Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Of Mothers and Morphling
It had started out well enough, but Madge really shouldn't let the Hawthornes talk her into supposedly 'fun' activities.
Gale was in meetings all day and Vick and Rory had wanted to take her ice skating. Posy had been glum, she had a horrible cold and her mother absolutely forbid her from going out in District Two's frigid winds.
Madge had been up to District Two about half a dozen times since she and Gale had gotten together. They were always pleasant trips, visiting with his family, seeing the District.
During the summer they'd taken her swimming, an activity she was less than keen on learning.
"I'll drown!" She'd whimpered, hoping to earn her some sympathy. The lone pool at the community center in District Twelve was never maintained, never filled, at least not in Madge's lifetime. Unlike Gale, she had never been in a body of water larger than her parents' garden tub.
"I won't let you drown," he'd whispered back, blowing a little puff of air in her ear as he'd done so and sending a shiver down her spine.
She had not died in dramatic fashion, had not needed to be resuscitated, though she thinks both Rory and Vick had desperately wanted to volunteer should the need have arisen. In the end, she'd spent most of the time on the shore of the little lake watching Gale and his siblings splash around in the water. When all was said and done, Posy won whatever game they had played and been deemed 'Queen of the Lake' and Madge had come to the conclusion that the whole ordeal was simply a ruse to get her into the awful swimming suit Gale had encouraged her to buy in District Four.
Now though, deep in the winter and with considerably more clothing on, that same lake was frozen over. Thick enough, both the boys and the locals had assured her, to support several dozen skaters. She was still leery of it.
Strapping sharp blades to the bottoms of her feet and running around on ice with them seemed a poor life choice, at least to Madge. District Two really was an odd bunch.
She'd let them though, strap the frightening looking shoes to her feet, and pull her onto the ice.
Rory had glided off, easy as you please, to a clutch of girls practicing pirouettes across from them. He was handsome as Gale, finally grown into his arms and legs, though from what Vick told her he'd also picked up some of his brother's less endearing traits. Specifically when it came to girls.
Vick was a sweet as he'd ever been, staying at Madge's side until she found her feet. He still had his little dimples and his painfully sweet smile, still was the first of his siblings to hug her when she arrived with Gale, still liked to tell her about his day. He was still her dearest friend. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed him during the intervening years apart until he'd grabbed her the first time and hugged the air out of her.
"He's such an idiot," Vick grumbled as he watched Rory pull off a sloppy looking twirl for the girls.
One of the girls spotted Madge and Vick and waved. Vick's face deepened in color.
"Someone has a fan," Madge giggled. She gave him a little shove, "Go say 'hi'."
His face pulled back, "Why?"
"She likes you," she huffed. "She isn't waving at me."
"She might be. You're very pretty."
Madge rolls her eyes at him.
"I can't leave you," he tells her. She really isn'tsteady, but she's been upright for nearly ten minutes which is longer than she'd expected, so really the day could end now and she'd be happy.
"I'll be fine. Go rescue that poor girl from your brother."
Vick hesitates, Madge can see he really wants to go; she puts her hands to her hips in her most impressive imitation of his mother and glares. He snorts before gracefully gliding off toward the girl.
It all goes well, as long as she doesn't attempt to move she's fine. For a full fifteen minutes the only motion she has is the gentle sway she can't help because of the wind. She watches Vick, much more awkwardly than Rory, but much more pleasantly than Gale, flirt with the girl. She's blonde, like many in Two, a pleasantly round face and bright smile.
The inactivity, though, combined with the biting wind, gets to be too much, and Madge decides to try to slowly slide back to the shore. It isn't far, it should be easy.
She had nearly made it, was less than a few yards from it, when a couple of boys, ten or eleven years old at most, came around the edge racing. The boy in front was skating backwards, taunting the one in back, a feat Madge would have been impressed with had he not proceeded to slam into her with full force.
Her feet go out from under her and she shoots forward through the air and attempts to break her fall with her hands, which, as it turns out, was a very bad idea. She landed without grace or dignity on her face.
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In every Capitol program Madge had ever seen, when the characters had gone to the hospital it had been immaculate.
A huge building with clean tiles and pristine rooms. Handsome and beautiful, young doctors and delicate little nurses and aides all eager to help whatever poor wretch came through the door.
She should've known it was just one more illusion of the Capitol.
District Twelve had no such hospital. Mrs. Everdeen and a handful of healers, along with the ancient physician who treated her mother, were the only medical professionals Madge had any recollection of.
She'd thought, perhaps, District Two, being a Capitol darling, would've earned them a better level of care. That was clearly not so.
The hospital, in the town where Gale's family lived, was little more than a small building. It might've been a storage house at some point, for paperwork maybe. Two story and dingy, the lights flickered occasionally, the little nurse, a red head with cherry colored lipstick, had to swat them every now and then when they went off.
