#so hopefully i can get disability leave until the surgery at the very least

[wtf-amiru]

pray for me as I assemble a full fucking binder for my dr appointment in 3 weeks

[p-artsypants]

I’ll Handle This (12)

In Which Lila Learns about Skyrim

Ao3 | FF.net

Sorry for taking a bit with this chapter. It isn’t even very long. But I was in the hospital recovering from surgery. We’re coming up close to the end of the story, but there’s maybe two more chapters after this. 

(Psst this chapter has hints to the next story I’ll publish after this one...as long as my ideas don’t change lol)

--

Lila was fired. It was immediate when they found out. Everyone sat in class, the lecture normal and lulling everyone into a soft state of sedation. 

Then Lila screamed. The scream was the worst thing Marinette had ever heard. Immediately, everyone turned to look at her in horror. 

She started bawling. Huge gasping sobs of someone who’d been shot. 

“Lila?!” Miss Bustier gasped in shock and concern. “Are you okay?!” 

“I’m so sorry, Miss Bustier!” She wailed. “I just wanted to peek at my email and—and—Mr. Agreste fired me!” 

Plagg had to bite his tongue. He knew she was going to twist this somehow, but her sobbing was so beautiful to see. 

“Oh Lila, I’m so sorry. It hurts a lot to lose a job. Especially when they don’t tell you to your face. That’s no fair.” 

“He-he-he said that Marinette told him that I was making Adrien uncomfortable! She got me fired!” 

Gasps, all around. 

“What?!” Barked Marinette. “I had nothing to do with this!” Not exactly the truth...

“But that’s what Mr. Agreste said!” 

Plagg stood, placing his foot on the seat, the spurs on his cowboy boots ringing with the motion. He put his cowboy hat back on (since Mrs. Bustier had asked him to remove it for violating dress code...again.) “well now. Sounds like we got ourselves in a gosh darn pickle.” 

Nino snorted. 

“Adrien! You never said I made you uncomfortable! Marinette must have lied to your father!” 

He flicked the rim of his hat. “Now slow your roll there, Buckeroo. I know my old man, and even if Marinette was mentioned in his email, it’s likely that he just wanted to place the blame on someone else.” 

Yes, throw the old man under the bus. He still deserves it, even with whole hearted apologies. 

“But you know, I do feel awfully bad for you, Lila. Losing yer job and all. How’s about I make it up to ya? I’ll come sit by you for a while. Keep ya company and cheer you up. Cain’t have gettin’ all akumatized up in here, you reckon?” 

Not that Lila getting akumatized was even a concern anymore. But the world wouldn’t know about Hawkmoth’s surrender until Emilie’s fate was resolved. Adrien’s family deserved that much at least. 

“Oh Adrien!” Lila cried. “You really are such a wonderful friend. But I couldn’t bear to make you move on my behalf. You need to focus on your work.” 

“A cowboy needs to be exceptional at multitasking. That is, as long as Mrs. Brassiere is okay with it.” 

Miss Bustier pinched the bridge of her nose. Usually, she was a very calm and level-headed teacher, compassionate and understanding. But Adrien’s antics were stressing her out massively. “Yes, Adrien, I suppose it’s fine if you move to—what did you call me?”

“Much obliged, Madam. If’en you’ll excuse me...” 

Marinette watched with fascination as Plagg gathered up his materials and moved to the back of the class to sit next to Lila. Then she glanced in her purse, where Tikki and Adrien were hanging out. They both shrugged. 

Due to the retirement of Hawkmoth, Adrien was now allowed to spend time away from the Miraculous without consequence. Plagg assured him that once the final condition was met, no matter where he was, his soul would return to his body. 

So he spent the school day with Tikki, and the evenings with Marinette. It was a sweet deal, and it really gave Adrien the time to bond with her without school or akumas in the way. 

He had even spent the night with her the night before, curled up next to her on her pillow, and purring every time Marinette’s hand glanced his fur. 

Nino leaned back in his seat. “Do you know what he’s up to this time?” 

“No idea...but I am eager to see where this goes.” 

Nino shook his head with a shrug. Two nights ago, when Plagg was arrested, Nino gathered all the money in his savings and went down to the jail to bail him out. 

Only to find out he was already let go. 

So he went back home, and called Adrien’s phone relentlessly, hoping for an answer. 

Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, Chat Noir returned and explained that he was going home now, thanks for having him, he had to watch the mansion because his sort of repentant father was going to Tibet to resurrect his dead wife. 

Nino gave up on logic and understanding, and just made sure Plagg had everything he had brought. 

Now he would wait until the whole situation blew over, and hopefully Adrien himself, in his own body, would explain it all to him. Plagg seemed to oversimplify everything to the point it became vague. 

Marinette, on the other hand, was very curious to see where this was all going. After all, Adrien’s previous tactic of being nice to Lila hadn’t worked. So what was Plagg hoping to gain from the same approach?

Wrassle her with his randomly appointed cowboy charm? 

In science, two classes later, Plagg had elected to sit next to Lila still, despite her protests. 

Marinette was close enough now to hear what Plagg’s master plan was. 

“So there’s like several types of Mer, right? But not like mermaids. This has nothing to do with mermaids. These are mostly elves, but not all. So there’s Dunmer, right? Those are dark elves. And Bosmer, wood elves, and Altmer, high elves. The Falmer are snow elves, but they’re all twisted and savage, because of the Dwemer, which are dwarves!” 

Marinette snorted a bit too loudly, drawing attention from the teacher. 

“Miss Dupain-Cheng, is something funny?” 

“No ma’am, I had a tickle in my sinuses.” 

“Ah, I see. Anyways, as I was saying...” 

Lila always sat in the back of the class, despite her many alleged disabilities. This was probably to get away with the fact that she rarely paid attention during class. 

It was the ideal place for Plagg to harass her and not get caught. 

Poetry in motion. 

“So you get to pick what race you want to be, but you’re always the Dragonborn. Despite the description, you don’t look any different. So a Dragonborn is someone that can devour the souls of dragons so they don’t get resurrected by Alduin. Let me back up, Alduin is an evil dragon that used to rule the world, and he’s resurrecting dragons so he can take over. There’s another dragon though, named Paarthanax, and he’s a good guy. He helps out the Tongues on the Throat of the World. Or the greybeards. Some call them Tongues, but in the game they’re called Graybeards. And the tongues are the monks that teach you to shout. And different shouts teach you different things, right? The dragonborn and the tongues are the only ones that are supposed to know how to shout, but there’s this other dude named Ulfric Stormcloak, and he knows Unrelenting Force, that’s the Fus Ro Da shout I was talking about earlier? He used it to kill high king Torygg to start a war. Oh yeah, so there’s nine holds with Jarls, right—“ 

The day ended, and Lila stood quickly. “Well Adrien, thank you so much for keeping me company today. I’m feeling a lot better. You can move back up to your old spot tomorrow.” 

“Well, you shore are welcome, Pardner. But sittin here in the back has been mighty nice. I think I’ll stay! You don’t mind, do ya? It’s awfully fun to have you as company!” 

Lila’s eye twitched, but she was aware that most of the class was watching them. “Yeah. That’d be...great.” 

“Darn tootin’! Well, you look like you’re in a rush, don’t want to hold you up!” 

“See you tomorrow!” She chirped, before hurrying from the room. As she passed Marinette, a dark look came over her face. The look of someone seething with rage and hatred, but trying to hide it. 

Marinette would have been scared, if Lila hadn’t been dealing with Plagg instead. 

Marinette went home, Tikki and Adrien talking to her from her collar. 

“I don’t know. Plagg was successful with the first two tasks, but I don’t know how he’s going to turn Lila over to the good side.” Marinette mused. 

“I don’t know if he has to. The condition is to just get her to leave me alone. He said he was doing some Pavlovian Jedi mind trick on her.” 

“Well, I sure hope it works. Speaking of, where is Plagg?” 

Adrien’s ears flicked. “He left pretty suddenly after class. I didn’t see him go. Hopefully, he went back to the mansion.” 

“Do you want me to call him?” 

“No, I trust him. He’s got things under control.” 

“Glad to hear it! Ready for snack time?” 

“Oh heck yes!” 

—

Lila had to actively stop herself from stomping all the way home. Frustration rolled off of her in waves, and she mildly wondered why she hadn’t been akumatized yet. 

Adrien Agreste was the most annoying person she had ever met. And oblivious too! He never picked up on any of her subtle hints to get him to shut up! She really didn’t want to be rude, because his friendship looked great on her, but wow. No wonder he didn’t have any friends. No wonder Gabriel was so protective of him. If he wasn’t cute...his personality was like a wet sock. 

And he was weird. Weird mannerisms, weird speech pattern, just weird. Hopefully she could either get used to it, or Adrien would get a clue to stop being so obnoxious. 

Finally, she reached her apartment. 

“Home mom!” She called. 

There was laughter in the kitchen. Her mother had a guest. While not uncommon, there was just a hint of dread that hung in the air. 

Lila walked to the kitchen, only to see Adrien sitting at the table, talking to her mother! How?! How did he beat her here?! How did he know where she lived?! What the hell was he doing?!

“Adrien?” Lila gawked. 

He rubbed his head awkwardly. “Sorry for popping in uninvited. I just...I was worried about you! You’ve been akumatized twice, and I didn’t want it to happen again since you were fired.” 

Lila’s face paled as her mother gave her a stern look. 

“I think you’ve got some explaining to do, Missy. I didn’t know you were modeling. And you never told me about being akumatized!” 

Adrien gasped. “Oh no! She didn’t tell you? I’m so sorry! I didn’t know that was a secret! I won’t say anymore!” 

“Any more?” Mrs. Rossi asked. “There’s more?” 

“Adrien.” Lila bit, in warning. 

“Well...I mean, you knew she was meeting with my father right? Something about being his muse?” 

Mrs. Rossi looked horrified. “What! You were talking to a grown adult man?! Were these visits supervised?!” 

Lila opened her mouth to answer, but Plagg beat her to it. “I don’t think so. Father is a very private person.” 

“Lila Giselle Rossi! You are sooo grounded! No offense to your father, Adrien, but meeting up with an adult man, unsupervised? And to what, be his muse? What does that even mean? It sounds gross!” 

“I swear nothing happened! He just wanted my opinion-”

“On what? What reason would he have to ask a 14 year old’s opinion?”

Plagg winced and looked at Lila. “I’m so sorry, Lila. I came here to help, but...” 

Lila shook with rage. Her mother was a complete pushover and believed everything she said. Now Adrien had sewn the seeds of distrust in her and she wouldn’t get away with any white lies ever again. 

“You’re dead,” She mouthed at Plagg. 

“Adrien, thank you for coming here and telling me all of this. I’m very grateful. But I think it’s best if you head home now. Lila has some chores to do.” 

“I understand, Madam Rossi. Again, I’m really sorry...I just wanted to help.” 

“Oh don’t worry, you did. This is for Lila’s own good.” 

He sheepishly looked to her. “See you tomorrow?” 

Her eye twitched. “Yeah.” 

And Plagg swiftly walked from the apartment, concealing his evil laughter until he got to the door. 

—

The next day at school, Marinette, along with Tikki and Adrien in her bag, arrived at school just a few minutes before the bell rang. 

Plagg was sitting at the front of the room, wearing a Pikachu onesie, and looking absolutely devastated. Nino sat next to him and had a hand over his face, doing his best to conceal whatever emotion he had. 

Everyone else in the room was avoiding them like they had the plague. 

Alya spotted her and came quickly, looping an arm through hers and escorting them out into the hall. “Girl, big news. I know you love Adrien, so this is going to be a blow. But here’s the thing...Lila told us this morning that Adrien came to her house yesterday and told her mom about her modeling job. Apparently, her mom didn’t want her working, and got upset that Lila lied. Adrien’s been insisting that it wasn’t on purpose, but everyone is kind of pissed at him anyway.” 

Marinette said nothing, but bit her lip. She knew that this absolutely was on purpose. 

“I’ll leave your actions up to you, but people are pretty mad at Adrien. Just letting you know.” 

“Who’s side are you taking?” 

Alya scoffed. “None. I’m staying out of this. Both people are in the right. Obviously Sunshine just wanted to prevent her from being akumatized. He was with her all day yesterday. It’s admirable, really.” 

“It is.” Marinette said with a smile. Though she was smiling for a completely different reason. There were no akumatizations anymore. Everyone was safe now. 

“We better get back in there, class will start soon.” 

So they returned. Miss Bustier was in, and ready to begin the lesson. 

Then Plagg raised his hand. 

“Yes Adrien?” 

“Before we start class, I want to say something.” 

“Go ahead, Adrien. The floor is yours.” 

He stood, and looked to Lila in the back of the room. “Lila, I know I apologized yesterday, but I’m really really sorry about outing you to your mom. I had no idea she didn’t know about your rendezvous with my father. I was just really scared that you were going to become akumatized, and I didn’t want that to happen. My friends are all important to me, and losing you would be like ripping out a piece of my heart. Could you ever forgive me?” 

Marinette glanced Nino’s face, which twitched to hide a smile. Then she looked at Lila, who looked calm, but her hands were balled into fists. 

After many breathless minutes, Lila smiled slightly. “I understand, Adrien. Of course you’re still my friend. I treasure you too! I’m sorry I got so mad.” 

“Hugs?” Plagg raised his arms. 

Lila could pretend to be happy and calm, but the paling of her skin could not be hidden. “Hugs!” 

Plagg brought her in for a squeeze, and the class ‘aww’ed at their make up. 

Except Nino, who let out the tiniest snort. 

Marinette flicked open her purse to look at Adrien. He mimed a gagging gesture back. 

And then Plagg took those last couple steps and joined Lila on her bench. No one tried to stop him. No one spoke up and said, “hey, maybe you should give her some space anyway.” 

