Participants:
| Scene Title | God Gives Us… |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | … pain for a reason. Whether it's physical or emotional. Post-op, Cash tries to help her mother with the former, when arguing over the latter and how to resolve it. |
| Date | August 17, 2011 |
The Garden has rooms, a few of them used for people passing through, emergency's, ships passing in the night. Long ago, Abby had lived here for a month or two in her first brush with Colette and needing to hide out. This same room was the one that she had used then as she does now, supine on the bed with eyes closed, swift shallow breaths. A day passed, and still alive. Not that she wants to frankly be alive. Sheets cover her, give scant more modesty than nightshirt can provide.
"It hurts" A hoarse whimper, right hand white knuckled and twisting in the sheet when it's gotten a bit more than she can breath through. This is not like New Years, or even Easter. The blonde/brunette in the bed isn't crying over a husband who's claimed to have cheated on her or found out to be someone else entirely. "It hurts Kasha" Eyelids flutter open and look for the blonde that she knows is nearby, takes comfort in knowing is nearby. "Is it time for more painkillers yet?" Please say yes. Please say yes. She wants some relief, even if it'll make her loose lipped and loopy.
There's no need to modesty around daughters, or so the daughter might say if the worries were voiced. They aren't, but it shouldn't be any surprise when she moves from the edge of the bed toward the bottle of pills. Not nearly as strong as they could be, but stronger than nothing. When she brings them over, she comes with a tray. A tray holding a glass of water and a bagel with spread. "You should eat something with it, so that you do not upset your stomach." Worse than a bullet being in her lower body would have, at least.
While she hovers nearby, ready to help with the pill taking and even the spreading on the bagel if needed, she looks relieved. For anyone else it would be hard to see, but Abby's seen her enough to catch the hints. For her it's the equivelent of a loud exhale, and it's barely a shift of her lips and the blinking of her lashes.
"How do you feel? Besides the obvious pain. Do you need me to send for one of the better doctors?"
"You'd have sent for Megan or Francois if you thought that you had messed up" She knows this much to be true. Abigail trusts that Cash would have had the smarts that god gave a person to do so, if she thought that she had screwed up in the patching up of the woman who would be her mother. She eye's the painkiller, shifting with panting breaths to get to a position where she can at least take the pill and water.
The thought of eating anything roils a stomach already traumatized from poking and prodding, makes her grimace more than she's already doing and shake her head to the offer of a bagel. Before, in days pre-susan ball, there'd have been saline bags, stronger painkillers riding in on the push of a plunger and facilities that while inadequate to do surgery in, were better than a musty house kept as a emergency squat. "I want my Momma" She feels embarrassed to say it, being a fully grown woman.
"I did what I could to make sure, but God gives pain to let us know when we need more," Cash says simply, reaching up to smooth back the woman's hair. "You will just have to settle for me, for the moment. Though I am a poor substitute, I know." A full grown daughter who spent thirty years with the woman who's nearly ten years younger than her at the moment. Ten years younger, twenty years older. All at once.
"You really should try to eat, but if you prefer I can fetch some chocolate milk to do the same thing." A mild coating for the queazy stomach.
"God gave us the ability to make percocet to make it go away when we know what's wrong and it will take time to heal" Time. Something Cash bought her mother with the help of Monica, Quinn and Raith. "Milk" She'll take the milk. Can stomach - hah - that. "Good substitute" She closes her eyes, tears leaking from the corners, forehead hot beneath the touch of cooler hands from her Ability and maybe more. Another day, more drugs will make their way there. "Better than no one. Better than a monkey"
"Give the monkey two minutes and she will be back," Cash says with a smile, leaning over to press cool lips against the warm forehead. The warmth makes her hesitate a moment, before she adds in a soft tone, "If you feel the need and you can not stop it, give me a little warning so I can get you outside. The Ferry does not have so many buildings that they can afford to lose this one."
And hopefully that warning will not be needed for longer than the next two minutes, when she quickly goes to the kitchen to retrieve the milk and the powder to flavor it. As she returns, there's the sound of spoon clinking against glass as she sturs.
