Annemarie Griselda Braun Wellington-Green (ex_sabotaged224) wrote in incheck, @ 2010-08-11 13:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, annemarie wellington-green, james london, luc rossi |
WARNING: Unpleasant subject material within. See the rating for more detail.
WHO: Annemarie Wellington-Green, James London, Luc Rossi, and others implied.
WHAT: A car accident! Relevant to anyone close to AM, James, or the WG family!
WHERE: Washington Hospital Center
WHEN: Wednesday & Thursday -- I didn't want to clog up the friend page, so this is the relevant information for the next two days all rolled into one! ♥
RATING: Involves lots of emotional trauma and a miscarriage! Be warned!
12pm - 8pm
AM: Everything was a blur, interrupted occasionally by bursts of coherency before drifting back into a groggy state of uncertainty. Annemarie did not (and would not later) distinctly remember the mundane details that led up to situation she now found herself trapped within, but the fact remained that they were completely ordinary. For a woman filled with so much stress and the almost instinctive desire to sabotage herself, it had ultimately been the actions of another that had led her to the emergency room. She recalled, briefly, catching the sight of the semi-truck out of her peripheral vision as the driver of the truck disregarded the changing of his light from yellow to red. She felt the impact on the back half of her car and the heavy jolt was difficult to forget, as was the dizzying spin the contact sent her into. She didn't recall the car leaving half of its wheels and beginning to roll down the embankment. She couldn't remember the harsh impact her head made with the window that was the primary source for her lack of memory.
Annemarie was uncertain how long she spent unconscious and suspended in her upside-down (and totaled) vehicle by her seatbelt, but she vaguely heard the somewhat muffled sound of the firefighters and EMT workers who carefully extracted her from the car. A benefit of her harsh impact was the lack of distinct pain that she felt, though she apparently relieved those tending to her by acknowledging briefly that she could feel her arms and legs. The gracious distribution of painkillers kept the pain from overwhelming her and she drifted in and out of consciousness for the ride to the hospital.
She was under anesthesia for many of the following, lengthy hours, allowed to drift off of it as soon as her condition had stabilized. Considering the impact, her survival was surprising, but the lack of any sort of extreme, life-threatening injury was a miracle. Given the intensity of what she'd experienced, her injuries could (for the most part) almost be considered fairly minor: a dislocated left shoulder, a sprained right wrist, four broken ribs, a concussion and a black eye, and a various assortment of nasty bruises and cuts. As she drifted into consciousness, many of these injuries were apparent to her as they ached dully. It was, however, with a groggy sense of panic that she realized that something was horribly wrong. Her eyes flashed around the room quickly (though this version of "quickly" was fairly sluggish), the machine that monitored the steady beating of her heart indicating a sudden elevation. She attempted to pull herself upright, groaning faintly and weakly as the movement sent jolts of pain through her broken body.
A terrifyingly familiar sense of emptiness engulfed her and she bit down on the inside of her lip as she attempted to move her hands to her stomach, needing confirmation that her horrible thought was false. Not again. This fucking couldn't be happening again. Frustration filled her as she helplessly attempted to use her arms only to discover that the one that was injured was somewhat useless and the other was connected to a series of wires that had somehow tangled themselves. "Get these off," she said quietly, repeating it almost in a whimper in her weak state of panic as she tried in vain to pull the IV from her arm.
JAMES: Annemarie not showing back up to work after lunch hadn't seemed particularly significant, at the time. They still didn't know each other very well, true, but James had picked up on the fact that Annemarie got sort of restless when she was feeling stressed; she could easily have just decided not to come back in for the rest of the day, on some sort of hormonal whim. Plus, they didn't work in the same department and James hardly kept tabs on what Annemarie was doing every day, mother of his child (his child, the words still felt discordant and unfitting, even when James didn't voice them) though she may have been. So he'd barely noticed. Just reflected upon the thought for a few seconds before putting it out of his mind and getting back to the spreadsheet he owed Slater.
He'd been working on that same spreadsheet - almost finished, just a few more cells to go - when the phone call came. James had given Dr. Zhao his cell phone number the first time he'd accompanied Annemarie on one of her OBGYN appointments, but he'd never thought she'd actually use it. He hadn't even registered the name that popped up on Caller ID, not really, just picked up assuming surveyors from the hospital were calling yet again. He'd recognized Dr. Zhao's voice, though, and even more than that, her tone. The soft but firm way she'd said Mr. London? had made the icy cold tendrils of dread start clawing their way up from James' stomach before the words There's been an accident, the baby-- could fall from her mouth.