They just all let poor, socially awkward Adrien push boundaries and take his seat. Because he had apologized so earnestly for trying to help. And she had forgiven him. So everything was fine now. 

Right?

As the lesson started, Marinette paid attention to the teacher. But occasionally, she’d hear the faintest whispers of Adrien’s voice (Plagg’s voice now). 

“...so it’s commonly believed that the Nord’s came from Atmora with Ysgramor, but they believe that they settled Skyrim, so they’re kind of racist to everyone else. But also, the Empire came in out of nowhere and tried to upheave their way of life, and even told them which Gods they were allowed to worship. High King Torygg was playing cordial with the Aldmeri Dominion, and some of the other Jarl’s didn’t like that. So Ulfric Stormcloak, the Jarl of Whiterun shouted him to death. Just like the Dragonborn can. Though it’s never explained why he knows how to do this. So this started a whole civil war…” 

Marinette chanced a glance behind her, and noticed that Lila had her head in her hands, and she looked absolutely miserable.

[abbysfrenchbraid]

Little Harbor - Beach Day Part 2

Thank you all for the lovely feedback on my writing so far, it means so much to me. I’ve decided that the Beach Day Imagine needed a Part 2 and spent last night manically writing 6.6k words of fluff, angst and semi smut.

In this part, Abby and the reader finally make their trip to Little Harbor and spend the night at the cabin there. The reader finds out they don’t know everything about Abby and there are some things in her past that still weigh heavily on her mind. 

TW for death/loss (Seattle plot for the Salt Lake Squad), light nudity, language and mention of suicide and mention of blood

This ist the playlist I curated for this fic. Make sure you disable shuffle and listen to the songs in order for them to fit! (It’s called Little Harbor on Spotify and has a picture of Abby in the thumbnail)

Little Harbor

The last few days had been a blur of happiness and secrecy. Stolen kisses in empty hallways, sitting next to each other in the cafeteria with your knees touching, sunsets in the watchtower staircase, and sweaty hugs whenever you picked up Abby after her morning training. It was clear to you by now that there was no going back and no stopping this. You were absolutely, hopelessly falling for the tall blonde soldier and she actually seemed to feel the same, which was still unbelievable to you.

Abby had taken up work with some of the combat and strategy trainers, educating them on the different groups she had encountered on her journey and on their territory, tactics, and relationships with each other. Lev had come in to explain more about the Seraphites, their whistle language, and their infrastructure. Even though it was unlikely that the Seraphites or WLF would come knocking at the Fireflies’ door, they still wanted to know as much as possible about the current state of the world.

The Rattlers were a different story altogether. Lev refused to speak about them and even though Abby had told the Firefly leaders about them as soon as she was conscious after her emergency surgeries, there was still much to talk about. She tried as hard as she could to remember every little detail and she got incredibly frustrated with herself when she found gaps in her memory even though that wasn’t her fault. The torture and mistreatment at the hands of these bastards had been so immensely traumatizing that her mind refused to let her remember the worst parts.

While the past few days with her had been all fun and exciting, the evenings had been more difficult and it had taken a lot of strength from both of you to get through this together. Abby was just learning to confide in you and talk about her feelings while you struggled with being there for her the right way, having never experienced anything close to the terror she must have felt. After the first day in the strategy room, Abby had knocked on your door just as you were about to go to bed and practically fallen apart in your arms. The Fireflies had decided to send a few teams back to Santa Barbara to see if there were any survivors and capture or help the people they found, depending on their previous alliance. They had offered Abby to go back with them, which she declined, and made it clear that she had to try to identify every single person they brought back.

You just hoped that the only people left there were the other prisoners who had freed themselves. It would be horrifying to know that some of the torturers could soon be sitting somewhere in this very building, practically at arm’s reach from Abby and Lev.

Although the others had advised her not to, Abby had told Lev about all the plans and tasks to come and he had agreed to help identifying people but remained silent about his thoughts on all this.

Trying your best to make Abby’s first week as an official Firefly less hard on her, you had organized a mission for you both to go to Little Harbor. You were supposed to check up on the little cabin there, throw out anything that wasn’t necessary and stock it with a few supplies in case someone in the area needed them in the future. The best thing about Little Harbor was the beautiful beach that stretched in a perfect arc and had the most beautiful sunsets you had ever seen.

You had just talked to your friend in admin and gotten the confirmation for the mission. For a second, you debated telling Abby at lunch in an hour but you simply couldn’t wait. Rolling up the note with the assignment on it and shoving it in your back pocket, you rushed toward the east wing of the base, practically jumping with every step.

As you came closer to the strategy room, you heard muffled voices. There seemed to be a heated discussion. You really didn’t want to eavesdrop, but you were already at the door and didn’t feel like you should knock and interrupt them in the middle of their conversation.

“Oh come on, Abby, what are you not telling us? You have to know more about her than that!”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know where they lived and I don’t know where she is now! I met them the first time at the WLF outpost in the middle of nowhere around Seattle and the last time I saw her she was in Santa Barbara. She’s probably dead, anyway, she was injured and all alone.”

She? Who were they talking about? Abby had never told you about a woman in Santa Barbara. Maybe another prisoner?

Someone slammed a hand on the table.

“Jesus Christ, I can’t believe we lost her again after all this time. At least we know Joel paid for what he did at Salt Lake.”

This sparked your attention. You knew Abby had grown up at the Salt Lake outpost before the massacre. Was Joel the guy who killed all the Fireflies there, including the doctors?

“What do you want with her anyway?” That was Abby again. She sounded bitter. “It’s not like we have the means to make a vaccine, Joel made sure of that. You’ll see what she did with the rattlers when you get there. Maybe you’ll find her body, too, and I can finally have some fucking peace.”

There was silence for a brief moment. Then a woman said: “Alright, let’s take a break. The teams are driving out to Santa Barbara tomorrow, then we’ll see what we find. Abby, thank you for everything you’ve told us. Take some time for yourself, I’ll call for you when the reports are in and hopefully a few survivors, too. I’ll see the rest of you after lunch.”

You could hear feet shuffling and chairs being pushed around. Quickly, you tiptoed away from the door and halfway through the corridor, then you turned around just as the door opened. Abby came out first, frowning and with her hands balled into firsts. When she saw you, her face lit up and she relaxed, taking a few big steps towards you and awkwardly coming to a halt in front of you, just a little bit too close.

“Perfect timing, huh?” She smiled at you before nodding to a few others that passed you.

You forced yourself to focus and smiled back.

“Yeah, I came to tell you that our mission is approved. We can leave as soon as possible.”

“Oh, that’s great! Martha just said I could have the day off and probably need to report back in tomorrow night earliest. Should we just pack now and get going after lunch?”

“Good idea. Say we meet in the cafeteria in 15?” you suggested.

Abby nodded. “See you there.”

-

As you packed your backpack, you tried to process what you had just heard. Abby knew the man who had run amok at the Firefly Hospital and apparently he was dead now. There had been another woman in Santa Barbara, and she had something to do with a possible vaccine? You knew the Fireflies had been extremely invested in the search for a vaccine after the outbreak, but they had given up on it a long time ago. Now they just tried to build safe zones without any infected in order to build communities of Fireflies, other survivors, and anyone else who wanted to join you.

Why were the others so keen on finding the other woman? What did Abby have to do with Joel and the massacre at the hospital? And why was this whole thing still affecting her so badly after all those years?

You wanted to try to talk to Abby later and find out what had gone down in Santa Barbara and at Salt Lake, but you also knew she had been waiting for this day to finally come so she could get out of here and distract herself for a while. Who were you to ruin this by forcing her to relive her trauma all over again?

Closing the zipper on your backpack and throwing it over your shoulder, you decided to just take it a step at a time. First, you had to get some food into your stomach.

-

Abby was excited about the trip and spent almost the whole meal asking you questions about the bay and the cabin. She told you she had spent some time in cabins up in Washington with her old WLF crew, but it had been snowing back then and the summer here was just an entirely different experience.

Lev was a bit sad he couldn’t go with you, but you promised him a beach bonfire in the next two weeks. He was way too happy about his new friends and tasks to sulk about your little duo mission. The boy was a fantastic archer and was now tasked with teaching his craft to younger trainees and older soldiers. He was delighted at being taken so seriously by adults for the first time in his life. His lessons at school were going well apparently, he enjoyed history and biology a lot.

Abby was attentively listening to him talking about crop diversification and the produce grown here during the different seasons as a group of fully-equipped soldiers came into the cafeteria. They seemed excited about their mission and were making a ton of noise, jeering and shoving each other around as they picked up their rations for the next two days from the serving counter. Abby and Lev both went quiet, poking around in their food and seeming to be holding their breaths until the squad had left.

Lev suddenly looked up at Abby with tears in his eyes.

“Do you think any of the Rattlers survived?” His voice was high pitched and he sounded like he was about to choke.

“Oh, Lev.” The blonde put her arm around his shoulder, her hands looking huge on his small frame. “I have no idea, I’m so sorry. I’m pretty sure the other prisoners were freed and got their revenge. She also freed some of the walkers in the area. It must have been bad. We’ll just have to wait and see, but I promise they’ll never lay a hand on you ever again.”

There she was again, the mysterious woman. Now you’d at least have a valid reason to bring it up. The boy sighed, then he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and straightened up. He waved over to a few other kids waiting at the exit.

“I need to go. Math class.” He grimaced and you and Abby both had to laugh. No one enjoyed math, but a certain basic knowledge was necessary for everyone here.

“See you tomorrow, Lev. I’ll bring her back safely,” you promised him and Abby rolled her eyes at you, but he gave you a genuinely thankful nod before tapping her shoulder as a goodbye and running over to his friends.

Abby smiled at you, her eyes lighting up as she remembered your plans for the day.

“You ready to go?” she asked, standing up and grabbing her backpack.

“Let’s get out of here.” You put on your backpack as well, took your plates and placed them in a plastic tub next to the counter.

In the empty corridor leading to the garage, Abby snuck her fingers between yours, sending sparks over your skin and making butterflies dance in your stomach. She pulled you toward her and after a quick glance left and right, she gave you a soft peck on the lips. You reacted instantly, burying your fingers in her hair and pulling her in for a second kiss, this time less innocent. Abby chuckled and grabbed your shoulder to push you away just a few inches and look you in the eyes.

You felt yourself blush and rubbed a hand over your eyes.

“Ugh, sorry, I just missed you all morning. Let’s just go.”

Grabbing her hand and pulling her with you, you entered the garage and quickly said hello to your coworkers before checking out the keys and leading Abby to your truck. Your colleagues didn’t lose a single word about the hand-holding and you were thankful for their discretion. They were your closest friends at the base and they knew you’d tell them more as soon as you were ready.

The drive out to the cabin took about an hour, one which you spent in blissful silence. You had rolled the windows down again and just like the last time, the summer air was whirling through the cabin and playing with your hair. Abby let an arm hang out of her window and took in the view of the different hills and forest patches, the beaches, and the beautiful meadows. She looked serene, completely at peace with herself and the world.

When you arrived at the cabin, it was better than you had remembered. The little wooden cottage was still in good shape, firewood was stacked up at the back and there was a small front porch with a perfect view of the bay in front of you. Two wooden chairs and a table stood on the porch, completely grown over with moss.

You fumbled with the keys for a second, then you were inside. All the curtains were drawn, bathing the dusty room in heavy yellow light before you opened them and looked around. Abby was still standing at the doorstep, uncertain of what to do.

The room was perfectly equipped with a little kitchen unit, a table with four chairs, a worn-out striped couch, and a decently sized bed, luckily covered with a big sheet to stop it from getting unbearably dusty. A narrow door in the corner seemed to lead to a bathroom. You put your hands on your hips and turned to Abby.

“Well, what do you think? Too dusty for your liking?”

The blonde snapped out of her astonishment.

“Are you kidding me? Y/N, it’s great! It looks so cozy, I think I’m gonna sleep better than I have for months.” She took a few steps toward you and wrapped her hands around your waist. “Especially when I’m sleeping next to you.”

“Oh, I thought you were gonna take the couch,” you said dryly. Abby’s eyes widened and you could tell she seriously thought she had overstepped until you wrapped your arms around her neck and snorted, immediately receiving a playful push backward that you put up with by holding on to her for dear life.

“You’re an asshole,” she laughed, “I got scared there for a second!” She planted a kiss on your lips and picked you up by your waist, making you squeal.

“I’m sorry, Abby, ahh! Please let me down!” you begged but you had to admit this was fun. The taller woman gently put you back on your feet, then she said: “Come on, let’s get settled here.”

She opened the windows while you tried the tap unsuccessfully before pulling the cover off the bed and revealing buttercup yellow sheets. Sweet. Abby used a towel to wipe the dust off the table before setting her bag on it and offering to take yours as well. She put all the supplies in the kitchen cabinet before announcing that she was going to find you some water.

“When you go outside, there should be a pump on the left side of the house. Make sure to pump for a while until you touch the water, it’s got to be disgusting,” you said as you started sweeping the floor with a broom.

“Yeah, I know how a cistern works, thanks.” She rolled her eyes at you. A minute later, you could hear the squeaking of the old metal pump and the gurgle of water seeing daylight for the first time in years. You put the broom in the corner and wiped your hands on your jeans. The bed looked inviting, but the beach called to you even louder. You could feel that this night would have a lasting impact on your life and your relationship with Abby.

After checking on the roof and the cistern, you made your way down to the beach and spent the afternoon swimming, reading, and chasing each other around. One time Abby actually tackled you too hard and you got sand everywhere - your mouth, your nose, your eyes, even under your bathing suit. Abby couldn’t stop apologizing and telling you how sorry she was and how she underestimated her own strength but you swore vengeance for later and laughed it off. In order to get rid of all the sand underneath your suit, you went into the water and took it off before whirling it around over your head and getting Abby all flustered.

