angel of mercy

                                         rules.  (  bio coming soon.  )

               you hardly thought your quiet snub would affect gwen like this. in truth, you feel a guilt welling in you. a shame. at the hint that no one else cares for gwen, that no one else listens or tends to her needs, or heeds her clever words you feel something in your throat tighten and something in your heart melt. it’s potent within you, so all you can do is say nothing. you observe instead. your eyes are careful and alert.   gwen continues :   thank you  -  for stopping to help me.  you really didn’t have to.      you give her a smile. unlike before, it is gentle. it’s genuine.    ❛   you’re welcome.  ❜     you say it softly. you like helping.                 gwen looks miserable. when she says the motel is a dump and that louise is a leer    -    which it is, certifiably, you can’t help but crack a grin. a smirk. maybe it’s to relieve the tension you feel, maybe it’s because there is something wicked and lovely about the way she admonishes things in ways no one else will.  a bright spark flashes in your mind, of gwen scandalizing you  :         THEN COCKTAIL SAUCE, IF YOU’RE A BOOR WHO LIKES HOOKERS AND CIGARS.         ❛   it’s good for this place that it’s the only one in town.   i can’t imagine it would get much business otherwise.  ❜         as always, her words are playing on your mind. she told you earlier this was the only one in town. you listen.                     you’re still on guard, of course. gwen wants something inappropriate. while gwen talks, a fantasy of her putting her arms against the doorframe and encroaching on your space and shunting against you, of kissing you gently ... your eyes widen a little while she talks, and again you feel that horrible fear mingled with something else which bursts in your chest like fireworks of revulsion and fascination. the polite thing to do would be to offer to let her sit in your room for a while .      BUT IF YOU DO, YOU’RE NOT SURE WHAT YOU’LL DO.    that is sickening. flashes of the grinding meat of the lobotomy patients flash in your mind, of the smell of scalded blistering skin from the hydrotherapy. `              ❛   i have time.  ❜      you say.      ❛   i’ll go with you to the front desk.  ❜     relief floods you, and you give gwen a small, constrained nod as you walk past her and onto the gravel again. 

            mildred.      your name in gwen’s mouth is ... pleasant. almost immediately you give a small, restrained smile. pleasant in return. that is, before you spot that she seems more irate and bothered than polite and pleasant.   your impersonal expression stiffens.   gwendolyn briggs wants something you have already told her, on no uncertain terms, she may not come near. the placid formality of a smile fades from your mouth as quickly as it appeared, you put your head down and quicken your pace. it’s clear to you now, this was a mistake.              your heels clack across the gravel, and you do not stop when she asks you  :   IS THAT IT ?    yes, that is it. of course that’s it. a small scoff forms in your mouth, even though you emit no sound. of course that’s it   -   do you have to repeat yourself ?   yes, she is intriguing and interesting and, yes, you think often of her   -    but it is irrelevant.  because gwendolyn briggs, as ever, ploughs ahead. the woman eschews social conventions like it’s a personal hobby. a female press manager, a woman who ... thinks of women. in that sense.   while you’re quite good at containing your facial expressions, you shut your eyes tight with your back to her.  in a sense it’s gratifying.  ( some things feel worse than nothing  and in a complicated way, you had hoped there would be a reason to dither. to stay. )   but then the feeling of her begging you, shouting this out in public ... it brings out a fear so potent that you feel it like a white hot revulsion.               ❛   keep your voice down !  ❜       you snap. it’s both more abrupt and more pleading than you would like.  you’re facing her now, a heavy silence pooling between you.   you wouldn’t care so much about people knowing you care for her if it didn’t run so horribly deep.            ❛   please.  ❜        you need a moment to think. your throat is tight and your eyes are wide. in a matter of moments you are striding toward her, towards her locked door and faulty key. you are, as always, keenly aware of the distance between you. it’s tiny now, you wedged between gwen and her door. with a look from under your brow, you wordlessly ask for the key from her hand and bend over to inspect the key as you slide it into the knob. it occurs to you that this is the second time in a short amount of time that you’ve wound up between gwendolyn briggs and a solid door of the motel. with any luck, the key will turn easily under your more sure and steady hand.           but of course, you have no luck.  your eyebrows knit together. the key refuses to work. you raise your head from key level and look back to gwen, a little displeased that you haven’t been able to help. a little nervous that you can’t now leave. 

                            “miss briggs.”     she says shortly, voice tight and shoulders tense. don’t stop me, don’t talk to me, don’t ask me about your jammed door or whatever is wrong. she’s taken the longway round on the walk to her room. she’s not sure why. when it comes to gwendolyn briggs, there is very little she is sure of. eyes drop to the floor, she hurries her stride.

think of your job. what’s right isn’t what’s clever.   that’s what she wants to say to him, but before she can, he has taken off. to confront bucket, to tear the baths apart, or hell, to scream blue murder and cry at the sky. she doesn’t know. before anything can ooze from her tight-lipped mouth, she is alone in the corridor, the smell of mrs cartwright’s melted skin coming from beneath her fingernails, where she accidentally dug too deep. like one might when biting into a peach.  something in huck makes her think of edmund, when he was young. before he had to do awful things. before he had skin under his nails. before he lived in an iron-cast cage. back when he needed her. he needs her now, she reminds herself. she sighs. it is an anxious, composing sigh. nurse ratched tucks the thought away. she has rounds. 

