2019-06-15 - Bubber

It certainly was almost melted, that candle she was burning. She'd only been running on about three hours of good sleep when Graham fell into bed last night, and it's sort of gone downhill from there. It was exhausting, she was exhausted, and she's had just about enough with her mother and all the goddamn buzzing that her phone was doing. But she was there and present, not doing crossword puzzles or watching soap operas, but instead sitting at the station with her elbows on the counter and staring at the text she hadn't yet sent to Graham:

'Do you want to go to dinner at my parent's house tonight?' it reads. Her thumb hovers over the 'send message' arrow, knowing if he said yes and she brought him, it would cause so much drama. And knowing that if he said no, it would bother her endlessly, because what were they doing even? Thus the hesitation, the gnawing at her bottom lip as she considered sending, and when she finally made the decision? That little voice peeps up from the front of the counter.

Her phone is abandoned, the message still unsent, as she leans around to look at this Children of the Corn blonde kid. "Oh, no. I'm not a doctor, but I am a nurse," she keeps her voice calm, quiet, and gets out of her chair so that she can walk around the station and lower herself to the kid's level. "Are you okay, sweetheart? Do you need something?"

Instinct has Elise reaching up to the counter to snag a tissue from one of the dispensers there as the kid mooshes his fingers into his nose and eye sockets. Gross. But she has a pleasant smile that twitches at the very corners of her mouth as she presents the tissue to him. "I sure do help people," probably better than some of the doctors do, but she leaves that out. She maintains the smile even after the kid mentions his mom being hurt, though her eyes narrow in concern as she follows the direction of his little body towards the elevator.

"Of course I can help your mom, sweetie. What's your name?" she stretches back to her feet and wiggles her fingers at the kid to take her hand. "You can show me where she was, yeah? Did the doctors take her?" There's a glance backwards to the station she's going to abandon, but, well. This was sort of her job, wasn't it? Help people in need! "Come on, we'll find your mom. If the doctors have her, I'm sure she's okay now."

It's a good thing there are so many hand sanitizer dispensers around the hospital. Elise doesn't let her smile dim even a subtle bit when the nasty tissue is pressed into her hand. She just chucks it into the bin beside the counter, and gets a quick squirt-squirt of the alcohol-smelling gel, rubbing her hands together vigorously before she takes the child's gross fingers. Who was, honestly, adorable with his 'Bubber' and smile full of baby teeth. Elise likes children; she spent her time in Seattle working at the Children's Hospital, and this lost one was pulling on all the heart strings. "It's very nice to meet you, Bubber. Is that why your mommy's in the hospital? Because she had a baby?"

She folds her warm fingers around his achingly cold ones and follows, unthinking about his keen sense of direction. But she does blink a few times when he presses every single button on the elevator. Fuck. "Oh, yes! It does," she taps her finger against the 'E' on her badge. "My name is Elise. Do you remember which one of these numbers was your mommy's floor?" She flourishes a hand to all the lit-up buttons, and does her best impersonation of someone who ism't vaguely annoyed.

It's a really good impersonation.

Look at that composure roll, Elise doesn't mind the talk. In fact, there's a lighthearted laugh that escapes at the boy's nickname for her. "My best friend calls me Elly," but not the -phant part. At least not to her face. "I bet the," racist, "finger trap makes a great sleeping bag for your Lego men. Do you have a lot?" It was easiest to keep him talking; if his mom really was hurt, talking meant the boy would stay calm and not worry so much.

Elise reaches to grab the handicap bar when the elevator jolts, using her other hand to grip the boy's own a little more securely. The descent to the very bottom of the hospital brings a sinking sensation to her stomach, which only worsens when the boy says this way. "Oh, no, I don't think this is right, Bubber," she protests with a furrow of her brow. Though, while she may drag her feet, she exits the elevator. That'll probably prove to be a mistake later. "We should go back up to the lobby. We can ask the nice receptionist what room your mommy is in. She can look it up on the computer." The receptionist was a bitch, but she far prefers talking to Marilyn than being in the fucking morgue.

"You could always make your own jail. That's what's great about Legos, isn't it? That you can just make whatever you want.." Elise's comment just sort of trails off as she looks behind her to where the elevator doors shutter closed. She takes in a breath and holds it until she's sure the release will come steady. But even then, there's a catch at the very end, at the little boy's insistence that his mom is here. With a sheet over her face. Elise feels that sinking sensation again, but this time it's her heart, free-falling into her stomach.

