5.6.16
Two posts in two days?! Lucky ducks ;)
Enjoy!
4. Interlude 1: Abby
Five Days Ago...
Long shifts at the hospital are long, and they only feel longer the older Abby gets. By the time she's walking out the doors of Swedish Hospital, back aching, eyes burning, hobbling to her car on feet that haven't been so swollen since her pregnancy with Clarke, Abby is cursing her decision to be a doctor. Not that it's the first time. It's a battle at the end of every shift not to throw up both middle fingers and chuck her ID badge at the front desk, a miniature existential crisis, to be sure. She could retire tomorrow and move to a little bungalow in the Bahamas, and truly, money is no object, but there's a devil that drives her onward. Her conscience is her cruelest taskmaster.
At least Jake would be proud of her. Most of the time, that thought alone is enough to keep her going through the long days and quiet nights.
It's pouring down rain as she throws a coat on over her scrubs, slings her bag over her shoulder, and sets off toward the parking garage across Madison Street. The wind blows up the hill off the Sound, picking up speed between the buildings like a wind tunnel. She clutches her tumbler of coffee close against her chest, a traditional Seattle talisman to ward off the chill, her preferred protection against the elements. A sharp gust sends a volley of raindrops into her back at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. The wet streets are shining, black and glossy like polished obsidian shards, glowing red, yellow, and green with the cycling street lights overhead.
Abby sips her scalding hot coffee and tries not to wilt.
157 more steps until she reaches the garage. Three flights of stairs to reach her car. Two miles and twenty minutes in traffic to reach home, because Seattle traffic never sleeps, infernal and incessant, more dependable than the sunrise every morning.
"I should retire early," she murmurs to no one, dodging the glance of a sodden hobo trudging past.
"Change, ma'am?"
"I don't carry cash."
"Shame. God bless."
Abby rolls her eyes, but her irritated mutterings are interrupted by the buzzing of her phone in her pocket. She almost hesitates as she goes to answer because her eye sockets hurt, and she absolutely cannot do another shift at the hospital in this state, but it's only Clarke, toothless and towheaded in a strawberry-patterned dress, smiling up at her from the screen.
She swipes quickly.
"Clarke, honey? Light of my life?"
"Hi, Mom."
A warm smile flits across Abby's lips. "Hello, my darling child. How are you?"
"I'm at the house. Where are you? Weren't you supposed to be home four hours ago?"
Abby frowns and pulls the phone away from her ear, eyes widening as she checks the date on the welcome screen. The streetlight across the way changes and Abby takes off at a jog toward the parking garage.
"I'm so sorry, honey. I didn't realize what day it was. They kept me late at the hospital because Cho has the flu, and- and that's no excuse. I'm sorry."
"You sound exhausted. I'm just gonna go ahead and order Chinese, okay?"
"Okay, do you need my card?"
"No, I've got this one. No worries."
Abby slows to a walk when she enters the garage, shaking off the rain as she pushes back her hood, wincing with each step she takes. "Are you okay, Clarke?"
"I'm fine."
"You sound a little flat, honey. Are you sure?"
"Yeah, Mom, I'm fine. Just tired. The set up today was grueling."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"They messed up the lighting so I had to stay late trying to fix it." Clarke pauses and Abby waits, trudging up the concrete steps, trying not to breathe too heavily into the phone. "Mom, there's something I- …no, never mind. Maybe we should just talk about it when I get home."
Abby fumbles with her keys. "Okay?"
"I'm getting a lot of food, so prepare yourself."
Abby laughs as she climbs through the driver side door. "My body is ready."
"Good. See you soon."
"Bye."
Abby starts her car and flips on the radio, something loud to keep her awake while she rubs her hands together and waits for the heater to warm up. A reporter on KUOW is presenting some special on ranchers in Bozeman, Montana, interviewing a local woman who claims that ranchers aren't rednecks because rednecks don't have college degrees. Which, that's racist, or bigoted...or something, right? Abby's eyes cross and she snorts. Since when does she care who insults rednecks? After treating wounds for 27 Fourth of July fireworks disasters the previous year, Abby's of the opinion that rednecks and their camo-wearing ilk deserve any derision the Montana ranchers want to throw their way. She finishes her coffee and pulls out of the parking garage.
