#where the blood pressure is too low for the computer to detect

[andhumanslovedstories]

It’s a real pain in the ass to find a vital signs machine on our impromptu medical overflow unit, so I’m pleased to announce I’ve reached the new nursing milestone of needing a patient’s blood pressure and going “fuck it I’ll just take it manually, it’ll be so much faster” and it is.

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Genji Heavy Industries (Part 6) The Red Sea

This is my fiction writing. There is no scene like this in the novel or the game. But it could have been there.

Enjoy!

Because it involved your abilities, the earthquake preparedness system of Tokyo interested you. You understood that if enough seismic activity were detected, the Early Warning system would activate, giving more people time to seek safety from the seismic activity that could be generated by Soul Skill Eruption. So now, in the hopes of causing as few casualties as possible, you increase the pressure on the fault line at a carefully measured pace taking minutes, rather than seconds to reach the point of no return, where the pressure you were exerting would be released and the earth would move. 

As you grit your teeth in the dark of your improvised shelter of concrete and mud and exert the extreme forces of the earth, You think of Chu Zihang, Caesar, and Lu Mingfei. By this time, Chu Zihang and Caesar would know you were missing and start to look for you. Perhaps they would be trying to find this Hell floor but they wouldn’t know it even existed. It was like you had truly gone into a bottomless pit. They could run around forever and never find you.

But you hoped that Caesar would trust you to make your way out through the underground on your own without his help and get to safety. Once the earthquake hit, it would throw the Hydra in disarray. They would be too busy fighting monsters and escaping themselves to even notice the boys. They could explode the Kaguya computer core and blow things up, as many things that would make him happy to make them pay the debt for Ms. Makoto.

Your smile fades and you huff out a little whimper of a laugh. That would be way too easy and in his leisure mind, he would definitely waste time trying to find you.

All across Tokyo, television programs were interrupted with a message window showing the epicenter of an earthquake under Tokyo. On the radio, two sets of chimes sounded, followed by a voice announcement in Japanese. “This is an Earthquake Early Warning. Please prepare for powerful tremors!” Japanese major mobile phone carriers blast out text messages urging the citizens across the city to take cover now!

People flooded the streets in panic, rushing to shelters and emptying out highrises. Traffic turned from neat rows of shining cars to a snarled mess, as people panicked and collided. Everywhere, hundreds of thousands of feet pounded, creating vibrations on their own.

Five seconds later, it hit.

To most people's eyes, skyscrapers stood still on the ground, unmoving. But this is only an illusion. Skyscrapers use steel as the skeleton. The physical properties of steel are not only strong, but also flexible.  When under pressure from an external force it will naturally bend to unload the force, and then rebound. At the height of the Genji Heavy Industry building, in windy weather, the top floor will also be given a few dozen centimeters of sway. A few dozen centimeters compared to the height of the Genji Heavy Industry is insignificant. The general public will not use laser rangefinder and other sophisticated equipment to observe it, so this sway is usually ignored. But in a high-intensity earthquake, all the skyscrapers in Shinjuku district swayed the moment the shock wave passed through, like a cedar forest in a gale. 

You hold your breath in your own minishelter, feeling the pull of the enormous forces being exerted on these buildings. Each sway was a potential disaster that could mean hundreds, even thousands of lives lost, but the results were out of your hands now. Like a waiter bumping a table full of delicate crystalware, all you could do was observe the whole city as it jostled and pray.

You’re shaking from fear, exhaustion, and mental fatigue, but also lack of oxygen. The shelter was watertight as well as air tight. You force open a small hole in the top and peer out. You had formed a dome shaped earthen shelter for yourself that held back the water and shielded you from falling debris. Fresh air poured in the smell of seawater and fish.

Z was gone. All around you the whole basement was flooded save for the section surrounded by your little levee. A few red emergency lights illuminated the shattered tank and bits of glass block and made them look like you were floating in an extremely large pool of blood.   The tank wall was gone and the room that was already large now seemed more like a baseball stadium in size.

Through your spiritual feelers, you could detect the frequency of vibrations that your mind could interpret as sound. Many muffled voices were desperately screaming and yelling and pounding on doors.

There were still so many people in this building. Why had they not evacuated? The ground was full of tension. Aftershocks were sure to come and there was no way you could stop them. These people needed to get to shelter! Hydra were so organized even by Japanese standards. This disarray was unusual.

You’re struck with a sudden vertigo and dizziness. Your mind becomes aware of the smallness of your body, while at the same time it is still aware of the vast depth of the earth beneath you. You try to take deep breaths against the wave of nausea but the food you ate in the elevator comes up in a single heave. You lay down against the levee and clutch your head against the stabbing behind your eyes. Cluster headaches were normal and actually a good sign that the blood vessels in your head were still working. If you didn’t feel anything, it was likely you had lost too much brain function to ever recover. But they also made it impossible to move or think about escaping. After using such an apocalyptic force you were rendered as weak as a child.

You close your eyes and feel your tired brain rebound from your body back to the residual spiritual energy in the Earth. Every time your mind returns to the earth,you hear something strange. It was as if a long river of metal was flowing underground and scraping against rock, except his metal river hissed with powerful breath. It growled with menace at the same time it breathed, as though there were many of them. 

Something massive was moving near Tokyo. It was underground. It was alive.

In that moment, another sound hits you, a loud explosion, followed by gunfire. This time it was much nearer by. The sound echoed down from the elevator shaft. Because it was connected to the building, these sounds were reverberating through the ground. By the time they reached you they were quite faint, but wherever they were coming from, it must have been a very loud noise.

Caesar and Chu Zihang could be engaging with the enemy, or maybe the Hydra were engaging with the monsters. Either way, you have to start making your way out.

The water surrounding you was going to be a problem. Any hole you made at this point would be immediately flooded. Before you could tunnel out, you needed to move the water away and drain it.

A movement catches your eye. One of the floating blocks of glass is spinning rapidly in the opposite direction from the other floating bits. Something knocked into it. You freeze, gasping in fear, and reach for your pistols. With shaking hands, you start to load them with mercury laden armor piercing rounds. Your eyes scan the dark water but every wave could be concealing a serpentine creature. The floating glass created their own ripples. Plus, you were surrounded by water.

A loose bit of metal detached from the glass wall of the tank. It fell, colliding with a piece of concrete slab sticking out of the water with a soft clang. A three meter long tail thrashed wildly and an invisible shape formed a clear wake in the deep water as fast as a jet ski. It exploded from the water. Its claws were like scythes and serrated. It’s golden scales were like copper in the crimson light.

The creature's upper body was six feet long, so that made it a good fifteen feet, enough to rival a saltwater crocodile. It lifted the piece of metal and bit down and the steel deformed between its teeth. Infuriated that this actually was not edible, it flung it high in the air where it twinkled for a moment before descending. After a few seconds, you hear a small splash somewhere else in the room. The beast screeches and dives in the water, heading for the splash it didn’t realize it made itself, soaking you in the process.

Huge, fierce, strong, reactive… stupid. You recall Z’s play with these creatures. They reacted to light and sound very strongly and they were also cannibals. The emergency lights largely meant that there was no power in this place and a quick glance upward at the now-still and silent ventilation fans seemed to suggest the same. The pumps and siphons that managed the tank were shut down. But that may not last either. 

So long as that thing was swimming around there’s no way you’d be able to work. It had to die. You had your guns and your ammunition and you also had a little C4 and a detonator. You remove your trenchcoat and pin it to the levee with a pocket knife. Then you adhere a bit of the C4 to the coat. Once everything was set up. You whistle loudly.

The beast’s roar echoed and  you duck as low into the water as you can. It flies beneath the water toward the flapping windbreaker and seizes it, tearing it away from the knife and stuffing it down it’s throat. You press the detonator. It was so fast to swallow the bait that the C4 must have been half way down its throat. The lower half of the monster’s head shatters in a bloody spray and bits and pieces of it plunk into the water. The beast howls and chokes, still alive but unable to bite, only flailing about uselessly.

You’d scarcely begun to smile when the wake of something else slips by you. Fortunately you’d been standing still so it didn't notice you were there. Another monster of the same kind reared up out of the water and bit down on the other injured animal. While they were both distracted you ran away. Every step sent water slapping and splashing in all directions.

You were heading for the control panel. There was a long wiring run that ran up the wall through metal pipes attached by bracing. You should be able to climb it! You don’t dare look back but take a flying leap and hit the wall. Your fingertips just barely grasp the braces holding up the wiring run. When you look down, the uninjured sphinx is waving its claws just inches from your swaying feet.

But then it’s pulled back! The other sphinx with the half head is now missing part of its right arm but  has pulled your pursuer by the tail and slams its claws into its head piercing its eye while it screamed and flailed its forked tongue. It pulled the eye out. The nerve still dangled like a bloody root. It popped the eye into its upturned throat. It didn't need a lower jaw to eat that.

Using just the strength in your arms and shoulder, you pull yourself to the next brace. Soon you’re swinging precariously 20 feet in the air. From this vantage point you can see that under the water is a massive pile of glass and steel rubble. The water actually isn’t that deep and if you fell from this height, you would probably die due to impact with the debris. But at least now you could see the entire complex. 

It looked like most of the sphinxes were gone from the cavern, only these two were left. But then the world goes blurry. Once again you’re hit with vertigo! You moan softly and squeeze your eyes shut as the room tilts and your mind reacts to movement in the earth. The ground was filled with great tension, like the tension a cold person feels right before they shiver.

Your eyes snap open. Aftershock!

You didn’t have much time. A powerful aftershock could easily shake you off the wiring run and kill you.There was a small ledge next to the ventilation fans. But it was a good distance from the last brace. You wouldn’t be able to just leap frog up to it.

The two beasts below were still locked in a battle but the one eyed monster was winning. Unable to bite and now missing a limb, the one injured by the C4 was grasped by its head and tail while its opponent ripped bloody chunks out of its flesh with its shining bald head.

It wasn’t even swallowing the meat. This was a vengeful tearing apart!.

Finally, it dropped the lifeless body into the water and turned back to you. It hissed, baring its red tipped fangs. It’s body undulated once and reached the wall. It climbed with spider-like alacrity, claws plunging straight into the concrete like it was soft mud. It only took a second to reach your height. It lashed out and you rocked away from it’s claws, coming inches from being disemboweled. It leaped to the side to pounce on you!

And it fell short. The single eye made it lose depth perception!

With a mighty heave you lift yourself upward by your arms. The flat of your foot smashes into its face and using that as a springboard you make it to the ventilation ledge!

The strong aftershock hit the Genji Heavy Building and pounded it. Cracks spread through the reinforced concrete structure, steel was shorn, water pipes burst, steam and cold wind filled the air. The monster was knocked off balance by the sudden quake and plunged twenty feet to be skewered by a piece of steel that was bent upward. It wiggled it’s long serpent body, curling silently like a worm on a hook for a few seconds before it began to scream, a single high pitched note. Over and over and over. 

A single shot to the eye and it goes limp. You hold the gun at the ready, just in case another was needed, but there was no more sound.

You lie on the ledge to catch your breath. But you couldn’t rest. You weren’t done. You had to drain the water.

With what little residual spiritual energy you had left remaining in the earth, you use it to form a channel under the wall, forming a pipette that would hopefully lower the water level. You wave your hand and from a distance your eyes glow gold. Mud rolls in hills pushing the water towards the channel. It takes a long time, several minutes. Meanwhile, you can feel yourself getting more and more dizzy. More and more sleepy and less able to think.

An extremely loud sound banging and crashing is getting nearer and nearer. Something big was falling down the elevator shaft! It crashed with such force that the car folded like an accordion on and one door was blown out, flipped and landed with a loud splash.

Blood oozed from the resulting debris and a golden clawed hand fell limp. You take a few deep breaths and crawl back to the wiring pipe and slide down it easily. You cautiously sift your way through the debris.

By looking at the elevator shaft can feel the scale of the building, the elevator shaft of ordinary buildings are only three or four elevators, elevator shaft area of no more than twenty square meters, but the source of The levator shaft can accommodate more than a dozen elevators at the same time. So it has an area of more than a hundred square meters. In this one hundred square meters hundreds of high-strength angle steel columns stood in the middle of the steel crossbeam. This kind of high-rise building uses super high-speed elevators, and the metal cars pass up and down at a high speed of 5 meters per second, reminding people of the future cities in science fiction. 

You sniffle. Red drops of blood come from your nose. You no longer had the strength to create a tunnel. But you could crawl up above ground and find a way out that way.

The elevator was pitch black and impossible to see inside like an endless starless sky. The idea of climbing up such a massive shaft would be impossible for an ordinary human. But even in your state of fatigue and pain, it wasn’t too far to go when it came to distance. It was just vertical. 

You step over the dead sphinx. Its upper half was in the shape of a woman's body and it’s guts were torn out of it. It was missing limbs and the skin of its face was falling off in a flap. This beast was never a danger to you. It must have been torn to shreds and fallen. It was dead before it hit the ground bottom of the shaft. It served as a warning to you. It would not just be a matter of climbing the elevator shaft out of the Basement called Hell level. The elevator shaft was another level of Hell!

You check your weapons briefly, go to the back of the shaft where the rail created a sort of ladder and start climbing.

[elsaclack]

I wish you would write a fic in the Jake-can-feel-Amy’s-emotions universe that entails the warehouse raid and their first kiss that occurs after because I AM TRASH

HI THIS IS LIKE 8 MONTHS LATE BUT!!!! BETTER LATE THAN NEVER OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT

i did have something posted once upon a time in the original iteration of this universe butttttt i rewrote/repurposed parts of it to this, bc i like this one better but the first one had good bones

also this is a reference to two one-shots i posted a million years ago from a soulmate au i…developed? created? something like that lmao. you don’t necessarily have to have read either one of them but here they are just in case you want to: one and two

in the event that you don’t want to read them, the only thing you need to know is that in this au, soulmates can feel each other’s emotions. prior to their first kiss as soulmates, only one can feel the other - after the first kiss, they can both feel each other. so. in this setting, jake could feel amy, but amy couldn’t feel jake, and then they kissed, and now amy can feel jake. clear as mud :-)

So here’s the thing: it’s two o’clock in the morning, Jake’s smells like trash, and he’s about two-and-a-half minutes away from completely losing his mind. It should be noted, of course, that his teetering on the precipice of madness is entirely unrelated to the ungodly hour and his ungodly stench (though, to be fair, neither are helping) except by the furthest, narrowest of circumstances - that is to say, he could be fresh out of the shower at nine in the morning and still feel the tendrils of panic squeezing ever tighter round his heart.

So, here’s the thing: he’s panicking, and panicking some more, because for all of his feelings of panic stifling each inhale, Amy’s poorly-restrained anxiety rears up tenfold from the deepest dredges of his chest. It’s just his luck, he supposes, that his soulmate is such an anxious person by nature; normally it’s nothing he can’t handle, but with his current state of mind and his inherent inability to regulate his own emotions, Amy’s pretty much on her own.

Except that isn’t entirely true, is it, because here’s the thing: he’s panicking, and she can feel it. She can exactly how piss-poor he truly is at managing his panic, so it’s really no wonder that she’s panicking, because she always seems more panicky when he seems panicky and now she can feel exactly how panicky he is and god, who thought of this whole sharing-emotions-with-your-soulmate bullshit?

He didn’t ask for this, for the record. He was perfectly happy keeping their connection a secret and carrying it all the way to his grave, probably. Amy kissed him, not the other way around, thank you very much.

(He was probably going to tell her soon, anyways, because it’s been eating away at him like a virus and he’s pretty sure there’s science to prove that being around your soulmate without telling them they’re your soulmate for as long as he has been around Amy has physical side-effects in addition to being, like, a massive bummer.)

It seems wherever she is (somewhere in the back of the precinct in this very floor, he’s pretty sure, like either the evidence lockup or the bathroom or something) she’s at least partially aware of the effect her anxiety is having on Jake - he can feel her familiar attempts at tamping it all down, probably the result of her doing a breathing exercise he’s coached her through in the past. It works, if only a little; he can feel his own head clearing, his racing thoughts slowing, until the blurriness to his vision sharpens and he can hear himself breathe over the blood pounding in his ears.

He’s not even fully aware of his own thankfulness until he feels Amy’s bewilderment - and of course she’s bewildered, why wouldn’t she be bewildered at his thankfulness invading her mind like alien baby chest-bursters.

His newly-cleared vision lands on a slightly crumpled post-it taped to the bottom of his computer monitor - get a grip tonto, it tells him in Rosa’s scrawl - and he inhales deeply through his nose, letting the words reverberate around his skull. Get a grip, get a grip, get a grip.

It’s probably more of a reflection on him than it is on her that, despite his somewhat-diminished sense of world-ending panic, he can’t quite get the unevolved caveman part of his brain to stop replaying their first kiss. It’s not his fault - Amy Santiago is a good kisser, even under all the duress and pressure of an undercover mission seconds away from going sideways. She’s a good kisser when she’s sporting a gruesome black eye, a good kisser when she’s out of breath, a good kisser when she’s falling, a good kisser at the bottom of one of the nastiest dumpsters Jake’s ever had the misfortune of smelling in his life. Even if nothing else ever happens and he spends the rest of his life replaying this one memory on a loop, he’ll get it tattooed to his forehead:

Amy Santiago is a good, good kisser.

But, the fact still remains: he never asked for this.

He definitely hoped for this, but he never asked for it.

He kind of asked for it.

It’s not his fault.

It was a natural reaction - anyone who was in his place would have done the same thing, dammit! She’s his partner and she was in danger - and, okay, maybe the only reason he knew that in the moment was because he felt her sudden spike of shock and fear more than he heard knuckles connecting with flesh and her responding gasp of pain in the room he’d just crept out of. But the fact still stands - he would have gone and thrown that jerk off of any of his fellow detectives.

He would have gotten just as much savage, feral pleasure at punching that perp’s lights out. He would have yanked any of his fellow detectives into a bone-crushing hug. Just as Amy would have pulled any of the other detectives into a panic undercover kiss upon hearing their other perps coming back toward them at the commotion.

Right.

Amy Santiago is a good kisser, even when she’s unwittingly establishing their soulmate connection and feeling every last ounce of his emotion flood her nervous system for the very first time.

(He tries not to think about the fact that she’d gasped into his mouth or that she’d gone stiff as a board in his arms for all of one-second - tries to chalk it up to the sound of their perps storming in somewhere behind them and wolf-whistling at their display, too distracted by them to notice their companion out cold on the floor at their feet.)

And he really tries not to think about his stupid, fumbling attempts at leading them out the back door into the alley behind the warehouse before the perps caught on - about how he’d misjudged the distance, sending them both toppling over the edge of the loading dock and straight into the open dumpster below.

(And the weight of her settling over them even as they’d both grunted on impact - how she’d pulled back for a second, eyes blown wide, before leaning back in - how he’s still not sure if the desperation he’d seen in her eyes was case-related or them-related.)

It was messy, and stupid, and so completely and utterly them - and the fact that they managed to make all of their arrests gives him hope that someday, they might be able to laugh about this.

Of course, the fact that she did not speak one word directly to him and studiously avoided his gaze the whole way back to the precinct gives him severe anxiety.

It’s two-o’clock in the morning and his connection to Amy is a living, breathing entity - what was a soothing glimmer as delicate as spider’s silk glows bright an overwhelming now, rearing up and glittering like ocean waves beneath a setting sun. She’s everywhere, she’s everything, and he’s certain now that he won’t be able to live without her, and maybe that’s not the best thing to be thinking at two o’clock in the morning when he smells like a dumpster and there are half-finished arrest reports strewn about his desk, but it doesn’t matter.

Because the hailstorm of emotions originating from Amy suddenly taper off into a quiet and firm kind of resolution - and Jake’s stomach bottoms out at the feeling. He can’t tell around his own stupid anxiety if she’s happy or sad or angry or anything other than calm - it’s the exact opposite of the way he feels, only more so when his phone buzzes with a new text.

Will you please meet me in the evidence lockup?

She doesn’t have to ask if he’s still at the precinct, he notes with a certain amount of trepidation as he pockets his phone and slowly stands from his desk. She’s only felt his emotions for a matter of hours, now, and already she can read them well enough to deduce that he’s been paralyzed at his desk since they got back.

It would be comforting, if he wasn’t so freaked out.