While the nurse was delicate enough, the doctor was anything but young and handsome.
White headed with a bushy mustache and a bad leg, he'd hobbled in to check Madge's wrist, thrown the x-ray film up onto the wall and croaked, "Broken."
"Can you fix it?" Vick had asked. He was wringing his hat. He was taking undue guilt for the mishap.
The doctor, his name badge was backwards, Madge thinks it might be on purpose, grunts.
"It's not the worst I've seen. We can do a closed reduction and plaster it up. Then you can take her up to the District Seat and they can take it from there. Might do surgery. Might just put another, better, cast on it. But I'm not in orthopedics."
He looks at the little red head, her name is Angela, and coughs. She winces.
"Get an IV started and, uh," he looks over at Madge, sizing her up, "five, uh, no ten of the morphling. This is gonna hurt like a bitch."
The moment the words leave his mouth Madge is shaking her head.
"No, I don't need it."
"Young lady, this is going to be painful."
She keeps shaking her head, "I'll be fine. I have a very high pain tolerance."
Truthfully, she doesn't know what her pain tolerance is. She's never had any breaks before, a bruise here and there, but nothing this major. The thought of the morphling, though…
She'd watched it zap the life from her mother. Maybe it had eased the headaches, maybe it had only dulled the painful reality of her life, there's no telling, but it had stolen her from Madge. Her father had let it, let her mother become addicted to the bliss that came with it, made sure she was always in good supply. He'd loved her mother, Madge would never doubt that. She just wished he'd loved her enough to save her instead of comfort her for all those years.
Rory, arms crossed and looking increasingly like Gale with his stern glare at the doctor, frowns.
"Madge, take the medicine."
Vick nods vigorously.
She'd rather take the throbbing pain in her arm, whatever procedure the doctor wanted to do, than take that medicine.
"I'll be fine," she assures them.
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Fine was definitely not in the list of words that Madge was once the doctor began.
She'd bitten down on a strap, she'd been told by some of the people in Ten that's what they did when resetting dislocated shoulders. That and a healthy dose of alcohol.
It had not helped in the least and she'd blacked out just after they'd begun.
When she woke she was in a little room, definitely not in the town hospital, it didn't smell of old papers and dust.
It was night, there was a small window in the corner, with the shades half drawn, and she could see the sun was gone and the lamp light was reaching upward from street below. The room was dark, it reminded her horribly of her mother's room back in Twelve.
She tried to set up, but was instantly dizzy and collapsed back. Her head throbbed and swam, making her stomach churn, and she began groping around for something to vomit in.
What did they do to me?
She feels something on her uninjured hand and manages to peak down at it.
An IV.
Vick and Rory, those traitorous bastards, had let that girl put one in her once she'd passed out.
Her foggy mind tells her to get the IV out. Her injured hand is immobile and she doesn't know why, but she doesn't care. The IV is what's important.
She puts it to her mouth. She'll chew it out.
Her teeth are just getting a grip on it when a large hand reaches up and stops her.
Madge whimpers and the hand smoothes her hair back from her face. Warm lips press to her forehead.
"Go back to sleep, Madge," the hand's voice murmurs in her ear.
Such a nice voice. She decides to listen, and drifts back to sleep.
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When she wakes again it's still dark out, the clock on the wall, an ancient thing with hands and a loud tick, reads three. It must be in the morning.
Her injured arm is hoisted up on pillows, a mass of wrappings are also present. She wiggles her fingers and thumb, nothing of it hurts anymore.
There's a pressure on her stomach, and when she looks down she finds Gale asleep across her. One of his hands is holding her fee hand, the one she now vaguely remembers trying to bite the IV out of. It's still there and she curses she hadn't gotten it out.
His other hand is on her stomach, under his head. He's got the blankets between gripped in his fingers.
"Gale," she rasps. Her throat is terribly dry. "Gale."
He stirs a little, eyes bleary when they finally peak open and peer up at her.
"How're you feeling?" He sits back and stretches, before reaching up and brushing some of her surely disgusting looking hair from her face.
She shrugs eyes falling to the IV. "I want it out."
He shakes his head, "They had to do surgery. They want it in until you can eat."
"Then give me food. I want it out."
He stands and gingerly touches the exposed fingers on her injured hand.
"It doesn't even-"
She freezes. It doesn't hurt. They did surgery and it doesn't even hurt. Her heart races and she feels a little faint again.
"What did they give me?"
She knows the answer. It's cheap and readily available. That's why it had been so appealing for her mother.
"I didn't want any! I told them I was fine!"
The IV is back at her mouth, she's getting it out this time. Gale wrestles it out though.
