madgesundersee challenged me to write Gadge with a nurse/doctor + patient twist… This took me so long to write. As usual, I made a mountain out of a molehill. Whoops.
I challenge combatpragmatist to write Gadge in a foreign place.
Because I am unoriginal, this fic was inspired by the fantastic movie "50/50"
He was surly, bitter, and rude from the moment she met him, but he also had cancer, so Madge gave him a free pass— somewhat. In her opinion, Gale Hawthorne was lucky that Madge Undersee was the psychologist assigned to him and not Johanna Mason, whose tough love approach worked on some people, but definitely not, Madge decided, this man.
He questioned her authority at every session, disbelieving that someone so young could possibly understand what he was going through. She let him rant and rave, and chose not to disclose that she lost both her aunt and mother to the ravenous disease. The odds weren't in her favor regarding her own chances with cancer, and that too she kept to herself. It wasn't his business, and she didn't think it would win her any points with him, anyway.
To be honest, she was just glad he was expressing himself, although in terms of the grieving process, he couldn't move past his anger.
They told me I have a 50/50 chance, he raged one day. They might as well have flipped a coin with all the good that information did me!
They're not the best, Madge admitted. But your odds are still good. Her aunt's was lower, and she lost in the first round— her mother's was higher, but the cancer would return a second time, and win.
Gale had shaken his head, disgustedly at her. How would you even know? He had spat. You think you understand cancer, the way it eats people alive from the inside out, uncaring of the collateral damage. You aren't the one experiencing cancer, you just watch it from far away, in your clean, neat little office, with your shiny, new PhD. hanging on the wall. Don't talk to me like you understand, like you know just as well as I do what this disease does.
Madge sat there, taking it, like a statue. She resolutely took his abuse, understanding his anger wasn't meant for her, but for his own helplessness and the disease, but— she realized in the quiet that followed— he didn't need to treat her like this. And she wasn't helping him, anyway. This was a waste of time, she thought with a similar disgust as his.
You win, she told him, and he looked at her in shock. Is that what you want to hear? You win. The world has done a much greater injustice to you than it has— or ever will— to me. Congratulations, Mr. Hawthorne, she said, standing up and opening the door. You win. You don't need to come back after today. You don't want my help, and I don't want to give it to you.
He had wordlessly left the room, presumably still stunned, and Madge was too tired to even cry. That was the last of him, she had thought.
But to her surprise, the next week at the same time as their usual appointment, (she didn't bother to fill it again, didn't intend to for a while) she found him at her door, a bouquet of sunflowers and a small basket of fresh strawberries in his hands.
"I'm sorry," he said, and the words echoed around the room. "I was— am— an ass. An ass who was awful to you in every way, for no reason than I was just being a child. I understand if you don't want to see me anymore after this, but if you do— I'll try. I'll meet you halfway."
Madge pursed her lips together, not touching his gifts. Her favorites. "How will I know that this… change of heart won't go away in a few weeks?"
Gale flushed and looked stricken. "I'll earn your trust," he murmured. "Once I put my mind to something, I don't quit. I'm consistent."
Well, he had been consistently an ass to her all those months, so that was probably true.
Madge plucked a strawberry from the basket and took a bite. Perfect. "You're lucky these strawberries are delicious," she said, opening her door wider. "Otherwise, I might have said no."
His bright grin— unmarred by the cancer— would've been enough to change her mind from the get go.
But the berries helped
0000
Things got better after that, from a purely professional standpoint. While Gale wasn't perfect— he was still bitter and surly— he was no longer rude. If anything, he had almost deflated, curled into himself into a mess of hopelessness and wistfulness.
One day after a particularly brutal round of chemo, he sat for half the session, hands clasped, looking out the window. Studying his profile, Madge lamented at the physical change she saw in him over the past few months. A naturally handsome man, she saw his large, but lean frame shrink, his broad shoulders become bony, his waist become too narrow. He shaved his dark, thick head of hair once he learned it would fall out because of chemo— he was still handsome, his eyes still piercing, but it was evident that he wasn't well.
"What will become of me," he asked, still looking out the window. It was overcast and bleak, "when I die? What will my mother do? My siblings?"
He was a co-provider for his mother and three younger siblings, although his mother had a good job of her own. One brother was in college, with two more following. He worried for them constantly. Everything he did, Madge knew, was for them.
"You've spent so long trying to be strong for them," Madge said, "perhaps it's time that you allow them that same courtesy and let them be strong for you."
Gale shook his head. "They're just kids," he said. "They shouldn't have to deal with this."
And yet she learned he had to deal with worse when he was their age, his youngest sibling's age. A dead father, a grieving mother, a crumbling household.
Gale shook his head again. "I don't like asking for help," he said, which Madge, of course, already knew.
"Letting people in isn't a weakness," was all she said. "And don't assume you're going to die."
"I can't think of the future yet," Gale said, "not until I'm sure it's gone."
She didn't tell him it could always come back. She didn't need to.
Despite this, they became something of friends anyway, completely by accident, of course.
His truck broke down and his mother forgot to pick him up, and she ended up giving him a ride home. Her car smelt like gardenias, which she admitted made her nauseous, but her dad kept buying these air fresheners for her and she didn't have the heart to tell him to stop.
The inside of her car was like her office, clean and impeccable, but, he found out by chance, her trunk looked like the inside of a train wreck, and Madge blushed when he saw it.
"I need to clean it," she muttered, shutting it hastily. "One of these days."