a number of things are revealed about mildred and gwendolyn’s life in mexico. you can compare it with the dream mildred has in the same episode; the differences illustrate things she wishes for, and her worst fears.  as regards gwendolyn: in the dream, she’s absolutely glowing. when betsy visits, mildred is able to brag about her recovery, to say that gwen is a ‘star patient’. in this dream, gwen’s health is less ambiguous. not only does she look better, she feels better. doctors say she’s the best - the ‘star patient’. dream!gwen is hardly thinking about this anymore anyway; she’s already back in her old political habits, taking keen interests in the war and urging mildred to forget the past. edmund is ‘gone’, in the serene part of this dream. betsy’s visit is among the more interesting parts of the dream. she enters the dream and is highly complimentary of the grandness of the room, of mildred too. she then marvels at modern medicine beside the pool. in mildred’s fantasy of betsy, the woman laments her part in hydroptherapy. this is, of course, projection. mildred would feel more at ease with her friend if she expressed regret for the hydrotherapy - betsy never expresses this thought to mildred in the show. whether it’s to shield her own guilt or not, mildred reads it as apathy. a lack of regret. dream!betsy regrets her past participation in systemic and violent lesbophobia. dream!betsy waltzes in with talk of cures for melancholy, or ‘depression, as they’re starting to call it’. dream betsy says openly it’s nice to be without men, and is open and jocular and accepting of mildred and gwen as a couple. she’s optimistic about their current circumstances, proud of what the three of them have managed. she even waxes poetic about it.  in reality, betsy expresses no regret in canon. she compliments gwen’s appearance, but no mention is made of gwen being a ‘star patient’ - because it is not true. in reality, betsy spends a good deal of time trumping herself up instead (and don’t get me wrong - in this house we stan betsy bucket’s wicked funny demeanor and how shameless she is) by bragging about how indespensable she is, how her salary has doubled. much less is made of gwen and mildred. in reality, when mildred asks, as she always does, gwen if there is ‘anything’  -  gwen tells her. a multiple murder of seven nurses in chicago. things are not ok. the past, as mildred mentions while her dream transitions from fantasy to nightmare, can’t be disconnected from them.  charlotte wells and edmund are represented differently in dream and reality also. charlotte wells, who mildred helped release into the world & who she witnessed face trial after trail (her original trauma, the murder at the dance just when she’d begun to feel safe, the horrific and uncontrollable violence she accidentally inflicted on doctor hanover) is now herself - and in true nightmarish fashion, charlotte wells is not corrupted beyond imagination. she kills and bathes in the blood of her victims, and needs no other personality to justify this. she is rotten to the core, and a harbinger of death. contrasted with reality: that mean motel lady stuck her foot in her face in the car and she got upset, so reverted to ondine and demanded some fuckin RESPECT. it’s worth noting, dream!charlotte sees right through ratched, and knows that she’s ‘done a lot of killing’. in this nightmare, charlotte is presented as a monster, and a reflection of what mildred fears she really is. edmund is presented with much more power in the nightmare. he’s in her private, personal space. she asks him helplessly about what he wants. he smirks at her. he has a knife. ‘you and i, we can’t go on the way we are. we have too much damage on our insides. [...] you betrayed me, the one person i loved. [...] so i figure - how ‘bout we just fuckin’ end it.’ mildred is tired of running, tired of lying, tired of being in survival mode. she’s fraught from it. it seems logical, natural, even, that the unspeakable truth of it all is that neither she nor edmund are built to live in the world. like faulty grenades. she aims her last defence, her gun, at him and it does not go off. he kills her. from the horrified way she jolts awake and gwen comforts her, it’s clear that this scenario - edmund stabbing her to death like he stabbed their last set of parents - is a common one that plays through mildred’s mind.  in reality, edmund is a bit of a fuckin soft boy. he has his own vision for what to do (get a car, leave a call, kill seven nurses to hurt your sister’s feelings, an exhausting to-do-list if you ask me), but in reality he craves company. he stays, for two years, with charlotte wells and recruits motel lady (i never learned her name and at this point i’m attached to ‘motel lady’ as a title) also. in reality, he goes on to clumsily tell her his acting out is a clue. he asks mildred questions, and she smoothly answers. edmund is far, far away, and out of reach - unnerving in its own way, but not nearly the same panic-inducing feeling as him being near. he doesn’t even get to tell her he wants revenge: in reality, mildred has already steeled herself, already cut out her vulnerabilities and softness - as she so often has to do - and prepared herself once more for survival mode. ‘you are to listen to me now, sis,’ edmund begins. ‘i don’t have to. you’re going to tell me that i betrayed you and that you’re coming for me and that i should be very afraid. well let me tell you something, little brother. you are the one who should be afraid. because i am coming for you, edmund.’  in order to protect what she has, the people she loves, mildred fully intends to kill him. she is absolutely afraid of him, and absolutely certain that this only means that the destructive, lying, impulsive and painfully uncalculating boy must die, if she is ever to know peace. 

give this a like for a starter with nurse mildred ratched. might include me jumping into your inbow to plot also. 

LETTING ME INTO THIS HOSPITAL WAS THE BEST DECISION YOU EVER MADE.    ----      NURSE RATCHED ROLEPLAY BLOG.