27 for Spotify fic thing!
a bit of comfy dreamling. and i fully believe that this would've been better if i had finished reading the entirety of the comics. alas... we can have a bit of silliness for now! but thank you for the ask!! 💓 i hope you are having fun with the ask game.
--
When you've lived for such a long period of time unimaginable to the common living being, asking for help is something short of unthinkable. He is Endless, after all. Lord of Dreams and Ruler of Nightmares. The Dreaming itself.
At least, that's what Dream thinks.
Death said he was foolish for not asking for help during his century in the Wych Cross, in the Burgess's basement, and for the pursuit of his tools afterwards. He doesn't think she will ever understand—he didn't want to worry her, or anyone for that matter.
Much less Hob Gadling, who is a mere 600 years old. He was older than most, yes, but still. Dream should be able to handle everything by himself. The Shaper of Forms should be able to fix all his problems on his own.
This is why Dream couldn't fathom why Hob gave him this tiny device he called a 'mobile phone'.
"Keep in touch," Hob said, "for when you need my help the next time you get... compromised. Or for when you just want a drink. Or a friend," he tacked on, grinning.
Dream stared at the phone accusatorily. It sat on the couch beside him in his room, unaware of his glare.
It was as if Hob didn't know how hard it already was for him just to mention that he'd been captured. By a human, with parlor tricks, no less. And before their recent meeting, they just met once every hundred years. Now Hob expected Dream to just... 'text' him?
Dream scoffed. This was ridiculous. They should have just continued to meet every hundred years.
But then again, the whole ordeal with Rose Walker and Desire just finished. Could Hob have helped with that problem? Most likely not. But sometimes, Dream did find that... elaborating... on one's feelings... proved. Useful.
And in the light of having been betrayed by his sibling, there was nothing he wanted more than to hear someone talk at him, for distraction. Or maybe even listen to him. Much like Hob did, the last time, in The New Inn.
Dream sighed. This was ridiculous. He tucked the phone into his coat, and left. He had much to do, and little time to spend on frivolities. He couldn't spend his time ruminating on every single thing in his life; he would certainly go insane if he did. So he will concentrate on the things he can fix now.
--
Dream was in the middle of a meeting with Lucienne and Merv when a ding! rang in the throne room. Lucienne looked up from her notes, and Mervyn cocked his pumpkin head.
It came from inside his coat. Dream paused for a moment, and opened his mouth to continue—
Ding!
"Uh, boss, I think that's coming from you," Merv said.
Lucienne hid the lower half of her face in her ledger. Dream dreaded to think why.
"I will take care of this," Dream said, standing from his throne. "I trust you will be able to attend to the repairs in my place, Lucienne. Mervyn."
"Of course, my lord," Lucienne said.
"See ya, boss," Merv said.
Dream turned away and blinked into his room before he could see them smile at each other at his expense.
He conjured the phone from his coat, forming from grains of sand. The screen simply said, '2 new messages from Hob Gadling.'
"Hey stranger! Fancy a night out at The New Inn? Just got done with finals, and I could use a relaxing evening. Beer for me, wine for you? I got you something even better than before," the first text said.
In their last meeting, Dream had actually caved to drinking wine. It seemed more palatable than any of the drinks in the past six centuries, and he was. In a good mood, so to say. He didn't really realize how thirsty he was until he got into a comfortable atmosphere.
"And I'm thinking you should try out our pizza tonight. Only made out of the finest ingredients, I promise. If you thought the shepherd's pie was good, wait for this one," the second text said.
And how hungry.
And because the Dreaming is him, thunder rumbled in the distance, as if to imitate an empty stomach growling.
This is ridiculous, Dream thought, as he stepped out of his room and into The New Inn. It was evening this time, and the place glowed yellow and orange. It was alive with its customers' tipsy buzz, the clinking of tableware, and the smell of savory food and alcohol.
Dream looked over to the spot where Hob sat before, and felt a pang of an unnamable feeling in his chest when he didn't see him there.
"My friend," bellowed a familiar voice from behind the counter.
It was Hob. He had a small towel thrown over his shoulder, and he had half of his hair tied back. Dream noticed the beads of sweat on his temples.
"Didn't expect you here so soon. I'll be right with you," Hob said, his face bright. He gestured to the table in the corner. "Have a seat."
And so Dream sat where he sat before. What was Hob up to?
"Sorry for the wait," said Hob from behind. He came brandishing a glass and a bottle. Was that a smear of something red on his cheek? And why was he wearing a flour-dusted apron? "If I knew you would come this fast, I would have texted you much earlier."
Dream watched Hob pour him a glass of wine.
