#worlds shittiest medic

[drawingroomanguish]

Post battle waltz

[bettysupremacy]

hc that mike has the world’s shittiest immune system because his terrible sleep schedule has just absolutely wrecked him

This is actually killing me cause this is so true and I can’t decide wether he’d be like very stony don’t touch me while I’m sick or like whiny baby please heat me up some soup.

I feel like on one hand he is a very stony boy, and we can definitely see that in the movie. But his nicer side definitely peaks through when he’s with Abby. Maybe he’s both..?

“Don’t touch me,” Is coughed out of his mouth along with. “Can’t get you sick.”

He’s been like this since last night. Inconsolable over his quick fever and chills. You drew the line at him drawing away from you in your bed.

“I don’t care if I get sick.” You say breezily, swatting his hand away to feel his forehead. “Not if it means helping you.”

“I can’t afford it.” He laughs at your crumpled face. He bursts into wheezes, arm in his elbow rattling uncontrollably. You frown, rubbing his back consolingly.

“Is Mike dying?” Abby rests her arms over the back of the couch, concern pulling her brows together.

“No,” you laugh, looking up to the frightened girl. She wears a medical mask securely over her mouth and nose, gift of the elderly neighbor. “Mike’s not dying.”

“Yet.” He whines. Her eyes widen in horror.

“At all.” You correct, squeezing his shoulder lightly.

He rolls his eyes, sighing pathetically into the couch cushion. He’s so mopey you can’t help but to smile. “Can you make me soup?”

You shine like he’s just confessed a secret, popping up from the couch. “On it.”

Abby gives him a once over, then hops away from the couch towards you, throughly convinced that he’ll be alive if she comes back in a minute.

“Y/n.” She whispers creeping up on you. “Y/n.”

“Yes, sweet thing?” You turn around, swinging her up to sit on the counter.

“I’m sick.” She whispers close to your face (lying through her baby teeth.) “Can I have soup too?”

[pookiethebloodsucker]

Venting

[mangoshorthand]

Could you possibly do Five x Reader where Five and the reader have a fight and the reader storms off. The next time Five sees them, they're in the infirmity, comatose, and no one is sure when, or even IF, the reader will wake up. Five has to sit with his regrets that the last thing he said was something he didn't mean and that he wasn't there to protect them when they needed it. When the Reader wakes up, Five breaks down in happiness, giving the reader all the love he can. Heavy Angst with a bit of fluff cause I like happy endings. Lol. Thank you!

This gave me serious flashbacks to the end of No Hard Feelings. Hope you enjoy this. Nothing like a bit of angst. Here ya go!

Dickhead Sugar Daddy | Five Hargreeves / GN Reader Words: 2.8k, rated T

It was such a stupid fight. He didn’t even believe what he said the moment he said it.

He insisted that you take that money. He wasn’t the type of guy to beg, but he came damn close. He watched you struggling to pay medical debt for an entire year before you let him pay it off for you. Until then, you were too proud to accept his help. He told you again and again that it wasn’t a big deal. It was only in four figures and his father left behind more money than he could ever use, even when divided among all his siblings. 

“I’d give it to a friend,” he said, “even if you and I don’t work out, it doesn’t matter. Gotta be honest, I wouldn’t even notice if that amount disappeared from one of my accounts. You owe me nothing, okay?”

He could tell it made you uncomfortable and, truth be told, he didn’t much like the feeling of being a sexagenarian trust fund brat so out of touch with ordinary life that this amount of money wasn’t even a blip on his radar. After you finally accepted his offer, he hoped you could both just forget about it.

So why had he been such a colossal asshole?

The argument was about housework on top and booze underneath. Neither of you wanted to state the obvious fact that Five’s binge-drinking was becoming a problem so, instead, you fought about the consequences.

“God, turn that thing off, will you?” he shouted, irritably over the roar of the vacuum.

“Don’t talk to me like that.”

“Well, I’m sorry, darling,” he said, testily, “I just feel like shit, alright? I don’t need the goddamn vacuum in my ear.”

“Well, sorry Five, but the world doesn’t stop because you’ve got a hangover. My friend’s coming tomorrow and you promised we’d clean up today.”

“Here’s the thing: this is your friend, not mine.”

“But this is our home,” you snapped back, “we both live here and this is half your mess. You’ve been shitty about this all week.”

“Oh, so I can’t be busy?” he replied, smiling sarcastically.

“Oh yeah. So ‘busy’,” you said, doing the air quotes that would have made him punt you through a wall were you absolutely anybody else, “- busy farting around with math and looking for non-existent paradoxes around every corner.”

“It’s theoretical physics, moron. Maybe your tiny brain can’t comprehend what I’m doing, but I can assure you it’s more important than the shitty job you do all day.”

“Oh wow.” you said, laughing disbelievingly, “Well fuck you, dickhead.”

“Yeah?” he said, fire behind his eyes, “well don’t come crying to this dickhead the next time you need a sugar daddy.”

Your mouth dropped open. You stood there, frozen, looking into his face. Later, Five thought it could have gone either way in that moment: if only he’d apologized, perhaps he could still have stopped it. 

But he would never know, because he didn’t apologize: he just let his shittiest, most insolent smile spread across his face.

You threw down the vacuum, grabbed your jacket and left without looking back.

At the time, Five considered it a job well done, only glad for the opportunity to rest his banging head. Over the following days, however, he would play your departure over and over in his head, scouring his memory for everything that proved his guilt.

You were agitated; probably too agitated to pay attention: his fault.

You were hurt; perhaps hurt enough to do something impulsive: his fault. 

You were enraged; maybe your final thoughts as you stepped off the sidewalk were of how much you hated him. And it was all his fault.

He didn’t even know he was your emergency contact.

By the time the phone rang, he’d hauled himself off his ass and cleaned in preparation for your friend’s visit. He also guiltily made a reservation at your favorite restaurant, hoping to apologise over dinner.

