he would treasure that encounter for the rest of his life. The following day, he had still been so high up on cloud nine he hadn't even bullied any dweebs. But he never expected anything like that to happen again.

It did happen again, though.

Football practice had just ended, and Dash headed to the bike rack behind near the auto-shop. Normally, he parked his bike on the rack near the boys locker room because it was obviously way closer, but he'd been a little later than usual that morning because Pookie ate something that had gotten kicked under the kitchen counter god knew how long ago and Dash had to stop to clean up the vomit and get her in a kennel for his mom to take to the vet while he was at school.

He remembered still being worried about Pookie by the time football got out because his mom hadn't called him with an update, so he was in a bit of a rush and he ran out of the locker room toward where he'd locked up his bike. As he pulled out the key to his bike-lock, however, he saw something through the window of the auto-shop. He was going to ignore it, when he heard a familiar voice call out.

"Ew, that's so wrong!"

Curiosity got the better of him, and he pushed open the door of the school's auto-shop, which should have been empty, not just because school had ended two hours ago, but also because Casper High hadn't even offered auto-shop classes since the eighties or something after the teacher retired or died. Dash didn't really know or care the details, but he did not that no one went into the auto-shop, and the door should have been locked for so long it was rusted shut, but it opened easily.

Inside, Dash saw Danny Phantom, his right arm bent unnaturally at the elbow and shoulder, definitely dislocated if not broken. Manson and Foley were with him again. Foley had a roll of bandages in his hand, even though bandages had nothing to do with treating dislocated joints. All three of them turned to look at Dash when he opened the door, probably just because they'd instinctively turned to the sound of it swinging open, but it certainly felt like they were staring expectantly.

Dash sighed, and stepped through the door. "Put those bandages away, it's obviously dislocated, not sprained."

He knelt down at Phantom's feet to take off his backpack and dig out his first aid kit. There was a thin piece of cloth in it that he could make a sling out of, and an instant ice-pack. He put his kit down on a work bench and carefully positioned his hands on Phantom's shoulder. It would have been easier if he could actually see the joint, but he wasn't about to ask the ghost to take his shirt off for him. That would be too embarrassing.

"Do ghosts feel pain or no?" Dash asked, forcing the joint back into place with a hard shove and a loud pop.

"Agh!" Phantom cried out. "Yes. We do."

"Good to know," Dash said. He moved down to the elbow. Gently, he rotated it, trying to ignore the way Phantom winced when he moved it, then he carefully positioned his hands again and popped it back into place.

Phantom cried out even louder the second time.

"You're not allergic to Tylenol, are you?" Dash went to his kit and pulled out a bottle.

"No?"

"Good," Dash poured out three pills and handed them to Phantom. "Take these, they should kick in in half-an-hour." Phantom took them and swallowed them dry, which wasn't the best way to do it, but Dash didn't have anything for him to wash it down with, since his water bottle was empty after practice.

"Is that all?" Manson asked.

"No," Dash said. "I'm gonna make a sling to help you keep it still and supported, and I've got an ice-pack for you. The key to recovering from an injury like dislocation is the RICE method. Rest, ice, compression, and elevation. The RICE method helps to reduce this inflammation, and reducing inflammation reduces pain."

He took out the thin cloth from his kit as he explained this and folded it into a sling, tying it behind Phantom's neck when his arm was settled at about the right height.

"Is that the right height?" he asked.

"Maybe a little high," Phantom replied, and Dash adjusted it. "Better?"

"Yeah."

"How do you have an ice-pack in your first-aid kit?" Foley asked. "Wouldn't it melt?"

Dash took out the instant ice-pack. "Not this kind. It's kinda like a glow-stick. The pouch is full of chemicals. You crack it, and shake it, and that makes the chemicals mix, causing a reaction that makes the pouch cold. You're not supposed to hold it with your bare hands though. Sorry, but you'll have to use my spare gym socks. Don't worry, these ones are clean."

he unrolled his spare socks and shoved the ice-pack into one of them before handing it to Phantom.

"Try not to use it much until it heals," Dash said. "Rest is the most important part of the RICE treatment."

"Thanks, Dash," Phantom said, taking the ice-pack like he was amazed to see Dash acting like this. Admittedly, it was a lot different than he would normally act around nerds like Manson and Foley, but he was more preoccupied with the fact that his hero apparently knew his name than whether or not folding a sling and loaning someone an ice-pack was out-of-character for him.

"You know who I am?" Dash asked.

Phantom tensed, which obviously made him jostle his sore shoulder and wince. "Uh... yeah. Sam and Tucker told me after you help me out last time," he explained. "They said you were usually kind of a jerk, but I really do appreciate you helping me like this."

Oh, that made sense. Kind of stung that after bandaging his wounds, Phantom's impression of him was still that he was the guy who bullied his friends.

"A guy can have more than one side to him," Dash defended. "Besides, I'm pretty sure you've saved my life personally, like, four times, so even after this, I still owe you two more. Try not to cash 'em in too soon, yeah?"

"I'll do my best," Phantom said, with a smile that made Dash's heart race.

Then his phone rang, and it was his mother calling. "Sorry, I gotta take this!"

He left the auto-shop to answer it.

His mother was calling to ask him if he was home yet and let him know the vet had pumped Pookie's stomach but she was going to be perfectly okay. Dash sighed with relief. When the phone call ended, though, there was no less urgency in his pace when he rode home.

Again, Dash expected to never be that close to Phantom again, but a month later, there was a knock on his back door.

He was very confused about why the back door and not the front, but he answered anyway, and standing there was Manson and Foley, with Phantom floating between them, bleeding profusely from his right leg while he cradled his left arm, and smiling sheepishly at Dash.

"You said you owed me two more, right?" he said. "Don't suppose there's a two-for-one special going?"

"We tried to patch up his arm like you did to his torso before, but we're pretty sure we did it completely wrong," Foley said.

"Not that wrong," Manson argued, but she had her arms crossed and she was pouting, looking very defeated.

"Anyway, we remembered you lived kinda close because remember that one time you invited Danny to that party so you could get with his sister?" Foley went on, ignoring her. "Yeah, we figured we'd be better off coming to ask for your help."

"Fine, take him to the garden bench. If he bleeds ectoplasm all over the floor, my mom'll flip, but nobody'll notice it on the dirt," Dash directed. "I'm gonna get the first-aid kit and wash my hands. I'll be right back out."

The fist-aid kit under the sink in the upstairs bathroom was a lot more comprehensive than the one Dash carried around in his backpack—which was mostly just the basics and a couple of extra things, like an instant ice-pack, that ended up being needed during practice or games more often than not. Even the more comprehensive one didn't have a needle and thread, though. He wasn't 100% sure he'd need it, but he got them out of his mom's sewing kit anyway, and sterilized the needle with rubbing alcohol before he headed back down to the garden.

This time, he did ask Phantom to remove the top part of his jumpsuit. Unlike with a dislocated arm, he couldn't properly bandage a wound he couldn't directly access. Dash did his best to keep his expression as neutral as possible when he did so. He didn't want to think about what he'd have to ask when he go around to the leg. By all accounts, he knew he should treat the leg first, but he had to work up the courage to ask Phantom to take off his pants before he could do that. So arm it was.

This was clearly the wound Manson and Foley had tried to do themselves. Dash could see immediately that they hadn't done it right. It was wrapped so tight that the arm below the bandage had started to turn green from lack of circulation, and even though it was a self-adhering bandage, they'd knotted it for some reason.

"We did it way too loose at first and it wasn't staying on," Foley explained, "But then we went too far the other way, and we couldn't untie it."

"You're not supposed to tie this kind of bandage," Dash said. "Self-adhering bandage like this is for sprains and muscle injuries, for making sure your joints aren't moving too much. They're not absorbent, so it doesn't do any good to wrap 'em around bleeding wounds."

He cut the bandage away, and under it, he saw that Manson and Foley had applied butterfly stitches longways over the wound, instead of across it.

"Oh, it's gonna hurt when I take these off," he said apologetically.

"I knew that wasn't right," Manson muttered, even though she was the one who'd said she didn't think they'd done things that wrong.

Quickly, but methodically, Dash re-cleaned, disinfected, and bandaged the wound. Luckily, this one wasn't that deep, to the butterfly stitches were sufficient, and Dash didn't have to pull out the needle.

Once he was done, however, he coughed uncomfortably.

"Uh... I've gotta get to the gash on your leg now, so you're gonna need to uh..." He couldn't get himself to say it. He couldn't ask his celebrity crush to take his pants off. He just couldn't do it.

Phantom looked a little lightheaded, and cocked his head, not seeming to get the message. Thankfully Manson didn't have that problem, nor, apparently, did she have any sense of shame.

"He needs you to take your pants off so he can treat your leg," she said bluntly.

"Oh," Phantom said.

He started to squirm out of the bottom half of his jumpsuit, apparently unbothered by the fact that they were outdoors in broad daylight—even if they were surrounded by a six-foot fence. His wound did seem to be bothering him, though, as he grunted and hissed in pain as he pulled his jumpsuit down past it.

Yeah... Dash definitely should have taken care of the leg wound first.

The gash in his just above his knee was much longer and deeper than the one in his arm. Ectoplasm almost completely coated his entire calf and was still leaking from the wound. It was no wonder why Phantom was so lightheaded.

"Shit, I shoulda done this one first," Dash muttered with a grimace.

He started by wiping away the ectoplasm with a clean rag, thankful he'd thought to get some out of his gym gear rather than grabbing his mother's nice hand towels from the bathroom. He wrapped a rubber strip above the wound to stem the flow of ectoplasm some. Then he cleaned around the wound with alcohol wipes. The rest of the leg still had streaks of green, but the wound itself obviously took priority when it came to getting it clean and disinfected.

This time, Dash was gonna need the needle and thread. His hands were shaking minutely as he threaded the needle, but he got it after two tries.

"Now hold on, there's no way you learned suturing in football," Manson contested. "There's no way!"

"I also took a couple of first-aid classes," Dash admitted.

"They don't teach suturing in first-aid classes either," Manson insisted, putting her hands on her hip.

"You say that like you've ever been to a first-aid class," he scoffed. "How would you know."

She scowled, but didn't have anything to say to that.

She was right of course. Suturing was not something they taught in first-aid classes. But there was no way in hell that Dash was going to admit to watching videos about it on YouTube for fun. He knew how that sounded. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't completely stupid.

Ignoring her, he went to start the sutures. Even with the tourniquet, there was still a slow drip of ectoplasm. Phantom grunted in pain when Dash pushed the two sides of the wound together to start stitching. It was a hard line to balance, but Dash tried to be both quick and gentle, not wanting to irritated the wound, or prolong the discomfort of getting stitches.

