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Scene Title | Get Em By The Neck And Snap |
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Synopsis | Abby flips out on the Vegan. |
Date | June 27, 2010 |
Ambulance Idling in the city.
Another day in the rig, and it's a few hours into the shift. Trevor and Abby have been kept fairly busy, which means that, up until now, Abby has been spared his preaching about veganism. Lucky her! There's just been a few random comments before calls came in, cutting off conversation. But things have calmed down now, which is surely a cue for Trevor to start converting Abby to the side of light and bland food. It probably has something to do with the fact that he's munching on some sort of odd gyro-looking thing.
"You want one, Abby? It really tastes good. I bet you wouldn't even be able to tell that it's not chicken." It doesn't even look like chicken. Unless it were a deformed or radioactive chicken. "You wouldn't believe what they do to chickens anyway. You'd never want to eat another one again." Which puts a gleam in his eye. Maybe convincing her to reform her animal-eating ways is to show her a few well chosen youtube videos.
"I slaughtered my own chickens Trevor, back home in Louisiana. Momma taught me when I was seven" She's tired, running on her umpteenth cup of coffee and Peter got assigned to someone else today for some reason. "You gotta get em by the neck and just snap, then twist" Abigail mimic's the motion with her hands, as if she were really holding onto the turkey. "You get a good enough grip, the head just comes right off Trevor. Little bit of blo- well, no, a lot of blood, and if you put it on the ground, it'll run to the nearest person like some sort of extra sense"
She really had/ slaughtered a chicken before. Trevor was grating on her nerves today and she'd been really nice to him, given that she'd seen his death in novemeber. "Really good for you actually, to process the chicken yourself instead of buying it from the store. No additives or washes that have all the harmful chemicals. There's just something about fresh chicken cooked over the barbeque"
They're parked in a fire lane, waiting for the next call. Him in the passenger seat, she's stretched out in the back with an arm throw over her eyes. She had been attempting to nap, but he was preventing that.
Trevor looks horrified. Absolutely horrified. It also looks like he might point accusingly and call her a murderer. But somehow, he refrains. Well, for a few shocked seconds anyway. "You slaughtered chickens?! But…that's…that's…murder! Don't you know that chickens are just as sentient as humans? You may as well have popped the head off a person!"
"Trevor, if they weren't meant to be eaten, they would move faster. Cows would move faster, lambs would move faster." She twists in spot, bending backwards a fraction, fixing her gaze on the dark haired individual. "Listen, trevor, have you taken jesus into your heart? Have you opened your heart and asked the lord to come in, redeem you? Take the light into your soul and redeem you for your sins?" She moves again, sitting up on the stretcher, reaching over to lay a hand on his arm as her own irritation hits an all time high by the combination of caffeine, little sleep, Flint and burying a body in a grave.
"I'm concerned for the welfare of your soul. I'm afraid that when the time comes, when your time comes to face calvary Trevor, that you won't be going to the holy kingdom with the rest of us"
Trevor sputters for a moment. "You're worried about the welfare of my soul? I'm not the one who goes around murdering innocent animals and eating them! It's cannibalism!" Okay, maybe not quite, but fanatics - or near fanatics - rarely make tha tmuch sense.
"Trevor"
Abigail looks at him before shaking her head. "Have you wondered at all, why you don't seem to have a stable partner in a rig? That you get shuffled off with whomever's partner is absent?"
The question has Trevor looking absolutely baffled. "I…what? What are you talking about?" The change of topics so quickly has thrown him completely off.
"It's disrespectful what you're doing. Trying to push your belief on other people. Trevor, no one likes to go in the rig with you, because you object so vehemently to their lifestyle choice. You're like.. You're like a Jehovah's witness only, I'll take a Jehovah's witness over you because at least when I start talking about being a Baptist and saving souls, they just hand me the watchtower and back away. But you" Abigail takes her hand back, scowling.
"You just keep pushing it, like you need to desperately convert me to veganism. And I'm sick of it okay? Yes, I know that to you, and others, slaughtering my own chicken, is disgusting and horrid and inhumane, but I like chicken. I like the way it tastes when you put some honey on it and cook it over flame. I like it poached and then shredded, mixed with mayo, pickles and celery so that I can put spoonfulls of it on a toasted bun and eat it with a cool glass of cola"
"But you're being a jerk and an asshole Trevor. To folks who are being nothing but nice and tolerating your attitude towards them. You're driving poor Peter nuts. I had someone heal me, and it wasn't a nice healing, so that I could get back to work and sperate you two because he was going crazy day after day with you. He laughed when I told him what was going to ha-" Abigail cuts herself off. Fall silent.