So when he answered the phone, he expected your voice:

“Hi. Can I speak to Mr Hargreeves?”

It wasn’t your voice. It was a stranger. 

“There are a few of us,” he replied, “you’re gonna have to be more specific there.”

“Mr Five Hargreeves?”

“Speaking.”

“Right. Hello. Uh- I’m a paramedic. I found this number in a patient’s phone’s I.C.E.”

 He could barely register the rest of her explanation. As soon as he heard those four words: ‘hit by a bus’, his entire body went cold. His stalled brain could only repeat it again and again as horror encroached slowly into every fiber of his body.

Hit by a bus. A bus?...Hit by a bus?

He was only brought back to a sense of the here and now by the repeated summons of the voice on the other end of the line.

“Sir?....Sir?”

“Hit by a bus?” he asked, weakly, trying to keep a firm handle on his swimming head.

“Sir, I think you should sit down.”

He took the advice and collapsed into the straight-backed chair beside the phone, eyes fixed straight ahead of himself.

“I’m sitting down. I sat down.”

“Good. Now listen to me: you should try to get here as soon as possible. Give me your address and I’ll call you a cab, okay?”

“I don’t need a-”

“Sir,” the voice said, sternly, “give me your address. You don’t sound like you’re in a fit state to drive.”

Drive? He could as easily drive as he could fly right now. His legs trembled beneath him, his brain sending confusing, bewildered signals. He never folded in stressful situations, yet here he was shaking like a leaf.

“Sir?”

“My brothers,” he blurted, “I’ll get a ride from one of them.”

The paramedic was satisfied with this and gave him the hospital name again very slowly and deliberately. After accepting her good wishes and slamming the phone back in its cradle, he willed his body back into action, stumbling down the stairs and screaming for anyone who might be around.

Lila answered his call, and one look at his shocked, white face told her that this was serious. 

As soon as he could have expected, he was entering your hospital room. Lila offered to accompany him, but he dismissed her with muted thanks. This was something he had to face alone. 

Your face: bruised purple and cuts newly stitched. Your left leg: in a cast that went all the way up. But the doctors weren’t worried about the broken bones, they were worried by the head injury.

Comatose.

You were comatose because of him.

Standing there in the doorway, he was hit by his own bus. His guts constricted, breath catching in his chest. 

“Don’t come crying to this dickhead next time you need a sugar daddy.”

As his own words echoed back to him, he squeezed his eyes closed, shutting out the sight and trying to gather himself. But it was too late. He whooped in a breath and felt the hot sting of suppressed tears behind his eyes.

All he could do was wait, they told him. The brain had a remarkable capacity to repair itself, they said. You might wake up and be just fine...but you also might not wake up at all. 

He swiped at his face with his forearm. 

Seconds were useless now: you needed seconds as soon as you stepped out into the road. If only he’d followed and apologized like he should have done immediately, he would have been there. He might have stopped it happening before it did, or he could have wound back time and undone it. 

But now, hours since you were hit? His puny time-travel powers couldn’t help, not without decades of planning and tinkering and paradox-proofing. Perhaps more years than he had left to live.

If only he hadn’t been such a cunt in the first place. None of it would have happened.

“I’m sorry.” he whispered, from behind his own forearm held across his face, “Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

He sat at your bedside, teeth gritted against the tears he wouldn’t give himself the luxury of crying. He held your hand tight, as if torrential water might sweep you away were it not for him anchoring you.

He held your hand as if his grip might tether you to life.

And his mind preyed upon itself.

Yet again, his own selfishness had hurt someone he loved. And this time it was the person he loved more than anything. First, he abandoned his siblings for the sake of his own ego and now he’d probably killed you because he was a cruel, spiteful asshole.

“Don’t come crying to this dickhead next time you need a sugar daddy.”

He sat in silence for the rest of the daylight hours, listening to your heart monitor. Every new beep was a relief, the spaces between were looming and fear-filled. The silence held the possibility that the next beep might never come. 

When darkness fell and the hospital’s bustle fell to a low ebb, he leaned forward and laid his head beside yours on the pillow.

“Please don’t die.”

And hearing himself say it was all it took for the dam to break. He couldn’t keep the tears in anymore. He cried like he hadn’t cried since those first years in the apocalypse, when he’d still been young enough to sob ‘I wanna go home!’ and ‘I want my mom!’ into the unhearing wasteland. 

“Please.” he said, burying his red, tear-streaked face in your hair, “Please don’t leave me. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it. I promise I didn’t.” 

He tore in two or three gasping breaths.

“Please, angel. Don’t leave me. I can’t- I can’t-”

But he was crying too hard to speak. He raised his fist to his mouth and bit down on it to contain the wails clawing their way up his throat and threatening to burst bounds.

Cutting white teeth marks into his knuckles, he cried it out until he could control himself; until his voice could stay steady.

“You gotta wake up,” he whispered, “I can’t do this on my own anymore. I need you, okay? I’ll be better. I’ll be whatever you need me to be. Just don’t leave me.”

Another shaky breath.

“-you’re the fucking love of my life. I love you so much and without you I can’t even- I can’t.”

He screwed up his eyes again, trying to keep himself from re-dissolving.

“I can’t imagine getting up without you any more. I can’t imagine going to sleep without you. There wouldn’t be any point, y’know? I may as well just…”

He never finished the sentence. He felt like muscles and tendons in his chest were being pulled apart by strong hands.

Day time. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t washed, hadn’t eaten. He spent most of his time in the chair beside the bed, holding your hand in his, but he occasionally perched beside you on the bed, stroking your hair and talking almost nonstop.

“You’re gonna have to wake up soon, darling.” he said, “They say they’ll have to give you a feeding tube if you’re asleep for much longer. You won’t like that. So how about this: you always hate it when I don’t eat. You loom over me while I’m working and make me eat. So- how do you like this: I’m not gonna eat until you do.”