If he mentally cropped out the peanut gallery, and pretended it was just him, Phantom, and an open wound, this was almost exactly like on of his fantasies. Yet another thing he would definitely never admit out loud.

Idly, he wondered how many hoops he'd have to jump through to add local anesthetic to the Baxter household first-aid kit. Probably a lot. The kind of injuries you needed local anesthetic to treat were also typically the kind of injuries people were supposed to go to an actual doctor for, and not a high-school freshman with a weird medical fixation.

Once the stitches were done, twenty-six in all, Dash used another alcohol wipe and a clean rag to more thoroughly clean the area around the wound before wrapping a gauze bandage around it.

This time, Dash did think to subtly ogle Phantom, just a little bit, before telling him he could put his jumpsuit back on. He was only human, after all. He wasn't gonna miss out on that kind of opportunity twice.

"Hey, how come Fen-toad's never with you?" Dash asked when Phantom was putting his suit back on. "I thought you three were like, joined at the hip or something."

"Oh uh..." Manson and Foley looked at each other before Foley answered, "Danny can't stand the sight of injuries. Makes him sick to even look at 'em, so... we let him dip when it gets this bad."

"That tracks," Dash replied. "Your friend always was a bit of a wuss."

"Haha... right," Foley agreed awkwardly.

Phantom and Foley thanked him for his help. Manson did too, after a matching pair of pointed looks from her friends, although her thanks was sullen and reluctant.

"You're welcome," Dash said, packing up the supplies to return them back where they belonged. "But you guys are so lucky my parents weren't home when you showed up or they'd've flipped, so I suggest you start making tracks sooner, rather than later."

"Right," Phantom said. "Come on, guys, let's go." With that, they were gone, and Dash was left to put his supplies away and then scour the Fenton Works website in the hopes of finding tips for how to get ectoplasm stains out in the wash.

If he had to pinpoint it, Dash would say that third incident was when he became Team Phantom's official-unofficial medic.

After that, whether by coincidence, or the three of them intentionally seeking him out, Dash ended up patching one of Phantom's injuries just about every week. They often went to the school auto-shop for it, since it was private, usually close by, and always empty.

"I'm pretty sure you've fixed me up way more times than I've saved your life by now," Phantom joked while Dash finished treating an ectoplasm burn on his forearm. Manson and Foley weren't with him this time, but Dash didn't ask after them. He didn't mind it being just him and Phantom for once. "How many do I owe you at this point?"

Dash shook his head and capped the burn ointment. "You don't owe me anything," he said. "This one was for saving Kwan's life from Walker a few months ago. The scratches last week were for protecting the cheer squad from Ember, and the sprained ankle the week before was for saving Pookie from that ten foot tall ghost dog that wanted to play with her and nearly stepped on her instead.

"You've saved the lives of everyone I care about. This is the least I can do," he finished. Then, he decided the two of them had gotten close enough by this point that he was safe to crack a joke, and added, "Plus, sometimes I get to see you with your shirt off, so like, bonus."

Much to Dash's relief, Phantom laughed lightly at that. "Yeah, too bad it's always 'cause I'm bleeding out."

"Well, you can't win 'em all."

Phantom laughed again. It sounded... familiar somehow, although Dash couldn't place it.

"Hey, I've kinda wondered this ever since you started helping me out, but are you planning to become a doctor after graduation?" Phantom asked.

"I've thought about it, 'cause I do actually like doing this kinda thing—but it's not realistic for me," Dash said with a slightly disappointed shrug. "In the first place, medical school is stupid competitive, and I'm barely scraping the 2.5 GPA required to stay on the school sports teams. With my grades, the only way I'm getting into college is with a football scholarship, but if I do get in, I'm planning to major in sports medicine. If I don't get scouted, I might become a paramedic. It's not set in stone or anything, but you know."

"Well, speaking as a repeat patient, I think you'd make a great paramedic," Phantom said.

Dash smirked. "What're you saying? You think I can't get scouted?"

"No!" Phantom said quickly, then chuckled sheepishly. "More like I don't know what sports medicine is."

Dash laughed out loud.

"Your burns are all treated; now get outta here. I gotta get home."

"Yes, sir!" Phantom saluted him sarcastically and flew off through the ceiling.

Dash never imagined he'd become close enough with his personal hero to crack jokes like that. And to tease him? Never in a million years. But he was.

"Did something happen?" Kwan asked him as they were walking down the hall on the way to third period.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I dunno, you just seem like you've been in a good mood lately," Kwan clarified with a shrug. "You haven't even bullied Fenton in, like, a month, let alone anyone else. I was just wondering if something good might've happened to you."

"Oh uh... not really," Dash replied.

As much as he would love to brag all over the school about being friends with Phantom, he was sure Manson and Foley—and Fenton too, he supposed, even if the dweeb always wussed out when things got bloody—had their reasons for keeping the fact that they were Phantom's allies a secret. Of course, Dash had no idea what those reason's were.

For his part, Dash knew that if he told everyone he was close with Phantom, they ask him why. Then, he'd either be forced to tell them about his secret interest in emergency medical treatment, lie like a bitch, or say nothing and accept the embarrassment of everyone thinking he was making it up. None of those options were particularly appealing.

It was fine that his buddies knew he was the best at applying sports tape and wrapping up sprains, but they didn't need to know how deep it really went.

"I guess I've just been in a good mood, that's all," Dash said finally. "No real reason for it."

"Well, it's nice to see it," Kwan said cheerfully, clapping him on the back as if in congratulations. "Not being grouchy and stressed all the time is a good look on you."

"Thanks," Dash said, genuinely. Although, how nuts was it that being regularly put in the position of having to patch up severe injuries on someone he cared about was somehow a stress reducer.

Yeah... Dash was pretty sure at this point that there was probably something wrong with his brain. Although, he found that he didn't worry about it as much as he once might have. At least someone else was benefiting from the fact that he found watching wounds being sutured mesmerizing, and almost therapeutic.

Dash was in his room, working on homework, sure that he was gonna have to redo every single one of these math problems when he went to tutoring with Jazz tomorrow because he definitely wasn't doing them right. He sighed and pushed math aside to grab his history packet. Document based questions weren't so bad, because at least he had the answer right there in front of him, if he could just find it.

He heard a thunk on his window and looked up, but ultimately decided it was probably a bird or something and chose to ignore it. Then the sound came again and Pookie growled softly from where she was sitting on Dash's bed. She barked.

"Alright, Pookie, I'll look," he said.

With a sigh, he stood up from his desk chair and went over to his bedroom window, sliding it open.

Standing in the back garden was Manson and Foley, and they were carrying Phantom between them. Carrying him—because he was evidently in no condition to fly. He looked to be more open wounds than intact skin. His left leg was bent at an odd angle with something black sticking out of it that Dash was pretty sure was bone.

Phantom hadn't been seen in over a week, and this was the condition he was resurfacing in?

It was hard to believe he could still be conscious in that condition, but Phantom shouted up in a slurred voice, "Hey... buddy!"

Dash's eyes blew wide. "I'll be right down!"

His parents were home, so he made sure the path was clear as he ran downstairs. His dad was up in his office, and his mom was taking a bath, meaning the coast was clear. Ge grabbed a tarp out of the garden shed, a new one, still wrapped in plastic. It wasn't sterile, but neither was Dash's bedroom, and the tarp would be easier to clean than his carpet.

Phantom still dripped ectoplasm on the floor every few inches—which Dash would have to clean up later—as Manson and Foley carried him up the stairs while Dash lead the way to his room, hurriedly unwrapping the tarp. He shooed Pookie out of the room and laid the tarp on his bed, throwing the pillows onto the floor so he'd have a relatively flat surface.

"Put him on the bed while I get the first-aid kit," Dash directed, rushing out of the room as soon as the three of them were fully inside and the doorway was clear.

He brought the first-aid kit into the room, then ran out again to raid his mom's sewing kit, thoroughly wash his hands, and get a new bottle of rubbing alcohol upon remembering that the open one was almost empty. When he finally had everything he needed, he pushed his desk chair next to the bed, but Phantom's injuries were way more extensive than usual, and he didn't even know where to start.

"Come on Baxter," he muttered to himself, laying out the first-aid kit on his nightstand with trembling hands.

He took a deep breath, and tried to recall everything he'd learned about first-aid. But this... this didn't require first-aid. This probably required surgery. The leg definitely required surgery. But they didn't have a surgeon, they had him, and there wasn't really any question of whether a ghost could go to a regular hospital because pretty much everyone in Amity Park over the age of 18 still thought ghosts, and especially, were a menace that needed to be eliminated.

Fuck, okay. After his conversation with Phantom before, he'd found some first-responder training videos online. Those would probably be more helpful than his basic first-aid classes. Phantom wasn't gonna be able to remove the jumpsuit on his own this time, so Dash stripped off his gloves and boots and grabbed the scissors and started to cut away the thick fabric. The suit never retained any damaged from Phantom's wounds, so it would probably survive being cut up.

It was worse when Dash could see the full extent of the damage. This obviously hadn't happened to him in an even fight. His wrists and ankles were badly bruised, even though they'd been cushioned by his boots and gloves. The cuts weren't the kind he usually got in a fight, but clean, straight incisions on his limbs. And across his torso was a large, Y-shaped cut.

"What the fuck happened to him?" Dash breathed out, horrified.

"The guys in white got to him," Manson answered darkly. "We had to work with Plasmius to get him back, but there was no way in hell we were gonna let that bastard see him like this, so we brought him here."

"I don't know who Plasmius is, but maybe he would be able to help more than I can," Dash admitted, shaking his head. "I mean, I'll do everything I can, but this is way beyond me."

"Please, Dash," Manson said, and Dash was pretty sure it was the first time he'd ever heard her sound earnest while she was talking to him. "We can't take him to Plasmius."

Dash took another deep, shuttering breath, and tried to make his hands still. If he just focused on one wound at a time, he should be able to do this. Maybe. Hopefully.

"Alright," he agreed.

He went to his closet and pulled out every one of his sweat rags that were clean. He had quite a few because his mom insisted on him using a clean one every day, even though no athlete ever did that. But she was a clean freak, and he wasn't about to argue with his mom.

"The bathroom is directly left of my room," he told Manson. "Go and get two of these rags damp with warm water, and then come back. My mom's taking a bath in the master bathroom, so she won't be out for a few hours, but if my dad sees you, just tell him your my girlfriend and he'll leave you alone."

"Ew, I don't want to be your girlfriend," Manson said with a grimace. "Aren't you gay?"

