Work Text:
Hope stops taking her medication because she swears it's not doing her any good. Her parents force her to take it, practically shoving it down her throat
Nothing changes the first night. She’s downed half a bottle of wine and feels her boyfriend’s hands taut against her waist as he exhaled softly, cigarette smoke landing directly on her lips. She lies and tells herself that she likes how it feels. That the world is a beautiful place and she’s better off with Matthew by her side.
“I love you.” Matthew, her boyfriend of six months reminds, more than her parents had in the past two years. “So much, Hope. You’re beautiful.”
The list of people she loves is short — mom, dad, maybe Matt: maybe, she doesn't know if she can trust him anymore — but that drys up the moment she lets herself go, not wanting to feel any of this anymore.
Mom still loves her. Hope has no doubt about that. It’s Dad that scares her.
She does drugs for one reason only, something she can't do in her personal life, to escape.
To feel alive and to not be a burden. Hope's smart, her dad always said she was brilliant, far too much for her own good.
She graduates High School when she's fifteen, begins graduate school at age eighteen, isn't sober during her valedictorian speech when she's seventeen.
Her parents still cheer, love her more than anything, their darling girl, Hope. They pretend they don't know when she slips in her window in the middle of the night, stumbling over the furniture in her bedroom, having to move back in with her parents after landing herself in jail, twice.
Mom doesn't bring it up. Wants Hope to stay alive, covers her rehabilitation costs twice, visits her everyday on her lunch break, almost loses her job because she wants to save her daughter, but her daughter doesn't want to be saved. Lucy knows this.
It haunts her at night. She loses sleep like Hope's a baby again, pacing outside her door incase she hears any noise, wondering how they've fallen into this rhythm.
Dad never stops talking about it. Mentions it to his coworkers during lunch, lowering his voice when they bring up their families. Tim has Lucy. Tim has… Tim had Hope.
When he gets the phone call the first time, he panics, he's driving and his chest constricted in a way he didn't know was possible, almost crashing into the sternum to his left. By the fifth call, he gives up. Tells them to phone Lucy instead, closes his eyes and pretends his daughter is a kid again, thinking he's the most wonderful person to ever roam the earth.
Tim loves Hope.
So much, in a way that it almost hurts. Tim doesn't tell Hope he loves her before she goes to bed, hasn't for the last two weeks. It haunts her. Her body keeps score, won't let her forget that her daddy doesn't love her anymore. She dreams about it. Him holding her close, telling her everything would be okay.
Tim's always there when Hope wakes up. Holding on tightly to her palm, wanting to feel the pulse jolting through her body. It's faint, and in the past, it's been non-existent.
When he closes his eyes, he remembers the three minutes without Hope. Lucy crying beside him, walling out in pain for someone to save her baby, jolts of life hitting the air as she demanded something was done.
Tim doesn't talk about those three minutes when his babygirl, the one that he taught to walk and refused to go to bed unless he was by her side, was pronounced dead.
He doesn't talk about the gasp of air when the monitor began beeping again. The way Lucy fixed her postured and froze, humming, humming, higher, higher, steady, steady, steady, until she came back.
Hope's different. She refuses to stay in the hospital, drives herself back to her apartment but doesn't stay there.
Tim notices.
Maybe he's too quiet about it, because she's convinced herself that he doesn't care about her anymore. Her own dad, the one she loves more than anything, silent.
His footsteps are loud against the stairs. Hope's slumped over her breakfast, rolling her eyes when he stops by her first, gently kissing her hair as she groaned. "Good morning, Hope." Tim chirped, walking over towards the coffee pot as he opened the cupboard, grabbing his favorite mug as he poured himself a cup, looking back over towards the table as his wife nursed a cup of her own, "How did you sleep?"
Hope makes a noise, but doesn't say anything. She keeps her head buried in her arms as Tim furrowed a brow. They weren't making any progress. "She didn't sleep at all." Lucy said, clearing her throat as she took a sip of her coffee, setting her mug on the table as she reached out a hand to gently brush across Hope's back, no longer speaking to Tim, but to her daughter, that little girl she's loved for nineteen years. "You need to eat, baby. Then you'll have your medicine and you can even come with us to work today." Lucy leaves out the obvious // if you want, because Hope doesn't have a choice anymore. She's not supposed to be left alone.
"No." She pushed the plate of eggs away, "I'm not hungry and I'm not taking that stupid fucking medicine anymore.” Tim sighs, “Matt's coming over later.”
Tim's distain is palpable. "Matthew's not welcomed here." Her father warned, pressing his hand into an already opened wound, “You’re taking your medicine, Hope. That’s not up for discussion.”
"He's my boyfriend." And then the tell-tale lie, something that helps Hope sleep at night, "He loves me, Dad.” Hope stands, slams her chair into the table as it shakes, storming off like she always does these days. “Unlike you." She’s already halfway up the stairs when she hollers, “I’m not taking the fucking medicine.”
