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btw this is not a universally agreed upon "symptom" of ADHD and I think many people would benefit from treating it as part & parcel of ADHD's broad, foundational trait: inability to do emotional regulation. A feeling of total rejection and terror at failure is a treatable and manageable issue. For me, I found it easier to manage once recognized that the reason I was having these reactions is that like many other emotional states, I couldn't "exit" an emotional state related to feelings of rejection once I was in it.
imo way too many people are going through life thinking they're just going to be sensitive to rejection for life because of how some people (not OP, but definitely plenty of ADHD influencers) talk about this "symptom." I don't think it's terribly productive that it gets constantly cordoned off as its own thing. like a lot of ADHD, while it sucks to have it shape your life up to the point you realize what it is, it is indeed possible to exposure therapy & DBT your way out of it.
signed: someone with ADHD who used to not be able to take critical feedback from anyone every and is now a freelancer and gets critical feedback three times before breakfast. still workin on it but it's very possible to go from "whiny crybaby disorder" to "mostly functional, if slightly sensitive ADHD adult"
I also think it's worth noting that rejection sensitive dysphoria is most parsimoniously interpreted as a trauma reaction—a learned response to a potential signals of social relationship deteriorating for reasons the ADHD person can't necessarily control. Social relationships are incredibly important to humans, and ADHD (especially undiagnosed and undisclosed) really sets us up to fail. This is especially true given that perceived social blame for stressful situations is a massive factor in transmuting stressful experiences into lasting trauma, and ADHDers are typically judged to be personally responsible for the failures that happen as a result of attentional, time awareness, or memory failures.
What conceptualizing RSD as a category of trauma response to social triggers does is allow us to treat it like any other trauma response. It pulls RSD out of the bioessentialist framework and into the realm of injuries that can be treated, learned associations that can be unlearned. It turns out that the same techniques that help with PTSD triggers, including the same damn meds (hi, clonidine), are effective for helping reduce RSD. (It also explains why RSD is also common in autistic people, who often have a similar history of social error and narratives of self blame, without requiring inherent neurological differences.)
It's a common kind of stress injury, basically. It's not Whiny Crybaby Disorder; it's more like shin splints. Getting better shoes for running, being careful about the ground you run on, and letting the splints heal properly can all help make shin splints go away when you've been running barefoot on concrete roads your whole life.
Not pertinent to anything in particular but I do think it's kinda weird that we keep depicting cavemen in media crawling around on all fours covered in dirt with tangled, matted hair, speaking in broken, cobbled-together toddler language when like.
They were us.
Like literally genetically they were US, just like. A while ago.
Like
Would you trust a TV caveman with a baby? Probably not
A real life caveman though??? I think they'd be at least okay at it
This is actually really important and comes up in Anthropology classes all. The. Time.
As long as homo sapiens have existed, we have had the same emotional and mental capacity as you and I do today. You nailed it. They were US. Even Neaderthals existed alongside and had offspring with Homo Sapiens for many thousands of years.
There's much evidence that cavemen would have had complex spoken language, culture (learned information passed down), symbolic interpretation, and I think they most certainly would have been able to handle holding a baby. In fact I have my suspicisions that an ancient homo sapiens mother may be a more present, attentive, and knowledgable mom than I could be today.
Do not let media trick you into believing we are the pinnacle of humanity. Unilinial evolution theory (google it quick I beg) is BUNK, GARBAGE, and the root of so much evil.
We've been human for a long, long time, and we are not inherently better than all those who came before.
One the most profound experiences of my life was visiting Font de Gaume, which has 12 thousand year old paintings. They use a technique where the horses appeared to run across the wall when seen in flickering firelight. There was a bison the wall staring at us with such attitude, I could practically hear him. I had the most profound feeling of those ancient artists reaching forward to lay their hands on my shoulders. To say, "This was my world." It was a profoundly moving experience.
Some years later, I went to the Orkney islands where we visited a tiny family run museum of artifacts from the chambered tomb at the other end of the farm. They handed me a pestle once held by some neolithci human.They'd worn groves where the thumb and forefinger would be for better grip.
One time, in a French history class, my teacher randomly at the end of the class had all of us draw a sketch of a horse. And we were all like ??? Okay???
At the beginning of the next class, my teacher showed us a cave painting of a horse. And then he showed all of our horses, which he had scanned and put into the presentation.
He then pointed out all the ways that our horses looked similar to the prehistoric horse. Same features, drawn from the same angle, etc.
And then he asked us, "Isn't it cool that you draw horses the same way as someone who lived 20,000 years ago?"