"Yes, but you think I'm gonna tell my dad that?" he asked. "Avoid him if you can, but if he sees you, lie. Now go."

She left without another word.

Foley, meanwhile, stood near the head of the bed, pushing Phantom's hair out of his face and muttering promises Dash would have to keep. Things like 'everything's gonna be fine', and 'you'll be okay'.

Dash looked Danny over and tried to determine his priorities. The leg and the Y-incision were obviously the worst, but it was all bad. Which one should he do first? What could he put off until the end?

It probably took too long for him to finally decide that the Y-incison was a bigger deal, especially since he had to make sure there was no internal damage. He pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves, the rubber snapping against his wrists, and held his breath as he carefully peeled back the flaps of skin.

"Internal organs cant feel distinct physical sensations," Dash recited. "Sharp or strong pains coming from internal organs are typically somatic, or the result of pressure, rather than actual organ damage."

Phantom let out a muffled scream through gritted teeth. Not good.

"Foley, in the med kit is a bottle of strong painkillers leftover from when my mom had to have abdominal surgery," Dash said. "It's an orange bottle. I can't remember the full name, but at the bottom of the label it says 'generic for: Norco'. Make sure Phantom swallows it properly."

"Got it," Foley replied with a determined not, and left Phantom's side to dig through the various orange prescription bottles in the kit.

"Once you've done that, look in my dresser for a pair of clean socks or a leather belt for him to bite on so he doesn't break his teeth, because we can't wait for the painkillers to kick in, and we can't have my parents hear him screaming either."

"Got it," Foley repeated, and kept sifting through the bottles until he found what he was looking for. "You said a belt, right?"

"Or socks, anything that'll keep him from grinding his teeth together," Dash confirmed. "But give him the painkiller first."

While Foley did that, Dash carefully arranged everything where it belonged according to the anatomy chart he'd memorized. He wasn't exactly sure why a ghost had internal organs at all, but he was grateful that they were at least organs he recognized, even if they were green, and gray, and black, instead of red and pink like human organs mostly were.

There was also a faintly glowing, iridescent, blue-green crystal in there, but Dash had no idea what that was or where it went, so it was without a doubt, a ghost-exclusive thing. Dash tried to position it more-or-less centrally without cutting any of the other organs on its sharp edges.

He had to stitch together some things that looked like they'd been cut. Even though he didn't have the proper thread for internal sutures, the ectoplasm should still dissolve it in a few days, even if the thread wasn't made to dissolve. At least, if what it had done to all his towels over the past few months was any indication, it would.

He didn't notice when Manson came back in and stood across the bed, waiting for further instructions, until she cleared her throat and held up the damp towels. Then, he looked up, his hands frozen in place as he took in the scene around him. Foley had found a belt and had Phantom bite down on it, which presumably meant that the ghost had taken the painkiller, although Dash could only hope it actually worked.

"What do you need now?" Manson asked.

"I need you and Foley to use those towels to clean up all this extra ectoplasm," Dash said. Resigning himself to buying a bunch of new towels, because these ones were absolutely done for after this. He pointed into the first-aid kit. "Use those rubber straps and tie them around his limbs above his injuries to slow the flow of ectoplasm. If your run out, rip one of the dry towels into strips and use those. If the towels you're using to clean him up get too soaked with ectoplasm, you can rinse them with warm water and keep using them."

Manson handed Foley one of the towels and they immediately got to work.

"One of you should do the broken leg first, but be careful around the bone," Dash added.

"I'll do it," Foley volunteered.

Finally, Dash was done reconstructing Phantom's innards, and closed the skin folds so he could stitch them up. He had to take off his gloves because the needle kept slipping across the ectoplasm-covered gloves and out of his hands. It wasn't the right type of needle for sutures. It never had been, but he'd never wished so much that he had the right one.

As soon as he was done here, if Phantom didn't dissolve, or evaporate, or whatever ghosts did when they ceased to be, Dash was gonna go to as many craft stores and/or medical supply stores as he needed to to find a proper suturing needle. And some local anesthetic, no matter how many hoops he needed to jump through.

He lost count of how many stitches it took to close up the massive incision on Phantom's chest. A part of him was afraid he might run out of thread before this was over. But when he looked up at the alarm clock next to him, he could see that he'd been working on this for over an hour. The dorks had done a good job cleaning up and applying tourniquets, but there was still a long way to go.

Fuck, that leg couldn't wait a second longer. There was no time to wash his hands again, so he just used the last dry towel to wipe the ectoplasm off his hands and put on a fresh pair of gloves.

Now that he was examining it closely, it had been a clean break, the only problem was that his femur was sticking out of his thigh.

"I hope the Norco has kicked in, but even if it has, this is probably gonna hurt like a bitch," Dash said. "You ready?"

Dash could see Phantom squeeze his teeth even tighter on the leather belt in his mouth as he nodded.

Without waiting a second more, Dash pulled on the leg and pushed on the exposed bone, forcing it back into place with a sickening crunching sound.

Phantom screamed through the belt in his mouth, and Dash was seriously afraid his parents would come in. He didn't have a lock on his bedroom door to stop them if they tried.

Phantom's eyelids drooped like he was about to pass out, and Dash wasn't sure if that would be a good thing or not. On the one hand, at least he wouldn't have to be awake for all this, but on the other hand, in a ghost, falling unconscious probably meant they'd disappear soon, and Dash didn't want that. His uncertainty was answered when Foley noticed the same thing he did and urged Phantom to stay awake.

"Come on, Danny, don't pass out," Foley said to him. "You have to stay awake. If you pass out, it's all over."

"You call him by his first name?" Dash noticed, surprised. Somehow, he'd never actually heard the dweebs refer to Phantom by name. Usually, they spent their time addressing him, usually in the form of a plea, and thanks, or a passive-aggressive remark.

"Yeah, why wouldn't we?" Manson asked.

"I dunno," Dash replied.

He didn't look at them, focusing solely on making sure the femur was properly aligned. A real doctor would have used metal pins to affix it in place, but Dash didn't have anything like that, so he would just have to hold it steady until Phantom's healing factor fixed just enough to stop if from moving out of place immediately. He was surprised to find that looking at an exposed broken bone being fixed wasn't any less fascinating or more disturbing to him than watching a cut getting sutured. He wasn't sure if he liked what that said about him.

"I don't even call you guys by your first names."

"Yeah, but that's because you're a jerk," Manson pointed out.

Dash frowned. Maybe she had a point there.

"Hang in there, Danny," he said softly. "I'm doing everything I can."

It felt like too long before the cracks in the pitch-black bone started to stitch together and Dash could let go, push the muscle and tissue back into place, and attempt to stitch together the skin. And he still had several more to go.

"Manson, uh, Sam—position a pad of gauze over the wound itself, then wrap the whole thigh with a gauze bandage," Dash directed as soon as he cut the last stitch. "Nice and tight to keep the bone in place, but make sure you don't cut off his circulation."

"Right," Sam agreed, and grabbed the necessary materials out of the kit.

Looking at their supplies, Dash wasn't sure they had enough gauze for everything.

"Try to make the gauze last, because it's got a lot to cover here," Dash added, cringing.

After the broken femur, Dash moved to the other leg, and started to disinfect and then stitch up a straight incision that spanned from Phantom—Danny's lower thigh, over the knee-cap, and a few inches down into the calf. It was deep enough to see the dark bone and gray tendon underneath, which was probably the point, but Dash didn't let it get to him.

"No, no, Danny, stay awake!" Foley—Tucker said urgently. "You're in the final stretch, only the arms and hands left to go."

"And this dislocated ankle," Sam added.

"Ankle, shmankle, Danny can handle a dislocation in his sleep."

"Doesn't it get confusing, having two friends named Danny?" Dash asked, doing everything he could to keep his hands steady as he continued the sutures.

"Not really," Sam told him. "You'd be surprised."

"He may be surprised sooner rather than later if Danny can't stay awake," Tucker said.

Dash didn't find out what he meant right away. He finished up with the knee, and moved up to the long incision on Danny's right arm from elbow to wrist. If ghosts didn't typically produce ectoplasm faster than they could bleed out, this one would have killed him for sure. Clean. Disinfect. Start stitching.

He'd just gotten past the elbow when he hear Tucker's voice on the edge of panic.

"Danny?" he said. Then he raised his voice and repeated, "Danny!"

A ring of white light appeared and passed over Dash's vision, and the next thing Dash knew, he wasn't covered in ectoplasm, and stitching up pallid skin over glowing green muscle. He was covered in blood.

He knew he couldn't spare the time to look up and see what was going on, but that was about all he knew.

"Somebody describe to me what just happened so I don't have to stop stitching and see for myself," Dash demanded, his voice on the harsh side, and he knew it.

"Um..." Tucker started to say.

"He's Danny Fenton," Sam explained, her voice low and almost scared. "He has been the whole time. He's only half-ghost, and he can't maintain his ghost form when he's unconscious, which also means his healing slows down significantly after he passes out, so don't stop stitching."

Dash breathed in deeply. "Fuck!" he shouted. "You two better start bandaging, then. When he was still a ghost that could wait until I was done, but not the fuck anymore. Foley, tape pads of gauze over the wound on his torso. Manson, the right knee, just like you did the left thigh."

"On it," they both said in unison, and started getting the supplies out of the medical kit.

"Remember that's all the gauze we have, so make it last, I still have two more incisions to go after this one."

"At least they didn't get around to his back," Sam noted darkly.

"Why would you even say that?" Dash groaned, distressed by the very possibility. Spines were a lot more complicated than femurs.

When he was done with the arm, the last incision he needed to stitch up was the vertical cut on the side of the throat. If he had know Phantom was half-human, he would have done that one first, but since he was a ghost, and didn't seem to have any trouble breathing, or need to breath anyway, Dash had figured there was no more dangerous than the cuts on his knee or forearm, and he could just start at the bottom and work his way up.

They couldn't very well have put a tourniquet on that one, so Tucker was standing there with a thoroughly soaked towel sopping up the blood as it slowly trickled out so Danny didn't drown in it. Dash considered putting the arm on hold, to take care of that, but the cut on the forearm went through a major artery that Dash had just barely gotten to heal before Danny turned human, so he wasn't willing to take the risk.

Danny hadn't died the rest of the way yet, which was a good sign. The only good sign so far, but still. It was a challenge not to rush himself and get sloppy as he finished the however many remaining stitches on Danny's forearm before moving to his neck.

"Tucker, switch places with me and gauze up his forearm."

"You got it," Tucker said.

"Sam, get a wring out a towel in the bathroom sink and come back to dab up the blood while I take care of this."

"Yeah." Sam grabbed the least gross looking towel and ran to the bathroom next door.