He made a satisfied noise as if you’d responded.

“Exactly- you don’t want that, do you. So you gotta wake up- it's the only way you can make sure I eat. I've got you there, haven't I?”

He looked down at his own hand over yours. 

“And, to sweeten the deal, if you wake up before they have to put the feeding tube in, you get breakfast in bed every day for two months after we get home. And I’ll massage your feet on demand. Shit, I’ll let the world end rather than miss a single minute with you. I’m going to be better. I’ll do better with the booze. I swear, I’m going to be the perfect man. You deserve that. You deserve better. Please. Just wake up.”

What started off as light humor had devolved again into the desperate bargaining of the night.

He looked down at his shoes and felt exhaustion wash over him. He rubbed at his eyes with the palm of one hand and wished he had the faith requisite to pray. 

A groan.

His head snapped back up so abruptly that it twinged his neck. His eyes scanned your face for any sign of life and found none. Just as he thought he’d imagined the sound, your hand twitched in his.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

Eyebrows knitted, he sprang to his feet and called your name urgently, leaning towards you and resisting the urge to take you by the shoulders and shake you.

“Come on,” he urged, “say something. Open your eyes. Please, just let me know you’re in there.”

Slowly, and seemingly with as much effort as if your eyelids were weighted with iron, your eyes drifted open. They were vague and bloodshot, but they held his gaze.

“That’s it!” he said.

Tears, of joy this time, fell thick and fast again.

“Oh, thank fuck. I can’t believe it. Oh, fuck.”

Your mouth opened and a rusty voice spoke.

“Hello.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He bent towards you and held you to him as tightly as he could in your delicate state. His heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest. Relief and euphoria rushed through his every atom. He kissed your forehead, each cheek and peppered several more across your nose and chin. He was too uncontrolled, too carried away by his own gladness to have finesse. Each kiss made a gentle smack against your skin.

“Who are you?” came your voice. 

And it was like the sun going in. He straightened up, cautiously. 

“It’s Five, angel,” he said, gently, “You remember me, right?”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

His breath caught in his throat. 

You had a brain injury. For some reason he hadn’t prepared himself for the fact that some things might be permanently broken. 

But then your face broke into a hazy smile, and a halting creak issued from your chest. If he wasn’t mistaken, that sounded like-

“Ah wait, you’re that dickhead sugar daddy I know, aren’t you?”

You were laughing. You were fucking with him.

Another wave of relief coursed through him. He bent again and kissed you with a pumping heart and tightening lungs. His lips parted yours, desperate, tender and giddy.

“I love you,” he said, between kisses,”I love you, I love you. I c-can’t believe you’re okay!”

And again he was sobbing. He laid his forehead on yours and cried unashamedly into your face. One of your hands drifted slowly upwards and came to rest heavily on his shoulder. He cried that way for a few minutes while you looked up at him dreamily. 

Eventually, when his crying began to lessen, you began to giggle slightly madly. He withdrew, looking down at you in a moment of confusion. 

And then it hit him: the dosage of medication.

You laughed harder, your hand coming to thump him on the shoulder as something hilarious occurred to you.

“Guess what. Guess what, Five: now I’m gonna have…even more…medical…debt!”

You dissolved into a peal of helpless laughter, which he couldn’t help but join in with despite all his tears.

“Don’t think about that now. Dickhead sugar daddy’s got your back.”

He continued more seriously when his laughter subsided. 

“I fucked up bad. I’m so sorry. I was sorry less than ten minutes after you left. I didn’t mean it.”

With the attitude of one who’s won a bet, you pointed at him weakly, 

“Now you have to make me breakfast in bed every day for two months.”

“I will,” he grinned, “if you say you forgive me?”

You smiled but didn’t answer, letting out another little burble of laughter.

He decided that now might be a bad time to talk about what happened in too much detail. There would be time for heart-to-hearts when you weren’t dosed up on enough pain meds to knock out a bull elephant. 

Instead, he kicked off his shoes and brought his legs up so that he lay on the very edge of the bed while taking up as little space as possible. He laid his head gently on your shoulder and heard you sigh with contentment.

Here it was: his longed-for second chance. 

He felt his eyelids growing heavy. All was right with the world now.

“I don’t want the perfect man,” you mumbled.

“Huh?” he said, rousing himself.

“I don’t want the perfect man,” you repeated, “I want you.”

Request masterlist >> HERE

NOTE:

Feel free to contact me with more Five requests, that was super fun and I want more! I'm fairly versatile in what I write (fluff, smut, angst, psychological character study- I'll try it all) but I will consider them on a case by case basis. See masterlist for more.

[pansyfemme]

you've got every right in the world to be angry about this. your situation genuinely sounds horrid and i really hope you can get out of there soon

i feel like fucking screaming sometimes im ngl and its like. tough because i dont want to just move out quietly because 1) im not sure if thats even an option. the only reason im in this housing at all is it was the only possible place that could fit my medical needs. I cannot go anywhere else unless i give up at least some of my medical accomodations, if not all of them. 2) that’s exactly what my roomates want. for the freak to leave and then they can finally do whatever they want. I want them to know that this is behavior that could get them seriously in trouble. I cannot let people feel like being transphobic will allow them to win as much as i want to get out asap.

I really really really hope i can move. But i honestly don’t know my options. Housing says its too soon for all that and we need to have a ‘mediated conversation’ but they made a death threat against me. What the fuck am i going to do, yknow? I love my school and i love my friends and the community i found here but they do not know how to protect their disabled and trans students sometimes and it makes me really fucking mad. The way i feel, i could be the shittiest roomate in the fucking world (im not) and it still wouldnt justify threats and transphobia.

