darlene mabry (visionsofearth) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2013-07-10 22:47:00 |
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When it came to hospitals, Darlene did her best to stay away from them. Their entire atmosphere was unpleasant. First there was the over-sterilized smell and the too-clean white walls everywhere you went. Then there was that feeling, that overwhelming sense that you needed to be quiet. All of it mixed together for a wholly unpleasant experience. That alone was enough to keep her as far from the hospital as possible, but then came the knowledge that one day – one day soon she hoped – she wouldn’t need anything other than her own abilities to heal herself. Sure, she could think on it really hard and get rid of a runny nose, but that wasn’t the same as encouraging one’s body to accelerate the natural healing process. The thought was bitterly pointed toward the deep cut that was wrapped up in one of her kitchen towels. She had been prepping for dinner, cutting up some vegetables for a stew. All it took was a loud noise from Jin and it was enough to startle her into slicing her finger. Darlene was no stranger to small cuts and burns; she was a cook and that came with the territory. Had this been no worse than a simple paper-cut, she would have carried on about the meal as though nothing had happened. Only, this cut was deep enough to cause her to bleed. Profusely. She had managed to keep herself together long enough to wrap a towel around the wound, yell at Jin to get in the car, and drive to the hospital, but now that she was sitting here in the ER waiting room, her head was starting to feel a little woozy.
“I want to go find Dad.”
Darlene lifted her head from her hand to look up at her son. She knew that it would only be a matter of time before Jin started begging to find Ky where he was working in the hospital. To his credit, he had lasted all of an hour and a half. Though she would have loved to have him elsewhere, she knew that Ky couldn’t spare more than five minutes if he was working – if he could even spare that. “Not now.” There was a phrase that she was all too practiced with. This would never have happened if she had hurt herself at work. With all the different kinds of people who stayed there, there was bound to be someone who could heal her finger in a second. Usually, when she was at home, she would just knock on Reggie’s door for help, but she knew better than to bother him with everything that was going on at the school. She had planned on stopping by with some stew leftovers to check on him, but that was apparently going to wait.
“Whhy! He would be excited to see me.”
Darlene narrowed her eyes at her son’s whining. Now was neither the time nor the place for such an argument, but she knew if she didn’t do something the odds of setting him off like a time bomb were even greater. “Just let me get stitched up and we’ll go looking for him, deal?” Jin didn’t answer, but instead slumped down into the chair beside of her. He didn’t get to brood too long before a nurse called her name and motioned for the two of them to follow her to a bed. Darlene was barely seated a second before the nurse told her to wait for a doctor to come see her. That was another thing she hated about hospitals – the waiting.
“I’m. So. BORED!” Jin almost yelled out his complaint as he threw himself onto the bed behind where she was sitting on the edge.
She turned around and rustled his hair with her uninjured hand. “Me too, little man. Me too.”