She follows even though she knows she shouldn't, the smile slipping from her face. It turns into a concerned purse of her lips when they pass the abandoned orderly station - was EVERYBODY fucking off today? - and then the frown takes over when they step through the doors just as she's fingering her badge. But here, with the bodies and the tables and the chill of the morgue, here is where she plants her heels into the floor and goes no further, giving Bubber's hand a small tug.

"Hey, Bubber? Why don't you wait outside? I can find your mommy, you just.. need to tell me her name." She tries to find a smile as she looks down at Bubber, though her eyes slide past him and over his bony shoulder, to the slabs behind. "I'll find her. But only if you wait outside. Please."

Dammit, on the one day where it would pay to be an actual ninja, Elise's thai kung-fu doesn't manifest out of nowhere. "Bubber! Wait!" There was no consideration given to not chasing this child through the morgue. Sure, it was a fucking morgue, but she wasn't even going to pay a single thought to leaving this kid here. So the only alternative was to run. Good thing she wears some speedy kicks, even if her white nurse sneakers were an eyesore.

Thank goodness he's four and therefore has stubby legs. She locks eyes on his Children of the Corn white hair and chases after him. "Hey, Bubber! Just calm down, we'll find her, I promise! I'm here to help!"

Just how fucking big was this morgue, and how can a four year old have such endless energy?! "Bubber, please!" Elise exercises, she does yoga, she goes to the gym - but there's only so much darting between metal slabs of dead people that she can reasonably do before she starts running out of steam. She just happens to run out of steam somewhere close to nutless - err, Mac - and the sudden glimpse of him there on the table with a bullet in his head and one ball missing stops her dead in her tracks.

She knows she shouldn't lose sight of this too blonde kid in the morgue, but it really was only so big. Eventually the room has to end, and she won't lose him forever in here. Besides, Mac's presence catches her off guard, her breath hitching in her throat. "Bubber," she calls out, all while her attention drifts from Mac to the other body bag, where the horns poke through the fabric. "Bubber, please come back and let me help you." Her voice sounds weak to her own ears. She takes a shaky step forward.

It's wrong to open up body bags. She doesn't belong down here. She takes another quick glance about the morgue, trying to see if she can put eyes on Bubber's blonde head, before she reaches to finger the zipper to the horn-girl's body bag. Curiosity only kills cats, and Elise is not a cat, and maybe putting eyes on this girl would put some realism to Graham's story. Her hand shakes, but she starts to unzip the bag.

Look, judgey meta. This was not violation, she was just unzipping the bag to look and confirm that her best friend maybe boyfriend wasn't actually crazy. It never occurs to her that she should just rely on the very reliable news article that came out in the Gazette about this. She doesn't even recall that the Gazette specifically said these corpses were brought to Olympia, so how could they even be here? But regardless, she was going to open this goddamn bag, Bubber be damned. He was here somewhere, that was the important part, she hadn't lost him yet.

The bag unzips, and the horn falls off, and Elise claps her hand to her mouth. Pale almond skin gets a vaguely sickening green twinge to it, but she holds in noodles she had for lunch earlier. "Oh god," she muffles against her palm, and she realizes that she just needs to zip this bag back up and find Bubber and get the hell out of dodge just as the corpse-cold hand of Mac's grips her wrist and jerks her around.

That great success means she doesn't projectile vomit all over Nutless and the hole in his head. She instead pulls back, trying to yank her hand out of Mac's own. "Fuck you, no, get off of me!" she shouts, and she knows it's crazy to yell at a corpse, but is it crazy to yell at a corpse that's calling you names? "BUBBER! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" she raises her voice, while trying to yank her hand out of Mac's grip.

Racist.

"Bitch? BITCH? Who the fuck are you calling a bitch, Nutless?! The only thing I'm going to fix is --" Elise starts to clap back. That great success means she has composure for days; she's not going to let a couple of zombies bring her down. But her big words fail her when another body sits up, and she puts eyes on Lukas Collins. " -- No," the strangled word crawls out of her throat, her eyes widening. She jerks on her hand, trying to pull it from the tightening grip of Mac's, but her stare is fixated on Lukas now.