From others, she might take it as a lecture. From Cash, she takes it as it is. An offering and solution. She nods her heads a fraction, waiting, breathing, formulating in those few minutes what she wants to say to the woman when she comes back, opening eyes to watch the spoon go round and round, anticipating the relief that is going to come.
"I can't combust. If I do, you'll have to go back in, sew me back up again. I'll die if I combust" in the time between returning to normal and able to implode again, she'd internally bleed out. "Stitches would burn away" Which explains the wavering but tight control on things and the asking for pain medicine far more often than one really should even if it's not the great stuff.
"you can go to Robert" She looks up, up at the blue eyes. "You can go to him, tell him what you need for me. He'll get it for you" She hopes that he would get it for Cash, if she asked. "Francois, he might have some, tucked away somewhere. Or know how to get it. Teo's good at getting things" Lots of people in the Ferry are good at getting things.
The spoon stops sturring at the mention of 'Robert'. Still 'Robert'. With a harder clink to get rid of droplets of milk into the glass, Cash holds the chocolatied milk forward and settles down next to the bed again. "I would not go to him." The first man, not the second, though Francois doesn't seem to calm her as much as one might have expected, either. "I will see what I can dig up from others, though." And Teo or Francois or Megan may be showing up any day now—
"I hired Raith to kill him" COnfession over the rim of the cup, glassy eyes regarding her to be daughter over the sea of dark colored milk. It's slow going to get pills, into mouth, then lips over the rim, get help to tilt the cup enough to wash everything down with a minimum of fuss and effort that leaves her exhausted and sinking back into the pillow and dirty lashes to meet their lower lid counterpart.
"He never did. He never did and I'm glad he didn't. He was going to take me, meet him. I want, I want to know the truth, from his lips." She cracks her eyes open, cheek turned into pillow and waiting for the drugs to kick in, kick things down a notch. "I want to ask him to leave, to leave here, go away, go to italy with you and me. I don't want him to die, I realized. He punished enough, when he looks in the mirror"
"No," Cash says simply, firmly, a kind of emotion tightening her voice. It's hard to tell which one it is. It's not an emotion she's used to letting show, or used to feeling at all, really. "You can not. You know what he is now. I know you are lonely, but you can not— He is not Robert, Mother. It is fine if you do not want him to die, but do not give your life to him. Your marriage to him was invalid, since he was not the man he claimed to be. You are free to meet and marry another."
"A rose by any other name…" Smells just as sweet. Even if the soil it grew it was full of shit. She lays there in the bed, white around the corner of her equally pale lips. Not a conversation she imagined having in this state, not a conversation that she had imagined ever having period, with this specific individual. Or even one that comes out on fast shallow breaths.
"The heart wants, what the heart wants Kasha. Of course I'm lonely. You are too, since you lost Lance. I don't need a dream, to know that. You gave your heart to him and I to Robert" The woman lives in a basement, she wears his ring around her neck, like Abby carted around the molten remains of hers in a pocket at one point.
"What would it hurt me to ask. What would it hurt me to know the reasons why for the deceptions? I know what I did in the future. I've seen the guilt, felt it like it was real" As real as the pain and ache the sits in her abdomen and keeps her in the bed, keeps her pale not just from blood loss. She turns her palm over, spreading quaking fingers wide in a silent request to hold her hand.
"What did you learn from me, growing up, about people"
For an instant, Cash's eyes look away, downcast, as if she's trying to hide the emotion that crosses her eyes. For an instant the expression seems to show pain, but that fades into a guarded expression when she looks back up. "Do not compare my husband to yours. Lance never gave me a reason not to love him with all my heart. And any fights we had— it is like comparing pebbles to mountains."
The tone of her voice lightens after growing a little harsh for a moment. She almost looks as if she wants to apologize for saying that, but she doesn't. Not outloud.
Any apology is only in her eyes, and only for a moment.
"I love you, mother, but whatever dream you saw, you do not know the whole of it, and no dreams can ever tell you. Not the full depth. It is one thing I never wanted you to know, and still would not wish you to know ever again— However— perhaps you deserve the right to know why— But I do not trust that he would tell you the truth."
