OPENING NARRATIVE; i am on your side. WHO: Lucy Michaelson and Sandra Weathers [NPC] WHAT: Lucy's two lives finally intersect. WHEN: February 13th, this evening. WHERE: San Francisco General Hospital RATING: PG
Early evening at the beginning of Valentine's Day weekend, and the emergency room at San Francisco General was, for once, relatively quiet. There were no catastrophic traumas to report for the day, nothing that would require all hands on deck. Just the typical fender-benders, sudden labors, and one very disturbing incident of a trip and fall that resulted in a little girl losing her eye to a pair of scissors. All in all, the staff was ready to mark the day as one for the win column by the time shift change rolled around at 7 o'clock PM. The next twelve hours would probably be a lot rougher, especially since people did supremely stupid things around V-Day. It was probably horrible, but Lucy was glad she had the night off.
Well, at least, from her official job.
No one on staff knew that Lucy Michaelson, Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Certified, had a second job. A second job that went beyond just a job, that was more of a second life. The two lives had never crossed before, aside from one-off incidents here and there where she acted as a real-life WebMD database or served as acute emergency care in her own living room (under extreme protest). The Librarian of a city wore many hats in their lifetime: leader, guide, guardian, mother, babysitter, therapist, designated driver, bail bondsman, etc. The list could go on forever. It was more demanding than a regular full-time job, which made the fact that she was rarely ever compensated all that much worse. But unlike her position at the trauma center, she couldn't quit. She just had to manage. If she could, she would have kept both lives separate forever. It worked. It wasn't confusing. And that was the way she liked it. Unfortunately, fate had other plans.
She'd felt the twinges as far back as a week ago. That sense, call it spidey-sense or deja vu, hit her in the stomach around the time that new LVN floated down from pediatrics. The new initiative to cross-train as many nurses as possible had brought a gaggle of new faces into Lucy's daily schedule. She wasn't the most senior member of the ER's nursing staff, but she did tend to get saddled with the bitch jobs. The girl in question (fresh-faced, bright-eyed, and still full of wonder) had been switched off her schedule after a day or so, which coincided with the sense ceasing. But the past two nights, they'd seen each other at shift change, and there it was again.
This morning, Lucy had woken to the notice: Sandra. 7:02 PM. Alexandra Spofford. It was unusually detailed. Typically, she received maybe a name or a time or a character, but hardly ever all three at once. Those in charge must be smiling on her. Or just thinking she'd really screw this one up. She did a bit of research, jotting down story details before running out the door to catch her bus. Now, here she waited in the lounge for Sandra. The clock ticked down. 7:01:53. 7:01:54. Along with the notice came a journal, one specific to suit Sandra's style. No surprise, it was pink with pink pages. She kept it hidden below her own journal which was thick and bound in a red-brown leather.
7:01:55. 7:01:56. 7:01:57. Her mind thought ahead to what she needed to do after this. That is, if Sandra didn't completely fall apart on her. Finding out you were the reincarnation of a fictional character wasn't the easiest thing to swallow. Sometimes literally, in the case of one guy who had gotten so upset, he puked on her. Thankfully, the majority of time, it just clicked. It was like she functioned as the missing piece of the puzzle, and as soon as Lucy came into the picture, it made sense. Jennings called it the A HA factor, and then proceeded to sing that awful 80s song at her.
7:01:58. 7:01:59. As if right on cue, Sandra Weathers walked through the door as the second hand of the clock ticked over to 7:02. She paused at seeing Lucy sitting there, rubbing her hand over her stomach. Lucy felt the featherlight flutter in her own stomach, and she knew. If the appearance of the journal hadn't, if the notice didn't, this definitely did. She waited for Sandra to put away her bag before even beginning.
"Hey, Sandy?" The younger blonde looked over to where Lucy sat, giving her a smile fraught with nerves.
"Hey, Lucy. I'd have thought you'd skedaddled with the others as soon as the time came."
"Yeah, I needed to talk to you." Sandy's smile faltered for a moment in the face of those most dreaded words. 'We need to talk' was a hateful, awful phrase, and even the coolest of cats felt that cold pang as soon as they heard it.
"What's up?"
"Have you been feeling okay, lately?" Lucy sounded concerned, and it was genuine. Maybe not completely heartfelt, but she did care, all the same.
Sandy made a face, like fear and anxiety and a budding attempt to lie smashed together like a three-car pile up. She pressed her lips flat and broke eye contact. "Yeah, why? Is there something going around?"
Lucy shook her head, her hands ruffling the edges of her journal. She got up from the table, carrying both journals in hand. The pink one was held out to the other woman, who instinctually took it. "You're not alone, Sandy. And you're not crazy." She kept her voice low, calm. Talk her through it faster and maintain control of the situation. "The visions. Eastwick, Rhode Island and Jane and Susie. It's real."
"I-I don't know what you're talking--"
"You were a sculptress. And a witch. Your ex-husband shrank and turned to dust while you were cheating on him, and after the divorce, you swept what was left into a jar. It's real, Sandy. Alexandra is not a figment of your imagination." By now, Sandy was fully bewildered, looking as if she was going to run away and fall down at the same time. The woman looked down at the journal, then back up to Lucy.
"We gave her cancer, and Darryl wasn't even sleeping with her."
Lucy put her arm around Sandy's shoulders, in her best attempt at comforting. It was a familiar gesture to fictions already under her watch, but it still had an air of awkward with perfect strangers.