vaccination | (no subject)

Tess leans a hip against the side of the bed. In part it's to be closer to him, but it gives her just enough leverage to hold him in place if she needs to. The adrenaline of that day has left her own memories of it very clear. There is precious little good news to deliver. No one could be expected to take it with grace.

She glances at Ellie and nods. Tommy is fine.

"We're at Dr. Nyugen's clinic," she adds, very calmly. "You took a pretty bad hit, Texas. You've been out for four days."

Joel settles more willingly with Ellie’s quick reassurance. She wouldn’t lie – she’s always been as honest as a brick to the face. Not like him. That old guilt rises up to add its weight to the nausea and confusion sitting on his chest – a Pavlovian response to Ellie crying. He takes his time turning away from her teary face back to Tess, feeling very tired as that white-bright fury-fear reaction recedes.

“I’m fine,” he grumbles again, readily dismissing pretty bad hit because he’s still sort of offended by the nursemaiding going on – but it’s nice having both his girls around again. It makes him settle.

“Four days?” That sounds like a lot, and through all the bruises and scrapes, he squints up at Tess as if he’s distrusting of that count. It doesn’t make a bit of sense… but Tess isn’t a liar, either. Worst she does is obscure the facts with all those layers of hers. “Are ya sure?”

It’s very difficult for Joel to focus on what he’s being told when his thoughts keep ricocheting off each other.

It's been the longest four days of her life. It's all felt like one long, dark night, Ellie's only indication of time coming from Tess or Dina or Tommy. Her free hand wipes her face, palm pressing hard into each eye, willing herself to just keep it together.

"Yeah. Four days," Ellie confirms. "Scared the shit out of us."

Not that she isn't still scared shitless, but. He's awake. Talking. She tells herself that's good. He might hate what he's left with, but at least he's alive to be pissed.

Ellie looks to Tess. "Should I go get the doctor?"

Maybe he needs to be drugged again... or will be, once he realizes his leg is gone.

Tess considers that a moment.

"Might be wise," she says. She glances at Ellie, and there's something a little warning there, a little strategic –– Ellie will want to be here when the axe comes down, and she's sure of that, but the girl better be ready to run for the doctor if things get ugly.

Tess passes a hand over Joel's hair, still ginger. It's a relief that he woke up at all, and she tells herself that no matter what happens next, it's fortunate that it's just that. Just a leg. She swallows the little bubble of fear, gently keeps his face turned to her.

"Joel," she says. "I'm sure. Do you remember taking a shotgun to your knee?"

He does.

He remembers the confusion and anger, the hurt and fear. Joel’s bleary expression takes on a little of all of those things to have Tess turning his mind back to it. She must mean well by that hand petting over him, so careful over the aches he’s starting to become aware of, but he shies away from it.

A lot of him hurts through the fading chemical haze.

One part doesn’t. That absence of pain leaves him more tender than the worst of his bruises or fractures. Joel tries to look down, but all he can see are clean white blankets, layers of them laid out all neatly over his chest and lap and legs. He means to sit up – can’t quite manage it between the drugs and Tess’ careful hold keeping him back against his pillow. She knows him too well – he does struggle then, if very weakly. He tries to pull his hand out of Ellie’s grip, tries to duck away from Tess looming over.

Nothing more really needs telling. It’s confirmation enough how only one of his bare heels scrapes over the starched sheets, how the other just… doesn’t.

“Shit. Lemme up.”

She gives Tess the smallest of nods. There's no way she'd hide from this, not be here for Joel, but if he's a danger to himself or them, she knows she'll be running out the door. Ellie watches his face, brow creased, and sees the dots connect.

It breaks her heart.

Ellie doesn't let him take his hand back. Instead, she stands, to keep a grip on him, other hand on his shoulder to help Tess keep him from getting up.

"Joel, stop," she says, firmly. "You gotta stay."

"Nuh uh," Tess murmurs, putting the barest bit of pressure into his chest as he struggles. She feels as though she might as well be putting a gun to his head, wounding him more than he already is, but she's had four days to prepare for this conversation. She still doesn't feel ready, but readiness has always taken a backseat to obligation. What she should do for her partner.

She steels herself when she feels the little prickle of teariness on her eyes.

"You're not going to be on your feet for a while. You lost the leg."

With the both of them on top of him, Joel has no hope of getting anywhere. He’s gone strung tight like a bowstring, his breathing hitched as he tries, one last time, to shrug them away. It does him no good, and with a humiliated flush rising up in his face, Joel stills. He has to: the nausea rears up so strong he thinks he might be sick.

“Yeah, I figured that out.” There’s a meanness in his tone that he hasn’t used in a while, and the lines in his face have gone craggy with the force of his frown. It’s thick enough to cover up the fear – it’s got to be. “Get off me.”

Ellie looks momentarily horrified that Tess just says it like that. But is there really any other way? She audibly swallows, and obediently lets go of his shoulder. He's not going to jump out of the bed. She lets go of his hand, too.