In Spain, there's a cave full of ancient, ice age era drawings of bison and reindeer and other animals of that period... And one small section of chaotic scribbles just a little away from everything else. These scribblesv were so incomprehensible, they were originally just called the 'Panel of Enigmatic Signs'... Until it occurred to someone that drawings only three feet off the ground probably weren't made by adults.
Scientists are now pretty sure the scribbles were made by kids ages 3-6, more or less on their own. The adult cave artists were probably doing what any modern parent might do when they want to keep small children out of their hair for awhile: they gave the kids some drawing tools of their own and a small section of wall to work on, out of the way but still close enough to keep an eye on them, and let them have at it.
What's most charming about the whole thing is the way the cave scribbles look exactly like what you'd find on the wall of a preschool today. Artistic styles vary widely across different times and cultures, but child development is as near to a universal human experience as it gets.
Wisher made detailed 3D scans of the drawings, which helped her understand the uneven pressure applied to the charcoal and the direction the lines were drawn. The team then compared the panel’s composition with age-appropriate artistic efforts by modern children. Kids across cultures go through the same developmental stages, which influence their physical ability to draw, until about the age of 6, Amir notes.
The team compared the ancient art with the developmental stages exhibited by modern children: the furiously scribbled circles and push-pull lines typical of 3-year-olds just learning to control their bodies, for example, or the wobbly, right-angled figures of slightly older kids beginning to master fine motor skills.
Both are apparent in the cave, superimposed on each other as though two or more kids were drawing at once. That’s a clue the Las Monedas marks were likely made by “siblings or a mixed-age play group within the sphere of safety around adults, but also within their own space,” says co-author Felix Riede, an Aarhus archaeologist.
...
Adults at Las Monedas would have been aware of what the kids were doing and presumably had lit fires or torches; without ample firelight the cave is pitch black.
dr. langdon doesn't necessarily approve of you, the new hire. that doesn't mean he won't drop everything to help when you stumble into the ER, bloodied and disoriented under the unforgiving light.
frank langdon x girly!wardclerk!reader
warnings/tags: reader is attacked but shes fine, hurt/comfort literally, langdon plays doctor, unidentified yearning, inappropriate workplace crushes being violently suppressed, Langdon in extreme denial, age gap but nothing has technically happened, blood duh hospital medical stuff Girl its The Pitt. wc 5k
a/n: I am fucking crazy..... but I am free
Frank Langdon didn’t think that they needed another ward clerk. Lupe was more than adequate, splitting her duties with that older woman—the one with the gray ponytail and the purple framed glasses—and then there was that balding, lanky young gentlemen… Harold, maybe? Harlan? Hardy?
Point being, he’s not sure why anyone felt the need to stretch the already sheer budget by onboarding someone who looks too young to have any relevant work experience. Nurses, is what they need. More nurses. Or better paid nurses. Definitely more security. The luck they’ve had avoiding any assaults for the past few months is sure to wear off soon.
So yeah, it irks him a little when he comes in through chairs in the mornings and you’re already there behind your plexiglass shield, typing on Lupe’s computer in Lupe’s seat. Always with your hair done. Always in some new blouse you’d bought with a paycheck that could’ve gone toward, oh—another nurse, maybe? Frank begins to resent those little blouses of yours. Each polka dot, each cluster of ditzy flowers, every single stripe and every lacy neckline representing vital cents that Gloria might as well toss down a wishing well.
Today you’re sunshine, butter yellow and cream stripes curving down a fitted cap sleeve number. Mother of pearl buttons and the tiniest hint of sugar-white lace, bridging the gap at your sternum where you stopped buttoning the shirt up. Frank wonders how many stylets they could’ve ordered with the amount of money you paid for this top. Then he wonders how long it took you to get your hair like that, with the tendrils curling just so, complimenting the soft line of your jaw and the shape of your mouth. The hair in question is pushed behind an ear as you look dutifully between your computer screen and a sour-faced man with a turgid beer belly, on whom your charms are entirely lost. He’s already taking up an attitude with you, at seven in the goddamn morning, and you’re utterly serene. That’s another thing you ought to work on—the way you look at these people, so openly, so receptively, as if it is your greatest, most earnest desire to get each and every one of them seen as quickly and attentively as possible. With your lips slightly parted, and your brows almost imperceptibly raised. It’s just a little too kind. You give these people an inch, and they’d be happy to use you as a rug between here and those all-powerful double doors.