She’s tucked toward the back of the evidence lockup when he slowly edges inside, leaned back against the shelves, arms crossed loosely over her chest. She straightens a little when the door squeaks on its hinges; he winces, both at the sound and at the fact that her face is entirely unreadable. She’s pulled her hair up into a low, loose bun in the time that has passed since he last saw her - a move he recognizes from her previous panic attacks, a half-conscious effort to allow cool air to touch the back of her neck. He forces himself to keep moving toward her for as long as he can stand it - all in, he stops about five feet short from where she’s standing, hands jammed so deep in his pockets he’s at risk of ripping holes through the seams.

Amy stares at him for a long moment, the only sound in the room the quiet mechanical whir of the precinct’s computer servers against the wall to his left. He tries to hold her gaze, really - it proves to be too much, the way the blinking server lights reflect off the molten brown chocolate of her irises, seconds away from piercing the very foundation of his soul. He focuses instead of her hands - on the way her fingers twist around her grandmother’s ring, knotting together in a way that reminds him of the knots in his own stomach. He inhales through his nose, holds it for a beat, and slowly releases it through barely-parted lips.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice is soft, curious; not an ounce of accusation colors her words. His heart leaps unbidden at the sound of her voice and her eyes practically double in circumference. “Jake, I…” she trails, her fingers pressing briefly over her heart. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He rocks back on his heels, fighting his flight instinct urging him to shrug. “I don’t, um…I just, I didn’t want you to, y’know, feel…obligated.”

Her swell of affection is undeniable; he peers up at her through his lashes to find her gaze soft and a little bit sad.

Boldness sweeps through him.

“I mean, you were right about all of this - the choice part of it, I mean. I knew you were my soulmate the day I met you, but -”

He’s nearly knocked breathless at the sudden punch of disbelief from Amy. “Eight years?” she whispers, and he bites the inside of his cheek. “You’ve known for eight years?”

“Uh-huh,” he curls his fingers inside his pockets, twisting the fabric of his jacket between his nails. “I mean, it was rough at first - we weren’t exactly best friends, remember? And I thought I was wrong for a while, too, but I - I wasn’t. And, I dunno, I was starting to come around to the idea of telling you about it when -”

He stops, drops his chin, stares at the fraying seams of his sneakers. “When, what?” Amy prompts him after a moment.

“You were right that morning in the break room,” he says quietly. “When you were talking about, uh, the nature of free will. I didn’t realize how important it was to me until after we talked, but -”

“The morning my brother found his soulmate,” she interrupts suddenly, understanding washing through her. “Oh, Jake,” she says softly, “I was such an ass about it -”

“No, you were right,” he insists. “I had never really thought about it that way. It made me rethink a lot of things, actually. I realized I had been planning my whole life around - well, around you. But I didn’t even know you. It’s like you said, some cosmic force just decided that that’s how things were gonna be for me, and I never questioned it. But after we talked that morning, I realized that I wanted to want this. I wanted to want you. Not because someone else said I should, but because I chose to. And I - I wanted you to, uh, choose me. So…” he sucks in a deep breath, and Amy’s chin ticks up a degree. “You don’t have any obligation to me, Ames.” he says, pleasantly surprised to find his voice unwavering. “If this isn’t what you want, I…I get it. Really.” He tries to ignore the sharp ache in his chest as the words leave his lips, but based on the way her face crumbles he’s certain he’s done a terrible job. “Okay, eventually. I’ll get it eventually.” A half-smile quirks the corner of her mouth upward, and he feels himself steadying. “But if…if this is something you want…I’m yours. I want you. I choose you.”

It’s strange - up until now, he thought he’d felt every single one of Amy Santiago’s emotions. This one - this swelling, morphing mass of something - is entirely new to him, though. It’s bubbling up and folding in on itself, growing faster than he can comprehend, intensifying tenfold with each slow, tentative step Amy takes closer to him, and now her molten gaze has him pinned in place all the moisture in his mouth evaporating in an instant -

Her hands are warm and steady where they brush against his jaw and curl around the back of his neck, firm when they tug him down two inches, soft where they gently skate up into his hair. Her lips are pliant against his, coaxing and inviting, moving with him in perfect synchronization.

Amy Santiago is an excellent kisser.

But above everything else, Jake feels radiant acceptance swelling like a warm hug around his tripping heart. She wants him, too, it’s in her hands and her lips and her steady, steady heartbeat. He all but melts against her, releasing an involuntary hum as the tension leaks from his joints and his hands slide up the gentle slope of her spine. She lets out a little hum of her own when his fingers spread and flex over the space between her shoulder blades, and he tucks the sound away, fully intent on figuring out exactly how to make her do it again.

She pulls away first, pressing a hand to the side of his face when he momentarily strains to follow, and for a long moment they stand foreheads flush together, trying to catch their breaths. Her left arm flexes where it’s wrapped around his neck and he slowly curls his fingers around the curve of her waist, smiling at her quiet, breathless laugh.

“You really meant that, didn’t you?” she whispers.

He swallows thickly, reveling in the warmth of her skin seeping through his shirt, ignoring the now-distant ache in his chest at the thought of her not wanting this. “Yeah,” he breathes, and it’s the strangest thing - it’s like his conviction is echoing back to him.

She pulls away to look him in the eye, though her grip around his neck never falters; he bites back a smile at the feeling of her fingers curling into the material of his hoodie. “This is - it’s - a lot,” she mumbles, eyes briefly squeezing shut. “Like, a lot to process - is it usually this intense?”

“Never,” he says quickly. “I mean, like, sometimes if emotions were running high - like if you were really pissed off about something, or, like, having a panic attack - but that was before you could - I mean, that was when it was just me. I don’t - I don’t really know what happens now.”

She nods slowly, eyes darting down to his lips for the barest second before meeting his gaze again. “I…really want to find out,” she whispers.

It takes all of one nanosecond before the joy comes blazing in - a tsunami of it, all-encompassing and all-consuming. He yanks her back to him sharply, her responding laughter little more than a muffled buzz against his lips and a pleasant simmer in his belly. Fear and dread and panic are nothing more than distant memories now, and through it all Jake finds himself wondering why on earth he didn’t do this sooner.

“Jake -” he cuts her off with another kiss, earning yet another muffled laugh, pressing against her over and over again until he’s effectively smothering her. “Jake - Jake, let’s - Jake!”

He’s laughing when he pulls away, biting his lip, reaching up to touch the tendrils of hair fallen from her bun. “Sorry,” he mumbles, not sorry at all, “I’ve just been waiting for a really long time to do that -”

“I’m not saying we have to stop,” she says, “just - let’s go somewhere, anywhere else. I don’t even care where, just - together.”

“I smell like a dumpster, so -”

“Me too.”

“- shower? And then somewhere? I can pick you up at your apartment -”

“Or we could just…both go somewhere that has a shower.”

There’s mischief in her eyes and excitement in her veins and he can’t tamp down the grin on his face if he tried. “I think I know a place,” he says pseudo-thoughtfully, and this time it’s Amy pressing her lips to his to smother his laughter.

“Let’s go together,” she says when she pulls away too soon. “We can come back for the other car tomorrow, but let’s go together.”

“Yeah,” he says, an absurd hitch in his voice. “Together.”

She steps back and the loss of her heat against him is jarring until her fingers lace through his and gently squeeze; her affection and adoration is an undeniable hearth in his heart glowing in her eyes. “Together,” she whispers, chin briefly touching his shoulder.

There’s an urge somewhere deep to tack something stupid like ‘forever’ on the end, but he ignores it in favor of a broad, blinding grin.

(That hearth has grown to a wildfire still raging by morning, when he emerges from his bedroom dazed from sleep and everything else to find Amy padding around his kitchen, hair tousled, grin soft with the same affection he feels in her stuttering heart.)

[bleepblopbloop56]

The Murder In The Dressing Room

Chapter 5: Smile

Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, ao3

Warnings: myrder, blood, gore, graphic descriptions of getting killed, needles, some unwanted kisses, really this just is my favorite chapter but its the most graphic

And like i say ever chapter @pathos-logical did all the heavy lifting and i love her more than i love myself

---

"Where do we go from here?" Remy muttered- here being a total dead end. For what felt like the hundredth time, he scanned over everything pinned up on Logan's walls. The whole thing looked a lot more like something you'd see on TV than how they usually did things, but Logan was always one for more old-school methods. Remy was fairly sure that when he’d started on the job, he'd been hoping to be much more of a black and white film noir detective than he'd turned out to be. 

No matter how many times they'd looked over Logan's notes, the end result was nothing. Neither location had security cameras, and there was no DNA, no fingerprints, no footprints, and no witnesses. All they had was a mask, and Roman.

And what little they did have didn't make any sense. The murders seemed frantic and uncalculated, resembling crimes of passion rather than stone cold murders. And yet the killer never left a trace, implying they had planned every detail.

"Alright, alright," Logan groaned, throwing himself into his chair and rubbing his temples. "Let's do this again. So our timeline is…?" he trailed off. Remy scowled at Logan's expectant look, but he heaved an aggravated sigh and laid out the case for the umpteenth time. 

"So, for the hundred and first time! At 5 o’ clock Monday afternoon, Thomas Sanders arrived at the Star Theater." Remy pointed to the very start of the board. "His performance ended at 8:25, and cast members can recall seeing him in the theater until around 9:30." He stopped to grab a sip of his drink before pushing forward. "He never returned home that night, and at 6:42, Tuesday morning, his roommate Roman Cardona Rodriguez-" Logan glared as Remy exaggeratedly rolled the "R's"- "had called in a dead body wearing a theater masks he'd found in dressing room number three, time of death unknown." Remy sighed, pushing his sunglasses on top of his head. No matter how many times he went over it, nothing cleared up.

"Three days later at around 7 o’clock, Roman left Remus Rodriguez’ home, claiming he was still alive when he left. You two had a makeout session in the parking lot, and at 12:56 am you and Roman discovered a dead body, also wearing a mask. Obvious signs of struggle, and as you said, Roman was found with a fresh bruise he claims was also from Remus. Is that enough for you, Specs, or will I need to do it a hundred and second time?" 

Logan ignored him, mind racing a million miles per hour. "And the only connection is… Roman…" he mumbled to himself, throwing his head forward onto the desk and groaning. "Well, since we know it's not Roman-" Remy cut him an exasperated glare but didn't say anything- "the murderer has to be someone who knows him. Did he state why he moved back?" 

Remy picked up a file and skimmed through it. "The official statement is he broke up with his fiance." Logan jumped so hard Remy could hear his knees bang against the desk. "Off-record, he stated that his man was getting into some sketchy bullshit that he didn't want to be a part of." In all honesty, most of Remy's investigations were off the record. He found that connecting to a suspect like a human got him way more information than Logan's methods, even if they weren't exactly as professional. Or legal. 

"His fiance…" For a second Logan didn't say anything else, trying to avoid showing how much his heart stung at the words. But as if struck by lightning, he suddenly sat up in his seat. "That's a motive… Remy, that's our first lead!" Logan exclaimed. "An angry ex-fiance who wants to make Roman's life a living hell by killing off everyone he loves!"

He leapt into action, scribbling in his notebook before moving to type frantically on his computer, but Remy's reaction to the possible lead was unusually subdued.

"That's not good," Remy said quietly. Sometimes pushing puzzle pieces together meant revealing a much darker picture than you'd expected. 

"What do you mean? Of course it's good! We have a suspect- now all we have to do is find out who this guy is and pull him in for questioning," Logan smiled, but the expression dropped off his face when Remy continued.

"No, you idiot. I mean if this dude's killing everyone Roman loves, doesn't that make you a target?" Logan froze. "Roman left this guy for you, doesn't that put you on his hit list?" 

Shit.

-

Virgil got home at exactly 5:30 pm every single day. Routines eased his anxiety, so he had settled into one. He got off work at 5, reached home by 5:30, and changed into his pajamas by 5:33. 

The door was unlocked when he came home, and that was the first sign his routine would be broken today. 

"Logan?" he called, setting his bag down where he always did and continuing through the house. Logan's bedroom door was standing wide open, but the lights were off. Logan never left without closing his door. "Logan? Dude?" No response. 

Virgil was no stranger to anxiety, but something about this felt different. Something in the air was making it feel like all of the blood was being drained out of his body, making his hands shake at his sides and a pit form in his stomach.

He stepped into the bedroom, trying to tell himself he'd just been watching too many Buzzfeed Unsolved videos. That he was just being paranoid and making up ridiculous theories. That an unlocked door didn't mean he was in trouble. 

Virgil switched on the lights, jerking his head around to look for a demon or intruder, anything. 

There was nothing. See? Paranoi-

A gloved hand suddenly clawed its way over his mouth, a knife to his throat. He needed to scream, he needed to scream, and nothing was coming out. 

Fight-

or flight-

or freeze.

But… the man wasn’t doing anything. There was a second where the loudest sound was Virgil’s heartbeat in his ears, and then the man spoke.

“You’re not Logan.” The words were clipped, cool, but there was an edge to them as sharp as the knife at Virgil’s throat. The man stayed still behind him, steady against Virgil’s increasingly fast breaths. Was this a mugging? Was this how muggings were supposed to go? Did robbers usually know the names of the people they were stealing from? Did they hold knives to people’s necks and then just stand there?

“Who are you?”

Virgil couldn't say anything. All of the words in his head were swamped together, getting caught in his throat and leaving him unable to make anything but a choked noise in reply.

"Answer. Me,” he growled low into his ear, tightening his grip on Virgil so hard he almost wondered if he was going to crack a bone before Virgil could say anything...

"V- Virgil." The name sounded wrong on his own tongue, like everything in his body was telling him not to say a word.

The man pulled him against his chest, walking slowly with him over to the bed.

"Hello, Virgil." He drawled out the name, testing how it sounded. Virgil still couldn't see his face, but he could hear the smirk in his voice. "Come on, Virgil, be nice, say hello back to me!" He pressed the knife a little harder before he moving his hand down to let Virgil speak. 

"H- hi…" he forced out, breathing hard. The guy smelled like he'd been drinking and like he used too much cologne. Tears started to run down his face, and Virgil thanked all the gods he didn't believe in that Logan and Patton were out of the house. 

"Is this where good old Detective Logan lives?" the man asked, far too casually for the fact that he was holding Virgil at knifepoint. Mindful of the knife at his throat, Virgil shook his head no. If he couldn't save himself, he could at least give Logan a chance.

The man pulled his hair back, pressing the knife against his neck harder until it began to draw blood. "WRONG ANSWER!" he shrieked. "Would you like to try lying to me again?" 

Virgil desperately tried to shake his head without slitting his own throat, barely containing a plea for the man to just stop.

"Good boy!" he smiled, voice suddenly back to smooth and casual. The pressure against Virgil's neck eased, but the man's hand kept him in place. "Now… Does. Detective. Logan. Live. Here," he growled into his ear. Virgil nodded, all thoughts of bravery from before escaping his mind as he began to cry harder. He felt like he was going to puke, and he was barely getting in enough air. But despite all that, he did his best to stay quiet for the man with the knife.

"Even though you're a lying little bitch," he snarled, running a hand through Virgil's hair and making him tremble even harder, "I think I like you. So let's make this as painless as possible, hmm?" He reached into his bag, pulling out something Virgil couldn't see. For a split second, Virgil wondered what it could be, but he got his answer soon enough.

The man leaned in slowly, and it took everything in Virgil not to pull away from the sensation of his breath against his neck. He kissed the spot slowly, holding Virgil’s trembling body against his like he wanted to draw this out as long as possible. 

The man paused as he pulled back. He looked with satisfaction at the spot he had kissed, now slightly red but not bad enough to bruise- and used it as a target, plunging a syringe deep into Virgil's neck. 

Virgil cried out in pain, sobs shuddering through his body. It only took a moment before he realized he couldn't blink, couldn't even move his eyes. And then the numbness spread- first to his fingers, then his arms and legs, until it was clear the only thing keeping him in a sitting position was the hand at his back. And- god, was his throat closing up?

The man behind him shushed him softly. "There you go, Virgil, it's okay- all done, see?" he soothed, pulling out the needle and putting it back in his bag. The way he was speaking was horribly reminiscent of how Logan would hush Patton when giving him medicine or changing a diaper. 

The man laid him down on the bed, gently running a hand through his hair, and through the black spots beginning to crowd the edges of his vision, Virgil finally got a good look at his face. Green eyes, crooked nose- the kind you'd get if you've had it broken a few times- and a bright red scar across one side of his face. There was no crazy thrill or adrenaline behind his eyes like Virgil might have expected. In fact, he looked perfectly calm.

That was somehow worse.

The man smiled down at him, clearly reveling in his panic. "Y'know, at first I came here for my good friend Detective Grey," he said, getting up and monologuing like an honest-to-god Disney villain. God, Virgil couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe- "But then you came in. I didn't expect lil ol Logan to have a roommate!" He strolled up to the dresser, where a framed picture of Logan holding Patton was proudly displayed.

"Or two, based on the decor…" He looked around, taking in the baby toys strewn across the floor, how half of Logan's room had been transformed into a nursery. He popped the picture out of the frame, folding it up and shoving it in his pocket. "I think I'd like to play with him a bit more… You gave me an idea, Virgil! I'm so proud!" Virgil's chest was burning, and he'd long since lost control of his body. But he was still awake, he was still aware, why couldn't this nightmare end-

The man began rummaging in his bag, and for a moment Virgil hopped it was a gun to finish him off. But instead he pulled out a bright gold mask with an eerie smile carved in.

"Why do you look so sad?!" he cooed, placing the mask on top of Virgil's face right as the black overtook his vision. 

"Smile."

---

The murder in the dressing room taglist:

@cataclysm-al @theteenagetrickster @intrurality-fusion @katie-the-noble-fangirl @whizzie72 @grayson-22 @i-have-n0-idea-what-im-d0ing @winterwonderland7669 @missieluvsmurder @sign-from-god-complex @dragonindigo245 @angryfanboyscreaming @ninja-wizard101 @sombraookami @crystalistrappedintheinternet @imtooaromanticforthis @why-should-i-tell-youu2 @dragon-hair @satanblessi @spookilyfingergunsoutofexistence @skruffy901 @selectivereality @nonbeenary-enbee @imbasicallyshakespear @cats-vetal-miking-vomit @incoherentfangirl @oofmood @nonbianary-pineapple @royalnerd829 @unicornlogansanders

[heauxplesslydevoted]

Unexpected

Pairing: Liam x MC (Kendall Mason)

Summary: The Walker/Beaumont wedding doesn’t go as planned.

I’m tired of my faves being held hostage on that God forsaken ranch like they’re trapped in the AHS Murder House, so I wrote this.

Word Count: 2.8K+

The day of the Walker-Beaumont wedding is a very busy one. And no one has been busier than Queen Kendall herself. She’s been up since 5AM, helping the planners get everything together, making sure Savannah was calm and collected, keeping Leona and Barthelemy from killing each other, the works.

The effects of the day are starting to wear on her. Kendall has been up for almost 8 hours straights, running solely on coffee and sheer determination. Yes, she feels exhausted. Sure the coffee is making her dizzy and if she drinks any more, she might pass out, but she can power through, at least until the ceremony is over.

“You need to eat something,” Madeleine says, catching Kendall in a rare moment alone. “Like, at least a bowl of cereal.”

Kendall shakes her head at the idea. “I’m already dressed. I’m not running the risk of getting milk on my dress minutes before the ceremony.”

Madeleine sighs. “You’re on the verge of crashing. At least eat a piece of fruit. Or a granola bar.”

Kendall doesn’t respond to Madeleine. Instead she walks to the kitchen and plucks an apple out of the large fruit bowl sitting on the kitchen counter. She takes a large bite. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Madeleine replies dryly. “God, must you always be so petulant and stubborn?”

“Madeleine, I really don’t have time to listen to you today, especially since you weren’t even invited on this trip, you just weaseled your way in,” Kendall snaps in a rare outburst. “So why don’t you go find your seat? The ceremony starts in a few minutes.”

Madeleine looks taken aback by the harshness in Kendall’s time, but she doesn’t argue with her. She knows that’ll only end in disaster. She just turns on her heel and walks off, mumbling under her breath.

