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mrs--wheels · 3 years

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I made a human.

Yes, I made a human. I gave birth to a baby boy! Here’s my birth story: On Wednesday July 14th I went for my routine 36 week OB-Gyn checkup. At that visit they did a sonogram and everything looked normal, baby was in the 46th percentile for size. The Dr. checked my cervix and I was 2 cm dilated already. My blood pressure was high, which it had been for 6 weeks, but I did not have preeclampsia (yet - I was borderline.) The Dr. took me off work and said if I did not deliver by next week Thursday July 22 I would need to be induced. My blood pressure was causing really bad swelling everywhere in my body, but especially my calves, ankles, feet and wrists. I weighed 251 lbs at the checkup, about 55 lbs heavier than my pre-pregnancy weight. So I went into work with my disability form all filled out and basically peaced out, said goodbye to a few of my coworkers and my boss, and I ain’t lookin’ back. I went home, much to my husband’s surprise (he was working from home that day.) I’d like to say I enjoyed the last week of my pregnancy but that’s not entirely true. I was in terrible discomfort, especially my pelvis: I was having bad pelvic pain & pressure, so bad I could barely walk. The night of Monday July 19th I could hardly walk up the stairs to my bed, it hurt so bad. I did have surprisingly restful night’s sleep that night, which was good because of what was to come... At 5 am on Tuesday July 20th, I rolled over in bed and felt a wetness. Unsure if I peed myself or if my water broke, I went into the bathroom. Clear fluid was running down my legs, and it didn’t smell like pee. The puddle on my sheets didn’t either. I called the OB-Gyn’s office from the bathroom. and the Dr. on call told me if contractions started on their own to head into the hospital. If they didn’t start on their own, head in anyway but wait until after 8:30, 9 am. So I took a shower, made some toast & a banana for breakfast, and unloaded the dishwasher. Around 6 am I had my first contractions, but they weren’t too strong and they were about 7 or 8 minutes apart. I woke up my husband and told him I thought my water broke, and I was having contractions. He leapt out of bed and into the shower. As I lay on the bed waiting for him, the contractions were coming closer together (4-5 minutes apart) and getting stronger. My husband got dressed and I called my mom. She said she’d meet us at the hospital and we grabbed the overnight bags and diaper bag and went straight to the hospital. My husband drove like a panicked maniac, and I was gritting my teeth in the passenger seat with every contraction. We got to the hospital and I refused to let my husband get me a wheelchair, I wanted to walk in on my own. I had a contraction in the parking lot and barely made it to the 2nd floor to Labor & Delivery. By now it was around 7:30 am. They took me into a triage room for a workup, I changed into a gown, and a nurse put the fetal heart monitor on me. I got to listen to that little galloping horse heartbeat, nice and strong. In came a Dr. and 2 students, they did a history on me and after a very uncomfy pelvic exam it was determined I was 8 cm dilated and fully effaced! (The student who first checked me said I was 4 cm... the actual Dr determined it was 8... kind of a big difference!) The contractions were pretty much on top of each other by now, only a minute apart. I was moved straight into the delivery room, without stopping in a labor room first. This was at around 9:30 am maybe? I got to 10 cm in less than than 2 hours, and ready to push. I didn’t even have a hospital bracelet or an IV, things were moving way too fast. The Dr. showed up fully gowned, and they got me on the table and ready to go. This was the first time my mom was able to see me, she’d been waiting over an hour, since I was expected to be in labor a lot longer! I was ready to push at just before 10 am and I was absolutely terrified, I was so not ready. I had a birth plan packed in my overnight bag. In it, I requested an epidural. I wanted pain meds, to be able to sleep and rest during labor... My husband brought his laptop, we had a bluetooth speaker ready to play music in the delivery room... All of this was shot right out the window. I was terrified of the prospect of pushing, terrified of the pain. I felt like I had to take a massive poop, and even screamed “I’m gonna poop!” in the delivery room. My mom and the Dr were like “Just do it! That’s the baby coming out!” I pushed maybe a dozen times? Twice for every contraction. I squeezed my husband’s hand and felt my mom’s hand on my forehead. I was drenched in sweat from head to toe and shaking like crazy. They told me not to scream, that I was wasting energy I needed to funnel into pushing - but, like, ok, it hurts! I was hurling 4-letter words (and I never swear around my mom,) and gripping onto the back of the pillow under my head (which didn’t help the poor nurse still trying to stick an IV in my arm - they blew a vein in my left hand and ended up putting the IV in my right wrist - normally I’m bad with needles but I was in so much pain I didn’t even care.) The fetal heart monitor wasn’t working anymore, because the baby was moving down the birth canal. The excess skin & fluid on my lower abdomen made it difficult to get a reading, so a nurse was literally pushing the monitor hard into my belly, while I was trying to push at the same time. Eventually they used an internal monitor, this thing that looks like a cattle prod that attached to the top of the baby’s head, under the scalp, through the cervix. Luckily I didn’t know that had happened until after he was born. After about 15 minutes of pushing, and my poor crying husband looking like he was about to pass out (he hates seeing me in pain.) I gave birth to a baby boy at 10:14 am. It’s the most bizarre feeling in the world: like I was a bottle of champagne and he was the cork. I could feel everything since I had no drugs, the baby’s head and shoulders popping out and the gush of fluids afterwards. I did need a few stitches, I had a second degree tear, but I never felt that or the placenta being delivered. The whole room was in a flurry, there was at least 1 dozen people there - the Dr, an instructor, several students, nurses and my mom & husband. I was the talk of labor & delivery that day: the first-timer who came in at 7:30 and had a baby less than 3 hours later. The baby was put right on my chest after he was born. I had my eyes closed pretty much the entire time I had been pushing, but I opened them when I felt that warm, wiggly little baby on me. He was absolutely beautiful, rosy pink and screaming. My husband said he was born with his eyes open, arms and legs flailing, and a very healthy set of lungs. He scored a 9 on his one-minute Apgar and a 9 on the 5-minute too: the highest score you can get! He weighed 6 lbs, 8 oz and was 20.25 inches long. My husband cut the cord (squeamishly) and my mom and him just gushed over this perfect little guy. I was exhausted but exhilarated, I felt triumphant! I had given birth with no drugs, all natural, and made it out to tell the tale. I had no idea my body was capable of that, but it knew more than I did.... We (me, my mom, and my husband) were able to stay in the delivery room for 2 hours after the baby’s birth. We finally agreed on a name (well, I proposed the name and wouldn’t take no for an answer - after all, who had just given birth anyways?) We decided on Owen Paul. Owen because I love the name and it means “warrior”, and Paul after my brother who passed away 19 years ago. It somehow fits him perfectly, he looks like an Owen. He’s got beautiful red-gold hair that swirls on his head, and dark blue eyes that I’m hoping stay that color. I was able to start nursing him right away (my nursing journey is a story for another time, though...) and we were all able to bond. It was a wonderful experience, and it is true what they say: you forget all the pain once you lay eyes on the little miracle. Maybe it’s the huge rush of hormones that causes this amnesia, but it really is true. I’d do it all over again!

I’ve lost nearly all the weight I gained during pregnancy, since it was pretty much all baby, placenta, amniotic fluid and the fluid that was blowing me up like a balloon. I’m not in any pain, even with the stitiches. I only took a few Tylenol the first couple of days, I guess I have a pretty high tolerance! I’m feeling good, all things considered, and healthy. It’s nice not to have that constant pelvic pain anymore. Owen is going to be 2 weeks old tomorrow, and it’s been a huge adjustment (an obvious understatement.) The days are long, but the years will be short - everyone tells me that. It’s frustrating, and miserable and so so so tiring. But they are only babies for such a short time, I plan on enjoying every minute of him! He’s the best thing I’ve ever made.

#tw: birth #tw: medical #my birth story #personal

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ourladytamara · 3 years

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Home Chronology

Tamara - 2020

Content warnings: breathplay/asphyxiation, torture, consensual non-consent, electrocution, and implied murder.

Time’s an odd thing, when you break it down. It’s hard to explain without referencing itself and muddying your own explanation. We run our lives by time. Minutes, hours, days, months, years. And yet, humans are the only beings which crawl upon the Earth’s magnificent surface to burden themselves with time’s passage. Isn’t that strange? For all our worries with deadlines, dates, schedules, and the ever-forward tick of the clock, we have only ourselves to blame. If we decided tomorrow to ignore time entirely, returning to a sunlight-based way of living, we’d be free to live without chronology’s unnecessary burden - and, clearly, be all the better off for it.

But is that entirely true? Without a rigid system of dates and hours, we’d have a far more free-floating society, that’s undeniable - but we’d simply stop measuring time, not the flow of time itself - a delightfully regular thing, as it turns out; each day is only so long, of a generally standard length, and it is also only so long until the Earth, all of its worried little people aboard, goes a full revolution around the Sun.

For the sake of argument, let’s continue to use time. Additionally, for the sake of argument, of course, let’s take a girl. She had a name, but I might’ve forgotten to take it down before shutting her up; I’ll call her Jane Doe, since I imagine the police are soon to follow suit. Five foot four, a hundred and sixty pounds, give or take whatever her hair weighed. Decently curvy, I suppose, a nice body regardless. She’s raven-haired, (what remains of it, anyways) quite shy, kind of the nerdy type - still a virgin, I checked. In another life she might’ve found my study interesting, based on her apparent interest in psychology. Not this one, though - in this life, for the sake of argument, she’s strapped to a chair. Nude, shivering, terrified; the waterboarding was a bit overkill, I will admit, but fun nevertheless.

Impatience is one of my many vices. It’s difficult not to see my time as a precious resource, after all, and with so much to do I knew I had to work with Jane quickly. Getting back to my place from here would be another several hours, only so many of which before her coworkers began to look for her.

I took her from her cheap studio half past two in the morning. With some gentle coaxing I was able to silently wiggle open her half-latched window in only six minutes, and within thirty seconds I had her mouth in my hand and a syringe of propofol in her pretty pink vein. God, her smile - I knew it was more impulse than bliss, a flinch of her facial nerves, but I still wanted so badly to kiss her...

The basement took three hours and sixteen minutes to get ready. Plastic sheets cover every surface, tacked down to prevent even a single drop of fluid spilling. Our little Jane Doe’s chair is in the center of the room, just opposite the curtained-off stairwell. Harsh fluorescent light bathes her skin in burning alabaster - maybe she ought to thank me for the blindfold; they shine eight hours a day in total, but not all at once. Beneath the plastic on the ceiling is a layer of soundproofing foam to absorb what the house itself won’t, the concrete walls and soil will do the rest. By my estimates - and based on how dilated her pretty pupils were - it was probably around four when the propofol started to wear off, consciousness returning to her utterly bound and helpless form in waves of throbbing pain. No time had passed in her mind, yet her body ached with the strain of countless lost hours. She’d stopped measuring - the world hadn’t.

At around 6:30 in the evening I took the black rag around her eyes off and spat in her face. It’s the first thing she’s felt in over two days beyond the sticky crinkle of plastic beneath her bare feet and the cold, stale air. For an instant it’s terrifying - the second after it gets worse, once her eyes start to adjust. By my guess the lights have been off for the past hour and a half, or so; I didn’t notice if she was sleeping or not and I truly didn’t care.

A frantic “What are you doing with me?” formed in her throat before her eyes lept to the IV in her arm, then again to the plastic bag and roll of tape in my hand, silencing what little sound she’s able to choke out around the ball gag. Eyes wide like exhaustion-pink dinner plates, a scream leaked spitlike from the corners of her mouth, coating her hefty breasts in reflective shame. Disappointing. I was hoping it’d be a while before she noticed it, giving me enough time to interrogate her a bit more in her last few hours of relative sanity.

Like I was saying, time’s a funny thing. A lot of things in Jane’s life were about to be really, really funny - to me, at least - and time was possibly chief amongst them. Remember that disconnect between the measurement of time and its true flow I mentioned earlier?

Now we’re getting somewhere.

The clock’s catching up. It’s seven in the evening and she’s been crying for the last half-hour, in and out of lucidity depending on whatever I’ve been rambling to her about. My life, her life, things I want to do to her - I like to monologue for a bit before really getting to know my victims. Our culture kind of trains you to expect a villain monologue, doesn’t it? After all, without it, there’s so little to fill that precious length of time between the wake-up and the torture itself. Something about that humanizing little pause seems necessary if I don’t want to rush, and it gives me an easy outlet to let off some steam. It’s what I do instead of therapy - I guess I do a lot of things I shouldn’t do, instead of therapy.

“And that’s why I needed you to help me test it. Time itself is relative - hm, the bags? Oh, the plastic bags are important, too, but those aren’t as directly related as my relationship with my mother…”

Jane thrashes around in her bondage before giving out limply. Clearly she’s tired of listening; I wrinkle the bag in my hand and snap her focus back to me.

“Hmph. You spend all that time in the dark and yet it’s almost like you’re ready to go back in!” I say, ignoring her whines as I step closer, plastic in hand. Truthfully I was getting bored of my one-sided therapy appointment - I’ve been over it countless times with countless other girls just like Jane, of course, but it often helps to repeat what I already know. “And here I was, about to tell you your plans for the evening! You really make bad company, you know - no wonder nobody’s looking for you yet…”

Tears well up in her eyes, which I quickly lick clean from the source; the saltiness of dehydration gives me an indication of how marinated her misery really is. They’re salty, coppery, almost acidic. I’ll have to adjust her intravenous drip to give her a bit more water, but for now she’s ready.

“How long’s it been?” I ask, my voice a layer of soft buttercream atop knives and needles. “Not in a cosmic sense, this time, I’m asking you literally - how long do you think it’s been since you got here?”

I slide a finger between her lips and gag and separate them just enough to allow her to whisper.

“W-why are you doing this to me?”

I pull it out and strike her across the face with a loud, fiery clap.

“How long has it been since you got here?”

“Ten hours!?”

“Wrong.”

Another slap.

“But that’s good.”

I need a subject as divorced from any concept of the current, measured time as possible. To Jane she may as well be, and have been, here forever, been born here and died here, her fifty-odd year lifespan compressed into the 72-odd hours she’s been in my captivity. Ideally I’d let her stew longer until she’s a bit more unresponsive, but I’m unfortunately short on time.

On average, human beings can go two minutes or so without oxygen. That’s a tiny, precious sliver of time which could separate life from death, a desperate gasp from the cold and twitching grip of Hell. Little enough time to prove my hypothesis, I hope.

See, even though our concept of how long things are - 24-hour days, 7-day weeks, and so on - is pretty much entirely bullshit, I’m curious to see how closely it matches the linear march towards entropy, the metronome of the universe to which everything’s set. If a mind completely divorced from outside bias is able to accurately guess a physically-measured length of time, it means time is innate - and probably a whole lot less bullshit than we might think.

That’s a lot of flowery language to tell you that I’m going to put a plastic bag on this girl’s head until she stops breathing. Basically, I need Jane’s sleep-deprived estimate of her own breath to match as closely as possible to the time on my stopwatch. If I’m right, and time turns out to be bullshit, she should be way off. I’ll give her a margin of twenty seconds or so.

If she’s further off, well, I have some other things in my bag for that, but those’re for later.

I unfurl the staticky, filmy plastic bag, a red ‘THANK YOU’ design emblazoned across the front, adding a tiny pop of color to my black getup and the monochrome walls. Jane starts sobbing again, trying to spit her gag out and succeeding only in covering herself in more slobber. Poor bitch; out of pity I wipe it up before striking her again. Obviously she knows what’s coming, but I have yet to explain myself.

“You need to tell me how long I have you in the bag once I cut you out, okay?” I command, my tone unwaveringly firm. “If you’re close I might even let you go. Try to be as accurate as you can - down to the second, if possible.”

Unfortunately this doesn’t do much to assuage her fears, and so with a tightening cinch of her leather bondage I get to work. Seconds pass, and still she refuses to acknowledge my terms.

“I’m doing this regardless of your agreement, so it’s only better for you if you just listen to me, honey; all I need you to do is keep time.”

She tries to pull against the newly-strengthened leather as I pull the limp plastic bag over her head. Ignoring her movements, I twist the mouth of the bag around her throat and pull it off, tightening the seal and utterly depriving her of air. In my secondary hand I have a stopwatch, now ticking up from zero. One. Two.

“Remember, doll, get as close as you can and I’ll consider letting you go. Alright?”

In response she simply screams futilely into her gag and throws her head back against the chair. It’s like she’s not even trying, I think as I grip her by the shoulder to prevent the worst of her seizing. Fuck, if I knew she’d be so uncooperative I would’ve just gone with the backup girl - currently tied up beneath the floorboards, for easier storage - instead of wasting my time with this one. Fifteen seconds, now, and she’s about to run out of air in the bag.