You secretly wanted her to join you, but she seemed to be too timid to go that fast so you put your bathing suit back on and let yourself flop down next to her, purposely splashing water on her and making her squeal as the cold drops hit her hot skin. Following an impulse, you rolled over and on top of her, pressing your cold, wet body on her soft, warm back. This time, she forced herself to stay still and not throw you around again, instead resorting to cursing you and calling you an atrocious little eel, only making you laugh harder.

After a while, she gave up on fighting you and you rested your cheek on her warm shoulder, humming in satisfaction. This was nice. It would be even better when you’d lie next to her in bed.

The afternoon seemed to go on forever, time standing still as you two forgot all your worries and enjoyed living in this little bubble of sun, sea and happiness. Then, finally, the sun hung low over the sea, drenching the world in golden light and painting the water orange and the clouds pink. It was an explosion of light and color, the pure beauty you could only find in nature. Or in the person you loved most.

Looking over at Abby, you saw she was also watching the waves and the clouds, the soft light illuminating the tiny hairs on her face and arms and making the dried salt crystals that stuck to her skin glint like little diamonds. Her dark blonde hair was swaying in the slight breeze and her cheeks had a faint red tinge from the sun. She was mesmerizing.

You moved closer to her and drew your nose along her jawline, breathing on her neck and placing tiny kisses behind her ear and on her temple until she was humming and leaning into your touch. She slowly turned her head and grazed your open mouth with hers before running the tip of her tongue over your upper lip. She opened her eyes.

“This really is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Nothing has ever made me feel like this,” she mumbled without drawing back.

“I’m glad you like it. I’ve been wanting to show it to you for a while.”

“I wish you would have shown me sooner. But I’m really happy you’re doing it now.” She turned her torso towards you and brushed her fingers over your thigh, leaving goosebumps in their wake. You could see the specks of gold in her iris, reflecting the last rays of sunlight and making her look ethereal and otherworldly. Oh god, how in the world had you found her? How had she found you? This was too good to be true, but you wanted to believe that it was, to believe that this moment could last forever.

In a desperate attempt to tell her all this, the beautiful chaos in your heart and your head that started spinning when you were with her, you leaned forward and kissed her. Hard, like you were scared this wasn’t real or it could be your last, then softer when you felt Abby tense up in surprise. She opened her mouth for you and you dragged your tongue against hers, tasting hints of salt and the fruit you had had earlier. You became more confident and placed your hand on her inner thigh which she took in with a gasp before grabbing the back of your neck and pulling you closer, her tongue now more forceful and demanding.

You couldn’t take the space between you any longer and crawled on top of her, straddling her hips as you looked down at her face, her green eyes half-closed and her mouth hanging open. The sun had said its farewells and vanished behind the horizon and the atmosphere created by the dusk suddenly hit you full force. Abby’s face was still softly lit by the pink clouds behind you while the sky behind her was a dark, heavy blue fading to black in the distance. She looked like a fucking painting.

“I’m so glad I found you,“ you whispered, running your fingers through her hair.

Abby answered by wrapping her arms around you and pulling you in. She kissed you with a burning passion, gentle but daring, sweet but hot, encasing you with her body and her mouth and pressing you so close that there wasn’t an inch left between you.

As she moved her hands down your body, pulling your hips closer and caressing your legs, she noticed the goosebumps all over your body and halted for a second.

“Are you cold, baby?”

You wanted to say no, but you had to admit you were starting to shiver under your still slightly damp swimming suit and wet hair, the evening breeze dancing around you and mocking you for getting so lost in the moment that you forgot everything around you.

“I really am,” you sighed, “maybe we could get some blankets and food and start a fire?”

Abby nodded and you struggled to your feet, feeling very naked and small all of a sudden. The blonde noticed your change of behavior and immediately got up next to you. She grabbed your books and towels and wrapped her dry one around your shoulders, rubbing up and down your arms a few times to warm you up before pulling you in for a tight hug.

“Come on, let’s get you inside and warmed up.”

Inside the cabin, Abby managed to light an oil lamp and fill the room with a wonderfully soft, yellow light. She slowly walked toward you and came to a halt right in front of you. Gently, she placed her hands on your shoulders and took the towel, placing it on a chair beside you. Then she hooked a finger under the strap of your swimsuit and slowly pulled it over your shoulder and down your arm, never breaking eye contact. Both of you were breathing heavily, the air between you felt like sirup and the world seemed to stop turning.

You laid a hand on top of Abby’s and moved with her, dragging the strap down your arm to expose a slight tan line and a hard nipple standing out into the cold air. Abby still hadn’t moved her eyes from yours, helping you pull your arm out of the strap and slowly pulling down the other one until your entire chest was bare. You could feel another rush of goosebumps chasing over your entire body while hot blood shot into your face and painted your cheeks in a deep red.

You both took a deep breath simultaneously, then you nodded at the tall woman in front of you. She lowered her eyes to your breasts and let out a shaky breath, then she raised a hand and drew her fingertips over your collarbone, down your ribs, and up between your breasts before brushing over your sensitive nipples and finally using both hands to cup your breasts. She stepped closer and bent her head to kiss you. You melted into her, her hands now all over your body, her hot skin on your cold flesh, and her mouth on yours before attacking your throat, making you throw your head back and let out an ecstatic moan.

Suddenly, Abby’s hands were on your ass and she picked you up effortlessly. You wrapped your legs around her waist and held on to her shoulders as she carried you towards the bed, sitting down on it with you in her lap. You buried your fingers in her hair and pulled on it as you ground your hips forward and kissed along her jaw.

In this moment, you felt something shift inside her. She tensed up, but not in a way that felt right in this situation. You let go of her immediately and leaned back to look at her, scared you had done something wrong or she didn’t want this after all.

“Abby, is everything okay?” you asked, your voice sounding strangely loud and panicky in the silent room.

She kept one hand on the small of your back while rubbing the back of her head with the other.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s just - fuck…” You could see tears welling up in her eyes as she furrowed her brows and tried to keep it together. “You just reminded me of someone. It’s not your fault, you didn’t know. It’s just… you don’t know everything about me yet. Maybe it’s time you did so you can decide if you still want me.”

She averted her eyes and let her hands fall to your thighs. For the second time in minutes, you felt strangely exposed and out of place. You nodded, then you stood up and turned away. It felt like your heart was slowly tearing at the seams and pouring blood into your stomach. Why couldn’t this be easy? What was the secret Abby had kept from you? You couldn’t imagine not wanting her anymore. She was everything you had ever dreamed of, the only person that had ever made you truly happy and it was impossible for you to see a future without her. The thought alone felt like a knife to your stomach.

You quickly pulled a big hooded sweatshirt from your backpack and put it on before taking off the swimsuit and slipping into fresh underwear and linen pants. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see Abby getting dressed as well.

“I’m gonna get some wood from the back and start a fire on the beach,” you declared into the silence and rushed out the door without daring to look at Abby.

You piled up the wood on the sand, added some dried grass and small sticks in the middle and lit them with a match. The breeze had died down and the fire started at the first try. Abby came down from the cabin with two plaid blankets, a water bottle, and a small loaf of bread from your provisions. She spread one of the blankets on the ground and motioned for you to sit down, putting the second one around your shoulders when you had settled.

She sat down next to you and took a few gulps of water before handing the bottle to you. You were thankful for the cool liquid soothing your dry throat after the day in the sun and saltwater.

Abby took a deep breath, then she began.

She told you about her life at Salt Lake, growing up among the Fireflies, about her father, the surgeon, and the search for a vaccine. They had heard there was a girl who was immune and on her way to them, but only a few people believed it, her dad among them. When the day finally came, she had been out training with her boyfriend Owen and upon her arrival at the base, everyone was talking about the girl and the surgery her father was about to perform on her in order to try to develop a vaccine. There was an actual chance of salvation; everyone was enthusiastic.

Then the shooting had happened. Joel, the man who had brought the girl had suddenly changed his mind and abducted the girl straight from the operating table. He had shot everyone in his way. When Abby ran to find her father, it had been too late. Joel had killed him and with him the last chance of making a vaccine. Abby’s world had been destroyed in a matter of minutes.

That day, she had sworn vengeance. She had started training even harder than before and followed every tip she got to find Joel. The Fireflies had crumbled and she and a small group of friends had joined the WLF. Abby had broken up with Owen and everyone but her had given up on vengeance, but one day she had found Joel and his brother Tommy. She had brought them to the cabin where she was staying with her crew and she had killed Joel. An eye for an eye.

What she hadn’t expected was the young woman turning up at the last second to inevitably watch Joel die. They had left her and Tommy there and seen the matter as dealt with.

Then, suddenly, Abby’s friends had been killed one by one. This was at the same time she had met Lev and helped him flee from the Seraphites. In Seattle, she had come face to face with Ellie, the immune girl from way back and the woman who had watched Joel, her father figure, die at the hands of Abby. She had been the one to kill Abby’s crew trying to find her. Abby however had defeated her and Tommy once more and warned them not to come after her again.

Months after, just as they had made first contact with the Catalina Fireflies, Abby and Lev had been captured by the Rattlers and were tortured for weeks. One day, Ellie had turned up there and helped them escape before challenging Abby to one last fight to the death, threatening to kill Lev if Abby wouldn’t do it. They had fought a gruesome battle, both sustaining terrible wounds before Ellie had given up and let Abby and Lev go.

Abby didn’t know where she was now and if she had survived, and she didn’t care. She knew why Ellie had pursued her and she knew Ellie understood her reasons, too. Still, the loss they had suffered at the hands of the other was unbearable. Abby had lost everyone she had ever trusted or shared good memories with to horrific deaths and there would never be justice. She would never get them back and she would never understand why all this had to happen.

By the end of her story, Abby was sobbing. You had wrapped your blanket around the both of you and your hand lay on her thigh, but you didn’t dare to make closer contact. You didn’t know what to think of all this. What a waste. What a terrible, devastating tragedy. How horrible to suffer this much and have no one to blame, nothing to do with all the pain and grief.

Abby wiped her eyes with the corner of the blanket.

“I think, if I hadn’t found Lev, I wouldn’t have made it. I would have let her kill me. What was there to live for after everything that had happened?”

The thought of Abby dying was the final pull that ripped your heart to shreds. You pressed both of your hands to your chest to assure yourself you were okay, panting heavily as you tried to find something to say. There was nothing you could offer that would make this hell better for her. The realization was crushing.

You both sat in silence for a few minutes while Abby tried to calm her breathing and you tried to calm your thoughts. Finally, you broke the silence.

“I’ve loved Lev from the minute I met him and I’m so thankful he’s here.”

What you wanted to say, wanted to scream into the flames, was that you had loved Abby since the second you saw her, that she had your heart, that this was fucking confusing but didn’t change your feelings for her and that you would never give up on trying to be with her.

“That little boy has the biggest heart I’ve ever seen. He’s been through so much and he had to grow up in the span of a few months, but when I see him smile or hear him laugh or talk about fucking sustainable agriculture” - she had to laugh through a veil of tears - “I know it was all worth it. Every fight, every day in that godforsaken cell, every bullet. He’s my reason.”

Fuck it. It was better to tell her right now than to suffer the uncertainty any longer.

“Abby, I honestly don’t know what to say. I can’t even begin to perceive the horrors you’ve been through and I’m not going to act like I even remotely understand how you feel. What I do know is this: there is no one to blame in this whole terrible web of tragedy. What matters is that it’s over and that you now have the chance to live a life without constant danger and death and disaster. And I’m going to be at your side every day, no matter how long it takes for you to accept safety and peace and maybe even happiness into your life, even if it takes you forever. I have never felt the way I feel with you, I didn’t even know it was possible to love someone this deeply. I understand that you’re far away sometimes and I know there is still a lot of distance between us and you don’t have to reciprocate any of this, but I just want you to know . Know you are loved, know you have a place here, and know I will do everything in my power to help you through this.”

Abby’s eyes had gone wide at your monologue and she seemed completely blindsided by your confession. How had she not seen this coming? Did she seriously think she was just some fling to you? A little summer fun? What was she thinking?

The blonde stared into the fire, contemplating and kneading her fingers.

“Today was the first time I didn’t think of them for several hours. Ever since we arrived, I just tucked it all away in a corner of my mind and decided I could be sad tomorrow because today, with you, I would be happy.”

You held your breath and waited for her to continue, not daring to move or say a word.

“And I really was. Happy, you know? And you’re different, too. Owen was there for me so I was there for him. It just turned out I didn’t care for him as much as he did for me. And that really, really fucking sucks to know now that he’s gone. But I can’t change it. All I know is that I’ve never cared for anyone as much as I care for you. You’re constantly on my mind and I get irritated and impatient when I haven’t seen you for too long, usually meaning only a couple hours, which is a little pathetic if I gotta be honest.”

She looked at you and it felt like she was staring right into your soul. You were frozen, in disbelief at what she was telling you. She held out her hand and you took it, your fingers naturally slipping between hers and closing around her palm. How could two bodies fit each other that perfectly? Abby took a deep breath and turned her gaze to the fire again.

“I still have a long way to go with all this and the next few days are going to absolutely fucking horrible. I have no idea how I’m going to survive that. But with you by my side, I want to try. For you, for Lev, and for all the people I’ve lost. I owe it to them to make the best of the life I still have.”

She lifted your hands to her face and kissed the back of your hand.

“You, Y/N, have stirred something inside me I haven’t felt in years. It feels warm and hopeful and eager to see what the next day brings. And because I know tomorrow will bring a lot of pain, at the moment I just want to see what the next hour brings.”

