"Bleed from my arm, won't they give it a rest now?"
-Jimmy Eat World, "Bleed American"
Where am I going in life?
It's not the most appropriate question to dwell upon when you're lying on the sofa, tottering between different levels of consciousness while you're watching kids—the same kids you're supposed to be babysitting—mesmerized by the television. She resolved that these weren't the worst of the brats she's seen before, and thus she could enjoy a few minutes of rest. Squinting to see the time on the clock above the television set, she groaned when she saw the numbers '10:30' staring at her in the face. The girls were supposed to be in bed an hour ago.
Sitting up, Linda rubbed her eyes of the sleep and said groggily, "Alright Jeanne, Hannah, let's go to bed…"
"Aw, just five more minutes!" Jeanne pleaded, not even noticing the fact that her sister was fast asleep, mouth hanging open.
"Trust me; I'm going to bed the second I get home, too." She bent down to pick Hannah up. "Go brush your teeth and I'll be right there after I put Hannah down, alright?"
Jeanne nodded and ran off to the bathroom while Linda went into the baby's room, gently putting her into the crib. After wrapping a blanket around her and shutting the door, Linda went to Jeanne's room, where the seven-year-old was sitting up in bed, reading a book.
"Hey.".
"Hi. I'm sorry about falling asleep like that; things just aren't going great for me lately. I'm tired all the time for some reason."
"Linda, why are there so many bruises on your arm?"
Oh God, please tell me…?!
No. She couldn't have seen them, could she? She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt on purpose, just until they healed. It was just a small chain of black and blues, nothing more. Unless you truly concentrated, you couldn't notice them at all.
This was before Linda remembered that she had rolled up her sleeves.
Laughing nervously, she tried to think of an acceptable excuse. Not even her mother questioned her about it. "I fell down the stairs, that's all. It was my own fault." At least the latter part was true. Jeanne narrowed her eyes, but didn't say anything. She bought into her little white lie—for now, anyway.
"I'll see you in a few days, alright?"
The younger girl nodded, eyes still narrowed.
Linda turned out the lights and left the room, softly shutting the door. It took all she had just to keep the tears at bay. She could so easily lie to her parents, her friends, but it destroyed her to lie to only the smartest seven-year-old she ever knew.
He couldn't really explain it, but things were different without Stiles and Thompson around. And god damn, things were a lot more boring. With GUILT being virtually down the drain, there wasn't much else to concentrate on. He wasn't concerned with the victims of an unfortunate car accident—hey, it was their fault that they were driving drunk in the first place—or the people with easily curable diseases. He increasingly found himself going home early; whatever 'home' was, anyway.
"Don't even think about it now, Victor."
That wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear the second he walked out of the door, either. Sidney Kasal gave him a curt nod of acknowledgment before going on to say, "Since you don't have anything to do, you can prepare the anesthesia for the next surgery."
He rolled his eyes, groaning exaggeratedly. "Do I have to?"
"Yes, you do. Stop acting like a child and follow the rest of them."
Ever since Meyers and the oh-so-romantic lovebirds left, he was in charge of various menial tasks that he otherwise would never have bothered with. Mostly because there was never a need to, in all honesty. And look at him now; reduced to this, having to constantly assist those idiots in whatever they were doing. He missed the days where he could go for hours without having to even listen to the morons' banter.
Getting the morphine drip ready, he wheeled it down the operating room, where Chase, Kasal and Sears were huddled around a girl—no older than twenty, at most—waiting for him to fix the morphine into place. Sticking the IV roughly into her arm, his eyes barely passed over her face; bloody and tear-stained, sleek black hair matted around the side of her head. It was strange, but he genuinely wondered what happened for once.
"Can I please go now?" he asked with strained politeness, if that was even possible.
"No," Kasal answered bluntly and was Chase actually smirking at him? He continued briefing them on the situation.
"…came here after her parents found her unconscious and bleeding, but there's internal hemorrhaging. If we don't appease it immediately, she'll bleed to death."
"Wait, they don't know what happened to her?" Tyler looked mildly surprised, if only because the reason the patient was there was usually explained.