"Y'know, you could have replied. I would've been more prepared that way," Hob said, setting down the bottle, and settling down across Dream. "Not that I mind, of course. Just thought you would be more preoccupied. But I could get used to it."
Dream huffed. "Do not. You merely caught me at an opportune time."
"And what joy," Hob said. He was grinning. Then he was standing up again. "Be right back."
Hob disappeared behind the counter and into what Dream assumed is the inn's kitchen. Dream looked at the wine. It didn't seem right to drink alone.
So instead, Dream listened to the sound of the inn's patrons talking to their friends about their day, good or bad, listened to the soft music playing on the speakers, listened to the dreams of a student snoozing on his friend's shoulder, heavily inebriated too early in the night.
He was having a nightmare about his 'finals,' as Hob called it. Dream waved the nightmare away. In this place, he deserved comfy dreams. His nightmare could wait another night.
"Make way, hot pizza coming through," Hob announced from behind again, hurriedly setting down a wooden plate. On it was flat bread with golden, melted cheese and the same red sauce that Dream saw on Hob's cheek earlier. There were also sliced cherry tomatoes and basil leaves on top. The pizza glistened under the yellow lights of the inn.
"Been a while since my last pizza," Hob said, sitting down across him with a sigh. He held his beer in his other hand. Maybe this time he would stop moving around so much.
Wait.
"You made this," Dream said, in disbelief.
"Yeah, picked it up when I lived in Italy a few years back. Don't think it's as good as how they taught me, but you be the judge. And don't hold back," Hob said as he cut through the sauce and cheese with a knife. "Hey, you haven't drank your wine yet."
"No," Dream said. He didn't want to elaborate.
"Buon appetito," Hob said, gesturing to the pizza. He wiped some of the sweat on his forehead away with his towel.
Dream stared at Hob.
"Please, before it gets cold," Hob insisted.
"Are you not going to eat?" Dream asked.
"Oh." Hob paused. Was that surprise? "I suppose I should, shouldn't I?"
Dream took his slice the same time Hob did, but Dream had more difficulty with his. The cheese stretched on impossibly, refusing to let go, until Hob chuckled and cut through it with his knife.
And finally, Dream bit into the slice. Both the sliced tomatoes and the tomatoes used in the red sauce reminded him of a dream of a farmer in the Italian countryside, toiling away in the hot day and coming home to his wife and son, his arms full of produce. The hot cheese came from the milk of a family cow cherished by its farmer. It dreamt of a seemingly never-ending green pasture, where she lived with her calves. The bread had the thoughts of the man in front of him kneaded into it, thoughts of how proud he was of his students, especially those graduating soon. Even the basil leaves contained Hob's thoughts, each carefully placed on the pizza, wondering if Dream would like it.
Dream gulped.
"Good?" Hob asked. He was smiling, but Dream spotted a bit of worry on the lines in his crow's feet.
"It is," Dream tried to find a sufficient word, but ended up echoing Hob, "good."
Dream watched Hob's shoulders loosen.
"Good. Great," Hob said, grinning, fully this time.
Dream felt his own chest tighten. He stifled the feeling with more of the pizza instead, and listened to Hob launch into how finals week went.
Maybe later in the night, wine-drunk, Dream would tell Hob of what happened recently. But right now, he was content to eat, and drink, and listen to his friend.
77 notes
·
View notes
guess who's still thinking about Lucifer >.<
anyways thought it'd be fun, given my previous post about his dissociation with conversations, to try and guess what his takeaways were from his phone call with Charlie based on his reactions
Maybe I'm wrong about what he's catching and what he's missing but either way I had fun
strike through= what he missed
bold=what he caught
neither bold nor strikethrough= he might've heard it/made it out through the white noise, but not enough to connect the dots
RED= only heaven is in red cuz you cannot convince me otherwise that that's not a trigger word for him
Idk thought it’d be fun to try and guess what Lucifer is ACTUALLY hearing with his dissociation filter on let's GO
Lucifer: [insert absolute fail of hello]
Charlie: Hi Dad!
Lucifer: Hey! How are ya? Oh! Wh-wh-where are you these days?
Charlie: You know where I am, Dad… I’ve told you before…
Lucifer: You hAve? Oh. yeah Uh, erm well I um uh
Charlie: I told you when you called me five months ago! Or did you not listen?
Lucifer: No no no just forgot! I just forgot. I’ve been really busy with you know… um. iMpOrTanT tHiNgS
Charlie: Well I’m actually running a hotel to rehabilitate sinners, maybe you saw our commercial?
Lucifer: No? Sadly I… missed it!
