michael brooks

"Fortunately at the moment I don’t have much that I need to be distracted from. What do you need a distraction for, hm?"

"Things. Mostly things that have to do with Tegan." 

"No…no it doesn’t…I keep waiting, you know, for her to burst through the door or something, laughing about how it was one cruel joke she came up with." 

"Strangely enough, I was thinking something along those lines too. It was just settling in for me that she had been diagnosed and now this happens." 

"...it doesn't feel real." 

"Then I guess it won’t come as too much of a surprise when I reach into my pocket and hand you the paperwork and the keys then, huh?"

"Not really, no." 

"Did um…did she tell you she left the apartment lease to you? Because I found that paperwork this morning…" 

"She mentioned it once." 

"You’re telling me. I go home for a week and come back exhausted with piles of new prescriptions to fill, release forms to fill, and applications to read… Nothin’ better."

"It's not entirely a bad thing. It's a good distraction." 

"Understandable…I kind of didn’t make it easier you by making you take most of it…." 

"Maybe I'll be motivated to do something about it." 

"I can give it to my parents if you want, or Steph. You don’t have to take it. I just figured you’d want his stuff back." 

"No, I can still take it. It's just kind of hard to unpack and sort through everything." 

"Yeah. It was something that came from Liam, and it clearly states you’re supposed to get everything that Liam gave me…I don’t even wear it anymore. It just sits on my nightstand, or in my pocket, depending." 

"I'll just add that and everything else to the collection of boxes full of some of his stuff in my spare bedroom." 

"I’ve still got the ring he gave me…That’s another thing that becomes yours when I die, by the way." 

"No…you’ve got it. Part of it is still Liam’s. Probably will always be Liam’s." 

"You know there's nothing wrong with that, right? Nothing at all." 

"He was ten years younger than me. There’s still the whole ‘I was a staff member he was a patient’ thing…and I think he only had part of my heart. " 

"Age doesn't really matter too much after a certain point. Did he only have part of your heart because the other part was still Liam's or am I missing more information?" 

"Well we had a relationship. It started as sex, and then it…I fell in love with him. In retrospect…he kinda reminded me of Liam at that age; young, a little stupid, carefree…Then the diagnosis came, and I pushed him away after a while, because I didn’t want him to hurt anymore than he was.  It wasn’t a mistake. I wanted it. I wanted him. I knew the risks, and I took the risks." 

"You say that now. But…what the hell, I’ve got nothing left to lose." 

"Was? So you're not anymore? And I have no room to judge when I slept with Miranda and know of a certain someone who slept with an intern and got pregnant. Everybody makes mistakes." 

"It does. Makes me feel less guilty. It is in-depth enough…but…I shelter you, from a lot of shit, Mike. And it’s shit I shouldn’t shelter you from because you deserve to know it but I do it anyway and to this day I’m still not sure why I do it."

"Don't worry about sheltering me from anything, I can handle it. Just tell me."