Kasal, much to Victor's shock, actually faltered. "Her parents have…suspicions, but they refuse to say anything. Let's not waste any more time, then."
He doubted that any of them knew what those 'suspicions' were, but he had a very dire feeling that they were what he thought they were.
Ugh…
Her body felt as though it had been hit by a train; more specifically, her midsection felt like it had. Where was she, anyway? She couldn't draw conclusions from eyesight—she didn't have the strength to open her eyes—but the place smelled sterile and there was an eerie silence suspended in the air. A chill passed through her body, and she instinctively opened her eyes and tried to sit up.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Even a tired, disembodied voice was welcome to her ears after what happened in the hours before. That's right…why wasn't she at home? Wasn't that where her argument with him had taken place?
Oh.
Her stomach sunk when she realized that she was in the hospital. Panic, relief, sadness—they all flashed through her mind, all at once. That emotional overload was too much for her to take, and she blurted out, "It hurts." She didn't even care who she was saying it to, she just needed someone to listen to her without making her feel worthless.
"I'd be pretty damn surprised if it didn't. That was by far one of the worst hemorrhages I've seen in a while. If you got here a second later, you probably would've died."
Linda squirmed beneath the covers, trying to dig deeper into the sheets. She tried to think of something to say. "How did I get here?"
There was a slight mocking tone in the man's—at least, she hoped it was a man's—voice. She didn't even want to know if that was integral or just suited to his mood at the moment. "Your parents found you bleeding to death. Can't exactly blame them for bringing you somewhere."
There was an uncomfortable silence. She knew that he'd ask about what happened, but she just wasn't ready to tell anyone yet. A small voice in the back of her mind reminded her that if she didn't tell someone eventually, she'd probably never be able to get out of the mess she had gotten herself into.
Tell me something I don't know, Conscience. The thought was sickly casual, and she immediately felt terrible for thinking it.
More silence. This was slowly killing her before he said, "Well, I have better things to do than hang around a girl who lets her boyfriend use her as a punching bag."
Fuck the pain; she sat up at an almost inhuman velocity. "W-What?" She ignored the agony that soon ignited in her abdomen, focusing more on what he just said. There was no way in hell he could've known about what happened.
Sure enough, the man—who looked vaguely familiar, although she couldn't place where exactly she had seen him before—shrugged his shoulders. "You heard what I said. Unlike most of the idiots here, I have a sense of perception. And the look on your face says everything."
Linda was on the verge of tears at this point. She somehow doubted that someone like him would go through the trouble of telling someone, but it didn't matter.
Someone knew, and that was all that mattered.
For her sake, he would keep the fact that she was being knocked around by her 'boyfriend' a secret. But really? He knew that it was the desperate tone of her voice that really sealed the deal. The picture of her sitting up, eyes tearing over, holding her stomach in pain, just wouldn't leave him alone.
"Please, if you tell anyone, he'll kill me!"
That was no exaggeration, unfortunately. If there was one thing he hated more than morons, it had to be guys who thought they were high-and-mighty because they had the nerve to punch a girl. Then they would turn around and say that they were sorry, they'd never do it again. And girls like her were foolish enough to believe them—
Snap.
He didn't even realize how worked up he was over something that was, in reality, none of his business until the pencil he had been absently doodling with snapped in half.
"Jesus, Niguel, you look like you could kill someone right now. What's wrong?"
He looked up from the piece of paper to see Chase sliding into the seat opposite him and ground his teeth. He was in no mood to put up with idiocy.
"Nothing."
"Nothing, my ass. What's wrong?"
Chewing on the inside of his lip, Victor figured that Chase wouldn't leave him alone unless he gave him some kind of answer that wasn't completely made of bullshit.
Suddenly standing up, he mumbled, "Everything's wrong."
When her parents asked with typical concern what had happened, she came up with the acceptable excuse of 'I fell down the stairs.' They had merely looked at each other, their faces contorting with confusion. Linda just shrugged her shoulders and furrowed her eyebrows, looking away. She couldn't bear to tell her parents the truth. If she had pleaded to whatshisname not to tell anyone, she'd be a bit of a hypocrite to turn around and spout off to her parents, wouldn't she?