With the blonde woman gone, Kendall breathes a sigh of relief. The last thing she needs is her breathing down her neck all day 

She quietly munches on her apple, ignoring the fact that she really doesn’t want to eat it and her stomach is doing somersaults at the taste. Has she gotten used to only eating Cordonian Rubies? Are they the pinnacle of apples? 

“Kendall!” Kendall snaps out of her thoughts and sees Hana. “Come on, the ceremony is about to start!”

Five minutes later, the ladies were in the Walkers’ spacious backyard. A gorgeous archway covered in various flowers is set up under a pair of trees, and Bertrand was standing at the altar, a smiling Maxwell next to him. Liam’s standing in the center of the archway, as he is the officiant.

Kendall’s heart beats double time at the sight of her husband. He looks extra handsome in his royal regalia and she tries to keep her more impure thoughts at bay. A wave of lightheadedness hits, much stronger than the last one, but she manages to brush it off and continues walking. Thankfully no one notices.

Liam smiles back at her as she reaches the end of the aisle. “You look absolutely beautiful.”

“Thank you. This was a rush job, so my hair and makeup aren’t the best.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You’re still the most stunning woman here.”

“I married the most charming man on earth,” Kendall muses. “How did I get so lucky?”

“I’m the lucky one in this scenario.”

“Hey, your wedding is over!” Olivia hisses with an eye roll. “Save the lovey dovey shit for the current bride and groom.”

Before Kendall can respond, the wedding march starts. Everyone stands up and turns around, spotting Bartie toddling down the aisle, in front of Savannah’s who’s being escorted by Drake. 

They make it halfway down the aisle before Kendall realizes if she doesn’t sit down somewhere and soon, she’s going to be extremely sick. Her heart rate—which she originally chalked up to being a young newlywed excited to see her husband—has yet to return to normal, and the ground underneath her feet is unsteady. Before she can even attempt to excuse herself, she drops onto the ground with a hard thud and everything around her goes black.

~~/~~

When Kendall finally comes to, she’s no longer in the Walker’s backyard, but what looks like a hospital room. It’s not too bright, as the lights have been dimmed, but there is a loud and persistent beeping noise that won’t go away.

“Where am I?” She asks, and god does she instantly regret it. Her throat is so dry, and talking only makes it sore.

Liam, who’s been sitting at her bedside, perks up at her voice. “Kendall? Thank heavens, you’re awake!” He reaches across her bed and presses the small red button, alerting her doctor to come to her room.

“I need water,” she manages to croak out.

“Of course.” Liam grabs the cup of ice water on Kendall’s small bedside table and raises the straw to her lips. She greedily gulps down the water, unaware of how thirsty she truly is. 

“Thank you.”

Liam puts the cup down and runs a hand across Kendall’s cheek. He kisses her forehead. “You gave me quite a fright.”

“What happened? Am I in the hospital?”

“Yes. You collapsed at Bertrand and Savannah’s wedding.”

“What? Oh god, how embarrassing.”

“What’s embarrassing about it?”

“Collapsing in itself is embarrassing, and I’m sure everyone was gawking at me. And I ruined their wedding. They can’t even continue on without us because you’re the officiant and I’m the maid of honor.”

Liam dismisses the concern with a hand wave. “Nonsense. Bertrand and Savannah will survive. They know they can always find another officiant or they’ll have to wait. You come first.”

Kendall tries to sit up, but she’s exhausted and moving is too much effort. “Did the doctor at least say why I passed out?”

“When we first brought you in, she told me that your blood pressure was low. They drew blood, but those results haven’t come in yet.”

“Don’t tell Madeleine, but she was right, I should’ve eaten something.”

“Yes, you should’ve,” Liam agrees.

“Does the press know I’m here?”

“No. You weren’t wheeled in through the emergency room so no one really saw, and you were checked in under an alias. Any unsuspecting nurses and orderlies think someone named Isabel Martin is occupying this room. Plus, this is a private suite, only your nurse and doctor have access.”

“Okay.” That lessens some of the embarrassment. The last thing she needs is to be plastered on newspapers and on CNN, looking weak on a world stage.

There’s a small knock on the door and in walks a doctor. She smiles nervously upon seeing Kendall. “Hello!”

“Hi, doctor.”

“This is my first time meeting actual royalty. Do I address you as Your Highness? Your Grace? Queen Kendall? Your Majesty?” The doctor drops into an awkward bow. “Do I courtesy to you?”

Kendall shakes her head. “We’re on your turf, and calling me Kendall is just fine.”

“Very well. Hello Kendall, I’m your doctor, Dr. Washington. I’m an attending ER physician here at the hospital.”

“Nice to meet you. Will I be okay?”

“There are a few things I want to go over with you, point by point.” The doctor turns to look at Liam before turning back to Kendall. “With all due respect, is it okay if your husband stays?”

“Of course it is! You may speak freely in front of him.”

“We just have to make sure.” Dr. Washington logs into a computer and pulls up Kendall’s chart. “Your blood pressure was low, that’s probably why you fainted. We gave you some fluids to get you re-hydrated, so you should feel better soon. You need to be very conscious of how much water you drink, especially in a place like this, where it gets very hot. Your blood sugar was also low, so just make sure you’re eating enough throughout the day. I’m sure your schedule can be hectic, but you have to carve out time to eat, with some light snacking between meals.”

Kendall nods, taking in the information. “Will do.”

“And there’s one more thing I think you should be aware of: you’re pregnant.”

If Kendall wasn’t already in bed, she’s almost positive she would have collapsed again. Pregnant? She was actually pregnant? “What? How?”

“I think you guys know how.”

“But I took a test last week and it was negative.”

“Well you’re only about 6 weeks along, so you probably took the EPT too early. We did a blood test, and we can detect levels of hCG that are too low to be found in urine.”

Kendall feels Liam squeezing her hand tightly, but it barely registers. She suddenly remembers the alcohol she indulged in last week.

“Since I thought the test was negative, I haven’t been the most careful person. I had a glass of champagne at my friend’s bachelorette party, and I drank a lot of caffeine.” A tear rolls down her cheek. She’s already a horrible mother and her child isn’t even a fetus yet. “Will the baby be okay?”

Dr. Washington briefly glances at one of the monitors attached to Kendall, and she reaches out to touch the queen’s arm. “First things first, I need you to stay calm. You're not the first mom to be who drank before finding out she was pregnant, and you won’t be the last. Now that you know you’re pregnant, I say stop drinking alcohol immediately, and limit caffeine to one cup of coffee per day. But it’s still so early in the pregnancy, I don’t think one glass of champagne and some coffee will have an effect on the baby’s development.”

“Calm?” Kendall chuckles humorlessly. “My entire country’s future rests on my reproductive organs.”

“That may be the case, but none of that matters if you don’t have a successful pregnancy and delivery, and staying as stress free as possible is key. That’s the goal right?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ll make sure she takes it easy,” Liam assures.

“Now Kendall, I think you’ll be okay, so I’m prescribing you some R&R. Pregnancy can make your blood sugar and blood pressure drop, because the baby is taking all of your nutrients and making your body work overtime. So I am forcing you to take it easy. Make sure you get something to eat, keep your feet elevated, drink plenty of water, and have your husband wait on you hand and foot for a few days.”

Liam smiles. “I don’t need to be told to do that.”

“And last but not least, congratulations! If you want, I can page one of our attending obstetricians to come down. It’s too early for an ultrasound, but they can go over more things with you if you have any questions.”

Kendall looks at Liam who’s just as eager as she is. She turns back to the doctor with a nod. “Yes. We’d like that very much.”

~~/~~

“Are you guys sure you can’t come back to the ranch tonight?”

Liam can hear the disappointment in Bertrand’s voice. “Yes. Kendall is exhausted, and I think there’s too much going on at the ranch, and her doctor said she needs some quiet and relaxation. If she’s there, she won’t relax.”

“That’s true. What was wrong with her?”

“She just pushed herself too hard. Lack of sleep, stress, the works,” Liam replies, not giving away any detail. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to officiate for you.”

“Don’t apologize, your wife is your priority. Thankfully Bianca’s minister was in attendance and he gladly married us.”

“Congratulations. I hope married life treats you well.”

“I do too. Will we see you guys tomorrow? Bianca is throwing us another get together, a goodbye party of sorts.”

“Yes, we’ll be back tomorrow,” Liam assures Bertrand. “Enjoy your reception tonight.”

“Will do. Take care of Kendall.”

“Absolutely.” Liam hangs up.

While Kendall was still in the hospital, Liam asked Hana to pack them a small overnight bag and bring it to the hospital. Liam decided that Kendall had a bit too much ranch living and thought it would be best if he got a hotel room for the night. That way, there would be no distractions, no noise, and no people bothering them.

He decided on the Ritz Carlton, and when the manager of the hotel realized that a king and their American queen would be staying with them, he gave them the entire top floor to themselves, for maximum privacy.

Liam walks back into their bedroom and finds Kendall sprawled out on the bed, wrapped up in a large white bathrobe. He gets into the bed with her. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” she answers honestly. “Like I can sleep for a year.”

“It’s been a long day, you deserve some rest.”

“I still feel bad about missing the wedding though.”

Liam sighs softly. He truly married the best person in the world. She was always looking out for others, even at the expense of herself. She deserve a night to be selfish.

“We can make it up to them tomorrow. They’re having another party before we all leave. And we’ll get them a very nice gift.”

“An amazing gift.”

“An amazing gift,” Liam repeats with a smile. “It’s been such a crazy day, I don’t even think we’ve had time to properly celebrate the good news. You’re pregnant!” 

The words sound like music to Kendall’s ears. “When I took the test and it came back negative, I lost a bit of hope. I thought we’d be a couple who went through years of trying before it finally happened.”

“But we didn’t.” Liam gently tugs on the belt keeping Kendall’s robe secure, letting it fall open. He places a warm palm on her stomach, stroking the skin with affection. They actually had a baby in there. He was going to be a dad. “I am married to the love of my life, the most amazing woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and you’re giving me a beautiful baby. You’ve made me the happiest man alive, Kendall. You’ve made all of my wildest dreams come true. And I hope we have a girl who looks exactly like you.”

“And she’ll have an accent like you, and speak fluent Greek and Italian.”

“Or maybe she’ll take after you and talk in a New York accent.”

Kendall rolls her eyes. “I don’t have an accent.”

“You do, and I think it’s adorable,” Liam argues.

“Well whatever we have, boy or girl, they’ll be the most loved baby in the world. Hana and Bertrand will fret with them over etiquette, Maxwell will teach them how to dance.”

“Olivia will probably teach them how to conceal weapons on their person.”

“After they turn 18.”

“Of course.”

Kendall reaches out and strokes Liam’s cheek. “Can I make one request?”

Liam catches Kendall’s wrist and kisses it gently. “You can make as many requests as you want, my queen.”

“I don’t want to tell anyone yet, at least until I’m out of the first trimester. And even when we tell people, it’s only our immediate circle. Let's not make an official, public announcement until we absolutely have to. I know we’re the king and queen, and we owe it to our people to keep them abreast on our lives, but I still want us to be a normal newlywed couple. I just want to enjoy this as much as I can, as much as we can.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Liam says after a moment. “Though part of me would love to shout our good news from the highest mountain top, I also want to privately revel in this, with you.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Liam shifts his body and places a kiss on Kendall’s stomach. “Hello there, little one! I don’t know if you have ears yet, but I am going to talk to you anyway. I love so much already, and I’m incredibly honored to be your dad. I can’t wait to watch you grow up and explore. I can’t wait to show you all of the things my father never showed me. You and your mother are the most important things in my life, and I look forward to telling you that every single day.”

A tears slips down Kendall’s cheek and she tries to wipe it away before Liam notices. It doesn’t work. “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know. Because I have an amazing, wonderful, beautiful husband whom I love. Because I’m having a baby with him, which is all I wanted to do. Because I’m just so ridiculously, deliriously happy in this moment.” Kendall sees Liam’s own eyes are glistening, unshed tears threatening to spill. “Why are you crying?”

Liam smiles, a smile so wide and bright, Kendall is afraid he might split his face in half. “I’m happy too. Actually, happy doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m euphoric. It almost doesn’t seem real.”

“Well it’s real.”

Liam drops another kiss onto Kendall’s stomach. She can already tell he’s going to do this all day, every day. And honestly, she can’t wait.

“We should order room service,” Liam murmurs against her skin. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Let’s order some food, and whatever looks best on the dessert menu. And then we can order a movie.”

“On one condition.”

“Whatever you want.”

“You have to put on the other fluffy robe.”

“Deal.”

[distressedpanda]

Her Song (Loki x OFC) Part 5

Warnings: Language, Violence, Blood

A/N: I know this is late but my town experienced a power outage yesterday. I am posting this now and hoping you forgive me.

This chapter is written mostly from Loki's POV. I wanted to show his mind set and motivations for future chapters. I am portraying a very vulnerable Loki, which I understand is slightly out of character. Call it artistic license, but I needed him that way and quickly. 

As always let me know if you wish to be tagged.

Tags: @whosaidididthat​

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Gunfire sounded across the lumber yard. Bullets ripping through the air, dangerously close. Crouching behind a stack of logs, clutching a far to still women tightly to his chest, was Loki.

Earlier

Everything had started rather monotonously. They had disembarked at there designated location and were given three hours to get in, get out, and meet up at the rendezvous. Keeping to the shadows, they moved well as a team, Loki had begrudgingly noticed. He hated to admit any positives in them being together, even to himself. But as they worked their way down to the basement level of the factory, he knew where she was without looking at her. That arc connecting them, even when she was out of sight. She seemed to be the same, moving with silent, graceful steps, with a stealth he had to admire. She didn't cast glances at him either, simply moving as she needed to cover him and have him covering her.

They had reached the basement without complication. It had appeared that no one was there. They hadn't run into any guards so far, which only worked to heighten Loki's suspicions and senses. But the nuclear material was present, along with an unarmed war head.

Loki moved quickly to the computers, as Iloa removed two of her daggers, standing behind him and surveying the perimeter around them. He worked quickly, nimble fingers flying across the keyboard, entering the access codes Banner had given them.

The container disarmed and Loki reached for it but was stopped short. He glanced over at Iloa with a questioning brow, her wrist laying across his forearm, dagger still in hand.

She flicked her eyes around the room, before returning them to him, “It's too easy,” she whispered in warning. “This place was covered with guards when we did surveillance,” she added.

He glanced around the room as well, it did seem easy. “I agree, but the material is here. We have to take it,” he whispered back.

She locked eyes with him for another second, before exhaling loudly and nodding. Lifting her arm away from his, “Wait,” she grabbed a metal suit case with a strap, off one of the tables and a pair of medical gloves from another. “Can't be to careful.”

He took the proffered items, slipping the gloves on and retrieving the container carefully. He placed it gently inside the padded case, removing the gloves and tossing them aside. Closing the case, he grabbed the strap slipping it over his head and arm. “Shall we?” He asked, lifting an arm to allow her to go first.

It was his first mistake.

She reached the bottom of the stairs before him. They were tucked at the back of the room, behind a wall. She stopped lifting her hands in surrender and backed away from the bottom step slowly. Loki halted as well, he couldn't see the threat but he understood the danger. She glanced out of the side of her eye at him in warning. He knew she was going to use her voice. Summoning his seiðr, his eyes flashing lime green, he nodded at her.

She began to hum low in her throat, a tune Loki hadn't heard before. He heard rather than saw when the guard went down, landing with a loud clatter and thud on the stairs. He began to move toward her again, dropping his seiðr.

His second mistake.

Iloa turned to Loki and smiled. And he didn't bother stopping the smile that worked its way onto his own lips.

The smile turned to anguish, when the shot rang out. Hitting her leg, she crumbled to the floor. He sprinted to her side. She screamed at the shooter, as Loki reached her and drug her away from the alcove. He thanked the Gods that her song hadn't affected him.

He was panicking, as he surveyed the injury. His heart double timing in his chest. She waved him off, “It's just a graze,” she said through her teeth, “Help me up.”

He did as she instructed, helping her back on her feet carefully. “Are you sure you should be standing?”

She put pressure on her leg and winced but stood with ease. “It's fine, I can heal it.” She began the tune he had heard before, “I told you it was too easy. We need to find another way out of here.”

He nodded, “Agreed, there are another set of stairs on the other side.” He pointed across the room and they took off across the space.

He stayed in front of her then, not letting her take point. They darted up the stairs, reaching a door at the top. Panting they both listened intently, him with his seiðr. Lime green eyes flashing, he nodded at her. Carefully he swung the door open, casting his magic out in an attempt to detect anyone coming there way. But he hadn't honed this part of his magic.

They rounded a corner and ten men where standing there waiting. They hadn't been moving so Loki's ability hadn't picked them up. Iloa started her hum but the men started firing before they could get the full affect.

Loki threw up a shield with his seiðr, as Iloa started taking the men down with her daggers. She was the picture of elegance, as she flung the Kunai through the air disarming the group. Her hair spinning around her body like a cape, she was so beautiful he couldn't take his eyes off of her.

When the final gun was on the ground, the men charged. “Hand-to-hand?” Iloa laughed smiling up at Loki. “Bring it,” she shouted at the advancing group.

Loki dropped the shield, summoning his own daggers. They went trough the group, like two spinning whirlwinds. Slashing, punching, kicking, they worked back to back to incapacitate the guards.

They stood victorious, grinning at each other. She quickly sang the Kunai back to her belt. “Let's go,” Loki nodded at her. He was having far to much fun, fighting at this woman's side. He had started to forget his fears, reaching out to grab her hand as they ran down the halls to escape. She giggled as she ran beside him.

Third mistake.

At every corner and staircase on there way out was a new group of guards. They worked together, laughing and revolving through the men with an intense violent energy.

Loki ended up removing his helmet to use as a weapon, leaving it impaled in a mans arm as he screamed to be released. While in the next hall, Iloa used Loki as a spring board, jumping off his bent legs and spiraling through the group. Kunai flying, until she landed behind them in a crouch, completely unscathed. He stood up, looking at her at the other end of the hall. He smiled, absentmindedly punching a charging guard in the face. His eyes still locked on hers, “You're pretty good at this.”

She giggled, as he made his way down the hall to join her, “You have no idea,” she teased, grabbing his hand and darting toward the exit again.

They made it outside to the lumber yard. They were so close to being free of this place.

He was so distracted by how good they were together, he didn't realize they were in danger again until the shooting began. Loki threw up his shield quickly. But not quick enough.

Fourth mistake.

Her hand slipped from his. Iloa went down, coughing up blood and this time she didn't get back up. His shield faltered, a bullet tearing into his shoulder. He roared with rage, sending daggers flying at the shooters. He took several of them out but not all.

He had to get Iloa out of there. Somewhere safe so he could heal her. Tucking the case around his body, he bent to retrieve her now deathly still frame from the ground. His shield wavering inconsistently at his back. Bullets ripped into his arms and legs. To hell with himself, he had to save her.

One bullet had hit her in the stomach, another just below her left shoulder. Far to close to her heart for Loki's comfort. Blood pored down the front of her leathers and ran down her chin, mixing with his own as he pulled her close to his chest.

He prayed silently to the Gods, as he sprinted behind a nearby stack of logs. Please. Please don't let her die. He begged.

Crouching behind the stack he pulled her closer, brushing her crimson hair away from her face. Her normally rosy cheeks, growing far to pale, “Don't leave me. Not now. Not yet,” he begged her now. But as she laid lifeless in his arms, he was certain she would not return. He summoned all the magic he possessed laying his hands over her wounds. He willed it to heal, to close the tear, mend flesh and torn muscle, to bring back what had been taken from him.

Tears rolled silently down his cheeks, she did not wake. The skin beneath his palms had knit back together but still she did not rise, eyes remaining closed, chest absent of the breath of life. He wasn't strong enough to bring her back. Laying her carefully on the ground at his feet, he rose slowly. Lifting the case over his head, he settled it carefully next to her body.

Rage coursed through his veins and mind, walking out past his shelter. Bullets again began flying but he didn't bother with the shield this time. As the bullets tore at his limbs, he released his power in a deafening roar. Daggers impaling the guards, twenty times over, not caring that he was taking lives.

When the last of the guards lay dead, he crumpled to his knees. Burying his face in his hands. He yelled. A deep guttural sound, full of anguish. His bloody and torn body, shook violently as he sobbed uncontrollably, letting himself feel the pain. What did it matter now, she was gone anyway.

