Title: Extraordinary Measures
Author: J.M. Flowers
Rating: M
AN: First of all, mucho humongous thank yous to one of (if not THE) greatest person I've ever known, Anna, for sitting up on a Sunday night with me and helping me to finish writing this. If not for her voice of reason and inspiring giggle, most of this story would never have happened.
But the real reason for posting tonight (besides the heaps of guilt) is to say that my planned schedule for finishing this story has been altered due to injury. As it stands, I only have the use of one arm for a while, which greatly limits my ability to type and makes it completely impossible to write with pen and paper. That being said, I'm focusing on getting better instead of risking further injury in order to get this story finished. The next chapter will happen once I'm better.
Thank you all for being so understanding and continuing to read! However short this chapter may be, I hope it's enough to tide you over for a little while.
Quod me nutrit me destruit
What nourishes me also destroys me
My head spins, nausea as angry in the pit of my stomach as I can remember before. Driving home. On top of chop suey. In a bar bathroom, in garbage cans, heaving over toilets. The before that still wraps around me with such an iron fist.
His face is as clear inside my head as it was sitting in the chair, his hand resting above my heart, asking softly if I was ready. Telling me he'd made extraordinary things possible.
He'd done extraordinary things. It says so, in the pages of his journal. The very reason he created the machine. The reason he has two living, breathing daughters. One with a medical doctorate and a promising future, the other sitting in front of me and begging for a truth I don't know how to give.
And I can see it in her face, the dreaming. The beginning of a plan. A single change, a jump to another reality, a chance to try again. She's not thinking of the guilt. She's not thinking of the consequences. She's too young, too naive. She's not the girl I knew, who sat beside the machine and squeezed my hand back to reality and cried every time she turned away.
Gardenia in my reality was a nurse. She was the one who followed in her father's footsteps, who dedicated her life to saving people.
But here, she grew up as a dreamer. Without her father, but delicately handed him a few years too late, had him wrenched away by a cancer that was already destroying him. Lost her mother.
She's a florist, like the woman he speaks of in the journals. The attachment to the perfect arrangement, the meanings behind every petal, the nicks in the pads of her fingers undoubtedly caught in the path of her tools. She is her mother in this reality; not her father.
Not the Denia I knew.
"You can't," I whisper. "You can't use the machine. You can't go make a change and try to save him." I choke on bile pushing its way up my throat, my stomach heaving even though I'm trying desperately to swallow it down. Someone will die. Someone will always die.
Vomit spills from my mouth, making her jump back from her seat. I spit the taste away, tears already pooling in my eyes, already feeling my emotions pull me from the present. Like the machine did. The machine let my emotions take control, let me lose all sense of grounding. Let me forget where I was, what was happening.
Until Arizona is right beside me, tugging me to my feet. Dragging me through the doorway of the cafeteria and into a bathroom across the hall. She locks the door, pulls my scrub top right over my head and then my pants down my legs and shoves them both inside the garbage can. She brings a paper towel to my face, cool wetness wiping me clean of the remnants of my stomach.
"What happened?" she asks softly, knowing me. Knowing me so completely. Because somewhere beneath everything, she is still the person I know. Still the woman who combed vomit from my hair before, saw me spill my guts in throes of anxiety.
Anxiety like this. Because someone always has to die.
"He's dead," I say, tears finally morphing into a sob. And she tucks me into her like Denia and Senna - two puzzle pieces designed to make a whole. My other half. My destiny. "Everyone is dead."
#
"This isn't healthy," she whispers, wiping sweat from my forehead with a moist cloth. She strokes at my hair, damp and splayed across her lap. My head lays on her thigh, the rest of me curled into a ball on our bathroom floor.
The pain has yet to let up, nausea still rippling across my head with the strength of a jackhammer. It's emptied my gut and warmed my skin, coating me in a layer of sweat.
But she hasn't left my side. At the hospital, she held my hair and changed my clothes; walked me across the street and into the safety of our apartment. She's given me water and crackers, pulled my curls off my face as I heaved over the toilet.
"You're perfect," I murmur softly, thumb scratching at the seam along the side of her jeans. She blows a puff of air out her nose, a disbelieving little laugh. "Thank you," I continue, "for staying with me." I still, aware of the depth of that simple phrase. More than just in sickness and in health.
Arizona stays silent for a moment, slowly twisting my hair into a braid. When she speaks again, her voice is soft, tentative. "What else did he say in the journal?"
I sigh, rolling onto my back so I can look right at her. Blue eyes catch mine, shimmering behind a sea of unshed tears. "What's wrong?" I ask, sitting up slowly (and praying to the heavens that the slight movement won't toss another wave of nausea my way). I push her blonde hair behind her ears, studying her face. The tears escape, trickling slowly down her cheeks - left then right. I catch them with my thumbs.
She shakes her head, fruitlessly attempting to whip the wetness from her eyes. "The effects, Callie..." She trails off, a gentle sob slipping past her lips before she clamps them shut.
But I didn't see enough of the book to tell her more. I didn't get to flip through all the pages, read all of Dr. Lewis' story. I just know what I've told her, what he wrote about the effects the machine had on him. The cancer; how it destroyed his liver, coughing up blood and migraine headaches and dreams of different realities that swirled inside his head whether he was asleep or awake.
"What if these are your effects?" she whimpers around her tears, "What if this is you getting sick?"
"Shh, shh," I soothe, stroking her cheeks. "I'd take this a million times over if it means I get to be with you."
She softens slightly, leaning into my chest. But I swear I hear her whisper: "What if I don't want you to?"