Everything inside the incision looked to be intact, so Dash cleaned it with an alcohol wipe and sprayed it with disinfectant. By the time he was done with that, Sam was back with a drier towel and ready to take care of the blood while he did the sutures.

At the very least, this last incision was much shorter than the others, but it still took eleven stitches to close it properly. Dash told them to hold off on bandaging it while he went over to the next room to wash his hands. Sam and Tucker were both a lot better at wrapping bandages than they used to be, but he figured, given the placement of the wound, he was better off doing it himself rather than risking one of them wrapping it too tight and inadvertently suffocating their friend.

Once he was alone in the upstairs bathroom, he could finally take a breath without worrying about breathing germs directly into an open wound. When he went out and got a suturing needle and local anesthetic, he should also get a box of surgical masks. And more gauze. And sweat towels. He should make a list.

As he washed his hands thoroughly and methodically, he also saw himself in the mirror. He had blood and ectoplasm all over him. A thick streak of the stuff was smudged across his forehead from when he'd used his sleeve to wipe off sweat. That wasn't sanitary, but Danny wasn't an ordinary person, so he'd be fine... probably... hopefully.

Dash was tired. He'd looked at his alarm clock when he got up, and this all had taken a total of six and a half hours. It was nearly midnight by now.

He needed a shower.

But he wasn't done yet.

He returned to the room and had Tucker hold up Danny's head while he wrapped up the final wound. They were all disgusting. Covered in sweat and blood, and ectoplasm, and they were exhausted.

Dash didn't even have the energy to take a shower. And it didn't look like Sam and Tucker had the energy to go home, not to mention Danny probably shouldn't move.

"Let your parents know your staying over," Dash said. "We have to clean all this shit up before we go to sleep or Danny could get infected."

Sam and Tucker both groaned, but didn't argue. They cleaned Danny up with a sponge, and Dash laid out a couple of old bath towels under him in case he bled through his bandages.

He ended up just throwing the whole tarp away. If his parents needed it, he would just say he didn't think they had a brand new tarp, and maybe they were misremembering. Or, he could put it on his shopping list. If he could afford it after everything else he had to buy, he might as well.

Dash barely had the presence of mind to wedge a chair under his door so his parents couldn't come in unexpectedly before he, and Sam, and Tucker, all collapsed on the floor and fell asleep all piled on top of each other.

Dash woke up the next morning because Sam extricated herself from their human knot, stole one of his shirts, and went to take a shower. Which was honestly not cool, because Dash totally should've gotten dibs on the first shower after all that. Not that it mattered, because he almost immediately went back to sleep.

A little while later, Dash woke up on his own and detached himself from Tucker. He followed Sam's lead in grabbing some clothes and taking a shower. The clothes he was wearing were obviously gonna have to go straight in the trash, which was a shame, because he'd like these jeans.

A hot shower was just what he needed, though. The water soothed his sore back and hands, and he watched the gooey brown-ish slime of ectoplasm and blood slough off him and down the drain. It was the greatest relief of his life when he finally felt clean again.

When he looked in the bedroom, Danny and Tucker were both still asleep, Danny on the bed, recovering, and Tucker sprawled out and drooling on the carpet. So Dash headed down to the kitchen for breakfast. Sam was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Wheaties and wearing one of his concert T-shirts and seemingly nothing else—although given their height difference, the shirt went almost down to her knees, so it wasn't exactly indecent.

"Uh... are you wearing underwear?" he couldn't help but ask.

"Yes!" she replied, sounding insulted.

"Are you wearing... my—"

"No! God, I washed mine in the bathroom sink and used the hair dryer to dry them off," she said in a rush. "Is that what you wanna hear?"

"Yeah, actually, it's kind of a relief," he said, getting out a bowl and spoon. "Also, resourceful. I'm impressed."

"Thank you," Sam said, and ate another mouthful of Wheaties.

Dash opted for the Honey Crisps, and took a seat next to her.

"Your dad saw me," she said. "Apparently, he got called in for a work emergency, even though it's Sunday. I had to use the girl friend lie, and not only did he buy it, but he told me to tell you he said congratulations. Your dad's kind gross, you know that? He knows we're only fourteen, right?"

"I mean, you are wearing my shirt and no pants," Dash pointed out. "But yes, I am aware that my dad is kinda gross. He's for sure gonna be weird to me about this for a while. If he doesn't ask me about the next time my girlfriend's coming over at least twice a day for the next week, I'll be surprised."

"Yikes."

"Pretty much."

"There was no work emergency," Dash said. "His workplace is closed on Sundays. He's going to meet his girlfriend Crystal. I don't think that's her real name. Mom doesn't know about her."

"Yikes." Sam repeated, more emphatically this time.

"Yeah."

The two of them ate in silence for a few minutes before Sam spoke up again.

"About yesterday..." she started to say, then paused, her brows furrowing in thought. "You... you were fucking amazing. I mean that honestly, like, you were in way over your head, and stepped the fuck up, so... thank you."

"Oh, uh... you're welcome."

Of the three of them, Sam was definitely the one Dash felt like he got along with the least.

"Seriously, coming to you like we did, with Danny in that condition... it was pretty fucked up of us, even though we didn't exactly have a choice," she continued. "I know I've been kind of..." Dash waited as she fished for the right word, "standoffish with you, because you've kind of bullied the three of us, and especially Danny for years, but you've changed after you started to help us so..."

"I get it," Dash said. "I've been a dick. That's not exactly news to me, I did it on purpose. Actually, stopping was the accident. I barely even noticed that I'd been laying off the bullying until Kwan pointed it out."

"Wait, what?" Sam asked. "Why?"

Dash stared into his cereal and brought a spoonful to his mouth to stall. It was sweet. The crunch was starting to get mushy as the cereal got saturated with milk.

"I live my life by my parents' expectations, especially my dad's," Dash answered finally. "My dad has very specific ideas about what the ideal life is for a boy like me. Sports teams, popular friends, hot girlfriend, bullies nerds. In middle school the times my dad got a call from the school about my bad behavior picking on weaker kids—those were the only times I ever got his approval. He actually acted proud of me for it."

"You're dad's fucked up."

"No arguments here," Dash scoffed. "Kwan says the same thing to me on a regular basis, but it doesn't change the fact that while I live in his house, he's in charge. When I'm eighteen and legally independent, then I can start making my own decisions, but he's pretty much set on narrowing down my prospects as much as possible until then, to force me into the life he wants me to have. You know. The American dream, just like what he got."

"Do you want me to kill him for you?" Sam offered.

Dash laughed. "Believe it or not, Kwan's actually said that to me a few times, too."

"You know, I never thought Kwan and I would get along, especially after he got me banned from my favorite goth poetry slam, but maybe I should give him another shot." Sam put down her spoon and lifted her bowl to her lips to drink the rest of the milk. "You know," she added, taking her dishes to the sink. "I was really surprised that you had oat milk in your fridge."

"Yeah, my mom's always on some kind of diet, a lot of 'em are no-dairy," he replied.

Sam shrugged, said see-ya-later, and headed upstairs back to Dash's room.

Dash headed up too when he was done eating. Tucker was gone, but the sounds of the shower going in the next room explained that. Sam was sitting next to the bed, watching Danny's slow, but steady breathing.

"Tucker stole one of your shirts," Sam said without looking at him. "But his cargo pants actually made it out of yesterday's blood fest basically unscathed, unlike my skirt, so he's gonna re-wear them."

"Oh... good."

"You really did do an amazing job with him," Sam said. "He's not even having trouble breathing or anything. Even Danny is gonna take a week or two to recover from this, but your work on him is definitely gonna streamline the process."

"Thanks."

"No joke, you should become an ER doctor."

"If only I had the grades to get into medical school," Dash sighed, taking a seat on his desk chair. "Danny and I had pretty much this same conversation a few weeks ago."

"I'm sure a well placed bribe could get you at least admitted," Sam said, "although you'd still have to study."

"What bribe?" Dash scoffed. "My family's well off, but we don't have that kind of money. Like I told Danny, if I can get scouted for a football scholarship, I'll major in sports medicine, and if not, I'll try to become a paramedic. I think it's a pretty solid plan, don't you?"

"I guess," Sam relented. She looked back down at Danny with a slight frown. "Should we wake him up? Would we even be able to?"

Dash followed her gaze.

Danny's breathing was still steady, his gauze covered chest rising and falling without hesitation or stuttering. He hadn't bled through any of his bandages, although it was still a good idea to replace them later.

"I have no idea," Dash admitted. "I don't think trying to wake him up would do any harm, but I don't know if he's actually comatose, or just resting. He'll need a lot of rest to heal from this."

Sam nodded silently, but made no move to wake her friend. Come to think of it though, Dash had a question about the whole 'Danny being a ghost' thing. It explained a lot, honestly, but there was still something that didn't make any sense.

"Hey, Phantom has been missing for a while, but Danny's been going to school like always, so how can they be the same person?"

"After Danny went missing, Tucker tracked down a shapeshifting ghost called Amorpho who owed Danny a favor, and called it in," Sam explained. "They've been posing as Danny at school to throw off suspicions, but they'll be leaving town again once they learn Danny's back."

"Clever," Dash commented.

About a minute after that, they heard the shower turn off and another couple minutes later, Tucker returned. Dash's shirt was almost as big on him as it was on Sam. Before now, Dash had never been particularly self-conscious about his size, but either they were really small, or he was actually huge, and it was kinda awkward.

"If I wake up Danny, will something bad happen?" Tucker asked, looking right up at Dash expectantly.

"Oh, uh... I don't think so, but I'm not 100% sure. He might be in a coma."

"I'm gonna try to wake him up," Tucker declared.

He walked over to Danny and poked his chest injury hard.

Sam and Dash both immediately started to chide him for it, but Danny's eyes snapped open and he gasped sharply.

"What happened?" he croaked. His throat may have been bandaged, but obviously his voice was still sore.

"You got got, dude," Tucker answered. "Guys in White cut you open, Sam and I got Vlad's help rescuing you, and then brought you to Dash to get you stitched up. He knows who you are now, by the way. You kinda passed out while he was still stitching you up."

"Oh."

"Sam, can you go get him some water," Dash asked.

"Right," she agreed. Before she left, she turned to her friend and smiled. "Good to have you back, Danny." Then she was out the door.

"How to you feel, Danny?" Dash asked.

"Like I got run over by a truck with razor-blade wheels," Danny replied.

"Try to focus," Dash said, his tone gentle but urgent. "Tucker, help him sit up."

Tucker immediately complied, slipping a hand under Danny's back to get him upright.

"Can you move your fingers?" Dash asked.