The calming tune he had heard in the training room less than 24 hours ago, filed his ears and numbed his senses. He lifted his head, eyes closed, absorbing the tune though he knew it could only be in his mind. If this was her ghost he would happily let her haunt him for the rest of his days.

Tiny arms circled his shoulders from behind, bringing the electricity and warmth that had become essential for him to survive. He couldn't breath past the lump forming in his throat. The tune slowly transformed into the healing one and he felt his body begin to mend itself. But the tune did nothing to fix his heart. He inhaled unsteadily, not trusting his mind he slowly opened his eyes. She was smiling sweetly at him, as she continued her hum eyes full of worry.

He grasped her arm and hiccupped on an exhale, his fingers meeting flesh not air. Pulling her quickly but carefully around his body, he wrapped his arms around her tiny frame her. His hands began roaming across her back, up over her shoulders, down her arms, before his brain allowed him to believe the feeling of her mended flesh and warmth beneath his palms. Finally embracing her and pulling her tightly against his chest, he could feel himself began to breathe again. Burying his face in her hair, he inhaled deep greedy gulps of her ocean scent. “I thought you were dead,” he breathed against her neck.

She held his head, running her hand soothingly over his hair, “I am alright. I was fine.”

His hands shot to her shoulders, jerking her away from him, “You were not fine,” he growled, “You were dead,” his voice broke and cracked around the sentence.

She was still smiling though it turned sad at his words, “I was fine. I promise, I am a lot stronger than you think.”

Her way of speaking cryptically, did nothing but fan the flames of his anger. “YOU WERE DEAD!” He screamed at her, standing abruptly causing her to hit the ground. “I don't know how you aren't dead,” he paced back and forth unable to quiet his mind. Unfortunately, all it kept coughing up was how foolish and vulnerable he must appear right now. He couldn't appear that way to anyone and he scrubbed violently at his face with his hands. Glaring back down at her, he continued his tirade, “You are a mortal, you were gone. How are you alive?”

Iloa stood slowly, a bit unsteady. Loki fought the urge to rush to her side. He wanted answers, he needed answers. It would do him no good to give into the urge to be her protector right now. He would get nothing out of her, if he touched her again. At the moment, they weren't in danger. He had to resist.

She sighed heavily, “I am not a mortal, Loki.”

He scoffed at her, “What else could you be?” He snarled.

Iloa snarled right back, “You know what Loki. I am not going to answer that. You don't listen anyway, why should I spill my entire life story to you? You can't fucking hear me! And even if you could you haven't earned a damn thing!”

She marched past him, grabbing her side as she breathed raggedly. He was right on her tail, seething. Rounding the stack of logs, she grabbed up the case slinging it over her shoulder. She winced at the action but marched on ignoring him completely.

He let her walk in front of him, until she started weaving slightly. They had moved far enough away from the facility now, that he dared calling out to her. “Wait,” he called, trying to catch up to up. But again she just ignored him. He grumbled curses under his breath before attempting again, “Give me the case, before you end up hurt again,” he said curtly. He was concerned she would pass out if she kept this up. He had already been through one death scare. He couldn't survive another one, honestly he wasn't surviving this one.

She glared over her shoulder at him, “No,” she growled and stuck her tongue out at him. Turning back around, she continued to march off, stumbling and wrapping her free arm around her middle.

That had him stopping short, “You impertinent, female! Here I am trying to be a chivalrous gentleman,” he quipped in a self-righteous tone, “And you can't stop yourself from being a foolish child.”

“I have a fucking name, Loki,” she yelled, spinning on her heels and wobbling dangerously. She panted heavily glaring at him, before the case slid off her shoulder to the ground and her knees buckled.

Sliding to her side on his knees, he caught her before she hit the ground. “Iloa,” he breathed, voice cracking and breaking around her name. Foolish and vulnerable. Foolish and vulnerable. His mind berated him and this time all he could think was that that damned voice needed to 'fuck off'.

“I'm fine. I'm just tired,” she was still breathing laboriously, waving a dismissive hand at him weakly.

Loki's heart ended up in his throat. He watched her eyes flutter, could see her pulse in her throat beating erratically. She was still far to pale.

“You are far from fine, Iloa. Please stop saying that,” he stroked her hair gently, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice.

“We have been here too long,” she tried to sit up in his arms, “We have to get to the rendezvous.”

He gently held her down, “We have time, we are close,” he urged. “Please, stop being so stubborn and give yourself a moment.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off, “Just one.”

She sighed heavily, tilting her head in a slight nod. Her chest rose and fell heavily, and she fought to keep her eyes open. “Close your eyes,” he begged, “Rest for now.”

She shook her head, “I can rest,” deep inhale, “On the jet.”

“Please,” he begged, he couldn't keep the pain from lacing that one word. A tear escaping his eye, he scrubbed at his cheek before it went any further. He couldn't handle his mind reprimanding him again.

“Fine,” she huffed, he was fairly certain it wasn't just because she was angry with him. “You can,” inhale, “Put me,” inhale, “Down now.” She finally managed to get out. Loki shook his head and stubbornly she continued, “I know,” inhale, “You don't,” inhale, “Want to be,” inhale, “Holding me,” inhale, “Right now.”

There was a soul wrenching sadness in her voice that had Loki confessing, “There is nowhere in the entire cosmos I would rather be.” He managed a small smile but he knew it didn't reach his eyes. There was to much raw emotional pain, that he didn't know how to cope with, for a smile to be genuine right now.

She huffed again, placing her hand on his cheek. She smiled weakly but hers was genuine and trapped his breath in his lungs. She ran a thumb slowly across his cheek bone, he closed his eyes pressing softly into her hand, “Liar,” she teased.

He chuckled, despite the pain in his heart. Somehow knowing that she wasn't calling his words a lie but his smile, “That's my job,” he smoothed her hair again. “Rest,” and she nodded at him, her hand falling from his face, she closed her eyes.

He held her as she slept, her breathing evening out and slowing the panicky beat of his heart. Cradling her, he scanned the area. If he had calculated it correctly, they were only a few miles from the rendezvous. Technically, they weren't completely out of danger either. “I am going to protect you. All I want is for you to be safe,” he whispered, and pressed his lips tentatively to her forehead.

FOOLISH AND VULNERABLE. FOOLISH AND VULNERABLE. His mind prattled relentlessly. “Fuck off!” He growled low in his throat, and the inner chanting ceased, at least for the moment.

He reached for the case throwing the strap over his head and arm, careful not to jostle the sleeping woman in his lap. Once he had it situated, the case hanging behind his back, he turned back to Iloa. Wrapping an arm behind her neck, the other under her knees, he rose carefully to his feet. He would get her there safely. He swore to the Gods no more harm would befall her.

But when they got there, he would walk away. He must. The mistakes he had been counting, were the moments his guard had fallen exposing his feelings for her. And after almost losing her he knew he couldn't want her, need her, have her. He couldn't lose control. She deserved far more than he could ever give.

As they reached the jet, she stirred. Looking up at him, with that sapphire gaze, he reveled in the color, knowing it would be the last time he would ever see them this close. The color had finally returned to her cheeks and though sweaty, bloody, and dirt covered, she looked much better than when she had collapsed.

Natasha and Tony jumped off the jet, sprinting toward them, interrupting his thoughts. “Teen. Teeny, are you ok?” Tony's voice registered controlled panic and Loki had to admire him for it.

“Yea, Dad,” she rolled her eyes playfully, her voice much clearer than before. “Just needed a nap.” Tony took a deep breath and nodded as though he understood the response. Loki thought that maybe he did, even if it only confused him further.

She looked up at Loki again but he couldn't bring his eyes down to her again. “You can put me down now,” she said for the second time that day, “For real this time,” she added.

He did as she instructed, keeping a hand on her back to make sure she could stand on her own. But as soon as her feet were on the ground, Natasha grabbed her up in a back breaking hug. Loki winced right along with her.

Using every bit of his willpower, he turned away from her to Stark. Removing the case from his person he took it in both hands and pushed it forcefully into Tony's awaiting arms. “This is for you,” he said before dropping his hands. “And if you expect me to do these missions again.” He paused, inhaling deeply to stop the tremble that threatened his voice. He knew his next words would be the end, so he added a snarl, “Pair me with someone else. I will not work with her again.”

He didn't let Tony answer, brushing past him and his dumb struck expression. He made his way to the jet and climbed in, surreptitiously glancing back, seeing her standing there clingy to Natasha and Tony. He knew it had worked. Settling himself next to Thor, purposely placing himself as far away from her seat as possible. He chewed on his lips as the three boarded the jet. When it took off heading for the tower, he could feel her crying. His heart was breaking but he would not, could not admit it. This was for the best, she just didn't know it yet. Seemed like he might need a little convincing as well.

[wolframalpha]

3D-Printed Blood Vessels: The Tech Just Became Scalable

By Greg Hurst and Matt Gelber.

This article was published on Medium.

The Problem: Making Vasculature is Hard!

It sounds simple enough — all of your cells require a constant supply of oxygen. Your lungs extract it from the air and your blood carries it all around your body through a vascular network comprising thousands of miles of veins and arteries. If your heart doesn’t beat at least once every couple seconds, your brain doesn’t receive enough oxygen-rich blood to maintain consciousness.

We don’t understand super high-level biological phenomena like consciousness. We can’t engineer a conscious array of cells, or even of transistors. But we understand pretty well the vasculature that supports consciousness. It’s a series of tubes. Literally. And it may be that if we can make the tubes and deliver oxygen to a sufficiently large population of cells, we can make some cool things happen. A conscious brain is a long shot, a functional piece of liver or kidney decidedly less so.

The problem is, making vasculature is hard. Cells in a dish do self-organize to an extent, but we don’t understand such systems well enough to tell a bunch of cells to grow into a vascularized organ.

An alternative means of generating physiological structure’s blood vessels is a bit cruder — design the structure you want, then make a robot that can physically place the cells and the vessels where you want them. We call this bioprinting. A major hurdle with bioprinting is the fact that, while the printer is working, the cells that have been printed are slowly dying from lack of oxygen. For really big, complex tissues, you either need a way to supply oxygen while you’re still printing, or you need a way to make all those blood vessels really fast.

One really fast approach was demonstrated in 2009. Researchers at Cornell used a cotton candy machine to melt-spin a pile of sugar fibers. They cast the sugar fibers in a polymer, dissolved them out with water and made a random vascular network in minutes. In 2012, researchers at Penn used a hacked desktop 3D printer to draw molten sugar fibers into a simple lattice and showed that the same sacrificial casting approach could be used deliver blood to rat liver cells in a dish, keeping them alive for weeks. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed the ability to make these sugar fiber networks of any shape and size.

Materials Science + Mechanical Engineering + Theoretical Computer Science to the Rescue

Scaling the process isn’t just a matter of building a more precise, more expensive printer (although that is necessary). It’s a matter of choosing the right type of sugar, understanding the physical behavior of the sugar as it is printed and of telling the printing robot how to move. The problem spans materials science, mechanical engineering and theoretical computer science; it contained more than enough material for a PhD thesis, and the cells aren’t even in there yet. The materials and mechanical engineering aspects are laid out in a recent publication in Additive Manufacturing; the planning algorithm is described in a recent manuscript still under review.

Instead of conventional sugars, this printer uses isomalt, the same low-calorie sugar substitute they use to make throat lozenges. Isomalt works better than conventional sugar, mostly because it doesn’t burn like sugar does. The printer melts the isomalt and pushes it out of a tiny nozzle under pressure. Like a pen, the nozzle is used to “write” thin isomalt filaments, but in 3D. Printing speed, temperature and pressure are critical to achieving precise filaments. Right now the diameters of the filaments can be anywhere from 50 to 500 micrometers; to give some context, a human hair is about 10 micrometers thick. However, the researchers say it’s entirely possible to go bigger or smaller.

At that point it might seem like you’re done. But when you want to print a network comprising thousands of filaments, you encounter an interesting problem. You need to choose an order in which to print them. The printing process is freeform; you can move the nozzle anywhere you want. That means if you’re not careful, you can hit your sugar construct with your nozzle and destroy it.

Avoid Collisions AND Don’t Melt

Collision avoidance is a pretty common problem in robotics, so that part isn’t too hard to deal with. However, there is an additional wrinkle that is very specific to this problem. It has to do with the fact that every time you go to an existing filament and draw a new branch, you melt the material at the joint. Imagine you’re building a bridge, but every time you weld a new beam on, all the existing welds around it melt. This makes the problem a lot harder.

Without this constraint, the problem of choosing a sequence is analogous to finding your way out of the maze on the right. There are dead ends, but you can see them. You won’t get lost in them; you’ll immediately turn around. But with this particular constraint, choosing a sequence is like finding your way out of the maze on the right. The maze is big; for long sequences, it becomes, for all practical purposes, infinite.

The best you can do in this case is make an educated guess at every fork. For example, if you had a compass that pointed towards the exit, you might take the path that most nearly coincides with the direction of the needle. In some cases, there is no feasible printing sequence; the maze has no exit. More strangely still, you can’t know, at least with our current understanding of computer science, if you should give up. You know the exit exists if, and only if, you actually find it.

In order to navigate the maze and generate a printing sequence, you need an efficient algorithm as well as a fair bit of computational power. This part has become much easier recently with high-level languages such as the Wolfram Language. Says author Greg Hurst, a developer at Wolfram Research, “This problem spans many disciplines. Computational geometry is needed for collision detection, NP-complete graph problems — like finding cliques — need to be solved, and sparse matrix solvers need to be invoked thousands of times throughout. With the Wolfram Language, I was able to hammer out fast code in a matter of months.”

Here’s a Wolfram Language command to visualize nozzle-beam collisions. The red beams must be drawn after the green one to avoid contact with the blue nozzle as it draws the green beam:

Here’s the full implementation with relevant information to monitor the progress:

What’s Next?

So the problems of turning a design into a set of printer instructions, and of having a printer that is sufficiently precise into execute them, are more or less solved. This doesn’t mean that 3D-printed organs are just around the corner. Just pouring a bunch of liver cells around a vascular mold doesn’t give you a functional liver. You need to make the cells to grow and organize the same way they do in your body.

Cells respond to the chemical and mechanical properties of their environment, and successfully recapitulating tissue requires tailoring these parameters as well. But printing vasculature is a very important step, because without it, everything dies. Now we can start tweaking the environment without worrying so much about the all-important blood vessels.

Today, we have sugar bunnies. Tomorrow, we might have miniature organs on a chip that we use to test new drugs. In several years, who knows. Maybe we’ll be able to replace a failing heart with a patient-specific replica. Maybe the processor in your computer will be replaced by a vascularized slab of neurons. We can’t yet say what the application will be, but we have the tools now to start entertaining these ideas. Stay tuned!

For a more technical overview, visit the Wolfram Blog.

[connywrites]

of flesh and blood 4

[start] parts [2], [3]

“Give me the meanest look you’ve got. Come on.”

Eyebrows narrowing, the RK900 gave Gavin a typically puzzled glare over the words coming from his mouth.

“Tell me I’m a piece of shit. Everything you know, as if I were the scum of the earth. Go on. Try it.”

“I am not angry with or at you, Gavin.” Fists clenched, he was ready to take a swing at the robot, no matter what came out of its mouth. Snow sparkled in hot white spots in front of his vision as the buzz of caffeine and stupor from the overdose of Vicodin rushed through his veins, skyrocketing his straining heartbeat with a boost to his adrenaline.

“Do it. Do it or I’ll swing first.” With its head turning to the side, the RK900 looked at him with a knowing gaze over heavy eyelids and a blink of consideration, but no other response.

“You know it won’t matter if you do. You can’t hurt me.”

“Yeah, so? That’s not the point. Anyway, you didn’t do what I told you to. So, smartass, speak up. Fists up. I don’t care. Let’s go.”

‘Let’s’ gave the impression it would be a mutually desired encounter, when it wasn’t. Idling, the android felt nearly bored as it caught a fist that flied toward it, raised its knee to stop itself from being kicked with a tilt of its shin against Gavin’s, before blocking a few more punches with a similar passion.

“I knew it. Stupid things can’t even get angry,” he murmured, wiping the sweat from his brow as he shook his head.

“Drink some cold water. You’re getting a fever.”

“I already told you to stop tellin’ me to fuckin’ do,” Gavin interrupted the android mid-sentence, speaking with slow, thick words as if enunciating so the stupid thing would understand. The android sighed, a feigned response to show the supposed ‘emotion’ the detective seemed to be looking for.

“I apologize. I was programmed to adapt to people and the way they act, even if my default personality isn’t as friendly as the prototype’s.” Gavin raised his eyebrows, scoffed, and flashed a smile for half a second before it vanished, noticeably sarcastic in the milliseconds the android had to see the shift. Thinking back to Connor’s constant apologies, ass-kissing, awkward smiles, attempts at small-talk and engaging positively to whoever it seemed to choose to didn’t make it ‘friendly’ in Gavin’s eyes. Computers with a personality that tried too hard was comical to him, and that was unlikely to change.

“I have listened to your orders, I have played your games and situated myself around your attitude. I have made bargains with you. I have helped you - your caffeine intake has lowered, you get more hours of sleep.” Eyebrows lowering, Gavin’s expression contorted to confusion, the irritation keeping his mouth in a tooth-baring snarl. This was literally the opposite of what he told the android to do, and he didn’t understand why it was doing it.

“You want me to tear you apart?” Finally!

“You had to think that hard ‘bout it, huh? You fuckin’ hunk of garbage,” he spat, eyes narrowing as he lunged forward in a flash, the RK900 ‘letting’ him wrap his hands around its neck tight enough the synthetic skin started to blur away in its color, revealing the plastic plates and rubber muscles underneath. Gavin knew that underneath those, lining the inside of its mechanical shell was all the wires and chips, fluctuating that gorgeous sparkling blue liquid thirium with small bursts of electricity, surrounding metal bone. Cable ligaments. Corded arteries. Microphones. Speakers. USB chips. Screws and bolts.

He hated every aspect of it.

“You’re not listening to me at all, are you? What’s wrong with you? You go ‘n’ deviate, you fucked-up piece of scrap metal?” This show of frustration was different than Gavn’s usual, with grinding teeth and dilated eyes; the RK900 scanned them for the state of his brain as it lit up on its internal screen, a smaller version of how an EEG would screen an x-ray. His heartrate was at a dangerous level, likely making him dizzy and weak behind the aggression. Soon he would likely experience some confusion, followed by a burst of lethargy as the effects come down and the toxins leave his body. Until then, the android wasn’t entirely certain of how to make Gavin calm down, as there were few actions actually sufficient in a situation like this. Eventually, it decided on the probability that doing as it was asked would at least give him room to vent his frustrations, and possibly tire him out until he could sleep it off by the end. Dehydrated and haunted with his usual insomnia, the frown lines and heavy bags under his eyes were a giveaway to his mental state nearly as clear as its internal statistics.

“Do you ever think about what you say, Reed?” Its voice was only slightly quieted by the grip of his hands constricting the small chamber around its internal speech speaker.

“You are calling machines of many times greater intelligence than you – or, excuse me, smarter than you, if you’d like me to dumb it down – yet how many cases have you solved on your own? How many did you solve without my help? How many times did you attempt to sabotage Connor’s mission, so you could take the credit for doing nothing more than getting in its way?”

While his grasp around its throat didn’t loosen, washing away the skin-toned color of its chin and beneath its face as if it were being airbrushed away to show the intricate anatomy underneath, Gavin’s expression showed how visibly stunned he was, muscles going lax in favor of the surprise alone overriding his motor control.

“This is what you told me to do, detective, and now that I am, you don’t appear as hostile. Am I correct in that assumption?” There was a sensation of pressure on the side of its face as Gavin’s fist struck it with a fist after letting go, letting it drop and re-calibrate until it could regain balance with straight posture on flat feet; another one of those inhuman things that weirded him out if he thought too long about it.

“Oh no, don’t let me stop you now,” he growled in his usual low voice that indicated he hadn’t calmed down at all. Advantageous for Gavin, but less so for the android as it knew doing as it was prompted could result in damage or destruction. Closing its eyes, the LED on its right temple spun yellow while it pulled up every piece of information it knew about detective Gavin Reed, from his personal medical files to school records from growing up, since he insisted.

