Chapter Text
A few minutes pass as she sits on the cot alone. The numbness in her hand bleeds into her fingers all the way to the tips, and as she drags them across her bloodstained blue jeans, they bend awkwardly—not painfully—and she doesn’t feel a thing.
The curtain opens again, vaguely reminding her of the shower in their ensuite, how she’s spent pooling nights standing, then sitting under the stream, willing the malicious emotions and wants within her to expire—not being able to talk to him about them any longer, so she wrote them in a journal.
It’s not the nurse in blue scrubs as she expects, but rather, the same doctor.
In hindsight, she should’ve known.
Fatigue and hunger are ravaging her system, but neither is greater than the want to return home. To be safe in the walls of their house, which she used to see as confines, now brings her comfort—where she doesn’t have to put on an act to impress any doctors, medical personnel, or government officials.
Somewhere she’s simply allowed to be herself.
Doesn’t even bother looking at him as he readies the needle. “I thought you said a nurse would be in to administer that shot.”
Fittingly, the doctor doesn’t glance up at her as he measures out the appropriate a dosage, flicking the syringe multiple times before holding it up to the light. “Unfortunately, due to the nurses shortage and the staff being spread thin because all of the homeland violence, I will have to administer your tetanus shot.”
Reluctantly, she shakes her arm free of her sweater, wearing a simple camisole underneath, baring her shoulder. “As long as you can do so without the added commentary.”
“Oh, I’ll try,” speaks with smile, opening a silver package, revealing a wet square of gauze, and wiping down her skin.
She doesn’t respond to his attempt at jest, she doesn’t watch as he maneuvers her arm, holding it up before announcing, “big sting,” and plunging the needle through her skin to the muscle to inject whatever poison or medicine is within.
The pain is the pain, and while it’s uncomfortable, it’s nothing compared to living with a weeping bullet hole for a year, or many of the other traumas—both physical and not—that she’s had to endure in the previous years.
“All done.”
The needle is plucked from her skin, and in its place, a cotton ball is pushed in. He swipes her skin with some pressure, once, then twice, and on the third time, checks the output of her blood on the soft, white ball which now has a growing red dot.
He retrieves another, this time taping it down with a scroll of medical tape, pressed hard against her skin, then disposes of the needle, and his gloves.
“Thank you.” She replies as she shrugs her shoulder, trying to gain a little more mobility, to work through the small bite of pain.
“You’re already bruising.” He points out, sitting back on the stool, no longer required, but not leaving the curtained area again.
“I always do.”
She shrugs on her sweater again, reaching across the cot to retrieve her bag and her coat, intent on meeting Cameron wherever he was sent to, to not spend another second within the confines of this hospital.
“May I leave you with one thought before you go?” The doctor remains seated, his hands folded in his lap, a slight sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead.
“I believe you’ve made your position very well known.”
She reaches for the curtain, intent on exiting the hospital without any further hinderances, but then he interjects, “what if you have a child with him?”
The words are so out of place, so unknown to her in her current situation, that she doesn’t understand the importance behind them.
With her coat still slung over her arms, her hand a little heavy from the numbing solution that’s starting to wear off, her shoulder stinging still from the injection, she turns back to him, questioning, almost threateningly, “what if I do?”
Doesn’t know what his intentions are, if he’s suggesting they reproduce when they cannot—thought he is not privy to that knowledge—or if he knows of a way they can.
Unfortunately, it is neither of those reasons.
“What if you have a child with him and he treats them the same way?”
“The same way as what?”
“What if he abuses them too?”
She uses the rest of her pent-up energy not to scream bloody murder at this doctor—not only to shout forbidden and horrifying words, but just screaming in general, like if she could until her throat was raw, it would be better than any therapy session.
“Cameron, wouldn’t do that—”
“But seeing him abuse you is okay?”
“No, you misunderstand me—” she holds up a hand to halt whatever direction this conversation is travelling in. Dutifully, the doctor stops his speech. “Cameron wouldn’t do that because he doesn’t do that. He’s never hurt me.”
“Mrs. Mitchell—”
“And I don’t care to speak with you any more on the matter.”
“At least allow me to give you the contact information for the women’s shelter.” He stands now, not physically trying to stop her from leaving, but with a plea in his voice as he produces a small piece of paper from his lab coat pocket, holding it out to her.
When she doesn’t reach for the information, he adds, “if not for you, for any children you might have.”
“You know,” she scoffs, staring at the pattern on the curtains for the first time noticing pale and faded colors. “We had a child, a daughter—the most gorgeous baby I’d ever seen in my long life—”
Surprisingly, the doctor remains silent, standing at attention, his eyes keeping contact with hers, willing her to continue.
“And she was murdered—she was taken from us, and we—” stops herself before she bares too much of her soul to a doctor that knows nothing of their sordid pasts “—she’s gone now, Doctor, and I cannot bare another child, so your fears are misplaced.”
Quelling her sadness, her anger at being misdirected and told how to feel as if she were Cameron standing up on stage and giving a speech about freedom when he knows that he’s really being puppeted along—put up with it the first time due to the perks he told her, traveling the country with her by his side seemed like a great way to spend his life, and with his influence, he did end up getting her gunshot wound healed.
She tears the curtain back, exposing their area to the rest of the medical department and imagines in her head, all the patients, all the personnel, all the family stopping from their own personal traumas to gauge her after hearing how she failed.
But instead, the same urgency fills the department, people being guided on a stretcher by her, covered in bandages and burns, in soot and smoke, and she doesn’t need to stand near the nurses station, her head craned to view the television above with a critical news report to know it’s happened again.
Her coat still smells of it.
Doesn’t look back to the doctor, or stop to ask anyone for directions, but manages to find Cameron not by his jacket, or his prominent limp, but because he’s the only other person waiting, and not staring at the television with shock and fear.
But when she approaches him, and he doesn’t glance up from the paper he has almost crumpled in his hands, when he doesn’t acknowledge her standing next to him, it’s not due to pain, shock—it’s due to distraction.
She slips her hand into his, between the paper and his skin to hold his warm, bare hand, and action that garners his attention. “Something wrong, Darling?”
He doesn’t take her hand in his own or bring it to his lips to plant a kiss to grow across the back, or shake his head, ignoring whatever the paper may say, laugh, stand, and hobble to the door with her, an arm slung around her waist, asking her what she wants to pick up for dinner.
He doesn’t do any of that, and that, is truly frightening.