Post by deadgirl on Aug 30, 2006 18:33:26 GMT -5
Theo Douglas was worried.
No, that was an understatement.
In the space of several hours he had received a number of increasingly confusing phone calls that said his girlfriend was, in no particular order, seriously injured, injured, wounded, critical and dead.
Nobody seemed quite able to agree.
The flight here had taken the heavens only knows how long and he was tired, dirty, needed a good smoke and anxious beyond belief. He had the cab driver take him to the hospital he'd been told to attend and threw a handful of scrunched up ten dollar bills at him for payment.
As he approached the desk, he pushed his long hair out of his face.
"Hey," he said, in his easy drawl. "I wonder if you can help me...?"
The admissions nurse looked up from the counter, a phone wedged between her head and her shoulder and paperwork in one hand. It was a busy day at the hospital, what with the injuries from the incident at NovaTeX and your usual spring vacation accidents flooding their emergency room.
Still, she was a professional. Smiling, if a little stiffly, up at the ruffled looking young man, she spoke quickly. "Yes dear, where do you need to go?"
"I'm looking for Moonbeam Harris-Broderick," said Theo, too tired and harrassed to smile back. "I was told she was at this hospital. I've just flown in from Oregon, so I hope that you aren't going to tell me she's not here."
Theo fixed her with a look that pleaded for her help. "I'm her boyfriend," he said. "Fiance, really, but boyfriend at the moment. I haven't bought the ring yet."
The nurse couldn't hide her reaction, her eyebrows raising, mouth dropping open a bit before she recovered. The dead girl in the psyche ward had a boyfriend? Dear god the poor thing.
"No, she's here," the nurse blurted, checking for her name in the registry. "She's in the psychiatric ward. Room 207. You'll need to talk to the nurse there to get the security in, but I'm sure they'll let you see her. I believe you're on the list." She nodded. "It's to your right, down the hall to the elevators. The ninth floor. When you get out, the desk is on your left." Nodding again, she almost added 'good luck', but thought better of it.
There were many words that could be used to describe Theo Douglas. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, or the brightest button in the box. The wheel was spinning, but the hamster was dead. In short, he wasn't particularly smart, but he knew when people were hiding something from him.
He made his way to the ninth floor in the elevator. He didn't like elevators much. The enclosed spaces did nothing for his need to be out in the open air.
When he exited, he headed up to the desk.
"Theo Douglas," he said, in a noticeably less polite way. "Moonbeam Harris-Broderick's boyfriend."
The nurse upstairs in the psychiatric ward looked at him expectantly. It wasn't often they got new visitors here. Parents, usually, but teen patients either got sent to the state facility or back home within a week or so. This guy looked like he'd been through hell. He could almost guess who he was hear to see.
"Moonbeam, yes... Theo... Douglas you said?" He ran his pen down a list. "Yes, her parents gave your name. Take a tag-" he handed him a clip on 'visitor' pass- "And remember visiting hours are over at 6pm." He stared at Theo rather openly. He hadn't see the girl, but he'd heard plenty about her. Just to be safe, after Theo left he was going to call security and have some backup in case things got out of hand.
He took the tag. He put it on and then he stared at the nurse on the desk.
"Look," he said, and his tone was rather plaintive. "Why is she in a psychiatric unit? Will someone please tell me just what the hell is going on around here? I've been shoved from pillar to post over the phone and I didn't expect it when I got here."
He looked for the world like he might cry at any moment.
"I just want to find my girlfriend."
The guy sighed. There were privacy laws to consider, but he couldn't exactly send the guy in there blind... leaning forward, he whispered.
"You mean no one's explained? Listen... all I've been told is that she woke up in the morgue, screaming like a banshee. They had to restrain her, and being alive, obviously, she couldn't stay at the morgue, so she was sent here. But look man..." He looked down the hall in either direction, then back to Theo. His voice lowered even further.
"I haven't seen her myself, but from what I've been told... she doesn't -look- all that alive. Green skin and red eyes. People have been sick when they've seen her. Just... brace yourself, alright? And if you need anyone, just run back up here." It was the best he could do.