...hm. A wicked thought crosses my mind as I tie off the bag and leave it, stopwatch still ticking, and reach into my bag of tricks. I was saving this for her second try, of course, but if the bitch is putting up this much of a fight I may as well skip a step. Out comes a vibrator wand, the white shaft wrapped in the power cord; it’s clearly well-used, visibly beaten up in many places that a vibrator really, really has no right to. Beside it, a stun gun, the two-pronged kind you slam into would-be attackers. Fully charged, it emits a high-pitched crackle as I test out the trigger, much to Jane’s onlooking horror.

Data is important, but sometimes reinforcing the hierarchy is a bit more important, and Jane clearly needs some reinforcement. Despite my repeated efforts to persuade her through kindness, she refuses to take to my commands, threatening everything I went through to procure her by giving me an ultimately-disobedient subject. That won’t do; while it pains me to introduce… outside variables into my experiment, it’s a safeguard for my work’s future if I nip this rebellious attitude in the bud.

A buzz as I fire up the twin prongs of the handheld taser, lightly jabbing it into Jane’s tender inner thigh. That seems to work; five seconds of pained sputtering later, she relents, finally nodding to my request.

“Good! I was starting to worry that I’d need your replacement sooner than expected,” I declare, keeping it vague to scare her, “but I’m glad you’ve decided to come around.”

Another jab snaps her back into position. 45 seconds pass, and Jane’s starting to get red in the face. Sweat drips down her chest and cascades off her tits, prompting me to lick it up before it spills onto the less-than-cleanly chair beneath her. At this point I can tell she’s struggling to decide if the taser or the bag is worse; it’s a struggle I can taste in every shallow breath as I work my tongue up her naked body. Zap, again - this time to her lower stomach, just above her crotch. Never at her heart, of course - this is as high as I’ll go, as I have… prior reservations at the morgue with a woman and a chest-bound taser.

Of course, that lucky lady isn’t getting the vibrator. Taser in hand and eye on the stopwatch, I dart to the wall outlet, five seconds passing as I plug the extension cord in. White plastic trails across the dirty concrete as I hurry back to my position above Jane. Click - a different buzzing. I push the white plastic tip into my subject’s clit and hold it there. Seconds pass in a fugue of revulsion and pleasure.

By the first minute she’s entirely cherry-red. Every inch of flesh is a magnesium flare of color in the drab, plasticine basement; wherever I place a finger, flesh or electric steel, lights up bright, bloodless white. She’s like a doll, porcelain cast in the colors of twilight; sometimes you can’t help but wax poetic, can you? A minute and ten, and finally I feel her drop limp in my arms, eyes drooping closed as she runs out of air.

In short seconds I grab the scissors and snip away at the now saliva and tear-soaked plastic film, ripping it where the blades fail to give sufficient air. I snap the stopwatch and glance down at the final time - 0:01:09:29 - before moving to hold her mouth open to breathe.

“And I didn’t even have to snap at you! How nice of you, my darling - I had a feeling you’d come around.” I coo, keeping my voice low to comfort her. “How long do you think that was?”

Jane stares at me with anger in her puffy, red eyes. She’s clearly fixing to spit at me, to scream and writhe with every ounce of adrenaline she has; despite the fire in her, she still remains limp beneath my touch. Beneath her sits a patch of wetness distinct from her tears and slobber. Panting, breathless, she motions to speak.

“45 seconds,” she begins with a gasp, “and… f-fuck, uh, 50 miliseconds...”

A wide smile spreads across my face. I hold the stopwatch in front of her and give a long, intimate look at the extent of her failure. My wrist digs the vibrator in a bit, eager to try and make her cum at the peak of her despair - yet, sadly, she simply slumps in her chair, tears welling in her eyes as she starts to silently sob.

“You do remember what I told you, right? You have to get it as close as possible.”

Jane sobs, convulses, and drops unconscious in the seat before me.

“Disappointing.”

I click the vibrator off and crack my neck.

An inconclusive result, I’m afraid. That’s one of the funny things about time, I suppose; I spend so long preparing for such a quick experiment, only to walk away empty-handed. It’s likely I owe it to my own tainting of the results, I will admit. Impatience is, after all, one of my many vices, but not one nearly as intense as my disdain for insubordination.

Jane and I will try again tomorrow, I think. For now, I’ll let her get a few minutes of rest in, lights still blinking and feet still cold and grimy. She’ll need the rest if I’m to get any further in my experimentation - and maybe, it’ll go a ways to showing her how very, very precious her time is, indeed.

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donnerpartyofone · 4 years

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idk if you've talked about it, probably have. but if you don't mind to again, ketamine injections for depression? did it work? was it expensive? how long did it work for? ty.

dang, i never got a notification for this message. sorry! ketamine absolutely worked for the management of my depression, it was very expensive, and i think i would have needed more for it to become a longer term solution. i may still go back in the future if my lifestyle changes, but for right now, i can’t justify the cost--which is an insane thing to say when what i’m paying for is freedom from hurting myself, but, ya know, CAPITALISM.

the whole story is, i’ve been severely depressed my whole entire life; i don’t have any memories that don’t involve feeling morbidly upset, and i can remember things pretty sharply from the time i was slightly younger than 2.* i took ketamine recreationally some years ago when i was around 30 (i wasn’t adventurous about substances until i reached about that age), and i was totally astounded by how it affected my depression both during, and for weeks after the experience. it seemed to distance me from the oppressively immediacy of my bad feelings, giving me space to actually THINK about what was really bothering me, what kind of control i could have over how i assign importance and authority to things that don’t serve me, and what i might like my life to be like in the future. so, when i found out that there were ketamine clinics in new york, i kind of freaked out. actually, i found out about it from a guy who i met on an ayahuasca retreat upstate (which is its own hilariously mortifying story that i’ve been trying to write down for years and it keeps turning into a big unwieldy novel), who had been through the entire gamut of treatments for major depressive disorder. he liked his ketamine experience, but admitted that it was prohibitively expensive to keep up.

this is the place i went, and i recommend it to anyone who can afford it:

nyketamine.com

they say that they accept patients selectively, if you have treatment-resistant depression. i don’t know how strict they are about that, because by the time i came to them, i was looking pretty treatment-resistant. i’d been in and out of a few shrinks’ offices, and i’m basically incapable of taking any of the usual antidepressants because of how they affect other conditions i have. the process was, i filled out a request form on their website, and in a day or two, a clinician called to interview me over the phone about the character of my depression, and to gather some other anecdotal information about my history and health. the person i spoke to was very kind, attentive, and reassuring. the following day, someone called to set my first appointment. the whole reason i was able to do this is because of some inheritance that i received at the time; it’s $450 a session, and they suggest (or insist? i’m not sure) that you begin with a minimum of 6 sessions, each of them 2 days apart. after that, you just kind of monitor yourself to see when you think you need pickup sessions; the effect is cumulative and long term. i have no idea if they have any type of sliding scale accommodation, it could be worth asking.

when i went in for my first session, i had a brief interview with the head doctor, a navy veteran and anesthesiologist who had been working with ketamine in various capacities for 50 years. he explained a lot of things that i had no idea about, that were great to learn. periods of prolonged stress, especially while your brain is still developing, can result in a deficit of the neural pathways that you need to experience a full range of emotion; essentially, being chronically depressed and anxious can kind of give you brain damage. if you have that type of problem, it doesn’t matter what you do to try to boost your serotonin or dopamine or whatever; it’s like if you’re trying to get somewhere in your car and you can’t, not because you’re out of gas, but because the bridge is out. for some reason, ketamine switches back on the function that builds those pathways, so with regular therapeutic applications, you can actually heal the structural problem around your mood centers that’s reducing your emotional range to anxiety and depression. if you’re over 60 or so and your brain is less plastic, your chances of success aren’t as good as when you’re younger, but there’s always a chance; also, for some reason, ketamine plays especially well with estrogen, so women have a bit of a leg up. anyway, the doctor was great, and i really liked everyone there; it felt like they all knew they were doing something meaningful.

the sessions themselves are pleasant. they put you in a private room in a big cushy medical chair with a blanket and a pillow, and you let them know if you want the lights on or off. they give you an IV drip that lasts roughly an hour, and they communicate with you to figure out the dosage. you basically just tell them what feels comfortable, if the dosage they start you on is too low to notice. you won’t get something that puts you in a K hole, but you should enter a gentle dissociative state where you feel a little numb and floaty, and you might have a lot of interesting abstract thoughts. the worst part of it is just how bad you have to pee by the time the drip is done, when you’re still feeling a little anesthetized; sometimes i wound up looking at the bag with my flashlight to check if i had finished, and then i’d just press the call button to get them to come unplug me before i pissed my pants.

you’re not supposed to necessarily notice a difference right away, but you should detect a change in mood after a few weeks. i did. the way my disorder works is, most days i just have a low level background radiation of sadness and exhaustion, even on a “good day” when things are working out or i’m distracted by things i enjoy. when i wake up in the morning and realize i’m conscious and the time for sleep is over, my first feeling is disappointment, 100% of the time. then, i’d say roughly once a month or once every couple of months, i have a complete nervous collapse where i’m in so much pain i can’t really do anything but like drool and cry and let my eyes go out of focus, for anywhere from 1-7 days. there will usually be an apparent trigger; i’m a fairly dysfunctional person, and i frequently lose things, break things, and fuck things up even though i like STUDIED to do them, took it slow, asked for help, gave myself extra time, etc. but the thing is, i think the “trigger” is arbitrary, this is just a cyclic psychic event that builds up and waits to happen. but after my first battery of ketamine treatments, i had a particular day when i could tell that normally, i would quickly wind up curled up at the bottom of my bathtub scream-crying until i couldn’t move--and this time, i managed to just push through. not only did i not break down, but i actually got a number of difficult chores done, that i had put off because they seemed too intimidating, or like i wouldn’t be able to mentally handle my inevitable failure. i noticed more and more of that, while i was in proximity to the treatments, an ability to just buckle down and keep going. so it’s not like i felt HAPPIER or something, but i felt much more capable of coping, which was like a miracle honestly.

it’s been about 3.5 months since i last went in, and i think i could use a booster appointment, but as i said i just can’t fit it in with my financial reality right now. so, that sucks. but, i definitely feel that it was worth doing, and i would recommend it to anyone who can shoulder the cost. hopefully in the future, ketamine will become a much more common psychiatric treatment, and it will become available to more and more patients.

*A friend of mine just told me he read somewhere that you don’t actually recall memories from like 20 years ago, you just remember the last time you recalled them--so like, i THINK i remember my parents struggling to give me drops for pink eye in our first apartment when i was about 1.5 years old, but in reality, i just remember the last time i remembered it, or the earliest time i’m able to remember remembering it. pretty interesting! and kind of disturbing, like the idea that star trek-type teleporters don’t actually transport a person, they just DESTROY the original person and rebuild a new one on the other end, a thought that REALLY BOTHERS ME.

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let-it-raines · 4 years

Text

Catch Me If You Can (30/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: I am not a fan of the fact that there are only 10 chapters left. Like, not at all. Where did all of this time go? How are we at this point in the story? I feel like I was just writing it!

Anyway, it seems fitting that this chapter posts in a week where a lot of us have gone home to see family because Killian is going home with Emma to meet Ruth😘 Thanks to you all for being you and thanks to @resident-of-storybrooke for reading these words for me and checking my facts!

Found on AO3: beginning | current

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-/-

“Did you know that it’s Friday the thirteenth and a full moon?”

“Thank you, Alec Trebek.”

“No, seriously. That’s what it says on my phone.”

“Love, I know the date.”

“But did you know about the moon thing?”

“I did,” Killian sighs, picking his suitcase up off of the security belt and placing it on the ground while Emma grabs her sneakers. “I read about it the other day, and I am prepared for all of the haunted werewolves to come out to play.”

“Shut up,” Emma laughs before she plops herself down on a bench to tie her shoes.

It’s a little past four thirty in the morning, and JFK is nearly empty of anyone who isn’t traveling in some kind of suit. He and Emma are surrounded by people in black blazers and tailored trousers only traveling with a sleek black suitcase and their briefcase. He and Emma, meanwhile, are both in joggers with t-shirts on (Emma has on his Vandy sweatshirt over hers) and their hair tucked underneath baseball caps.

Emma got in from Detroit late last night, only taking five minutes to kiss him hello and take a quick shower before collapsing on his bed on top of the covers. The only flight they could get so last minute that wasn’t an exuberant amount of money is at the ungodly hour of six in the morning, so Killian insisted that she just stay at his place last night so that they could leave from the same place and save time. Considering they woke up ten minutes before their Uber arrived and could barely brush their teeth before they left, that didn’t exactly work in the whole saving time department.

It doesn’t help that Emma has pretty much been deadweight this entire morning until she started to wake up right before they went through security.

He, on the other hand, is wide awake. Nervous jitters run through his body, his stomach twisting in knots, and for someone who doesn’t get nervous for many things other than baseball, Killian is pretty much a wreck when it comes to meeting Emma’s family. Ruth is the last one, the final piece of the puzzle, and as intimidating as David was to meet, his mother might outrank her.

Killian both wants to spend the entire weekend sucking up to her and thanking her for taking Emma in and giving her the love she’s never had but has always deserved, but that could prove to be a bit much.

Then again, if Ruth hadn’t taken Emma in thirteen years ago, Emma would have never met David. If Emma hadn’t met David, David would have never taken her to the baseball game that truly allowed Emma to fall in love with sports. And if Emma hadn’t done that, he doubts she’d have ever gotten into broadcasting and found her passion there that makes her so damn happy.

The two of them also would never have met, and that thought sends a shiver down his spine.

It’s funny how such little things can change absolutely everything.

Everything.

So, yeah, Killian is most definitely a little nervous to meet Ruth.

“You want to go find some coffee, Swan?” Killian asks Emma as he props his foot up to tie his own sneaker. “I think the two of us are in some desperate need of caffeine.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll be able to find a coffee shop in an airport. There are never any coffee places here.”

“I don’t appreciate all of this sarcasm so early this morning.”

She pokes his stomach. “You’re the one who woke me up.”

“We’re going home to meet your family.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“You should.”

“Well,” Emma huffs, standing up and pulling up her pants so that he sees a flash of tanned skin on her stomach, “you should. Onto coffee we go.”

They both grab onto their bags and start walking down the terminal, passing gate after gate and store after store, but everything is black with the lights turned off and bars pulled over the stores. Nothing is open, not even the convenience stores, and the moment Emma realizes this, she stops walking and buries her face in his shoulder.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“There are vending machines,” he soothes. “I think they have coffee.”

“But it’s gross coffee,” she wines before wrapping her arms around his stomach. At first, Killian thinks that she’s being affectionate, but then he realizes that she’s using him so that she doesn’t have to stand on her own. He’s not sure he minds either way. “I need real coffee, and I need it in an IV.”

“Okay, Lorelai Gilmore.”

Emma laughs into his shoulder, the vibrations working through his shoulder. “You’re learning. I’m so proud, babe.”

“I might have watched an episode or two.”

Emma’s head pops up then, the bill of her cap hitting him in the chin. “When?”

“While you were gone. It was on Netflix, and it just kind of happened.”

“Good choice, twenty-nine. Good choice.” Emma’s lips brush against the corner of his jaw, and he tugs her a little closer as his hand runs up and down her back while she presses up on her toes to make contact with his lips. “I need a diet coke or something, and then when the stores open, I’m buying the biggest damn cup of coffee in this entire airport.”

“Whatever your heart desires.”

-/-

The flight is only an hour and a half, Emma sleeps the entire time despite them getting her the biggest damn cup of coffee in the airport right before they boarded, and Killian spends his time answering emails before closing out the app so that he won’t see anything else work-related for this entire weekend. It’s a conscious decision, one he’s happy to make, and it’s almost refreshing to know that he doesn’t have anything to worry about for at least a few days.

Well, anything to worry about except for Ruth Nolan and making sure that he can impress her.

-/-

The taxi they get from the airport takes them directly to Ruth’s house, so Emma doesn’t get much time to show him around, only pointing out a few landmarks. They pass the minor league baseball stadium here, the Portland Sea Dogs, and Emma tells him that she’s never actually been despite having such easy access. She was too caught up in everything having to do with New York and getting there that she never really thought about it. He teases her and tells her they’ll have to go to a game, but Emma turns him down by saying that she needs a break from baseball.

He does too.

