Quick fixes (Josie, Peter)
The issue that Josie hadn’t anticipated, when she’d gone to Yvonne to say shoot me full of drugs and make me feel human, was that Yvonne didn’t have those drugs just… lying around.
Sure, she’d been working on different theories about what different formulas might work, but there was not a syringe at the ready. Josie was at the ready. Josie had been building herself up to this for what felt like a very long time and to be told she would have to wait maybe a couple of weeks – that was hard. That was almost ‘sweep everything off the table and pin Yvonne to the wall by her neck to hurry her along’ hard.
Almost. She hadn’t moved from her seat, but she’d pictured it vividly, refusing to look at anyone in the room in case they could tell what she was thinking. She suspected Peter could read her like a book, even if she avoided his eye. Josie stared down at her fingers and saw shadows creeping across her skin. She blinked, deliberate and hard, and they were gone.
Yvonne had taken quite a lot of blood samples to play with, and warned her she would probably need more. Josie also refused to look at the needle going in. Josie refused to look at anyone for the rest of the visit because as soon as the violet urges passed they were replaced with the distraught need to cry and she didn’t want to do that either.
“Fine,” she said, when Peter asked her how she felt after. Fine yep, yep, good. And then she locked herself in her room and put her back against her door and twisted both hands in her hair, pulling till her scalp felt like it was on fire.
Two weeks, maybe, before Yvonne had something she could try.
Two weeks, maybe. Josie didn’t know how she was going to survive it. She didn’t log in and meet Jinx online that evening, instead went up to the roof and paced and tried to think of some way to escape her head without physically escaping the hospital.
When she broke into Peter’s office later that evening it wasn’t to find Peter, or to leave a note on the skull. It was for his totally not secret supply of alcohol. She was aware this was a terrible idea, but she didn’t give a shit. There wasn’t enough in his office to get so wasted she’d pass out for two weeks but it didn’t matter, Josie barely knew how she was going to get through tomorrow.
His bottle of scotch was almost full. Josie knew where it was from last time she broke in and had been snooping around, but that bottle had been half empty. This bottle was almost full. Josie pulled it out and sat in Peter’s chair and stared at it. She should… do something about it. Josie was pretty self obsessed in her misery but not so much that she didn’t recognise Peter drinking this much was a bad sign.
No, you know what? She thought, as she opened the bottle and downed a couple of burning mouthfuls. Not my problem.
Her problem was how she was going to survive in this state of hellish limbo for two more weeks.
Her problem was how to stop herself snapping Yvonne’s neck if she didn’t hurry up.
Her problem was drinking this as fast as she could because it took an ice pick to her brain and broke the worst chunks off into the dark.
Soon the urge to hurry Yvonne along faded, and the worry about Peter faded, and Josie sat with her knees up on Peter’s chair, reading through old messages from Jinx and hugging the bottle like it was an old friend.