With the rain coming down as hard as it is, I-5 is even more snarled than usual, and weather reports are predicting a wind storm overnight, prompting local residents to clear out the shelves at the grocery stores as hoards of commuting 9-to-5ers make a mass exodus east to the suburbs before the bridges close. It takes her thirty five minutes to get home instead of her usual twenty, and Abby's head is pounding like a marching drum by the time she finally staggers through the front door into Clarke's waiting arms.
"Hi, Mom."
"Hi, honey." Abby sighs and squeezes her daughter tighter. "I missed you."
"I missed you, too." Clarke is smiling faintly as she steps away and leads Abby into the kitchen. "How was work? Sounds like they kept you busy."
Abby collapses into a chair at the kitchen table, some expensive leather-seated thing that the interior decorator had insisted they have, and props her head up in her hands. From the corner of her eye, she watches Clarke move around the kitchen, gathering plates from the cupboards and silverware from the drawer next to Jake's old fancy refrigerator, the one he claimed was superior to every other brand, the one which she still hasn't had the heart to give away even though she only ever buys enough food to fill up the first shelf. Pictures of Clarke, smiling in a graduation gown and cap, sitting at the bottom of a slide at Madison Park, balancing on a bike with two hands in the air, pepper the stainless steel refrigerator doors, and Abby can't help but notice the contrast in Clarke's demeanor now. Her shoulders are hunched, her movements awkward and lethargic. Abby knows that look. She's seen Clarke at her very worst, at the very bottom of the barrel. She'd once chased some boy named Finn out of the house with a pair of poultry scissors, no questions asked, because to her, Clarke is still seven years old, sitting at the bottom of that slide in Madison Park, and… she knows that look.
But she waits.
They're halfway through their plates, heaped with mushu pork, chow mein, and broccoli beef before Clarke raises the issue on her own. There are circles under her eyes, and she looks leaner. Abby decides she doesn't like the way Clarke's fleece hangs on her frame. She definitely doesn't like the faint translucent quality of Clarke's skin. She sees sick people all day, every day, but not her own daughter. Not in some years. This doesn't sit right.
"Mom, um…" Clarke wipes her mouth on a paper towel, always refusing to use the expensive napkins the decorator bought, and drops her chopsticks, folding her arms tight across her chest. "There's something I was wondering about."
"What's wrong, honey? You look like you haven't slept in a week."
Clarke turns her head, steel eyes staring out the rain-streaked window, and Abby knows she's just guessed at the truth. When she's playing doctor she loves to be right, but this hurts, like a screw twisting tighter in her chest. She'll take a hundred more days with swollen feet before she'll see Clarke in pain.
"I kind of haven't." She bites her lip, turns back to fix Abby with startlingly clear eyes. "Do you have a copy of the DSM-5?"
Abby blinks. "You know I do. It's on the shelf next to the medical journals in the library. Why do you ask?"
Clarke twists in her seat, twists her lip between her teeth, and Abby knows that look, too, though never worn with such obvious agony.
Something's not right.
"There's a girl," Clarke says, very quietly.
"A girl?" Abby cocks her head to the side, racing through all the information she's stored away about her only daughter, searching for the threads she'd missed. "Really?"
Clarke squirms again, but her jaw is clenched ever so slightly, and Abby can see that she's not wavering on this is. Whatever it is, it's quite serious.
"I've always been bisexual," Clarke admits. "I experimented in college a bit, but nothing really stuck."
"Well, you haven't dated much anyway." Abby runs her fingers through her hair, shaken out of a ponytail earlier that smelled of antiseptic and latex. "You've always been very focused on your work. When did you know?"
"When I was 17. Wells' friend kissed me at a party on a dare."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
Clarke shrugs. "Dad was sick."
Abby looks down at her plate. "That's true."
"It didn't seem important at the time."
"I guess that's fair." Abby sets her chopsticks aside, and devotes her full attention to Clarke, whose jaw is still tight, fingers clenching and unclenching in her lap. "So, what's her name? And what does she have to do with the DSM-5? You know that homosexuality hasn't been classified as a psychological disorder in decades."
Clarke's lips quirk. "Her name is Lexa, and she's… special."
"I can tell."
"Really?" Clarke smiles, blushing lightly, staring at her fingers in her lap. "Am I that obvious?"
"You always love with everything you have." Abby reaches out and touches Clarke's wrist, squeezing lightly. "You never do anything by half. It's one of the best things about you."
