Nate Grey (shaman2012) wrote in x_2012, @ 2010-12-15 01:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | shaman |
Not his finest moment...
Who: Nate Grey (Narrative)
What: The honeymoon's over... (or, unwanted mutant powers ftl)
When: Wednesday morning, December 15th, 2014
Where: Haven
Warnings: Emotional anguish, references to adult/traumatic situations
Nate had gotten a crash course in using his telekinesis to float a few centimeters off the ground when he walked, that way he didn't have to wear shoes and wouldn't be assaulted by random psychic impressions from anyone who had stepped there before him. He sheepishly walked up to one of the nurses that knew him and gave her a small smile.
"Hey, sweetie," she said. "You're here for your drip, aren't you?" She waited for his nod before continuing. "Get comfy, hon. I'll have it ready for you in a sec," the matronly woman went on brightly. She knew by now that Nate's psychometry and touch telepathy were back online, so she put on a pair of gloves before handling any of the instruments she was about to use on him. It would make little difference, since others had come in contact with the instruments before, and because his ability was powerful enough that he'd still get distinct echoes from her through the gloves, but at least she hoped it would attenuate what she brought to the mix.
"We had to use your chair, sweetie, but we put a new plastic covering over it."
"Thank you," Nate said, and he couldn't be farther from his usual ebullient, if slightly dazed, self. His voice was soft and his eyes downcast and introspective. It was his turn to be avoiding Rascal these days, since Xavier called him down into the Cerebro room and explained once again that he didn't think keeping artificial restraints on his abilities was healthy. They spoke mind to mind, so that there could be no doubt of subterfuge or any sort of lying, and Nate reluctantly agreed with the older telepath's logic. Since then, his carefree days of rediscovering the physical world had ended, or at least been severely curtailed.
He could not even fly up to a lonely high branch and sit there staring at the beauty around him without receiving all manner of sense memories or emotional and thought impressions. The nest that had once been there, or the mutant boys and girls who had flown, climbed or slithered up to this very spot, some with secret joys but most with a terrible sense of alienation and homesickness. No matter where he went or what he touched, he was never the first one there. Everything was now fraught with psychic detritus and, sadly, the stronger emotions and traumatic memories always seemed to leave the more lasting impressions.
So while his IV drip should be mostly harmless in comparison, since the components were all made by machine in more or less sterile conditions, there were often exceptions. And he knew it. He almost immediately started to feel assaulted by all the people whose hands had handled the simple sheet of plastic covering he sat on. He could have told nurse Irine that it was futile to cover the chair, but who was he to discourage kindness?
The needles were usually blessedly free of torment. Usually. Today, he could almost smell the acrid undertone of fear in the bead of sweat from the factory worker who had inadvertently touched this one. He even knew his name. Troy, who had put back together the Needle Assembly Machine after a part had to be replaced, had three kids to feed and recession cuts which affected his work hour load were forcing him to keep a second job, which was against company policy. He was plagued by tension headaches because of the state of stressful paranoia he suffered through every day. Every time he was called by a supervisor to do something he felt that he'd been found out and was about to lose his main source of income and medical insurance.
Other thoughts and emotions weren't nearly as vividly clear, and in fact the myriad minute distractions acted as a sort of buffer for the worse of it. That is, until the plastic tubing attached to his IV brushed against his exposed forearm. This shipment of tubing had not come from their usual supplier, who bought from a fully automated manufacturer. This other manufacturer was partially automated, and workers manually fed the tubing into the machines that cut it and capped it as needed. This particular length of tubing had been handled by a girl, barely a woman. She had just experienced a spontaneous abortion. She had really wanted that baby.
The anguish was indescribable. As a man, he couldn't even begin to comprehend the depth of the impact a miscarriage could have on a woman, to begin with. Her name was Maureen, and she had forced herself to go back to work less than a week after she lost her baby, fearing she'd go mad unless she was doing something. Tears came so violently that they appeared to be literally jumping out of his eyes. His face paled and a whimper caught in his throat. Nate tried to remember the breathing and grounding exercises Xavier had been teaching him, but he couldn't focus. He couldn't think.
"Nate, sweetie? What's wrong?" the nurse promptly asked.
"M-M-Maureen. Sh-she. She lost her baby," he replied, his voice breaking into soft sobs.
Seeing no choice, the nurse grabbed him by the upper arms, following Xavier's instructions to try and ground him and bring him out of the memory he might be reliving if it got bad. The stricken face, the trembling and the tears? Looked plenty bad to her.
Nate yelped in surprise, feeling hands on him, feeling... things. Other memories came, like baking bread for her children, rushing everyone to school in the morning, feeding the dog. There was the repetitive memory of her, taking the subway every morning to go to work and every evening to come home. There was the endless drudgery of trying to save lives in an overcrowded, understaffed Bronx hospital, then a husband who'd abandoned her and their kids because she had turned out to be different, one of them. A mutant. But there was one memory, one pain that shone brightly above everything else, brought forth by Nate's own words.
"You lost one too," he blurted out, still sobbing quietly.
The memory of the child she'd lost hit Nurse Pelham like a ton of bricks. She stood there for a moment, stunned, looking like someone had just slapped her in the face. Her voice was pitched lower when she finally managed to speak again.
"I know it ain't your fault, baby, but I'm really mad at you right now."
Nate dropped his face to his chest and spoke through his sniffles. "I'm sorry."
She deflated. Being mad at the boy now would be like being mad at a hurt, whimpering puppy. She was still mad at him for prying, whether on purpose or not, but she also felt compassion for the boy who shared everyone's pain whether he wanted to or not. "I know you are, sweetie. I know you are."