[secret-gallavich]

word count: 1.2k

-

It’s hot as balls outside. Mickey fucking hates everything about spring. Sure everything looks nice and he doesn’t have to wear layers upon layers of clothing but it sucks. His hayfever acts up and he spends the day sniffling away, rubbing his nose raw. 

Ian, the lucky bastard, has never had to deal with hayfever or allergies in general. Mickey was cursed with both. He’s not really sure he ended up with the world's shittiest immune system since he grew up in the Milkovich household where he was constantly exposed to everything, maybe that’s why. 

Regardless, he fucking hates Spring. 

He’s used to buying cheap hayfever tablets from the chemist but there’s a reason they’re so cheap. They’re fucking useless. So he sucks it up and has breathing problems for a few months. Allergies on the other hand are even worse. Who the fuck is allergic to tomatoes? Mickey apparently! Ian was the one to tell him that no tomatoes are not in fact spicy. It really put a damper on Ian’s dreams of growing tomatoes in the garden. 

He tries to make the best of it nowadays. He’s on stronger medication now that they’re earning enough money to afford them. He takes one as needed and is able to go day to day without feeling like he’s going to sneeze at every second.

read the full fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51012709

[none-shall-caricature-me]

Fear and Hunger is such an awesome game that only hardcore channels cover because most famous players cater either to children, more sensitive folks or to the pussy 'omigosh how DARE a game depict realistic brutality and sexual violence even though it DOESN'T glorify it in the least' crowd. Yes, some people are legit uncomfy with that stuff and that's totally fine (even though I personally will NOT be discussing media with those types. Too easy to spook them), but the nutjob crowd on social media would've thrown a hissy fit over this game. What a shame.

Also, it's honestly pathetic how some people say the game 'trivialises' or is 'problematic' in its depiction of frequent sexual violence / nudity. As someone who lives in a country where rape horror stories are well - known (India), I'll provide an explanation to y'all. The dungeons and historical war setting are the core of this story. Historically and even nowadays, prisons are chock - full of depravity. Warfare and famine enable the shittiest among us to dominate the social order. When it's universally accepted that awful people in positions of power WILL murder, torture, pillage in such situations - how come sexual assault is out of the question for such an uncaring mind ? Face reality, both 'normal' and less - triggering - for - sheltered - USAmericans forms of violence, AND sexual violence have been and ARE distressingly common in the settings this game depicts. It's not problematic, it's just the truth. The devs, streamers, any content ratings website gives you ample warning about these elemnts. If you can't handle it that's a YOU thing. This story is for those people who CAN handle it.

Also the violence and gore are perfectly historically accurate too. You get a hopelessly infected limb, even nowadays ? It gets amputated. You don't have a safe medical facility around to assist ? It gets amputated painfully without anaesthesia. People used to easily die of what today are laughably small wounds, because they got infected. Germ theory didn't exist. Starvation was widespread. Betraying your fellows to terrible fates to save yourself is a timeless viable strategy - we privileged asses can't complain about it cuz we've never had to face those terrors. It is in fact ABNORMAL to not resort to cannibalism or deceit to survive in terrible conditions with no way out. You'd have to be suicidal, too good for this world, a rabid religious fanatic or psychopathic to not do so. I am none of those, and nor are 99.99 % of you.

And about sexual content in general - there's a reason soldiers / mercenaries and prostitutes have often gone together. Warfare is stressful and you're constantly hoping you won't be the next one to die or get captured / wounded. Sex is a great stress reliever and literally the opposite of death. I'm not saying prostitution networks can't be exploitative. But it makes sense why high - anxiety professions are big users of these services.

[andhumanslovedstories]

Feel free not to answer this but I was wondering if I could ask you about your job. I’m thinking about becoming a nurse but I’m not sure it’s a good fit. Do you have any advice or recommend it? Thank you 💜

Oops! I wrote a wildly long answer! Hope it helps!

Let me know if you have more specific questions, but here are some general thoughts. 

incoming like 1700 words okay

There are so many different ways to use a nursing degreel. Right now I’m a med surg bedside nurse in the hospital float pool, which means I don’t have an assigned floor and I go wherever is currently short staffed. Before that, I was a home health nurse where I could spend up to eight hours a night reading a book while a kid slept peacefully in the bed. I also worked in a different part of home health briefly (hated it, you have to be on the ball with scheduling but some nurses preferred it) where instead of doing full shift bedside care for one patient, I went to a bunch of different patients’ houses in one day, doing tasks like setting up their medication for the next month or doing wound care. All three of those jobs use the same basic skill set but are very different in practice. 

Even within the hospital, a behavioral health nurse has a different night than an inpatient rehab nurse who has a different night than a short stay surgery nurse who has a different night from an ED nurse who has a different night than an ICU nurse who has a different night than a labor and delivery nurse who has a different night than a postpartum nurse. And that’s just night shift, which is what I work and doesn’t have nearly as many specialties working as are there during the day.

This answer--nursing is so broad, you can do anything!!--is true but not necessarily useful, so I’ll get more specific. 

There are a few things that are important to me about nursing. 

It is a job that contributes value to the world. Even if the American healthcare system was perfect, you would need caregivers like nurses. Even if the American healthcare system ceased to exist tomorrow, you would still need caregivers like nurses. Even on my shittiest nights, I can point to something I did that helped someone in some way. Not all jobs can say that. 

I do good work and then I go home. This is more bedside nursing specific, but it’s important to me. I can’t take the work home with me. Emotionally, sure, I can do that, but physically, my patients stay at the hospital when I clock out. I have handed over the responsibility of them to another nurse, then I get to leave, and my free time is my own. I can always opt into more work of the administrative type, but I don’t have to.

It’s a good stable income. This will depend on where you live and your speciality, but in general, yeah. Easy to get hired, especially right now, hiring bonuses, overtime if you’re the type of person to pursue that (this is advice for later in your career if you start it, but I’d strongly strongly strongly advise limiting how many extra shifts you pick up while you’re still learning). Solid reliable income. 