Danny wiggled his fingers on both hands.

"Try to touch each of your fingertips to your thumb."

Danny did so, though he couldn't quite get his thumb to meet his pinkie on the side that had the forearm incision. That was to be expected this early in the healing process, and Dash assured him the that mobility should come back with time.

When Sam came back with the water, Dash handed him the bottle of leftover Norco and told him to take one. It might make him a little loopy, but it would help with the pain.

He moved on to having Danny bend his wrists, elbows, roll his shoulders and so on. They hit an embarrassing bump when Dash realized he never reset Danny's dislocated ankle, but that was a quick fix. He had Tucker grab some self-adhering bandages from the kit, which he hadn't taken back to the bathroom. Thankfully, the painkiller had kicked in before Dash reset the ankle, so Danny didn't even flinch.

"You're nice," Danny said as Dash finished checking him over and gave him the all clear.

Oh yeah, the meds had definitely kicked in. From the sound of Danny's voice alone, Dash could tell he was completely loopy.

"Thanks," Dash said, taking out a set of sweatpants and a zip-front hoodie from his closet. "It'll probably hurt to raise your arms for a while, so button up shirts and zip-front jackets until your chest heals."

"Okie dokie," Danny agreed, taking the clothes from Dash and floating off the bed to get dressed.

Dash pointedly looked away, ignoring the fact that his crush had been fully nude in his room for twelve hours and he'd never once taken the opportunity to ogle. Given the circumstance, it just felt like it would have been particularly wrong.

"You're a whole sweetie pie," Danny said, and floated over to give Dash a kiss on the cheek. "Not just a piece of a sweetie pie but the whole pie. You're a pie."

"Thanks," Dash said again, although this time his voice came out as a squeak, and he could feel his face turning bright red.

He could hear Sam and Tucker snickering at him. No. Manson and Foley. They were temporarily losing first-name privileges for this.

Dash didn't understand how finding out that Phantom was actually the kid he always bullied didn't make his crush go away, but actually made it worse overnight. He sure wished it hadn't though.

"If you're not dying anymore, then get out," Dash grumbled. "I still have to clean up the ectoplasm you dripped all over the house coming up here, and then I have to buy more gauze. If you get injured again in the next month, I'll kill you."

"Sweetie sweetie pie pie!" Danny singsonged, but didn't protest when Manson and Foley each grabbed him by one hand and dragged him, still floating, out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

Once they were gone, Dash's shoulder slumped and he sighed. He wasn't sure if it was exhausted, relieved, love-struck, but he sighed.

Being Team Phantom's official-unofficial medic was hard work.

He eyed the green drips on his bedroom carpet and sighed again.

But his work wasn't over yet.

#danny phantom #dp #danny fenton #dash baxter #sam manson #tucker foley #fic #things i wrote #phic phight #phic phight 24 #cw: gore #cw blood #injuries #minor swagger bishie #medical

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brightgnosis · 22 days

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Y'all understand the vast majority of the people living in Palestine are either Islamic or Jewish, right- and that even the minority religion in Palestine is still largely Christian, or some other form of Abrahamic religion (Baháʼí, Druze, Samaritan, etc)?

And that they are not your Pagan Gods' "Children" or "Creations" no matter what your personal religious or spiritual worldview happens to be, right?

And that it's incredibly disrespectful to make posts talking about how your Pagan Gods "love and protect their Children / Creations in Palestine" (speaking specifically about all Palestinians, but especially those in Gaza), right?

Especially as largely American people who tend to get, like, big mad when, say, Christians tell you "I'll pray [to the Christian God] for you" or Eclectic NeoPagans say "Blessed Be" to you, right?

Right?

Like ... Please tell me you do understand how incredibly fucked up and completely disrespectful (not to mention hypocritical) that is, as a Pagan.

Because I literally just saw the most insane post by a Hellenic Polytheist saying exactly that, and I am losing my head about it. Like, this has absolutely nothing to do with the war itself and everything to do with the fact that some of y'all really need to sit down and check yourselves for a moment.

Some of y'all're out here getting absolutely out of hand with some of the things you think it's ok to say "in support"; some of the stuff I see ... Y'all don't seem to get how absolutely disrespectful some of the stuff you're saying actually is to the real, living, breathing people with real, living, breathing cultural, ethnic, and religious identities that are miles away from yours (in space, content, and context; etc).

Like holy shit. Y'all'd absolutely lose your minds if you were the ones being disrespected on this kind of level over here in your cushy little homes. Hell, I've seen y'all lose your minds over disrespect on far lesser levels than this, even! And some of y'all really though this was a good, kind, and compassionate and supportive take despite the glaring hypocrisy on even the most basic level!

I'm not naming names because the person in question is literally a minor and deserves grace even for this. But some of y'all clearly really, seriously need to think about things far more than you are.

#Personal #2024 #Paganism #Paganblr #Witchblr #Wiccablr #Religion & Magic

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the-rainbow-lesbian · 9 days

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few things piss me off more than seeing people say “there are no israeli civilians.” there is no way to say something like that without being violently antisemitic. they also forget that israel is quite literally the most diverse country in the middle east, and one of the most diverse countries, period. so, what about the druze? arab israelis? samaritans (although the population is at less than a thousand, following millennia of violence, displacement and forceful conversion to islam)? what about refugees from african and middle eastern countries (both jewish and not jewish) that had no where else to go? were they supposed to just die instead of going to israel? what about the mizrahim that were literally kicked out of their home countries in the middle east? were they supposed to just roll over and die rather than seeking refuge? and, lastly, what about the children? kfir, the infant who wasn’t even a year old when he was kidnapped by hamas along with his brother and the rest of his family? was he supposed to just not be born? how does he participate in the occupation of palestine?

also, how does hamas know to differentiate between the jews of israel and the non-jews? they literally kidnapped a young bedouin hijabi and her family on october 7th, did they think she was a settler? or maybe, just maybe, is hamas a violent terrorist group that is not set on liberation, but destruction and domination? because that’s the only conclusion i can come to after seeing all of this. the fact that hamas kidnaps and murders literal CHILDREN is just further proof it isn’t about liberation. because young children are innocent by all metrics. they literally don’t understand war or countries or anything like that. so what benefit for the palestinian cause does it serve to kill children?

it doesn't serve palestinians because when they corner israel and give them no option but to retaliate then their own children die in the war, but october 7th wasn't war, it was a massacre and dare I say genocide, because hamas' eventual goal is to kill all jews, people seem to overlook that inconvenient detail.

people assume since israelis are required to serve it means each single one of them is a competent combatant who has killed palestinians for fun (not true obviously) never mind that conscripted service is necessary since israel is surrounded by hostile entities that want to eliminate them. then they say "well what did israelis expect living on occupied land" which is hilarious when it comes from americans, canadians and australians, you really want to talk about occupied land??? the mental gymnastics these people be doing just to avoid saying they hate jews, like no no trust me, this time unlike the nazis I have a good reason to hate the jews! I am a very good compassionate person which is why I am ignoring all the humanitarian crises around the world and focusing on this one 🙄🙄

also on a personal note, as an arab woman who lived the majority of my life in the middle east fuck you all 🖕🖕do you want to talk about fascism and ethnostates but say nothing when our governments violently subjugate women, gays and lesbians, and exmuslims, and all the other religious minorities?? and imprison and torture people for just speaking out against the government or islam? sure they totally totally care about arabs or whatever/s

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aeliesa · 1 year

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Hello author, could you make romantic charlotte katakuri with a female reader who is a dragon leader, she resembles like a mix of Hiccup and Valka from httyd, she also has a fire sword, dragon armor and staff, she is kind and compassionate to dragons, can tame and earn the trust of any dragon, she has 3 main dragons: Stormcutter, Triple Strike, Song of Death and the baby Deathgripper she recently rescued (She carries him in a special compartment in her armor that looks like a mama kangaroo bag. Like the fishleg in part 3 httyd). She also has 5 dragons that look like the dragons from Game of Thrones. She lives in a hidden place with the dragons she rescued. All the dragons obey her, so when a screaming death attacks the Totto Land , she calmly talks to the dragon and tames it. She takes Katakuri with her in flying in search of dragons, but her dragons are not friendly to Kata (they don't trust him, but after Kata saves y/n, he deserves their trust and respect, but the little deathgripper tries to burn his clothes with acid), but are friendly to the others. The reader does not have a power (she got from our world to them with the help of a portal along with her dragons and decided to stay here and bring dragons here, as it will be safer for them) One shot, if it's not hard. I apologize for the mistakes in the text, English is not my native language

Hi, I'm sorry that this took long (my schedule hindered me from writing). I hope you won't mind that I altered some parts of your request. Needless to say, the gist is still there. I hope this meets your expectation; enjoy!

WONDERS IN INITIATION

Synopsis: He's a great fighter and the hearsay about him speaks for himself, from his bounty to his ranks. However, none of the aforementioned could comfort his essence knowing that he must make a step to establish something with you.

• Relationship: Charlotte Katakuri x female reader

• Content: fluff

A/N: Errors are to be expected.

Of all the worst things to happen, it’s the one that angers him.

His little sister called unto his name, trembling in fear, trying to evade the aggressor’s attack. At this sight, he quickly dashes, preparing for his attack, thinking of ways to make the man responsible for his sister’s tears suffer.

In between his tracks, he stops. His observation haki shows him otherwise; although the suffering is still present, he is not responsible.

You kneel before his sister, checking on the poor woman who passed out. From a great distance, Katakuri witnessed how it all happened: you threw your sword, fire igniting, and it hit the assailant right on the crucial part.

Katakuri is about to enter the scene when he notices that the random pirate stands up - wincing but trying its best to get revenge. He was a devil fruit eater considering how his hand turned to a claw; right before the pirate could land an attack - Katakuri threw a stone, hitting his head and causing him to lose consciousness.

With the unfortunate news he received in five hours, Katakuri’s patience is ticking; the last thing he wants to see is his siblings being in peril and the good samaritan who saves his sister.

“He’s still alive?!” you throw a look at Katakuri before shifting your attention at the lifeless body and then at his sister, who just lost consciousness, “Hey, please be with me… miss, are you - hey…” you gently tap her cheeks, but to no avail, the woman didn’t respond.

Amidst the situation, a colossal figure landed behind you - roaring in anger. The sight widens Katakuri’s eyes; he’s about to move - to take his sister when you turn to him with a glare. In this world, everything seems to be possible. However, seeing a dragon right before his eyes just leaves him with the notion of the possibility of the existence of those myths he once heard as a kid.

“Don’t!” you yell, “don’t take another step, please….”