"Madge! Calm down!" He has her by the shoulders. His voice is firm, like he used with his brothers and sister when they were younger. "You're going to mess up your wrist."
Angry tears are leaking out her eyes, but she stops and stares at him.
"Gale, I don't want it. I didn't want it."
He studies her for a long moment, brushing the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, before pressing a kiss to her lips. "I know," he murmurs into her mouth.
"You were hurting." He sighs, "I couldn't just sit here and watch you hurt. Could you do that if it were me?"
She studies the IV in her hand, listens to the machine whirl and push whatever fluid they'd decided she needed into her.
Of course she hadn't been able to even just know he was in pain. After his whipping she'd begged her mother, cried, sobbed, to her to let Madge take some of her precious morphling to Gale. The man who'd just barely acknowledged her since Katniss' return. She'd run through a bitter snow storm, caught a cold, just to ease her mind that he wouldn't die from pain alone.
He taps her knee, "Madge."
She looks up, through puffy eyes, and sees him tracing the lines of the hospital blanket on her thigh.
"You couldn't do it, and neither could I."
It's vague. He isn't looking at her, so she doesn't quite know how he means it.
"I know about the morphling, Madge."
Her previously racing heart comes to an abrupt stop. She watches him warily, even after all this time she still sometimes thinks he might want to pick a fight, for old time's sake.
"Oh," is all she can manage.
When he finally meets her eyes he doesn't look angry, not like she expected. He just sighs again.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
All she can do is shrug a little. She hadn't told anyone not to tell him. It wasn't as though she'd meant it as some clandestine operation. But no one, not Katniss, not Peeta, not either of the Everdeens, not even Mr. Abernathy had told him. Maybe they knew he'd spend the rest of his life trying to repay her and didn't want to add to his burden. He'd been somewhat shunned after the whipping and his poor mother had a difficult time finding work. He wouldn't have wanted her charity no matter how badly he needed it, and she didn't want a debt for him to pay.
"Who told you?" She finally asks.
"My mother, when I got here. When I was worried about upsetting you by letting them drug you up."
How his mother knew and why she'd kept it from him, Madge can only imagine.
"I'm sorry," Madge mutters, running her free hand over her eyes. "We weren't-not really-not really friends, Gale. I couldn't let you suffer."
He looks at her, his grey eyes are hard, thinking. She finally closes hers, he's too intense for her frayed nerves at the moment.
The bed shifts, she just knows he's getting up, leaving her. She shouldhave told him, but when was the opportunity? How do you bring something like that up? She certainly doesn't know.
Then his lips are on hers. It's sloppy, she's been fighting off a full blown fit of sobs for nearly half an hour, she has too much saliva, but Gale seems oblivious. His tongue runs along her lip, trying to urge it open, but she hasn't brushed her teeth since the previous morning and the boys had made her eat some horribly greasy food on a stick at the lake and she must have the most horrible case of morning breath imaginab-
His hand, a little cold from the hospital air, runs up the back of her very open gown, and she gasps, finally giving him what he wanted.
"Gale!" She pushes him back. Anyone could walk in. "You-Keep your hands where I can see them."
He grins at her, a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar grin. It suddenly dawns on her.
She frowns at him, "You aren't mad?"
"A little, I mean, they say hospital gowns aren't sexy, but-"
Madge rolls her eyes at him as he adjust the neckline of her gown, it's dangerously low on her left.
Gale sits back, his hand rests on her lower leg, gives it a squeeze. "I'm not mad. You're right, we weren't friends. You should've let me suffer. I know why you didn't though." He leans forward and presses another kiss to her forehead, "It's the same reason you're going to take that crap if you're hurting, okay?"
"Gale, I don't," she bites her lip. "I don't-you remember my mother? I don't want to turn out like her."
He groans, "You aren't going to go home with it. It's just for while you're here, okay? You aren't your mother, this isn't long term. You need it because my idiot brothers took you skating and didn't watch out for you."
That isn't fair, really. She could've fallen whether Rory and Vick were there anyways, but Gale rolls his eyes at that and mutters that they're still idiots.
She won't be like her mother, Gale won't let her. He would save her as well as comfort her, which she appreciates. The conversation about the morphling isn't over, she knows that. But it won't be as volatile as she'd always imagined. He understands why she did it, and that helps.
Madge fidgets in the bed and realizes not only are her clothes gone, so are her undergarments.
"Gale?" She begins cautiously. "Where are my clothes?"
And just as importantly who took them off of me?
A small grin creeps up his face, "I don't know. But it doesn't matter, you have to wear the hospital gown until they put on the cast."
He'd better hope he's lying.
She hits him with one of her pillows.
No, Madge thinks, she definitely isn't letting the Hawthornes talk her into any more 'fun' ever again.