So that’ll probably be knocked off the itinerary that Killian is sure Mary Margaret has made. Luckily, though, she and David won’t be here until early evening since they both had to be at work and school for half a day, so they’re pretty much free to do whatever they want with Ruth today.

He’s still slightly reeling from his injury and their fight and everything that came from that. He’s not angry or upset, but this is all still such an adjustment. He should be playing. He shouldn’t be here, but it’s his own damn fault that he is. He screwed up on so many levels, and owning up to it all has been a tough pill to swallow.

Hurting the people he loved nearly killed him, and he doesn’t want anyone to hurt because of him ever again.

In the blink of a bleary eye, they’re pulling up to a quaint two-story Victorian home with brown and white details and bright green bushes lining the brick-paved walkway to the front door. It’s a home, undoubtedly, one much the same as all of the ones in the city and yet entirely different in that he can see vibrant green grass and flushed trees that spread out all over the neighborhood. It reminds him of growing up in Ohio, even if they were not the ones to have the spaciously fenced-in backyard, and a little fluttering of his heart takes place as Killian takes it all in.

He’s always kind of wanted a place like this – away from everything.

“So, this is the place?”

“This is the place.”

“It’s nice.”

“Yeah, I’ve always thought so.” Emma hikes her bag up a little higher on her shoulder and turns to look at him, trepidation written across her face. “We can still turn around if you want to. There are hotels around here.”

“We’re going inside, love.” He leans down and quickly brushes his lips over hers. She tastes strongly of coffee just from the little taste that he got. He’d like to kiss her more, to have the privacy of the hotel so he can show her just how much he’s missed her the past few days of her being gone, but they’re not doing that. “Besides, I believe I just saw Ruth peeking her head through the window looking at us, so it’s too late to turn around now.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs, “I guess it is.”

Emma steps forward and begins moving up the path, Killian following right behind her, and Emma barely gets a chance to knock on the door before it’s swinging open and Ruth is lunging forward to practically smother Emma with a hug.

Damn. Ruth Nolan is a force of nature.

Then again, she was already for being a single mom most of her life and still taking in foster children, especially one as stubborn as Emma. He can’t even begin to imagine.

He fully intends on finding out this weekend. There are a million questions running around in his mind.

“Oh,” Ruth coos, shaking Emma in her embrace. A dog escapes the front door and comes to sniff at Killian’s feet. This must be Wilby. “I have missed you so much. I think I’m going to have to move to New York so I can see you more often. Do you have room in that apartment of yours?”

“Only if the couch is comfortable for you.”

“I think it may kill my back.”

“No, it’ll definitely kill your back. I have no doubt. It kills my back. Killian’s couch is super comfortable, though.”

“Well, I hardly know the man. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to sleep over in his apartment.”

“Who cares about proper, love?” Killian teases. “I would be remiss to not let a beautiful woman sleep over at my apartment.”

The words slip out of his mouth before he’s able to stop them, and he immediately regrets them. Ruth may not be Emma’s mom, the title something that Emma still struggles with no matter how much she loves Ruth, but she’s very much a mother figure. Yet here he is spewing words that pretty much scream in her face that he doesn’t care about proper and has been fucking Emma for months now. What a smooth start.

The pit in his stomach becomes a heavy, solid weight, one that’s going to have him breaking the wood of the wraparound front porch.

Shit.

But then Ruth is leaning her head back in laughter, her eyes shining brightly as her hair falls off of her shoulders, and that weight lessens a little bit.

“I’m not much of one for proper either,” Ruth says with laughter still on her lips. She releases Emma and steps toward him, wrapping him in a hug as well, even if this one isn’t quite as smothering. It likely helps that he’s larger than Emma. “Hello, sweetie. SoSo, you’re the infamous Killian Jones I’ve been hearing about?”

“From Emma?”

“No, my grandson. He loves you. I think he was probably more devastated about your arm than Emma was.”

“How did you know I was devastated?”

Ruth pulls back from him to look at Emma. “Intuition told me that you’d be upset over the fact that your boyfriend is injured. Mary Margaret gave me all of the other details.”

Emma’s eyes roll. “Of course she did.”

“You know she can’t keep a secret.”

Killian looks over to Emma to see what she’s got to say, thinking that this first meeting is going rather smoothly, but then Ruth’s eyes are snapping back to him and looking him up and down in a way that has him feeling rather naked under her scrutiny.

Obviously, it was wishful thinking for him to assume he was quite out of the woods.

“You’re much more handsome in person than on TV.”

“Thanks,” Killian laughs awkwardly as he reaches up to scratch behind his ear. “I, uh, appreciate that.”

Emma looks over to him with raised brows that are pinched together, probably wondering when he turned into a stumbling fool instead of someone who can charm anyone, and all he can do is shrug is shoulders at her. She shrugs back before squatting down on the porch to scratch behind the dog’s ears.

“Have you eaten breakfast yet, Ruth?” Emma asks, obviously trying to save him. “We’ve had coffee but not food, and we’d love to take you out to breakfast.”

Ruth waves her away. “Nonsense. I’ll cook breakfast for all of us.”

“You really don’t have to do that, Mrs. Nolan.”

She smiles at him. “It’s Ruth, and yes I do. I hear you’re quite the baker, so you can help.”

“Well, who told you that?”

“Mary Margaret. She’s where I get all of my information, don’t you know? Emma and David don’t give me nearly enough.”

“You know, Ruth,” Killian smiles, “I have heard a little bit about the two of them not sharing a lot of information. You practically have to drag it out of them. I would never do such a thing as keeping secrets.”

Emma scoffs but there’s that loving, playful smile. “Too soon, twenty-nine. Too soon.”

Ruth guides them inside and sends Emma off to take their bags to her old room. Killian raises his brow in question to make sure it’s okay for them to share a room, and Emma simply rolls her eyes before taking both of their bags up the stairs while Ruth ushers him into the living room.

It’s just as homey as the outside. Everything is covered in warm colors from the deep brown of the leather couch to the inviting green of the wall. Two windows sit on either side of the stone fireplace where the television is mounted, and that’s when Killian spots the myriad of picture frames on the mantel, as well as on the bookshelf in the corner of the room.

This is exactly what he’s been so excited about.

(Besides getting to spend a weekend away with Emma where she spent the last of her teenager years.)

There are a few photos of David as a child, ones of him alone and then ones of him with both of his parents. Most of them, however, everyone is a tad bit older. Killian knows that it’s so Emma can be included in all of the photos, and his heart swells a bit at the thought of Ruth being that thoughtful so that Emma doesn’t have to feel left out in any way.

A picture of David, Mary Margaret, and Emma sits in the middle of the mantle. David and Mary Margaret look much the same, if not younger than they look now, but with different hairstyles. Killian makes a mental note to tease David about his shoulder-length hair. Emma, though, is definitely a teenager here. Her face is rounder, far less angled, and he can see the tepidness of her smile as she leans into David in the picture.

“Are you looking at how cute I am?” Emma questions as she walks into the room.

Killian turns to look at her and at the shy smile on her face now, and he opens up his arm to let her walk into him so that her arm can wrap around his back while her head rests on his shoulder.

“How old are you here, love?”

“Um, that’s a question I don’t know the answer to.”

“Sixteen,” Ruth supplies, and Killian doesn’t miss the way she’s smiling at the two of them standing there. “That’s from Thanksgiving. Emma still wasn’t too sure about us.”

“I’m still not.”

Killian squeezes her hip. “Liar.”

“Nope, I’m serious. You’ve only just met Ruth, so I don’t think you can judge her character yet.”

“Oh no, darling, I can. She’s promised to tell me stories about you while we cook breakfast, and that’s good enough for me to love her forever.”

Emma groans and dips her head down. “Just let me sulk, and I’ll come to the kitchen when breakfast is ready.”

“Just like when you were a teenager,” Ruth teases.

The morning is mostly spent in the kitchen where they eat waffles and bacon, which is definitely not on his diet but he’s not playing right now anyways, and he gets to listen to Ruth tease Emma all about what she was like as a teenager. Emma’s cheeks are painted red, the embarrassment very clearly there, but she takes it like a champ and smiles and laughs along even when Ruth tells a story about Emma nearly breaking her arm while trying to sneak back into the house after meeting a guy who she wasn’t supposed to be meeting.

“Not my finest moment,” Emma admits as she bites into a piece of bacon. “And definitely not my finest boyfriend.”

The stories continue, and as the day passes on, Killian’s stomach hurts from all of the laughter. Everything about his time here just seems so…perfect. And he knows that there is no such thing as perfect, but the crisp breeze of the air with the sunshine filtering through the leaves of the trees tells him otherwise as the two of them help Ruth with some of her yardwork. Of course, he hasn’t done yardwork in over a decade, so he’s a little rusty. Ruth and Emma make sure to point that out to him every time he cuts a shrub in the wrong way or manages to screw up turning on the lawnmower.

It was complicated, okay?

And Killian definitely wasn’t aware that this is how they’d be spending the first part of their afternoon. It was not at all mentioned in Emma’s pitch of asking him to come here.

Not that he would have ever said no to helping. It’s good to feel useful when he’s been feeling a little useless lately no matter how well he thinks that he’s handling his injury layoff.

It’s decidedly different than the first time around. It likely helps that the injury isn’t as serious and that Killian knows that the end of it is in sight, even if there’s still bits of uncertainty that no one can answer and predict for him. Yet, it also has everything to do with the fact that the people closest to him know exactly what’s going on instead of him letting it all fester inside of him. Honesty is the better policy this time, even if his hand was the slightest bit forced.

Watching Emma easily guide him through Old Port with a beatific smile on her face may help as well.

No, it definitely helps.

She’s such a force of light in his life, even if she doesn’t like admitting that sometimes, but the fact almost seems reinforced after having been apart from her and facing the thoughts of what his life may be like without her in it outside of being someone who he works with.

Frankly, it would be kind of dim. She’s integrated herself so easily into every aspect of his daily routine, and while at first, he thought it really only had to do with her clothes in his closet and her shampoo bottles littering his shower, it’s more in the way that he’ll be sitting with Elsa and look over to see her texting Emma or the way that whenever he wakes up in the morning and she’s not in bed with him, his first thought is to check his phone for a text from her. It’s ridiculous and yet also…not.

She annoys him more than anything or anyone in the world, but he also loves her more than anything. It’s easy in a way that it’s never been before, and Killian wonders if this feeling of fluttering deep in his belly is what he was missing in the past.

They grab a late lunch at a quaint little seafood place, one he can tell is family-owned simply from the atmosphere, and instead of sitting inside, they settle down at one of the umbrella-covered tables outside so that they can have a view of the ocean with the salt-water breeze wafting over them.

He’s missed the water.

Of course, he’s been around it living in Manhattan and traveling to several places around the country that are surrounded by water. Hell, he’s even been back in it in the three years since the accident with Liam. But it’s been a long damn time since he’s sat and simply enjoyed getting to spend time near the water.

During the off-season, he and Emma are going somewhere that’s surrounded by water for at least a week, and they’re not going to let any outside distractions get to them. It’s making plans for the future, and that’s all that he wants right now.

(Some would call it baseball mating season, and while he doesn’t plan on them reproducing anytime soon, they can sure as hell practice.)

They get a call that David and Mary Margaret are nearly there when Emma is showing him some of the lighthouses while using a ridiculous voice that she calls her “tour guide” voice, so they quickly gather their things and start walking back to Ruth’s car since she absolutely cannot wait to see the rest of her family and refuses to have them be at her house before she can get back to her house.

David and Mary Margaret get there first because they are apparently the fastest drivers on the planet today.

And Leo practically tackles Ruth in all of his ten-year-old glory when he sees her.

That’s how Addy and Lucy are with Elsa’s parents too, and Killian imagines that being a grandparent is a hell of a lot of fun since you aren’t in charge of molding a little person into a functioning human being. You just have to give them candy and all of the things their parents don’t want them to have.

Or, at least, that’s what he thinks Ruth does.

(That’s what he does as an uncle and wishes his mom could have done as a grandmother.)

They all eat takeout dinner together from an Italian place that Emma and David swear by, and while it’s certainly not the best thing he’s ever had to eat, it’s pretty damn good. Then again, he’s had so much to eat today that his stomach very well may explode soon. He’ll have to get up and go for a jog in the morning.

But right now, it’s a little past ten at night, he’s been up for over eighteen hours, and all he really wants is to sleep. His body is dragging enough that he imagines he’ll have no trouble falling into a slumber as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He’s wrong.

Because then he sees Emma’s teenage bedroom and sees just how empty it is. It’s absolutely nothing like her apartment in New York full of throw pillows and blankets and every artificial plant known to man with a colorful paintings above her headboard. Everything here is rather…beige.

Emma walks out of the bathroom where she’s been getting ready for bed, and he watches as she rubs lotion up and down her hands and her forearms. “Why that glum look on your face? Are you still trying to figure out better ways to argue with David over soccer? Because that dinner conversation is long over. I thought Leo was going to climb on top of the table and start beating on his chest or something equally ridiculous.”

“Hm, no,” Killian chuckles, opening his knees so that Emma can step into them and his hands can find their spots on her waist, warm flesh against his fingertips.

“Then what?”

He blinks up at her, not entirely sure if now is the right time to ask, but then he sees the glint of his mom’s ring falling against Emma’s chest and is reassured in who he is to Emma. “I can’t help but notice that your room here is not quite as colorful as your room at home.”

Emma sighs, and he squeezes her hip in response so that she looks down at him and smile. “It’s kind of a stupid reason. You don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’d love to know more of your beginnings, Swan.”

“Haven’t you heard enough about them today?”

“There is never enough information, love.”

She smiles and reaches to push his hair back off of his head, her hands a magic touch as they move through the strands there. “I’m not a sentimental person. Or, I wasn’t.” Her right hand leaves his hair to find the chain around her neck. Killian’s heart stutters at that movement. “And I never trusted that I was going to stay in one place for very long, so if I had the chance to decorate my room, I didn’t. I kept everything I owned in a little box that was always ready to go.”

His heart may actually break for Emma in this moment, the sad reality of what she’s telling him something that’s hard for him to take in. He can’t imagine what it must be like for her to have lived that way.

“I think this place worked out for you, though.”

“Yeah, it did.” She smiles again, but Killian can see the twinge of sadness in the corners of her lips. “You sure you still want to know about these beginnings of mine when they’re a little bit sad?”

“Like I’ve said before, love, we make quite the team, sad backstories and all. I do, however, think that you need a little something on these walls of yours.”

“I think all of the home décor stores may be closed.”

Killian winks. “Well, I think I’ll just have to get a little creative then.”

His hand slides around her back to squeeze her ass before he’s pushing Emma back from him and getting up from the bed to walk out the door. Everything is darkened with the lights turned off, and since he doesn’t want to wake up everyone else in the house, he uses the flashlight on his phone and quietly walks down the stairs to find his way to the kitchen where he knows there were sheets of paper in the printer as well as a few pens in a cup right behind it. Emma is on his heels, questioning what the hell it is he’s doing, but he doesn’t tell her until he’s grabbing the paper and a thick blue marker.

“What are you doing?” Emma hisses.

“I’m making you some artwork for your wall.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s endearing.”

“You say that about every weird thing that you do.”

“Because the weird things are endearing,” he corrects, looking back at her and smiling. “What kind of drawing do you want? I’m pretty talented, if I do say so myself, but it’s been awhile since I’ve drawn anything.”

“Just…do whatever you want. I’m going to fix myself a hot chocolate. Do you want one?”

“Does Ruth have any tea?”

“I’m going to make you the hot chocolate. It’s better than tea.”

Killian rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t protest as he starts sketching out what he can remember of the view of the lighthouse today. It’s rough, definitely not his best work, but considering his original plan was simply going to be writing her name out, it’ll have to do for quick work.

Strange things happen when he’s far past tired.

“Milady,” Killian sighs, picking up the paper as well as a bit of tape before walking the few steps toward Emma as she sits on a barstool at the island with two cups of hot chocolate, her mug piled up with whipped cream and sprinkles of cinnamon, “I present to you your artwork for your wall.”

Emma’s eyes glance over it before glancing up at him with a slight smile on her face. “You’ve got to sign it.”

He taps the corner of the paper where he’s scribbled in his number. “Already done.”

“Ah,” Emma laughs, “how could I have missed that?”

“You were distracted by the beauty of the picture.”

“Exactly.” Emma presses up over the countertop and leans forward to quickly brush her lips over Killian’s, and while a part of him wants to deepen it, he doesn’t want to get carried awhile while here. “Thank you. That is very sweet of you to do.”

“Endearing, right?”