Tim follows after her as she shouts, as if his hands are already on her skin. They aren’t, but to Hope, he never leaves her alone. “I’m not taking it and you can’t make me!”
“Of course we can.” Her father protested, “Do you want to go back to rehab, Hope? Would you like to see the look on your mother’s face as your heart flatlines, as nurses pull her away from your lifeless body, Hope? Do you want us to fucking lose you again?”
“Tim.” Lucy clears her throat, rests her hands gently on his back as he leaned forwards as Hope cried at the top of the stairs. “Honey, please.”
He jerks his shoulders away, pointing his finger towards his daughter as he cried, “Don’t put us through that again, Hope. Not now. If you want to leave, be my guest, but we are not going to watch you suffer anymore.”
She dwells on it for a split second before meeting him in the middle, knees almost buckling as she folded her head against his chest, crying as he cradled her neck. “It’s not helping me, Dad. I can’t keep feeling all this shit.”
“I know, baby. I know. But you’ll get better, we just have to give it time.”
“I’ve tried that.”
“Just give it a few weeks. I’ll figure something out.”
Hope takes his word for it, it’s the last time she ever does that.
She stops talking her medication because it causes her to gain weight.
Lucy doesn’t mention it. Has struggled with her own self appearance for over half her life. When she found out they were having a girl, she hoped that they wouldn’t end up like her, so miserable in their own body that they hid away from everyone.
She sees the signs of herself in Hope for the first time when she’s a toddler, it comes in the way she stakes her blocks, shaking her head as she finds the rhythm, having to do it a certain way.
Tim, like most people, can’t let anything go.
Her bathroom doesn’t even have a lock anymore. She can’t shower without one of them in the room, she’s lost all sense of adulthood by the age of nineteen.
She’s in the middle of washing her hair as Lucy responded to her emails, sitting down on the ground, knees folded to her chest as she occasionally asked if Hope was okay.
Tim on the other hand, just can’t seem to let it go.
He bursts through as Lucy looks up, sensing the change in his step as she furrowed a brow, trying to stop him, “Tim?”
He’s wagging his head like a dog as Lucy fixed her posture, trying to stand as he bolted towards the medicine cabinet, locked as he fiddled with the key in his hand, trying to break through as Hope moved the shower curtain for a second, eyes widening, panicked.
He grabs the full prescription, shoved it in Hope’s face as her shoulders went back, “What the fuck is this?” Her father screamed at the top of his lungs.
“What is what?” Hope asked.
“Your medication, Hope. Why is it still full?”
“Because it’s not working!” Her hands go up in surrender as he jerked the shower curtain back, unable to look her in the eye. Hope groans, balling her fist up in anger as she yells, “It’s not helping me, Dad! Nothing can fucking save me.”
“I think it’s best you find somewhere else to live.”
Hope breaks.
Lucy gasps, a fury in his eyes that she’s never seen before, “Tim, stop it. We are not kicking her out.”
“She’s a drug addict, Luce!”
“It’s not her fault!” Lucy yells, “She’s trying her best, Tim. Screaming at her isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
Hope turns the shower off, wrapping herself in a tower as her wet hair drenched the floor with water, rubbing into her father as she ran out, sobbing.
Tim leans forward, “She hasn’t been sober in almost a year, Luce. I — I can’t keep seeing my daughter destroy her life.”
“I know, baby, but getting angry with her is only going to make it worse.”
“I just want my daughter back.” Tim wept, “I need my baby back, Lucy.”
She cradled her husband as he buried his head into her shoulder, gently running a hand across his cheek, “I know, Tim. We just have to be there for her.”
“I am.” Lucy tilts her head towards him suspiciously, as he admits, “I’m trying.”
There’s a loud bang in the background as his world stops. Tim lets go of Lucy as he puts his hands out, warning her to stay back as he sprints down the hall, shouting Hope’s name as he opens the door, eyes sprawling towards her lifeless body, a now empty bottle of medication next to her.
He can almost hear the words she wants to say.
Almost.
Instead, Tim hears Lucy before he sees her, doubled over as she sobbed, moments replaying slowly as he instructs her for her call 9-1-1 as he admits a rescue breath.
They’re here again.
Tim blames himself the entire drive over the hospital, refusing to drive separately as he holds his daughter’s hand, remembering how her laughter sounded on a summer’s day as they ran through the yard, wanting to go for the swings as she giggled with excitement, claiming her daddy was her hero.
Tim blames himself for the next four hours, hunched over in a chair in the waiting room as Lucy sits beside him, silent this time, like she knows they won’t win anymore.
Four hours, it takes them four hours to pump the medication out of her stomach. Tim heard the judgment coming from the nurse as they went over her history. He skims over the rehabilitation pamphlets quietly, already knowing they have to send her there.
Tim cried at the idea of only being able to visit Hope once a day for the next month. The only thing keeping him alive is her, and the small comfort of her heartbeat playing softly in the background as he holds her hand.
Tim’s there when she wakes up.
He always is.