James hadn't run for his car immediately after the line went dead, instead sitting at his desk numbly for a few long minutes, the shock washing over him, cell phone still to his ear. And when he finally did move, walking from the office to the parking garage, and then driving to the hospital, it felt almost surreal. It was difficult to believe this was really happening, that he wouldn't wake up from an entirely too realistic dream any second. It didn't start feeling real until after James had parked his car, entered the hospital, passed by Annemarie's family in the waiting room (and how had he been granted a private audience in the first place?), and got a glimpse of the damage for himself. Seeing Annemarie post-crash, hooked up to a bunch of monitors, bruised and broken-looking, made James feel incredibly tired. Incredibly overwhelmed. Jesus fuck, he didn't know how to deal with this. Maybe he should just leave. Let Annemarie's dads tell her what had happened, or Dr. Zhao. It'd probably be better that way, anyway, hearing the news from people she knew and trusted, as opposed to him.
But before he could make up his mind, Annemarie's eyes fluttered open, and James found himself moving forward, plying her fingers from the multitude of wires winding their way across her left arm as gently as possible. "Hey," he murmured, "Hey, don't do that."
AM: The first glance she shot to James was wild and almost accusatory, though it was clearly a result of her current state rather than any instant recognition of who he was and why he was there. She tensed a bit at the feeling of his hand against her fingers, but wasn't strong enough to fight their actions in spite of her strong desire to do so. She needed the wires out, though she wasn't sure why this was so important. "Get them off. Please," she said, pleading with him to do so. "I need to check the baby and my other hand is hurt." Annemarie knew the truth , deep down. She could feel the vacancy within her and the ache was far too familiar. However, she was not certain if she could handle admitting the truth to herself just yet. There was still a chance and, if she could do nothing else, she needed to have the opportunity to discover the reality of her situation as much on her own as possible.
JAMES: James startled a little when Annemarie looked at him, but he kept his grip on her hand firm. "I - no," he replied, the tone of her voice making him waver, a little. "You can't take them out, Annemarie. You're hurt. You've - the baby -" And this was it, this was the moment he was supposed to tell her that the baby was dead, that the crash had killed him. James was having trouble forcing the words out of his mouth, though. He just stood there, speechless, one hand clasped around Annemarie's, still keeping her from tugging at the wires. "The baby -" he began again, clearing his throat. "He - it - he didn't survive the crash."
AM: When he began to explain, she froze. The silence that came after he faltered the first time was tense and she was thoughtless, focused intently on him to wait for him to continue. The second attempt to start made her heart sink deep into her stomach (which, simultaneously, felt as though a dagger was being driven into it). By the time he finally was able to get the words out, she was lost. She stared at him for a few very long seconds, her brain attempting to wrap itself around the news. She inhaled sharply, tears springing to her eyes involuntary and starting to roll ungracefully down her face as sobs overtook her. She sank into herself, pulling her eyes from his to refocus elsewhere as she bit down on her lip. "He didn't survive the crash," she repeated vaguely. "This can't be fucking happening again."
JAMES: James felt a flare of panic flash through him when Annemarie began crying. "Shhh," he muttered quietly, releasing his grip on her hand to pat her arm in what was supposed to be a reassuring manner, but felt almost painfully awkward. He didn't know what to say. The customary words he used when dealing with crying people were generally 'everything's going to be alright' or 'it's fine, you're going to be fine' but none of that could have been further from the truth. He settled for just staying quiet and resting his hand on Annemarie's shoulder. Which seemed wrong, somehow, but James was reluctant to withdraw it until Annemarie flinched or told him to. Didn't some people like being touched when they were upset? Another's physical presence was supposed to be comforting, wasn't it? James' mind was swimming with uncertainty and he felt vaguely panicky, still. However, he was distracted from his own thoughts by Annemarie's words. "What, again?" he blurted out, before he could think to stop himself.
AM: Annemarie wasn't focused on his presence and essentially forgot that he was there, her mind consumed with the sharp burst of pain that came from this massive failure in her life. This had been her very last chance to have a child on her own, as there was no way she'd risk losing yet another baby. She felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for the fact that she hadn't completely wanted the child in the first place, and felt worse that she'd actually mentioned it out loud to Luc not long ago. Another sharp gasp for breath escaped her at his question and she looked to him, reminded suddenly that he was still there. "Lost one before. Eleven years ago," she said, then continued quietly. "You don't have to stay."