"Dad was that way, too."
"He was." Abby blinks away sudden tears. "Sometimes you remind me so much of him. You have a kind soul, Clarke."
Clarke laughs. "I don't know. I'm kind of a curmudgeon."
"Which you get from me," Abby rolls her eyes playfully, "but you care for the people you love. You give them everything you can," her voice takes on a cautionary note, "even though sometimes that means you give too much."
Clarke's hands twist together, fingers lacing, lips pursing. "I know."
Abby watches her daugher with furrowed brows for a long moment, listening to the rain strike the kitchen windows, to the branches of the evergreen trees in the backyard creaking in the wind. The storm is getting closer.
"Why is Lexa special?"
Clarke wipes her eyes. "S-she's- ...I'm sorry, i-it's just-"
Abby's chair legs squeak against the stone floor as she stands and walks around to take the seat next to Clarke. "Is she sick?"
Clarke's chin quivers as she nods.
"Clarke…" Abby scoots closer, puts her arm around her daughter's trembling shoulders. "What's wrong?"
"S-she's got some...s-some issues." Clarke sniffs and takes a shuddering breath. "Up here." She points to her temple. "She hasn't told me exactly what's wrong, but...I've been trying to figure it out."
Abby puts her physician's cap on. "What do you think it is?"
"I d-don't know." Clarke wipes her eyes on her sleeves and sniffs again indelicately. "God, I'm sorry. I'm all over the place today."
"It's okay."
"She gets panic attacks, and sometimes she can't sleep for days, and...I think there's depression, too. Maybe just anxiety and depression. Maybe bipolar II disorder, I don't know. The sleeplessness could be hypomanic episodes, I just don't-... I-I don't know. I'm not a clinician."
"You could've been."
Clarke scoffs.
"I know, I know. Sorry."
"I just wish she would let me in. She's so closed off. I think she had a rough childhood, but I'm just not sure, and I have no idea what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to be doing. I have no idea how to support her. I just…" Clarke puts her head in her hands, says, muffled, through wet fingers, "It's just so hard sometimes, and I'm so tired."
Abby sighs and pulls her daughter close, lets Clarke lean against against her shoulder as she wipes her eyes. It's not the first time something like this has happened. There have been other boys, careless and adolescent, who have caused her daughter this kind of pain. Clarke always gives everything she has, just like Jake, ever her most adamant supporter, whispering to her that everything would be okay even as his last breath slipped away. They're really so alike, father and daughter, mirror images of each other, and Abby doesn't regret a single moment of it. She would make all the same mistakes again just to be here, holding her beautiful daughter, holding her beautiful heart to the lessen the burden for a few minutes.
"Clarke, honey," she searches for the right thing to say, draws from her own personal experience, "sometimes when people aren't well they make choices that hurt you, and it's not because they don't care. It's just that they're fighting so hard against their demons that you might accidentally get swept up in the melee."
Clarke nods against her shoulder. "I know."
"The only thing you can do is be there for her when she needs you, and it's up to her to tell you what she needs, and to accept that support or not."
"Okay."
"This Lexa, is she good to you?"
Clarke smiles. "That's funny. If you had asked me a few days ago I would've said no, but…" Her smile fades, replaced in seconds with a look of wonder, glassy-eyed and innocent, a look that Abby knows all too well. "She came back for me, and she apologized and explained… And she stayed even though she was scared."
"She loves you?"
Clarke nods. "I think so."
"And you love her?"
Clarke nods again and says the words that twist Abby's heart with their familiarity. "So much it hurts."
"Oh, Clarke."
"I've never felt like this before, Mom." Clarke smiles through her tears, through the gloom and the pitter-patter of angry raindrops and the screaming wind, through her exhaustion and her doubt, through the heavy knowledge of the battles to come. "She's just so different than anyone I've ever met. We understood each right away. It's like...with everyone else I'm speaking through interpreters, but with her we both know the same language, and it's so easy to talk to her. I want you to meet her someday."
"You haven't brought anyone home in a while."
Clarke laughs, a weak little thing, wet with tears. "I know. Maybe I'm jumping the gun on this one. It hasn't been very long."
"No, time doesn't matter. When you know, you know." Abby kisses Clarke's temple and swallows the lump settling in her throat. "And if you love her Clarke, I can't wait to meet her."
A/N: Thanks for reading! Tell me what you think!
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