#drliscuddy

you don’t know how to talk about this. or anything. all of this settles around you like snow, except it’s falling ash, dotting your skin black, smearing unkindly on porcelain. sometimes you almost see it. sometimes you almost look down and there are the smudges of red, all over you. you hate this wheelchair, frankly, and your jaw works with a resounding click. the television’s soft glow illuminates the room-- your photosensitvity hasn’t been stricken yet, that chord unplayed, and there’s a sound in the background you can’t distinguish. you put the sound on to drown out the silence. sometimes, the quiet is laced with what sounds like voices, like a snake slithering through your ears, between them.

there’s a pot on the floor between you. it’s full of the only thing you can eat, now-- glue-looking, fake macaroni and cheese. it feels like a slap in han-- dr. lecter’s face. it’s disgusting and generic and comforting. it’s just oozing orange. you can eat maybe three forkfuls before you can only consider it. your legs aren’t useless-- but they’d said you wouldn’t walk ever again. fuck them. they thought you were dead, too, so.

“do you ever wonder what would have been different?”

——–  location  meme    /    readily  accepting !          random :   a hotel lobby      motel lobby

morning  sun  through  the  blinds  adds  striped  pattern  to  already  gaudy  design  of  the  carpet.      paisley.    she  did  not  notice  it  upon  their  arrival  last  night,      an  hour  south  of  kansas  city,    which  is  not  in  kansas,        late  check - in  with  a  manager  whose  breath  smelled  of  hot  dog  and  cigarettes        /         dana  struggled  for  sleep  but  found  it  on  the  hard  mattress,    held  onto  it  a  few  hours’   time.     morning  now.      a  quick  shower.     they  have  work  to  do.             

she  leans  against  the  check - in  desk   ;      the  manager  is  on  a  smoke  break.     on  a  napkin  before  her,   the  crumby  remains  of  a  bagel  with  light  cream  cheese  and  the  discarded  curls  of  an  orange  peel.         beside  that,     case  file,    abnormalities  that  have  summoned  them  here,      a  lab  result  on  a  deadly  parasite,    which  is  not  a  parasite.       an  hour  south  of  kansas  city,    nothing  is  as  it  seems. 

       ❝ you didn’t realize, did you ? ❞ there’s a SADNESS to stacy’s gaze, a tight pull to her lips as she tries to maintain a smile. ❝ no one here seemed to realize how much i CARED about you... and i missed you. ❞

                                       Cameron pushes that thought aside, it sinks to the back of her mind like a pebble in a well. There are living things she needs to occupy her time with.  She tilts her head to one side, a disarming and patient downward curve to her lips. 

Her hand hits off the bedside table, and she clumsily snatches her phone. “Hello,” she murmurs to herself. Messages. That’s new. What time is it? The numbers won’t focus, but there is an eight in among them. In her messages, she sees a single little letter, a tiny letter, smallest letter.                 C.  She can’t read anything else really, or if she does the information bleeds out of her eyes again. She forgot to do the IVF for Cuddy. Her heart is pounding. Her heart is going to explode. Like, physically it is going to rip out of her chest and she’ll hear the thumping of it beating on her bed, the bed with the bedsheets yoking off the bed corners. leaving the scratchy exposed mattress face under her skin. Cameron can’t stop fixating on a piece of music that she’s forgotten the name of. She keeps her jaw clenched.

[ C. ]    I’m Sorry!! I mised the shot. [ C. ]     :( . [ C. ]     SOrry! Soryr baby . [ C. ]     I can do it now, my  aim is on. [ C. ]     [ LOCATION SHARING: ON. ] [ C. ]     donnt be sad? COme over. [ C. ]     Please

This is the most brilliant idea she’s ever, ever had. She keeps kicking her heels into the bed and she remembers her mother on the couch who did the same thing. “Fucking hell. Fuck.” She says, again just to herself. She’s not checked her phone in a long time, but she doesn’t have a very solid idea of time at the moment. Cuddy crosses her mind, and she bites her lip, mostly for the sake of guilt. Without checking for a response, she sends again:  [ C. ] Where have you done?