Frank eyes the man, assessing for any hint of aggression in his body language, and then looks back to you. Only sets his eyes squarely ahead when he’s sure you’re not going to look away from your charge and in his direction—in which case he’d be forced to offer a flat little smile and an indifferent nod of greeting. That happens some mornings. Most, probably. Other than that, and some brief parlay when he’s needed in chairs and you have the relevant patient information, the two of you don’t often have occasion to speak. And so he doesn’t have occasion to think about you. Or how whoever hired you was practically setting you up to fail. To be emotionally scarred for life, at the very least, and to have your confidence slashed in a million different ways. Ward clerks don’t need to be especially kind, or accommodating or pretty, or make every patient feel singularly special with that solicitous look in a set of sparkling eyes. In fact, they should be more like drill sergeants. They should lay down the law, and never take any bullshit from anyone. Frank has seen what scorned patients do to even the most hardened hospital staff given the chance. Putting you in chairs and saying manage these lunatics is like setting up a lightning rod on a roof and expecting it to clear up a storm.
It’s irresponsible. And, mostly, an egregious waste of money. But he clears the double doors, and the antiseptic fluorescents embrace him like a weary partner, and there is no more cause to think about you.
Not for a while, anyway.
Not for a few hours, until he’s peeling off a pair of soiled gloves and absently catching a handful of sanitizer, and someone opens the doors to the waiting room and someone else’s angry words slide through the gap.
His feet are moving before his brain has made any logistical decrees.
Instead of the double doors, Frank takes the direct route to your little box office. It feels smaller than he remembers, and smells a whole lot sweeter, which is very odd until he realizes that it’s you, and then he’s inexplicably embarrassed at having considered what you smell like. And by taking note of the fact that it is rich vanilla and an almost arresting hint of lavender. It gets worse when he leans over your shoulder—the scent gets warmer, and a little disarming, the way a good fragrance always does when it sits flush to the skin and invites you to come closer, to try and parse the difference between synthetic and organic. He braces a hand on the desk next to you. No way you should be allowed to wear such a distracting perfume to work. It’s out of place. It’s just not what a hospital is supposed to smell like.
This whole thought process unfurls in a matter of about three seconds before he’s cutting off the man who’d been yelling at you—the same one from earlier, he realizes with distaste.
“No yelling in the waiting room. It’s distressing to the patients.”
“I am fucking distressed. I am a distressed fucking patient!”
“Sir, lower your voice or you’ll be removed by security. We have a zero tolerance policy for aggressive behavior.”
For good measure, Frank points to the sign by the nearest pillar. You look in that direction too, like you hadn’t know it was there. Seriously, did nobody fucking train you? Did you wander in off the street? Or maybe out of a perfume commercial?
“Are you going to treat me or is she just going to keep giving me the same bullshit line?”
You begin: “Sir, there are people ahead of you who need—”
“I wasn’t fucking talking to you!” the man explodes, hitting the glass with a meaty palm. Frank looks around for security, but there’s nobody to be found. Fucking budget cuts. Fucking ward clerks.
“Dr. Langdon doesn’t decide who goes back. I decide who goes back,” you shoot, and while it’s not entirely truthful, Frank is caught off guard (and a little impressed) by the quick, clean jab. “Have a seat or I’ll call security and you’ll have wasted everybody’s time here today.”
The man looks at you, dumb and red as a brick. Then, he chuffs under his breath. That laugh does little to set Frank at ease—in fact, it has him tensing up. It’s a reckless laugh. Like this guy might be about to do something stupid.
But he just turns around, shaking his head as he walks down the aisle of chairs toward the exit.
“Unbelievable,” he laughs again. Langdon is pretty sure he’s actually burning holes through the back of this guys jacket as he tracks his flight path, still not quite believing that he’ll leave so peaceably.
He’s proved right, at the very last moment, when the man is at the threshold of the door. Clearly a coward who knows he’s on the precipice of escape, he looks over his shoulder and yells: “Dumb fucking bitch!”
Frank immediately straightens, rigid with an innate impulse to chase this fucking guy down—but ultimately, is bound in place. Just barely. Just by nature of knowing dealing with assholes is a part of your job, and beating them up is not a part of his. Violence is not exactly endorsed in the Hippocratic oath.
“Dr. Langdon?”
“Hm?”
He’s aware that he sounds disinterested, that he hasn’t looked away from the rectangle of bright midday light which beckons him in search of retribution. He’s also aware that he might break off a piece of this desk with how hard he’s gripping it.
“Should I call security?”