"Well, if there's anything you need, just tell us," her mother told her, stroking her arm as they stood up to leave. "We love you."
"I love you too," Linda murmured, forcing a smile. At least she had retained that skill. It was almost sad how much it came to be useful.
They left her room, and she sank deeper into the bed, feeling the ever familiar sensation of guilt coming back, weighing on her like bricks. She silently promised them that she'd tell them eventually about the monster that was her boyfriend. That it was his fault that she was here, that it was because of him she became so detached from everything.
But they had been infatuated with the guy, too, she thought miserably. They would never believe what she told them. She mulled over this fact for a while before thinking about how she got into this mess in the first place. It was still blurry in her mind, but it was there all the same; the screaming, the occasional flashes of black and red, the sound of the door flying open as he took his leave, waiting for her to die…
She didn't even realize she was crying until she saw the small dots of moisture dropping onto the sheets. Quickly wiping her eyes, she looked up to see Whathisname staring at her, an eyebrow raised. Ugh. It was the last thing she needed.
"You're a doctor, right? Don't you have something to do?" she asked, not really caring either way; she just wanted him off her back.
"Not really, actually." He plopped into the chair by the door and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "It's so goddamn boring around here since the interesting people left."
She sat up. "Interesting people?"
"Huh? Oh, nobody, just talking to myself…"
"Ah." She tapped her finger against her lip. "I wonder where Derek and Angie went."
"Wait, you know them?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"Oh yeah," Linda said, nodding to herself. "The last time I saw them was a year ago, I think." Yes, that was when out of seemingly nowhere she was sick again, all because of the same GUILT she had three years before. The very same GUILT that she had wanted to kill her…Well, it probably would be a good idea to clarify this to Whatshisname, because he was still looking at her expectantly.
"I had GUILT a few years ago, and Derek was the one who operated on me," she told him, twirling her hair around her finger. "Although, he did tell me afterwards that he had no idea what the hell he was doing at the time." She had to suppress a laugh when she thought of his expression when he told her that; awkward, dorky, adorable.
And she felt inexplicably sad when she thought of the times when she had been happy.
So after a little probing, he had found out that this was Stiles' first GUILT patient, back when he was still at a 'normal' hospital. He didn't tell her the whole story about the Hands of Asclepius and Neo-GUILT—he wasn't even allowed to, anyway—but she wasn't particularly curious about it, anyway. Half the time she had something of a vacant stare, despite the fact that she was listening to him carefully. Damn, he really was bored to talk to a girl like this.
He figured that he might as well ask for her name, since he was getting tired of calling her 'girl' in his head.
She seemed to falter when he asked her, her gaze clouding over for a moment, as though she was remembering something she'd rather forget about. Still, she carefully answered, "Linda."
Linda, he repeated mentally. He liked the way it sounded. Not like the millions of Rebeccas and Ashleys and Kaylas. It actually didn't remind him of a squealing teenage girl. It had an eerie softness to it.
Why the hell am I thinking about that of all things?
"Hello?"
"What?"
Linda was bobbing her head back and forth, looking extremely irritated. "I asked you, what's your name?"
Oh. Why was he suddenly at a loss for words? It was just his name for God's sake!
"Er, Victor. Yeah…"
"Victor…" she repeated before closing her eyes and plopping her head on the pillow.
He used this opportunity to get the hell out of there, because he couldn't stand to hear her defeated voice, let alone saying his name with an unusual degree of calmness.
He resisted the urge to tell someone about the sad fucker that was making her life so blatantly miserable.
Oh hay guise am I doin' it rite?
So yes, I'm trudging into the TC fandom with a waaaangsty VictorxLinda story. I honestly thought I was the only person who could've possibly dreamed a cracky pairing like this up, but apparently I'm not, because In The Beginning and TCGeek support it too. ILU guys.
Yes, this is multichaptered. It's for my 10 Themes claim at livejournal. The prompt for this particular chapter is 'Depression.' Poor Linda. She always gets the short end of the stick in life, doesn't she? Anyway, I'll see you next time. 8D (moseys off to finish her other stories)