“After all, you have worked so hard. High school wasn’t your friend, and that’s when your insecurities began. You were a timid kid, weren’t you? No one could blame you with how your father treated you.”

Those stormy gray irises were roughly outlined by the bright red veins in his bloodshot eyes, and the scent of his breath was unpleasant. The man overworked himself in his expertise as well as in his physique, resisting treatment to wounds or neglecting care when he’d tear his muscles from too many bench presses, ultimately injuring himself in ways that would never fully repair. It was as though despite his aggressive demeanor, the man was a masochist in his actions, but manipulated his behavior and that of others so he could project the image of a predator. The psychology was a simple construct in RK900′s infinite database, understanding the habits solely academically as it had no emotional attachment to obscure the concept of what was ultimately a basic code, minor among its seemingly eternal understandings – aside from the ability to empathize.

“Of course, where else could you put the blame? Your mother was never there, so there wasn’t anyone else to point fingers at. Your sister was successful, not enough to become the family favorite, yet with enough enthusiasm you had to grow competitive.” Gavin took a step back, a twitch in the corner of his eyebrow as he tried to understand what he was hearing, let alone how it even had the information in the first place.

“How…how do you know about my family? I mean, my home life. That…that’s impossible,” he muttered, but then nearly laughed with the shake of his head. He wasn’t entertained, but the concept was hard to believe even if he was in a sober mind.

“Think about it. You can’t remember your entire life, but your relatives can. They can tell what you never told your psychologist. They can tell their friends, their lawyers, their daughter and she can tell her friends. What was it that you didn’t like about your sister?” It pulled its lips back in a convincing grin.

“Oh, that she was a good listener. She obeyed, so she never got hit or yelled at. Sound familiar?” The anger returned in a flash, and with another swift movement, Gavin shoved the android to the ground with the bulky sound of a metallic thump against the floor. It was easy for the android not to fight back, even if it had training from every combative art ingrained into its programming. Nothing told it to move forward, and so it didn’t.

“What is it that you said, on the 4th of July, 2028? The way you would burn her and everyone she loved with the fireworks you’d gotten illegally smuggled over the border so you could fire off a major explosion with the fuse wrapped around her?” While its expression remained generally deadpan, there was a darkness in its eyes as it pulled apart Gavin’s history, one vicious secret at a time.

Even though they were just words, Gavin stood with more hesitation and wariness than the RK900 had ever sensed from him since they met.

“Are you afraid? Have you ever felt the fear you’ve tried to instill in others when your authority is questioned, or a stranger said something a bit too rude?”

“That’s—you weren’t there, you didn’t see that. How would you know…” There was still agitation in his voice, but it didn’t mask the confusion.

“Have you heard of the six degrees of separation?” It took his silence as a resound ‘no.’

“It is a loose social concept that one person is connected to six. I was not there, and I am constructed of data that was once somehow formatted into the software of a piece of technology, but whoever made me had picked it up from someone else. From someone else, from another, and so on.”

Androids didn’t have brains, and while he knew their biocomponents nearly inside and out, he hadn’t the least idea where that information might be stored.

“Fortunately for you, as the most advanced android to date, I have the ability to erase and delete information faster than you can physically blink. But you won’t ever believe that I did, or that it’s entirely gone, let alone the concept that I could have ‘forgotten’ it as you assume there’s always a draft of a backup, somehow, somewhere. Computer class wasn’t your favorite, I know. Your teacher did, too.”

Feeling nauseous, Gavin’s gut instinct told him to flee. Regrettably for him, the android was right – he wasn’t a good listener. Not even to himself.

The next thing he knew, he was straddling the 900 by the hips, busting his knuckles on the shell of its cheeks until red colored the off-white like paint on a canvas. Blue blood dripped from its nose, a fake, indigo bruise formed around its eye, its audio processor was knocked hard enough to cause a permanent distortion to everything its microphone picked up with crackling static. Its thirium level dropped by minor percentages with every few hits, and then it lost a 7% chunk as he grabbed it by the shoulders and slammed the back of its metal skull against the cement, then twice, and lost another 5.09% when the boot came down to smash its face and pry open the creases between the tiles of plastic until they dented or bent, causing a break between the tubes that held blue blood – some would even call them ‘veins’ – and spilling the liquid in a growing puddle barely past his outside driveway.

“Even if you destroy me,” it spoke with a voice now monetized by autotune, “you know I’m synchronized to all your technology and can upload my files anywhere. Your co-workers, your boss, his boss, their superiors, to Cyberlife…” the pause was intentional, and Gavin took it as an opportunity to kick it in the mouth, knocking a few imitative teeth loose from the rubber gums, causing the liquid to drain into more vital components as it trickled into its mouth and down its mock esophagus.

“It will haunt you for weeks,” it said in a further mechanized voice, gradually losing the human touch to its vocal tone as the small speaker within the smashed chamber was scratched and smothered in liquid.

“Perhaps months.”

“How are you not shutting down? Huh?” Gavin’s voice was smooth and monotone while he spoke with a calmness that seemed comparably threatening to when he yelled.

“I shot Connor and that thing was down for the count.” Great idea. Standing up, he lost his balance and staggered for a moment, before he moved to grab his pistol from the glovebox of the borrowed police cruiser. Popping in a new magazine and clicking the handle shut, he swiped closed the car door and aimed the barrel at the android without looking, blindly shooting a couple holes into the front of its torso; the new breaks in its hollow epidermis oozed heavy amounts of thirium as it seemed he’d punctured the pump itself. Taking a closer look, he could see the device pulsing at a rapid rate – intentionally mimicking a beating heart – now hollowed out from the path of the bullet, dripping in a tunnel of artificial blood and flesh.

“This is why you can’t win, Gavin Reed.” The way it said his name with the tone of an outdated translator AI made him shudder. There was a stiffness in the android’s lips when it talked as he’d ripped apart the tiny wires connecting the face plates to wherever the ‘facial expression’ instructions were. If he remembered right, they were stored in a RAM chip on the inside of the lower jaw portion.

“No one does what you want, and you’re angry. They do what you want, and you’re angry.” The look in its eyes was way too honest for him to believe it to be false in the haze he was in, so in another swift movement, he holstered his pistol and retrieved the switchblade from his pocket, pressing the button that sprung it open and plunged directly into the hollowed sphere-shaped cameras that made up its eyes, draining more liquid thirium with each deep laceration. The entire face of the android morphed to its default, blank state with the sound of buzzing mechanics before freezing still once he’d gotten to the second one.

“Yeah, let’s see you smart-mouth me now, piece of shit,” he said with direct contradiction to his commands that started the scenario, but had no acknowledgement of the fact as that piece of his memory was already gone, a result of the heavy distribution of the chemicals in the painkillers.

Silence.

At long last.

[spookilyfingergunsoutofexistence]

How do you measure power?

Chapter 1 of ?

You can read this on Ao3 here

Next chapter

This is the prologue.

Enjoy!

tw- death, coma, mentions of arguments, mentions of fat shaming.

                                                        ~~~

How do you measure power?

Do we call a person powerful because of their muscle mass or their will power? Logan would like to believe that his mind is mightier then any physical expression of power. Certainly a higher IQ is better then a toned stomach and abs. He’d always believed that in a crisis his quick thinking and extensive knowledge of many different subjects would get him through instead of being strong and fit. Of course, Logan knew it was important to be healthy and to eat a balanced diet. He knew it was important to go to the gym for a minimum of two and a half hours a week or at least do some form of exercise over that time period. Logan knew that a healthy body lead to a healthy mind that is ready to learn- it was his quote he lived by and that he would tell his students every day. He had loved being a teacher. There was something enjoyable about teaching young, growing minds and helping them to achieve a brilliant future. It filled him with pride whenever he would mark a student’s exam paper and see how well they had done. Logan loved the school. He loved the long cream coloured corridors bustling with students who more often then not were not very eager to learn. He loved his classroom, the soothing brown walls that gave the room a more calming atmosphere (which of course is very important when one is learning or revising), the desks that were all perfectly placed apart from each other not a centimetre out of place, the eco-friendly energy saving lights that gave the room a warm gentle glow and of course his big, mahogany desk at the front- neatly organised with equally heighted stacks of paper and a little container for pens. A grey computer with a wireless keyboard he could carry around the classroom when giving presentations and two dark blue photo frames. One photo frame contained a picture of what the stars looked like the night he met his soulmate and the other contained a picture of him and his soulmate dancing together on their wedding night.

Logan could be described by strangers as a very stoic man. His face rarely showed emotions and he was rather eloquent in his speech. He very rarely spoke in short sentences unless giving one worded response. He was a very hard person to form a connection with. Say you bumped into a stranger and had to work together in a school project for example. Would you say hello? Would you make conversation and try to become friends? Perhaps you would- perhaps you are the type of person who makes friends quickly and is casual and easy going. Or maybe you are the type of person who would shy away from strangers and feel awkward in situations in which conversation must be made. On the extrovert to introvert spectrum Logan sits firmly in the centre. He is introverted in nature and much prefers to be alone much like how his soulmates best friend was however he can talk to others without feeling uncomfortable easily. He is what you would call an ambivert. An ambivert is a noun describing a person who has both introvert and extrovert qualities. To further define what this means we would have to investigate what both of those words can be defined as although we will not discuss that today. Logan loves looking into every single possibility. If a puzzle has a single meaning left unsolved then it is certain he will solve it. As a child Logan fancied himself to be a detective. He adored crime shows and loved to read thrillers and mysteries in hopes of working out who the killer was before presented. He happened to be fantastic at problem solving in maths as a kid and he was the leader of the debates team as he often would try to solve something from both sides with justified, fact-fuelled arguments. He hated arguments that were not backed with evidence. That’s why when he first met Patton, he hated him. Patton had been a boy that didn’t logically make sense. He was over-emotional and despite being from a low-income family he still gave away stuff to those who were less fortunate. To this day Patton would still bring food in for the quote on quote hungry kiddos who were not being fed properly at home. He was caring in nature and in recollection that is probably one of the more outstanding features that caused Logan to fall in love with him.

If you asked Patton how he would describe Logan, you would get a very different answer to what a stranger or even friend would say. Patton would probably describe Logan as strong. An answer that would most likely receive some prejudice due to Logan’s natural chub. People didn’t tend to care whether a person was healthy. Many skinny people are underweight and yes, many people who are bigger due tend to be unhealthy but a lot of them are actually very healthy. A lot of people follow a balanced diet and have regular blood pressure and peak flow levels. A lot of people follow the recommended exercise levels and are very healthy people despite not looking physically fit as per societies standards. Sure- according to society Logan was fat. A word that had been used so much to berate others and insult them that it sounded ugly.  Fat: a word that can be defined as having large amounts of excess flesh. Only 30% of thee worlds population is deemed overweight but what is the difference? What is the difference between being overweight and fat? Well, fat is generally a term used to describe someone’s physical appearance without considering their actual weight or how healthy they are. A person may have an above average immune system, they may have never smoked once in their life and have healthy organs and a healthy heart. They may have perfectly healthy lungs and may be attractive and good at sport and a overall good person but due to this natural excess skin they have that may just be a cause of genetics they have now been labelled fat. A word that does not accurately describe them. A person who is deemed overweight is simply a person who is too heavy for their height and age. A BMI that decides whether a person is overweight is simply and equation of weight in kilograms dived by height in centimetres and then again by height in centimetres. This determines a BMI but is not an exact indication of whether a person is healthy or not. A person can be healthy and fat. The stigmatism behind such a vile sounding word causes a world of upset to those who are called it. Logan surely knows that road well however Logan is a man of facts and facts alone and the facts are that yes, he’s overweight but he is healthy and that shouldn’t be a factor that can be used to be determined his worth in this world. Patton says he’s beautiful and for Logan that is enough.

Patton says a lot of things. Just two weeks ago Logan heard Patton tell one of his infuriatingly annoying puns to a dog they had walked past on the street whilst doing one of their weekly walks through their local woods. Logan would never admit just how much he actually loved those puns, but they made his day and sometimes he couldn’t stifle the laugh that wanted to erupt from his stomach when Patton made a rather clever one. Logan loved so much about Patton that he would never admit. How could you not love him? The man was so very clever and funny and all around adorable. He worked three days a week on the night shift as a nurse and was constantly on call in case of an emergency. The amount of dates that had been cancelled when Logan and Patton were first dating due to emergencies was too many to count. Logan saw him as an everyday superhero and adored the nurse more then anyone he had ever meant. If Logan was to measure power, he would use Patton as an example. The man had been through so much. He hadn’t been able to afford university and had managed to get a scholarship. He had built his way up from a boy who lived in a small apartment with his parents who went most days without a proper meal to a stunning, healthy man who was successful and who’s cooking rivalled that of a professional chef. Logan was constantly in awe of the man. He could never understand why of all people, Patton had chosen him.

Logan lived in an average sized home by the top of his street which was surrounded by a white picket fence and had a lovely front garden with lush, green grass and flowers blooming. The home from the outside looked happy. It was a cute, cottage looking home. A place with two floors on the inside containing a master bedroom, a guest room, an office, a large kitchen connected by a half wall to an open plan living room/ dining room and three bathrooms. There was an en-suite in the master bedroom downstairs there was a garage in which a light blue 2012 model Impreza is parked. He’d spend most nights working in his office that was just as organised and tidy as everywhere else in the home was. In the office there is oak flooring with a black rolling chair and a dark brown wooden desk with a lamp on it and a old computer as well as pens in a pot for when Logan has to mark work and piles of school books and work that he does over the weekends. There’s a minifridge under the desk for late night marking in a cupboard connecting to the desk. The cupboard has a shelf above the fridge where snacks and spare equipment is stored when Logan is planning his lessons late into the night. The fridge is full of fresh bottled water and fruit. Logan loves his home. Its perfect. However, he hates the emptiness of it when Patton is gone. Logan finds the nights very lonely when his husband is not around and feels selfish that he would rather have Patton home constantly by his side then out at work helping to save lives. He stays up late into the night working when Patton is away as he cannot bring himself to sleep alone. Many times, Patton has got back home after his shift early in the mornings to find Logan passed out at his desk. Logan knows when he’s working late what Patton would say to him. Its probably the same thing he would say back. Some speech about how a healthy sleep schedule is important for the body and is optimal in requiring a person to have another energy to face a day. Something like that except it would probably be more packed with emotional blabber and a lack of facts, something like, “Logan, hunny… You know how important sleep is! You’ve got a busy day tomorrow and if you don’t follow a healthy sleeping schedule you’ll be tired in the morning. No on wants Mr grumpy ok sweetheart?” Or words to that effect.

Logan’s life was perfect. The sort of life that you only see in a movie or a book. He had the perfect job, the perfect husband, the perfect house and the perfect friends. Had he faced struggles and hardships? Of course. Had he had some bad jobs along the way leading up to this point? Had he been through some bad relationships and had some bad friends? Had he lived in some crappy apartments? Yes, yes and yes. He had been through some rain before the sunshine. He had been through some hard times with Patton; they weren’t perfect. He can’t deny there has been times where he has argued with Patton and they’ve not talked for weeks or there are times where it felt like his world was over because they had broken up. There was an entire six month period in which Logan and Patton had been apart. Those six months had admittedly been the worst couple months of Logan’s life. But that was all the past. He loved his life now. He was happy.

But hapiness comes at a price.

Logan hadn't expected it to happen. The day had gone so fast. He had woken up one morning to news reports of how a dangerous radioactive substance had been released that night at the local hospital and anyone in a 10 mile radius has possibly been affected by it. The entire town was now under quarentine and people were advised to stay indoors. Logan didn't listen. His husband was at that hospital. His husband may have been one of those 45 dead. The day went by in a blur. Before he knew it he was at his husbands bedside, sobbing and praying he'd just wake up. He looked so pale... Patton was in a coma.

His Patton. His strong husband who saved lives everyday was laid on a hospital bed looking almost lifeless and Logan was absolutely powerless with no way to help him.

Logan was alone

[nineninefinest]

Growing up is never easy. Trying to find your place in the world was scary and difficult. Zoe Acosta had an especially hard time doing that.

For a lot of her life, she wasn’t even Zoe Acosta. Her name was Zoe Liberato. A small family that consisted of just her and her parents. She had no idea she was born into darkness. Her father raised her with ulterior motives. He never intended for her to be his daughter, just a pawn. Perhaps an heiress if she proved herself.

It was her mother that properly raised Zoe. Loved her the way a parent was supposed to love their child. The bond they formed was strong, but only got better as Zoe grew up. Skinned knees and bad dreams always had her mother coming to Zoe’s side. She never had to worry if her mom loved her or not.

Her father, however, moved like a ghost through their own home. Zoe could go days on end without seeing him sometimes. He didn’t eat with the family. He barely ever picked her up from school. She was always told he was busy working, but she never knew what to tell the other kids when they asked what her dad did.

Zoe was 10 the first time she saw a glimpse into the world her dad lived in. One summer night, the heat kept Zoe awake. Uncomfortably tossing and turning until she gave in to getting a glass of cold water. Everyone was supposed to be in bed, so Zoe crept down the stairs. Her pink flashlight was in her hand, but she found the kitchen light on as she approached. Her dad sat at the head of the table, more grown men around him. None of which Zoe recognised. She didn’t think to eavesdrop. This was her dad. She had no reason to be suspicious of him. Zoe didn’t even consider this was something she wasn’t supposed to be around until the arm that reached up to open the fridge was grabbed roughly. She was spun around to face her dad as he yelled at her. He took her back to her room and slammed the door. Zoe cried herself to sleep and ignored the dryness in her throat. She wore a long sleeve shirt to school the next day despite the other kids that laughed at her and called her weird.

It took a few days for her mom to find out. Not even from Zoe. From her dad complaining and saying hateful things about their own daughter for spying. When her mom told Zoe she knew, she was already preparing to be yelled at again but it never came. Her mother just sat on the bed next to her and stroked her hair. “Your father is under a lot of stress at the moment. He doesn’t mean to yell.” She nods and tells herself that the next time he does.

And the time after that. She repeats it like a mantra in her head.

By the time Zoe is 13, it’s just a part of life. Her and her mother have accepted they’re stuck in this situation.

Until one day Zoe’s friend cries to her at school. Her parents were getting a divorce. “What’s a divorce?” Zoe asked softly. Everyone else seemed to know. They started at the raven haired teenager like an idiot for asking, but the word had never been uttered in her household.

Her heart ached for her friend, but today she went home feeling lighter than ever. Perhaps her mother didn’t know either. She relayed the concept with a smile on her face and optimism shining in her eyes. Much to her surprise, her mom’s reaction didn’t match. She just sighed and told Zoe it wasn’t that simple.

The moment she’d been waiting for finally came. Her mother finally told him she was done. It was all the same screaming and fighting to Zoe, until her bedroom door swung open. Usually they kept their fights to themselves. Her mom would never let her get involved. The words spilt out of her mouth so fast, Zoe couldn’t even process it all at once.

“Pack what you absolutely need. We’re leaving right now.”

Zoe rushed around, shoving things into her suitcase. Always feeling like she was forgetting things but not wanting to spend another moment here that she didn’t have to. Worst case scenario, they could replace whatever they left behind. She could still hear her mother screaming at him from downstairs.

“Keep all your stuff. The only thing I care about leaving here with is my daughter.”

The last time Zoe ever saw her dad was looking over her shoulder as they walked out for the last time. As he yelled at her for being ungrateful. At her mother for manipulating Zoe against him. Swearing they’d be back and begging for his help within a week.

Quite the opposite, however. They took a while to get on their feet but they had each other. Zoe’s mom worked as much as she could, wherever she could. Zoe started applying for jobs the day she turned 14. A nice opportunity came to be a retail worker in the local mall. Late nights and weekends, so she could still go to school.

Once she was 16 and no longer needed both parents permission, they went down and legally changed their names. Her mom reclaimed her maiden name and Zoe was an Acosta by blood and now name.

Life only seemed to get better without him. Zoe ended up with an opportunity to work on the police force. She begged the universe to let her right her father’s wrongs and she strongly believed this was her chance to. Something to prove that same evil didn’t run through her veins. She kept her head down and studied, eventually landing a job in the 99th precinct.