"No. No no no, you're not dead. Graham didn't kill you, I saved you, I helped you even when I shouldn't have!" This has to be a dream. Did she fall asleep at the nurse's station? Her eyes start to fill with water as she flails about helplessly, and tries to look for something she can stab Mac with. Or cut his arm off with. Certainly there was some kind of scalpel or something around here somewhere. "Let me go! Wake me up, this isn't REAL! You're still alive," she says that firmly to Lukas, she needs to believe. And then she turns to Mac, and spits right in his face. "And you're fucking dead."

"I wish you were fucking dead, you piece of shit," Elise sneers back to Lukas, and she's going to spit in his face too for good measure. "You're only alive because of me, because I didn't tell him everything. He should've ripped off your dick and choked you with it, he should've -" Oh, such strong words. She's found them and lost them again, because as this is coming out of her, her father sits up. And then her mother. And Elise loves her parents, truly and deeply, in spite of her mother's fixation on her marital status. Her throat cinches up, and there's nothing more than a whine that crawls out of her, a desperate whimper.

Then there is the pull, and in spite of her dragging her heels, she's coming closer to that woman who really shouldn't be choking anymore, not after she vomited Graham's dream penis onto his lap. "Please, please please, I don't want to hurt you, you didn't do anything wrong," she begs the woman, because it's not like this devil-horn creature was anything more than a victim.

But Elise.. Elise wasn't good at playing the victim. If she was going to cut anybody, if she was going to HURT somebody, she was going to do it to Lukas. So while she pulls, and she pulls SO hard..there's quite a lot of thought given to cutting Lukas' dick off right now.

Let's be honest, Elise had no clue what she thought that was going to do. Except in spite of how not satisfying it was, it was still pretty satisfying to see his dick fall off. Too bad she can't force him to choke on it. Those thoughts were for later though, much later, assuming she wakes up from this terrible nightmare. There's a yowl of pain as the dead woman's fingernails bite into her skin, and she twists with pain. "I'm coming, Bubber!" she calls out into the morgue and all the dead people that are sitting up now, but there's a tremble of uncertainty to her voice. Was she really? Would she even be able to get out of here? Get them both out of here?

But something Andre says makes her think. It hurts to see him like that, to hear her mother's judging gasps. But this poor woman, she was so desperate to say something .. and if she could hurt, maybe she could help? So with her free hand, she lifts it up, and puts her palm to the dead-cold forehead of this poor woman. "Please God," she utters, a few tears falling as she winces her eyes shut, and tries to fix whatever's wrong with this woman that's preventing her from SAYING shit.

Something has to give. In spite of her awesome composure, and it really is awesome? Elise loses the noodles she had for lunch, right after she's thrown to the ground by Mac's fumbling shove. Maybe it was the black soupy mess that came out of Heather-Mary's mouth, or the violent stabbing that she feels responsible for. Either way? There was puke, and it was by the grace of God that she was even able to tear her eyes away. "God, help me," she utters up to the ceiling, tears streaming as she pushes to her feet. To her mother: "I'm so sorry," but there was more heart in that apology for Andre, running past the both of them to try and find that tiny blonde adorable baby. "Bubber, I'm here! Where are you?" she touches Andre on the arm as she rushes past, cold and dead as he is, trying to will that hole to close if she can. But her main focus has to be on Bubber.

Because he was real, and everything else wasn't. Or so she has to believe. "Bubber! Hey, keep shouting so I can hear you, please!" she scrambles towards where she feels she last heard his voice.

Elise can't worry about Andre now, nor about the rows of other corpses. Her vision was swimming anyway, from the sting of tears that want to leak down her cheeks. But no, she can't cry, she has to focus; focus on that little voice, the excitement, not on the corpses of the people she vaguely knows, getting up to stare at her. "Oh, God. Bubber, thank God," she utters in a little voice when she finally sees his pale white head, and she gets about two steps forward before she sees Graham there on the table between the two most adorable children ever .. and immediately falls to her knees.

"No. Nononono," she covers her face with her hands and muffles a wail, pushes her fingers through her hair afterward and forces herself back up. She doesn't even see herself at first, she's got her eyes fixed on Graham and the hole in his head. "No, Graham, God no," her voice trembles as the sobs shake through her, and she touches his cheeks and his hair and tries so hard to fix him even though she knows she can't. Even though she knows she'll fail. She hasn't even gotten to her tag yet, hit by the realization that the two most adorable children she's ever seen were..

