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Charlotte Dubois became a doctor to help people. Being black, and female, she’d had to work harder than any of her peers to get into medical school. After getting her degree, she had needed to be better than any of the other doctors to get the same jobs, but she had always been okay with that, because she would have wanted to be the best anyway. She didn’t need society's presumptions of her to push her to be better than everyone else. If it meant helping more people, Charlotte would have pushed herself to be the best doctor all on her own.
She was passionate about helping people, healing people. There were always those who couldn't be saved, and she never became desensitized to the passing of her patients, but death in her field was inevitable. Most people that came to her, however, were better off as a direct result of her treatment, and Charlotte knew that despite the losses she was making a positive impact on the world.
That was until a new disease began spreading that made Charlotte feel that she wasn't very useful at all.
She heard rumors that something bad was happening through the grapevine at the hospital. It was impossible to ignore whispers about patients being admitted at other hospitals for a new sickness, but Charlotte didn't realize the severity of the situation until the first victim showed up at her hospital.
He was a young man in heavy makeup and a ball gown, who was followed by a frantic mother as he was rushed down the hallway on a gurney. Later they were told that he had collapsed backstage at a club after a drag performance. While everyone awaited diagnosis, the mother insisted her son be changed into a hospital gown as soon as possible. She cried as she scrambled to wipe the make up from his face before her husband and other family members arrived.
Weeks later, when his room was being prepped for the next patient, a nurse found the dress and wig he had arrived in still shoved where they had been initially hidden behind the dingy couch in the corner of the room.
Dr. Charlotte hadn't saved him.
And as more and more victims of the disease arrived, she couldn't save any of them either.
At the beginning Charlotte would go home to Cordelia and weep for those lost. Drown her girlfriend with a flood of insecurities and worries. Allow herself to be overcome by the misery of it all.
By the time a couple months had passed since the first boy in drag, Charlotte wasn’t just sad anymore. She was frustrated. At the situation, and the outside world’s apparent apathy, and the government's refusal to invest in finding a cure. But more than anything at herself, because Charlotte didn’t know how to help the people who came to her. What good was a doctor who couldn’t make you well?
Charlotte turned on herself. She had worked so hard to be the best doctor because that meant she would be able to help the most people. Help lesser their pain in the shortest amount of time and allow them to get back to their lives. But now she could do none of that. All of her efforts had built and built but when the time finally came that she was needed most they amounted to nothing. And, because she wasn’t good enough, people died. Died, and died, and kept dying without exception.
Then one day Marvin showed up with Whizzer clinging weakly to his arm.
She administered antibiotics. Made sure he got fluids. And then... there was nothing else to do. The only thing left was to hope that somehow a new treatment was discovered before it was too late. Or hope that some divine power would take mercy and Whizzer would be the miracle case whose body was able to fight off the disease, just as countless families before had prayed that their loved one might be the exception to the bleak trend.
Hope was pointless.
Charlotte didn't become a doctor to hope. She hadn't spent sleepless nights studying all through school to sit around and wish for things to get better. Hope was for the families that waited as she worked to heal people. Being so helpless was destroying her.
One night, after another day without progress in the hospital, Charlotte snapped at Cordelia. She knew it was wrong even as she did it but anger had been boiling inside of her for weeks straight, growing and spreading within her until there was no room any more. The anger sat in her jaw, and strangled her neck. Knotted in her stomach and it beat along beside her heart. It burned in her eyes and her hands and across every square inch of her skin until it was too much. So when Cordelia met Charlotte at the door and tried to assure her that things would all be okay in the end, Charlotte opened her mouth and the beast that had been growing inside her burst forth.
As it escaped it formed words.
“How can you say that any of this will be okay!” she bellowed so loud that the walls shook. “None of this ever be okay-- so many already lost and who knows how many more will die before anyone finds the cure. If anyone finds the cure! And so many people stand by and do nothing because they don’t care about these people. These dying homosexuals. Because it’s what they all think we deserve!” The force of her anger sent cracks stemming through the walls until the entire room crashed down around them.
Charlotte yelled through the crumbling debris. She shouted that there must be some way that this all could be better by now. That people must not be trying hard enough, must not care enough, if people are still dying.
The ground itself began to fracture, but still Charlotte screamed.
That people are still dying, and she should be able to save them. That she’s not trying hard enough, that she must not care enough, if people are still dying.
And the world began to crash in on itself through the cracks her anger had carved straight through the crust of the Earth. Charlotte yelled until there was nothing left of the universe but dust. Dust, and Cordelia. Cordelia who loved her and took Charlotte in her arms and whispered that Charlotte cared enough for the entire world. Something very bad was happening, and the amount Charlotte cared was more that anyone should be burdened with.