Lucifer: You know I haven’t been watching much TV lately! Scrambles the brain!
Lucifer: but hey! A hotel! Fun!
Charlie: Listen, Dad, I’ve got kinda… a big ask?
Lucifer: -spit take- Yeah?! Of course! Anything in my power is yours for the asking you just name it
Charlie: I need to speak to heaven! Well, whoever’s in charge up there above Adam above anybody, I need to go to the top!
Lucifer: NO
Lucifer: no no no no
Lucifer: That’s uhahah no…
Charlie: Look! Dad! I don’t ask you for much. I never have, but this-this is really important to me. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done and I… need… you… I need your help
Lucifer: I-... I don’t know Charlie
Charlie: Please just- Come see what I’m trying to do. You’ll see why it’s a really good idea and heaven is bound to agree if I get the chance to talk to them
Charlie: Please dad
Lucifer: wait… you’re… INVITING ME OVER???
Lucifer: ABSOLUTELY
Lucifer: I’LL BE THERE IN AN HOUR
___
so yeah, he can semi follow along but like crucial bits and pieces ARE being left out
309 notes
·
View notes
Hey so your post about pain management as a bedside nurse is so important to my own nursing practice that I've considered printing it out so I can have it to hand all the time. So thanks for that. Also, how do you deal with assignments that are busy enough that pain management is harder than it should be? I'm coming up on two years as a nurse and I feel like I take it personally when I am too busy to adequately manage my patients pain. I'm also coming from a newly unionized hospital where the ratios are still horrendous (I do 1:10 on med surg) and I'm hoping once we can enforce our staffing grids it'll be better but idk I'm burning out and I love my job so much and I really respect your nursing philosophy? I guess. Sorry for the word vomit it's been a crazy shift.
I've been trying to think of how to answer this since I got it. It's just such a horrendous ratio. With ten patients a shift, that's like six minutes an hour for each in a fantasy world where there's no charting and everything is exactly where you need it to be. I feel like I don't have great insight into this because the most med surg patients I've had assigned is five. Ten patients to one nurse is just a raw deal for everyone. Like christ no wonder you feel like you're burning out! I'll give you what thoughts I have and hopefully other people can chime in if they have suggestions. But that's such a hard patient load.
When I've been super swamped, I've found that's when being really explicit about your thinking with the patient helps. Like if I have to dash into a room and then dash back out, I'll make sure the board is updated with the next medication time and that the patient knows when the medication is going to kick in. I'll also provide call light parameters. I have a lot of success telling people, "the med should be doing something by 5:30. If I haven't checked in with you by then, and the pain is unchanged or barely changed, hit your call light and we'll try the next step. Also hit your call light if you feel any sudden change, like now you're nauseated or you have a headache or the type of pain changes or something just feels very wrong. Is there anything you need before I step out of the room?"
I like to be explicit about when to call me because I think there's two directions call light usage can go wrong: someone calls all the time, or someone never calls. With someone who calls all the time, I find that telling them when I'll be back and that I want them to call me if I'm not takes away some of that anxiety that can causes some people to call frequently. Often those patients are afraid that if they aren't on the call light, they're gonna get ignored.
For the other type of patient, the one that doesn't call, I want to make explicit that it's GOOD AND NORMAL TO CALL YOUR NURSE WHEN YOU HAVE SYMPTOMS. We've all had that patient at the end of shift who goes, "btw the gnawing pain in my leg is now a 10/10" and you're like "what gnawing pain sir?? you've literally never mentioned it before now?? I don't have any meds for that lemme page super quick????" These patients can get into pain crises easily because they don't ask for help until something is unbearable. In addition to pain crisis bad, it takes a lot more time to deal with something unbearable than it does to deal with something uncomfortable.
On that note, are you spending your very limited time efficiently? To me, that actually means spend more time talking with patients, at least up front. Manage expectations, make sure people know what to expect. Having conversations with patients that are like, "You just had surgery, it's not gonna happen that we get you completely painless. We want to get you to a manageable pain level that allows you to do whatever it is you most want to do this shift." (For me on nights, that's usually sleeping at least a little, but sometimes the realistic goal you make together is that you will feel at some point better than you feel right now.) "You have this medication scheduled, and you have this one available every X hours when your pain is severe. Is there anything you know that helps you deal with pain?"
Also establish if patients want to be woken up for certain prn medications or if they're sleeping, to let them sleep. With some patients, I will advise them to get woken up for pain medication because I know that they're going to need consistent control to avoid a crisis. (Crises take so much time!)