JAMES: "Jesus," James muttered, mouth set into a thin line. What else was there to say? It wasn't like he could even come close to comprehending what Annemarie was going through, and trying to muster up standard condolences just seemed stupid. Her telling him he could leave, though, caught James by surprise. "Oh," he said softly. "That's..." He wanted to go, honestly. At least, he thought he did. Standing here just felt so fucking awkward and terrible, and it was obvious he couldn't think of anything to say, or do anything that might comfort Annemarie. Leaving would really be easier on both of them. Despite that, James found himself pulling over a chair and sitting down, resting his hands on the edge of Annemarie's hospital bed. "I'm fine here," he replied. "If you want me to stay. I know we don't - I mean, I could call your family in, if you wanted."
AM: A faint, humorless laugh escaped her as James responded to the news about her previous miscarriage. Honestly, she hadn't realized that he didn't know. Granted, she wasn't exactly in the mindset to think of what she and James had and hadn't discussed, but she was still vaguely surprised that she'd failed to mention it. She adjusted just a little, wincing slightly at the various injuries before curling in on herself a bit in a feeble attempt to comfort herself. "I don't care," she commented, though the words were exhausted and tense from her pain rather than angry or sarcastic. "I don't want them in here yet."
JAMES: "OK," James responded, after a moment. "I'll stay, then." He reclined back in the chair, a little, trying to get more comfortable. Which was pretty fruitless, seeing as hospital chairs seemed to be chronically horrible (whether because of the general mood in hospital rooms or the chairs themselves) and you always ended up in the same uncomfortably rigid position you started in, but James gave it a go, nevertheless. "Just tell me when you want me to leave," he added, just in case Annemarie wanted to be by herself, after a while. Sometimes being alone helped too, didn't it? James was unsure whether Annemarie was one of those people who craved solitude when upset or not. He felt unsure of everything right now, truth be told. Still, James stayed where he was, letting silence fall over both of them and leaving them to their own thoughts.
2 a.m.
LUC: The smell was the same. No matter how expensive the hospital, the muted art on the walls, the whisking nurses' uniforms, the smell that bound itself to the back of the nose and throat until you wanted to gag on it, would be the same. Lemon and disinfectant and antiseptic and sweat and pain, a perfume which even the sharp medicinal tang of a top-note couldn't disguise. It wasn't as sterile-looking as the med-bay at work was: a nod to the humanity of their patients in the pinky-beige swirls in a print on the wall - probably thought of as 'modern art' - and the curtains at the window, rippling in the breeze through the opening, the warm yellow of the walls. It couldn't compensate for the fact that the woman in the bed's skin was a starker white than the crisp pillow she slept on, that the tangle of hair spread out beside her was a duller sort of gold, somehow. That beneath the blankets, she --
Luc's hands twisted on the cellophane of the flowers, a squeaking kind of rustle in the silence. After several hours' wait, they were limp in their plastic, leaking the occasional petal and a little puddle at his feet testifying to the hour -- or was it more? he'd lost time -- he had spent sitting in this chair, largely ignored by the nurses who came and went, checking the beeps and lights of the machines that monitored Annemarie while she lay asleep. A fresh clump of dollar bills sat on the bedside table each time the shift changed was perhaps why.
He was watching the paraphenalia as she moved; the little peaks and troughs of a heartbeat, the slow drip of fluid into her arm without really watching them at all, without thinking at all -- because if he thought, if he thought anything other than the surreal mundanity of 'our reservations were exactly five hours ago' and 'that wall is the same color as the blanket on the couch' then it would fail to be surreal any longer, and instead, reality would take over. So he waited, crumpled shirt and tie askew, with a faded bunch of flowers in his hand, for Annemarie.
AM: After the nurses had ushered her visitors out of her room at nine, Annemarie had taken a few long hours of silence to herself to collect her thoughts. She’d cried until her throat was hoarse and her eyes were swollen. Her injuries, though not terribly major individually, combined to make her very uncomfortable. She attempted to get comfortable, only to be deterred by the dull aches and sharp bursts of pain. The broken ribs were the most difficult to adjust around, given that they made it hard for her to lay in any position other than flat on her back. At eleven, she’d asked the nurse who checked in on her for a new round of painkillers so that she could sleep, as she was unable to handle listening to her own thoughts any longer. With the help of a second nurse sometime later, she’d managed to find a somewhat comfortable position slightly on her side, a barricade of pillows supporting her back.