Those all come with some caveats. It’s a stable income, but it often plateaus at a mid level salary range unless you move up into a more administrative role (overgeneralizing this, but true often enough). You can be under a lot of pressure to pick up and stay late (16 hour shifts!) because staffing runs lean. You’ll rarely have all the help you need, especially on night shifts. I get called every single day I’m not working asking if I want to come in. Burnout is so so high right now, and often it seems like admin is like “well new nurses graduate every day so”. Some floors I’ve been on, the senior most nurse has 18 months experience. That’s bad, that’s stressful beyond belief when things are life and death. 

It’s physically demanding work. A lot of bedside nurses leave bedside because they’ve hurt their backs moving patients. I know I’ve seriously tweaked some muscles, and the amount I’m on my feet is not great for my poor weak right ankle. There’s also other physical demands, i.e. helps to have a strong stomach. People will tell you CNAs (certified nursing assistants) or techs do all the incontinence care. They’re correct but also wrong because 1) who the fuck is staffed with CNAs, especially at night, and 2) okay you’ve got a CNA but they’re busy helping change another patient so are you just gonna let this person sit in their shit for 30 minutes? I do incontinence care about every night. There’s the other bodily fluids as well--blood, mucus, pus, Just Ambiguous Goop Hey Where’s That Coming From. Not to mention wound care, which can be gnarly. Like lift up a skin fold, find some maggots in necrotic flesh gnarly. And since so many wounds are on the tailbone and groin, incontinence care and wound care are often the same thing. 

There’s also the emotional stuff. Maybe your patient is dying and just got told today. Maybe they’re dying and they’re comfort care and the whole family is in the room crying every time you go in. Maybe they’re going into withdrawal. Maybe they only speak taishanese and there’s no translators available. Maybe this is their first night in the hospital ever. Maybe this is their 180th night. Maybe they’re terrified of pain and they don’t trust you to help control it. Maybe they’re so mad that they’re in the hospital. Maybe they’re refusing to be discharged because they have nowhere safe to go. Maybe they’re confused and keep trying to stand up on two broken hips. Maybe they had a traumatic brain injury and won’t stop screaming for your entire 12 hour shift. Maybe they really want to tell you about society’s freeloaders. Maybe you walk into their room to answer a call light and they’re sobbing and also you’ve never met this person before. Maybe their husband died five minutes before you got on shift. Maybe they’ve sexually harrassed multiple caregivers and you aren’t allowed to be alone with them. Maybe they’re mean, and sure there might be nuance to that meanness, but goddamn are they an asshole and goddamn they are still your patient. 

Maybe all that sounds bad to you, the physical and the emotional work. I don’t like wound care, so I’m not a wound and ostomy nurse (but I still do wound care). I like talking to my patients, so I’m not an ICU nurse (where the joke is that your patients can’t talk back. heard an ICU nurse darkly refer to their job as “watering crops”. Not work I’m interested in, but thank god some people are) (but I still take on very high acuity patients). I don’t like chaos and triage so I’m not an emergency room nurse (and yet? still chaos!). I like giving patients medications and warm blankets and whatever food they’re allowed to have, I like talking to them how their day went and what’s gonna happen tomorrow, I like checking in on them and finding them soundly asleep, so I’m a med surg night nurse who hates when I hate to wake people up for neuro checks. 

(Med surg, by the way since I didn’t know either before I started nursing school, is medical-surgical nursing. According to the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses, med surg nurses “provide care to adults with a variety of medical issues or who are preparing for/recovering from surgery.” Isn’t that the most expansive category you’ve ever heard of? It’s the catch all of the hospital and, as I like to think as a med-surg nurse who actually likes med-surg nursing, the very heart of bedside nursing and should be respected far more than it is sometimes. But that’s a different rant.) (More respect for generalists!!)

Here’s a final thought: If you don’t like sick people, don’t go into nursing. Not everyone is kind and compassionate in the same way, but kindness and compassion should be the foundation of your work. Kindness, compassion, critical thinking, diligence. The role of a nurse is to be a patient advocate. Sometimes that can be advocating for the patient against what you think is the right thing for them to do. How can you protect the patient’s safety and autonomy? How can you help them be an active participant in their care? What do they want? How can you get that for them? This isn’t the same as “dilaudid and ice cream every 3 hours” (sometimes it can be!), but it can be encouraging them to go through with wound care even though it is so painful because otherwise it won’t heal, and it’s thinking about timing their pain meds to take effect in conjunction with the wound care, and it’s practicing the wound care steps with another nurse before you do it on a person so you don’t fuck it up (I. hate wound care yall). It’s being aware that the stakes are life and death, but also dignity and embarrassment, comfort and pain, hope and despair, autonomy and force. It’s an honor to care for people, but you have to be aware of the power you have in those circumstances and the ability you have to be neglectful or cruel. It’s hard to be overworked and underpaid and yelled at and bored and tired and at just another day at the sickness factory and still be thoughtful and kind. Every day at work, I have to push myself to be a version of myself that I like and I respect. Sometimes I don’t manage that, and it’s feels so much worse than when I had a lazy shift as a barista. But I like having a job that pushes me to try, and to have a job that matters if I do it well. Nursing forces me to be a version of myself that others can rely on, and I love that about the job. This is not a career for everyone, but I’ve found it tremendously rewarding, even as I’ve also found it incredibly frustrating. 

If this intrigues you, maybe nursing! If it doesn’t, that’s fine. There’s lots of ways to help the world without burning yourself out.