Theo blinked several times and wiggled a finger in his ear. He couldn't possibly have just heard correctly. He clipped on his visitor's badge and stared at the floor.
He didn't move.
After a few moments, he looked up.
"The morgue?"
Swivel, swivel.
"You mean...she was dead? But then woke up screaming?"
Green skin? Red eyes?
Theo checked the date on his watch. No, April Fools was over more than a month ago. But...things like that didn't happen in the real world, did they?
"She's dead?"
The clerk frowned a bit and nodded. What a strange character. You'd think the situation would be upsetting more than confusing, but... People dealt with things in their own way.
"She's not dead, she just looks like it. At least that's what I've heard. If she were dead, she wouldn't be here."
He considered this for a while, then nodded. "True enough. Oh, well, I'll - I'll go see her then."
Theo was a tall, skinny sort of a man and walked as though he was made of mostly knees and elbows; ungainly and awkward, a little like the personality he put across. He was, however, very sweet natured and sensitive. It was what women saw in him.
He got to the door of room 207 and raised a hesitant hand to knock.
Today was getting stranger and stranger.
The girl took a long time to answer, having turned her head to look at the door. No one had knocked before. Well, Simmons and Largo knocked, but they did so as they were walking in just to make sure she knew they were coming.
"Come in?" She said softly.
When the door opened, her red eyes widened a bit. It was one of the people from the photograph Simmons had shown her yesterday. At least she thought it was yesterday... The sun had set as some point and come back up, but she hadn't slept, and neither had they it seemed. Nothing was clear, everything was confusing.
And so she looked confused at first, the black hoodie too big around her body, long red plaid pajama pants and white socks covering most of her sickly green skin. Her full lips were bruised pinkish in places over a slate-green colour that set them off against her pale skin. She watched him with a guarded expression, tightening her grip on the edge of the hospital bed.
"Hi." It was not the sort of hello someone gives their lover.
Theo stared at the apparition on the bed and blinked. Then he shook his head.
"Excuse me," he said, politely. "Wrong room."
Then he shut the door again, took several steps away and then came back.
No, this was room 207. It even had her name on the door. Too long in an aeroplane breathing recycled air. He was, he decided, either asleep and dreaming, or hallucinating.
He opened the door again and stared at the girl on the bed.
"Moonbeam?" he said, hesitantly. "Baby, is that you?"
God she hated that name. It wasn't that it was silly sounding, in fact it sounded entirely natural to her. It was more that it didn't remind her of anything other than that she'd forgotten who she was.
Sighing, she looked at her knees. "That is what they tell me." She nodded a little. "I'm supposed to know you, aren't I." She looked sad, and felt bad that she couldn't give him whatever it was he wanted.
He had called her baby. And he was too old to be her father, so he must be an older brother, or maybe a boyfriend. She didn't know how to respond, or how to feel.
The discomfort read across her face as clearly as words.
His face ran a gamut of expressions. He was horrified by her appearance, distressed that something so crazy had happened to his beautiful, bright, bubbly girlfriend and upset that she didn't remember him. Only ago he'd spoken to her on the phone and had told her how much he missed her.
He loved her. He'd loved her from the day he'd met her and now, here she was, looking like an extra from an Evil Dead movie and claiming that she didn't know him.
"Baby, it's me. Theo." No change in her expression. "Your boyfriend?" he hazarded. "Three years, four months, six days."
So that was it. She nodded, and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't remember anything...yet." Shaking her head, she whimpered. "I don't know if I will or not... I'm sorry I look this way." No tears, but the sound of them in her voice. Oh it would be such a relief to cry, but no such luxury was there to console her.
"Theo. Theo." she tried the name on, looking at him again. Her head shook sadly. "I... I don't know a Theo. Please... Shut the door?"
Sure, tell him you don't remember. So you can stay here with me, right?"
She didn't answer Harold. The last thing this Theo needed was to watch her talk to dead people.