“Uh…” he’s drawn back to you, briefly distracted by your proximity when he looks down. You’re expectant looking, eyes clear and wide as usual, combing for information and ostensibly unrattled—but your lips are pressed together somberly. Like you’re keeping something in. “Uh, no. No, if we had security chase down every disgruntled patient there wouldn’t be any left. I’m sorry about that, though. Guy was an asshole. You okay?”
A little nod. One of your earrings catches a drop of light, twisting and arcing brilliantly. Distractingly.
Jesus, he’s out of it today.
“I’m good.”
Unconvinced, he does another quick scan of the room.
“Are you sure? How about you take a break, where’s, uh…”
He draws a blank.
“Honald? He’s on lunch, I think he’ll be back soon.”
“Okay, why don’t you take yours when he gets back? Just, you know, take a beat. Relax for a minute.”
It’s ridiculous for him to be telling you how to take your break, and he has no idea why he’s doing it, but you nod.
“Yeah, okay. I will.”
“Good.” Frank straightens fully, pats your shoulder even as he’s already turning around to leave and immediately wonders if that’s something he usually does with his coworkers. “You’re doing great.”
The door is closing behind him before he has a chance to hear your reply.
Frank is visibly shaking his head and muttering to himself as he walks past central, where Robby is consulting over some files with Dana. He feels Robby’s eyes catch on him and follow his path for a moment before calling out, “Alright?”
“Alright,” Frank mutters uselessly, and goes to make himself useful. Hopefully someone is on the precipice of death via massive internal bleed. That, at least, would make sense to him. There’s an area in which he can demonstrate absolutely competence.
-
No internal bleeding, but a couple of burns and concussions need dealing with. He handles them quickly and is sauntering up to Dana for something a little more challenging when the door opens again—and there you stand, cradling one limp arm against your chest, and Frank can’t quite make sense of what he’s seeing at first, but he’s aware that Dana is exclaiming in that jaded way of hers, already making her way toward you.
You—looking out of place as you blink against the white light, dazed, glancing around furtively, uncertainly.
Blood, oozing from your cheek and arm, matting your carefully styled hair to your face and ruining your brand new sunshine-yellow shirt. Frank is in action, beats Dana to you, calling over his shoulder for assistance as he takes you by the shoulders and guides you to a nearby chair before kneeling in front of you.
“I don’t need—I can walk,” you insist, a little breathless. He sees your gaze drop to the floor as you speak, and your brows furrow a little—surprised by your own pain.
“What happened?”
“Um, that guy—” you wince as Mattheo, who seems to have materialized out of nowhere, dabs at your bloody cheek with gauze.
“Hey, woah, no,” Frank interrupts. “Don’t touch her face. Look at the arm, I got her cheek. Which guy?”
“The guy who was yelling at me earlier, I guess he waited in the staff parking lot, and, um, I went out to grab my lunch from my car, and I saw the tires were slashed, and then, like, he just—I don’t know, someone just grabbed me, I don’t even know what he was holding—”
“He attacked you with a blade? Did you call—”
Frank is forgoing his own sentence, rising up and shoring in a sturdy breath to yell for security, but your hand catches on his forearm and it jars him enough to stop him clean in his tracks.
“It’s fine, Orlando was right around the corner smoking. I think he got the guy, I don’t know, I just turned around and came right here, I didn’t know—I wasn’t sure what I supposed to do.”
“No, you did great. You did good, you did the right thing. Did you at any point hit your head?” He takes your face in his hands and turns you this way and that, searching for any signs of head trauma.
“No. I don’t think. I mean, I staid on my feet.”
“Ooh, making me look bad,” Dana mutters, fussing in her way as she sets up makeshift first aid station.
“What?” you ask.
“Nothing,” Frank insists as he very carefully slides your sticky hair off your cheek and smooths it out of your face. “You didn’t see what he used?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Woah, ward clerk,” Robby says, and Frank is inexplicably annoyed by his presence. “What we got?”
“A low patient satisfaction score, I guess.” You wince even as you say it, and Frank grimaces in sympathetic pain, hand darting back from where he’d been trying to assess the wound.
Any humor melts from Robby’s voice. “Are you serious? Where the fuck is security?”
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Frank murmurs to himself, impossibly gentler this time as he dabs away the blood.
“They got him. Right away. It was my fault, I—”
Frank cuts you off. “No it wasn’t. That’s all on me. I should have taken that asshole seriously.”
“Arm lac is superficial and clotting,” Mattheo reports. “How’s the cheek?”
“Ah… can’t tell. We need a bed.”
“What? No, we don’t, I’m genuinely fine.”
“South 15 is open,” Dana barks. “You’re gonna want that bed, Scarface.”