[possibilistfanfiction]

i love how ava’s being very anti instution is clear in your stuff, i feel like some fics forget that about her or in trying to show that beatrice knows her stuff accidentally make it come across as if ava isn’t politically aware & needs to be lectured on politics by Beatrice

when canonically ava’s literally a abuse survivor who was abused because of her disability and had religion used as justifiation for her abuse and so is kinda more than a little against institutions and systems

anyway as a disabled person it’s more than a bit exhausting to read “abled person lectures disabled person on politics” regardless of authorial intent, so just wanted to say thanks for staying away from that, reading your ava characterization is really a breath of fresh air

absolutely! ava is so so so smart!! most gaps she has, at least for me canonically, are because she just didn't have access to any sound schooling (obviously — especially with history, but also just basic civics? exposure to different politic? etc). so it's like, of course ava wouldn't know that the nazis persecuted & killed queer people if she learned subpar history (undoubtedly with the shittiest pedagogy on the planet) from nuns who hated her — but once she learns it, she's immediately like oh. that contextually makes sense in a horrible way. fuck them. like it's not an issue of politic but just of nuanced & additional information — in the real world i'm sure ava's politic would (of course) grow (as hopefully all of ours irl continue to do lol), but it wouldn't be a real shift in politic, especially bc of an able-bodied person lecturing her or something. it would just be one that contains more concrete events, history, current povs, etc, because she would just learn more & have access to stuff!

i also think like you said that when bea lectures in the show, that's mostly about ava just being goofy when she needs to be serious, or definitely just not understanding the insane situation she's found herself in — which contextually is fair, but i don't think would happen with politic or ethic sort of beyond the halo/battles, etc. even her like 'you should think about someone other than yourself' is mostly motivated by ava's mission/the ocs's mission; ava is selfish but she has every right to be. & of course that's ava's main character arc growth: realizing that, while she always wants to be selfish (kissing bea), she has been put into a role that is far greater than her. that's a politic in itself, really

in reality bea probably has more to learn about politic & anti-state ethic than ava lol. i get why this isn't A Thing in the show but if i choose to throw them into NOT the catholic church lol, it's a reality that bea is a queer woman of color, specifically an asian woman, which does matter — in ways that can hurt but also in finding community & history that informs/builds a particular politic. i feel like it's incomplete to not at least include that a LITTLE. but yah bea like... rly fucks w The Institution at least for some of the show. she's got a lot to unlearn!

& yes i TOTALLY agree that ava's abuse & disability (even if people choose to write her as no longer disabled which.... a choice but ok lol) would absolutely eventually really inform her politic. i simply haven't gotten to this yet but ava finding disability justice (& by that i obviously mean like intersectional disability justice led by & designed for queer & trans folks, especially qtpoc) would be so fucking cool for her! communal care? anti-state abolition? abolition of Institutions (psychiatric, medical, etc) that harm that are rooted in white supremacy (& specifically the church)... she would LOVE it. she would be so into it. it would be such a respite & passion & joy for her as she got older & realized she has such purpose through her experiences, without the halo & without any holy wars. also they would both be thoughtful about thinking transnationally which rocks.

anyway yah i feel like out of the two of them ava is actually the most likely to like a) access information in "non-academic" ways; b) have a more radical politic just inherently. not that i think bea is like a shitty neoliberal person forever or anything bc... she would also be v smart, but ava is awesome.

[vpalmersfootballgloves]

if they are steering van's story the way i think they are steering, it's going to be Very Very bad for my therapist.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE tw, SUBSTANCE DEPENDENCE tw

from tai's immediate outburst of concern over the pills, it does sound like van has had previous experience with self medicating on painkillers. i do think van's suffering from either chronic facial pain or a tension headache or a migraine. but it fucking kills me that van palmer, who lost her childhood to substance abuse, might be reliant or dependent or addicted to any form of painkiller right now.

van palmer, supremely unqualified caretaker of her mother who battled with substance abuse. van palmer, who grew up around alcohol and drugs through a significant portion of their childhood. van palmer, who was unfairly robbed of her carefree years first by her responsibilities towards her absent and sick mother then by the trauma of the wilderness.

van palmer 25 years later, dealing with the loss of her suddenly ever-present mother after caring for her during her dying years, and surviving the world's shittiest set of circumstances, is coping with it all in a way that she's been familiar with for a good part of her life.

[tiannasfanfic]

Gone Away

Billy Butcher x Reader (Angst)

Summary: Relocating to New York was supposed to be a fresh start after a supe related incident took everything from you. But now, you're just wasting away in a new city. Could a random job offer from a stranger be enough to save you? (Crossposted to AO3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Author Note: I listed this as angst since it has a dark theme. This is my first attempt writing from The Boys, so I focused mainly on the reader to ease into the tone of the setting and Billy’s way of speaking. He’s quite different to write than Adrian is, so it was fun branching out.

CW: Mentions of the family's death and how but no details, severe depression and grief, self destructive behavior, alcohol dependency, cussing, Butcher being Butcher.

Word Count: 1,470

Two years.

It had been two years since your life was destroyed. Your home, your family. All gone in the blink of an eye. Literally.

What happened?

Well, that you still didn’t like to think too much about. At least, not when you were out in public. That was just asking for a breakdown, panic attack, uncontrollable fit of screaming or all the above.

That was the whole reason you moved to New York last year. While you had wanted to since you were a kid, this was a good opportunity to get a fresh start. You couldn’t get away from what happened while still in your hometown. At least in New York, no one knew who you were. You could blend in again and people wouldn’t be staring at you with sympathetic looks. Or constantly asking how you were doing. Or offering their support then not being there when you actually needed them. Or any one of the million other things people did or said to make themselves feel like they were helping without actually having to help. You just wanted a normal life again.

The settlement from Vought paid for your relocation. In all honesty, losing everything due to the richest company in the world had taken care of the rest of your life. You were living off of the interest alone, and only a portion of the interest at that. You actually had more money now a year later when you made your decision than the check had been worth.

When you got to New York, however, you ended up getting one of the shittiest and cheapest apartments. It was a one room loft in a particularly low, low-income area. You could’ve gotten something better, but in your mind, what was the point? Depression and grief had a deep hold on you. Life had taken everything good from you, so in your mind, you didn’t deserve anything better. It would just be taken from you too, you thought.