“Sure.” She shakes her head and slides his mug over to him so that he can have some of his hot chocolate. “I hope today hasn’t scarred you for life, especially since you still have to survive tomorrow.”

“It’s been fun, Swan. I’ve been…I think it’s gotten me majorly out of my own head. I needed that. And I liked getting to see you be so happy. My only complaint is that I’m under strict instructions not to make your bed squeak. I don’t like that rule.”

Emma reaches over to slap his shoulder, but he moves it out of the way quick enough that she doesn’t get it. It also causes a slight twinge in his shoulder that reminds him that he needs an ice pack for tonight. He hasn’t gotten to put ice on it all day. So, he turns toward the fridge and opens up the freezer, grabbing one of Ruth’s ice packs, and placing it on top of his shoulder before turning back to Emma whose fingers are tracing over the drawing.

Emotion lodges in his throat again, something that’s been happening quite a lot tonight, and it’s what propels him forward to step behind Emma’s back and wrap his arms around her stomach before resting his chin on top of her head.

“I’m not going anywhere, Emma,” he promises, meaning every word. “Not unless you tell me to go. So, you can plan on hanging paintings and making plans and keeping little trinkets in more places than a box. I love you more than I know how to tell you. That’s not going to change.”

Emma audibly sighs, something that he feels under the palms of his hands, before leaning back into Killian and simply staying in that spot so that he can breathe her in.

“I love you,” she breathes out as her head tilts up so that her lips can move across the underside of his jaw. “Let’s take the hot chocolate upstairs and go to bed.”

“And your picture?”

“Yeah, that too.”

-/-

Killian’s arm tingles, the feeling nearly gone, when he wakes up in the morning and finds Emma’s body pressed around it. This isn’t how they fell asleep, not even close, and he’ll probably never have use of his arm again. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, and he flexes his fingers a bit before nuzzling his nose into the back of Emma’s head in an attempt to get to go back to sleep.

They were up until maybe two in the morning talking, sleep never really coming to either of them no matter how much they both wanted it, and judging from the dim light coming through the blinds on the window, it’s still early yet.

He desperately needs coffee. He’s probably not going to be able to go back to sleep, and he desperately needs coffee.

Slowly, Killian begins to extract his arm from Emma’s grip, stopping when she flinches, and after several careful minutes, he’s able to quietly get off the bed and step out of the room, leaving her door cracked so as not to make any kind of noise. He walks down the hallway and uses the guest bathroom before walking down the stairs and wandering to the kitchen in search of coffee.

To his surprise, David is already there sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and a cup of coffee sitting next to him, the smell wafting toward Killian.

“Hey,” Killian greets. David nearly jumps out of his chair and knocks everything over, and Killian can’t help but laugh at the shock on his face. “Did you really not hear me coming down the stairs?”

“I, uh, I – ” David is stuttering, obviously at a loss for words, and Killian can’t quite figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t think Dave is usually this flustered in the mornings. “I wasn’t expecting you or Emma to be up this early.”

Killian shakes out his arm, still trying to wake it up. “Believe me. I wish I wasn’t up. Do you always work this early in the morning on a Saturday?”

“No, I don’t, but my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with emails this morning, so I came downstairs to see so it wouldn’t wake Mary Margaret up.”

“Ah, I turned off my emails this weekend for that exact reason.”

“You probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“What’s that, mate?” David coughs in response, and Killian steps forward to the table and sits down across from David, confusion running through him as his stomach twists and turns. “Seriously. What?”

David can’t look at him, not really, and that doesn’t help calm any of Killian’s nerves as he tries to figure out what in the world is going on with him this morning.

“I didn’t know this was happening, I swear. I’d have stopped it if I got one whiff of it, but there’s been an article.”

“An article?”

David turns his computer around, and Killian reads a headline that he’s always expected to see and yet has always hoped to avoid.

The Truth Behind Killian Jones: A Story Told by His Father.

“Fucking hell,” he murmurs, his eyes taking in the picture of his father that’s plastered on the screen. Killian hasn’t seen him in years, actual years, and yet he looks exactly the same. “What kind of shit is this?”

“It gets worse.”

“How could it possibly get worse?”

“Look at the journalist.”

Killian’s eyes glance toward the screen again, his gaze finding more words he didn’t want to see.

Walsh Osborne.

As in Emma’s ex, Walsh Osborne who she still works with at ESPN. Though, this article is decidedly not on ESPN’s website.

Holy fucking shit.

Killian’s got to go back to bed. This isn’t real. This is all some kind of messed up nightmare that he’s experiencing, and soon, he’ll wake up and none of it will be real. And yet Killian keeps scrolling through the article, skipping the words to instead look at pictures of himself that Killian hasn’t seen in years. His father shouldn’t have these pictures. Liam should have all of them. And yet, somehow, he doesn’t.

Childhood pictures are nothing, though, at least for right now, when at the bottom of the article are pictures of Killian and Emma standing in the airport yesterday with Emma’s arms wrapped around his waist as well as a picture of them kissing in his car from who knows when. Then there’s one that he knows is from the hallways of Yankee stadium in what was supposed to be a private room.

“Everyone knows about you and Emma,” David tells him.

This is too much. It’s all too much, and he doesn’t know how to handle the reappearance of his father and the very public reveal of his private relationship.

Fuck.

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan

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diamondsnpolaroids · 4 years

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Kingston's birth story♡

On Thursday February 13th I had my last midwives appointment to which I asked for a membrane sweep. My midwife happily agreed and did it. For the rest of the day I felt regular contractions but unfortunately nothing came of it.

Friday February 14th, my due date. Still getting contractions but spread apart more and not as strong. I spent all day crying, begging my baby boy to hurry up. I felt as if my body was failing him. It wasnt trying hard enough, I wasnt doing enough, he was ready but I just couldnt. I couldnt sleep, everytime I tried I'd get up and start walking in hopes my body would finally start labouring properly.

Saturday February 15th, 12:15am I finally settled down enough to doze off after being awake since 6am. 12:32am I wake up to hear and feel a huge popping sound. I immediately sit up thinking something is terribly wrong. I actually get to my feet and that's when I felt it. Water gushing out of me. I had zero control. I waddle run to my bathroom, trying to avoid soaking my pants any more than they already were. I see nothing but clear fluid with tinges of red. That's when I realized it was indeed my water breaking. I couldnt get up for 2 minutes, my amniotic fluid was pouring out of me like you wouldnt believe. Finally I'm able to clean myself up, get on new pants and wake my mother to let her know. I told her to stay asleep since most women dont contract right away, thinking I still had time. By 12:50am I felt my first hard contraction. 12:53, another. 12:56, another. I call my sister to let her know to be ready to pick me up. I message King's father and grandmother, then attempt to wake my mother again. I call my midwife and was told to wait till my contractions were either unbearable or lasting 1 minute, 1 minute between contractions, for 1 hour. 1:34 I call my sister again and tell her to come over to help me labour since it was getting intense. Around the same time King's father comes over since I knew this was going to be a fast process. Contractions were getting closer and closer together, getting more unbearable with each passing one. I call my midwife again, my sister doing the talking for me, telling her we are on our way to the hospital.

2:20am we leave my place and head there. 2:36 we're parked and I'm inside trying to sign in. Having to stop and contract infront of a room full of strangers. I get my bracelet and sent upstairs. 3 more contractions ensue in the meantime. We get up to the birthing floor and head for triage. That's when things begin to get intense and blurry. I'm sat in a bed, in extreme pain, trying to answer questions and get blood taken. I'm noticing this is all happening really fast and we need to hurry. I'm checked and told I'm 4/5cm dilated. We get told to move to a birthing room. Finally arriving in the place my child would be born, I lay down and my body takes over. I get no more than 30 seconds between contractions for my body to calm down. I get checked again, I'm told I'm 7/8 cm dilated and everyone is shocked. Its happening and its happening soon. Theres no chance for me to receive any drugs or IVs. No contraction belt to track them or heart monitor belt to check on King. Within 2 minutes my contractions get so out of control I can feel my body pushing against my wishes. I tell the room this, apologize and scream all at once. I'm being told to try and stop but I physically couldnt. After another 5 minutes of this I'm checked one last time, but this time im told to push. Everyone is shocked. In 7 minutes I've dilated 3cm and ready to bring my baby into the world.

I'm told to move into position, breaking both the fathers hand and my sisters while I sit there pushing. My sister is instructed to hold my leg and push it against me, my mother is told to grab my hand and the midwife had my other leg up and ready. I'm screaming bloody murder and trying my hardest to push. I will never be able to compare this pain to anything else.

4:09am, I give a push and my little mans head is out. I'm told to give one last push, my sister looks at Kings head and by the time she moved her head to look at me, he was out and on my chest. My baby boy is finally born and screaming almost as loud as me. Kingston came out at 7lbs 0oz, 19 inches long.

Within a few minutes he was calm and looking all around. I finally come to and realize what just happened. Instant shock, not knowing what to think or say, I'm hugging my baby so tight against my chest with tears going down my face. I did it. I finally did it. 9 long hard months of growing this tiny human and I finally bring him into this world for everyone to see and love.

I spent 13 hours after his birth in the hospital till we were sent home. Multiple family members and friends stopping by to say hello and meet my little ham. Everyone is shocked and amazed I managed to have a baby within 3 1/2 hours of my water breaking, zero drugs, all natural. His skin colour being perfect from the moment he was put on my chest, next to no wrinkles, just all around perfect. He took to breastfeeding so easily, barely cried unless he was cold. My perfect little man.

It's been 13 days since he entered this world, dropping to 6lb 6oz after 3 days, up to 6lb 9oz by day 5, then 7lb 4oz by day 10. Kingston has been nothing but a dream. I am so incredibly blessed every single day with his presence. He makes me feel every emotion under the sun, but mainly proud and love. I dont remember what life was like before him and I couldnt imagine my future without him. Everything our mothers, aunts, grandparents and friends told us is true, you never know love until you see your baby for the first time. I never had expectations on how life would be with him finally here but even if I did, hed surpass them all. I have such an angel baby who has me feeling more blessed than ever before. He is my entire world and I'd go through all the pain and suffering again if I had to for him. The absolute love of my life. ♡

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pitiless-achilles-wept · 4 years

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Lost Weekends: Chemo Progress Report

Hi friends,

I'm writing you from my sofa, where I spend an increasing amount of time (much to the delight of the cat), at the end of my second post-chemo weekend. My last update was a month ago, right after I had done the considerable work of enrolling in the clinical trial at Penn that looks at treatment with chemotherapy and the immunological agent atezolizumab vs. just chemotherapy. My first session was on January 30th and I had a bit of good luck (for a change) and was randomized to the arm of the trial that got both the chemotherapy agent and the immunological agent, rather than the control group! (That's why I look improbably happy about my IV infusion in the attached photo.)

So far, the side effects are pretty tolerable. They don't really show up until days 2 or 3 which, since I go on Thursdays, pretty much means a Lost Weekend to symptoms. There's nausea, but I'm able to manage it with medication, and then there's very intense fatigue. I said to a friend at the outset of this trial that I consider myself a connoisseur of fatigue, having suffered chronic fatigue for years that was bad enough for them to do a bone marrow biopsy to verify that I didn't have cancer. (That's how I know I didn't have it in 2016.) This particular strain of fatigue is both familiar, in that the physical effects are undeniable and demand immediate rest, and unfamiliar because I get foggy-headed in a way I didn't before. Some folks refer to memory and concentration problems they encounter as "chemo brain," but I think this is less intense, more like being sleep deprived or a little sick. Honestly, the whole package is like having a bad flu. It lasts about 5 days and the symptoms are pretty similar. So, not great. But also not the worst. On this study, I go to Penn for treatment every 3 weeks. It takes all day, in part because when you get treated with a drug that's in trials they have to release it from the "experimental pharmacy," a process that can take multiple hours (as it did last Thursday). I'm really glad I only have to go every 3 weeks (plus visits for scans) and not every week, as I was doing before, both because it gives me the opportunity to recover from the side effects and have a bit more of a normal time in between visits. Also, they are a huge pain.

I know that may seem obvious, since chemo is clearly a terrible way to spend a day. But the truth is that it's actually less bad than the exhausting apparatus surrounding the visit. I tend, as usual, to minimize the more distressing aspects, both to myself and others, because it's just what needs to be done and, in a situation as colossally unfair as this one, the inconvenience or annoyance of actually going to the hospital pales in comparison. But, if you're curious, here's what it's like.

A day going to chemo for me starts pretty early since I live about 45 miles from Philadelphia and since I-95 is always terrible. Driving can take anywhere from an hour and ten minutes (without any traffic) to 2+ hours (if there's an accident). So if I'm supposed to check in at 8:30am I have to leave the house ideally by 6:30--which I NEVER manage to do because I have a lifelong hatred of mornings--but definitely before 7:00. This means getting up around 5:30 or 5:45. Again, I know people get up this early all the time, but if you know me you know that I am basically incapable of falling asleep before 1am (unless I'm very sick).

So I set out on this early venture, but not alone. I have an intrepid and sleepy friend with me to drive, both because I'm not allowed to drive myself home and because parking at the hospital is such a nightmare that often I have to hop out at a corner or intersection to make my appointment time. I did, however, learn that you get completely free parking if you get chemo! (This isn't true for other kinds of appointments.) My intrepid friend will meet up with me again in the cancer center and, usually, work remotely throughout the day while we sit in a series of chairs and check in with a series of doctors. I'm really grateful for this company because something that no one tells you about cancer is how incredibly boring it is a lot of the time.

The first medical thing that happens is that the nurses at the "infusion center" (which always sounds more pleasant than it actually is, as though it should come with scented oils) access the port through which they draw blood (usually about 10 tubes of it) and through which I'll receive chemo later. After they collect blood samples, I head to the waiting room for my oncologist, who I have to check in with before I can receive treatment. We have to wait for my blood tests to come back to prove that my body is functioning well enough for me to poison it. That sounds kind of backwards, but basically I have to have baseline body functions that are good enough for me to withstand chemo. (Oh, at some point they also do my vitals--height, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation--which they'll collect again several times.) I also consult with my oncologist and the study coordinator about any side effects or questions and have a physical exam of the palpable tumors.

Next, assuming my numbers look good, I can check in for chemo. Penn has private rooms, which is different from the infusion center in Princeton. Some of them have lovely views of the city and some are windowless prison cells. I've had one of each. It's just luck of the draw. But I can certainly confirm that having natural light makes a big difference. By this time I've been at the hospital for 2-3 hours. The next phase is the most frustrating, which is waiting for the experimental pharmacy to release the immunological agent, which I have to receive first. The first time it took about 90 minutes, the second almost 3 hours. Once they get that, they can finally start the infusions. I get the immunological agent, followed by pre-meds for chemo (a long-acting anti-nausea drug, a short-acting one, many others to make the process less awful by controlling my reaction), followed by chemo itself. Together, all the infusions take about 3 hours.

My total time at the hospital is something between 6 and 7 hours. The driving, total, is about 3 hours. So, all in all, it's a 9-10 hour day. I often manage to use this as a time to enjoy the company of the friend who goes with me, since how often do you get to spend that much concerted time together? Often one or both of us is working, though increasingly I get spacey enough that I prefer to read, listen to a podcast, or just nap. Once I get home, I usually nap and, hopefully, see another friend who brings by dinner. These little acts of company make the biggest difference to me. I feel somewhat bad, since my exhaustion means I'm not often up for long visits, but just having another person around is tremendously reassuring. Dropping by, or being there while I nap or read, does a lot to break me out of the isolation that I can feel by being trapped so much in the physical symptoms of my treatment experience.

Illness is very isolating and makes you very vulnerable. No one else can endure the treatment for you and, in a way, the pain and discomfort is fundamentally incommunicable. Yet the emotional experience doesn't have to be similarly incommunicable and company (or well wishes) is a major antidote to that risk. So, as I wrap up this post-chemo weekend, I'd like to say thanks for reading and sharing it with me.

Love, Bex

#my life as a cancer patient #medical update #health update #clinical trials #stage 4 #bex writes

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shytiff · 3 years

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Small Dec Wins

i cant believe its December already tf?!?!?!