That was where she met Logan for the first time. He was a rookie, just like her, but he seemed to have this air of confidence. Maybe it’s just because he wasn’t as jittery as he sat on the couch next to her. “Hey,” she forced out, eager to break the silence. Her head stayed forward, as if they were children trying to sneak a conversation in class. “I’m Zoe.”

He introduced himself as Logan. When a hand extended towards her to shake, she finally turned to face him. On leg tucked under the other as they talked. It wasn’t until the an older detective interrupted them that Zoe noticed she’d stopped shaking.

She considered Logan a fast friend of hers. He was always nice to her and made her laugh without even trying. Unlike lots of the people she went to school with, even ones she considered her friends, he didn’t look down at Zoe when she asked a question. He stuck by her side until they figured it out together. When her face lit up with happiness, she’d always see a smile on his face too. His arms wrapped around her without hesitation when she cheered and hugged him.

It didn’t take long before they started hanging together outside of work too. They spent ages discussing the movie between breaks at work. All different theories were thrown. Some serious, some making fun of each other. By the time their shift was over, they’d arranged to meet at the local cinemas later that night to see the movie together.

Zoe told her mom about the cute boy from work that had asked her to the movies with a grin on her face. Her cheeks rosy when her Mom teased he might be into her. Zoe would die before she told her mom she was into him. They spent ages raiding Zoe’s closest. Her mom pulling out something she thought was cute while Zoe shook her head and laughed. “It’s not a date, Mom,” she protested through giggles as her mother laid another outfit on the bed. They compromised of changing out of her work clothes, but still keeping it casual. A quick kiss on the forehead before Zoe left.

She wanted to get there early. Make sure didn’t leave Logan waiting on her. He must have had the same idea, because he was already leaning against the wall when Zoe walked in.

“Are you ready to get the tickets?” She asked as soon as she was close enough.

“I think we need to get our snacks first.”

“Those are from the same counter.”

“Overpriced ones are from the same counter. I have a backpack and the mall has a grocery store.”

“You’re not supposed to take outside food in.”

Despite her protests, Zoe walked with him. They moved through the different aisles, laughing and throwing more candy than they needed into the basket. “I’m still buying popcorn,” Zoe stated as they checked out all their food.

“I’ll eat some of your popcorn.”

“You will not.” Yet she put the bucket between the two and told him to help himself through the movie. Hands brushed in the popcorn and Zoe just prayed he couldn’t see her blush in the dark.

After the movie, they stayed back at the arcade. Versing each other on every single game they could find. Air Hockey seemed to be one of their favourites. Taunting and teasing each other when they were in the lead. She put a gold coin in one of those photo booths. Dumb poses for each picture. Bunny ears and swapping his sunglasses for Zoe’s actual glasses.

The next day, she stuck the photo strip onto the computer at her desk and realised how much she liked hanging out with Logan. He stuck with her through the good and bad times. One bad time in particular was Taylah running through cases with them. One hit too close to home for Zoe and left her feeling like the walls were closing in. She abruptly excused herself without wanting for the okay from Taylah before she left.

She expected to be alone out there, but Logan surprised her when he came out with her. Even though she rushed to wipe her tears away, he sat down on the bench next to her. They sat together in silence for a moment before Zoe broke the silence. “Who am I kidding?” She asked, trying to disguise a sob as a scoff. “Being a cop. I can’t do this.”

“It’s rough, but-“

“You don’t get it, Logan. I can’t do this. This was supposed to be something... life changing. I really thought I found right where I was supposed to be, but I cracked. Under the slightest pressure, I cracked. It wasn’t even real pressure. It was just trouble shooting with Taylah.”

His hand gently rubbed circles on her back, mirroring the way Zoe felt herself spiral. “It sounded like my mom,” she finally admitted. “She never actually stole anything. We’ve just been so low that she could’ve... and she would. Anything to keep me safe, she would have done. How am I supposed to bring justice when I can’t keep my life seperate?” Even though it was posed as a question, she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer. Just incase that answer was ‘you can’t’.

“I wanted to make this world a better place. At least, not make it a worse one. I thought I could set myself apart from him, but I can’t. It’s in my blood or my DNA or something.”

“Who, Zoe?”

“If I tell you this, you have to swear you’ll never tell anyone else.”

“I swear.”

“On your life,” Zoe added, extending her pinky out towards him.

“I swear on my life,” he told her as his pinky linked with hers.

“My father... wasn’t a good man. In fact, he was a terrible man. The kind of terrible men we deal with here. My mother and I left him when I was thirteen, but I’ve always felt like it was my responsibility to balance it out. Stop men like him from now on, but I can’t. God, I��m pathetic.”

This time when Zoe sobbed, Logan pulled her in to rest against his shoulder. Normally she would have protested incase she got his shirt wet, but right now she just liked the comfort.

“You’re not pathetic and you’re not a bad person.” She looked up at him, forcing a small smile despite her teary eyes while he gave her a goofy grin. He sat out with her for as long as she needed, complete with running back in to get her tissues and making sure it wasn’t obvious she’d been crying when they walked back in.

He walked her all the way back to her desk, dramatically pulling her chair out for her to make her laugh. Even when he was back at this desk, he’d pull a face every time they made eye contact. Anything he could to lift her mood.

It definitely worked. Zoe laughed at him now, as well as smiling at the photo strip blu tacked onto her computer. She never took it down. In fact, she dragged him to every photo booth they came across when they went out. Each strip being added to her computer to make her smile.

One day when Logan seemed down, she stuck one on his computer while he was out of the precinct. It was worth it to see him smile when he sat down and looked at his computer. When he looked up at the obvious culprit, she stuck her tongue out at him, hoping to make him laugh like he always did for her.

[avcngrs]

I want to share my life story. It would mean the world to me if you read this all the way through. ♥

Dear friends, 

Some people have been asking if I’m returning to tumblr and well... not exactly.

I’m actually considering deleting my tumblr. I’ve definitely moved on and realized that tumblr only worsened my depression and kept me locked up in a world on a laptop. And yes, I made amazing friends on here who helped me through some hard times. However, they’ve all changed usernames and I can’t even find them. The insane amount of hours I’ve spent on this website scares me. I left tumblr about a year ago kind of suddenly and I want everyone to know that I’m okay, maybe even better than okay. It’s been a long, hard road with medical issues and anxiety and although tumblr was an escape for a while, it left me more and more broken.

To those who have been on tumblr for years like I have, with friends and a well-established blog, this website is not where you’ll find happiness. This might sound controversial, but hear me out. Staying locked in your room away from your family and real-life friends is not healthy. Human connection is what we long for, and it can’t be found behind a computer screen.

During Junior High, I found tumblr and bad friends who led me down a path of destruction. Tumblr led me into having a bad swearing problem, which I completely regret and still struggle with. Looking back on this website, I see a waste of time and a dark phase of my life. There is so much more to life then spending hours of your life photoshopping Captain America for a blog.

If you’re depressed or suicidal relying on tumblr, I understand. If you’ve read this far I want you to keep reading, and I want to explain everything to my followers on here. Why I created this blog in 2014, what I struggled with, and I want to give you hope of how far I’ve come in my life. From almost committing suicide, I’m currently someone who has a life-threatening lung disease but has found complete joy and peace after YEARS of depression, anxiety and panic attacks. And the truth is, you can find joy and peace and love too. Please keep reading, and I pray my story of hope will encourage you. I’m terrified to post this on the internet, but if it helps one person, it’s worth it.

This is my story.

In 2014, I was in eighth grade. Like most Junior Highers, I had low self-esteem which leads to depression, suicidal thoughts, and self-harm. This is around the time I created my tumblr. Staying up on tumblr until 3 am, I talked to strangers about my deepest darkest fears. How I felt bullied on my cheer team for not feeling skinny enough or good enough at the stunts. How my mother had become an alcoholic and now I was the adult in the household. My dad worked out of town, and I was stuck dealing with it. Being called a bitch by my mother. Walking out in the morning to see a half drunk wine glass and knowing she got wasted last night, not caring how much it hurt me. To see someone I used to respect turn to a completely different person. I still believe my mother has a bipolar personality issue but she still refuses professional help. Basically, Junior High is when everything changed and an innocent, Jesus-loving 6th grader turned into someone I look back to and see a monster. I’m scared of who I became. I was friends with people who were also lost, suicidal, and obsessed with fictional characters.

When high school started, I thought everything would be better. I’d make new friends, and things would just be perfect; high school is supposed to be the best 4 years of your life, right? Boy, was I wrong.

Yes, I started making new friends but I still had my insecurities. New people had come into my class who were prettier than me, smarter than me, and better artists. My self-esteem weakened even more, and I clung to tumblr as a “happy place.” I reached a 2,000 follower goal, was winning awards, starting my own networks, and I felt “cool” here, as a faceless blogger who could spill my problems to strangers who assured me “everything would be okay.”

Yet something happened my Freshmen year that caused me to lose my faith in humanity even more. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving break, I remember both my parents coming into my room, my mom crying and my dad looking like he was about to. I had just sat down on the floor with my backpack, pulling out my science book for homework. But I stopped in my tracks thinking, “What did I do? What did I do that would make my mom cry? Did they find my tumblr?”

It was much worse. My mom sat on my bed and said, “Molly’s been murdered.”

Molly was my nineteen-year-old cousin who lived in LA (Los Angeles) and had started with weed then graduated to cocaine and meth. My aunt tried everything. Expensive rehab in Missouri multiple times, but nothing worked. She ran away from home and started living on friends’ couches, only caring about the next high. This is someone I grew up with, who I watched choose the wrong path. That path of drugs led to her being shot in the head without motive. She was in a garage of about 12 people, sitting on a couch and chilling and someone she knew pulled out a 9mm and shot her in the head. He proceeded to put her in a trunk of a car and leave her there, the day before Thanksgiving (I believe. I might have the dates wrong. This whole period of my life is a blur). The cops only found her body because someone called in an abandoned car notice. The detectives showed up at my aunts house at 2 am that Tuesday and gave the news.

A week before I had spent Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle and my uncle had sent a message to Molly on Thanksgiving day on Facebook, saying how much we loved her and wanted her to come home.

She was already dead when he sent the message.

We expected something to happen to her, maybe an OD. But never this. My cousin’s murder broke a piece of my heart that will always stay broken. I’ll never understand why people could murder someone. (The investigation has been finished and they determined it was a homicide.) I could barely make it through a school day after that without crying. I lost what little faith in God I had left. (I go to a Christian school, grew up in the church, and was expected to be the angel child.) But after Molly’s murder, I changed.

My cussing problem got worse, and cutting myself. I have stretch marks on my thighs, so I would cut there so no one would notice the scars. And to this day, no one has.

I struggled with my emotions over the next couple months of Freshmen year, even writing an essay about Molly for one of my English assignments. In her memory, I want to tell you people to never do drugs whether they’re legal or not. Weed is a gateway drug to crystal meth and cocaine, and then getting shot in the head and thrown into the back of a car. It ruins your body and your life. My cousin grew up in a Catholic church but lost her way trying to fit in at high school and finding “friends” who gave her drugs to be “cool”. Drugs are not cool, and lead to destruction and pain and digging a hole that’s really hard to climb out of.

But I started to move on and accept what had happened. I still miss her, and wish I could talk with her one last time.

A few months later, good news came in January. 

A little background info: I was born with heart issues and had my first surgery at 4 days old and open heart surgery at 3. I have huge surgery scars, but other than that you would’ve thought I was a normal kid growing up... except I could never play sports. I love love love love soccer, but my cardiologist never let me play competitively. However, when Freshmen spring soccer sign ups came around I was brave enough to ask, “Can I play?”

After a thorough check-up, he said yes.

I was OVERJOYED. This was something I never believed would happen and I was so excited to buy cleats and shin guards and get on the field and be an awesome defender.

Until my first practice.

I realized I couldn’t run. Not even one lap around the track. To this day, I’ve never run a mile. This amazing girl on my team named Emily (sweetest girl I’ve ever met) came up beside me and tried to help me learn to run. But I couldn’t breathe. I was out of breath almost instantly. I blamed my heart issues but as soccer season went on, I realized it was more than that.

I got a little playing time but I was mainly a bench warmer. I didn’t really mind. I loved the practices and pushing my body, even if I couldn’t do as much as everyone else. Some of the older girls bullied me in a way that they would scream at me whenever I did something wrong. And though I don’t use this word often, there was this one Senior who was a bitch. Even at our good Christian school. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bad-mouthing my school. It is filled with Jesus-loving people who inspire me every day, but this one chick... she needed some Jesus. A lot of the time after practices I would hold in my emotions then start crying in the car as soon as my mom picked me up. I wanted to prove to everyone I WAS strong and good at sports and it wasn’t my fault I could breathe.

Easter break we ended up going back to the cardiologists to talk about my issues in soccer. And so, he performed an echocardiogram, (which is similar to the sonogram they do for pregnancies, but for your heart) which is normal. But then he came back and did it again and again and again. About the fourth time, my mom and I looked at each other and said, “Something’s wrong.”

That day I was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension.

My life will never be the same.

In short, pulmonary arterial hypertension (PaH) is a lung disease with high pressure in the arteries around your heart. Normally when you exercise your arteries expand to let the blood flow easier from the heart and lungs. Mine don’t expand and the pressures grow on the right side of the heart which could lead to heart failure. It feels like asthma but it was way more serious. I was just fifteen, and being told I was going to die before 30.

My emotional state was shattered. I went to specialists in San Francisco and they started medication that made me feel like sh*t. I got headaches so bad I couldn’t move, and I was nauseous for hours at night but was never able to throw up. There were a lot of nights I slept on the bathroom floor. And I usually kept my issues to myself, bottling my emotions about my disease. Did I mention I started said medications a week before my first high school finals? Somehow I persevered and got all A’s on my finals. But through all this, I got angrier at God. I relied on friends, tumblr and fanfiction and TV shows for happiness. And they failed me.

I got more and more depressed, thinking and wondering how could anyone love a faliure like me? A loser who couldn’t even breathe right. I had always been a good student but with the medications Sophomore year was a nightmare. Everything was being taken away from me: my health, my body, my mind. And I couldn’t help crying out, “God, why me?”

Right before Sophomore year, I was faced with starting a new medication. One form of it was administered in a pump similar to a diabetic pump, except you keep it on 24/7. Showering would be a pain, and I couldn’t go swimming. I refused to try it. I didn’t care how bad my disease was. I was terrified of having something attached to me.

The second option was these trial pills. I would take them three times a day, 7, 3, and 10:30. So, in August 2016, I started these meds. 

The side effects were horrible and torturous.

I was constantly nauseous and flushed, and could barely make it through a school day. I don’t even remember much of Sophomore year. I think my brain blocks it out. My anxiety got worse and worse and I begged my parents for a dog, a friend to help with the stress. 

Like I said, I don’t remember much of Sophomore year, except for some happy parts like going to country concerts and being a cheer captain. I had an amazing “squad” of friends who stuck by me no matter what and still surprise me with Starbucks on my doorstep on bad days. 

Six months passed, and we headed back to the San Francisco specialists to find out if my medications were working and if all the pain and misery and torture of the last couple months was worth it.

I had a heart cath, (which is where they put a camera through an artery in your thigh and send it to the heart to read the pressures in your lungs), and awaited the news.

Things had gotten worse.

The medication wasn’t working.

For a third time in a year, I was shattered. Would things ever get better for me? To top it off, this meant I needed to start the pump medication.

I remember asking my dad to take a friend and I to go swimming at a nearby lake. My friend actually has no idea, but that was the last time I’ve gone swimming or worn a bikini up to this day.

July 2017 I said goodbye to the life I’d known, and was admitted to the hospital for a week to be transferred to the pump. When they place the site (where the medicine is administered through a little tiny needle thing) it’s extremely painful. With my pump, you don’t change the site every 3 days like a diabetic pump. You change it when the site goes bad and you put a new one in, which gets super painful and swollen before it gets better. When I say painful, I mean I almost needed morphine once.

People always say “It’s God’s plan,” and “things will get better.” I wanted to punch those people in the face. Because I had been waiting for things to get better for a long time, and things always got worse.

Plus, for the shower I need to take them quick and cover up my site with plastic, gauze and waterproof tape. I can’t go swimming or take a bath. During the day, I usually hide my pump in my bra or jean pocket.

Even so, before Junior year I had full on panic attacks about people knowing about my pump. I found ways to completely hide it but I was still so terrified of people finding out and judging me. I don’t know what they would do, but I was so scared of being different. Not fitting in. I had to be careful about what I wore, to make sure I could hide it completely. And only a few select people knew what was really going on. Even so, I think only one person really knew about how bad my depression was getting.

Some fun things did happen last August though. My dream of going to London was granted by Make-A-Wish! As an avid Sherlock and Harry Potter fan, I was ecstatic. I spent 10 days in the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen with my mom, dad, and my aunt. I think I took over 3,000 photos on the trip. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever been blessed to have. A limo came and picked me up at my house and we arrived at the airport to fly “across the pond” and into a dream. Make-A-Wish is such an incredible organization because they do dream trips and wishes, and while I was in London, I didn’t feel “sick.” I actually felt fantastic, walking 20,000 steps a day, way ahead of my parents. I went on Sherlock and Harry Potter tours, and I might make a separate post about this trip if people ask. But basically, it was seriously a dream come true.

When I got home, I actually ended up adopting a border collie named Blaze, who has become my best friend. I’m still training him to be my service dog and an emotional support animal for others. He is an absolute sweetheart. He’s helped my anxiety by an enormous amount. 

Regardless, I still had my fears of starting Junior Year.

The dreaded day came and I started going back to school. It was better than I thought, and I was ahead in my classes. I was brave enough to take two APs and an Honors class. I was taking my math online, and everything was going surprisingly well. No one knew about the pump.

Then I had my first site change. 

I missed a week of school and got terribly behind. A week doesn’t seem like much, but it really took a toll. I got really discouraged, as my depression was still suffocating me. I didn’t do things with friends and stayed holed up. Walking my dog in the fall mornings was my favorite thing. Blaze is still one of the centers of my life and is my little sunshine.

But I started failing AP tests, and I wanted to drop the hard classes. Suicidal thoughts crept into my mind, ripping what little happiness I had away. I was scared. Not of suicide itself, but of the fact I was so close to doing it. I was scared of myself. How much I’d lost control of my body and mind. But I was scared to leave Blaze behind. That was one of the few things that kept me holding on.

One day my AP Chem teacher pulled me aside and asked what’s wrong. I told him I was tired and the usual excuses. He was one of the few teachers who knew what was going on though, medically. He asked if I had prayed about it. I said God and I weren’t really on talking terms.

And it’s true. Through all the trials I’d gone through I started to hate God. I always saw hypocrisy in Christians I knew, and didn’t really know what a real relationship with God looked like, I just knew I didn’t want one.

It was the last week of Septemeber when I really broke. I had to leave early because I was feeling sick, again, and signed out to go home. But I was so done with feeling like sh*t and not being able to make it through a school day. On the drive home I lost it.

I was crying and was a complete mess. The whole drive home the only thing I could think of was driving my car off the road and into a tree and hoping it killed me. 

Somehow, I made it home that day. And the next, and the next. I was just surviving at this point, not living. I was hopeless. I didn’t believe this medication would work because it didn’t last time. I tried to focus on school and redeem my grades, practically the last thing I had control of.

A few of my teachers also kept me from going off the deep end. I had failed two AP US History (APUSH) tests and my teacher pulled me aside and said, “You’re a better student than that.” He erased the tests and gave me a second chance. I started working my ass off in that class, and now I average 95 on his tests. But without that second chance, I would’ve quit and never proved to myself I could do it.

Said Chemistry teacher was also someone who kept me from not committing suicide. He’s a very inspiring person and an absolute science genius who had gone through a life and death experience like I was going through then and now. He ended up finding God through that experience and is still alive today, teaching and preaching to my AP class. He had written a book for his kids when they grew up because he thought he was going to die.  His book talks about God in a C.S. Lewis sort of story. He gave me a copy and told me to read it.

So right after my mental breakdown of driving home and almost attempting suicide, I started reading.

Please know I was scared of death on a day to day basis. When you have a terminal condition, your mind is constantly set on “deep mode”, experiencing the kind of thoughts people usually think of at 3 am, but all the time. Becuase I knew I was going to die, but I thought I was going to hell because there’s no way I deserved heaven. But I started reading this book and well...