Katakuri pauses but gives in, patiently waiting to see a good result while on it; he’s on guard and is ready to mediate when things escalate. As he lets the event unravels, the fascination starts to grow; your bravery is something, and the resoluteness in your voice is evident that you’re not easy to drag.

His mind starts to give him notions about your identity, characteristics, and how you have come to be on good terms with dragons. Katakuri could sense himself wanting to hear your story, and somehow, he was giving himself sweet impossibilities while being attentive to his sister.

I may take a risk. The thought made Katakuri scoff.

“Be calm,” you hold your hand in the air waiting for a response. “No one is going to hurt you, I promise that….”

If he could say one thing, it would be: impossible. The dragon surrenders to your touch, and right before he can process everything, another figure appears, another, and another until he chooses not to count. Every dragon growled, lowering their head, cuddling your little body while some even licked your hand.

Katakuri is at ease to see that nothing has happened. It is new for him to see dragons being close to a human. Let alone engaging in a conversation with you, hearing your yearning for them, Katakuri surmised that you were separated from them and only reunited. It’s a touching scene until one of his brothers stands beside him - pissed at the sight.

“It is rare to see a sight of a mythical animal to wreak havoc in our area….” Oven announces, taking admiration at the massive figure before him. “It’s a pleasure to bring this on its knees for making the townfolk scared, or we can use that as a gift,” his brother shrugs, “I think that would be great! You know - for Mama’s collections.”

“Collections?!”

His brother’s goofy demeanor is gone when he turns to you, displeased at your outburst, not to mention your sudden interruption of their conversation. “This is a family matter, as far as I am concerned, Intruder.”

“These dragons are my family,” you glare; anger starts to spark at the thought of a poor innocent mythical animal turning into something that it doesn’t desire to. “As far as I am concerned, I have the right to speak in this matter,” you objurgate, emphasizing your authority over the animal that caused the commotion on a foreign island you landed.

Katakuri remains silent, still trying to calm himself due to the fact that he just saw his little sister almost on the brink of the claw’s death.

“Oh Lady, you entered this place illegally, and now you have the guts to act high and mighty?” his brother clicks his tongue repeatedly, “A mere statement like that won’t make me acknowledge your authority… learn to know you place or why don’t we let our strength speak for each other?”

“Fine by me!” you took a brought out your own sword and removed the bag where the baby dragon roared, noticing the tension. “Please hold him gently,” you calmly hand the bag to the man beside you, silently sizing the situation. “This will be quick.”

“Funny of you to declare your fate,” Katakuri’s brother cackles confidently, taking a step forward. The grin on his face just boosts your distaste to ruin him; you could feel the tingling sensation in your fingers due to anger; the eagerness is too evident that Katakuri starts to eye you intently.

“Your arrogance will bring you nowhere,” gently shaking your head as you take your weapon.

Katakuri watches as his brother and the woman he just saved will tear each other’s limbs. He’s been hoping to see a shade of light in this series of unfortunate events. However, just as when things are starting to be okay, another occurs - ruining the chances of calling it a day.

He never likes violence, especially if it does not wield an outcome that benefits him, his principles, his mother - or the citizens of Totto Land.

“Enough.”

Inches from the battle, Katakuri’s sternness is evident through his eyes. “Violence won’t solve this,” he begins, gently tugging the baby dragon in the bag you handed. “Oven, need I remind you that she saved our sister?”

A smirk flashed from you when his brother glanced at you, “Be a doe and listen to your brother.”

By the command of Katakuri, his brother takes the step back first, begrudgingly acknowledging your presence briefly before turning to Katakuri.

“So what’s your plan?” he asks.

“Make sure this mess won’t reach Mama,” he orders, “I’ll personally handle this matter, take our sister and ensure she’s okay.”

Oven nods, “I will,” taking his unconscious sister. They left without taking a second look at the both of you.

“Thanks,” you huff when the figure of the man you almost clashed with disappears. “I’m sorry for the mess - really. We were just finding some new place to stay, but we got lost in this massive forest, and the next thing I knew, some intruders started to infiltrate the place… my dragons were disturbed hence the commotion, but I assure you they are nice!”

Before he speaks, Katakuri studies you, “Are you hurt?”

Surprised at his answer, you shake your head, “You?”

“I’m fine, thank you for asking. Anyway, what brings you here?”

“I was lost,” you confess, lowering your gaze. “The jerk earlier was after us when he learned that we entered this place illegally - not that I have any idea, and we mean no harm; we just really happened to stop by for a while.”

“What is your plan?”

“Of course, we’re going to leave…” a dragon lowers its head - yearning for your hand. “I need to find a place for my family to be safe,” you added, smiling at the dragon who succumbs to your caress.

“Why don’t you stay?”

It’s a sudden action that even Katakuri is surprised to hear, but what should he do when you’re going to leave the place he’s residing, and the probability of crossing paths is next to impossible? Desperation is evident; Katakuri’s calm demeanor slowly breaks as he waits for your answer, beseeching that you would agree to his request.

“I mean…” he averts his gaze when you look at him, and did your dragons hide their surprise at Katakuri’s sudden statement. “Only i-if you want… Totto Land is diverse, and I am sure you will fit in the right… along with your dragons,” he adds, still not meeting your eyes.

Never in his whole life did Katakuri feel so much embarrassment, yet he’s putting himself on the lifeline of discomfiture within your presence and the dragons. In his family, he’s known to be the reserved and honorable brother. However, this very image of his siblings seems to be a facade on how his actions defy the perception of his younger brothers and sisters.

Katakuri silently felt grateful that no one is around to witness his actions.

“Fly with me.”

“What?”

He could only look at your hand when you extended it, “The weather is nice, and I would very much like to see the whole place…” to see your face radiating in warmth, Katakuri felt at ease to know that there was no hint of mockery in your demeanor, instead, it is pure gaiety, “It would be nice for a visitor to explore the place she’s unfamiliar with a citizen that gives a sense of security and comfortability, don’t you think?”

He lowers his face, trying to hide in the scarf that wraps around his neck. You have a point; for someone who is in a foreign place, it would be precise to explore the island with someone who knows the corners of it.

“I’m afraid that your dragons might not like it.”

It’s not that he’s afraid, Katakuri can still recall what happened earlier, and the hostility of your dragons is something that he must avoid; the ruckus did not reach his mother’s ears, but indeed, this time around with more than five dragons, it won’t be surprising if Katakuri’s mother shall be the one to put an end to the mess; a lovely sight can be ruled out from the possibility.

“They don’t,” you stifled a laugh as you glanced at your dragons beaming at them, “I was saved by him, guys… you know that, right?” the dragon nods, along with the youngest expressing its agreement through its little roar.

Katakuri would never understand how the communication was established between you and the dragons. Still, since he’s a pirate and has been to different places and seen various things that rationality might take forever to comprehend, it would be presumptuous of him to act surprised by sight before him. To see you getting along with the dragons makes him think that perhaps if given a chance, he wants to establish amity with the others - starting with your dragons.

“See?” beaming at him, the dragons nod, acknowledging him as someone they should be civil.

He makes no haste; taking your hand, he pulls himself and sits behind you - feeling nervous about being near someone, let alone a woman.

“Is there something you might want to warn me about?”

“You might find things that bewilder your perception,” he admits, “I suggest keeping your expectations broader.”

You giggle, “I guess this place isn’t as bad as we’ve ventured to…” patting the dragon, its wings spread. Katakuri met your gaze when you looked back widely and smiled; he was confident that you were about to say something, but a yelp escaped your lips right before you fell, and an arm swiftly snaked around you - holding you closely, preventing you from falling from his grasps.

He can see the future, but it didn’t cross him how difficult it is to fight the intensity of your hold against him. Blood rushes down his cheeks, and Katakuri can only cower shyly. He’s still holding you even if you’ve already settled, but seeing what’s waiting for you, he could only shield you from what’s ahead.

“Hold still,” he whispers, and you nod, leaning against him to share the view that’s been taking your breath away.

In the middle of the air - feeling the breeze against his skin, Katakuri thought how the both of you didn’t start with the standard way of getting to know each other. Despite not knowing your name, he’s still enticed to accompany you; maybe it is because of being jovial? To him, you just elicit kindness, and he finds it adorable. He did something good; the exchange of names may not happen, but it is up to fate’s hands and how it unfolds.

As of the moment, it’s just you, him, and everything in between that brings your paths with him closer and closer.

“This is amazing! Everything is breathtaking!”

Since he resides in the same place you’re gawking at, Katakuri finds no pleasure in the view before him. Instead, the cosmic fervor of adoration that engulfs him slowly is evident through the smiles he hides behind his scarf whenever you express bewilderment. He finds it amusing how he once wondered about establishing a head start in getting to know you and now ends the same woman caged in his arms - safely. He can see what lies ahead, but when it comes to you, Katakuri just wonders about the future and how initiating a conversation might lead the both of you to something better, exciting, and uncertain, but in a positive way.

He nods, unconsciously fixating his gaze on you, “Yeah… breathtaking it is.”

fin.

#katakuri x you #katakuri x reader #one piece fanfiction #katakuri x y/n #fanfiction requests

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godslove · 4 months

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐢𝐟𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲

The Greek word for the spiritual gift of mercy is eleeo. It means to be patient and compassionate toward those who are suffering or afflicted. The concern for the physical as well as spiritual need of those who are hurting is covered by the gift of mercy. Those with this gift have great empathy for others in their trials and sufferings. They are able to come alongside people over extended periods of time and see them through their healing process. They are truly and literally the hands and feet of God to the afflicted.

All Christians are called to be merciful because God has been merciful to us.

³³ “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?”

—Matthew 18:33

⁴ “But God is rich in his mercy, and because he had such great love for us, ⁵ He brought us to life with Christ when we were already dead through sin—it is by grace that you have been saved. ⁶ He raised us up in union with Christ Jesus and enthroned us with him in the heavens,”

—Ephesians 2:4-6

The Holy Spirit gives the spiritual gift of mercy to some in the church to love and assist those who are suffering, and walk with them until The Lord allows their burden to be lifted. The gift of mercy is founded in God’s mercy towards us as sinners and is consistently expressed with measurable compassion. Those with this gift are able to:

¹⁵ “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.”

—Romans 12:15

and

² “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

—Galatians 6:2

They are sensitive to the feelings and circumstances of others and can quickly discern when someone is not doing well. They are typically good listeners and feel the need to simply “be there” for others.

⁸ “...whoever performs acts of mercy should do so cheerfully.”

—Romans 12:8

⁷ “Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy.”