For something to do, you ended up getting a retail job at a Walgreens. You were a standard floor associate, spending your days stocking and helping customers find stuff. It was mindless work. You could do it half asleep, hung over or high, and frequently did. You couldn’t sleep unless you self-medicating otherwise, you would just lay in bed, wondering why you were still here. That was becoming a problem too, but you didn’t want to think about that either.

In all fairness, you didn’t really think about much of anything anymore except for what you lost. You may have not died physically, much to your dismay, but there wasn’t any living left in your life. You were just going through the motions at that point. Nothing held your interest; nothing was fun anymore; it was all for nothing anyway.

It was your job that led you to being recognized. You helped a man who had a French accent in the first aid section find what he needed. He didn’t instantly know who you were but knew he recognized you from tv. Something about an incident involving a supe. It didn’t take but a quick Google search on his phone to confirm his suspicions. The incident that destroyed your home with your husband, three children, and pets inside had made quite a few national headlines.

Immediately after he left, the man informed his cohorts who he had identified at the store and pitched the idea that if anyone would want to join their cause, it was you. There was a fire in your eyes that he recognized. It was very, very dim, but Frenchie felt like if that fire could be stoked higher, you’d be one hell of an ally. After some debate, it was agreed on to at least talk to you about it.

Unfortunately, they made the mistake of sending Hughie.

In all fairness, it seemed like a good idea at the time. You both had a lot of common ground. He had lost the woman he loved to a supe in the blink of an eye, you had lost the family you loved to a supe in the blink of an eye. He could empathize with you and sway you to their side. How hard could it be?

No one counted on the fact that what passed for your personality these days was the exact opposite of Hughie’s. He said all the wrong things and you ended up having your manager throw him out.

A day later, Butcher stopped by himself to talk to you.

By that point, he was starting to wonder if this was all just one giant waste of time. They were doing fine; they didn’t need anyone else. They already had one person who lost everything, and he could be somewhat of a whinging cunt at times. Sure, Hughie was useful, but the last thing Butcher needed was two whinging cunts.

You were helping a customer shade match foundation when you noticed the big man wander over into the section. He was hard to miss, especially when he had a big energy about him that was a cross between a grizzled old sea captain and one of those Hollywood police detectives you see on network tv. He just had that sort of air of authority about him, which included a healthy dose of not giving a fuck. He stepped over to the Maybelline section and started browsing mascaras.

Once you finished with your customer and rang him out, you approached the man.

“You ever wonder why people put so much stock in all this shite?” he said in an accented voice, not taking his eyes off the display of eye makeup.

“Not much to wonder about,” you said, coming to stand next to him and looking at the wall of makeup yourself. “Initially it was men that invented and wore all this crap. Same with heels and hosiery and corsets. Then at some point they decided those were feminine things. What was considered masculine and good became feminine and bad. Fast forward a few hundred years and they still try to say it's the only way to be beautiful.”

“Oh yeah?” his eyes cut over to you, you nodded, and he looked back at the wall. “Well, that’s the biggest load of bollocks I ever heard. Women don’t need all that fucking shite to be beautiful.”

You chuckled. “Agreed. It is a fascinating history though.”

“I bet,” he said, then finally turned to you. “But I can’t say I came here for a history lesson.”

“I didn’t figure,” you said, chuckling and turning to him. “Looking for a new mascara then?”

“Eh?”

You shifted your gaze pointedly to the products he was standing in front of then back to him. He looked back at the wall then back at you.

“Course not. I don’t have the lashes for it, love,” he smirked.

You chuckled. “In that case, we have some pretty affordable selection of false lashes that might be better suited for you.”

That got an even bigger smirk out of the man.

“Tell me something, love. Would you wear those?”

“You want me to be honest?”

“Course.”

“Fuck no,” you said instantly. “I ain’t putting glue on my eyes, I don’t give a shit how safe they say it is.”

That got a laugh from him.

Butcher made a decision then. He had been doubtful about this whole thing, but now he saw the fire in your eyes that Frenchie was talking about. You’d be a good fit.

“I’ve actually got a job offer for you, if you’re interested,” he said.

“Pfft,” you should with a scoff, then you gestured around you. “And, what? Leave this fabulous career behind?”

Butcher chuckled. “Hear me out, at least. I think you’ll be interested.”

You studied him as you considered.

It couldn’t hurt.

“Alright,” you said. “I’m off in little under an hour. I usually go across the street for a drink after work to relax if you want to meet up there.”

At the bar, the introduced himself as Billy Butcher and you learned about his particular area of expertise. You found yourself listening to his explanation with rapt attention. For the first time in two years, you felt an interest in something. It probably wasn't the best of things to be interested in, admittedly, but something was better than nothing. You'd find out later that this man was absolute shit at pep talks, but something in his choice of words that day made you feel the fire in your blood that he saw ignited in your eyes. He wasn't even halfway through with his story when you told him you were in with absolutely no hesitation.

This is why you never send a Hughie to do a Butcher’s job.