You let your head fall on her shoulder and she put an arm around you. It had gone completely dark and the fire was slowly dying down, but you were warm and comfortable. The night was singing a bittersweet song for those gone too soon, the trees humming their wonderful tenor as the waves joined in with a whisper, the bats over your heads drumming their fleeting rhythm, and an owl completing the symphony with her wailing cries.

Abby started talking again and telling you stories about her time with the Fireflies while ripping off little pieces of bread for you both. One day, her and Owen had helped her dad free a zebra that had gotten caught in some wire. Her first kiss had been Nora, her closest friend and a brilliant doctor. Leah and Jordan had been the power couple at the WLF, brilliant together but also extremely annoying whenever they started wildly making out at parties or fucking in the bathroom thinking the others wouldn’t hear. Then there was Mel, part of the group but in a difficult triangle with Abby and Owen. She had been pregnant with Owen’s child when Ellie killed her. And Yara, what a wonderful young woman. Lev’s sister had stood by him and defended him when he had gotten in trouble with the Seraphites and she had done everything she could to protect him until the day she died. From that day on, Abby had taken that responsibility.

She also told you about her fear of heights and the trip through the sky with Lev, now laughing as she admitted how bizarre it all seemed looking back. It was nice to hear her laugh again and to finally really get to know her.

When the fire was nothing more than a few smoldering coals, Abby suggested going back to the cabin. You packed up your things and carried them back inside. Abby lit the lamp again while you folded the sandy blankets and put them to the side. Then you locked the door.

As you turned around, you could see Abby standing next to the bed, looking at you. Her features were only lit from the side, golden light flickering over her cheekbones and jaw. Her head was slightly cocked and her hands were restless again, searching for something to hold on to and finding only each other.

“Come here,” she said in a low voice. You felt yourself drawn to her by an invisible string, moving faster with every step until you clashed into her, hands and arms entangling, hot mouths pressed together. She let herself fall back onto the bed and pulled you down with her.

You couldn’t tell if the rushing in your ears was the sea or your own blood, but it didn’t matter. Abby’s calloused hands were exploring your back under the sweatshirt, her thigh was pressed between yours and her heavy breathing joined the harmony in your head.

You paused for a minute, staring down at the beautiful face beneath you, her eyes promising that she was all yours.

“You're so fucking beautiful,” you whispered, then you kissed her again and dragged her down with you into an ocean of pleasure.

-

Author’s note: After receiving amazing feedback from you guys and a demand for more, I’m currently in the process of writing a Part 3 for this! Thank you for your patience 💌 if you’d like, you can support me by buying me a coffee 💛

[dellikay]

Arnold Chiari Malformation Blogs: How it all began & getting a diagnosis

This is the first in a series of blogs where I’m going to be writing about my experiences with Arnold Chiari Malformation (ACM, as it will be referred to from here on out), ranging from how my condition suddenly worsened and made it itself known, all the way to present day and how it affects me now. These will all be likely very long posts, but there is a lot of information to share and it is all integral to address, so that people reading this who don’t know much about the condition can understand exactly what the condition entails and how it feels to actually have it. I’ve split the whole ‘story’ into five parts and will be working to get those typed up and released as soon as possible. What I want to start with is how my condition made itself known to me, having laid dormant internally for 15 years of my life and the ordeals I went through to secure a correct diagnosis. It all started on a perfectly normal day - I was playing Simon the Sorcerer 3D (I’m blaming the game for it all because it was bloody awful and broken beyond all belief) on the family computer. I got to a part of the game (among many others) where the game had glitched and I couldn’t progress any further. I accessed a walkthrough online and read how to navigate around the glitch. I then started to feel nauseous. I tried to carry on as normal, but the intensity of the nausea increased rapidly and I had a really massive headache, one of the worst that I had ever experienced up until that point in time. I had to give up on my game and laid down flat on the settee. Before long, I was having major coughing fits and had to run to the toilet to be violently sick. This, of course, made the headache worse, so I ended up making up a bed on the settee and having to stay on there. I was too weak to do anything and I kept having to rush to the toilet at the drop of a hat to be sick over and over again. After a few days, my other symptoms from what we assumed was the flu started to subside but I was still being violently sick multiple times a day and had agonising headaches that lasted all day and all night. I assumed the headaches were an issue because of how often and how forcefully I was being sick multiple times a day. Months passed and I was still the same. I’d been to see my then GP a couple of times since regarding what was happening to me. Because I had been diagnosed with OCD and depression from the age of 11, he immediately assumed that my symptoms were a physical manifestation of my mental illness, so just upped my dosage of whatever I was on at the time and sent me on my way. I was going to college by this time, after I had to leave secondary school due to being bullied to the point of...well, not being in a very good state of mind, I’ll just put it that way. Somehow, I managed to attend classes and go when I should do and even went on a trip to Alton Towers with the group I was in there, all the while getting worse physically, having to excuse myself from lessons suddenly to go and be sick and having headaches so bad that I had to lay my head down on the desk. Walking to and from college (which was literally a ten minute walk from my house) become more perilous as my balance became affected...on one occasion, I was crossing the road and a car was approaching faster than I anticipated. I tried to run the rest of the way over but my legs immediately collapsed from under me and I fell flat onto the road, about six feet in front of the car. Thankfully, the driver had seen what was going to happen and had the foresight to slow right down. However, I couldn’t get myself off the road because I was dizzy and my legs didn’t want to cooperate and no one stopped to help me or to see if I was alright. I walked the rest of the way home in tears. I didn’t know what was going on and was obviously shaken from what had just happened as well as the sheer rejection from the public who just acted like I was invisible even though I was in dire need of help. Sadly, after a few more months of this deterioration, I had to stop going to college because I was too poorly to make it through lessons and the journey to and from college was way too risky. From one end of the day to the other, I laid flat on the settee and was just enveloped in a complete world of pain.  I persisted with my GP, insisting that there was something physically wrong with me, as opposed to it all being ‘in my head’ (ironically) and that the medication he had put me on my own wasn’t doing anything to stop the headaches or the vomiting. He wouldn’t listen to me and even got cross with me at one point and basically told me to stop putting it on to get attention. I felt defeated - I KNEW my own body and I KNEW that there was something very wrong but no one would listen to me. I could see and feel that it was getting worse. My balance became worse still, my weight had plummeted because I couldn’t keep any food in my system, I was still being sick multiple times a day and by the end, just bringing up water because my stomach was empty. I was accused of having an eating disorder and once again, doing this all to myself for attention. My headaches had got so bad that one time, I was laid on the floor in the living room because my head was too painful to stand or even sit up and suddenly my body started to move of its own accord. It was like I was rolling down a hill but I was on a completely flat surface. My body kept trying to roll to the side as if to balance itself if I was on a slope. It was completely out of my control and certainly one of the scariest parts of pre-diagnosis. I phoned for an appointment with my GP again, ready to stand my ground and insist once more that my symptoms were the result of something physical. I was angry, in incredible pain 24/7, weak, scared and I just wanted to be heard. When I went to the doctors, not feeling the most confident, I was told that my GP was off that day and I would be seeing one of the junior doctors instead. This made me feel a tiny glimmer of hope but I repressed it just in case he was of the same mindset as my regular doctor and he also accused me of being an attention seeker. When I was called into his office, I took a seat and I was asked to describe my symptoms. As I told him, the doctor started to look more and more concerned. He did some balance tests on me, which obviously I was incapable of completing and within five minutes, he told me that in no uncertain terms that my symptoms were way too severe to be merely a figment of my imagination and that he agreed that there was something physically wrong with me. He told me he’d book me in for an MRI. Finally. Someone listened. Someone believed me. I cried, partly from relief and elation that I had a chance of being saved from whatever it was that was destroying me from the inside out - and partly from fear because there really, truly was something wrong with me. Something seriously wrong with me, according to the doctor I had just seen. The following few months are a blur to me and I can’t remember any real details about what happened or the order in which things happened. I just remember going to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham multiple times, being prodded and poked and being sent for more scans and then I saw a man who warned me that no matter what a man called Mr White said to me, I should REFUSE to have brain surgery. Under no circumstances should I listen to what he was saying and carry on as I was. He also asked me outright if I thought I had an eating disorder (basically, that I was causing myself to be sick and lose all of this weight - which was getting on for four and a half stones (63lbs) by the point - and made me feel like I had to concede that there was a possibility that could be the case, even though I knew it wasn’t. Of course, being in the sorry state that I was, I couldn’t understand this path of logic and neither could my parents. It turns out the Mr White was one of the leading brain surgeons in the country, specialised in rare brain conditions and would be the one to perform my surgery if I consented. We (as in me and my parents) met him shortly after and well, basically me and Mum fell in love with him. Lol. He was very softly spoken, gentle and kind - completely different to the man we had seen previously. Mr White was the one who told me I had Chiari Malformation Type 2 and what that meant. I was 18 years at the time (bear in mind my symptoms had started when I was 15) so he took his time with me, was very patient because he could see how terrified I was about what he was telling me and told me everything I needed to know and answered any questions I had. He explained why I was experiencing the symptoms I had and how the surgery would at the very least hopefully stop the progression of them getting even worse. He also told me that alongside the ACM, I also had hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and this was putting extra pressure on my brain and squeezing it into an even tighter space. This also meant I had a rare version of a rare condition (as it was known now - the classification of the illness has now been upgraded to ‘uncommon’, which means it’s not as rare as once thought but often misdiagnosed) so any surgery that would be carried out on me was not guaranteed to have the same level of success as if I hadn’t had the hydrocephalus. In fact, my cerebellum (the part of the brain that controls the nervous system, balance and coordination and reactions to external stimuli) had been wedged behind the top few vertebrae of my spine, which was what was causing the disabling headaches. Despite what the other man had advised me to do, I agreed to the surgery. There was no other way I was going to get better. It was scary either way and the decision was completely mine to make. Mr White was extremely concerned as he could see how poorly and fragile I was and was pushing for me to have the surgery before Christmas (I think we went to go and see him at some point in November). However, I was frightened and I just wanted one more Christmas before going through such a huge life event. I wasn’t sure I’d make it out the other side so I wanted just one more big celebration. Even though he wasn’t best happy with me wanting to wait until after Christmas, he agreed but he said he would book me in for as soon as possible afterwards. Basically, time was of the essence, I had a ticking time bomb in my head and it could have detonated at any second. I was too young and too frightened to understand at the time but me choosing to have the surgery a month or so later than was wanted by the surgeon could have cost me my ability to walk entirely or my life if my health had taken another slump.

[angelholme]

This is how democracy dies

So Nigel Farage and his mob of angry nitwits are protesting the Peterborough Election because - essentially - they can’t believe they lost.

It should be noted that right after the election he called most of his supporters stupid - “The reason we lost is most of the Brexit supporters were too stupid to know what they were voting for” (I may be paraphrasing, but that was pretty much what he said). 

However he has made wild accusations of voter fraud on a large scale, and suggested Labour have used unfair means to win.

Which is bad enough, but his sycophants are taking the ball and running with it.

Much like the people in America who think that because there is an alleged 0.9% fraud with the food stamp system they should “CANCEL THE ENTIRE PROGRAM”, there are now a few people who - because their messiah Nigel has suggested the postal vote system is possibly open to fraud - want the entire postal vote system scrapped. For good.

I got into a discussion about this :- (my comments in bold, his in italics)

The Postal Vote was FIVE times bigger than the average for a Constituency and there were plenty of allegation made that the Votes had been tampered with. IF the Electoral Commission decide to re-run it then hopefully NO Postal votes will be allowed and people will be obliged to prove who they are and that they are entitled to vote.

So you are just going to disenfranchise EVERY disabled person in Peterborough by banning postal votes?

That seems kind of mean, don’t you think?

No, they can be taken to a Polling Station just like everyone else. Necessary if you are going stop electoral fraud.

And those who live out in the middle of no where, fifty miles from their polling station. Are you going to do that? And pay the cost?

Or make someone else pay for your little crusade?

So they want to vote. They get a bus or a lift.

“So this is how democracy ends. With cheering and applause”

OR is it that you have a personal reason NOT to stop any Electoral Fraud?

x-x-x

Because of some allegations - made without any proof, and none that have been proven - he wants to strip postal votes from everyone. Leaving hundreds, maybe thousands of people without a vote. 

And even when I point out the problems, he just assumes that if people want to vote they will find a way - that it is up to a person to get to a polling station, no matter what physical, mental or other problems they might have, if they want to cast their vote.

And then - when I point out he is destroying democracy - he accuses me of being a criminal, and having my own agenda. He doesn’t have any proof of this - he just assumes that if I want to support the idea of postal votes and those who need them I must be a criminal who wants to cheat the system.

This is how democracy dies. How thousands of people lose their right to vote in a single sweep of a pen. Farage and his ilk make unfounded, wild accusations, and soon it balloons into “WE MUST DO SOMETHING TO STOP FRAUD” and so all the methods to make our system more accessible are stripped away until we are back to the days of only straight, white, rich men being allowed to vote.

Because trust me - that’s where this is going. Next will be ID cards, then bans on burkas and other veils and soon bans on anyone who looks a bit dodgy.

I think Farage knows why he lost Peterborough - because in the whole history of UKIP they’ve won what? One seat at Westminster - and the Brexit party has no manifesto. 

However he’s seen how well these kind of tactics - throwing around unfounded accusations and lies - go over in America, and decided to give them a try.

And, from all appearances, they seem to be going quite well.

x-x-x

Just for some background - six years ago I was recovering from heart surgery. I found it hard to stand up for five minutes in a row. I was at home with my girlfriend who didn’t drive (at that time). 

So the idea that I could “get a bus” or “get a lift” to the polling station in the event of an election was ridiculous. The idea that I could walk into the polling station, stand up long enough to vote and walk out again was even more so. I am pretty sure doing so might have killed me, or at the very least put me back in hospital.