"Lance, is not like Robert. I'm not trying to compare the two. Just our loneliness." She leaves her hand open to to be taken, going back to closing her eyes, waiting for the pills to dissolve in the milk that sits in her stomach, wait for it to take that edge away. "Just our loneliness" That's had a choke hold on her.
"Will you forgive me, for seeing him at least one more time? I try to keep my promises. I'd be breaking what I promised you"
There's another long pause, before Cash finally reaches her hand out to accept the offered one. She still looks as if she wants to apologize, from the way her eyes shift downward. "I will amend the promise, for your sake…" she offers instead of an apology. "Do not go to see him alone. I will not ask to be the one to go with you— it can be someone else— but do not meet him alone. I do not know what happened when you— when you found out before."
When she killed her husband.
"For all I know the answer of why may be the reason that you killed him— and I would not have you to do that again." Her hand squeezes the fingers she holds, "Not for his sake, but for yours."
"I was planning on bringing Raith with me. A sensible practical mind" She tightens her fingers around Cash's, fingers perhaps a shade too tight, letting the other womans grip steady hers. "Someone to kick my arse. I'll go negated too, if you want. To make sure. It's not going to be for a while now" Not with a fresh set of stitches and a fished out bullet out of her middle. The back of her eyelids plays host to a myriad of colors, like a kaleidoscope, tricks of the mind as she breaths through her nose and out.
"Tell me something. About… about us. From there."
"Raith is a good choice," Cash says in a quiet kind of agreement, still looking down more than not, where their hands touch. Her hands have callouses of work on them in more than a few places, but they are softer than the stone that she could take on if she chose. "And I will leave the decision on negation to you— I do not think it necessary, as long as you keep your distance." No hugging and kissing goes unstated.
A slow inhale is heard as if the breath will make her thoughts easier. But they are not easy. Because how does one summarize a lifetime in a short time, with words. With someone who would have been there— if the lifetime hadn't changed. "I helped build you a house a few years ago. You had always wanted a house that was your own— not just one that we found. It was built out of stones and materials salvaged from other buildings, but it was yours. We gave it to you for your birthday." There's a smile during her pause, before she adds, "For your forty-fifth birthday."
"A perfect present. For an old maid" Not that forty-five is particularly old, but it makes her smile to think that she will at least reach past forty-five. "Did it have a garden? I can't imagine, that it never had a garden, not with the way things grow in your basement or… or the rose garden in the Corinthian" She lays perfectly still, letting her lids lift as much as the weight of them lets her.
"Did I know you came back?" She still holds tight to the other woman. "Or did you go without telling me?"
"You have not known me for very long, so I will forgive the need to ask that," Cash murmurs with a hint of amusement. Only a hint, but from her it seems the same as someone else giggling at the very thought. "You knew. You knew of the plan before I did, actually— you told me of it." Such discussions weren't made with her around, it would seem. "I imagine you would have hid it from me if you did not think I would take the chance, but even if you had not been the one to tell me of it, I would have told you before I left."
"You were a good daughter. You sound like you were the best daughter I could ever have and I bet, that you going back makes me proud than sad. At least… at least I have a house there, to remember you by. A beautiful stone house" Breath still works in and out, shallow, fast, from between lips or sometimes from out her nose. Tears still silently work their way out in a never ending path. "Just sit with me Kasha. Just, just tell me about this house that you built. It helps me" Will help her till someone can come out, with stronger stuff, or she asks that her future daughter just up and chloroform her again.
"I believe brick is the better term, though the inner walls and roof were made of wood and other things," Cash says with that hinting smile. "It was simple. Four rooms, but four rooms were more than you needed." Without all the modern conviences, who needs more than that, she might be tempted to say. Her own apartment had been small and simple. "The yard had a garden, your garden, though I helped get you started. Sometimes you needed more help on that— I did not live far away."
The stories continue, simple tales about mundane things. The furnature, the painted walls, the decorations, what little they managed to have.
And the topic of husbands seems to be avoided this time.