He stared at her in confusion for a little longer, feeling both disgusted and morbidly fascinated by whatever had happened to her. She was, at the end of the day, the woman he believed he was going to be spending the rest of his life with.
Poor Theo stood there for a very long time before eventually shutting the door and turning to face her.
"I...have a couple of photographs if that'll help," he said, awkwardly.
"Did you love me?" She said softly. She could remember the feeling of love, of touching and closeness, trust and intimacy. Those things weren't foreign to her, that piece of her hadn't been stolen. It wasn't as if she were blank slated back to birth. But all those things with him.. .no, she didn't remember a thing.
"I mean, you have your chance to come clean I guess..." she smirked. "If you really loved me...or if you didn't." She pushed messy hair out of her face. "I don't know what it means now. I'm... dead, Theo." her shoulders shook and she covered her face with one hand for a moment. "I just don't know what to do. Why did you come here?" Immediately her hand raised and she waived that thought away.
"I'm sorry. It's all very confusing. I don't know what I feel, let alone what I felt. If you go, I won't blame you. Neither would... Moonbeam. I guess."
"DID I love you? I still do, you stupid girl," he said, his voice strained and sounding near tears. "I loved you from the first moment I saw you standing there in the queue for that concert. Ah, Beam..."
Theo sat down heavily on the chair in the corner of the room and buried his head in his hands. "You're everything to me," he said, through his hands. "You have been for all these years and I came here because I needed to see you, because...because I LOVE you!"
He continued to sit there, his face in his hands, miserably.
She slipped her arms around herself, half turning away from him. Her eyes closed. The sound of his tears brought forth only the sympathy one might have for a stranger. What was she supposed to say? At least he hadn't thrown up when he saw her.
"I'm sorry," she whispered again and again. "I'm really sorry."
Pulling at the wristband of the hoodie Simmons had given her, she almost wished he was here. He had become her rock.
"What am I supposed to do?" She whined softly, rocking a little. "What do I do now..." She wasn't sure who she was asking.
Tell him to fuck off. Faggott'll smoke a bong and be over it in the morning.
She covered her ears, trying to shut the sound of Theo's tears and Harold's teasing voice out.
"I'm staying here with you," he said, eventually looking up at her and wiping at tear-streaked eyes. "You're my girl, and I said I'd always be there for you."
He wanted, more than anything, to cross the room and hold her in his arms, but was afraid to. She looked...like she might shatter under his grip, or something.
So he sat there.
"I don't know what to do either," he said, sadly. "I just want to be here for you."
Sobbing softly, she gathered her calm around her again. She couldn't freak out in front of him, and if he loved who she used to be, well...
"What if I remember some day? What if it wears off... don't leave me Theo..." Even saying it sounded crazy. She had no feelings for this man...
"Am I horrible to look at? I..." she looked at her hands, then closed her eyes and turned her head away. "I mean, how can I go back to being.. normal? I don't even know where to start."
A sigh sat between them in the empty room for a few moments. Then she tried again.
"The guy who's been running tests on me. They have a facility they want to take me to, where they can run more tests." Her parents would have been horrified. They had always accepted her mutant gifts and celebrated them, would never have wanted her studied like the monkeys they had fought to set free from the university labs her sophomore year. But she wasn't that simple child of nature anymore. What she was was entirely outside of that, and it was clear in her voice that she was utterly lost.
"He's taking me tonight." She looked to him as if hoping he'd know Moonbeam better than she did. Was this the decision she should be making?
"Over my dead body," said Theo instantly, then stared at her, horrified.
"That was SO the wrong thing to say, wasn't it? He's not taking you *anywhere*, Beam. Not unless he takes me too."
This time, he did cross the room and, almost hesitantly, took her hands in his own. The touch scared him rigid, but he grit his teeth mentally and tried to lend her some of the strength she had once given him, back in the days when he'd been shy and awkward and uncertain of himself.
"I said I'd always be by your side and that doesn't change. The marriage vows say in sickness and in health, right? So maybe you're just sick. Whatever, Beam, you're my girl and I'm going nowhere."