"Bubber," her voice aches, and she kisses Graham on the forehead before she goes, tears streaming, to put her arms around these kids. To squeeze them and hold them and touch their chubby legs and cold faces even if they aren't real. "Yeah, I'm a nurse," there are no happy faces, just more tears. "I'll fix her, I promise." It was all lies. But she kisses their heads and moves towards herself there on the table, her knees shaking and legs like jelly. But she finds the tag. And she wants to repeat what Mac and Lukas had said to her earlier: she was a stupid bitch, a dumb bitch, how could she let this happen? Her fingers curl around the tag on NotElise's toe and she rips it right off, and it's with some absolutely grim determination that she wills this paper to fall apart in her hand. Because no. "No. I won't. I won't fucking fail."

There's one last glance to Graham, to the little heads that he puts his hands upon and turns their faces away, and Elise is all over the place emotionally. Mentally. She's drained, sickened by the way her own toe bends from pulling the tag, but there are no more noodles to throw up when her dead self rises and vomits fishy-smelling water all over her feet. "Come on!" she hisses at her boneless self, "Come on, you can't do this. We can't do this. We have something to live for!" she envelopes herself into her arms, all boneless and soggy as deadElise is, uttering quiet prayers into the air and into her own ear. "Please. Please, we have something. We have him, them, a future," she is sobbing, but she is trying. Trying to fix this, trying to will her watery self back to life.

She's trying not to fail.

Elise wanted to smack herself, shake some sense into herself, why was her self turning to liquid in her hands? "I'm trying, I'm trying, dammit!" It was stupid to yell at herself, but hey, she was clearly cracking up and not waking up so it was just time to go with the flow. "Knock this shit off! You have something to live for. We have something to live for! I have something to live for!!" But before she had a chance to slap deadElise (and probably turn her into a puddle for realsies), the musty smell of the carpet in the lobby was assaults her senses.

Her eyes go wide. Was she at the station again? She looks down at her hands, which were just seconds ago gripping up deadElise, and then blinks to the boy that was blonde like her child but wasn't hers. "Bub.." she starts, and then her attention whips to the EMT. She's still tear-stained, she probably looks like a damn wreck, but she shoves her hand into the EMT's shoulder and shoves him as hard as she can. "You're an asshole," she hisses to him, for saying what he says right in front of that poor little boy, and then turns to the child. "It's okay," she was shaking, but she wipes her tears and brushes her thumb gingerly along the cut of the boy's forehead. "It's okay. I'm a nurse, I'm going to help. My name's Elise." A pause. "You can call me Elly. I'm gonna help you and then I'm gonna help your momma, okay? I promise."

It's a terrible thing, to promise something to a child that you aren't sure you can actually fix. But she musters up a smile for him, in spite of her tears, and she prays she can hold it together long enough to do what all these fucking doctors can't. She wishes that little cut on the boy's head mend itself together, and then she turns on her heel and rushes after the gurney. Because maybe she can wish his momma better, too.

Elise privately wishes the EMT would die in a fire but she's not going to say that out loud. She'll just glare at him on her way after the boy's momma, giving not-Bubber a quick thumbs up before he goes. The shiny doctor's wide-eyed look of surprise is given right back to him when she sees the fact that he's fucking shiny, but there will be time for that later. Right now? Well.

Right now, it's time for Elise to show everyone in this room who's the boss. She's gonna nurse the FUCK outta this lady.

And when it was all done, when she was sure that woman was going to make it and that she hadn't failed? Elise finds her phone where she left it on the nurse's station. With amazing efficiency, she types out a quick message to her mother in Thai: I can't make it tonight, I have to work. Next Thursday instead? I'll bring a date. I love you, mom.

But there was nothing efficient about how she contacts Graham. Because she's drained and scared and emotional. So her voice breaks when he picks up, or his voicemail does: "G? Baby. I'm okay, I'm not hurt, but I need you to come pick me up. I think whatever happened to you... happened to me."

Graham will find Elise out on the curb, her phone on silent because she can't stand her fucking mother. And she'll get in the car without saying a word; she just takes the liberty of shifting his car into park, climbing over the stupid middle console, and hopefully does not knee him in the balls in her attempt to plant herself in his lap. She lays a kiss against either of his temples, bursts into tears, and tucks her head against his chest with her ear pressed against his chest. She's going to tell him the whole story, all of it, but right now?

