title: the paper lantern flickers and sways
rating: pg
pairing: Cameron, shades of House/Cameron
spoilers: for informed consent, spin and fidelity
summary: 'Your head hurts and you scrub at your wrists and hands defiantly. You can't get rid of the metallic smell of the bedrails, no, nor can you get rid of the faint whiff of morphine lingering on your hands and your mind.'
disclaimer: not mine
I need some sleep,
I can't go on like this
I tried counting sheep,
But there's one I always miss.
The Eels, I Need Some Sleep
Your veins extend from the
base of your palm to your elbow,
and your fingers brush over
thin blue threads lightly.
You knew he (doesn't) didn't want you to stay, but you never understood why.
You think you do now.
- - -
Your head hurts and you scrub at your wrists and hands defiantly. You can't get rid of the metallic smell of the bedrails, no, nor can you get rid of the faint whiff of morphine lingering on your hands and your mind.
Are you imagining it?
Light reflecting off the mirror glints off your watch and you lower your eyes hastily. You don't want to know yourself anymore. You dry your hands hastily on a paper towel and flee the bathroom.
It's still dark, but already people haunt the hallways, their eyes wide and vacant as they try to outstare potted plants and cups of coffee. You exchange a quick look with a girl standing in the corridor and try to ignore that sense of empathy that comes so easily. It's the first time you're using your lab coat as a barrier between you and the world.
It won't be the last.
So let's talk about avoidance instead, and let's not remember the metallic circlet on your fourth finger that smelt like the bedrails you're trying to forget. Let's not remember how it was too big for your finger and that you cried because you knew you wouldn't have time to grow into it. Or the first time you took it off – let's not remember that either.
You pause by your office and walk on.
- - -
You linger in the empty clinic for a moment and run your hand across the nurses' desk. Sometimes you think you like the clinic, because it teems with life – with people who think they're dying. You like telling them to go home and get some sleep, just because it means they're not.
But Danny started off in a clinic and all that got him was a cold, cold bed under the cold, cold earth.
Sometimes life has a sense of humour. You're not sure, but you're pretty sure it's a sadistic one, and contrary to popular belief, you're not a masochist.
You pass a doctor opening exam room one and give him a faint smile to acknowledge his polite doctor cameron. He glances up at you as he slides a drawer open and you think he's about to say something. But you hear the rattle of syringes and you move on quickly.
You were never very interested in platitudes anyway.
- - -
The wall of the lift is cold beneath your cheek as you lean against it. As the door closes, you think you hear the main entrance doors sliding open and the click of a cane on the tiled floor. You doubt it though, because it's too early for House to be here, and you never trusted your hearing anyway.
Not since you heard the insistent ding-dong, ding-dong of Danny's bedside bell when you were trying to complete that journal article. Maybe he was trying to tell you not to bother, because it would be all in vain anyway.
It hasn't reached ten years to the day yet, but it might as well be, because you're beginning to forget everything that (mattered) matters to you. Soon all you will remember is his name and the name of the man who killed him.
- - -
belle
The doors slide open and as you step out, you wonder where you're going. It doesn't seem to matter that you don't know though, because your feet seem to carry you towards the stairwell. It's a good idea, you reflect as you push the door open. Climbing up a flight of steps, you sit down, head resting against the wall and arms clutching your knees to your chest.
Ask most girls and they'll tell you that they felt beautiful on their wedding day. You can understand the idea, the feeling, the myth.
You felt beautiful at your first competition, on your prom night, on the first day of med school. At your wedding you just felt jaded and cracked.
You haven't taken the photo album out for a while – not since the night your cyclist patient was discharged and you had that conversation with Wilson. It's probably under the cushion on the sofa, or in a box somewhere – with all the other things you want to forget (but can't.)
But you do remember that Joe was in the photo album – as if you really needed a photograph to recall his face. In the photograph all three of you were smiling – smiling as though each of you didn't know what was happening. As though Danny wasn't dying, you didn't know that he was and Joe wasn't going to help him die.
What hurts the most was that they had planned it all.
- - -
nocturne in e flat minor
You don't remember leaving the stairwell, but it must have happened sometime, because somehow you've found your way to the chapel, and the stained glass is casting coloured shadows all over the floor. You close your eyes and you can almost hear the choir singing in the church and your father's voice in your ear as he clutched your arm, walking you down the aisle.
You didn't want him there, because you could see his second wife watching you from one of the pews. You didn't want her there either.
Is that betrayal you can taste?
Let's remind you that the music playing wasn't a death march.
You're screwing your life up, your father whispered as you walk down the aisle, except that he uses a stronger profanity instead – one that began with 'f' and you've avoided at all costs. He only started using it on you when you were fifteen, but you'd always remembered it from hot, summer nights when you were living at his parents' house, and he'd fight with your mother. You remember the scratchy dresses and tight black shoes that your mother would dress you in, in between telling your father that you two were leaving for good.
You also remember your grandmother leading you back to the room your parents and you shared and putting you to bed.
Somehow, complying had always felt like a betrayal of your mother.
- - -
You'd always liked Joe's family, because it was so normal. (you hadn't met Danny's parents until much later.) His mother took to you, and you sometimes felt that she wished you hadn't fallen for Danny, so you could be with her son. But she'd attended your wedding and pretended that she wasn't crying. You'd always loved her for that, because you remember that half the congregation had been.
If you were honest, you were one of them.
She still calls you on the anniversary of Danny's death, even though you don't talk to her son anymore. You'd refused to talk to him after he confessed that he had helped Danny die. You hated everything he stood for – Joe: Danny's angel of death in his lab coat, stethoscope hanging around his neck and pretending that he saved lives when he had ended your husband's.
Now you'd become like him.
- - -
You wonder if Ezra Powell had family to miss him and curse you for taking him away from them.
- - -
somebody needs you
You hear his uneven footsteps as the chapel door clicks open. He pauses behind you, and you resist the urge to turn.
- what have I done? – never escapes your lips.
You feel his hand on your shoulder, and you close your eyes, because once upon a time you'd have been excited at the thought of him breaking the invisible barrier between the two of you.
Not (anymore) now.
"I'm proud of you," he says.
You're not, you think, as he limps out.
- - -
The mirror in your bathroom is cracked in the corner and slightly smudged in places, but you can still see your reflection in it.
Your tired eyes search
the image in front of you
for a memory of the person
you thought
you were.
- - -
minas morgul
Do you find it?
- - -