Robby slams a folder on the counter. “I’m going to find Gloria.”
“Gloria?” You frown, twisting to look at him.
Frank gently redirects your head and puts a square of gauze in your palm. “Right here, just look forward. Can you hold this to the wound?”
“What does he need Gloria for?”
He’s up and wheeling you with purpose toward the south wing. “How’s the pain?”
“It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.”
“When was the last time you received a tetanus shot?”
“Uh… I don’t… remember?”
“Okay, we’re going to need to administer one just in case. Mattheo—”
“I’ll put in the order. Analgesics, too. Any allergies?”
“Not to medicine.” You slump fractionally in your chair, still holding the gauze dutifully to your head. “Fuck.”
“Still doing okay?”
“Yeah. Pretty embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. This happens all the time.”
“What—patients attacking staff?”
“Absolutely.”
“Shouldn’t we have more security, then?”
We should, Frank thinks as he wheels you into South 15 and cranks the bed up to 45 degrees before guiding you to lie down. But we have you instead.
“I think Dr. Robby is on his way to make that case as we speak. Can I see?”
Carefully Frank pulls your hand from your face, taking the bloodied gauze with it and does a quick visual examination. The bleeding has stopped and all signs point to a shallow wound. He begins configuring the setup for a quick irrigation and primary closure. Realistically, he doesn’t need to be the one handling such a simple case—in fact it would be a better utilization of resources to have a nurse handle the whole thing so he remains free if he’s needed—but Frank can’t help but feel a little responsible for the whole thing. It was him who said you didn’t need to call security, he who sent you on your ill-fated lunch.
“Fairly clean job,” he mutters as he irrigates the wound. “Almost incised.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the wound edges are straight enough that we can use glue instead of staples or sutures. Better outlook in terms of scarring, too.”
“Oh, god. I didn’t even think of that. Is that gonna happen?”
“No damage to the dermis, and it’s a low tension area. I can’t make any promises, but scarring should be minimal.”He sets the irrigation tub and syringe on the cart before patting your cheek dry with sterile gauze. “No foreign material in the wound. Cut and dry.”
“Is that a joke?”
“Only if it was funny.”
Frank allows himself to examine the rest of your face for any cue that he might’ve offended you, just in time to watch as you huff a quiet laugh. The corner of his own mouth tugs in response and he focuses on the cut once more—setting aside the shimmer on your eyelids, and the way you haven’t totally eliminated all the stray hairs around your brows. He wonders for no particular reason if you matched your blush and lipgloss on purpose.
Up close and personal, he finds himself searching for indicators of age. Crow’s feet? Smile lines? The working theory is late twenties. Not that it matters. But it could clue him into how much work experience you might have. If you’re in school, and this is just a job to pay for ramen, or if you’re an over-qualified graduate trying to afford downtown rent.
Probably he could just ask, he realizes as he breaks open an ampoule of skin glue. It might even be appreciated—the silence is getting increasingly sticky.
“Alright, we’re gonna do three coats of Dermabond with thirty second intervals for drying. It may tickle a little, but no glue is getting in the wound itself. This method should minimize scarring. Sound good?”
Frank has the applicator poised above the cut and is about to begin before he realizes you haven’t responded. He leans back to catch your eye, and notes the vacant gaze, set astray at a waxed tile floor.
“You okay?”
Finally you stir, eyes widening as they meet his and you realize you’d tuned out. “Sorry. Yeah, that sounds great. All good.”
“You heard what I said?”
“Yes. Three layers and it’s gonna tickle.”
“More or less.” Satisfied, he straightens once more, and very carefully, begins applying a thin layer of adhesive over where he’s pinched the wound shut.
More silence. Adrenaline crash, probably. Someone will have to bring you a juice box.
“Remind me. How long have you been here?” Frank asks, more in an attempt to make sure you’re not internally spiraling over the moral failure of humanity than because he wants to know.
“About a month.”
Frank whistles. “Didn’t make it very long, did you?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t really expecting to be attacked, period.”
His hand pauses, and it’s good a time as any to let the first layer dry. Most normal people are pretty upset by witnessing violence, let alone experiencing it. Especially ones who haven’t worked in the field long enough to anticipate the accrual of a few battle scars.
“I’m sorry this happened to you. For what it’s worth, I can guarantee that guy is already on his way to jail if Orlando caught him at the scene like you said.”
You pick at your white nail polish without moving the injured arm. “Mhm.”
Another silent beat. Frank is about to apologize for not doing more to prevent the whole thing when there’s a knock at the open door. Without looking, he’s sure it’s Dana.