Right now, she just needs to hear that he is alive. So she's going to listen to his heartbeat in the car, crammed between him and the steering wheel, and he's just going to have to deal.

Dude, is Graham allowed to park here? Hospitals have all kinds of weird rules about where you can park and where you can't. He worries about this for about half a second, after he gets over the shock of Elise being... different. Knowing someone backwards-and-forwards (THAT'S NOT A SEX JOKE, I SWEAR) and then one day they walk out of a building and they shimmer like that? Takes a minute to get over. Apparently, this is not a minute that Graham gets right now, since it seems important that he put arms around Elise, smoothing her frazzled hair for her.

Also, he's definitely not silent through this, so no worries, nobody cut out his tongue or anything. The things he says are unimportant, though, just about how it's all right, baby, she'll be all right, "We'll figure this shit out, we always figure shit out." IT JUST SOMETIMES TAKES THEM NINE YEARS.

There were no minutes for either of them. Just this, this moment, with her ear glued to his chest and his heartbeat drowning out the words he was saying. She needed this minute, this stretch of time with his arms - warm! alive! - around her, and his heartbeat in her ear. And when she was satisfied that he was okay, that this was real, she reaches up and grabs him by the ears and tugs him into her for a kiss that was by no means appropriate for sitting outside the hospital in plain view.

It's only after her lips are numb from that kiss that she tells him, her watery eyes on his. She tells him everything, in as much detail as she can, though she gets a little choked up at the part where she finds him dead, and a whole lot more choked up at the part about their fucking gorgeous kids; but her eyes never leave his. She tells him of the glowing doctor, and woman that she saved. And at the end of it all, she has only one question: "What the hell happened to us, G?"

Graham is good for the kiss. It's not like she got hit in the face with Mac's nut, so he doesn't even have to be grossed out. Truth be told, he'd be good for a whole lot more than just a kiss, regardless of the parking situation, but now's not the time for that, so yeah. Down, boy. Everything that follows... that's a hard story to hear. There's good old-fashioned pain and sorrow in his features while he listens - man, these two have a lot to learn - and even a few soft apologies said into her hair here and there, arms tight around her, anything to not dwell on the aching brutality of what these two have been put through.

Ultimately, though? "I dunno. I think? Yanno how people are always saying this town fucking sucks? And how it's full of crazy people?" He looks for her eyes with his, and he smiles ruefully at her. "Kinda thinking they might be on to something."

Yes, down boy indeed. They don't need to be making little Bubber in a car in the middle of the hospital parking lot. She soaks up the attention that he gives her - the soft apologies, the arms around her, the warmth of his skin against hers when she leans in to touch her forehead to his own, and she really wants to cry but has no more real tears to do it with. So ultimately? "I think you're right," she whispers, her brow wrinkling against his own, and she sighs as she pulls away to sit back up again. "The doctor might know something. Something more," she gnaws at the corner of her bottom lip. "He's short but I guess you can't hold that against the guy? Marilyn did say he's shacking up with some mental patient or something? But Marilyn just talks and I... I don't know. The way he looked at me.." she shakes her head.

And she's quiet, for a moment. Long enough to watch his eyes and try to find something there. "I'm not.. not gonna fuck this up," it's a quiet promise. "I'm not.. we're not going to end up like that. We're going to figure out how to not end up like that, G." Don't ask her how, she just wasn't going to allow it. And there was one other thing she wasn't going to allow:

"And we're not going to name our fucking kid Bubber, and I'm getting him that goddamn Gotham prison."

There's a laugh from Graham about the mental patient bit. "A'ight. You talk to the doctor that's fucking the lunatic, and I'll talk to the dude that's banging his sister. I'm sure they know exactly what's up." <-- That was sarcasm.

There's no clue from Graham what she's looking for, but he looks back at her without flinching. He cups her chin, and he leans his forehead to hers, and he believes her. Unfortunately, he's not capable of sharing that belief with her - goddamn Glimmer n00bs - but he says with soft certainty, "You never fuck things up, baby. If anybody's getting us through this? It's you." He squeezes her into a hug, and he manages to bury another laugh in her hair, quietly pointing out that Bubber? Kinda sounds like brother? Maybe that's what their kid ("holy shit this is a weird conversation") was saying?

Whatever. Ellybean and G would never name their kids anything stupid. They will have awesome names, like LAZER and SOPHITIA.