When I'm crunched for time, I'm fond of bringing in an ice pack and being like "if it works, great, if it doesn't, just take it off, either way here it is." Sometimes I'll do the same with a warm blanket. If I know my patient needs to take pills, I'll bring a cup of water with me into the room. If there's a basic prn like melatonin or tylenol that I think they might want, I'll pull them in advance. If the patient doesn't want them, I return them next time I'm in the med room. (Obviously, don't do this with controlled substances. It's super easy to forget to return them, and not returning opioids is one of those whoopsies people get fired over.)
Decision making takes time. Walking to go get stuff takes time. I want to save the time it takes to assess if the patient needs those things and then walk off to fetch them by just having the things already. If your tightest resource is time, be liberal with resources you can spare. If you're stuck with a patient, do you have anyone you can delegate a prn med pass to? Do you know how to do the absolute minimum charting you need to? Do you have flushes and alcohol wipes and whatever other most common things you need? And since you can't hoard time, if you've got some to spare, ask yourself if there is anything you can do now that will save you time later. If you have five free minutes now and an incontinent patient, getting them up to the bathroom now can save you from taking the time for incontinence care and a bed change later on when they've also sundowned and decide they hate everything but most of all you.
So much of this answer I realize is investing as much time upfront as you can, which I realize is so hard when you are so busy. It sucks immensely that prepping takes much less time than not being prepared does when you don't always have time to prep. Plus when you invest that time to pain plan with patients and do small preventative interventions, I think it also provides some psychological comfort that helps with pain. You're letting them know you're invested and you care and you have a plan, even if you don't have all the time you'd like. That can mean better pain control, which can mean needing to spend less time in that room overall, meaning you can save six whole minutes at some point and maybe even, if we're feeling crazy, get a chance to indulge in that greatest of indulgences: just a real leisurely on-shift piss.
145 notes
·
View notes
good evening, all. it is May the 25th. our lilacs are blooming, just as the ones at the Watch House did. and I am thinking about remembrance of the fallen, and GNU, and the love in commemoration.
y'know, I read Night Watch… oh, maybe a year ago and some months ago. and the lilac symbolism, the remembrance of the Watch, has always struck me with the depth of the emotion of it, the tangibility of it in the flowers. but I wasn't aware that today was the day until I saw commemorative posts, all that gorgeous artwork and more, on my dash.
I was also not aware, until now, that fans commemorated the day not only because of the book reference, but in support of Terry Pratchett and of those with Alzheimer's. which knocked me over a bit because of course, of course the group that would use GNU to honor him would do that. and… I've been thinking about GNU a lot, lately, and this caught me again.
I read Going Postal a bit ago, and reread it recently. both times, the parts about GNU made me tear up. this idea of the names, the memories, the lives of the clacks workers who dedicated themselves to ensuring that people heard each other's voices—all those names spoken again and again and again by that which they poured their souls into, winging along in the air as they could not, an eternal reminder that they were loved—how could that not touch a person's heart?
when I found out that fans online used it to memorialize him, I damn well cried. hell, I still tear up just thinking about it. do you know, there's a code for an HTTP header "X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett" written by Reddit users to put in webpages, where it goes unseen by the average user? and in 2015, when Netcraft took a survey, there were eighty-four thousand websites using it? it's eight years later—how many thousands upon thousands of websites have this now, do you think? how many little cables of light has his name flown along, now? how many times?
that alone is absurdly and unimaginably lovely in its own right, but… there's something else to it. there's something about remembering with the lilac sprigs every year, just as Vimes and those who were there remembered their dead. something about how, when we take up our lilac sprigs, we carry a little piece of the characters in our hearts, too. I kept trying to put my finger on why that makes me tear up the way it does. the conclusion I came to is this:
what greater way to honor a writer is there, but to honor them the way they did the characters they poured their heart and soul into? what better way to say we know you and you are not forgotten and your work and words and gifts to the world are held in our hearts forever than to remember them by their own words, their own vision? how else could we say you embodied all the good you believed in and wished to see in the world, but to memorialize them after the little pieces of their soul they wrapped in ink and put upon the page?
it is a knowing of the writer, to remember them in their way. it is not a worn-out faceless platitude, but a reminder that their work has been read and will continue to be, that the characters and world they loved enough to bring to life last just as their name does. such remembrance is warm and loving and delights in their memory even as it grieves.
and now Pratchett's name has been written in his tradition, over and over and over, across the vast plane of the Internet, where it will—with any luck—continue to fly for generations to come.
there is no way to truly express the beauty of that… but perhaps we can catch a glimpse of it in the lilacs, both ours and the Watch's.
145 notes
·
View notes