“How you doing, Doll? Langdon’s taking good care of that pretty face?”
“Yeah, thanks. We’re all good.”
It could be his imagination, but he’s pretty sure he feels your cheek heat under his gloved hand.
Probably a physiological reaction to pain.
He swallows. “Where’s Mattheo, Dana? We need those painkillers.”
“Backup at the ADC. Shouldn’t be much longer. The cops want to talk to you.”
You hesitate. Langdon chances a peek at the rest of your face as he brushes on the second layer of glue.
“Do I have to do it right now?”
“No,” Frank interjects, though he doubts Dana would’ve pushed you on it either. “We need to finish this, get to your arm, and then administer your tetanus shot. After that you’ll need at least fifteen minutes of observation in case of any adverse reactions. Dana, can you get someone to bring her a drink?”
“You got it.” Then, very obviously aimed toward you: “Do you need anything else?”
“I’m okay. Thank you.”
“Of course. Keep me posted.”
“Always,” Frank assures, and Dana moves along.
A quiet moment.
“Does this actually happen all the time?” you ask without warning. “You guys seem really chill about it.”
“Not really, no. But pretty much everyone has a story.”
You hum absently, and Frank senses something about his answer needs amending.
“It’s rare for clerks. You guys get that fancy plexiglass.”
“Have you been attacked?”
Memories stir loose, and Frank huffs a quiet laugh. No sense in scaring you with horror stories involving scalpels.
“It’s pretty easy to win a fight when you have a syringe full of heavy duty sedatives.”
“Maybe I should keep one of those up front.”
“You won’t need it. Today was…” he swallows back ‘my fault’. “Atypical. Lupe’s been here longer than I have and I’ve never seen her get hurt like that. It won’t happen to you again.”
Because I will personally start beating asses if these people want to keep it up, is what he doesn’t say. Anyone who picks on the twenty-something glorified secretary at the front desk is a bully, and there’s no room for that in an ER.
Frank carefully, unblinkingly watches the final layer of glue set. Wonders what would drive anyone to attack you. You, with your cheerful yellow shirt and that delicate necklace—the dragonfly pendant that dips into the hollow of your throat. The way your hair curls at the ends and dances when you move. Everything about you seems engineered to elicit positive reaction. No, not engineered—that connotes some sort of farce, or mistruth. The pleasantry that you inspire is one hundred percent you. All the pretty trappings just signal your expectations for how you’ll be treated, and consequentially, your inherent nature.
Or—he assumes. He doesn’t actually know you.
Regardless, you didn’t deserve the attack. Nobody would’ve, of course. But seeing your shirt all ruined, and the even finish of your face contorted by this long cut, drains Frank of a little of his belief in the goodness of humanity. There wasn’t much to begin with.
Somewhere in this wash of pointless musing, he’s begun work on your arm. He’s distantly aware of your watching this work, and that you’re holding yourself a little differently with the pain. If Mattheo doesn’t come back soon, he’s going to have to get to the cabinet himself and find you some acetaminophen.
Suddenly, you’re speaking: “I don’t know if…”
And just as quickly, the sentence tapers off. Frank looks up at you as he works, and then back down. It’s pretty easy from the pensive look on your face to determine your train of thought.
“I promise you it’s not going to happen again. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Yeah, but… I don’t even like getting yelled at.”
“You are on the wrong career path, then.”
“I was waiting for it to get easier.”
He risks another glance. You’re fixedly watching rust-colored saline trickle from your arm into the collection tub.
“It will. If you stick around.”One last push of saline gurgles from the syringe and into the tray. Clear, now. He sets the tools aside and finds more gauze to pat the wound dry. “Are you thinking of quitting?”
“Can’t afford to,” you say, all too quickly, like you had pursued the idea and run into this immovable wall minutes ago. “I’m very much in debt and looking to get into more.”
“Oh, yeah? Considering med school?”
“Maybe. Or a PhD. Not sure if I want to get into psychology or psychiatry. Now I’m wondering if this is, like… a healthy environment for me.”
Frank half-smiles. “Well, if you did go the med school route, you could probably avoid rotations in emergency medicine. Or—hey, you could come back here. Barring death, I’ll still be around in four years. It’d probably be less intimidating if you knew your attending.”
“Alternatively I’d be so preoccupied with trying not to look like an idiot that I’d accidentally kill a bunch of people.”
“I’m confident that you’re not an idiot. In practice or appearance.”Frank can hear you swallow as he dispenses a small amount of antibiotic ointment into his gloved hand and carefully goes about working it into your skin. “Sorry. Tender?”
