#whomuses

The coffee has long since crossed the line from tolerable to questionable, but Jack drinks it anyway. Elbows resting on the nurses' station, he stares up at the tracking board with the kind of focus most people reserve for imaging. A room opens. Another ambulance pops onto the board. Someone gets admitted. Someone else gets discharged. His eyes keep moving, quietly connecting pieces before they ever become problems, the paper cup lifting for another absentminded sip every few seconds.

@whomuses ; random one-liner! (left it open for you <3)

❝ it's just a scratch, don't worry. ❞

The mention of stitches and needles makes her stomach turn, the color draining from her face as she shakes her head. “I’m… nah, I’m okay, really. Totally fine, see?” Stubbornly, she stands, and very quickly regrets everything as the room spins and she grits her teeth against the dizzy feeling. She hadn’t thought the cut on her forearm wasn’t that bad, certainly not stitch-worthy, but it wasn’t like she’d looked at it for long enough to know anything other than it was bleeding pretty well.

Is she okay? No. No she is not. 

Mel isn’t really sure how to answer the question, she lets it hang there in the air as she leans forward and sits her chin on the top bar of the railing. Sat on the bottom bar her legs swing gently, almost childishly as she feels the weight of that silence. 

Her chest hurts in ways she can’t quite describe, and she isn’t sure that she wants to. Putting names and descriptions to it felt like giving it some kind of power and setting it free and while Mel is fully aware that it is bad for you, she still doesn’t want to do that. 

She fears, in some ways, to be honest about it will backfire.

That people would tell her she’s reacting wrong. Over reacting. Under reacting. She can never seem to nail the socially acceptable level of reacting to a situation and it haunts her at times. 

Yet she knows she has to give him something or it’s just rude.  

“I’ll be okay…” it’s not a lie. Not entirely. “Just…that kid and her mom…” too close to home for Mel and she knows it. “Just…looking after a parent at that young an age…” what she wants to say is it’s not fair. That it shouldn’t happen. That the world is shit for having needed for it to be happened and none of it leaves her. Instead she just sighs. 

Dana had been watching Skye closer than she normally would've, but she knew something was wrong; it was like her sixth sense or something. So when she followed Skye to the breakroom and pointedly stared at her as Skye chugged ice-cold water. She moves to stand in front of her as she makes to shove past Dana.

A chuckle leaves her, Feng Wu can’t help but smile to herself. That is true, more true than she thinks the other realises. 

“Oh, that is very true.” She answers, a little knowing in her voice as she keeps her eyes down focused on the paper work in front of her. Still flicking through the EHR trying to tick and check the boxes that all need ticked and checked. 

What a waste of her fucking time, but here they are. 

She doesn’t like the direction of this conversation. 

Mel has never been a fan of being perceived, normally she is the one doing the perceiving. If there was anything she was good at, it was spotting changes in people. The way they spoke, the way they moved, the way they interacted with the world around them. It was obvious to her. 

Was she good at dealing with it? No. Did she know how to call it out? No. 

Instead, she just knew about it. 

As for her own…not so much. Mel was Mel and Mel turned up every day as bright as she could be and that was that. She tried hard to keep it like that, regardless of everything else that was going on.