—Matthew 5:7

³⁰ Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him and beat him, and then went off leaving him half-dead. ³¹ A priest happened to be traveling along that same road, but when he saw him he passed by on the other side. ³² A Levite likewise came to that spot and saw him, but he too passed by on the other side. ³³ “But a Samaritan who was traveling along that road came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. ³⁴ He went up to him and bandaged his wounds after having poured oil and wine on them. Then he brought him upon his own animal to an inn and looked after him. ³⁵ “The next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Look after him, and when I return I will repay you for anything more you might spend.’ ³⁶ “Which of those three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷He answered, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

—Luke 10:30-37

¹⁷ “However, the wisdom that comes from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, and considerate, full of mercy and good fruits, without any trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”

—James 3:17

²² “Have compassion for those who are wavering. ²³Save others by snatching them out of the fire. And for still others have compassion mixed with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.”

—Jude 22-23.

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quidam-sirenae · 4 months

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Whenever people are like “don’t give money to people panhandling they’ll use it for drugs” it’s like yeah and? 1) so would I 2)that’s not my problem. I did my job which is to be compassionate. Especially when talking to religious people I’m like. Yeah? Has nobody taught you that it’s your job to be kind? Like that’s #1 Christianity. Would Jesus rant about giving homeless people handouts? Did he say “be kind but only if you know the other people follows your same standards?” Im pretty sure the Bible says the opposite, actually, if you’ve ever read the good Samaritan story. I’m so tired of being told that you shouldn’t give homeless people money because they’ll spend it on drugs. Maybe it’s not your job to decide who’s worthy of compassion.

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greensparty · 1 year

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Preview: 2023 IFFBoston

To paraphrase Nirvana: “Spring is here again...IFFBoston time”! It is now my favorite time of year in Boston! My favorite film festival in Boston, in Massachusetts and possibly the world is Independent Film Festival Boston (read my coverage here). I have a special place for this festival: in 2014 my documentary Life on the V: The Story of V66 had its World Premiere at the festival, and in 2015 I was on the Documentary Jury. Due to the pandemic, the scheduled 2020 festival was canceled and 2021 was virtual, so last year felt good to be back in-person. The 2023 film festival is at Somerville Theatre (Somerville), Brattle Theatre (Cambridge), and Coolidge Corner Theatre (Brookline) from Wed. April 26 to Wed. May 3, 2023!

2023 IFFBoston logo

Here are just some of the Official Selections that are on my radar:

Wed. 4/26/23:

Opening Night Film is the documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer. So fitting that the pop icon Donna Summer was from Boston and now she is getting the documentary treatment co-directed by Roger Ross Williams and her daughter Brooklyn Sudano and it is opening IFFBoston!

Thurs. 4/27/23:

Legendary writer/director Paul Schrader has been on a roll in recent years with First Reformed and the highly underrated The Card Counter (my #5 Movie of 2021). Now he’s back with Master Gardener with Joel Edgarton. In the modern comedy Free Time, a New Yorker decides to leave his job to re-assess his life, only to want his old job back.

Fri. 4/28/23:

Penny Lane has made some great docs in the past: Nuts! was one of my 10 Best Documentaries of 2016, Hail Satan! was one of the highlights of the 2019 Boston Underground Film Festival, and Listening to Kenny G. was really good too! Now she has turned the camera onto herself as she donates a kidney in Confessions of a Good Samaritan. Oscar-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) has made a doc about one of the most well-liked actors of the last 40 years, Michael J. Fox. I’ve been a fan since Family Ties and Back to the Future and I’ve been hearing nothing but great things about Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie since it’s Sundance premiere. A Brooklyn brownstone in 1945 is the setting for a seance in Brooklyn 45.

Sat. 4/29/23:

The Student Shorts Showcase is on Sat. afternoon and it’s free admission! My buddy James Rutenbeck has his short Nixon’s Reversal in the Shorts Gloucester Documentary program.

When I was making my V66 documentary a few years back, I interviewed members of Boston garage rockers The Dogmatics because they were popular on the 80s music video TV channel V66. Skip ahead to 2019, I had heard about a documentary being made about The Dogmatics, so I reached out to director Rudy Childs and producer Jada Maxwell. We met up, talked shop and I stayed in touch with them about the project over the years. A few months ago I was lucky enough to see an early screener of The Dogmatics: A Dogumentary and I am proud to be a Consulting Producer. It’s really great to see this band get the music doc treatment and that there is a segment in the doc about their popularity on V66! I’m like a proud parent!

Sun. 4/29/23:

Join or Die is a doc about Robert Putnam. Aurora’s Sunrise is a doc about an Armenian Genocide survivor, told through animation. One of my favorite documentarians Steve James (Hoop Dreams is one of the greatest docs ever) returns with A Compassionate Spy about controversial Manhattan Project physicist Ted Hall. Pod Generation stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emilia Clarke in a not-too-distant future as they explore a new technology for fertility. Never Be a Punching Bag for Nobody is a doc directed by and about Naomi Yang who was in Galaxy 500 and is now learning to box. Speaking of Boston music, Beautiful Was the Fight is about several Boston female musicians and their struggles.

Mon. 5/1/23:

Mary Tyler Moore was a true entertainment legend, especially Mary Tyler Moore Show (re-watch that Chuckles funeral episode if you don’t believe me). Now she’s getting the doc treatment with Being Mary Tyler Moore.

Tues. 5/2/23:

The doc Time Bomb Y2K looks back at the Y2K anxiety that was building closer to the Jan. 1, 2000.

Wed. May 3:

The Closing Night Film is the romance Past Lives.

I’m excited about this year’s lineup. For info and tickets go to: https://iffboston.org/

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la-pou-belle · 4 months

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So I'm in a local email group which is intended for sharing ceasefire events in the area. Some folks shared news of Aaron Bushnell's death, and described him as a "true hero" -

which prompted a climate activist and policy guy I know, Dan, to say: "Killing yourself is not heroic. If he wanted to do something brave to make the world better, there are many ways to do that without killing anyone. There are a lot of people in despair in the world, and they don't need this kind of encouragement to murder themselves. [...] I think it’s wrong for people to promote and publicize such an action. We need people alive and working to make peace. Every death is a loss. [...] I refuse to believe that nothing Aaron could have made of his life would have been better than what he made by ending it. Believing the opposite, that all the people he might have loved, or clothed or fed or taught, or made to smile, are insignificant compared to impact of death in flames, seems really disrespectful to those who loved him."

This led to two other folks responding, telling him he's in no place to criticize this action; to think twice before saying this in an email group; asking "Dan, you must be in the wrong group, then?"; Doubling down on describing Aaron as brave, "having the guts to make the ultimate sacrifice", etc; and complained that Dan was hard-hearted, rather than compassionate.

I've met Dan before and I don't think policing his tone or questioning his values are good responses. Self-immolation is an extreme act of protest and it's divisive, for fair reason. When I mentioned climate activism, that's because I know Dan from these fields - and it's entirely possible Dan has lost comrades, friends, or even loved ones to suicide. In regards to self-immolation in the U.S., I can think of Wynn Bruce and David Buckel off the top of my head who have taken this act to protest climate inaction. But climate scientists commit suicide in other ways at an alarming and well documented rate. Frankly, we don't know what Dan's relationship to this topic is and I think it's valid for him to show concern, even anger, when someone's suicide is depicted as the best/ultimate sacrifice in a public, activist space.

I suspect all of us in activist circles know an activist - even if they've never explicitly said so - who struggles with depression and privately wishes to end their own suffering. This is difficult work for all of us. I didn't want to police anyone's tone in that thread, more just encourage folks to lay off of Dan, but I will say that the Society of Authors has guidelines on how to discuss suicide/self harm in ways to specifically avoid encouraging these actions in others (https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines/guidance-depictions-suicide-and-self-harm-literature/). Young people, bereaved people, and folks struggling with mental health (all demographics who I know are on this email thread) are statistically more likely to respond to prompts from media depicting suicide.

I fully expect there to be a string of similar self-immolations considering the publicity Aaron Bushnell's death has received, available videos of it, descriptions of this act as "heroic" and him as a martyr, and the available details on his method. If I'm being honest, I'm personally worried for some high schoolers I know who have expressed they no longer can function in school and are gripped with hopelessness at how they can effect change. I'll do what I can to offer them support.

I respect Aaron Bushnell's choice and I am going to continue to push for change. I hope to honor his memory. But I will also never say that self immolation was the best use of his, or anyone's, life. If I'm being selfish, I would prefer folks like Aaron to continue building community, educating their personal circles, and "make up" for their participation in the military with good works - but it's not my decision and it shouldn't be my decision.

Anyways, I'm ranting about it here because I think it's important for us to have space to express opinions like these without being pushed out of community or publically dog-piled. In my ideal world, Aaron's death and motives are accurately covered by the media, but details and descriptions of his method are left out of it (as per the writing guidelines, details on method - especially novel methods - increase the likelihood of mimicking the method.)

#aaron bushnell #free palestine #xan talks a lot

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theriu · 1 year

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“Compassion is kindness for people in need. More than just feeling pity, compassion moves you to relieve the misery of a person. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan “had compassion” on the injured man (Luke 10:33 esv), which moved him to come to his rescue. The Greeks and Romans valued courage, strength, wisdom, power, and revenge. For them, compassion was a weakness, not a virtue. But for believers in Jesus, compassion is what marks us out as God’s children. Jesus tells us to imitate our heavenly Father: “You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate” (6:36 nlt.) Compassion is God’s very person. In one of the greatest self-revelations in the Bible, He described Himself as “the compassionate and gracious God” (Exodus 34:6). We’re most like our Father when we’re compassionate, kind, and gracious to others.”

—Our Daily Bread, Jan. 26, 2023

#God #compassion #I really appreciate this explanation of what compassion really IS #it’s so simple yet so powerful #kindness that moves you to relieve others’ misery #and God is the compassionate and gracious god #Chrstianity #encouragement

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beardedmrbean · 1 year

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A Long Island nurse has been charged after she was caught on video allegedly picking up a two-day old baby and slamming him face-down into his bassinet.

Amanda Burke, 29, was arrested Wednesday morning and charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a Class A misdemeanor, in connection with the Feb. 6 incident, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office announced.

Burke worked as a registered nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip on Long Island, and at the time of the incident was in charge of the newborn's care.

“Burke approached the newborn while he was lying in a bassinet, lifted him up, quickly flipped him over, and violently slammed him face down in the bassinet,” prosecutors said in a news release.

The infant’s father recorded the incident on his cellphone through the nursery window, the baby’s mother confronted Burke, and the parents notified hospital nursing staff, prosecutors said.

As a result, Burke was terminated “within hours of the incident,” the release said.