“A little.”
“Mattheo should definitely be here by now. If he’s flirting with that intern again I’m going to kill him.”You laugh half-heartedly. Frank smooths a 4x4 over your arm, tapes it in place, and leans back, peeling off his gloves. “Should be good as new in a few weeks. When do you work next?”
“Monday.”
“I’ll find you Monday for a check-in. Until then keep it clean and dry. Princess or Perlah will put together a kit with everything you’ll need, and Mattheo will be here eventually with that other stuff. You’re not afraid of needles, are you?”
“Uh—”
An intern sticks his head through the door—evidently one who hasn’t made an impression on Langdon.
“Code blue in chairs.”
“Then you should get to chairs.”
“Right.”
The intern disappears and Frank stands, taking longer than he should to walk to the door and grab some hand sanitizer.
“All good here?” he asks, giving you a once over as his hands rub together. With an air of self-consciousness you smooth your skirt. It’s a nice skirt. Untainted by blood, as far as he can tell.
You nod once, decisively. “Yup.”
“Good. I’ll make sure someone calls a tow truck and a car so you can get home. But don’t leave until you get that tetanus shot, okay? I’m serious.”
“I won’t.”
Frank nods slowly, and feels like there’s something he should say. He skims his teeth with the tip of his tongue. Nothing comes to him. He knows he’s wasting time. And probably making you uncomfortable—you, just sitting there, back rod-straight and ankles crossed, hands folded politely in your lap. He’s been told he has a tendency to stare.
In the end, all he can think to say is, “Take care of yourself.”
Again you nod, and Frank is pulled by duty down the hall, leaving you there in your ruined sunshiney shirt, and with your hair streaked in drying blood.
A strange image threatens to stop him in his tracks—one he hadn’t thought about in the moment, but now sticks to the inside of his retinas at half-opacity. Blooms in full, violent color when he blinks.
A drop of your blood, tracing its way down the dip in your cheek, clinging to the hollow beneath your jaw. Tracing slowly, all the way down your throat. Catching on the dragonfly pendant, as had the quick, covert trail of his gaze.
That’s weird, he thinks. An odd image to fixate on.
Frank shakes his head like he could dislodge the memory. Snaps the edge of a fresh glove extra hard against his skin as he comes up to the edge of the heart attack’s gurney and someone fills him in.
Yeah—the last thing they needed was another ward clerk. Broader, wiser coverage could’ve stopped the events of the day. More nurses. More security. Shit, you wouldn’t have been attacked if you weren’t ever hired.
The heart attack is caused by a complete blockage in the left anterior-descending artery. A widowmaker. They stabilize the man, and get him up to an OR without a hitch.
Afterwards, Frank finds himself passing by South 15. Casts a quick look inside, and finds the room completely empty.
Good—room for another patient. The whole thing shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Shouldn’t have taken up time and space.
We don’t need an extra ward clerk, he thinks for the millionth time.
Then remembers the way the dragonfly had collected blood and smeared it in impossibly fine lines across the expanse of your chest every time you moved, tracing linked and overlapping circles, like a Spirograph on your skin. The gentle rise and fall of you.
He comes to a standstill in the empty hallway, an unwilling hostage as something else hijacks his brain and projects the image onto the sterile white wall. Baffled and fruitlessly willing himself to move on. Flexing his hands in time with his own breathing.
I'm in S1 of The Pitt and I KNOW this is a really minor side character that we'll (probably) never see again but oh my goodness Minu is SO cute she's so smiley
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For anyone unfamiliar with Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the entire thesis is that traditional educational models promote oppression by removing students' agency in their own learning. Freire argues that currently education functions as a "banking model" - teachers are the holders of knowledge, and students are empty vessels, waiting to have that knowledge put into their heads like a piggy bank. This reinforces a passive attitude towards information, not seeking and understanding it on your own terms, but waiting for a "banker" to deposit it into your head.
Instead, Freire proposes that teachers and students act as co-creators of knowledge, where students become active participants in their own learning through questions and dialogue. Teachers are also open to changing their understanding of topics in the process of critical dialogue - the goal is not "student learns Fact A and memorizes it as presented," but instead the goal is the knowledge itself, discovered collaboratively by teacher and student, who are acting with empathy and respect towards each other. This also starts the process of the oppressed being able and empowered to question structures of power, take agency, and actively participate in the transformation of society.