1 - poli KIA today. saw a mother who cant feel the movement of their baby. the senior midwife tried to find the baby’s heart beat but not finding it. she said she hopes she were wrong. fell asleep at 3pm-ish, woke up super hungry. ate. i swear i feel like my weight when i measured it this morning was ~52, but after eating its close to 54 lol. eating banana and chocolate nextar is yummm. dalbang today is hella funny as always and suuper endearing. fell asleep after dalbang, didnt study hufttt

2 - today im at igd but joined azkia at vk for a bit to see partus. its not that im scared (maybe not consciously) but when the mom was being stitched i felt lightheaded, nausea, cold extremities, and i even had to squat multiple times because i couldnt stand. But i felt better after the partus so maybe seeing it was the cause. I did not feel scared at all honestly ._. and i’ve seen multiple partus before. i dont know why. i can literally feel my symphatetic tone giving out lmaoo. tried matcha latte with Cy matcha powder. it tasted more milky and grassy. mom thought it tasted like nori. i prever cocodeli alll the way (although Cy is cheaper). i think it also has a bit of caffeine that made me feel awake like a normal person should be.

3 - today is vk but there’s no patient so thank god i saw sumn yesterday. did some cicil ukmppd in the morning accompanied by matcha latte. tried to order dufan tickets and i couldnt find my damn ktp...... fell asleep after worrying about said ktp

4 - matcha latte in the car, swab at lmk, went to dufan by tj with willy, had quite some funn with atikah nila willy amel pupuy. first time trying kereta misteri, quite fun. it rained after ashar so we didnt ride anything after that. turns out my ktp was at barel’s fotocopy lmaoo thankyou ara for picking it. went to solaria ancol afterwards, picked up by mom. i didnt tell her in the morning that i was going to dufan lmao. plenary @ zoom 19 pm. rapat nemo. fell asleep.

5 - went to lmk by tj to surprise clara. went back home and fell asleep. didnt rly do anything afterwards because this ragged body gets tired easily and i dont eat much recently. i can feel the difference before and after eating and there’s actual energy after eating. its not that im hungry though, but i feel less energized. felt annoyed terrible and just wanna lay in bed (this is unrelated with the less food in my system). even though i met up with friends

6 - after LOTS of sleeping i feel somehow better but not to a ‘normal’ amount. watched kimbab family videos. did power vinyasa by doogether with fianti. took a shower and ate indomie and i felt quite normal, except i slept again wtf. i thought i would have the second half of the day but nah. did self tryouts with fianti, 150 FDI questions. I got 96/150 right. huft. such a great reality check

7 - poli lansia with dokter isip, matcha latte in the afternoon rly helps me not sleeping the day away, packed up for depok

8 - poli umum with dr gita (helped doing phys exam), packed the rest of my stuff, ate some risol and matcha lattteee in the car, took swab results, picked up hazmats etc, zoom discussion with FT PKM Kalideres (dr gita) on the way, and i finally arrived at tamel. dinner is granola with vsoy. Taste like a slightly wet granola bar, nutty fiber-y vibe

9 - walked in ui with ara, managed to jog from the trees near st ui until kuburan bikun wow. i reached that point where my leg and heart were going in a steady unburdened pace and my willpower to keep going on was tested. tried the signature steak in Double U Steak by Chef Widi, while ara tried ribeye. the ribeye was more tender than the signature. but the seasoning in the signature is quite delish, salty and oily without being too much (like futago ya). read poppyland fast pass from ara’s phone omg season 1 is finally complete! went to coftof (omgggg i miss this place), it looks different now. ordered matcha latte and it tasted weirdly like a soy milk although ara doesnt feel that way. the matcha tasted weird. wont repurchase. read chainsaw man, its so entertaining, funny and deep at the same time. denji mess around and be too naive sometimes but hes lowkey hot lmaooo. aki is lovvvvve.

10 - first day at rsud budhi asih. had moesli combined with granola + vsoy for brekkie. went back to tamel at 3 pm. it rained when i got back. bought warteg lugina worth 32k. walked to sbux for tumbler day its been a while since i had their matcha latte. it tasted quite good, but not as good as i remembered (?) maybe bcs i asked for non fat milk. sbux closes at 8 pm for now hikss

11 - left tamel at about 7:10 and arrived on budhi asih at 08:54 yalll the traffic. Icu. Bought eatlah double and ate the salted egg part. Nap. ICU discussion with dr Dedi @8pm. I presented from my phone to save data hehe,,

12 - woke up at 8, eatlah brown butter for brekkie, symcard, saladstop's caesar salad for lunch (quite 'eneg' because i didnt eat the cheese evenly so the chicken and cheese were eaten last after the vegs are out. The vegetable's not that variative, and the non vegs make the salad taste delicious (albeit maybe not THAT healthy). Evening jog @UI and i realized i can get wifi sitting near the lake n library. Stared at the night sky from my room, i swear the sky seems super clear. Saw tiny fireworks in the distance

13 - ate muesli and saladstop’s banana walnut cake, symcard, bought moon chicken and saladpoint. lunch was egg salad and the wings. the original tasted so good like??? maybe i havent had msg for a while. also tried big bang, not too spicy which is nice. cicil ukmppd. put my laundry at buih barel lmaoo. try out with fianti. got 70/100

14 - breakfast was salad and leftover chicken. today was bangsal with angga armand. the geriatric patient has a loud murmur yall (and scoliosis, so much that the heart looks distorted). went to margo city to see sales, but when i think about it id rather just thrift stuff lmao. bought lugina. slept through kuliah guru besar. writing this in yellow truck coffee, that had 2 customers on the 1st floor including me. tried banana milk. yall after trying to drink less sugar the beverage tasted super sweet. my headache just goes away. sugar is magic but unhealthy whyyyyy.

15 - igd siang with indah. This body sure is frail. Did cbd with dr afifah AND rescheduled pleno. Rip mobile data i have to use for hotspot.

16 - ok today. Inserted goedel and did bagging. I bagged the patient the wrong way at first (too much). Thankfully the nurses were kind and taught us a lot :) watched some bts content. I feel like after reading househusband my tiktok page is now immensely funnier. Dalbang is also hilarious as always. Put on ginseng sheet mask (smells quite strong)

17 - bangsal. snacked on fried chicken. matcha latte starbucks (turns out its quite full here) and liqo about keeping our tongues in check

18 - arrived at icu. And then opened line. Turns out hadin's swab is positive, so agung kak iman and me have to isolate and swab. So i went back. Ordered kanayam chicken and fish and tempe. Nasi liwet tasted goood damn. Sleptt in the afternoon. Pleno at 4 pm (entered the room 4:30). Had no motivation to do anything. Azkia is getting married! Spent 20 mins formulating words to congratulate her lmaoo

19 - osce simulation, kak nanu was so kind and encouraging. Did try out solid. Lunch is fish bite pasta with melted cheese (cause i had to reach the minimum amount for promo). It got cold so its not that good (pairing it with self made mentai sauce, mixing the mayo and chili, is way much better). Jogged in ui (and searched for wifi). Approached by someone selling haraus coffee (25k), saying that some earnings will be for charity. Its basically sweet. Can barely taste the coffee.

20 - had kanayam for lunch (brekkie is almost always muesli lately). The nasi liwet tasted much better the first time. Walked to yellow truck coffee in the pouring rain. Got banana milk. Saw webinar ksk (electrolyte correction and dr nadhira talkshow). What i got from it is that, dr nadhira is a different person from the first place. Shes visionary, knows what she want and not afraid to reach it. The mindset is different. Even if i try as hard as her, her propensity to growth is different. Cicil ukmppd. Try out with fianti (got 72/100). Talked for an hour about love and marriage and engagements (there are so much of it lately)

21 - leftover kanayam for brekkie, also ate roti salman in cikini st. swab today (met kris, nessa and others). muesli for lunch. i thought my body felt a bit warm, so i decided to find sumn to eat. tried kedai abu bakar’s spaghetti brulee. its okay. maybe because its not too cheesy or meaty, mainly bechamel sauce. the one pupuy made is much tastier. finished the whole 10x20 portion in 2 eating sesh. cicil ukmppd @ bed in the evening (somehow felt refreshed enough to be able to concentrate in bed)

22 - went early to icu to put dops form. lugina for early lunch. i feel like my metabolism is faster? or my body is not so much in calorie deficit mode anymore and it got greedier lmao i used to just ignore hunger but not now, for health. starbiiies tumbler day. ordered black tea latte with non fat milk and vanilla syrup (because raspberry syrup is no more). did cbd geri ppt.

23 - finally knew the swab result bcs kak iman asked kak farras. thankfully negative. igd with jordi. quite a few chances to do iv line, but i failed 2 times. managed to do iv injection to insert 2 drugs. saw the worst cpr ive ever seen in my life. its too slow, with maximal interruption. fish bite for lunch. wasted the rest of my day

24 - originally intended to run but i cant bring myself out of bed. packed up my stuff. picked up by mom. got the paper result of swab, got ksk from kelvyn @ capitol. can finally drink self-made matcha latte again, but it tasted horrible. i know cy matcha doesnt have that much going on, but even this is low even for them. previously i was starting to get used to the grassy smell.

25 - my lil bro remarked “maybe shes depressed because she doesnt have her chair”. fuck yall. this “depression” that im in is caused by this very place and the people. and im supposed to still muster the strength to study for ukmppd AND get my face together for solid book photoshoot. that shit is too much. this is why the money that goes to cafe, and the bike ride there is worth it for my sanity. after showering, things felt a bit better. had absolutely no will to study today. ate muesli with a bit of matcha latte.

26 - muesli for breakfast. matcha latte is lyfff ive probably said this before but it ~somehow~ makes me feel normal and not in a slump. like im a regular person. with normal moods. and not wanting to sleep all the time. i try to do ukmppd exercises but the pace is so fucking slow, bcs im distracted by get rich haha,,,. the latest potn update (64) is omgggg the mixed feelings? love? hate? anger? everything and nothing? the ~tension and passion~? im obsessed. watched a ton of bts content today and yesterday lmao.

27 - nasi kebuli for brekkie. went to flavola, im the first customer lmao. tried kopi susu coklat, tasted quite close enough to janjiw’s kopi soklat. had the same ~improved mood and concentration~ effect. tried to read ksk. bought milky banana 1L from puyo to give dajen (its his bday yesterday) (i feel prompted (?) to gift people when theyve given a present to me) (because my love lang is not gift giving at all so i barely think abt gifts lmao). talked with sum 33 ipa guys @ dajens house. yay appropriate amount of social battery charging. tryout with fianti, padi this time. got 67/100.

28 - ate muesli with matcha latte after breakfast. cicil ukmppd. Listened to yoongi's vlive until i fell asleep lol. 2 burger and salad for dinner. omggg hansol revealed his gf.

29 - spent half of my day tidying up the mess that is my room. figured out what to wear for solid book photoshoot with fianti, ara. matcha latte terosss. phd for dinner.

30 - breakfast is muesli with cimory choco hazelnut. mom made matcha chocolate brownies. tryna study. slow pace terosss. read some padi materials. dalbang.

31 - bought vsoy low sugar and multigrain. moved my body a bit to youtube videos. showered. felt better. it also rained (which i love). the pleasant mood only lasted til the evening. did nothing from 7pm even though im not sleepy. cant tell when did i start to sleep

and just like that, 2020 kkeut. its sad to say i dont rly remember much remarkable things this year. other than the trip and memories with minor rotation friends. i just remember wasting my life away in my house. i guess that’s the danger of living a monotone life. sometimes you gotta invest some time to have fun, to have motivation to live on and do things. not doing this makes it difficult to live day by day. and friends. meeting friends, seeing new stuff. that helps me live.

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olivia-moussot · 3 years

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Love, Sarah

(This is an original work of fiction)

Katie’s POV

Katie sat in a circle of teens. After a party invitation and some apparently spiked punch, her sense of reason and caution, which she normally wore a thick layer of, was gone. So, when someone she didn’t know asked her to play 7 minutes in heaven, she was more than happy to oblige.

Katie sat in a circle with four other girls, and six other guys that she either didn’t know or had just seen passing around campus, but one person that sat across from her stood out from the rest. Sarah Guido.

Everything about her was perfect from her tall figure, to her bright blue eyes, shoulder length blond hair, and smile that could light up any room. She was perfect except for one thing. Sarah Guido was straight. Katie’s best-friend that she had told everything since second grade, had been her crush since fourth grade, and the person who Katie had realized she was absolutely head-over-heels, in love with, since eighth, was straighter than an arrow, and sitting in a circle of 7 minutes in heaven participants.

Katie got thrown back into reality as the last person sat down and asked for a volunteer to spin the bottle.

“I’ll go,” Katie turned her head to the voice and wasn’t surprised who it was. Anna Covington, a nice girl and a good student, but also someone who was notorious for their goal of trying to sleep with everyone on their dorm room floor.

Anna leaned forward and spun the bottle. Anyone, Katie thought to herself, Anyone but Sarah.Katie didn’t know why she still had hope of being with Sarah in the almost 0% chance circumstances, but she held on to it as she watched the bottle slow down and finally stop. Katie breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Sarah, or her for that matter.

The bottle stopped at a member of the football team that she didn’t know the name of, and Anna pulled him to the nearby storage closet. A girl went over and locked the door behind them, and started the timer for seven minutes.

She sat in the circle with the other people, using small talk as a way to pass the time. Katie’s phone buzzed and looked down.

It was a text from Sarah “Hey, is everything ok, you looked stressed”

“Yea I’m fine” She wrote back “Just a little tired”

Katie looked up and saw Sarah smile at her. A smile that was so bright it could practically glow in the dark. Katie wondered if that smile could ever be caused because of something she said. It couldn’t possibly be, but it would be cool if it was.

Katie was again jogged out of her thoughts as the timer rang. Someone went over and unlocked the door. The boy walked out first hair disheveled and dark red spots following his jawline and down one side of his neck. Anna walked out behind him not a single hair out of place. She walked up behind the boy and whispered something in his ear. Anna sauntered out of the room followed by the boy right on her heels.

People kept spinning the bottle going clockwise around the circle. Katie was relatively calm, until the bottle got to her. Having downed a few more shots during previous rounds, her mind was a little looser and more prepared for what was to come.

Katie leaned forward and Spun the bottle, time seemed to slow down as her panic heightened. Around, and around, and around it went. Until it stopped. At Sarah. Sarah smiled at Katie before standing up and holding out her hand. Katie couldn’t believe it was happening. She took Sarah’s hand and they walked together into the closet.

The closet turned out to be fairly large, easily enough room for two or three people to sit down comfortably. They heard the lock click behind them and both sat down in awkward silence before they burst out laughing.

Sarah spoke “Ya know, this docent have to be weird. We can just talk”

“Yea, I know” Katie said “But that not really the point of the game, is it”

“Point of the game or not, they can’t make us do anything” Sarah responded

Katie spent the next few minutes in bliss talking to Sarah till her tone suddenly turned serious. Sarah placed her hand on Katie’s and Katie swore her heart was beating so loud that Sarah could hear it. They had never been overly physical when it came to their friendship, so Katie knew she was serious about what Sarah was about to say.

“Katie there’s something I need to tell you, I….”

Sarah was cut off by the door being opened.

“Hope you enjoyed your seven minutes ladies, but your time is up.” Said the girl at the door.

Sarah’s face was full of disappointment and she walked out of the closet with Katie behind her.

They did a couple more rounds of 7 minutes in heaven before the game rapped up. The group broke apart to mingle in the party and as the hours went on, Katie’s curiosity was getting the best of her.

She walked through the party scanning for Sarah and found her talking with a group of friends by the entrance.

“You gonna head out too,” she said in a slightly slurred voice.

“Yea” Katie said

“I’ll see you tomorrow I guess then” Sarah responded

“I guess so,” Katie was panicking and her chance of making a move was slowly dwindling.

Katie went up and hugged Sarah behind, before placing a slight peck on her cheek.

Sarah turned around in a flash with her eyes huge “What are you doing Katie.”

Katie was at a loss for words, she had never seen the anger she saw in Sarah’s eyes

“What are you doing, why did you think that that was ok!”

Sarah’s voice slowly escalated into a yell. Everyone gradually turned silent and focused on them.

“ANSWER, WHAT ARE YOU DOING KATIE!!!”

Katie’s fear grew, she didn’t think about the repercussions of what she had done. She had never seen anger like this in Sarah before.

“FOR ALL THE YEARS WE’VE BEEN FRIENDS, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU!!” Sarah was screaming now.

“I’m sorry, it didn’t mean anything...” Katie said before she was interrupted by Sarah

“NOTHING! THAT DIDN’T MEAN NOTHING! IVE SEEN THE WAY YOU LOOK AT ME. WHY ARE YOU LYING.” Sarah turned on her heel and stormed off.

Katie stood there in silence looking at the crowed staring around her. She ran through the house and out into the cold air. She was in a daze as she walked through the dorm parking lot and found her car.