If you ban all postal votes, for everyone, tens of thousands of people will be disenfranchised. 

And not just those with physical disabilities, or (for want of a better phrase) psychological problems.Those who will be away on election day, or who are going into hospital and won’t be there to vote.

Our right to vote is an essential part of who we are as citizens, as people of Britain. And the idea that it can be taken from us just because of some unfounded and wild accusations is horrifying.

And yet...... this is what some people would have happen. Because their messiah and god emperor says so.

[owljolson-archive]

it got mentioned in my last comic update reblog blurb, but i don’t think i actually detailed what happened to me recently, did i?

sooo. my luck being what it is, back on the 11th i broke my left arm. it’s super frustrating; i was just bringing in the last of my laundry, ready to go to bed after, looking forward to the warm weather starting the next day, and i’d already slipped and banged my knee earlier in the evening and was being cautious, so you’d think i was good for the night, but nooope. and then a few days later i had surgery and my grandma died.

lengthy unpleasantness and ruminating under the cut

slipped on the very last black ice of the season, landing hard on my left arm and breaking it to the point that it sagged in a way forearms should not sag when i attempted to raise it. a neighbor passed by a couple minutes later, and kindly called for help and stayed with me until it arrived.

i’ve never broken anything before. that night was a traumatic one, and had a lot of firsts; my first ever broken bone(s), my first ever ambulance ride, my first ever overnight stay in a hospital. all while experiencing some of the worst pain of my life. luckily for me, i live pretty close to the best hospital in iowa, and one that’s pretty well-regarded in general and even nationally ranked in a few areas, including orthopedics (woo)

it was a rough night; lots of waiting, lots of x-rays and manipulation of my arm. they knocked me out, because they didn’t like the way my bones were set initially, and actually had to remove my cast and put on a second new one. afterwards i threw up all over everything, including my poor nurse, because my body didn’t like ketamine one bit. my nurse was super nice and positive, a real trooper, i apologized to and thanked him a whole bunch.

eventually i went home, spent the next couple days in a daze, and on the 15th i went in for surgery. because when i break bones, apparently i break ‘em good; the doctors needed to install some steel plating and screws to help the healing process. it was pretty nerve-wracking; my first ever invasive surgery, like-actual-real-ass-operating-room-surgery. but everybody was nice, the operation went well (good hospital for it, after all), i didn’t throw up, and after several hours of waking up and observation they sent me off with my lovely cousin and his wife, who’ve been extremely helpful through all this and kept an eye on me as official caregivers for the next 24 hours despite still getting over illness of their own (surgery would’ve been postponed indefinitely/cancelled if i didn’t have one).

and then i found out about my babcia. she’d just had her 98th birthday not even two weeks before, but she had heart troubles and had caught pneumonia, and we knew that that was pretty much the ballgame. she passed away just as i was going into surgery, apparently. it was quietly and my mom was by her side, so i suppose that’s the best it could have gone, and she’d had a very long life.

but...man. it had just been her birthday so recently. she was my last blood grandparent, and was Always There. she never spoke very good english, being an older immigrant, and rarely talked about the past. so i only ever caught snippets of her younger life, becoming an adult in poland just as ww2 hit and ravaged the country, with things like her brother being a pow, and her and her mother traversing the countryside on foot in winter. but they all informed a lot about her, and probably explained how resilient and always-trucking-along she was, and how she cheerfully lived by herself in the village in manhattan even into the 2000s. but she became so frail in the end, physically and mentally, that she couldn’t even stay with family anymore. she quietly died in a little hospital-like retirement home in some small corner of arizona, with almost nothing and few people in her life, just family and most of them spread out far away, quietly cremated.it feels so unfair. i think my mom’s going to try and request a small catholic mass in her memory; she would have liked that.

and it happened in the middle of my trauma and surgery, with my recuperation and sleepy medication knocking me out, so it still hasn’t fully processed yet. i feel so numb and isolated from it, and that makes me upset on another level. i hope i don’t crash too hard when it does eventually hit.

so...now i wait. my left arm’s in an elbow-covering full arm cast, which really sucks, but i get a new regular cast on the 29th. and then i’m in that for another month (and potentially i’ll need another surgery in a year or so to remove the metal, depending on how well my body handles it being in there).  i don’t know what the hell i’m going to do with myself during that time. i have a special project i need to power through and work on, so fingers crossed i can swing that since my drawing hand is mercifully untouched, but my regular webcomic and other stuff is off the rails for months, just as i was preparing to ramp things up.

i’m going to miss out on a lot of the nice cool spring weather, too. my workplace has been very supportive, even sending me flowers, but i haven’t been there long enough to qualify for medical leave or short term disability, and was forced to cancel an upcoming vacation and burn through most of my pto for 2019. hopefully i can get a couple days of bereavement leave, at least. and thank god i have health insurance and an hsa, but i’m still dreading a huge bill even after all that, with everything i’ve been through it won’t be cheap. if i have to create yet another gofundme, i’m gonna be so pissed. capitalism!

that’s me for the next month and a half, i guess. it’s been very difficult but there’s been a lot of support, and i’m doing my best to cope, but, man. it’s rough. it’s going to be a long six weeks. typing this all out helped, but man.

[amandaelisablog]

A RANT THAT IS TMI

I need to vent because life gets heavy sometimes and it’s hard to be alone in your mind with these things. I’ve found that doing this gives me an outlet and hopefully finding others who feel as I do. So back in November I had a work injury and forgot to send in a report about it. I didn’t have insurance at the time due to how expensive it was which sucks because you get a penalty charge on your taxes for being uninsured. It’s an unfair thing to the hardworking folks who put in time for crap pay and even work under poor conditions or strenuous physical demands. Having your government say, hey you work, you pay your taxes but you fucked up by not being able to pay for insurance. Anyway, so I got through the whole process to get this checked out, find that it’s a sprain in my knee that hasn’t healed since November, it’s now March. They pay for the urgent care visit, the sports injury doctor, the MRI proving the injury and then deny the claim for physical therapy because I didn’t report it when it happened. What was the point of going through all of this for three months if you knew this and still paid for those tests? Not only that but my company told the worker comp that they called the family I work for (I’m a care provider for people with disabilities) and said that the family said they didn’t know anything about it. It’s all bullshit because the day it happened I told the parents, plus me and the mom are very close and she would have told me right away if someone had called her. She doesn’t hide or keep things from me, she considers me family.

It has put a bad taste in my mouth over my company and the way they deal with things like this. I am a hard worker, I even stayed that day on two twisted ankles, a messed up knee, hip and arm. I was there 8 hours and couldn’t do much with the child I work for due to all the pain I was in, so our activities were floor or table based. On normal days we play and work on habilitation which can be physically demanding and that wasn’t possible. So now after all of that I still have a messed up knee and three months of wasted time. If I had known that this was going to be the outcome of this I would have used my insurance, though I didn’t learn of this insurance until after I started the claim process. It had been active since December which would have been nice to know but again what can you expect from the way that Arizona department services are run.

If the can get out of spending any money on a person they will find a way, which is what Copper Pointe did, it was easy for them to deny it and for my company to throw it and lie about doing a more in depth search on my claims. I am a truly honest person and find that there isn’t a reason to lie about things, especially something like this. The only reason I had informed my manager was to find some information on what happens if I were to have surgery on my knee due to the extreme pain, as well as others in my life who had the exact same pain in that area. I wanted to know if they offered any kind of time off. I like to cover every base I can in order to avoid losing out on pay. I barely make it every month and each month is so anxiety inducing. If it came down to missing work for this or just living with it I would have just left it alone. This is how the world works and it’s your word against those of higher power. You will always be in the wrong because they get final say.

My second issue is this. Since I just got insurance I’ve established a PCP, OBGYN etc. First of all my PCP is making it real easy for me to drop her and find someone else with more consideration. I take medications for anxiety, depression and a mood disorder, which they can’t decide is bipolar or not. I need them badly and after a few days the effects are obvious. Pretty soon it will be hard for me to drive or get out of bed. My mood is very manic as I go through these cycles, it so disorientating and damaging to my job if it happens then. I still have to work and it’s hard, so hard. How the hell am I supposed to even get to work if I can’t drive a straight line or keep the fogginess at bay?

Anyways, so she told me any times since seeing her she would refill these medications. I even brought a paper from a free clinic I had been going to. It had all the information they needed in order to record this and the phone number to the place to verify. Two different people took this information down. The front desk girl took the paper and wrote it down as well as the doctor’s assistant who I watched type every single one into my file on the computer. I was there 7 days ago and told her I needed them refilled since I had one more left of each of them. She said she would send them out that day. I waited and waited but never got the text from my pharmacy saying they were filled so I called the pharmacy thinking maybe they didn’t send it yet. They had no record of it being sent over.

So called my doctor’s office and the girl I spoke to seemed like she didn’t know anything. I explained to her three times the situation and she claimed she couldn’t find any record of these medications, the ones I made sure to give them straight away to avoid this. I called every day since and still nothing, after the third day she magically found the medications and was waiting for doctor approval and for the quantity and mg, which had given the second day calling. I even called today and got the same damn thing from when I first called. I’ve been out of medications for about five days and feel like shit. It has really made me feel as though I made the wrong choice in a provider. I am considering finding someone different who will take things seriously and do their job. Luckily the family I work for is on vacation and I have this time to be in this depressed anxious state.

The last thing on my list here and this is going to get personal, a lot of tmi. I went to my new OBGYN and did all the fun tests you get to do that are both uncomfortable and awkward. After all the tests the doctor sat down with me and said matter of fact, you guys don’t plan on having kids I see. I was taken aback by this because we do plan on having kids just not right now as our money situation isn’t the best. I told her this and she look at me with concern and I didn’t understand what was going on. She explained to me that due to my age, weight and birth control that this factors are working against us conceiving. That was a huge punch to the gut and I wasn’t expecting to hear that. So she hooked me up with this woman who is helping me to lose weight and I’ve lost 6 so far which is a great feeling. But due to this whole business with my meds I am having a hard time not falling back to eating to fill that void. So far I haven’t but I want to.

Anyway, so I had another problem that had to be checked. This is where it gets personal. I got my nips pierced a few years ago, after a year they got infected, did the whole antibiotics thing and it seemed to have gone away. But about a year or so ago I started feeling pain and something hard inside of it. Because I didn’t have insurance it been a struggle to deal with this. On the pain scale it’s about a 7 to 8 some days. The doc didn’t find anything upon inspection but decided to send me to get an ultrasound. So did that and they found an abnormality inside? Just think if she hadn’t sent me and it got worse. I got sent to a specialist who gave me three options, 1 was to leave it alone, 2 was antibiotics and the last option is removing the damaged tissue, which is last because it’s the worst one on the list. So I’m on antibiotics for two weeks then I wait 3 months to make sure it’s gone before we visit the last option. So this is the last option, we remove the damaged tissue which will cause the nerves inside to die and cause the nip to cave in making it an unusable source of feeding a baby.

This all happened within two weeks and its weighing heavy on me. This is where I feel the most alone; no one knows or can understand this feeling I have. It feels like some kind of punishment from the universe or something. To know that I might not be able to have kids but even if I do I basically have a shutdown boob. I’m very old school and feel as though breastfeeding creates a bond with mother and child, it’s important. But it feels as though all my dreams are dashed and the only thing I can do is sit and watch. I’m trying though, to at least lose weight, this has been a great motivator for me to get on the ball. But who can say if this one thing will help in the end? I’m 30 which isn’t old but it is a concern, due to the fact that we might not even start until our mid to late 30s.

“The miscarriage rate is 11.7 percent. By age 30 your risk of having a baby with Down syndrome is 1 in 952, and a baby with any chromosomal abnormality, 1 in 385.” – parenting.com How can I do that to a child? Knowing this is a possibility? Now before you get all uppity there isn’t anything wrong with down syndrome or anything but with the knowledge I have on this how can I be selfish and not give my child a chance of being born healthy? This study is just for age 30, but considering when we decide to have children it probably won’t be until after 35 if that.

“This is the age when your doctor might recommend amniocentesis or some other prenatal screening—which for many women is anxiety-provoking while they await results—because the risks of having a baby with Down syndrome or another type of chromosomal disorder begin to rise significantly.” – parenting.com.

“The miscarriage rate rises after age 35 to close to 18 percent. Rates of stillbirths are about twice as high among older pregnant women than younger ones, according to recent studies, although the reasons are unknown.” – parenting.com

The above are my concerns and at that point do I even take that risk? I get tired of hear people say, well so and so had a healthy baby at 45. Good for her, but all woman’s bodies are different and you can’t base my situation on someone else. Based on my own body I feel like there is a greater chance of the above happening.

It’s been hard to accept this as a possible reality considering I’ve found a man I love who I want to have children with and grow old with. Before him I was so afraid to have children due to my upbringing with a destructive parental unit. I didn’t want to end up like my mother because I can see a lot of similarities in us that scare me.

Age is a big problem for me mainly because I don’t want to be too old to enjoy my children. I want that time when I’m still able to play with them and be involved and not be in my 60s when they are my age. I wish I had children in my 20s. You know how old my mom is right now? She’s 50! She’s young still and I’m 30 we are 20 years apart and she looks young, people used to think she was my older sister, not in that cheesy way but even at school functions they’d ask where our parents were.

So that’s been my past 2 weeks and it feels good to get some of this out.

[dragonasheswrites-blog]

The Heaven We Didn’t Choose, Chapter 5: In Which the Royal Guard Intervenes

...And Sans winds up with more responsibility than he expected.

First: Chapter 1: In Which a Child Makes a Friend

Previous: Chapter 4: In Which a Diagnosis Is Made

Next: Chapter 6: In Which Everybody Threatens Sans

Click here for the story overview.