The drugs coursing through her system brought a few hours of blissfully thoughtless and relatively painless sleep, but wore off shortly after two in the morning. It did not take long for her to drift groggily into consciousness, as AM had never been a heavy sleeper. She stared at the back of her eyelids for a few long moments, frightened that if she opened her eyes that everything would be real instead of some horrible dream. Finally building the courage to let them flutter open, she found that they could not focus entirely in the darkness. This gave her a few more seconds to live in the idea that this might not all be real.
Unfortunately, this was short-lived. The sound of machines and the hospital scenery felt like a punch to her gut. She inhaled deeply, her breath shuddering still from the hours of sobbing. A wince escaped her as she lifted her left hand, the pain in her shoulder continue to trouble her as she reached up to push hair from her face. As she did, she caught sight of a figure in the corner. "How long have you been here?" she asked.
LUC: Eyes long-adjusted to the gloom, Luc was tuned for the most fractional of movements; the gust of a sigh, the flicker of her fingers. The catch of her breath was like a siren in that stillness -- he moved to adjust closer to the bed, and found the protest of his body at motion, sat too long in one spot, settled back again. There was no clock on the wall, presumably to keep the patients from counting off the hours of emprisonment in starched sheets and cotton blankets, so he was able to answer honestly,
"I don't know." His voice was careful, low and soft but warm, the sort of coaxing tone he'd had when she'd been sick before, when there had been crankiness and tinned chicken soup and days spent with Annemarie at her most impossible and fractious. "A while." She looked like she'd been beaten. Luc felt his gut twist, threatening the cup of cold coffee he'd had a few hours previous. She looked lost and alone in a sea of white cotton and there was nothing forgotten flowers could do to even ease the edges of it. "You were asleep."
AM: The tone he used was one that she knew very well. It was warm and inviting, comforting while not crossing the line of the barriers she constantly held strong to keep from being too vulnerable. Though it brought her some small sense of ease, it also reminded her of the truth of her situation. He would not have spoken to her in this manner if not for the way that she looked and everything she’d been through. A shuddering and failed attempt at a faint sob shivered down her spine and she sighed a little. “How did you get in?”
She adjusted carefully, managing to push the pillows along her back just enough so that she could lay back flat and see him better. Using the same hand (which was the only useful one given that the other was in a brace), she wiped her eyes a bit before adjusting them in the darkness to look at him. “You look nice.” Better to talk about nonsense than to broach the subject that had ripped her heart so recently.
LUC: His smile felt stiff, like a canvas tipped for display against a wall, hiding the cracks in the paint. It didn't waver, though. He stretched up and laid the flowers at the edge of her bed, within reach of her fingers. A sad display for themselves, they had been a bright mix of colors, the type of bunch that were selected from expensive floristrys. They looked like a gift, that someone had forgotten about and left out in the rain. "I was going to bring you these," he said, and the smile came a little easier because it wasn't a proper smile at all, sheepish with remembered foolishness. "Before you stood me up." His voice was light, careless, darting in and stitching up the gaping holes in the conversation as though it stood repair, as if it weren't unraveling at a touch.
"You don't look so good." He warred with the words before settling, saying them, committing to honesty - but she didn't and lying to her about it would make this plastic reality even more strange.
AM: She reached to the flowers in their paper and lifted them, forcing a faint smile for him (though she didn’t bother hiding how forced it was). “Yeah,” she commented, absently. “I was a little tied up. Sorry.” It wasn’t much of a joke, considering, but the attempt at morbid humor was enough, regardless of how badly it failed.
Her mouth tensed a little into a line as he spoke. She’d caught a glimpse of herself during a trip to the small bathroom in her room (occasions that had to humiliatingly involve a nurse for the time being). The sight of the cuts on her face, the sickening bruise around her eye and the bits of blood that had settled into her hair had nearly made her sick with the reality of the situation. Since then, she’d actively avoided the sight. “I don’t really feel so good either, so at least how I look matches how I feel.”
LUC: He moistened lips he hadn't known were dry. He'd seen Annemarie a hundred ways; as pursed up and tight as if she'd swallowed a bee, laughing and loose and easy with grace that was near poetic, he'd seen her sad. But not like this. With an awkward sort of movement, he was one moment in the chair, leaning toward her and the next on the very edge of the end of her bed, fingertips of one hand against her cheek, looking at the evidence of the crash. In a vague, deep-down way, he acknowledged pride that he didn't react at all, didn't let one flicker of the way he felt appear behind the mask -- Garrett's training was coming in useful earlier than he'd thought necessary.