Well now, this is a side of Abby that Trevor hasn't seen before. And probably never wanted to see. He gapes at her for a moment, before his mouth starts moving, though no words make it out. Then he sits up a little straighter, trying to look as dignified as he can. Dignity doesn't suit him as well as he thinks it does.
"I'm not that bad," he argues, shaking his head. "I'm just trying to help. You should understand that. Why else would you have this job? It's just more healthy and moral not to eat animals. I feel great, and I want you guys to feel great too!"
"This job has nothing to do with helping animals. This job has everything to do with me once being a healer and some equally assholish asshole coming along and taking that from me. Ripping my ability out and leaving me with a big fucking hole in me that I needed to fill. That is why I have this job Trevor. Because it's a way for me to still heal and to feel useful to the world. I can't take away their hurts anymore, but at least, with this job and with more training, I can learn to make it hurt less and bring them a little bit of comfort that they might not get."
"Seriously, do you hear yourself Trevor? I wont' ever feel great like you. I'm on drugs to help me feel better, drugs that do a really good job of me wanting to twist off your head like the chickens when I was younger. What have you done in your life trevor? You're like what, just tipping over into your thirties? I have a letter of thanks from the president and I will never have to pay taxes for the rest of my life for service to my country. They don't hand that out willy nilly. You earn that like you do medals of presidential what have you"
Out of the back she comes, crawling her way up into the drivers seat. "And I am healthy. I have a diet that was tailored to me, that involves plenty of vegetable and what have you and I don't need you telling me what I should be eating, drinking, dressing, and otherwise dictating how you feel my life should be run. You're not me, you're not any of us that you get all preachy to. So I advise that you had better shut your mouth Trevor, before I file a complaint with the company for harassment, and there are plenty others in our job who would be able to help me justify your unwanted and unwelcome advances on my personal beliefs and choices"
Down into her seat the pink haired woman goes."And before you say anything My hair is naturally dyed. An evolved individual did it with their ability, so no there was no animal testing done"
This wasn't how the conversation was supposed to go. He was supposed to get to try his tofu wrap, that was all. He wasn't supposed to end up feeling sheepish and ashamed. Which has his defenses up, just a bit. But he's not a stupid man, not really. He couldn't be and do this job. So he takes a minute to consider her words, to think them over and carefully formulate his own reply. But it's not easy to come up with a retort to that that doesn't just prove her point of his asshole tendencies.
Trevor nods slowly. "I…see. Well, I'll never understand wanting to eat animals. It's just not in me." That's honest, and not too offensive…not by itself. "Can't promise to stop altogether either," he says with a shrug, lessening the impact of his last comment. "I really do just want to help. But I'll…I can try to be less…pushy," he says with a mild grimace.
"Well I'll never understand atheist or agnostics Trevor, doesn't mean I'm going to shove a bible in their face and yell at them to repent, redeem themselves" Peter had better appreciate this. Her blowing up at the man. She doesn't think that it will much change how he behaves since he pretty much just told her he won't stop altogether.
"Keep your opinions to yourself, when you're in my rig, on all things vegan and I won't go all preachy on you anymore Trevor. That's the deal. Same for Peter. Leave him alone. It's not easy being the Presidents baby brother. He's got stuff on his plate and doesn't need to hear you prattle on and on and on about saving the world one chicken at a time"
No nap was going to be forthcoming, so she might as well get to driving around, find a parking lot proper and wait for a call. "Do me a favor too. Don't come in to work on the 8th Trevor, of November. It's in your best interests"
He can't try to convert her or Peter? Well hell. "Yeah, okay," Trevor mumbles about the ban on all things vegan. It may not last, but it seems like he'll try. But then he frowns. "Why shouldn't I come in to work on the eighth?"
"I'm not going to say, and you're not going to come into work that day. Go take a vacation, go to Italy, burn some carbon footprint or go volunteer at some hippie commune in like, Nebraska." The engine turns over, cool air refreshing in the rig though it hadn't heated up too badly. "That's all you're getting out of me. Finish your tofu.. stuff already. I don't want you smearing it all over a patient"