As soon as she sat in it, tears started running down her face. Katie was panicking, she didn’t know what to do. She was going to lose her only friend, and the person she’d loved for years, over one stupid idea.

Maybe she was just drunk. Maybe she was just surprised, and she’ll come around tomorrow. Maybe I can work this out with her. Thought after thought came out of her head trying to replace the last with a more ridiculous one that could lead for a hopeful outcome.

Katie picked up her phone trying to execute the most rational idea she had to come up with and texted Sarah “I'm sorry. Do you think we can talk through this and work this out? You've been my best friend ever since I can remember, and I don't wanna lose you over one stupid little thing.”

Katie hoped but never heard her phone buzz and lost faith as she sat there in her car tears falling thicker and thicker down her face as her breath became more uneven and overwhelmed.

She picked up her phone and saw the text had been marked as read for 10 minutes. She sat there as time went by 15 minutes, then 20, 30, then 45. Steadily losing hope that Sarah would never see her the same way again and she would never be able to see Sarah again.

She kept watching the door to the house hoping that she could see Sarah walk out and catch her before it was too late and she left, but Katie never did.

Katie finally left the parking lot after two hours of waiting for Sarah to answer her text or come out of the party. Finally, she gave up shutting off her phone and starting her car. Tears still silently streaming down her face, she drove away. Away from the party. Onto the silent street, and into the night.

Sarah’s POV

Sarah stood by the door to the party, the effects of the alcohol had finally worn off and she realized when she done to Katie and regretted every bit of it. Sarah put her head in her hands contemplating on what she could do. She had seen Katie’s text but didn’t have the heart to respond and tell her the truth. So, Sarah did what she thought was her only option. She finally texted Katie.

I have so many things to say to you but there’s one that I want to get across. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say what I did. you’re my best friend and I could never live without you. I don’t know why I acted how I did I regret every word that came out of my mouth, But Katie. I love you. I always have I thought of us having a future together and every bit of it excites me. I wanna be with you and no one else for forever. I’m sorry, love Sarah

Katie’s POV

Everything seemed like a blur as rain started coming down in sheets as thick as her tears. Part of her didn't know what she was doing but part of her knew that it was exactly what she wanted. Fear of seeing Sarah in class the next day slowly dissipating. Katie turned down to the highway away from the campus following it until it got to the bridge, she pressed down on the gas faster and faster thinking only about one thing. She moved all the way into the right Lane of the and jerked the steering wheel to the right as peace finally flooded her mind. she heard a crash and a scream, and then nothing. She felt cold icy water running against her skin numbing the feeling of her broken bones. Katie faintly heard her phone buzz through its waterproof case and saw four words I love you, Sarah. She laid there gripping her phone as her vision got fuzzy blocking out the lights above, and those four precious words, until she only saw black. But she knew that whatever she was going to face next that it would be ok. Because she was going to go away again. Away from the party. Away from people. Away from Sarah.

Epilogue

Dear Katie,

It’s been exactly five years since the night of the party. I have so much to say and have so little time to say it. After the bridge, I lost the will to get out of bed, as well as the will to live. I became suicidal the three following years after your death, thinking of only one thing. You. You had been my first love ever since I can remember, and I didn’t know how to deal with your passing. I tried to end my life twice during that period. Once standing in the middle of traffic, praying a car would collide with my body so I could see you again. And a second time, trying to overdose on the same medication that could have saved me. After years of depression and wanting to end my own life because you ended yours, I was told something. The best way to honor you is not to end myself, but to keep living for you. I have loved you for so long and I doubt I will love anyone the same again. But I will try. For you. I was told that I wasn’t honoring your life, by trying to end mine. But didn’t listen for a while. I have been doing better. Some days I can't get out of bed, thinking only about you, concluding the day with crying myself to sleep. Some days I can wake up, like things are back to normal. But my eyes carry to your empty seat in the class, and the thought of you weighs heavy in the back of my mind no matter what. I've been through into fits of hysteria with no one to blame but myself. Now I know exactly what I want, just like you did that night. I’m standing on the same edge of the bridge you were phone in hand sending this last text to you saying the same thing I did that night. I'm Sorry. I Love You.

Love, Sarah

Sarah set her phone down as she saw the last text, she would even send to Katie go through. She brushed away her tears as the brisk wind softly touched her skin. Sarah closed her eyes for the last time, leaning forward ever so slightly until she felt the wind rushing by her as she fell, and the same cold water soothe her broken bones just like it has done to Katie five years ago.

Her vision lightened until she only saw white. She was transported to a large room that looked like a cathedral and she saw someone in the distance dressed in white, who spoke the same words she had previously just written. The person came into view as she continued to walk toward her a smile on her familiar face, wet with tears. She heard her recite words that she knew too well. Sarah ran to her as the same voice she had loved forever, met her ears.

The girl embraced her still reciting her message. Her voice had quieted to a whisper until only Sarah could hear her as the figure said the last words she wrote.”

“I’m Sorry. I Love You.”

“Love, Sarah.”

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human-trash-fire · 4 years

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Beautiful Disaster: Chapter 5 (Pynch Soulmate AU)

Alrighty my loves, this chapter has been a labor of love from the beginning. As you continue reading you will see art pieces and each is correlated with a song (those will be at the end), and references yet again will be made to the EMFS playlist (Ronan’s rehab playlist- I’ve actually made it on spotify! you can find it here)

As usual you can find this story on Ao3 @ glam_reaper 2 if you’re interested <3

TW: Mention of suicide attempt, a panic attack though not super descriptive, cannon typical language.

Iv.

You,

I made a friend last week.

I know for most people that wouldn’t be a big deal, but I assume by now You understand what that means for someone like me. I guess “friend” may be a generous term? I don’t know if we are there yet, Blue definitely disagrees with him “on principle.”

You see, President Cellphone as she calls him, or Richard Campbell Gansey III (I know, what a douchey fucking name) is all boat shoes and privledge and perfect teeth. Gansey isn’t someone I’d normally associate with mind you, Henry kind of met my quota for rich extroverts in the inner circle, and yet…

So, here’s the story. I’m writing my last letter right? And I was so fucking lost. I decided to walk home from Nino’s- I thought maybe it would help me settle. And there, right around the corner is this fucking ‘73 camero. It should have been beautiful, really.. A classic like that? It’s a dream to look at. Only this fucking thing is the UGLIEST color of candy orange you could ever imagine… And it’s blowing smoke all over the damn place. I was honestly going to leave boat-shoes to call his daddy or mechanic or what have you, but he looked so confused. I offered to help him out and was able to get it running long enough to get to Boyd’s.

I expected him to just drop off “The Pig” (the car) like any normal person and come back for it, only I apparently made “quite the impression.”

Gansey ended up staying with me, prattling on about his Masters History program and some welsh king the ENTIRE time I worked on the damn car. At first I was tuning him out, but without realizing it I became completely entranced by the whole story. I’ve never seen such passion for anything, and I have VERY spirited friends.

He has one of those voices you know? The kind that can stop a room, raise an army, lead a nation. The kind that demands to be heard without ever having to raise itself.

That’s Gansey though.

I think he’ll be good for me, I don’t think he’d give me much of a choice in the matter though to be honest. He kind of adopted me this week? That should bother me and yet, being around him is just… It’s being included. It’s a sense of purpose.

I think he needs it too, he doesn’t seem to talk about negative things but you can tell, he’s haunted by something. That’s what solidified it for me really. He may be a senator’s son but he’s seen some shit.

I wish you could have met him, I wonder if you would have been as intrigued by him as I find myself.

Blue is being a total idiot about him, but I’m about 82% sure it’s because she is into him. I know for sure the feeling is mutual. It took Gans approximately 15 minutes after meeting Blue to ask me for her life story, offend her beyond measure, and then haul ass out of Nino’s. It was the first time I’d seriously laughed in so long. Have you ever been second-hand embarrassed for someone? It was that.

I’m going to wrap this up now though, I need to head to Nino’s for my shift, Blue’s working so of course Gans is stopping by. He said he’s bringing one of his best friends with him, some dude named Noah. Apparently he’s pretty cool, so I’m moderately less apprehensive. He said he wished he could bring his other best friend/ his and Noah’s third roommate but the guy is staying with family for a few months or something. Idk? He doesn’t talk about the other roommate much. I honestly don’t even think he’s ever said his name. Who gives a shit though, I can barely handle one new friend, let alone a 3-pack of Ganseys. Good God… I hope Noah isn’t another Gansey…. Fuck.

Welp.

Here goes nothing.

*****

It started with a not-so-subtle idea from the esteemed Dr. Allen. “Show me what happened.” Ronan was never great with words before all this, and since… When he spoke it was usually a litany of curse words. So Dr. Allen had suggested art. In the weeks since his entombment in this fine rehabilitation center, Ronan had kind of already been doing what he was being asked to do now. Though, he didn’t mention it to Allen. He’d spent countless hours sketching his life, the whole thing, in snapshots inside that beautiful leather sketchbook Gansey had given him.

He started at the beginning, pictures of Aurora and his brothers, the Barns, his father playing guitar by the fire. He drew their family vacations, the cows he used to sneak out and sleep beside when he was a child, the feeling of winning the Tennis State Championship when he was 15. He drew the bad things too, his nightmares, his drug-trips, that old stained couch in the basement of Kavinsky’s house. He put every piece of himself, all 22 years of memories down in that book, woven together with song lyrics in the margins.

So when Dr. Allen asked him to look specifically to his addiction and create, he didn’t see a problem. He needed to return to school with a series anyways, Declan had called to inform him that strings had been pulled to allow him to finish his final semester at Georgetown, but he needed to walk in with something to show at the January exhibition. Two birds, and all that.

He settled on 7 pieces, each done in oils on canvas, each accompanied by a song. 7 moments in the life of his battle with addiction, from the beginning to now. With each stroke of his brush he felt infinesmally lighter, pouring his grief into the images before him.

It started with “The Fall.” His father’s murder in reds and greys; fracturing lines and deep shadows. He mixed his paints with tears and used his heart to drag color across the canvas. For the first time in years, Ronan allowed the memory to consume him. He’d re-lived it plenty of times in his nightmares, but this was different. His hands shook, jagged strokes of anger and confusion bleeding through. He painted the brief moment, the final moment, when his world was whole before his teenage mind finally realized what it was he was looking at. His last free breath. And he painted his screams, the cacophony of pain, endlessly mixing with sirens until his vocal chords gave out.

He drowned the canvas in un-kept promises and hung it out to dry with childhood dreams.

Then came “Chasing the Void.” It was a story told in stark lighting. High beams on a backroad, swirling smoke and broken bottles. It was white glasses and white-powder lines on shark-nosed hood. It was going 115mph, bones rattling with the beat of the bass in his sound system. Ronan painted a black tattoo, used the blood on his knuckles to tint bloodshot eyes. His brush moved with his mother’s disappointment and his brother’s anger. Whimsical lines and Gansey’s head shaking when he found Ronan passed out yet again. He painted the highs and lows when sobriety reminded him that he hated the face that stared back at him in the mirror.

Each new piece he added to the collection was brought to Dr. Allen’s office. Together they worked through each memory associated with the piece and slowly Ronan felt the weight on his chest lighten.

Gansey visited every Monday and Friday like clockwork. He kept Ronan apprised to all the goings on of Monmouth and updates on Matthew and Declan. Ronan never asked for them, but he appreciated it regardless. His current obsession though seemed to be a new friend, Adam something. He had been going on for 30 minutes now about how this man single-handedly raised the Pig from the dead. Ronan tuned out most of the conversation, but nodded at what he assumed were appropriate moments while sketching.

“Ronan, are you even paying attention?” Gansey asked, irritation only slightly evident.

“Mmm?” Ronan hummed. “For sure. Pig. Smoke. Some new guy.”

“Essentially. I was saying that Noah and I are heading to his second job, the man works 2 jobs and is getting a masters can you believe it? Anyways Nino’s, so Noah can finally meet him and Blue. Have I mentioned her yet?”

Blue? He thought. Who the fuck names their kid Blue. “Once or twice.”

“Well they both work this afternoon, so I assume we’ll just hang there until they get off. Then maybe grab a bite. I wish you could come, I’m sure you’d get along nicely with Adam.” Gansey said, choosing to ignore the previous sarcasm and barrell on. Excelsior.

“Doubt it.” Guy sounds like a douche.

“On that note, thank you for another lovely visit. I’ll see you Monday, Ronan.” Gansey gathered his coat and made his way to the door with a final wave.

Ronan waved back with a single finger and a saccharine “Bye, Dick.” Then shoved his Airpods back into his ears and lost himself in the EMFS playlist.

*****

As Adam gathered the tub of dirty dishes from above the trash and made his way back to wash them, he was lost in thought. These last two weeks, recent events, had been so much and yet he strangely was beginning to feel some semblance of peace. He knew that Blue had wanted him to write letters to help him cope. If he was admitting to it helping, he also needed to be honest with himself in noting that it may have been hurting just as much. He was falling in love with a ghost. A figment of his imagination that he could tell his every secret too, someone who listened without judgment; Someone who never asked more of him than he could handle. It wasn’t healthy, wasn’t what Blue had intended, of that he was sure. But, if it brought him peace and allowed him to sleep without seeing cold, dead eyes, then what was the harm?

He rinsed the mugs and plates loading them efficiently into the dishwasher, and dried his hands. As he moved to toss the towel into the bin, he heard the bell chime above the cafe door. He made his way slowly to the front, knowing that Blue was currently handling the register meant that he didn’t need to rush. On his way down the hallway he stopped to straighten a missing cat flier on the community bulletin board, taking a moment to snap a picture of the cat in question so he could be on the lookout, then continued toward the front; eyes glued to his phone.

He rounded the corner towards the coffee bar to the tune of laughter, it seemed Gansey had arrived. His eyes found Blue first. For all her insistance that she loathed the man in question, she was positively glowing, head tossed back in a hearty laugh. Lost in the bubble of charm Gansey operated in.

“-And so I asked him, mind you I’ve had a lot to drink at this point, ‘Hey senator, why do you fucking hate poor peo-‘ Oh! Adam” Ganseys story of embarrassing his mother at one of her Republican fundraisers interrupted, as he caught sight of Adam sliding behind the bar.

“Hey Gans,” He smiled.

“My apologies, this is Noah.” Gansey stepped to the side to reveal the man in question, and Adam’s breath stopped.

There, eyes blue and wide with shock, mouth agape stood the man from the alley. The one whose scream still haunted Adam in the dark, solitary hours of sleep. The one that began his every nightmare of that night.

He was different now, tears weren’t pouring from his eyes to dance across the plains of his smudgey face. His blonde hair free of blood was slightly tousled, and his clothes were clean, albeit a little disheveled.

“No,” the word was a broken noise, barely a word at all, closer to a sob. Gansey and Blue looked frantically between the two for what seemed like an eternity before Noah spoke.

“It’s you…”

“Who? Noah, you know Adam?” Gansey’s voice was quietly confused.

Adam began to shake his head slowly, increasing with speed as his breath finally returned to him; Erratic and wild. Crocodile tears blurred his vision, and he finally croaked a simple question, “What… What was his name?”

“Ronan.”

“Oh, god” Blue breathed.

Adam ran, desperately fleeing the scene and chorus of his name called from the front. Ronan, his name was Ronan. Adam couldn’t breathe. His pain fresh, an un-mendable wound reopened now that he had a name to grieve. He paused, only long enough to grab his messenger bag from the back, and took the alley door.

Then he ran, faster than he’d ever remembered running. Tears turning the colors of the world around him to a haunting watercolor. His breath came in painful stabs, each beat of his bleeding heart an excruciating truth.

He somehow made it back to his apartment. The moment the door closed behind him he fell against it and slid to the floor. Ronan Ronan Ronan-

“R-Ronan.” He spoke the name the first time aloud, the feeling of its weight on his tongue was an answer to a question he’d been asking for a month. For a lifetime.

Adam didn’t know how long he sat on the floor, grief taking time and twisting it in on itself. An amalgam of pain, hopelessness, and questions. Gansey, Gansey knew Ronan, knew Noah. Noah the boy he’d last seen carted away in the back of an ambulance covered in red red red. Noah, who’d screamed for help like the world was shattering. Noah, who’d clung tightly to the shredded arms of a bleeding man in a dark alley.

Help me, his mind screamed, his internal voice morphing into Noah’s from that night.

Help me, I’m not okay…

A key twisting in the lock above his head brought his attention to the present. Adam pushed away from the door, and waited as Blue made her way into his dark apartment. Night had fallen sometime since he’d been here, on the floor, lost in the alley. Lost in a name.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Th-that was-”

“I know. Noah told us after you left. Adam, there’s… Adam. I need to tell you something.”