"You got a little banged up, Annie-girl."
AM: The situation was many things, many of them obviously settling around the general idea of being completely horrible. Her reactions were mostly emotional at the present and, though she felt very much like weeping, she choked it down to save herself the raw feeling in her throat. She also felt frustrated physically because she wanted to curl herself into a ball but couldn’t. The restriction provided by the machines was annoying enough, but matters were made much worse when coupled with the limitations given by her own broken body.
“A little,” she commented, nodding, letting him brush his fingers against her face. “Did they tell you?” About the baby. She couldn’t continue with that, not yet.
LUC: If he had been asked for something he wished would never happen -- it would be this. He'd been told, there had been terms used when he'd folded a hundred dollar bill into crisp edges and handed it to the most junior member of the nursing team, things like 'D & C' and 'second trimester miscarriage' but the one word that hung in the air, clung long after it had been spoken had been 'lost'. He hadn't ever imagined the aftermath a decade ago - tried, once, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and enough self-pity to kill a man, but he'd never been able to think of Annemarie, the way she'd been broken in the five years he'd not seen her -- the woman whose stride into the Agency corridors, hair a bright banner behind her had been utterly whole. Now he knew.
There were too many machines looped around her, too many wires and buttons and bleeps to make sense of, so when his arm settled around her shoulders, it was feather-light, not a weight at all, barely there. "Yes."
AM: Though the circumstances that led to this occasion were vastly different from those surrounding the first miscarriage, the feeling was virtually the same. The vast emptiness where there had once been a life was overwhelming. It was made worse by the fact that the void was so very familiar. This felt so much like a bad memory, though with a stark reality that made the emptiness worse. She felt lost.
She rested her head back a bit on his arm. “I... I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” Thinking about it was enough.
LUC: There was a ghost of a kiss against her hair. He didn't know the words to say; there were none to make up for this grotesque ending to an evening he'd planned with almost meticulous precision. "Okay." She had a look, as though she were already somewhere else, not here at all. His hand pressed against her shoulder for a moment, just enough to reassure. "Okay."
Thursday
At six that morning, Annemarie drifted awake to discover that her late-night visitor had either departed on his own or had been escorted from her room. She did not mind, however. For nearly half an hour, she sat in near silence and stared at the dark ceiling of her hospital room, the beginning shades of dawn beginning to creep through the thin curtains. Soon, her thoughts sent her into a mild state of panic and a feeling of nausea swept over her, causing her to alert her nurse. The nurse then gave her something for the nausea and, effectively, sent her back unconscious.
At eleven, she winced a little against the light that had filtered into her room, her eyes blinking open and adjusting to it. After a bland meal and an adjustment to sit upright, her nurse posed a question concerning visitors. Finding herself hesitant to go through another day of awkward encounters, she limited her visitors to her parents only. Given that she'd spent most of the night with Luc's support and wanted mostly to focus on getting out of the hospital as soon as she could, she felt this decision made sense. Above all, though, she mostly wished to have the ability to cope on her own and figure out her next move.
Sometime during the day, she was brought the replacement cell phone she'd asked her brother Nicholas to buy for her. Checking into the network mostly reminded her of all of the work awaiting her when she returned and further sparked her desire to escape the hospital. It took a bit of persuasion and some lying about the pain she felt to convince her doctor to clear her for release late that evening instead of the next morning, but she managed to do so. She resentfully allowed herself to be wheeled out to the cab awaiting her (and made a mental note to check with Legal concerning how her vehicle situation would be mended) and directed him to her apartment. Nearly home, she made him hesitate for a brief moment in front of a convenient store that doubled as a liquor shop. Ignoring the looks the employees gave her in response to the black eye and her other injuries, AM purchased a container of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka (marveling at how strange it felt to do so after months without). A mass and non-descriptive text message was sent once she'd made herself comfortable at home to explain that she'd been released and was fine by herself. Settling back into a chair, she stared blankly at the television that hadn't yet been plugged into the wall and lit the first cigarette she'd smoked in awhile.
It was an anxious anticipation that filled her at the sight of the bit of smoke curling from the end of the cigarette, a craving that had unhappily laid dormant for so many months beginning to hesitantly appear once more. She stared at it for a few long seconds, then sighed and pulled it to her lips, taking a long drag and settling back with relief as the first bits of nicotine filtered through her. The alcohol could wait a little while, until the pain of her loss returned in full force. For now, she was relatively content just to sit in darkness and let the cigarettes calm her.