[fuwaprince]

The amount of things I've done just for a fucking hug is insane. The amount of things I've done for crappy fastfood dinners. For a ride. I don't care. If somebody helped me by getting me the fuck out of here and into my own apartment I would do ANYTHING FOR THEM. I would let them OWN ME so long as I was just allowed the space and freedom. I don't care if I still don't eat. I don't care if I still don't have medical care. I don't care if I still don't have connections. Give me one fucking person who can support the weight of my world on their back. I am not dead weight but it'll feel like it to somebody who isn't very strong. I need Herculean level strength to be pulled out of this. I don't have credit. I don't have the pay stubs. I would do ANYTHING and I promise to be good. I just need stability. One month to recover. One month of just REST after SO LONG of this insanity. I would literally cut off my own limbs and hand them to someone if they'd hand me the keys to my own place in return. A place where people won't mistreat me. That's it. A place I can occupy. It can be the shittiest fucking cockroach infested place. It could be a biohazard. I don't care. My room is moldy here anyways

[outlying-hyppocrate]

hello. welcome.

introductory. ☆

name: crispin edward viscera

pronouns: he/him, fae/faem, it/its

age: 401 (give or take a couple years)

languages: english & french; learning 5+ others

interests: edward scissorhands (1990), will wood, melanie martinez, stomach book, ghost and pals, luke black, käärijä, joker out, eurovision in general, medical malpractice (in theory), serbian music, clowns, learning languages (if you couldn't already tell), various types of alternative fashion, playing my silly instruments, the sims 4, etc.

additional information. ☆

asexual, gay, gender-nonconforming transmasc

musician. channel is here if you want to listen

most likely some form of neurodivergent

unabashedly cringe

i will often have moments in which i speak entirely in a strange and poetic and nonsensical fashion. do not mind this

i will also have many moments in which i am dissatisfied with everything in my life and wish to end it all. i often discuss despising every aspect of my life and even wanting to kill myself. do not mind this either

self-diagnosed philosopher, poet, hedonist, masochist, and everything & nothing at the same time

if you are reading this. i love you very much. you deserve all the pleasantries in the world. please take care of yourself. i want you to do things that make you happy.

that being said. if you are one of those shitty people such as terfs or racists or whatever. fuck you. all you deserve is to listen to nothing but crispin glover's shittiest and only album for the rest of your life

thank you to @cotards-daydream for letting me use this idea !!

[will put my meet the artist 2024 here once i've finished it.]

[kuja-kujaku]

debilitating fatigue and lack of sleep vs adderall XR. go go go. hit em with the steel chair. gimme the people’s elbow babey this body is battered and tired but by god some silly little salts in a colorful pill will force me through the day like the world’s shittiest puppet. fatigue? who is she. i’m beating the shit out of nicotine cravings behind a wendy’s but i’m gonna french kiss the first open box of menthols i find. i’m running on 4 hours of sleep. they could hire me at the local hardware store to shake cans of paint with these tremors. unstoppable force (my desire to stay in bed) meets immovable object (the necessity to go to work to make money to spend on bills and medication). i am so fine rn. trust.

[with-my-murder-flute]

I keep catching literary resonances in The Locked Tomb series, like with Jane Eyre, when both Mr. Rochester and John Gaius, early on in their relationship with the main character, are like, "If you knew the full truth about me, you'd slap my face and never see me again! So I'm not gonna TELL you the truth about me. I'll just leave this hint of a tortured soul dangle out and keep playing on your sympathy for me so hopefully you'll be too in love with me to leave when the truth comes out!"

(And The Locked Tomb takes the concept of the madwoman in the attic to incredible places. So many madwomen. Such attic. Wow.)

And then there's Dorothy L Sayers, especially Gaudy Night, which is a novel written in 1935 and blissfully unaware of how world events are gonna pan out over the next decade. It's a mystery set in a community of academics, and in between chasing their own madwoman in the attic, the characters sit around talking about medical ethics and eugenics and the economic recovery of Germany in ways that make the modern reader very aware that generally, the characters with what we'd call "good" opinions are the ones written as unlikable and tactless extremists.

Which, like... in Gideon the Ninth, Gideon literally learned most of what she knows about the outside world from comic books. She wants what's presented to her as the best possible route to freedom from her childhood, which is to be a soldier of the empire, invading worlds that have been selected for colonization. Which, as a modern person, I know that colonialist empires are not great, and "thanergy bloom" appears to mean "killing a shitton of people" which again! Not great! But ugh, a lot of SFF uses trappings of not-great systems, whatever.

Except Tamsyn Muir absolutely knows colonial empires aren't great, and you see that as the lens zooms out, from Harrow the Ninth to As Yet Unsent. Which changes your perspective on Gideon the Ninth, because you start to realize that some of its shittiest and most unlikable characters have, objectively considered, some of the best opinions.

But right on the balance-point of opinions in Gaudy Night is Lord Peter Wimsey, the grey-eyed detective with roots in the old world but a mind that reaches to the new, and I thought of The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex and went, "It's probably not an accident, then, that Palamedes is himself a grey-eyed detective... and Camilla kind of does have big Bunter energy..."

And then the friend I was talking to and I stared at each other for a minute because oh my god, does Camilla EVER have big Bunter energy. Mervyn Bunter is Lord Peter's faithful manservant, and I've seen him called the deuteragonist of the Peter Wimsey mysteries, since he is essential to the plots of the books, matchless in his many talents, and unswervingly devoted to his lord. The tenth book Sayers wrote about them doorknobs us with a closing note about their relationship's origin story that just makes them so much more intense. There's a significant Bunter/Lord Peter slash fandom.

But then, Peter... falls shatteringly in love, in book 5, with an unattainable woman. That is, there are a number of emotional and legal obstacles to them even having a normal love-affair, and it takes another five years of unswerving devotion to her before they can be cleared away. And that relationship can only work in the first place if that woman understands that any relationship she has with Peter has to accommodate the space Bunter has already taken up in Peter's life; Bunter is a fixture that not even the most beloved of wives could dare usurp. (Bunter? Bunter's supportive, but also a little stressed. Why does this woman get ruin the peace and disturb the sleep of the most important person in his life, and how can he deal with that damage?)

"None of [Palamedes' relationship with Dulcinea] makes any sense.”

“Nope,” said Camilla heavily, “but it never has the whole time I’ve known them both.”

[loyalhorror]

I'm the WORLD'S SHITTIEST X-MAN! and I'm growing THREE NEW SPIKES through my SKIN this week!

DESPITE medical intervention!

i am BEGGING YOU TO EXPLAIN. TO ELABORATE