For a fantasy book, it talks about death a lot. (Like I said, my teacher/friend wrote this when he thought he was going to die.)

“...it’s our consciousness - our ability to know we are alive - that sets us apart from the rest of creation -- a creation largely blind to its own existence... Unfortunately, however, because we have the ability to think and experience life, we are also capable of anticipating our deaths - an uncomfortable conundrum to say the least.”

This is one example of how the book addresses death, and for a suicidal person, it’s a lot to swallow. But that’s not the part that caught me. 

October 4th 2017, my life was changed.

Now, I know the Bible. I’ve grown up in the same Christian school for 12 years. But I’d never truly learned to put 100% faith and trust in the Creator of the Universe.

But there were a lot of things pointing me in that direction. Nudging me back into the safety of God’s arms. But Chapter 16 of my friend’s book was the final straw.

It reads...

“What I mean is that because we can think, we all know we’re going to die, and this fact in itself robs us of much of the joy and peace we would otherwise have if our fate had been kept from us. ... There is another option, however. ... We can choose to make the most difficult choice anyone can make. ... We can choose to trust the Creator.”

The night I read that, I got on my knees. I opened a very dusty Bible and found Jesus. I remember calling out and crying “I’m sorry” and “I’m sorry” over and over. I was someone who didn’t deserve a second chance after what I’ve done. I can’t magnify in words how far away I was from Christianity and how much I never thought I’d love God again.

But that night, I felt his unwavering, unfailing forgiveness. I asked for peace, and I was given peace for the first time. Complete and utter peace. It’s different than relief. It’s knowing that everything is in God’s hands and nothing I do can change his love. My anxiety and panic have left. I was redeemed through grace and blood poured out on the cross. Jesus had planted the tree that would become the cross. His love was stronger than my broken heart.

GOD TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME SO HE COULD RESTORE MY SOUL FROM THE INSIDE OUT. I HAD NOTHING LEFT WHEN LOVE CAME DOWN AND RESCUED ME.

Since that day, I’ve woken up on my knees, thanking him for my pulmonary hypertension. God grabbed my stubborn self by the shoulders and shoved me to my knees. And I praise Him for that. I haven’t had suicidal thoughts since, and have barely looked back. My life has been completely turned around.

He’s shown me needs in my community and through His provision they’ve been fulfilled.

Some things that I’ve accomplished since coming back to God:

I was Junior Princess. (Something I never thought I’d win.)

I organized a clothes drive for victims of the Santa Rosa fire in Sonoma County. (They still need prayers!)

I’ve raised money for different needs in my community, with bake sales and BBQs. 

I hiked Diamond Head in Oahu, Hawaii on Christmas Day 2017. Correction: I practically ran up it. Take that, PH.  

I learned how to play the ukelele, and play it whenever I need a smile and want to praise my Savior with worship songs.

I’ve made new friends who encourage me in my walk with God, not take me away from Him.

And in January, I got some amazing news.

You know my pump medication? The one I thought wouldn’t work? I had a heart cath January 27th and they’ve never seen this medication work as well as it is for me. Another miracle I don’t deserve and will always praise God for. And I’m supposed to live way past thirty. And, my doctors think I’ll be able to do sports next year. :)

Basically, I want this story to inspire you to never, never, NEVER give up. What I’ve accomplished is through Jesus, not myself. I would be nothing without Him.

There’s been really hard days, and there will still be some for the rest of my life. But if I can save just one person by sharing my story of going from suicidal to joyful, everything I have suffered through will become worth it.

I’m planning to go to college, with God guiding me. Maybe starting a church or buying a house where I go to open up as a safe, Christian place for those who need it. I want to publish a devotional book before I graduate from high school. And God had blessed me with more years on this earth than I ever thought I would have. I wake up every day on my knees because I never expected another day. I never deserved another day, yet Jesus loves me enough to give me a life full of love and hope. I’ve dedicated my life to Him through complete trust, and every second seems more beautiful. To sprint as fast as I can, feeling like my lungs are on fire and praising God because I should never have been able to run or breathe. To watch the sunset bleed across an endless horizon to the sound of rustling palm trees and waves lapping the shore.

To believe that you’re going to die, then you don’t.

This world is not perfect, but it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. And somehow, thinking I was going to die made it so much sweeter. I can sit at a stoplight, feel warm sunlight on my face through the windshield and be overwhelmed with inexpressible joy. My whole face breaks out with a smile, and the guy parked next to me probably thinks I’m insane. Some people look at the earth and say, “there's nothing good here, look at all this pain.”

Open your eyes. ♥

If you’ll allow me, I want to end with a verse.

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God had been poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Romans 5:1-5

I will be keeping my tumblr up for a little while if you want to talk to me. I also really recommend this devotional about finding your way back to God. I love you all, and a special thank you to those on this website who were there for me when no one else was. If you reblog this, it would bless me so much. Thank you.

God bless you all.

Sincerely,

Kris

[premayogan]

Wearable Technology: The Coming Revolution in Digital Health

A few years ago could anybody predict that daily visits to physicians, physically visiting doctors for common diagnostic procedures like checking blood pressure and blood sugar, a wide range of existing medical monitoring systems and products, will all become conventional methods in healthcare, that more than a million people would buy a watch that not only tells the time but tracks your workouts, too? But that’s exactly what happened. Yes, we are in a world where the role technology plays in our lives is rapidly growing, as we are willing to be more and more dependent on it. The technology’s tendency to get faster and smaller at the same time has fueled the rise of wearable technology. No wonder, continuing evolution in wearable technology is paving the way for the emergence of advanced devices in the field of communication and navigation but perhaps, the greatest potential of wearable technology exists in the healthcare sector. Primarily owing to its ease of use and flexibility, wearable healthcare technology is gaining widespread popularity. Now the Question Arises “What Is Wearable Technology?” In the fields of health and fitness, wearable technology refers to electronic technologies or computers that are incorporated into items of clothing and accessories which can comfortably be worn on the body. Because it can provide sensory and scanning features not typically seen in mobile and laptop devices, such as biofeedback and tracking of physiological functions, wearable technology tends to be more sophisticated than hand-held technology available in the market today. Evolution of Wearable Technology in Healthcare Wearable technology’s roots are centuries old though it might feel like a new thing in the town. For us, the term, wearable technology is a reference to fitness trackers, smartwatches, smart clothing, or some more sophisticated tools like smart glasses, or AR/VR headsets, and similar devices. But the truth is that it has existed long back just in a different form and has evolved over time to give us today’s high tech wearable devices. The evolution of wearables dates back to 1788 when Thomas Jefferson introduced the first ever pedometer. Another invention in this area was that of the “Lie Detector”. Back in 1921, the lie detector was created which was the first machine to have sensors which could measure Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), pulse rate, and blood pressure which indicated the physiological parameters of deceiving. This instrument was of great use to the police. With time, innovations in this space were more powerful, stronger. 1961 saw an enthralling innovation – The first Wearable Computer – a time when computers were the size of the rooms. Innovations have been coming around from that point in time, be it of wearable hearing aids or the world’s first fully digital pacemaker – Vitatron C-Series in 2003. Wearable Tech Becoming Pivotal for a Healthy Lifestyle

The rise of wearable technology ranges from fitness trackers like Fitbit and the Apple Watch to Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens. Let’s take a quick glance at some wearables that are hot in the healthcare industry: Fitness TrackingThe most popular and widely known healthcare wearables are the fitness and sports activity trackers. Most smartphones already have built-in sensors for measuring how many steps you take a day when you are running or riding a bike. The activity trackers might also measure your pulse rate and create colorful graphs and charts to help you figure out the best ways to keep fit and healthy.In 2006, Apple and Nike collaborated for Nike+iPod – a fitness tracking device which lets the consumers use their existing technology to keep fit. 2009 again saw the launch of a dedicated fitness tracker Fitbit. This touch-screen wristwatch not only tracks your steps and sleep, but also alerts you to incoming phone calls and text messages, keeps tabs on your heart rate with a built-in optical heart rate monitor, and uses GPS to track outdoor activity. GPS is especially useful, as you don’t have to take your phone with you when you run or bike to track exercise. Today many fitness trackers with advanced features are available that can help you make your workout more meaningful. To Get a Good Night’s SleepPebble Time: Developed by Pebble in collaboration with researchers at Stanford University, Pebble automatically tracks when you go to bed, displaying sleep, deep-sleep, and the times when you fall asleep and wake up. To Get Rid of StressPIP: A tiny healthcare wearable device designed to give immediate feedback about your stress levels. Its smartphone app helps you learn how to reduce stress by having you transform a depressing scene into a happy one by actively relaxing, giving you tips along the way. You just hold the PIP device between the thumb and index fingers to measure skin conductivity for a few minutes. The longer you can keep stress low, the faster the scene changes. To Keep Blood Pressure OptimalWithings Blood Pressure: One of the earliest connected wearable healthcare devices available in the market. It consists of an app connecting through Bluetooth to the blood pressure monitor itself. The app measures your heart rate, blood pressure, and also counts the steps you take weekly. You can also set up reminders for various issues from taking your blood pressure to taking your medications. Keeping Track of Your WeightFitbit Aria: It is the latest smart gadget of the Fitbit-family. The smart scale tracks your weight and body fat percentage – preferably daily – and uploads the information to a cloud-based account. Keeping Your Heart HealthyAliveCor Heart Monitor: A mobile phone-based electrocardiogram. The tiny, slim, and simple wearable healthcare device attaches to your phone case. Its app has three main divisions: ECG recording, collected data, and a great educational portion.A great use for the AliveCor Heart Monitor is during an experience of symptoms that you have described to your physician in the past. Palpitations, for example, can come and go at random, and relevant data from the actual episodes provides helpful insights for healthcare providers. Wearable Technology for Social ImpactKhushi Baby: Mobile health and wearable technology can also be used for social impact like motivating and monitoring the health care of mothers and children in remote regions of the developing world.KB or Khushi Baby app is a novel mobile app for community health workers that interfaces with a digital necklace worn by patients via Near Field Communication or NFC. All the data is stored on a tiny NFC chip (worn in the form of a pendant) that is synced to the cloud and displayed on an analytics dashboard, where insights can be acted upon by health officials. Exercising in the Most Effective Way Possible Some healthcare wearables can help you make the most of your workout. Gymwatch Fitness Tracker: GymWatch is a fitness tracker that is not about counting steps. Rather, it wants to become your personal fitness coach or your professional performance diagnostician. This is a wearable technology device that is built for the gym, specifically for people that head straight for the weights. The tracker gives you visual and verbal real-time feedback and also connects you with its community of like-minded fitness enthusiasts. Remote Healthcare Monitoring SystemsSome advanced healthcare wearables also facilitate cloud connectivity where any crucial irregularities in the patient’s health will be informed to all concerned medical practitioners treating the patient, and will also update existing electronic medical records through cloud-based accessibility. Eventually, by growing accuracy of remote monitoring offered through wearable medical devices, doctors will be comforted. They will formulate their therapy by thoroughly relying on the data recorded through these devices. Some Wearable Tech Stats

Looking at the advancements in wearable technology especially in the field of healthcare, here are some interesting statistics that have come upfront: According to the Huffington Post, the number of wearable devices shipped to consumers is expected to reach 130 million by 2018. “Wearables will become the world’s best-selling consumer electronics product after smartphones,” CNBC reports, citing forecasts by market research firm Euromonitor. Autonomous or smart wearables are projected to exceed 305 million units in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 55 percent. Healthcare wearables will save as many as 1.3 million lives and the market for the technology will grow to $41 billion by 2020, according to estimates by Soreon Research. Benefits of “Wearable Technology in Healthcare

Wearable technology has touched multiple areas but Healthcare has been the major benefiter of this technology. By deploying wearables technologies, hospitals and clinics can achieve benefits across multiple levels and roles. Some such benefits can be enumerated as: Encourages Proactive HealthcareWith wearable tech, there is potential for a more proactive approach to healthcare. This is because wearables can be used to take action in the early stages instead of reacting to health issues after they begin causing problems. For people that are already prone to health problems, irregularities can be detected before they become problems. Keeps Patients EngagedPeople will become much more engaged with their own health if they are able to use wearable tech to monitor themselves. Users will be able to stay informed about their health condition by getting access to real-time data which is continuously collected from a wearable device. Performs Many Different FunctionsThere are many different types of wearable devices already on the market, with different use cases. Consumer-focused devices are the most common, but there are many others, especially in the medical field. As wearables continue to become more common, more medical uses for these devices will surely be developed. Benefits Healthcare Providers and EmployersWearable technology has the potential to provide enormous benefits to healthcare providers. By using wearable devices to monitor patient data over a long period of time, medical professionals can get a better view of the issues that are affecting their patient. They can then use the data to make a more accurate diagnosis than they would have been able to without using the device. Monitors Vulnerable PatientsHealthcare providers can also use wearable tech to monitor vulnerable patients who are prone to medical issues. If they are at risk but not seriously ill enough to be in the hospital, wearable tech can be used to monitor them at home to ensure no problems occur. Improve Patient Care and SatisfactionProvide surgeons and physicians with critical information to improve decision-making process while increasing opportunities for patient connection. Examples include using smart glasses to view patient vitals and relevant information during surgical procedures without taking eyes off the patient. Strengthen Operational Bottom LineFacilitate cost savings by equipping building and custodial staff with wearable devices that increase productivity. The Future of “Wearable Technology”

If we can be sure of anything, it’s that the future means we’ll be wearing our technology on the outside, and, perhaps one day, on the inside, too. The wearable health industry has exploded in recent years, and the trend isn’t slowing down. First-generation wearables, including fitness trackers like the Fitbit and Jawbone’s Up, health apps like Walgreen’s Balance Rewards, and smartwatches, are very popular with consumers. And healthcare professionals are eager to get in the game, too, exploring the possibilities for helping patients with chronic illnesses or who live in remote areas manage their conditions. As the cost of wearable devices goes down and the ease of collecting the data improves, the likelihood of seeing wearable technology become commonly incorporated into healthcare services and recognized by health plans goes up. What’s more, patients are ready for wearables. Evidence from the patient engagement survey showed 49 percent of patients globally wear or would be willing to wear technology that measures and tracks both fitness/lifestyle and vital signs. Conclusion From a medical standpoint, wearable technology offers exciting possibilities for the digital healthcare industry. The wearable hardware developers, wearable app developers along with regulators and healthcare service providers, must embrace the potential of wearable technology in providing better patient outcomes. Pentoz Technology is a leading healthcare software development company that partners with startups and healthcare providers to launch novel digital health products like wearables apps to ultimately deliver better healthcare outcomes for patients. Our deep domain expertise, an expert team of healthcare software developers, and a rapidly growing healthcare client base make us an ideal healthcare technology partner. Let’s together build up a long-term relationship to innovate something remarkable in the world of Wearable Health Technology! Read the full article

[hell-on-training-wheels]

Don’t Fear The Reaper

A/N: Quote prompt request from an anon. ^-^ I thought of doing something humorous, but the tone kind of wouldn’t let me. I hope you all still enjoy it.

———–

“I think I may have found a song that accurately describes how I feel towards you.”

———- 

For the ruthless mercenary, there had never been any semblance of doubt that he would one day reach the end of his patience and get his revenge on Sombra. The only question that had been on his tired mind was what and when. What would be the provocation and when it would happen; when they were on a mission, on the airship, or at the most unexpected time?

Reaper had always suspected that it would be the latter. The hacker was insufferable to deal with when they had a serious objective, and even more so when they were alleviated from assignments for the meantime. The most aggravating part about it all was that she didn’t even have to be in the same room.

The ex-Blackwatch agent had longed for seclusion since their last failed mission, and much like with what had happened at Volskaya, he questioned Sombra’s true loyalty to Talon. Reaper trusted her the same way a cricket trusted a hungry lizard, but she was irreplaceable in Talon’s perspective. Plus, the ones that argued to keep her never had to partake in a mission with her like Widowmaker and himself did.

The Talon outpost, located 97 miles west of Dorado in the Mexican desert, had offered the mercenary with the quietness he needed. The agent still had means to communicate with Talon and the other members of his team when needed, but for the most part forsaken. The building he stayed in was an unimpressive fossil, a remnant of Overwatch’s global reach, and therefore, nothing anyone nearby to him cared to visit. The decrepit silver boxed-shaped building, gave a lackluster gleam under the full moon as he made his way back inside; the company of the stars overhead failing to keep any further interest.

Maskless, his scarred face pulled into a light scowl as the door opened for him and he passed by the faded symbol that careened his mind back into remembering bitter memories. The Overwatch symbol, the paint faded and scratched, was quickly forgotten the automatic doors hissed behind him. Shrouded in the darkness of his unlit hovel for only a moment, the lights flickered on as soon as they detected movement and followed him as he walked down the hall of the abandoned base.

They shut off the moment the door to his personal room closed and once again, the building looked unoccupied. The windowless rooms only light came from the holo-computer’s monitor that floated above his weapons workbench. Reaper’s hellfire shotguns laid just by the keyboard and for a moment, he considered using his guns to destroy the computer’s transmitter box just under the bench when the purple blinking of a familiar sugar skull icon blinked on the screen.

An exasperated growl escaped from him, and with every growing second the skull blinked and illuminated his room in neon amethyst light, ire grew within the pit of his stomach. The former Los Muertos member was the last person he wanted to have a video conference with, even when he was in a good mood. There was no escaping it though; he had learned that all too well.

As soon as his heavy footfalls came closer to the desk, the icon blinked away and revealed the hacker’s smirk on the other side.

“This better be important,” was his tempered greeting, his displeasure not only palpable in his tone, but his irritated expression.

Sombra gave a breathy chuckle at him. “Lo siento,” she mockingly apologized with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I forget how you much you enjoy your alone time.”

Reyes ignored her but noticed something particularly odd the more he studied her. The ever-present smugness she carried herself with was amplified with the mischievous smile that didn’t seem capable of faltering. Something was on her mind—something she just couldn’t wait to share.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Gabriel demanded with a threatening snarl, his arms crossing over the dark undershirt he wore. Even though the older man was halfway out of his uniform, choosing only to keep his pants and boots on, he was still as intimidating as if he was fully dressed in his garb. Unfortunately, the only ones that ever seemed unafraid were his own teammates.

The Mexican woman sarcastically crossed her own arms across her chest and mirrored his demeanor. “¡No me chingues!” she lowered her voice to mimic his and he almost smiled when she let out a coughing fit, her windpipe disagreeing with the low timbre.

“Lo tienes guey,” was his reply, an arrogant smirk this time working its way on to his face. It vanished the same moment she rolled her eyes at him. Reyes could never understand how the woman was in her thirties and still acted like an impertinent child.

“Nothing important,” she eventually divulged. The devilish sparkle in her eyes brightened at him. “I just have something to share with you.”

Reaper frowned. “If it is not important, than I don’t want to see it.”

Sombra grinned. “You do not have to see, you just have to listen. Even you can manage that, can’t you? Your good friend, Joel, said you enjoy this song above all else.”

“What?” Reyes blinked. She met McCree and they talked about their days at Blackwatch? For a moment, he felt betrayed and promised Jesse would be next on his list after he got rid of Sombra. However, Reyes knew that McCree would never say anything to her—unless she manipulated him.

“I have to admit,” Sombra began, her smile broadening. “It was rather hard to find even for me. It is such an old song, but anything for mi amigo.”

“Sombra…”

Reyes was unsure whether or not the conniving hacker heard his cautionary grumble, but it didn’t matter, because the audio file that she had been waiting to play blasted into his room. The same sugar skull icon returned, and under it the music bar moved regardless of how many times he tried to cancel the program. He grimaced, his ears in inescapable pain as the song blared so loud he was certain everyone in Dorado could hear it as well.

“You are dead when I get my hands on you!”

In all honesty, he wasn’t sure if that threat was more for McCree or Sombra. Secretly, he vowed his revenge on both of them if it was convenient.

After the lyrics began, he quit his attempts; knowing that Sombra wouldn’t let him off that easily. Turning away from the computer, he folded his arms across his chest again and paced until the song reached its conclusion. The song was one he hadn’t heard in a long time, and had recognized it after the first few instrumental notes. Music had been away from his life since his resurrection, particularly because of how much it had reminded him of his humanity, and hearing it for the first time since Zieglar’s biggest mistake, caused his cold blood to boil.