He squeezed her hands gently.
"I swear."
No, that was an understatement.
In the space of several hours he had received a number of increasingly confusing phone calls that said his girlfriend was, in no particular order, seriously injured, injured, wounded, critical and dead.
Nobody seemed quite able to agree.
The flight here had taken the heavens only knows how long and he was tired, dirty, needed a good smoke and anxious beyond belief. He had the cab driver take him to the hospital he'd been told to attend and threw a handful of scrunched up ten dollar bills at him for payment.
As he approached the desk, he pushed his long hair out of his face.
"Hey," he said, in his easy drawl. "I wonder if you can help me...?"
The admissions nurse looked up from the counter, a phone wedged between her head and her shoulder and paperwork in one hand. It was a busy day at the hospital, what with the injuries from the incident at NovaTeX and your usual spring vacation accidents flooding their emergency room.
Still, she was a professional. Smiling, if a little stiffly, up at the ruffled looking young man, she spoke quickly. "Yes dear, where do you need to go?"
"I'm looking for Moonbeam Harris-Broderick," said Theo, too tired and harrassed to smile back. "I was told she was at this hospital. I've just flown in from Oregon, so I hope that you aren't going to tell me she's not here."
Theo fixed her with a look that pleaded for her help. "I'm her boyfriend," he said. "Fiance, really, but boyfriend at the moment. I haven't bought the ring yet."
The nurse couldn't hide her reaction, her eyebrows raising, mouth dropping open a bit before she recovered. The dead girl in the psyche ward had a boyfriend? Dear god the poor thing.
"No, she's here," the nurse blurted, checking for her name in the registry. "She's in the psychiatric ward. Room 207. You'll need to talk to the nurse there to get the security in, but I'm sure they'll let you see her. I believe you're on the list." She nodded. "It's to your right, down the hall to the elevators. The ninth floor. When you get out, the desk is on your left." Nodding again, she almost added 'good luck', but thought better of it.
There were many words that could be used to describe Theo Douglas. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, or the brightest button in the box. The wheel was spinning, but the hamster was dead. In short, he wasn't particularly smart, but he knew when people were hiding something from him.
He made his way to the ninth floor in the elevator. He didn't like elevators much. The enclosed spaces did nothing for his need to be out in the open air.
When he exited, he headed up to the desk.
"Theo Douglas," he said, in a noticeably less polite way. "Moonbeam Harris-Broderick's boyfriend."
The nurse upstairs in the psychiatric ward looked at him expectantly. It wasn't often they got new visitors here. Parents, usually, but teen patients either got sent to the state facility or back home within a week or so. This guy looked like he'd been through hell. He could almost guess who he was hear to see.
"Moonbeam, yes... Theo... Douglas you said?" He ran his pen down a list. "Yes, her parents gave your name. Take a tag-" he handed him a clip on 'visitor' pass- "And remember visiting hours are over at 6pm." He stared at Theo rather openly. He hadn't see the girl, but he'd heard plenty about her. Just to be safe, after Theo left he was going to call security and have some backup in case things got out of hand.
He took the tag. He put it on and then he stared at the nurse on the desk.
"Look," he said, and his tone was rather plaintive. "Why is she in a psychiatric unit? Will someone please tell me just what the hell is going on around here? I've been shoved from pillar to post over the phone and I didn't expect it when I got here."
He looked for the world like he might cry at any moment.
"I just want to find my girlfriend."
The guy sighed. There were privacy laws to consider, but he couldn't exactly send the guy in there blind... leaning forward, he whispered.
"You mean no one's explained? Listen... all I've been told is that she woke up in the morgue, screaming like a banshee. They had to restrain her, and being alive, obviously, she couldn't stay at the morgue, so she was sent here. But look man..." He looked down the hall in either direction, then back to Theo. His voice lowered even further.
"I haven't seen her myself, but from what I've been told... she doesn't -look- all that alive. Green skin and red eyes. People have been sick when they've seen her. Just... brace yourself, alright? And if you need anyone, just run back up here." It was the best he could do.