Attie was asleep by the time Sans found his way back outside Ebott Medical Pavilion.  He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d gotten there; the exit was one he didn’t recognize, and he was half-sure he’d just wandered in circles until the universe converged on itself and spat him out.  Still, it was good to see the sky again.

The...night sky.

Well, shit.  Boss was going to have his skull.  He looked down at the sleeping kid.  He couldn’t leave her alone, not after suffering through tears and awkward humans and enough medical jargon to make his head ache.  He was starting to feel...responsible for her.

Taking her to his apartment would be the best bet, especially if Tori was still busy; he could start making calls in the morning.  Hopefully Boss was still at that meeting thing, and Sans would have enough time to put Attie to bed and think up a good explanation before having to face the music.

Fortunately, teleporting with a sleeping kid was fairly easy, even if that kid was so heavy she felt like she was full of rocks.

Unfortunately, she didn’t stay asleep for as long as he’d hoped.

“SANS, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!  WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, AND WHY DO YOU HAVE A HUMAN CHILD WITH YOU??”

“Shut up Boss!”  Attie whimpered in Sans’s arms, covering her ears.  He lowered his voice; he was too tired to watch his words, regardless of whatever punishments Boss cooked up for him later, but he didn’t want Attie scared of him.  “Look what you did!  You woke ‘er up!”

“YOU DARE CONTRADICT ME??  WHY WOULD I BE CONCERNED WITH...wait, is that…”

“Boss, meet Atlas Dreemurr.  Attie, this is my b...uh, Boss.  Attie’s gonna have to crash with us for the night.”

“WHAT?  SANS, WHY DO YOU HAVE THE AMBASSADOR’S DAUGHTER??  WHERE IS THE AMBASSADOR??  I DEMAND AN EXPLANATION THIS INSTANT!”

“Well, that’s rough, ‘cuz you’re not gonna get one until she’s back asleep.  Guess you shouldn’t have screamed at me, huh.”

Boss narrowed his eye sockets and huffed.  That was never a good sign.  A yelling Boss was one Sans could deal with; a quiet Boss was plotting something.

Usually something painful.

“Very well, Sans,” he said after a moment, crossing his arms over his chest.  “I will give you ten minutes to put the child to bed.  In MY room; yours is filthy.  The deadly death traps are currently disabled, and I’ve already changed my sheets for the night.  Neither of you will touch anything in my room with your filthy claws.  You will go in, deposit the child on my bed, ensure that she is asleep, and return here.   Ten minutes, Sans.”

“Uh...sure, Boss.”

Well.   That was unexpected.  Sans didn’t know when Boss had developed a soft spot for kids; he sure hadn’t showed it back in the Underground.  Heh, the last kid he’d acted this nice around was…

...Frisk, actually.  Well.  That made more sense.

Boss’s room was as neat and orderly as always.  It gave Sans the creeps.  He looked around; the decor was probably not what most humans found...comforting.

“You, uh, gonna be okay in here, kid?”  He asked, giving a full-sized skeleton model (dressed in Boss’s spare suit of armor and a pair of sunglasses, of course) a light kick.  “We can always punt and go to my room, but it is...uh, pretty messy.”

“‘Tsokay.”

“Alright, your choice.  Onto the bed - hup! - and under the covers.  Wow.  This is pretty soft, huh.”

“Yup!”  Attie seemed content, snuggling into Boss’s skull-print pillow.  Her eyes were drifting shut already.  Not really surprising; it was, according to the alarm clock on the nightstand, nearly 2 AM.  Probably well past her bedtime.

“You gonna be okay up here by yourself?”

“Uh-huh.  Just...can you see if Mr. Boss can not yell again?”

“He is pretty loud, huh.”

“Yeah.  It woke me up.  He’s not nice, just like you said.”

“‘Kay, then.  I’ll go talk to him.  G’night, kid.”

“G’night, Mr. Skeleton.”  To Sans’s surprise, she sat up before letting go of his jacket and did...something with her face near his cheekbone.  It made a weird almost...smacking sound?  He’d heard it before, but…

Oh, right.  A human kiss.  He could feel his cheekbones getting red.

“Welp, that’s enough from you.  Go to sleep, ‘kay?  And don’t wake me up b’fore morning.”

Attie muttered something he didn’t catch, her eyes already sliding shut.  He watched her for a moment, half-expecting her to sit back up and start babbling, but she was still and quiet.  Her breathing got a little slower and more even and she didn’t move.

Back in the living room Boss was sitting on the couch, posed with his arms still crossed in a manner that was supposed to look intimidating.  Sans told himself (as he always did) that it was not intimidating, no matter how hard his knees shook when Boss scowled at him like that.

“So,” Boss said, “You have Ambassador Dreemurr’s daughter in my room.  I trust there is a good explanation for that, and that you are not using this apartment to continue your little...feud with the ambassador.”

“Y-yeah, I have a good reason, Boss.  See, I was walkin’ home from the hot dog stand - like I always do - since I didn’t have a sentry shift t’night, and, uh, I found the kid outside.  Said she was locked out.  I, uh, helped the kid inside, and she said her mom wasn’t feelin’ well.  We took Frisk’s temperature, found out she was runnin’ one hell of a fever.  We called up Tori, but Tori didn’t wanna...”

Wait.  Tori.  Tori had filled in for Frisk at that mysterious meeting...a meeting which the Royal Guard would have been running security for.  And Papyrus had been - was still supposed to be - at a very secret meeting.

“...You already know some of this, don’t you.”

Boss snarled.  “Just continue.  I am losing my patience.”

“‘Kay...so, uh, Tori was busy.  The internet said Frisk’s fever was high enough to be dangerous, so we took her to EMP’s emergency room.  They said...it was good that we brought her in.  Said the infection could’ve spread a lot further if we’d waited; that Frisk...could’ve died.  So, uh, we waited until she was out of surgery, then I brought the kid here.”

“I...see.  And why, Sans, were you walking past the ambassador’s home?”

“It’s just...on my route, Boss.”  Kinda.  An alternate route, really.  Boss didn’t need to know about the monsters who’d been hassling him on his usual walk home; the punishment for allowing himself to be hassled would be worse than anything the bully-wannabes would dare do to him.

“And why would you - you of all people - help Frisk’s daughter?  It is no secret that you and the ambassador have not gotten along for the entire time we have been on the surface.  Your petty squabbles have caused more work for the Royal Guard than I care to outline for you at this moment.  You expect me to believe that you would help her?"

Sans didn’t really have a good explanation for that himself.  Just...he’d felt some kind of empathy for her.  It was stupid - he’d always been too soft, even when he still lived Underground - but...that was the best reason he could come up with.

“I wasn’t gonna leave a babybones to watch her mom die, okay?  I’m an asshole, but not that big of an asshole.”

Boss considered him for another moment, then relaxed slightly.  Sans felt his shoulders droop in relief.  “Well, at least that lines up with what we know.”

“What do you know?  Sheesh, no need to get all growly.  I’m just askin’ ‘cuz I wanna make sure Tori knows what’s goin’ on.”

“Hmph.   Queen Toriel updated myself, Captain Undyne and a few other elite guards when it became apparent that the ambassador was going to be...indisposed.  We thought it was much less serious than it apparently is.

“Then during a break in discussions, the queen received your voicemail regarding her daughter’s condition, and another from the hospital giving a much more... concise and detailed explanation of the situation.  She neglected to inform us that you were watching the ambassador’s daughter, which is a...surprising oversight.  Regardless, she tasked some of us with disseminating the news among monsters and beginning the process of trying to control the media.  You know this is going to cause a stir once reporters catch wind of this?”

“Uh…”

“You didn’t even think of that, did you.  I wish I could be surprised.  I’m still in shock that you actually performed an action of your own volition, and something that may very well have saved the life of a member of the royal family besides.  It’s so out of character that I’m considering being concerned.  As it stands, I’m just trying to figure out what you did wrong.  There must be something; this is all too good to be true, otherwise.”

Sans stood very still, remembering one particular detail Boss would be furious about.

“Oh, by the stars; we may as well start damage control.  What.  Just spit it out.   What did you do.”  Boss’s control was getting a little terrifying, actually.  Usually he started screaming and throwing things at that point in the conversation.

“I, uh...well, y’see, it was the kid’s - Attie’s - idea, but...she kinda...said I was Frisk’s fiancee?”

Boss stared.  “You...WHAT?  Well...this is going to be a nightmare.  If reporters get wind of this, I am dealing with it, do you hear?”

“‘Kay, Boss.”

“I mean it.   NO talking to reporters.  They will blow the whole thing out of proportion and cause a scandal that will take months, if not years to clean up.  Just stay away from them altogether.  You will not prank them.  You will not make rude hand gestures at them.  You will not swap their recording equipment for assorted root vegetables with crude faces carved into them.”

Sans hadn’t realized Boss knew about that...incident.

“You will not distract them and teleport away, ESPECIALLY if there are cameras nearby.  You will avoid them as best you can.  If you are asked a question, you will say “No comment” and keep on walking.  Nothing else.  If you are cornered, you will call me.  No redirecting them to someone else; they know who the official liaisons are when the ambassador is indisposed, even if they elect to disregard that information.  I will not have you risking human-monster relations by running your fat jawbone about something you don’t understand.  Is. That. Clear?"

“Uh...crystal clear, Boss.”

Boss thought for a long moment, staring at something over Sans’s shoulder.  “Oh, and - against my better judgement - I’m taking you off all sentry shifts and that hot dog stand of yours and assigning you as Atlas’s full-time caretaker until Frisk recovers.”

“What?

 But Boss…”

“No buts.  She is, by all accounts, a resourceful and independent child.  Captain Undyne has been her primary contact within the Guard, and she will likely want to stop by in the morning to...evaluate the situation.  She’s very protective of Atlas; I suggest you be on your best behavior.”

“Then why can’t Undyne watch her?”

"Captain Undyne has patrols and administrative tasks, as well as active duty.  Originally, we planned to have Queen Toriel and King Asgore take shifts with Atlas should the ambassador ever be out of commission, but both will be busy these next few weeks.  There is much more going on right now than you can possibly understand.  Atlas needs to have a guardian or the humans will take her.”

“But...but why me?"

“The child seems comfortable enough with you, stars know why.  Keeping Atlas here will provide additional security.  Everyone else is up to their eye sockets with real work.  You barely do anything but sleep, as it is; you may as well contribute for once.  This will be a learning experience for you.  Take your pick.”

Sans growled again.

“Oh, and if you intimidate the child into requesting another guardian I will make you sleep in the dog park for the rest of the year.  Am I understood?"

“Y-yeah, Boss.  I’ll keep a good eye socket on the kid, sheesh.”

“You had better."  Boss stood.  “Now get out of here and go to bed.  I must inform Queen Toriel of this development.”

Sans made a tactical retreat back to his room.  For one fleeting moment, he really, really wished he’d just ignored the kid from the start.

Oh, well.  He collapsed face-first onto his bare mattress and promptly passed out.

.oO0Oo.

BRRRRRRRING!

The sound of his phone alarm going off roused Sans from slumber.  It took him a moment to register the numbers on his phone’s screen.

7:01 AM.

Ugh.

He grabbed it and silenced the alarm (titled, “WAKE UP, SANS”), then tried to slide it under his pillow.  The movement caught on something...connected to his phone?

Oh.  The charger.

He disconnected the phone ( carefully; charging cords were so weirdly fragile) and reluctantly sat up.  If his phone was charged and his alarm was set, that meant Boss had ventured into the depths of his room.   That meant he was undoubtedly supposed to be doing something.

He blinked a few times, trying to remember.  Nothing.

He glanced down at his phone.  131 text messages and 25 voicemails awaited him.   Ssssskip.

He was still wearing day clothes.  That was probably...not good?  Maybe?  What had he been doing?  He felt so tired.  Couldn’t he go back to sleep…?

BRRRRRRRING!

His eye sockets opened again, slower this time.  7:05.  Another alarm, this one called, “SANS, DON’T FORGET ATLAS.”

Huh.  What did he need an atlas for?

BRRRRRRRING!

7:07.  “UNDYNE WILL BE AT THE DOOR IN THREE MINUTES.”

Undyne?  Why was Undyne…

Wait.  Undyne.  Atlas.   Attie.

He hauled himself off the mattress, stumbling a little.  Sure enough, Boss’s door was clear of the ‘deadly death traps’ he favored when he was out doing Royal Guard things.  A quick peek inside proved that Attie was - thankfully - still asleep.  Boss’s alarm clock was dark; apparently, he’d unplugged it before heading out.

BRRRRRRRING!

Sans quickly silenced the alarm on his phone without reading it.  Attie just rolled over, eyes still closed, apparently not too bothered by the noise.

The sound of a knock came from the front door of the apartment.  He reluctantly shuffled over and unlocked it, positioning himself carefully -

“HEY, PUNK!!!”  Undyne slammed the door open - narrowly missing his head - and strode into the apartment.  As usual, she eyed the slightly shabby living room with barely-disguised disgust, then glared at Sans like it was his fault.

“Hey, Capt’n.”

“That’s Captain Undyne to you, sentry.  Now, where’s the kid?”

“Sleepin’.  We had a late night.”

“Ha!  YOU had a late night?  I’ve been awake for TWO DAYS STRAIGHT!”

That explained the manic gleam in her eye.  “That sounds...awful.”

“Huh?  Oh, this is nothin’.”  She wavered a little as she brushed by him.  “Is that coffee I smell?”

He breathed in deeply.  “I think so.  Want a mug?”

Undyne was already in the kitchen.  “Nah.  Mugs are for LOSERS!”  She grabbed the carafe - still piping hot - and poured a generous portion into her mouth.  “GAH!  Stop staring at me and GO GET THE KID!  We have a FULL DAY PLANNED!”  She took another gulp.