It was a concentrated effort to drag his gaze from the space between their bodies on the floor to meet her eyes. Lights from the street poured through the window in the living room, painting Blue’s honey warm skin in a haunting glow. He couldn’t bring himself to ask, so he waited. He watched. She brought a trembling hand to his, her brown eyes lined with silver, she squeezed.

“Adam, he’s alive.”

A sob born of heartbreak and pain tore from his chest, he couldn’t form words. He broke then, completely and wholly. Blue came to cradle his head against her chest as he cried. Every hope he’d killed since the alley came barreling to the surface; All the pain and confusion, love and questions, beating like waves against the shores of his mind. Some minutes later he finally raised his head and met Blue’s eyes, her smile was wet and broken. He dragged his hand under his nose, across his eyes, and finally found the word to the question he needed to ask. “How?”

So Blue told him. Apparently, him finding Noah and Ronan in that alley, the tourniquet he’d made of his scarf, that extra minute he’d bought him had been enough. The doctors were able to stitch his wounds, and though it had been a close call, he’d pulled through. She explained that he’d had a hard life, though Gansey wouldn’t give details because he insisted those were Ronan’s to share when he was ready. He did however give her basic facts. Ronan Niall Lynch is an artist, a senior at Georgetown. He’s an orphan, and a brother. He’s an addict in recovery at a facility in Arlington, and Gansey’s third roommate.

Blue explained that, when Adam was ready Gansey and Noah wanted to meet with him, to talk more. She offered to accompany him when that time came, but they all agreed they wouldn’t push him until he was ready. “Thank you,” he’d said to Blue. For getting the information. For telling him. For allowing him space. She understood that his history made this difficult, an addict for a soulmate was something he would need time to process. She eventually asked if he wanted to be alone and when he’d told her “yes” she kissed his forehead, and made her way to the door.

“Adam,” she paused, and he looked up. “We’ll wait on your text okay? Whenever you’re ready. But please check in so I know you’re safe.”

“I will.”

With a perfunctory nod she slid back out the door.

Adam spent another minute in silence before dragging himself from the floor. He made his way in a daze to his desk and he collapsed into his chair. Slowly, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper.

His hand shook.

He took a deep breath.

He wrote.

Ronan,

You’re alive…

**********************

Art Pieces and their correlating songs (linked):

“The Fall” The War- SYML

“Chase The Void” For What It’s Worth- Malia J

#bd au #pynch #pynch fic #Adam Parrish #ronan lynch #ronan x adam #blue sargent #gansey #richard campbell gansey iii #gangsey #soulmate au

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becoming-hx3 · 4 years

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Your birth story as I remember it 24 hours later (I’m sure I’ll have more to add to this after talking to your mom again):

All I asked wanted you to do was come just a hair early and not on any holidays. You did your part!

On Wednesday, I decided, with encouragement from your mom, to take a small round of castor oil. I pooped a bit but that was about it. I kept thinking you’d gotten lower and I’d had some lightning pain, but no real contractions, even with pumping. I’d woken up at 1 &2AM to move around but again, no contractions. Around 3AM, my water broke while I was asleep. I thought there was no way I’d peed my pants, so I rolled out of bed, careful to keep my legs closed, and was greeted with soaking shorts and dripping in the bathroom. I’d had my bloody show and water break at the same time. I was so excited thinking you’d come on Thursday. I problem solved how to keep from leaking everywhere, insert depends for the win, and decided to go back to bed after starting a load of laundry and telling your mom she was going to be a mom super soon.

I woke up around 7, still nothing happening. I had occasional cramps but that was it. I originally had a 9:30 39 week appointment scheduled which I called to cancel. I had 12 hours to try to get things going naturally. I took a mile walk, did spinning babies, pumped, lunged, side stepped......you name it, I did it. I also baked some rainbow cookies because of course, you couldn’t come into the world without fresh baked goods. The birth photographer came to take some pictures later in the day as we got ready to finally go into the hospital. The Justins and Collie also came to sit with the dogs and help us while we were at the hospital as you’ve come during a pandemic and your mom isn’t allowed to leave the hospital upon my admission.

We arrived to the hospital at 3:20. I got checked in and was 2 cm dilated, 90% effaced, and at a -1 station. My contractions were not strong at all and were about 15-20 minutes apart. Ashley was my nurse at the time and got me through triage. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to get my IV started prior. I got poked 4 times before Mandy the charge nurse in L&D got one in the back of my arm. The nurses were awesome and really wanted the IV to be in a place that was easy to labor as I wanted to have an unmedicated birth. Around 5:30, we got started on low dose pitocin. Jenna, our midwife, decided to increase the dosage a little bit every half hour, which I’m grateful for. Most doctors do it every 15 minutes which I cannot imagine. Jenna had me eat dinner and try to rest before Things got really intense. At about 7, things were ramping up and I was feeling it. You, on the other hand, we’re not feeling the monitors. The nurse, Lauryn, spent all night tracing us. I wanted to try to labor in different positions but of course everything I’d read had been all about people with back pain and all I had was front pain. I labored for a while on the toilet which was nice. Around midnight I was starting to spiral. I decided to ask her to check me again just to see where I was. It had been hours and the contractions were getting intense. I just wasn’t sure what else to do. I was 4cm, 100% effaced, and at. +1 station. She was pleased with the progress. I decided to keep laboring, but I ended up asking for something that wasn’t an epidural so I could get a bit of rest. I thought I had a long way to go, and truthfully, I needed the break. They gave me some narcotic medication and I was able to rest for a bit in bed on my side. While sleeping things got even more intense. I woke up to these freight train level contractions and not being able to find a comfortable spot. I kept switching which side to lay on, much to Lauryns frustration, though she handled me moving and the attitude with grace. I’d just whine while she tried to hunt you down while also apologizing and saying I knew she was just doing her job. At one point, she needed me to lay on my back since we hadn’t been on the monitor for 20 minutes. I was NOT pleased. I told her I didn’t care about the monitors and it didn’t matter. (These are the words of a woman in transition...but we didn’t know that.) Your mom kept telling me I had to do it for you so I obliged. The contractions were insane. I kept feeling like my whole body was pushing while also trying not to push. Lauryn kept telling me about how much my cervix would swell if I pushed without being ready and she kept telling me to breathe with them and to just not push. I tried my best. Your mom tried to keep me encouraged. She really was the best birth partner.

At 3AM, I’d had it. I could no longer describe anything and just could not bear having more contractions and not pushing. Your mom came through with essentially presenting an epidural as an option if we had a long road ahead. She reminded me that I had a code word and I could use it. She found language for me when I had none. She asked Lauryn to get someone in to check me. Lauryn was calling on the walkie about whether Jenna would allow someone else to check her patients and I jumped in saying, “I’ll wait for Jenna.” Essentially I was not letting this lady touch me. She hadn’t done anything wrong but I wanted Jenna. Jenna came floating in and I could finally see a bit. She was asking questions about how I felt and if I felt pushy without contractions and if I felt pressure. All I could tell her was that my butt hurt and I felt like I needed to push because the baby was coming. I felt like your head had been coming in and out for some time but as a first time mom, I had no idea. She asked me if I’d like to be checked so we could discuss pain management if need be, but when I said that you were coming she said, “Okay then, let’s have a baby.” She was so positive. She gloved to check me saying that I’d feel pressure and then quickly realized your head was coming out. All the birthing supplies arrived. She told me to push when I felt like it. Everything was so calm. The lights stayed low. It was so surreal. The ring of fire is no joke. I was suddenly terrified to push you out. I even asked if the contractions would just push you out....everyone laughed, but Jenna said that it was normal to be afraid and it was the hardest part but I was going to feel so much relief. I pushed. It hurt and burned and just scared the shit out of me. I waited until I felt like I should push again. I fussed at your mom for touching my leg, I couldn’t stand the pressure. I had one knee upright and the other bent to the side. Lauryn was still trying to monitor your damn heartbeat holding the monitor at the very bottom of my belly....she did start taking off all of the other monitors and things. I pushed a little more. Just baby pushes while I waited for the burning to stop. I was encouraged to lean into it and that they could see your hair. I pushed a little harder and literally all of you came out at 3:26. Your mom got to catch you and put your cheesy butt on me. I just cried. I couldn’t believe I’d made you, grew you, and birthed you. I was just in love.

I spent the next hour or so holding you and trying to convince you to nurse....you didn’t really go for it until a little later. While we waited for your cord to stop pulsing we did skin to skin. It was magical. Your mom cut the cord and I birthed the placenta. It came out mushy and strange. Jenna gave us a tour of it and then I got some stitches. I had a 1st degree tear. The lidocaine is god awful. It was literally the only time I screamed the entire labor. Jenna stitched me up and had to do another stitch after what she said was the last one. I was not pleased. lol. I was terrified of tearing but Jenna assured me I’d done everything right and I did a good job. Evidently I still needed reassurance even though i was holding you.

Needless to say I did everything I wanted to do in terms of an vaginal birth without an epidural. I am so grateful for the care providers I chose and the ones who showed up to make it happen. We’re so lucky to have you! Here’s to the rest of our lives, kiddo. Your momma loves you.

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alkalinerock · 5 years

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50 questions air

thank you @kisamas i love talking about myself

1. What takes up too much of your time? im double fisting ffxiv and three houses rn im swear im gonna beat nier one day and i recently got bloodstained so i might fuck around with that :)

2. What makes your day better? eating something tasty and then im happy :) i also like it when i talk w/ the pals makes me feel good

3. What’s the best thing that happened to you today? I am thinking about making mashed potatos i will i promise and it will b the best thing today

4. What fictional place would you like to go to? if i could visit some ffxiv maps like crystarium would b cool. n like, id visit inkopolis (i wanna b squiddo) and ryme city would be dope as hell would love a shinx buddy

5. Are you good at giving advice? i feel like i am but i feel like i still have so much more to learn about imparting wisdom. i was thinking about this the other night n as funny as this sounds i heard a lot of good advice on tumblr. mainly realizing how simple but important the small things are. “i’m proud of you” or “you did really well”. and i like giving advice i think it makes people feel less alone when theyre dealing with situations. if nothing else thats what i want to accomplish

6. Do you have a mental illness? idk i feel like i do but i never officially got diagnosed we got no health insurance. a lot of ppl tell me that im depressed and i think i believe it too but i always tell them im gonna remain impartial about it until i (finally) get a chance to talk to a profreshinal

7. Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? ya a few years ago after class id take like, a nap daily. and most of the times i wake up unable 2 move. sometimes im in like, a bad position where my face is a little too close to my pillow and its hard to breathe. i havent gotten it in a while but it sure does stink.

8. What musician inspires you the most? i dont think any musician INSPIRES me but octopath’s composer yasunori nishiki really makes me wanna be like “quit your job join my octopath band”

9. Have you ever fallen in love? yeah it rocked but things didnt always work out but i learned a lot in the end

10. What’s your dream date? never rly thought about this kinda stuff i dont really fantasize about my ideal date. i think the best things in life happen spontaneously. i think.

11. What do others notice about you? i like 2 talk about myself and that im cute and smart funny and handsome and my meat is huge :)

12. What’s an annoying habit you have? i play a lot of osu!taiko so i have this finger tapping habit and a lot of like anxious tics like shaking my leg i bite my nails n whatever i do this n that a lot

13. Do you still talk to your first love? yea we’re like still best friends

14. How many exes do you have? two too

15. How many songs are in your playlist? i have many playlists i have soundcloud playlists for like. anime music/future funk/game music/etc. my spotify playlists have like. hundreds of songs. my youtube playlist also have like. hundreds of songs. some things i listen to on a daily basis i havent even saved so it just keeps growing.

16. What instruments can you play? i used to b able to play geetar, piano, clarinent but ive forgotten everything since

17. What do you have the most pictures of? animals n other stuff

18. Where would you like to go before you die? oh wow uhhh like. i have general locations but nothing specific. it’d be nice to visit japan and see korea (finally) n then like new zealand. i know it doesnt sound exciting but i’d be happy to be anywhere.

19. What’s your zodiac? tavros

20. Do you relate to it? sometimes but i take astrology with a grain of sand anyways

21. What is happiness to you? chillin

22. Are you going through anything right now? tryin 2 get a job. get my AA.

23. What’s the worst decision you ever made? hmmm i have made many bad decisions but nothing stands on top as my worst. i think anything that falls under the category of “mistreating my friends because of my short-sightedness” is considered the worst.

24. What’s your favorite store? food stores

25. What’s your opinion about abortion? pro

26. Do you keep a bucket list? nop

27. Do you have a favorite album? no lol

28. What do you want for your birthday? uhm. better earphones?

29. What are people’s first impressions of you? im silly maybe

30. What age do you seem according to most people? a little younger than i am.

31. Where do you keep your phone while you’re sleeping? on the dresser next to my bed or like. on my bed next to me in a safe corner

32. What word do you say the most? idk maybe like. epic. or. legit. or fuck.

33. What’s the oldest age you would date? i donno lol maybe like. 1000.

34. What’s the youngest you would date? my age and above lol wtf

35. What job/career do most people say would suit you? any job that requires, like, talking. on two occasions ive heard ppl say that i have a voice suited for customer service (like, ehh?? i just talk politely lol) but like. counseling too i guess.

36. What’s your favorite music genre? most genres but lately ive been listening to anime op/eds and bideo game music and bandori songs and like. brockhampton or like. outrun. this n that.

37. If you could live in any country in the world, where would it be? i donno... i don really think about this stuff

38. What is your current favorite song? fire bird by roselia (lol)

39. How long have you had this blog for? for a while idr how long maybe like. 5 yrs

40. What are you excited for? these maybe mashed potatoes im gonna make LOL

41. Are you a better talker or listener? i think im both. i prefer to listen and i think depending on my conversation partner i think listening is more important

42. What was the last productive thing you did? i got out of bed brushed my teeth and got something to drink. i know its not much but ive really been makin an effort to improve my....””””mornings””””. ive been waking up at like 1-2pm these days so the least i could do is get my day started right

43. What do you want for Christmas? something rly good to eat!!

44. What class do you get the best grades in? i dont look at my grades LMAO i do like. OK on most of my classes but somtimes i make an oopsie whoopsie and lose a lot of points becuase im forgetful and stupid

45. On a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling right now? like. 7. 10 being like, i just ate something really great and im chillin w/ the homies. im 7 becase i ate something sorta tasty and im chillin but no homies. n im thinkin about the mash potatoe im going to maybe make

46. What can you see yourself doing in ten years? uhm. maybe teaching? doing something like, being sillay with my pals. i dont think about the future i just kinda just. Do.

47. When did you get your first heartbreak? never rly the breakups were my responsibility becos i was mentally immature so i tend to like, think about what i did wrong.

48. What age do you want to get married? ahh im not rly thinking about this but itd be nice to have a gf first LOL these future oriented questions be like. “idk!”

49. What career did you want to have as a child? yuusha

50. What do you crave right now? despite what ive been saying about thos mash potatoes i really want like. a good burger or somethin. i just wanna eat something free and tasty!!

@gurmza @learnosaurusrex @advancewars2 do it and please read over my answers very carefully i will test you on this on discord without warning

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derpyslurpy-da-derp-master · 5 years

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All the personal asks plz

Alrighty then!

1. Any scars?

Mhm, pretty much all the scars I have are burns. One is from burning the side of my arm on an iron my mom had standing upright that I brushed against trying to reach something on the counter behind it and I’ve got one or two other scars from my culinary class on my hands from trying to put a tray in the oven and bumping it on the rungs above the ones I was putting it on. I burnt my hand day one of actually cooking. Yes I’m a disaster.

2. Self harmed?

Absolutely not. One, I’m too scared of pain, and two, I have uh… An unpleasant history involving someone else threatening self harm to make me do what they wanted, so… It’s a really sore spot for me.

3. Crush?

I honestly have no idea.

4. Kissed anyone?

Nope

5. Coke or Pepsi?

Neither they make me physically ill

6. Someone you hate?

There’s a LOT of assholes at my school but the person I hate the most is probably my dad for reasons.

7. Best Friends?

Mhm! I’ve got a handful on this site but my IRL best friend is @theansweris-a. She doesn’t really get on tumblr anymore but if you’re reading this I love you friendo and have a good day! :D

8. Have you ever done alcohol or drugs?

hahaha fuCK NO. I’d rather not get addicted to something that can and will kill me and throw my money at people to sustain it. If someone offered me either I’d probably flip them off whilst slowly backing up and getting tf out of there because NO.