Theo blinked several times and wiggled a finger in his ear. He couldn't possibly have just heard correctly. He clipped on his visitor's badge and stared at the floor.
He didn't move.
After a few moments, he looked up.
"The morgue?"
Swivel, swivel.
"You mean...she was dead? But then woke up screaming?"
Green skin? Red eyes?
Theo checked the date on his watch. No, April Fools was over more than a month ago. But...things like that didn't happen in the real world, did they?
"She's dead?"
The clerk frowned a bit and nodded. What a strange character. You'd think the situation would be upsetting more than confusing, but... People dealt with things in their own way.
"She's not dead, she just looks like it. At least that's what I've heard. If she were dead, she wouldn't be here."
He considered this for a while, then nodded. "True enough. Oh, well, I'll - I'll go see her then."
Theo was a tall, skinny sort of a man and walked as though he was made of mostly knees and elbows; ungainly and awkward, a little like the personality he put across. He was, however, very sweet natured and sensitive. It was what women saw in him.
He got to the door of room 207 and raised a hesitant hand to knock.
Today was getting stranger and stranger.
The girl took a long time to answer, having turned her head to look at the door. No one had knocked before. Well, Simmons and Largo knocked, but they did so as they were walking in just to make sure she knew they were coming.
"Come in?" She said softly.
When the door opened, her red eyes widened a bit. It was one of the people from the photograph Simmons had shown her yesterday. At least she thought it was yesterday... The sun had set as some point and come back up, but she hadn't slept, and neither had they it seemed. Nothing was clear, everything was confusing.
And so she looked confused at first, the black hoodie too big around her body, long red plaid pajama pants and white socks covering most of her sickly green skin. Her full lips were bruised pinkish in places over a slate-green colour that set them off against her pale skin. She watched him with a guarded expression, tightening her grip on the edge of the hospital bed.
"Hi." It was not the sort of hello someone gives their lover.
Theo stared at the apparition on the bed and blinked. Then he shook his head.
"Excuse me," he said, politely. "Wrong room."
Then he shut the door again, took several steps away and then came back.
No, this was room 207. It even had her name on the door. Too long in an aeroplane breathing recycled air. He was, he decided, either asleep and dreaming, or hallucinating.
He opened the door again and stared at the girl on the bed.
"Moonbeam?" he said, hesitantly. "Baby, is that you?"
God she hated that name. It wasn't that it was silly sounding, in fact it sounded entirely natural to her. It was more that it didn't remind her of anything other than that she'd forgotten who she was.
Sighing, she looked at her knees. "That is what they tell me." She nodded a little. "I'm supposed to know you, aren't I." She looked sad, and felt bad that she couldn't give him whatever it was he wanted.
He had called her baby. And he was too old to be her father, so he must be an older brother, or maybe a boyfriend. She didn't know how to respond, or how to feel.
The discomfort read across her face as clearly as words.
His face ran a gamut of expressions. He was horrified by her appearance, distressed that something so crazy had happened to his beautiful, bright, bubbly girlfriend and upset that she didn't remember him. Only ago he'd spoken to her on the phone and had told her how much he missed her.
He loved her. He'd loved her from the day he'd met her and now, here she was, looking like an extra from an Evil Dead movie and claiming that she didn't know him.
"Baby, it's me. Theo." No change in her expression. "Your boyfriend?" he hazarded. "Three years, four months, six days."
So that was it. She nodded, and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't remember anything...yet." Shaking her head, she whimpered. "I don't know if I will or not... I'm sorry I look this way." No tears, but the sound of them in her voice. Oh it would be such a relief to cry, but no such luxury was there to console her.
"Theo. Theo." she tried the name on, looking at him again. Her head shook sadly. "I... I don't know a Theo. Please... Shut the door?"
Sure, tell him you don't remember. So you can stay here with me, right?"
She didn't answer Harold. The last thing this Theo needed was to watch her talk to dead people.