A little resentful of Undyne for hogging the coffee, he shuffled back towards Boss’s room.  Attie was still asleep as he’d left her, curled up on her side.

“Hey, kid?”

No response.

“Kiddo?  Buddy, pal, chum?”

Nothing.

“Uh, Attie?  Atlas?  Wake up?”

The kid’s nose scrunched and her eyes opened just the tiniest amount.  She hummed a little under her breath.

“Hey!  There ya are.  There’s someone here to see ya.”

“Mr. Skeleton…?”

“Uh, well, sure.  I’m here, but you’ve already seen me, right?”  He waved his hands like Mettaton did when executing a particularly flashy attack.  “But there’s someone else here.  I didn’t realize you knew the fish-lady.”

“Huh?”

“Y’know, Captain Undyne?  Tall, blue, smells like-”

“Undie’s here?”

Sans snorted.  “S-sure, kid.  Oh-oh gosh.  Yeah, sure, “Undie’s” here.”

Attie smiled, then stretched sleepily.  She moved about as fast as he did in the morning.  By the time they made it back down the hallway, Undyne had finished the entire carafe of coffee.  Luckily, she’d been over to their apartment before and knew how to operate the coffee machine; she was watching a small stream of brewed coffee trickle into the carafe like it held the secret to life and happiness.

For someone who’d been awake for 48 hours and counting, it probably did.

“Undie!”  Attie said, running straight for the feared Captain of the Royal Guard.  Sans tensed, ready to grab the kid and run, but-

“Hey, lil’ nerd!”  Undyne swung Attie up over her head, high enough that ankles brushed the low ceiling, then settled the kid on her hip.  It looked disturbingly domestic.  Or it did, until she turned a formidable glare at Sans, who was snickering in the doorway.  “Don’t.  You.  Dare.”

He snorted.  “Why not?  The kid-”

“...Is one of my besties.   You aren’t.  It’d suck to have to babysit without your jaw, now wouldn’t it?"

Point taken.

“Undieeee, you’re being silly!  Mr. Skeleton has his jaw!”

"Mr. Skeleton?  Sans, you little shit!  You make her call you Mr. Skeleton?”

The skeleton in question grumbled under his breath.  “Was her idea…”

Undyne cackled.  “Kid, you ain’t gotta call him ‘Mr.’ nothin’!  This asshole is just ‘Sans.’  Or ‘Shit.’  Either one’s fine.”

Attie giggled like Undyne had just told a joke.

“ANYWAYS!  Papyrus took care ‘a ya, see?  Oatmeal!  Aww, don’t scrunch yer face up like that, punk.  See?  There’s a bowl here for that asshole, too.  Misery loves company, right?  And hey, lookit that!  Papyrus gave you the little dinosaurs from both packages of oatmeal!  You get double dinosaurs today!”

Sans glowered.  He didn’t care about dinosaurs in his oatmeal, not really, but it was the principle of the thing.

Attie tilted her head to the side.  “Who’s Pa-py-rus?”

“Huh?  You met him last night, remember?  Loud, tall, wears black.  Y’know, the skeleton guy who isn’t a lazy asshole.”

“Oh!  You mean Mr. Boss?”

“Mr…”  Undyne lost it.  “OH MY GOSH, THAT’S THE BEST THING EVER!  HAHAHAHA!  Bone bag, I blame you for this!  Oh...oh gosh…”

“What’s so funny, Undie?”

“N-nothin’, punk!  Just...just let me breathe...whoo boy…”  She took a few deep breaths, steadying the kid.  “Oh!  Coffee’s done!”

Attie was promptly dropped to the floor as Undyne turned complete focus towards the one true love of her life.  The kid landed on her feet, thankfully, and contented herself with distributing the oatmeal and spoons.

It wasn’t Grillby’s, but it was food all the same.  Frowning, Sans poked a funny lump that looked like it had been added after the rest of the oatmeal in the bowl.  A tiny little orange dinosaur was inside.

“The orange ones are the best,” Attie whispered over the sounds of Undyne grossly demolishing the coffee.  She gave him a grin that he could only describe as conspiratorial.

“Uh, thanks, kid,” he whispered back, eating the evidence of her little kindness.

Breakfast finished up quickly once Undyne ran out of coffee again.  “Okay, punks,” she growled, “Here’s what we’re gonna do today.  First, we’re gonna TRAIN!”

Attie cheered.

“Then, we’re gonna start on SCHOOLWORK!”

The cheering stopped.

“Aww, c’mon, don’t be like that.  You know ya gotta do it.  ‘Sides, we’re gonna start with HISTORY, not that nerdy science crap.”

“Hey,” Sans protested, personally offended by that remark.

“Pfh.   You’re gonna do the nerdy crap with her, bone bag.  I’ve gotta take off after lunch and do eff’n paperwork.”

Attie blew a raspberry.  “Eff’n paperwork!  Blech!”

“Shuddup!”  Undyne put a hand over the kid’s mouth, like she expected Frisk (and all her accompanying maternal wrath) to tear through the apartment at any moment.  “Ya can’t say the “eff’n” word until you’re grown up or your mom’ll kill me, ‘kay?”

“‘Kay!”

Sans sighed.  “And what about her mom?”

Undyne looked at him with a disturbing intensity.  “None of your business, asshole.  ‘Sides, you hate Frisk, right?”

He glanced at Attie, who appeared to be memorizing every word of the exchange for future blackmail.  “I...uh...well...the kid’ll wanna see her, right?  I’m supposed to watch her, ‘s all.”

“What?  Why would Attie wanna go see someone in the hospital?”

Attie looked up at Undyne with one of the most pathetic, pleading expressions possible on a human face.  “Pleeeeeease, Undie?  Can we go see my mommy today?  Please?”

“...Huh.  Well, squirt, I dunno what good it’ll do ya, but sure.   LATER, after schoolwork.”  Undyne’s phone buzzed, and her eyes scanned the screen for a long moment.  It looked like she was having trouble focusing.  “Oh!  You’ve gotta get your ass to the hospital, like, now, bone boy.  I’ll watch the kid.  We’ll have an official liaison in place later to get us updates, but for now you’re one of the few folks on the visitation list.  We’ve gotta make sure she’s still alive and stuff.”

“Okay.”  Sans, grateful for the escape, shuffled as quickly as he could manage towards the door.

He was thwarted by a blur of blue.  “NOPE!  Change first!” she ordered, shoving him backwards so hard he fell over.  “And take your phone so we can track you.  If you DARE slack off or try to escape us, I’m gonna sic the dogs on you.  Got it?”

“Fine.”  He picked himself up, brushed off his pants, shuffled back towards his room and slammed the door.  He could hear Attie whining that she wanted to go instead, and grimaced.

It took three changes of clothing before he found something Undyne deemed ‘acceptable’ to visit the hospital in.  He wasn’t sure why she wanted him to wear long pants and his last clean turtleneck (red, naturally), but he wasn’t about to argue with the Captain of the Royal Guard.

Not when Attie was close enough to get caught up in the destruction, anyways.

After he passed inspection, Sans beat a hasty retreat.  Attie was distracted by Undyne’s ‘training,’ so he was able to slip out without too much fuss.  They appeared to be training Attie’s ability to pose dramatically and scream insults: a vital part of any monster’s childhood.  He stopped to snap a photo - to blackmail Undyne in the future, of course; not because it was cute - and slipped out the door.

[eds-zebra-warrior]

2021 Ehlers Danlos Society Awareness Month (Day 12 Prompt: Nurses and Doctors)

I have already covered much of this topic in previous posts so it's no secret that I have very little trust in the medical field. Of well over 200 doctors I have interacted with through both specialists, medical clinics, urgent care and hospitals there is only one that I have total trust in. Yes on and only one doctor who I trust with my life. I used to have more trust in doctors and used to have the mindset that I trust them until they give me a reason not to trust them because most kids are raised to believe that doctors and nurses are the good guys/girls I had my first experience that I remember with a medical professional at the age of five and they just kept adding up.

Layer after layer of abuse and neglect, four times being dead on their time and three times being so sick my blood pressure registered as clinically dead even though my heart continued to beat and all but one of these times I was not treated by medical personnel, once being revived by my mom in a hospital full of doctors and nurses ignoring my alarms. I have been released multiple times even up to the point of needing ICU level care with psychosomatic disorder labels slapped on me they didn't want to put the work into saving me. My uncle has died at the hands of the medical system from this disease and my mom defied the odds with only a 5% chance of survival rate and more time than I care to think about in a coma and in ICU as a result of a doctor who didn't know what he was doing and botched her surgery then both abused and neglected her for 9 hours after his mistake while trying to hide it so he wouldn’t get caught.

I don’t only have experience as a patient in the medical field but also as a nurse myself. I can't tell you how many times I heard students say they weren't going to do certain procedures because they were gross or uncomfortable like changing a colonoscopy bag acting as if the patient is gross because they have a medical condition that results in something that they believe is unpleasant or undesirable. How do they think the patient with the colostomy bag feels without their nurse making them feel gross, ugly or undesirable. I worked as an STNA where I was raped by my boss. I worked as an LPN at a long term care facility for children with severe to profound developmental delays and complex physical health conditions.

The state recommends no more than four patients be assigned to one nurse and no more than two patients to one nurse in a critical care setting. These patients were total care and at the most I was assigned 17 patients. 17 when there was only one of me and to give you an idea of what total care entities, All 17 were in diapers and needed changing every two hours, with one being on a toileting program meaning every morning she had to be put onto the toilet and strapped onto it with a harness since she had little control of her body and prone to falling off. We were to leave her on the toilet for 15 minutes or until she went to the bathroom and were not allowed to leave her room until she was done. The bathroom connected to two rooms and there were usually three kids in each room with the bathroom being between both of them so shared by six kids. We were not allowed to leave her alone on the toilet but could leave the bathroom itself if we left the door open so we could hear her so we could go into one of the rooms attached to it and change another kids diaper or change bedding but other than that we could not go any further until she was done. She was diapered the rest of the day unless you had more time to work with her later in the day so only did her toileting routine a minimum of once for morning shift and once for night shift. All children needed their bedding changed daily, they all needed a bath every day, clothes changed, hair done, teeth brushed, and some of the older guys we would shave their face if their family wanted us to. 15 of the 17 were tube fed or on TPN so I had to hook up their feeds. The other two, one ate solid food and the other was on a puree diet. They did not eat in their rooms and had to be taken to a group room with a table where we had to allow them a minimum of a half hour to eat. If they refused food we had to try to offer it for at least a half hour. One of the two needed feeding and the other was much more high functioning than the others on the unit so could feed himself, you just had to remind him to eat if he got distracted. All of them had medications, some up to six times a day. None could walk so they all needed picked up and put into their chairs and into their beds, one could craw and if we let her crawl we put knee pads on her knees so she didn't hurt her knees, one could walk using a gait trainer which is basically like a baby walker but bigger, where the strap goes between their legs so they don't have to hold their weight but can push with their feet to slide the walker. 14 of then needed turned every two hours to prevent pressure ulcers, one had a colostomy bag, one had a tracheostomy. They all needed rectal temps daily, They all had to go to the rec room and get some time on the matts daily, 14 of them had physical therapy which we were responsible for except once a week when a therapist worked with them

Therapy for 10 of them dealt with button training where a button as connected to a toy, TV, radio etc. and they had to press the button with their hand or head to get the TV to change or toy to light up or play music and what not. They did their therapy until either they pressed the button on their own ten times or a half hour had passed, whichever came first. One would get in her walker and needed us to guide her to take at least one lap around the unit in her walker, the other did the toileting program and we worked with her on using a modified form and spoon to eat herself, 6 of them did sucker therapy which essentially we would hold a sucker for them to lick in hopes to improve their swallowing skills and build up their saliva so hopefully one day they could get off the feeding tube or be less reliant on it, able to eat some puree or possibly one day solid foods. One we worked with his fine motor skills to have him pick things up but he was easy when it came to this because we could do it throughout the day so if I was changing him I could ask him to hold the clean diaper for me or a wipe or two and while I gave him a bath I could have him hold his tooth brush or comb or his deodorant so that I could combine with a lot of other routines but it helped him with both being able to grasp things and to learn to release his grasp at appropriate times.

11 of them worked on eye gaze to relay their needs so instead of just grabbing clothes and putting them on them we had to pick out at least two shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks etc. and ask them which one they wanted to work on eye gaze for them to tell us which they wanted. The highest functioning one was learning to use a power chair at the time so we had to follow him with a kill switch and joystick so we could make sure he didn’t run into anything or if we needed to turn the chair so he didn't hit the wall etc. he was also working on menu training where we could give him a picture menu for him to choose what he wanted for his next meal starting with two options for a main dish, like chicken nuggets or mac and cheese, two options for a side dish like cheese slices or apple sauce, two options for a second side like green beans or corn and two options for a dessert such as chips which were more like cheese puffs in different flavors or a cup of ice cream and eventually add more and more options Two of them were labeled as combative which I never had an issue with even once as I also majored in interpreting and learned very quickly that one was combative because he was the only one who could talk but some had trouble understanding him so he got frustrated kind of like a child in their terrible twos who is frustrated because people may not understand their speech, the other was deaf blind and no one worked with her on any kind of sign language or gesturing. As you can see, this is way way too much for one person to take care of.

Now to make things worse, I felt as if I was the only nurse who had any ethics. I felt horrible for these kids because they basically just sat them in front of a tv all day. They had an accessible playground outside which I had never once seen used because they hired so few staff that you didn't have extra time. We had four nurses on our unit which had, if I remember right 23 kids in our unit which doesn't sound too bad but we rotated days off with one weekend off a year so only three people were there at any given time. When someone took a week off we had two of us. Some went to day programs so during the week we usually had around six to 8 residents. On holidays such as the day I had 17 kids I was the only one and there. Two of them took Easter off and one already had that day already off and the boss let this happen. 6 of the kids, their parents took out day passes and took them home for Easter thankfully because I don't know what I would have done with another six kids.