So, the irony of writing an AI essay on critical pedagogy is actually insane; because it's essentially the extrapolated endpoint of Freire's arguments that our current educational system creates passive receptacles who not only can't think critically in an educational context, but also become the perfect citizens for a world that doesn't want us questioning structures of power, to view those in power as we viewed our teachers - deliverers of indisputable facts that must be memorized and regurgitated because they command it, and not co-creators of true understanding.
How the hell they greenlighted that. How there is no one there with a minimum of common sense to shout that this was going to be the outcome. How their legal department didn't murder every single engineer to prevent this from shipping
Superhuman, the tech company behind the writing software Grammarly, is facing a class action lawsuit over an AI tool that presented editing suggestions as if they came from established authors and academics—none of whom consented to have their names appear within the product.
Julia Angwin, an award-winning investigative journalist who founded The Markup, a nonprofit news organization that covers the impact of technology on society, is the only named plaintiff in the suit, which does not call for a specific amount in damages but argues that damages across the plaintiff class are in excess of $5 million. She was among the many individuals, alongside Stephen King and Neil deGrasse Tyson, offered up via Grammarly’s “Expert Review” tool as a kind of virtual editor for users.
Imagine being a product manager in grammarly and going like "fuck yeah, we are going to add a a Stephen King agent to our product" without immediately having a little part of your brain that goes "uh the dude probably has enough money to buy our entire company three times over, and he could field an army of lawyers against us for using his name without his permission".
Imagine being so full of yourself that you think you can just use the literal most successful author alive's name without his consent.
READ THIS INTERVIEW! I'm not sure I've ever read a more vicious interview, the journalist does not let up, does not let him get away with nonanswers unchallenged. God how I wish more journalists acted like this in interviews.
I read the whole interview — absolutely incredible stuff in there, lots of excellent moments, but I think this part was my favorite.
The interviewer calls out Grammarly’s parent company’s ad copy for saying that “in the AI era, taste and judgment are more valuable than ever”, and then insists that the CEO defines what “valuable” means and who is actually receiving the value in the situation. CEO ends up trying to spin the thing into an offer to have the interviewer design an AI chatbot that will impersonate himself more accurately than the one they previously made without his permission, and the interviewer proceeds to point out that the CEO basically admitted that AI devalues creative work to the point that the only way creatives can still profit is by selling out to the companies that stole their work anyway.
The interviewer then goes on to talk about how internet-related creativity is being devalued to the point where most creators have to run separate business ventures if they want to actually turn a profit, to which the CEO has no real rational response; again, the whole interview is worth checking out.
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I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"
But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.
Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!
I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.
Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.
Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)
And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.
You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.
So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?
My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.
(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)
It's been three years since I made this so I would just like to reveal that the "cute girl from math class" was actually the "cute boy from my statistics class" , but I changed it to better appeal to lesbians and people who didn't take university math classes.
In retrospect, one thing I kinda like in ATLA is how Zuko never tells the gaang how he got his scar.
It would have been cool to see their reactions to Zuko's story and see how their perspective on Zuko changed. And I have no doubt that he tells them about it at some point. But this way, it doesn't come off as emotional blackmail, with him trying to paint his actions as 'Yes, I hunted you across the world, but I actually had a really good reason."
If he did, he might have had a better chance of joining the Gaang, but he doesn't. In traditional Zuko fashion, he takes the most challenging route possible.
Zuko takes full accountability for his actions, even though they came from a place where he felt he had no choice. Because at the end of the day, he realized that even though his father put him on his avatar's path, he was the one who zealously attacked them at every opportunity. He isn't letting himself off the hook for anything.
#zuko is so funny to me because at multiple points throughout the show if he had any manipulative bone in his damn body #he wouldve gotten somewhere #blue spirit? why are you throwing fire. the avatar is talking with you. LIE. #its so fucking funny bc the gaang is like 'zukos EVIL he is PLAYING you' guys zuko doesnt know how to do that. #full honest truth confessing insane shit in front of them. he didnt even gaf about being friends or being FORGIVEN it was abt the goal #'i need the avatar to take me into their group so i may aid in however possible to stop my father' that was the goal. truly was like #'take me as a prisoner if this is the way i can help' HES CRAZY (@ponytailzuko)
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what really fucks me up about watching the truman show in 2025 is how it's not fictional. truman is fictional, but the truman show isn't.
there's thousands of truman shows. you find them on youtube, tiktok, instagram... family and mommy vloggers, sad beige moms and now the trend of neglectful moms showing the "reality" of parenting. all of them using their kids for entertainment. each child their own truman; living a life manufactured by their parents, a camera watching their every moment, broadcasted for the entire world to see.
janainaart
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