He stared at her in confusion for a little longer, feeling both disgusted and morbidly fascinated by whatever had happened to her. She was, at the end of the day, the woman he believed he was going to be spending the rest of his life with.
Poor Theo stood there for a very long time before eventually shutting the door and turning to face her.
"I...have a couple of photographs if that'll help," he said, awkwardly.
"Did you love me?" She said softly. She could remember the feeling of love, of touching and closeness, trust and intimacy. Those things weren't foreign to her, that piece of her hadn't been stolen. It wasn't as if she were blank slated back to birth. But all those things with him.. .no, she didn't remember a thing.
"I mean, you have your chance to come clean I guess..." she smirked. "If you really loved me...or if you didn't." She pushed messy hair out of her face. "I don't know what it means now. I'm... dead, Theo." her shoulders shook and she covered her face with one hand for a moment. "I just don't know what to do. Why did you come here?" Immediately her hand raised and she waived that thought away.
"I'm sorry. It's all very confusing. I don't know what I feel, let alone what I felt. If you go, I won't blame you. Neither would... Moonbeam. I guess."
"DID I love you? I still do, you stupid girl," he said, his voice strained and sounding near tears. "I loved you from the first moment I saw you standing there in the queue for that concert. Ah, Beam..."
Theo sat down heavily on the chair in the corner of the room and buried his head in his hands. "You're everything to me," he said, through his hands. "You have been for all these years and I came here because I needed to see you, because...because I LOVE you!"
He continued to sit there, his face in his hands, miserably.
She slipped her arms around herself, half turning away from him. Her eyes closed. The sound of his tears brought forth only the sympathy one might have for a stranger. What was she supposed to say? At least he hadn't thrown up when he saw her.
"I'm sorry," she whispered again and again. "I'm really sorry."
Pulling at the wristband of the hoodie Simmons had given her, she almost wished he was here. He had become her rock.
"What am I supposed to do?" She whined softly, rocking a little. "What do I do now..." She wasn't sure who she was asking.
Tell him to fuck off. Faggott'll smoke a bong and be over it in the morning.
She covered her ears, trying to shut the sound of Theo's tears and Harold's teasing voice out.
"I'm staying here with you," he said, eventually looking up at her and wiping at tear-streaked eyes. "You're my girl, and I said I'd always be there for you."
He wanted, more than anything, to cross the room and hold her in his arms, but was afraid to. She looked...like she might shatter under his grip, or something.
So he sat there.
"I don't know what to do either," he said, sadly. "I just want to be here for you."
Sobbing softly, she gathered her calm around her again. She couldn't freak out in front of him, and if he loved who she used to be, well...
"What if I remember some day? What if it wears off... don't leave me Theo..." Even saying it sounded crazy. She had no feelings for this man...
"Am I horrible to look at? I..." she looked at her hands, then closed her eyes and turned her head away. "I mean, how can I go back to being.. normal? I don't even know where to start."
A sigh sat between them in the empty room for a few moments. Then she tried again.
"The guy who's been running tests on me. They have a facility they want to take me to, where they can run more tests." Her parents would have been horrified. They had always accepted her mutant gifts and celebrated them, would never have wanted her studied like the monkeys they had fought to set free from the university labs her sophomore year. But she wasn't that simple child of nature anymore. What she was was entirely outside of that, and it was clear in her voice that she was utterly lost.
"He's taking me tonight." She looked to him as if hoping he'd know Moonbeam better than she did. Was this the decision she should be making?
"Over my dead body," said Theo instantly, then stared at her, horrified.
"That was SO the wrong thing to say, wasn't it? He's not taking you *anywhere*, Beam. Not unless he takes me too."
This time, he did cross the room and, almost hesitantly, took her hands in his own. The touch scared him rigid, but he grit his teeth mentally and tried to lend her some of the strength she had once given him, back in the days when he'd been shy and awkward and uncertain of himself.
"I said I'd always be by your side and that doesn't change. The marriage vows say in sickness and in health, right? So maybe you're just sick. Whatever, Beam, you're my girl and I'm going nowhere."
He squeezed her hands gently.
"I swear."