log: eddie/steph - hospital visit. WHO Eddie and Steph. WHAT eddie comes to visit again. WHEN This weekend, after their most recent phone call. WHERE VA Hospital. WARNING TBD!
When it rained in Gotham, it poured, and god was it pouring right now. The rain pounded on the windowsills and drowned the pretty little patches of garden scattered around the front of the hospitals entrance out, and the nurses bemoaned the possibility of a very rainy summer as they pursued their rounds on the psychiatric ward. Windows still cracked open slightly pushed the soothing smell of Gotham's rain-soaked streets to just slightly damper the sharp smell of antiseptic and cleaning supplies that inundated every inch of every hospital. There was a sedated air about the ward that day, tittering of the morning died down by the time lunch rolled around. The patients who regularly caused scenes and fought to have their breakdowns didn't even have the energy to protest that day. Lethargy pervaded most of the patients, the weather dampening any sort of explosive needs of the day.
And Stephanie? Well, Stephanie was tired. Emotionally and physically. Selina, Bruce, Damian, Dick. Ra's's reappearance, magic and cults, Eddie's nightmares. Broken (or lost) pieces of the puzzle that was making it harder and harder to dig through and find hope in the muck and mayhem. When it rained in Gotham, it poured. Hope. That little ray of sunshine that flickered out during the rainstorms? It was still there. Stephanie knew that. She knew that whenever she looked at the messy pile of wedding magazines on her bedside table at night, or when she twisted her engagement ring between her fingers, or when Dick ecstatically shared news of a baby bat to be. It was there, underneath her skin, but sometimes it was really, really hard to remember. But queen of hope for a city that smothered it so easily, she was clinging desperately despite everything that might have broken it.
That didn't make it easy though. What Ra's did to Damian burrowed into her chest, her conversation with Selina made her mad and sad for the kitty, and the realization that Bruce might want to end it all for himself? Broke her heart in more ways than she could imagine. But, she couldn't lose herself in it. She tried to focus on other things, on sifting through that pile of magazines or doodling on the legal pads collecting on the side of her bed, but the sadness niggled. Her therapist, Dr. Coleman, could tell that the knotting in her shoulders wasn't just typical from her anxiety-ridden nightmares of that war she'd fought. He needled, asking the exact questions that unfurled more and more little bits of the puzzle of Stephanie Brown's heavy, heavy history. Over the past week, he'd gotten some progress. He knew, now, that she was a bat, and he was surprisingly open to that aspect of her life. They'd spoken of her relationship with Eddie, and the one with her father. Touched on the horrors she'd seen on a completely different plane of existence that he didn't even know if it really existed. But, Dr. Coleman understood. He reminded Stephanie so much of Thompkins sometimes, and she appreciated it so much.
But, she was bitter today about how good at his job he was. After the exhausting and sad conversations with her family members, he'd managed to dig into her brain and pulled out some dark, dark stuff. Stuff about Owlman and what he'd done to every single person she cared about on Earth-3. The panic attack he induced wasn't as ugly as the one that had her blowing holes into her bedroom wall, but it was bad enough to have him dose her and keep her isolated for a little while. When she was better, when she was calm, he told her that they were done for the day, and she could enjoy the visitor the nurses had told him were there. He put his hand on his shoulder and told her how proud he was of her progress so far, and then he walked her out of the sitting room they'd been talking in to her room on the other side of the ward.
Stephanie, in black leggings and a baggy deep blue cardigan over her white t-shirt and her purple sneakers, padded back to the room, drained but looking forward to seeing whomever was there. She'd forgotten in the mess of her therapy session that afternoon that Eddie was supposed to be coming this weekend. She just shuffled back, happy for any company that wasn't the din of rainfall on her window and nurses who she'd only known for a week.