In thanks, he found out what her favorite drink was, and brought it to her the next week— and then, (and no, he didn't know why) he kept bringing them to her.
One night, after a well-meaning, but completely exhausting night out with his friends, he accidentally butt dialed her number, and when she called him back, frantic with worry, they end up talking for two hours.
His thoughts blurry as he fell asleep, Gale thought about his ex-girlfriend, Katniss, who dumped him the day he found out about the cancer, and when she found out immediately came back to his side. He took her back because he loved her, but it wasn't the same. And when he found out she was in love with someone else, had been since before their break-up, he made her leave. She had come back to him because of guilt, not because of love, and he realized they weren't good together, anyway, not in the ways he had hoped.
He may have been thinking about his ex as he lay in bed, but all he saw was golden hair as he drifted off...
000
Chemo ended, but there's still surgery. To remove what's left and not eradicated. Like everything else, there's a 50/50 chance of success. His mother sobbed at the news, but Gale felt nothing but a resignation settle over him. The last battle that would decide the war.
His last session with Madge was spent mostly in silence. He didn't feel like talking— not due to any surliness, for once, but because he felt numb, and strangely at peace in the stillness.
Yet, for the first time in a long while, Madge looked awkward, fidgety, pulling the sleeves of her charcoal grey cardigan down around her clenched fists. She didn't look at him much.
It took him nearly the entirety of the session to figure out why.
"Madge," he said her name more gently than he ever had. Her head snapped up and her eyes were watery. "I'll be okay."
Her lips pinched together. She didn't call him out on the lie.
"Whatever happens, happens," Gale said. "I've come to terms with it, I have." He had seen friends he had made while at the hospital— Boggs, Mitchell, Darius— die. They did not die with dignity, and Gale came to terms with the fact that if he died on the operating table, he wouldn't either. It didn't make things any easier, but he supposed how one died didn't matter, only that they did.
"I haven't," was all Madge said, pressing her lips together again. Gale recognized that look from his mother and siblings. She was trying not to cry, and he was trying to resist the urge to take her in his arms.
They sat in silence for another few minutes, and then Madge gave a shaky laugh. "You've come a long way," she said, thinking about his words from the moment before. "You don't need me anymore."
"Nah," Gale said, looking at her in a way she had never seen before, his expression soft and open, "that's not true at all."
He called her the night before his surgery, drunk, courtesy of his friends (he always seemed to call her when that happened, Madge mused, not quite sure how she felt about that.)
"I've locked myself in my car," he informed her, a laugh stuck in the back of his throat, gurgling his words just a bit. "I'm not letting anyone else in."
"You always did have a problem with that," she replied sardonically, before pausing. It was more and more difficult for her to remain professional with him.
He was silent for too long.
"Gale?" She asked softly. "What's wrong?"
"I looked you up," he slurred. "On the internet. The other night. I was curious about you."
Madge stilled. "What?"
"I— I know about your aunt. And your mom."
Madge swallowed hard. "Yeah?"
"You must hate me," Gale said, hooking his words together. "Don't you? I would hate me. I was terrible to you and you never said anything."
"I didn't want your pity," Madge said softly, but firmly, "I still don't. You should know that."
Gale was silent for a minute. "Yeah. I do. I'm still sorry."
Madge sighed. "I know you are. Gale, why are you calling me?"
"I have something to tell you," Gale said, slowly, enunciating his words.
Madge rolled her eyes. "Ok, Gale," she humored him.
"Remember how I told you I wouldn't look towards the future until I knew for sure the cancer was gone?"
"Yeah." Madge smiled. "And?"
"I have such bad timing."
Madge was intrigued. "What— what made you change your mind?"
"You," he said, with his usual serious decisiveness, despite his inebriation.
Madge cradled the phone to her ear, her heart racing. "Gale," she breathed.
"I wish you were my girlfriend," he murmured, longing in his voice. "You would've been a great girlfriend. The best. So kind and strong and brave."
She hated that he was speaking in the past tense; even more, she hated that, as his psychologist, she couldn't act on it. Yet.
Still, she found herself saying softly, "Yeah, I would've been."
"I…" Gale stopped, his breathing heavy. "I've gotta go."
"Gale, no," Madge begged, "no, wait. Gale—!"
The phone clicked.
000
She met his mother, siblings, and best friends in the hospital waiting room during his lengthy surgery, and she, like the rest of them, paced the halls nervously. Celebrated when the doctors came and said that the surgery was successful.
Yet when he was finished, she stayed behind as his loved ones crowded him. She felt awkward, unsure, like she overstepped a line. Was it right to come here?
She waited until almost the very end of visiting hours, when she was sure he'd be asleep, to sneak in.
Silently, she sat in a chair, thinking of how much she hated hospitals, how she usually avoided them because of her mother, her aunt. But for Gale—
"Hey," came a murmur. Gale, his head turned to see her.
His eyes were barely cracked, but he managed a slight smile.
Madge blinked. "Hey," she said, surprised.
"I was wondering when you'd come in to see me," his voice seemed dry, cracked, and Madge gave him a cup of water, which he drank gratefully.
"How'd you know I was here?"
"Mom told me," he muttered, still smiling. "I'm sure it's hard for you to be here." Madge felt her eyes smart at his acknowledgment. "Thanks for coming."
She flushed. "You're welcome."
Gale gave her a warm look. "You're a good girlfriend. The best."
Madge laughed out loud at this. "I'm not your girlfriend, Gale."
His grin widened. "Yet."
Madge didn't protest.