This being said they didn't hire enough people so if someone from another unit called off they would take someone from another unit. The unit I worked on had the most severe children. There were other units that had the ones with moderate disabilities so could do things like brush their teeth, sit up, feed them self and just needed care like bathing, transferring them into their chairs, making sure they didn't get in trouble or fight with other kids, change their diapers or help them change their own or help them toilet themselves or care for catheters so they were a lot easier. There was another unit where most of the kids only had mild delays and basically just needed the staff to work with them on daily living skills like cooking and making sure they shut off the stove, go for walks with them to make sure they didn't get lost or walk up to strangers etc. they had another unit that was all babies two and under so though some of them had pretty advanced delays its a lot easier to pick up or change a 2 year old's diaper than it is a 19 year old's diet. Staff was an issue.

Now for lazy staff. I felt like the only one who actually worked and took a lot of the kids under my wing even if they weren't mine. When the “nurses just play cards thing” came out on tv I couldn't help but laugh because we had one nurse in charge of the most critical patient on the ward. He had no brain and only a brain stem. With a brain stem only your most basic body functions are controlled like breathing, heart rate, kidney function to produce urine and heating and cooling. You can't make pictures of images seen by your eyes so it’s pure darkness, you can't make meaning of sounds you hear so pure silence, cannot register a sense of touch or feeling, no voluntary movements etc. This being said he was hooked to monitors that were linked to a pager to alert his nurse to know if he stopped breathing or his heart stopped and you would need to rush in and do a sternum rub or sometimes CPR on him. This would happen anywhere from a few times a week to on and off all day. He literally would die over and over and over again so we had to be quick to revive him each time.

His nurse was notorious for taking off her pager and laying it in his bed, on his night stand, at one of the computer kiosks for logging, in the rec room etc. and then just going off and playing cards with another staff member. His door had a light and alarm too but it was really quiet which was a big reason the nurse had a pager. If they were busy changing another kid or something, they could yell for someone else because yelling was even louder than the door chime but she did this so much, I got to be like a new mother with a newborn baby where I could hear the ding of his light from a mile away because I knew if I didn't revive him she sure as heck wouldn't we had a room with three boys in it, an 8 year old, a 10 year old and an 11 year old. They were non verbal and there were two nurses who would run into that room and drop their pants and moon each other.

Most of the staff would skip bathing kids for sometimes days on end and just mark it on their charts that they had been bathed. This was especially so for the kids whose families lived out of state or kids who were property of the state and had little to no visitors. These kids were neglected to the fullest. Left in dirty diapers, had physical therapy skipped, were not rolled as much as they should be including one that got MRSA. If one of their family members showed up unexpectedly it would be like all hands on deck, they would call all of the nurses to their room while the receptionist lied to the parents saying they were in therapy or still in the bath or something and have two nurses yanking their clothes off throwing them in the tub to try to scrub them down one getting their clothes and changing their bedding changed, room cleaned, aids in there with mops mopping the floor and cleaning up the other kids in the room, changing their diapers, washing their faces and doing their hair, opening curtains, organizing stuff that's laying all over the place all in about ten minutes flat to try to make it look like their kid was taken care of the whole time. It was called “all men on deck” when this happened, they would even call people from other units for this so it's like we magically went from no staff to a ton of staff for ten minutes only.

The same thing happened when they got a call from the health inspectors. All blankets got pulled out of the closet because they weren't allowed in the closet with sterile items, no one was allowed to take off but they took half the staff and assigned them to cleaning, moving meds to the appropriate storage area, removing cleaning chemicals from the same area as the fluids and cartons of ensure and tube feed. They had so many violations it wasn't funny but knew exactly what needed fixed or removed before the health department and medical board visits. They had extra stuff they shoved in staff members' trunks of their car, in offices and all kinds of hiding spots then would just move it all back after they passed and it was over. I don't know why they never came unannounced. The nurse who used to leave her pager laying around didn't like me at all and would go into my kids rooms after I walked out and drop the bed rails on my kids beds to try to get me fired.

During my training they put me with a resident who was very sick. She had what they thought was the flu. She had a trach so couldn't control her cough which came right out of her tracheostomy, really bad diarrhea, a fever most of the first week I was there, the whole nine yards of being sick. Well after training I got sick but they had a one month probationary period in which you were not allowed to miss any days in that time and they said if you were sick you had to be checked out by one of the NP’s who would take your temperature and assess you to determine if you are healthy enough to work or not and only if they determined you were too sick were you allowed to take off during your probationary period. Well I got worse and worse and ended up developing pneumonia. So like her was hacking up a lung. I woke up with a temp of 103 and by the time I got to work my temp was 103.8.

I saw the NP and showed her the paperwork from urgent care where I had been diagnosed with pneumonia and stated my concern about spreading it to my kids who were all immunocompromised and high risk. The NP said I would be fine and told me to just wear a mask. I put on a mask and went to work. They gave me a ton of kids that day too, I want to say I had 12 that day so I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, getting dizzy spells and I could feel my fever exploding. I could feel sweat running down my back and chest and kept having to wipe the sweat off from my face. I literally felt like I was going to fall over and die running around, lifting teenagers, and rushing around to try to keep up which was nearly impossible because of short staff anyhow. Well I started overheating and coughing so badly that I had to take off to a bathroom in the hall and started throwing up and was struggling to breathe from all of the mucus and feeling like my airway and sore throat was swollen up and totally full of mucus. My boss came in while I was throwing up and said “why aren't you out there doing your job. Of course I’m there in the stall hanging over the toilet with all the sound effects of my vomiting, coughing and wheezing and told her I was sorry but I have pneumonia and got too hot. She said “well you need to come out here and do your job and throw up on your own time” Yes she told me to throw up on my own time. I said what because I was throwing up and thought I misunderstood her and she said “I need you to throw up on your own time” like you can control something like that and as if they hadn’t trained me on a patient who was sick and very contagious earlier that month. She told me if I didn't get out there then she would be writing me up and if you get a writeup during your probation time you will lose your job; then she left.

About two minutes later I got to a point where I thought I may be able to make a run for the supply closet which was right across from the bathroom, ran over there and grabbed some of their mini garbage bags that go into the little feminine care product trash cans and spent the rest of the day, working and running around the corner into the patients bathrooms to throw up in the bags and throwing them into the hazmat containers. I felt terrible with my patients having to listen to me throwing up right beside them but the boss wouldn't let me go to the bathroom or go home saying I wasn't too sick to take off even throwing up about 15 more times throughout the day and so dizzy I had no idea how I didn't pass out in front of any of my kids. When I went home that day, I took my temperature and it was 105.2. And that was with taking fever reducing medication while at work. After lying down a while it went down to 104.8 and I had the next two days off thankfully but by the next morning I was in the hospital passing out over and over again, having trouble breathing and under rapid cooling protocol having cool IV fluids pumped into me, wet towels put on me, ice packs layered around me benign told by the staff that any job that makes you work when you're that sick isn't worth keeping and how they would have just walked out.

I still hadn't been there long, almost three months, when I went to the linen closet with the towels, wash cloths, chux etc. and it was totally empty except for one wash cloth so I went to the manager filling in for mine who was on maternity lead and told her the linen closet needed restocked. They never told me what to do in this situation so I didn't know if we had a number to call down to laundry for them to bring it up, had to send an aid down to bring up a cart of clean linen to restock the closet or it was our responsibility to go down and get a cart full of clean linen and stock the closet. There was no list of phone numbers by the phone or anything because I checked before I asked the manager and when I asked she was in the rec room full of children with intellectual and physical disabilities. I told her the closet needed restocked and asked if there's a number I need to call for more, if I go get it or how that works telling her no one had told me how this works when I started. She looked at me like I was a total idiot and said “I see we have another retard in here as if we don't already have enough!” right in front of those kids. Enough was enough at that point and at the end of the day I said I wasn’t coming back.

I bawled my eyes out having to leave that job because those kids became like your kids and the care they got was god awful. They deserved a lot more than lying in a bed in front of a tiny tv all day. The other nurses didn't even meet their most basic needs leaving them in overflowing diapers, I can't tell you how many mornings I walked in after second shift left to find dirty diapers laying in the kids beds including one that my residents knee was laying in because they couldn't even throw away a dirty diaper. Basic needs like personal care, rolling them and the needs to sustain life and keep them safe weren't even met but kids have many more needs than just those most basic ones.

There was a playground that was never once used. They had no volunteers or staff to take them out of their rooms for a walk, to take them to the play room and actually play with them, hold crayons in their hands and help them color or finger-paint with non toxic or edible finger paints, do things with the teens that most teens take for granted like painting their nails, reading them books, bringing around therapy animals or even having an in house therapy animal. They just left them in their beds or laying on the floor on a mattress pretty much all day and all night which isn't a way for a child to live regardless of their cognitive function. That job took everything I had to give and gave me almost a try to save the world mindset because I wanted these kids to have the lives they deserved.

There was even one of the kids labeled as combative who was deaf/blind who I really connected with who I looked into adopting. The other staff couldn't stand her, literally ripping through her hair, yanking her neck back, forcefully ripping her hands off of them, basically tossing her into her chair. Some of these nurses were physically abusive with her because she was basically just really grabby and it made them mad. I realized the actual problem is that she was Deaf/Blind and they would literally just grab her and do whatever they wanted to. She was scared. She didn't know who was grabbing her or what they were doing so would grab for the hands and face to try to figure out who had a hold of her. Everyone used to ask me why she wasn't grabby with me yet no one took my advice. I told them they had to let her know who they were and what they were doing. Let her touch their face and hands to know who was there and touch is totally normal. It was just grabbing because she would be in a panic but she would be very gentle if you took things a little slower and gave her a chance. I would go into her room and instead of just yanking her up out of bed, I would tap her on the arm or sometimes just sit down on her bed and she would feel the movement and move her hands around to try to find it so I would put my hand by one of her hands so she grabbed my fingers then move her fingers toward my face so she could find my face and feel it. A lot of the staff thought it was gross because she put her fingers in her mouth but we knew her medical break down and a little spit wasn't going to kill anyone. That's what baby wipes are for but I would let her feel my face so she knew who I was and she would calm down once she realized it was me.

If I was going to put her in her wheelchair I would tactile sign the word chair then pull her chair up to her bed and guide her hand over to it and put it on the wheels so she could feel it. If I picked her up, I would put my arms under her like I was going to pick her up but not actually lift her for about three seconds so she got used to knowing if I slid my hand behind her back and under her legs that I was about to pick her up and put her in her chair which she had already felt. If she needed a bath most of the staff threw her clothes in the bathroom and got the water going and stuff. Then yank her up and carry her in the bathroom with her having no idea what was going on. I would first put her in her chair and take her in her chair into the bathroom because once I put her in her chair and signed a bath I could get her clothes and diaper and such and sit it on her lap so she could feel them and realize that she was about to change clothes or take a bath. I would then wheel her into the bathroom and the tub had a sprayer and it was a wet room so if you got the floor wet it had a drain and didn't hurt anything. I would take her clothes from her and set them on the counter and then turn on the water to the right temperature and bring the sprayer down. If I touched her hand she would usually grab my fingers and I would pull her arm out to the side and put her hand under the water so she could feel it with her hand and knew she was going to take a bath. I put the hose in the tub basin and signed the bath again. Put my hand behind her back and under her knees again giving her a second for it to register that I was going to pick her up again, lift her and put her in the tub which was basically like lounge chair, take her clothes off starting slowly with her socks instead of a large piece of clothing that was more shocking then after taking her socks off moved to the larger pieces of clothing. When I went to spray her to get her wet I again put her hand under the water and then moved the sprayer slowly up her arm so she knew she was going to get wet, bathed her and dressed her.

If I changed her I would sign the diaper and give her the diaper to hold before taking her pants off or anything so she knew she was going to get a diaper change. Once I took off her pants, before removing her diaper I would get one baby wipe and put it in her other hand so when I took the diaper off she knew when I took the wipe away from her that she was about to feel the cool whip. If I did her hair, I would give her a comb and brush to hold and would take whatever one I needed at the time out of her hand and to make things easier, I actually taught myself how to French braid on her hair because French braiding it kept it from getting tangled and matted so combing out her hair wouldn't be so traumatic for her, especially when another staff member had her but she was really a very easy and laid back kid just very much misunderstood which is why I requested her as my permanent. I actually took the two kids on the unit that no one wanted and they were both great kids and I just don't understand how a medical facility can operate with such ignorance. So though it was hard to leave I feel like I made the best decision. When I left I called Children's Services, Our county's Department of Developmental Disabilities, The Medical Board and the Health Department hoping that even though I had to leave, the lives of those children would improve.

I have had many negative experiences with other medical workers both as a patient and as a nurse. There are so many unethical, abusive and neglectful medical personnel so I no longer live by the mindset that all medical personnel is good unless they prove otherwise, realizing just how rare good doctors, nurses and other medical personnel are to come by and now believe that they are all bad and have zero trust in them unless they can prove otherwise. It's very difficult and takes a very long time for medical personnel to gain my trust. I’ve had this trust for too many in the past who let me down so now that trust has to be gained over a long period of time. As I mentioned before, I have one doctor I have trust in and his name is Dr. Joseph. It took him almost two years to gain that trust and this is a doctor I see every two weeks so I have seen him more in two years than I see most doctors in ten years if this puts into perspective how long it takes to trust a doctor. Trust isn't something a lot of EDS patients have in the medical field but many have experiences similar to mine so it’s easy to understand why.