9. What’s your dream job?

Author/Illustrator with some VA work and Video Game directing on the side.

10. Ever been in love?

I have. It was with someone I didn’t have a chance with and who would be an absolutely awful lover to me since we weren’t compatible emotion-wise so I let it go. It was hard, but I did it.

11. Last time you cried?

Last Sunday trying to explain to my mom why our preacher and the church we go to has completely fallen out of my favor for it’s very loud blatant ‘LGBT people are bad abortion is evil insert other white conservative stuff here’ ‘cause she doesn’t know I’m LGBT+ (and it’s going to stay that way) and I was trying to explain to her why I would never say invite my LGBT friends to church because they would be mercilessly persecuted by people who call themselves followers of God then spit in his eye by doing the exact opposite of everything he’s asked of them. Yes I still feel really strongly about this.

12. Favorite color?

Cyan!

13. Height?

How coincidence, I just got it measured today! 5′6, FINALLY OFFICIALLY TALLER THEN MY MOM MUHAHAHAHAHA

14. Birthday?

November 17th!

15. Eye color?

Milk chocolately-brown

16. Hair color?

Dark brown

17. What do you love?

this is so open ended hjkfjfjkhgkjh okay then I love girls, video games, anime, writing, drawing, reading, and animals.

18. Obsession?

My top 3 in order of obsession; Kill La Kill, RWBY, and Kingdom Hearts.

19. If you had one wish, what would it be?

For every single illness, disease, syndrome, disorder, and so on to have a cure. From Cancer to Asthma. Both because I have so many incurable diseases/disorders and because I know there are people out there who have things so much worse than me in that department.

20. Do you love someone?

I love all my mutals, friends, and most of my family including extended family.

21. Kiss or hug?

I’ve never been kissed so I don’t know anything about how that would be so I’d say hug because I love hugs!

22. Nicknames people call you?

Derpy, Slurpy, D-Slur, Resident Cinnamon Roll (That’s my actual nickname on a Revue Starlight discord)

23. Favorite song?

this is like asking me to pick my favorite child uhhhhh… This Life Is Mine by Jeff Williams, it just means a lot to me.

24. Favorite band?

i know no bands by name

25. Worst thing that has ever happened to you?

….Okay, uh, this is gonna be really hard to decide because a LOT of bad things have happened to me. I’ll go with the more physical choice because I’d rather not dump too much of my emotional baggage onto yall. One time I was being prepped for surgery and they needed to get the IV in. (for the record I’m shaking pretty badly right now from thinking about this) They had to stab my arm with what they called a ‘Bee sting’ (it wasn’t a bee sting it goes almost down to the bone) that had numbing stuff in it and they were trying to find a vein they could put my IV in but they couldn’t find one (okay now i’m typing really fast so I don’t have to think about this for long) and they kept stabbing my arm over and over again. The thing is I have a serious phobia of needles that sends me into panic attacks, I’ll go lightheaded I’ll lose my hearing and so on. So I was trying to put a brave face on despite my parents not even being there but they would. not. stop. They didn’t give me a break. It was one stab then another then another then another. I was having a full blown panic attack, I was almost crying. Then they seemed to get it. They left me for a bit and my parents came in. My arm started swelling. They HADNT got it. My arm was being filled with whatever my IV was. They came back in with the beesting. They started stabbing me again but on the other arm. I couldn’t keep a brave face anymore after thinking they were finally done. I started to cry and sob and the panic attack I had that day was the single worst I have ever had. It got worse. They missed a vein entirely and instead hit a bundle of nerves. My hand started involuntarily twitching as pain unlike any I’ve ever felt before or until now wracked my arm. I had actual trauma from this, the night after the surgery I kept feeling ghost pains of the stabs in my arms, I had to sleep on my stomach with my arms wrapped around my front just to make them go away. I’m still extremely traumatized of this to this day. I never want to have surgery again. I never want an IV again.

Okay that got away from me there I’m sorry I kinda was having a panic attack while writing that. Anyways moving on.

26. Best thing that has ever happened to you?

This is gonna sound cheesy but meeting @theansweris-a. She’s the sweetest and kindest person I have ever met in my entire life and I feel so incredibly lucky to call her my friend, though knowing her she’ll see this and reply with ‘No U’ because we always end up in a shouting match of ‘YOU ARE A WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING’ ‘NO YOU’RE A WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING’

27. Something you would change about yourself?

I definitely would lose weight. Not because of societies bullshit but because I legitimately want to lose weight so I can actually get strong and build up some muscle, I WANT TO BE ABLE TO OPEN GATORADE BOTTLES GODDAMNIT

28. Ever dated someone?

Nope, I’m closeted and have no interest in even pretending I’m straight by dating a guy, I mean I know some genuinely nice guys (all of them dorks) but they’re all just my friends though they are massive goofballs and I love them very much. (Entirely platonically)

29. Worst mistake?

I… Don’t think you guys wanna know that. It’s nothing bad its just depressing and I don’t wanna be more depressing then I already have been.

30. Watch the movie or read the book?

Depends on which is better, like I’d rather watch the Chronicles of Narnia than read the books because the books are honestly terrible but I’d rather read Percy Jackson than watch the movie because the movies are incredibly unfaithful to the books.

31. Ever had a heartbreak?

Yeah…

32. Favorite show?

Kill La Kill!

33. Best day of your life?

My cheesiness never ceases but the first time I actually hung out with @theansweris-a IRL at the mall. I remember being SO excited for it but also nervous that how easily we talk to each other wouldn’t translate into real life and I remember spotting her walking up and practically shouting her name before running up and giving her a big ol’ hug whilst crying happy tears (I know i’m sappy shut up) and then when we were let loose to walk around we quickly discovered that we clicked almost immediately and incredibly well it was just the best thing ever. Like, in that one day alone we spent six hours in that mall just chatting and buying stuff and having fun and we left the mall with like three different inside jokes despite it being our first time meeting in person since we first met. Hi my name is Derpy and I’m a big ol’ sap.

34. Any talents?

I’m pretty good at writing, I can type really fast, and I can play the harmonica.

35. Do you wish you could ever start over?

Absolutely not. Things are the way they are for a reason, and even though I’ve been through a LOT it’s because of all that that I’m the person I am today and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

36. Any bad habits?

Yeah, I’m a nail biter.

37. Ever had a near death experience?

Yes actually, when I was 3 or 4 we took a plane to California to visit some relatives and I almost walked out of the air hatch one the way out, I remember this vividly even though it was a long time ago. If it wasn’t for the flight attendant grabbing me before I fell out, I wouldn’t be here today.

38. Someone I can tell anything to?

@theansweris-a and @my-words-are-light, they’re both really good listeners and have helped me through a lot of stuff.

39. Ever lost a loved one?

My Great Grandpa Ritch died shortly after I was born, there’s a lot of pictures of him smiling and holding me while in a hospital bed and hooked up to oxygen.

40. Do you believe in love?

Oh absolutely, 100%. I mean if you know me you already know that I have just ABSURD amounts of love in my heart and I genuinely believe that it exists.

41. Someone you hate/Dislike?

Wasn’t this already a question?

42. Are you okay?

Mostly, yeah. I have some stuff to work on but I’m honestly at the best i’ve ever been!

43. Relationship status?

I’m a Single Pringle

#Ask #Original

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loadingluke · 5 years

Text

Day of stage one RFF phalloplasty

Recovery days 1 and 2

FRIDAY 1/2

5:18am: I woke up 2 minutes before the alarm. Maddy and I woke up about the same time, I gave her a hug and we got ready for the day.

5:25am: I had a shower, my last shower before surgery. I washed myself with some antibacterial cleanser and brushed my teeth.

5:47am: Mum and Maddy had some coffee and tea, and I had nothing. We had a little bit of a chat before surgery.

6:03am: we left the house and headed to the hospital. We were all a little in shock by how bright it was. The sun was up when we woke up at 5:20! No daylight savings and just being a little more tropical I guess. There were heaps of people out and walking their dogs.

6:46am: we made it to the surgery check in counter- we got a little lost! Just waiting in line to check in. It was mainly done online so it shouldn’t take too long.

6:55am: everything is all sorted. I paid for my excess and now I’m just waiting for the nurse.

7:18am: I went in for my questions. Mum and Maddy waited outside. Then we went to the bay area and I changed out of my clothes and into my gown. Dr Goossen came in and went over everything again, so everyone knew what was going to be happening. He said he’d ring mum once i was out to keep her up to date.

7:32am: I was wheeled down into the anaesthetic room and met my anaesthetist, Dr Booth. He went over my history again and put an IV in my hand. I was wheeled into theatre, but due to some issue the surgery was delayed. I was given something to relax me while we waited to get the go ahead. I’m not sure how long I was waiting for or when the op actually started because of that, but I believe it was about half an hour? (edit: I found out later that it actually was an hour and a half, it definitely didn’t feel like that) The nurses were really nice, we talked about game of thrones, trashy TV and Harry Potter. By pure coincidence, thinking out loud by Ed Sheeran was playing- the same song that was playing when I was going under for my top surgery!

~5:20pm: I came to in recovery. I wasn’t in too much pain, my arm was all wrapped up and there was a lot of padding around the phallus. I felt surprisingly good. I had a button to press for fentanyl if I needed it. They did the doppler on the phallus to check blood supply, and I could hear that it was nice and strong. Hans and Scott came down to see how I was going and I got to actually see it....and I cried a little. Not my finest moment and probably to do with the meds, I was just so happy that It’s THERE! My pain was sitting at about a 3/10, and it was mainly sore on my butt incisions and my groin incision on the right side. I could wiggle my fingers well. My hand was a little cold so the nurse wrapped the gallows in a warm blanket to warm them up a bit- worked a treat! I was taken to my room.

~7:20pm: I got to my room, mum and Maddy were there. I was able to chat to them for a bit. I wasn’t allowed to eat anything but I had a little bit of water.

Overnight I had some routine obs done every hour. This involved my blood pressure, temperature and pulse being taken, a doppler on my phallus to check blood flow, wiggling my fingers and checking blood perfusion and finally my pain out of 10. Surprisingly, even with all of that every hour, I still had a pretty good sleep! My pain never got higher than a 5/10. My arm didn’t bother me too much either which is good. It was really weird sometimes. It felt like my arm was in a different position to where it actually was, for example in my head I thought it was lying across my chest when really it was in the sling hanging up. I would sleep pretty much from when the nurse left until she came back again.

I’ve got quite a few bits and bobs coming out of me, this is the setup we’ve got going on: My right arm is up and in a sling. I have a lot of padding around my groin, including a drain from my abdomen. There’s a drain coming out of my phallus and a catheter in my new urethra to keep it open, as well as one in my current urethra for voiding. In my left arm I have two IVs- one with my saline and fentanyl and one spare. I’m on oxygen for the time being as well. I have to wear compression socks and pumps on my legs as well to prevent swelling . A lot is happening and going on lol. My night was just sleeping and having my obs done.

SATURDAY 2/2

8:40 am: Hans came in with another urologist to take a look at how I was healing. He said I will probably get the drain out of the phallus on Sunday if it continues with how it has been healing which is good. He is happy with how the blood supply is going. He said the nerve hookup went well and that I should have pretty good sensation once the nerves grow back. We discussed the incisions behind the bum and I asked if they were stapled like how it’s done in the UK. Huzzah, sutured! I thought they would be but it was comforting all the same. The last thing I’d want would be to have staples removed from below my butt. He said that depending on who was around on Sunday I may be allowed to get out of bed which would be amazing. Fingers crossed.

9:00am: catering came by and I was given some breakfast. I had some toast and jam, and some orange juice.

I was also moved to be in right position as I couldn’t reach my breakfast properly. Two nurses moved me further up the bed so I was in a more comfortable position. First they laid the bed flat then slid a red-silk piece of material underneath me by getting me to roll onto my side and sliding the material underneath my butt. Then I rolled back onto my back, they pulled the material through so it was properly underneath me and then used it to pull me up the bed. I wasn’t strong enough in my legs to push myself up the bed.

9:20am: I had some blood taken. The guy who was doing it seemed a little confused as to why a 22 year old man was here all the way from Melbourne. I just went with it lol.

~9:30 am a nurse came in and have me hot towels for sponge bath. She left me to my own devices and wiped down face and body as that was all I could reach. It was refreshing. The nurse said she would change sheets later, probably tomorrow (Sunday) and I didn’t really think anything of it. Relaxed for a while and waited for Maddy, mum and a friend from school who happened to be in Brisbane to come and visit.

11:30 - just as my visitors arrived, two nurses came in and were confused as to why my sheets hadn’t been changed earlier and offered to do it for me. It was a similar process to how they move me further up the bed earlier with the silk. I rolled onto my side, they removed the old sheets and tucked the new ones under my butt. I then rolled onto my other side so they could pull the sheets through. They also replaced the absorbent sheet underneath me as I was oozing from my incisions a bit (perfectly normal but a little gross).

I had some time with my girlfriend, Mum and a friend from school. We hung out and had a bit of a chat which was nice. I felt quite awake and alert and was able to talk quite freely. They stayed until about 1:00pm, and also came back later at about 4:00pm. I had a nap in between. Throughout the whole day I also continued having hourly checks from the nurses.

SUNDAY 3/2

Overnight Saturday was similar to the first night but I was more restless so I didn’t sleep as well. It was very warm overnight, i has the fan on but my legs were still quite sweaty and itchy as a result of the combination of compression socks and the pumps on my legs as well as my leg hair. It was very itchy and hard to sleep because it kept tickling.

~8am on Sunday I had antibiotics and after that I had a sudden wave of nausea and felt like I would throw up. I told the nurse and she gave me a bag right away and I just allowed the wave to pass. I didn’t end up throwing up but I did come close to doing so. I was given some anti-nausea medication intravenously and that helped a lot.

~9:30am I asked if I could have my sheets changed as I felt really sweaty and clammy. It was pretty busy though so I had to wait for the nurses to be free. At about 10am Hans’ registrar came in and had a look at the phallus. There was minimal swelling and it was looking good so he removed the small drain from it. I couldn’t feel it. Once it was removed there was a little bit of bleeding coming out of the tip, but not much at all. He said everything was looking good. I video called some friends in Melbourne and then called Maddy to see what they were up to today.

~11:30am, a nurse came in to change over my sheets and give me a sponge bath. Boy, it was worth the wait! She wiped down my legs and changed my compression socks over, and then changed my sheets. It made me feel so much better, but did tire me out a bit. Maddy and Mum came over to visit me, and I had some fruit. Since Maddy is leaving Monday she got to stay for the day. We watched some TV together, but I was very exhausted so a lot of the time was spent with me asleep and her holding my hand (I love you for that Maddy, sorry I was so boring xx)

~3:30pm: Hans called me to see how I was traveling. He said I seemed to be doing well and said my blood work came back normal. He said he’d be in Monday morning to check up on me, and that I should be able to get out of bed then! How exciting!

~6pm Mum came back and her and Maddy helped get me some dinner. I had some decaf tea and juice, and that definitely helped give me a little more strength. I’ve got some fruit next to me that I can pick at overnight if I’m feeling peckish.

~6:30pm mum and Maddy left. Dr Ingram came down to check on me and he was also happy with how it was all going. He said he would touch base over the next few days and to let him know if I have any questions.

7:13pm: my last hourly check! The past 48 hours have been absolutely exhausting, mainly because I had to be woken up every hour for my check ups! Now that it’s been 48 hours I can drop down to checks every 2 hours. Doesn’t sound like much but I’m very keen for that.

9:27pm: I had the second spare cannula removed from my hand- it was just getting annoying at this point. My IVs also were falling off due to the tape, so a nurse has given me a little glove to keep them in place, and it’s worked a treat.

10:03pm: I’ve just finished off these notes and I’ll post them ASAP. All in all, pain has stayed consistent at about 3-4/10. Still have an IV and my arm in the sling. Still have my fentanyl button and oxygen. Legs are still in the pumps. I still have a catheter but that should come out tomorrow, along with my abdominal drain.

The catheter in the phallus will stay there, along with all the padding around it and my arm until I leave the hospital. I’m feeling a little more mobile, I can move my legs a little and scoot up if I’m too low on the bed, but that’s all the movement I’ve really been allowed to do for now. I’m gonna sleep now and will update in the morning hopefully when I’m allowed out of bed!

Thanks for all the kind words and support and I hope this has been helpful/interesting 😄

#phallo #ftm #trans #transgender #trans man #trans guy #dr goossen #phalloplasty #stage 1 #rff #rff phallo #lukes phalloplasty

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