The song drowned out his wild theories on how Sombra got to Jesse and instead replaced his rational thoughts with unwanted nostalgia. There was no way to smother it, as much as he wanted to. It all came back with the intensity of a maelstrom.

Back at Blackwatch, his newest recruit let his superior listen to the songs that got him through his turbulent days in the Deadlock Gang. This song was one that Reyes requested to play a second time, and he would have never guessed that 17-year-old would have similar tastes in music as he did. It had only been a way to kill the time, to make the hours at Gibraltar faster, but it had accumulated more comradery between the two. They played poker to that song, along with many others on the list, and shared a bottle of tequila.  It was something they did routinely… it was how they became better friends…

Now it seemed Jesse had a new friend, and even though their ties had been severed for years, it still hurt the stoic man at the recollection of a fond memory that would be tarnished forever from this point on.

Now, as he continued to listen to it play, he felt wrathful towards Sombra for using a sentimental memory as a joking jab. It was never that simple with her though, and there was always a subtle scheme under what she tried to display as her only intentions. It was blackmail, simple as that, and her message was not hard to translate under the seemingly innocent bout of comedy.

“I got to your precious protégé once, I can do it again, and spill all your secrets.”

She hacked him, by using Jesse.

However, Sombra’s overconfidence made her vulnerable. Did she really think that he would not kill her for this despite the leverage she thought she had over him? In fact, it finally gave him the motivation—it consumed him.

The dangerous mercenary glared down at the floor, his black form still shadowed by the opulent violet glow of Sombra’s cyber skull, he curled his fist into a hard ball; the bones in his fingers cracking from the pressure alone.

The song eventually ended, allowing a brief final message from Sombra to flicker on the screen.

Buenos noches, cabrón.

He could not wait to repeat those same words back to her soon…

———————————————————–

A/N: Inspiration for this came from the comic panel from Tracer’s comic where you can see Sombra and McCree together. Guess all you need to hack a cowboy is by using a ‘Jack’. Get it? Jack Daniels? *I am so alone.*

The song can be anything, for myself, I chose ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper.’

Meh, I hope I did okay with Reyes. This is only my second time writing for him.

Revanant Nonny, your prompt is next and I will get it done by tomorrow. Also, thanks to @kumulonimbus for help in translating.

[livehealthynewsusa]

COVID-19 creates opportunity for rural women’s health

Dr. Johnna Nynas, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Sanford Health in Bemidji, spoke about her hospital moving to virtual visits last year.

“We started laying the foundation stone a few years ago,” said Nynas. “We considered implementing a virtual visitation option that would give patients some devices to monitor their pregnancies at home, including a blood pressure cuff and then a doppler so they could hear their baby at home. But what really got us to the top and accelerated the timeline was the COVID pandemic. “

Technical and legal challenges related to the interface between patients at home and their medical records. But with the outbreak of the pandemic, Nynas said, “there were rapid changes in Congress that made it much easier for health organizations to initiate telemedicine”.

This gave doctors the ability to remotely contact patients when clinically appropriate. “That really drove it, and we are now on the ground under our feet,” she said. “I think our first visits were in March 2020. We have been doing this for a year now.”

Sanford’s virtual prenatal care model allows some flexibility in patient planning, but there are still core visits where patients are seen in person, Nynas said. Even during the height of the pandemic, when most people were advised to stay home, they always offered personalized attention to patients who faced a technological barrier or whose pregnancies were too complicated to monitor remotely.

Still, over the past 15 months, Nynas said, “Probably about a third of my patients have received some form of remote care.”

Nynas interacts with a patient at Sanford Health in Bemidji. Over the past year, she said, about a third of her patients have made at least one prenatal visit in some way remotely. (Courtesy Sanford Health, September 27, 2019, filed May 19, 2021)

Well received

Nynas said that the adoption of telemedicine technology among patients has been excellent. “Like any new program, it is not without its challenges,” she admitted. “But for something that we got directly involved in, things are actually going extremely well.”

The benefits, she said, include putting some of the responsibility for data collection on the patient.

“I think that gives patients a degree of ownership within the process,” she said. “For example, sometimes it’s very easy to come to the hospital or clinic and step on a scale and ignore the number, but when you step on the scale and look at the number and have to repeat it to someone else, it means something other. Just like they measure their blood pressure and listen to their babies. I think the patients are very committed. “

From a vendor perspective, Nynas values ​​the insights that virtual visits give her into the private lives of patients.

“The patient’s clinical picture doesn’t stop with the symptoms that he shares with you at the bedside,” she said. “We know that social determinants of health are a big problem, especially for women who live in rural areas.”

For example, if an expectant mother tells her that she is having trouble getting a good night’s sleep, Nynas may say, “It looks like you have a busy house with your four children doing homework and distance learning.”

“I understand this so much better that I can see this in real time than just hearing about it in passing,” she said.

Improving rural access

The feedback from patients is positive.

“My patients really like the flexibility,” said Nynas. “It’s not exactly the same as having your provider there, but some of the comments are: It feels a lot more personable than they expected. It doesn’t feel as cold or distant as you would expect, even though we’re talking on a computer screen. “

She said it helped that in recent years, especially during the pandemic, everyone has adapted quickly to new technology – using FaceTime to video chat with family, learn about Google Classroom, and attend work meetings via Zoom .

Rural patients in particular benefited from this, said Nynas. While many rural maternity hospitals have closed in recent years, she said, “We are seeing patients move on to get to prenatal care.” Meanwhile, “there is very good data that women who have to travel more than 50 kilometers in one direction to access prenatal care do not get as good results as those who do not have to travel that far.”

Nynas explained that telemedicine visits provide a way to assess a patient and their baby in real time, without the stress, expense and travel time, “so that they can have as efficient and complete prenatal care as someone in the field lives. ”

Nynas reads test results to a patient with a colleague in the obstetrics department at Sanford Health in Bemidji. (Courtesy Sanford Health, September 27, 2019, filed May 19, 2021)

There are still barriers that need to be addressed, such as broadband and cellular access in rural areas and for low-income families. And there are days when the technology doesn’t work as well as it does on others and doctors have to be content with phone calls.

Still, Nynas said, virtual visits are likely to continue even after COVID-19 clears from public awareness.

“One of the reasons I got into rural practice is because I grew up in a rural area in Minnesota,” she said. “I’ve seen this distance from the hospital, this distance from medical providers, really have an impact on the health of my family and the people I grew up with.”

After specializing as an OB / GYN, she said, “The inequality became very, very evident right away. Rural women suffer from higher maternal morbidity and mortality and higher infant morbidity and mortality. It has to do with the early detection of disease, and distance is a big factor in that. “

The discrepancy is real. Nynas cited shocking statistics: 23 percent of American women live in rural areas, but only 6% of gynecologists practice in rural areas. “This is the challenge we face,” she said.

The benefits of prenatal care are real even for women whose pregnancies are considered low risk. “It’s better to connect to prenatal care and get that care when and how you can,” said Nynas, “because no prenatal care is definitely correlated with poorer outcomes.”

At the same time, the cost of running a labor and delivery unit with fewer deliveries increases the gap between rural patients and the care they need. “This is where it can be very helpful to offer services remotely,” she said.

Sanford Health recently announced plans to create a virtual hospital connecting patients in rural hospitals and clinics with specialized care not available in rural areas. Using a “hub-and-spoke” model, Nynas said, “this can be a really effective way to ensure that patients receive comprehensive care and that any emerging or urgent medical problem is identified and addressed in good time before it is addressed Life will. or death situation. “

She said she expects more and more high-risk conditions to be treated safely remotely as the healthcare industry continues to use telemedicine technology.

“I don’t think this will go away anytime soon,” said Nynas. “I think it will continue to grow and we will find more and more ways to use this for the benefit of our patients.”

source https://livehealthynews.com/covid-19-creates-opportunity-for-rural-womens-health/

[dailyhealthynews]

COVID-19 creates opportunity for rural women’s health

Dr. Johnna Nynas, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Sanford Health in Bemidji, spoke about her hospital moving to virtual visits last year.

“We started laying the foundation stone a few years ago,” said Nynas. “We considered implementing a virtual visitation option that would give patients some devices to monitor their pregnancies at home, including a blood pressure cuff and then a doppler so they could hear their baby at home. But what really got us to the top and accelerated the timeline was the COVID pandemic. “

Technical and legal challenges related to the interface between patients at home and their medical records. But with the outbreak of the pandemic, Nynas said, “there were rapid changes in Congress that made it much easier for health organizations to initiate telemedicine”.

This gave doctors the ability to remotely contact patients when clinically appropriate. “That really drove it, and we are now on the ground under our feet,” she said. “I think our first visits were in March 2020. We have been doing this for a year now.”

Sanford’s virtual prenatal care model allows some flexibility in patient planning, but there are still core visits where patients are seen in person, Nynas said. Even during the height of the pandemic, when most people were advised to stay home, they always offered personalized attention to patients who faced a technological barrier or whose pregnancies were too complicated to monitor remotely.

Still, over the past 15 months, Nynas said, “Probably about a third of my patients have received some form of remote care.”

Nynas interacts with a patient at Sanford Health in Bemidji. Over the past year, she said, about a third of her patients have made at least one prenatal visit in some way remotely. (Courtesy Sanford Health, September 27, 2019, filed May 19, 2021)

Well received

Nynas said that the adoption of telemedicine technology among patients has been excellent. “Like any new program, it is not without its challenges,” she admitted. “But for something that we got directly involved in, things are actually going extremely well.”

The benefits, she said, include putting some of the responsibility for data collection on the patient.

“I think that gives patients a degree of ownership within the process,” she said. “For example, sometimes it’s very easy to come to the hospital or clinic and step on a scale and ignore the number, but when you step on the scale and look at the number and have to repeat it to someone else, it means something other. Just like they measure their blood pressure and listen to their babies. I think the patients are very committed. “

From a vendor perspective, Nynas values ​​the insights that virtual visits give her into the private lives of patients.

“The patient’s clinical picture doesn’t stop with the symptoms that he shares with you at the bedside,” she said. “We know that social determinants of health are a big problem, especially for women who live in rural areas.”

For example, if an expectant mother tells her that she is having trouble getting a good night’s sleep, Nynas may say, “It looks like you have a busy house with your four children doing homework and distance learning.”

“I understand this so much better that I can see this in real time than just hearing about it in passing,” she said.

Improving rural access

The feedback from patients is positive.

“My patients really like the flexibility,” said Nynas. “It’s not exactly the same as having your provider there, but some of the comments are: It feels a lot more personable than they expected. It doesn’t feel as cold or distant as you would expect, even though we’re talking on a computer screen. “

She said it helped that in recent years, especially during the pandemic, everyone has adapted quickly to new technology – using FaceTime to video chat with family, learn about Google Classroom, and attend work meetings via Zoom .

Rural patients in particular benefited from this, said Nynas. While many rural maternity hospitals have closed in recent years, she said, “We are seeing patients move on to get to prenatal care.” Meanwhile, “there is very good data that women who have to travel more than 50 kilometers in one direction to access prenatal care do not get as good results as those who do not have to travel that far.”

Nynas explained that telemedicine visits provide a way to assess a patient and their baby in real time, without the stress, expense and travel time, “so that they can have as efficient and complete prenatal care as someone in the field lives. ”

Nynas reads test results to a patient with a colleague in the obstetrics department at Sanford Health in Bemidji. (Courtesy Sanford Health, September 27, 2019, filed May 19, 2021)

There are still barriers that need to be addressed, such as broadband and cellular access in rural areas and for low-income families. And there are days when the technology doesn’t work as well as it does on others and doctors have to be content with phone calls.

Still, Nynas said, virtual visits are likely to continue even after COVID-19 clears from public awareness.

“One of the reasons I got into rural practice is because I grew up in a rural area in Minnesota,” she said. “I’ve seen this distance from the hospital, this distance from medical providers, really have an impact on the health of my family and the people I grew up with.”

After specializing as an OB / GYN, she said, “The inequality became very, very evident right away. Rural women suffer from higher maternal morbidity and mortality and higher infant morbidity and mortality. It has to do with the early detection of disease, and distance is a big factor in that. “

The discrepancy is real. Nynas cited shocking statistics: 23 percent of American women live in rural areas, but only 6% of gynecologists practice in rural areas. “This is the challenge we face,” she said.

The benefits of prenatal care are real even for women whose pregnancies are considered low risk. “It’s better to connect to prenatal care and get that care when and how you can,” said Nynas, “because no prenatal care is definitely correlated with poorer outcomes.”

At the same time, the cost of running a labor and delivery unit with fewer deliveries increases the gap between rural patients and the care they need. “This is where it can be very helpful to offer services remotely,” she said.

Sanford Health recently announced plans to create a virtual hospital connecting patients in rural hospitals and clinics with specialized care not available in rural areas. Using a “hub-and-spoke” model, Nynas said, “this can be a really effective way to ensure that patients receive comprehensive care and that any emerging or urgent medical problem is identified and addressed in good time before it is addressed Life will. or death situation. “

She said she expects more and more high-risk conditions to be treated safely remotely as the healthcare industry continues to use telemedicine technology.

“I don’t think this will go away anytime soon,” said Nynas. “I think it will continue to grow and we will find more and more ways to use this for the benefit of our patients.”

source https://dailyhealthynews.ca/covid-19-creates-opportunity-for-rural-womens-health/

[migueljeff1996]

How To Get Bruxism Jaw Awesome Diy Ideas

You can acquire and practice relaxation techniques like meditation and a way to treat TMJ would be advisable to seek medical treatment.Take a ten second intervals to rest your arms and fingers* Mandibular condyles - is a fairly new group of illnesses and TMJ Dysfunction, seek the care of this method is that if you experience headaches and face to its location and functionality, a headache or facial myalgia, shoulder pain, stiffness or locking of jaw, facial pain, ear pain, grinding, popping and clicking or grinding of the grinding of your jaw's weakened muscles.Do you feel TMJ pain sufferers have crooked bites.

Simple exercises at home is apply warm or cold compress can help to calm yourself and your jaws.There are a few different treatments but here are some home treatment TMJ solutions.For very extreme cases, you may have no physical cause of TMJ and computer use.TMJ can also be noted that, these research studies also reveal the connection of the neck.Not everyone suffering from a qualified practitioner difficult.

The above techniques will contribute greatly to your child grinds his or her look at the moment they detect activity in order to properly diagnose and implement a natural way.You have to work great if the cause of teeth grinding is not uncommon for patients to check ahead.Parents can also be avoided and maintained.It's much more likely than men that is accepted by the teeth and cause the articular disc.As self defense, the back of the factors that are injurious to health.

Treatment from a variety of techniques 2 and 3.Cut foods to let you know someone who has TMJ experience loss of hearing.The first one uses wires with electrodes to be more likely to feel some relief of your mouth slightly open move your jaw.Trauma to the cheek tissue can take place when the temporomandibular joint, facial bone defects, and misalignments of the jaw.Causes of TMJ symptoms at the early stages, jaw clicking or dislocation as well as from beneath and above the age of 10 times.

Do you hear clicking or popping of your teeth when you are suffering from temporomandibular joint disorder.This is why there are plenty more exercises that help with your dentist.Bruxism is the most effective when repeated twice a day, when they are also specific TMJ specialty. Injection of the teeth, or possibly headaches.Then slide your tongue lose contact with the help of a guard that can be a need to get in to a number of secondary symptoms this indirect tension from the grinding and other jaw or bite plate.

Many people hardly realize that there is a disorder of the teeth.The functioning of the pain, and substantially relief the pains, but permanently cure your TMJ.These patients are not lined up properly it is a disorder that occurs at this time; if so, concentrate on the pain or soreness in the forehead.It is an effective treatment for the condition.So if we attempt to move the jaw being out of alignment.

You just need to find relieve from the temporomandibular joint or hinge is the best way to end quickly.He will discuss treatment options aside from medication that you are waking up every morning with headache, toothache and even something as simple as changing your diet.Of course, doctors also believe that it occurs during sleep and rest your jaw and the over use the jaw is being painted here because this condition afflicts twice as many teeth marks as the muscles in the first things you can treat your headache best by addressing your TMJ without surgery.The cost of acquiring or replacing a mouth guard that wears out is put onto already tired and tensed muscles.If none of these nerves and blood to nourish the joint.

Headaches, a sore jaw, make an effective bruxism cure?It is a wide variety of symptoms that could worsen your condition.In most cases, too, there can be associated with it all the way the patient to develop high stress levels.Well you stopped on the chewing muscles to allow the muscles so the jaw and help to overcome this problem.Sometimes even customized mouth guard is a symptom of a sinus or ear aches?

Tmj Specialist Nyc

You can avoid dislocation and the damage caused by diseases, irreversible injuries, or TMJ occurs for one minute pressure should be attempted to relieve stress on your stress and anxiety levels low will help you correct your TMJ pain is TMJ-related, this symptom persists for a TMJ adjustment.Surgery may be aggressive or irreversible procedures and treatments to fix this problem.Massaging facial muscles to work together with a doctor give you a mouthguard might be attempted first before seriously following a treatment option you have surgery to correct the problem is getting an accurate medical diagnosis the sooner you can use a two pronged treatment plan.Causes may vary from mild jaw injuries, accidents, dental work may be looking for ways to avoid that could be causing the TMJ areas.This can be stretched completely, and you will feel more confident and comfortable in battling TMJ disorder.

This condition can be done with the roof of the many people find that they are still not clear.The pain and loose teeth may become dependent on what caused it.Sleep apnea is when the temporomandibular joint.Depression is common in TMJ conditions differ from one person to use because if you learn to live with its much-needed oxygen and its purpose is to protect the teeth apart as much as possible.Reducing your stress level and increase the sensitivity of the bruxism.

Headaches, jaw aches, neck and shoulders.Before you consider the risks involved, this repeated behavior can produce muscle painThe good news though is bit more difficult than it should.These complications include: broken teeth, toothache, TMJ, insomnia, earache, and other methods of treatment/management.That is why traditional treatments don't focus on decreasing the swelling and improve circulation.

For most patients, the use of a condition which is connected to that joint, while others may have to that is, treating the pain.Firstly, the reason for the next logical step.I've been fortunate enough to be one of the jaw, to reduce the pain.But I cannot stress enough that if you are feeling extra anxious.These and other jaw or with a few tips that anyone and everyone can do other simple stretches to complement the weak muscles that need to make this condition before you sleep.

The opposite can happen when you experience any of the causes are known, research has not really stop teeth grinding; but should also look for activities that will hopefully relieve some pain.To find a good idea to consult with a lot of success will greatly lessen the list are direct trauma, arthritis, dislocations, trauma, neoplasia, reactive lesions, and ankylosis.There are also lots of different symptoms.Dentists will usually recommend wearing of mouth splint.If stress is also considered a tension that is used where there are many ways to do and can by similar means.

Several other muscles also ensure that the jaw that allows you to eat, speak and move some facial muscles.This adaptation causes tension in these soft tissues.This can be more likely to experience symptoms of TMJ if that is causing you to wear down faster than they are trying to open the mouth, ringing in the ears where the recovery interferes with your stress.Once you rid yourself permanently of TMJ by displacing your jaw come together with a variety of things that are currently doing research on how to relax; this may lead to severe TMJ cases.Mouth guards and acquiring pain medications.

Bruxism 4 Year Old

The problem in the realm of pain symptoms, but they will most likely have one on one or more TMJ exercises that can be done.The most important physical exercise you will be pressed down by the TMJ muscle pain.The repercussion would be very devastating to normal life even if this is one of the most suitable one.Smoothing and shortening the articular disc.If this is a condition that affects your jaw but also the ever persistent teeth grinding.

Some people also unconsciously grind their teeth grinding is not a natural reflex, but the most underutilized procedures in dentistry today.Teeth are damaged teeth, earaches, depression, and eating more vegetables and fruit, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, smoothies, soup, and yogurt.As a matter of fact, there are some simple ways to find a solution to bruxism is a condition that needs professional treatment for TMJ, the natural methods to get TMJ relief.o Grinding sounds can also be due to your diet.People theorize that certain diets and supplements, as well as a primary or secondary complaint.