“The allegations against this defendant, who is someone entrusted with the care of our most vulnerable citizens, are truly disturbing," District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said.

Robert C. Gottlieb, an attorney for Burke, told NBC News: "This case should have never resulted in criminal charges.”

“Amanda is an outstanding, exemplary, compassionate nurse who did not and would never do anything to endanger any infant or patient under her care,” he said. “The baby involved was not injured or ever placed in any danger of injury. The District Attorney’s statements are off base and not justified by all the facts that will come out in court.”

The infant’s father, Fidel Sinclair, told NBC New York in February it was divine intervention that he witnessed what happened to his son, Nikko.

“I’m happy I was there. God sent me,” Sinclair said. “If it wasn’t for God, who sent me to go over there and check on him, we would have never seen none of that happen. And that would have kept happening through the night, not only to him, but to the other babies, too.”

Nikko’s mother, Consuelo Saravia, told the station, the video of how her baby was handled left her shaken.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said. “I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t even sleep.”

Saravia said she confronted the nurse: “I told her, ‘I don’t want you to touch my child! You just slammed him,’” she told the station. “She said, ‘Oh no, if you think I mishandled him or anything, I’m sorry.’”

Burke's arraignment has been set for May 2.

The district attorney’s office said it notified the New York State Department of Education’s Office of Professional Discipline of the investigation findings, but to date Burke’s registered nurse license has not been suspended.

#nunyas news #marked sensitive

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 8 months

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10th October >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Luke 10:38-42 for Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time: ‘It is Mary who has chosen the better part’.

Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Except USA) Luke 10:38-42 Martha works; Mary listens.

Jesus came to a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who sat down at the Lord’s feet and listened to him speaking. Now Martha who was distracted with all the serving said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please tell her to help me.’ But the Lord answered: ‘Martha, Martha,’ he said ‘you worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one. It is Mary who has chosen the better part; it is not to be taken from her.’

Gospel (USA) Luke 10:38-42 Martha welcomed him into her house. Mary has chosen the better part.

Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.” The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

Reflections (8)

(i) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus is portrayed as offering people the hospitable love of God. In the passage we have just read from Luke, Jesus is offered hospitality by two women, Martha and her sister Mary. They each showed their hospitality to Jesus in different ways. Martha’s hospitality took the form of an anxious and fretful activity. Mary’s hospitality consisted in sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to him speaking. On this occasion, Jesus saw a greater value in the form of hospitality that Mary showed. Although Martha was highly critical of Mary to Jesus, ‘Please tell her to help me’, Jesus recognized that Martha had something to learn from Mary. Perhaps one of the ways of hearing this story is that we often have something to learn from those we criticize. Jesus had something to say and Mary listened to him. Whereas Martha criticized her sister for being lazy, Jesus recognized her as a good listener. Jesus suggested to Martha that in allowing herself to worry unduly about many things she was missing something very important, finding the space to allow the word of Jesus to enter her heart. Martha needed to become more like Mary, more child-like in receiving what Jesus had to offer. Today’s gospel reading invites us to ask if we are allowing the worries and cares of life to choke the seed of the Lord’s word that has been sown within us. There are times in life when we serve the Lord best by receiving from him, so that we can then give to others from what we have received.

And/Or

(ii) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Most people on hearing that gospel feel some sympathy for Martha. There she is working hard in the service of Jesus and Jesus declares that Mary has chosen the better part. ‘Poor old Martha’ would be a fairly common response. Jesus is clearly not opposed in principal to people working hard in his service, in the service of others. The immediately preceding passage in Luke’s gospel is the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan was very active on behalf of the injured man by the roadside; Jesus points to him as someone who exemplifies his own compassionate love. Yet, as the book of Ecclesiastes says, ‘there is a time for every matter under heaven’. Apparently Jesus understood that his visit to the home of the two sisters was a time for them to refrain from activity so as to listen to his word. Jesus had something to say and he wanted them to listen. It was Mary who recognized that this was the kind of hospitality Jesus wanted on this occasion, the hospitality of listening rather than the hospitality of activity. Mary was more attuned to what the Lord really wanted than Martha was. Yes, the Lord wants us to work on his behalf, but he also wants us to listen to him. Wisdom consists in knowing when it is time to be active and busy in the Lord’s service and when it is time simply to sit and listen to his word.

And/Or

(iii) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus is offered hospitality by two women. Martha seems to be the more senior of the two women and Mary the more marginal. It is said that Martha welcomed Jesus to her house. Martha’s way of showing hospitality was to roll up her sleeves and to prepare an elaborate meal in a rather anxious frame of mind. Her anxious activity made her rather angry with her sister whom she perceived not to be carrying her weight sufficiently. She comes across as somewhat angry with Jesus too for not giving Mary a telling off, ‘Lord, do you not care..? Tell her to help me’. However, Mary was showing Jesus a different kind of hospitality. She was sitting at his feet, listening to what Jesus had to say. It was traditional for students to sit at the feet of the Rabbi or teacher; Mary was taking up the position of a disciple. In the gospels Jesus often defends people against the criticism that others make of them. On this occasion he defends Mary against Martha’s criticism. Jesus validates the kind of hospitality that Mary is showing him, the hospitality of listening. Indeed, on this occasion it seems that this was the kind of hospitality that Jesus actually desired, ‘Mary has chosen the better part’. The parable of the good Samaritan which precedes this passage shows that there is a time and place for anxious activity on behalf of others. Yet, there is also a time for listening. The gospel reading suggests that true hospitality attends to what the guest really wants, not to what we think the guest wants. In terms of our relationship with Jesus, there is a time to be active on his behalf and a time to listen to his word. Both are important in their time.

And/Or

(iv) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Hospitality is a very important value in the gospels. Jesus himself was very hospitable to people, revealing the hospitality of God; he also received hospitality from others. In this morning’s gospel reading he receives hospitality from two women, two sisters. Yet, they each offer him a different kind of hospitality. Mary sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to him speaking. Martha was preparing an elaborate meal. Martha did not think much of the kind of hospitality that Mary was offering Jesus and she called on Jesus to put Mary right. However, Jesus defends Mary against the criticism of Martha, as he often defends people from the criticism of others in the gospel of Luke. Jesus it seems was delighted with the kind of hospitality that Mary was offering him and suggests that Martha may have something to learn from her sister. She is more preoccupied with the serving that is necessary. The parable of the good Samaritan shows us that showing hospitality to the Lord sometimes has to take the form of frenetic activity; today’s gospel suggests that showing hospitality to the Lord can also take the form of attention to his presence, attentive listening to his word.

And/Or

(v) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus is offered hospitality by two women, Martha and her sister Mary. Each of the sisters offers a different type of hospitality to Jesus. Martha shows him the hospitality of activity, whereas Mary offers him the hospitality of listening. Both forms of hospitality are very valid in their own way. We can receive people into our lives by doing things for them and we can receive people by being attentive to what they have to say to us. The gospel reason suggests that, on this occasion, Jesus appreciated more the listening kind of hospitality shown to him by Mary, a form of hospitality for which she was severely criticized by her sister. Jesus suggests that Martha has something to learn from her sister of whom she is so critical. Attentive listening to the word of the Lord in which we allow the Lord to serve us and feed us has a great value which be easily undermined by the anxious business of our lives.

And/Or

(vi) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

There are different forms of hospitality; there is the hospitality of activity and the hospitality of presence. In today’s gospel reading, Martha exemplifies the hospitality of activity and Mary the hospitality of presence. It seems that on this occasion, it was the hospitality of presence rather than of activity that Jesus was really looking for. In that sense, Mary read the situation better than Martha did. In the words of Jesus, she chose the better part. Jesus was not looking for an elaborate meal; he had a word to speak and what he wanted above all was a listening ear. It was Mary who noticed this and who sat at his feet to listen to his word. Mary was more hospitable on this occasion because she was more attentive to the needs of the guest than Martha was. In our own relationship with the Lord there is a time for both sitting at his feet to listen to whatever word he may wish to speak to us and there is a time for rolling up our sleeves and serving in a very active way, as the Samaritan did in the parable that formed part of yesterday’s gospel reading. We need to be attentive both the Lord of the work and the work of the Lord, and we need the wisdom to discern what is being called for at any particular moment.

And/Or

(vii) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

The gospel reading this morning suggests that Jesus welcomed the hospitality that was shown to him by others. On this occasion it was Martha welcomed him to her house. Yet, it seems that Jesus’ visit was more a cause of anxiety to Martha than an occasion of joy. That is clear from Jesus’ words to Martha, ‘Martha, Martha, you worry and fret about so many things’. We can all turn what is, in reality, a pleasure into a chore. Mary, Martha’s sister, seems the more marginal of the two women. The house is spoken of as Martha’s house, and Mary is simply referred as Martha’s sister. Yet, it is this more marginal of the two sisters who received Jesus in a way that was more appropriate to the occasion. Rather than allowing herself to be unnecessarily burdened, like Martha, she simply attended to the guest with joy, sitting at his feet and listening to him speaking. Jesus expressed his appreciation for the kind of attention that Mary gave him. It is often the way in Luke’s gospel that the more marginal people are the ones who respond best to Jesus and have most to teach us. On this occasion, Martha had something to learn from Mary, as we all do. Martha was overly anxious to feed Jesus, when, in reality, it was he who wanted to feed both of them with his word. Sometimes, what the Lord wants from us is just to sit and listen, and allow him to feed us with his word and his presence.

And/Or

(viii) Tuesday, Twenty Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

There is a reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes that is often chosen for a funeral Mass. One of the lines in the reading speaks of a ‘time to keep silence, and a time to speak’. One way of hearing this morning’s gospel reading is that when Jesus entered the house of Martha and Mary it was a time to keep silence. Jesus, the Word of God, had something important to say. It was Mary who discerned the time correctly. She sat at the Lord’s feet in silence and listened to him speaking. She showed Jesus the kind of hospitality he was seeking on this occasion, the hospitality of listening. Martha, in contrast, was unnecessarily anxious about providing a meal for Jesus. In frustration at not being helped by her sister, she rebuked Jesus for not caring sufficiently for her predicament. In response to Martha’s accusing question, Jesus called her twice by her name, ‘Martha, Martha’ and suggested to her that on this occasion she had something to learn from her sister, rather than something to rebuke her for. We all need to discern the right time to be silent and the right time to speak. We can fuss over someone too much when a listening ear is called for. We can offer them the hospitality we think they need rather than the hospitality they want. The same is true of our relationship with the Lord. There are times when the Lord calls us to be silent in his presence. Our inclination to anxious activity can lead us to miss those times. Sometimes we too need to choose the better part, to listen to the Lord in prayer when that is what he is calling us to.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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