"It's... it's gonna be okay," she tries, not sounding like she believes that much herself. Whatever she sees in Joel's face, she interprets as anger, even if in her heart she knows him better. "The doctor said when you're out of the woods you can come home. I'm--I'm gonna move in, so I can help out."

It's almost a question. Does he want that? Maybe it's not something to say or talk about now, but Ellie has so much bouncing around in her head that she really doesn't know what to say or do. She feels like that helpless little girl, sitting in a shopping mall, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Tess eases back, but she keeps a hand over his chest, at least at first. She's never felt afraid of him, much less afraid of him when he's laid up like this, but she feels wary when she hears that tone. She's known him a long time, ridden those ups and downs, watched storms roll in and roll out again. She keeps that hand on him to brace him just as much as keep him in one place.

But she does look away, at first casting her gaze around the room just to blink back some feeling and then landing on Ellie. Sure, he's mad. Anyone would be. Either of them could calm him, but Ellie's got that magic to her, that bond that doesn't need to anchor itself in tough love.

She withdraws that last hand.

He feels them retreat individually. Ellie is quick about it, obedient for the first time in a while, and it’s fitting that she looks a lot like that scraped up little kid from the road. Tess is slower, lingering, and he feels even worse by the time her hand does finally let up off his chest, but he doesn’t look her way.

Doesn’t want to know if she’s looking at him with pity or resignation.

Ellie’s safer, even if his temper hasn’t fully broken. He half-hears her babble, but there’s a hollow sort of ringing going on in his head. Now that he’s aware of it, Joel’s not sure how he hadn’t realized his leg's absence the instant he’d been awake. It still doesn't feel real. He needs to look.

“You don’t –” want that is what he was going to chase her off with, but instead he catches his breath and swallows that bitterness back. Maybe it’s not fair to Tess… Hell, definitely it’s not fair to Tess, but Joel has a much harder time being mad at Ellie.

“Okay.” He sounds so tired again, looks even worse as he tries to prop himself up on unsteady elbows. Better go get that doctor: Joel’s on the move. “Sure, okay.”

He doesn't sound thrilled. Ellie can't blame him. She tries not to take it personally, but she's taking all of this personally. If she didn't get wrapped up in Dina. If she'd moved faster. If she fought harder. There had to have been some way to avoid this.

"Hey, easy," Ellie says, putting a hand on his shoulder again. She doesn't try to push him down, afraid he'd resist more this time. There's this incredible urge to just hug the man, cling and tell him how sorry she is and how worried, but once more she's afraid. If she makes that move, she'll lose what composure she's managed to scrounge up.

"I'm gonna go tell the doctor you're up. Maybe we can get you home real soon."

Sure he won't die in the few minutes it takes to head out of the room and down the hall, Ellie glances at Tess before unsteadily stepping away from the bed. It's a sorry sight, the three of them. Swallowing down the bile in her throat, Ellie turns and heads out the door.

"Thanks, sweetheart," Tess replies, giving Ellie a look that's ostensibly calm, but something dark is simmering just under the surface. There's a lot to think about. There's a lot to do. It's a long fucking road from waking up to getting back to normal, and it's not a road often taken in this world. Their world is not a kind one, even to those with all limbs, digits and senses in order.

She doesn't move to ease Joel back down, but she doesn't move off, either, just lingering within reach.

"What do you need right now?" she asks.

Tess has witnessed him acting a mess more times than he would be proud to admit, and fate throws another moment onto that pile: after Joel struggles up to lean against his pillows, his head swimming and ears ringing as Ellie flees for the door, he breathes for a second. He can sense Tess hovering close to his shoulder as she tries to be there for him. And later on, when he’s not so raw, he’ll be real grateful for it but in that moment all he wants to rip up these blankets. Put his eyes on it, make it real.

What he needs is help doing anything. His hands are steadier now that he’s awake but it’s not good, and his strength is flagging as a box truck of a headache starts bearing down on him, but by god he’s going to look before Ellie shows back up –

Though she’s probably seen it all herself, of course. Four days he’d been out, Tess had said.

“I’m already the last fuckin’ person to know, to see it,” he says finally, only after tearing at his blankets for a silent, frustrating half minute and getting nowhere. Whoever had tucked him in had been thorough. “Would you please just–”

"Alright," Tess says. It's about as patient as she's capable of being, halfway between deep concern and being an order. Let me handle this, then. It feels like all those little moments from Boston to Jackson, everywhere from managing Ellie on the way to the Capitol building so he didn't have to think about little girls with death sentences, all the way to covering for his rampage at the hospital.

She moves down the length of the bed and sets about untucking the blankets, reaching down where he can't or where his hands fumble. She peels the covers back with her eyes on his face.

"It's bandaged up pretty heavily," she warns him. "You're not going to see it until it has to be changed."

“What, do you think I’m gonna need to squint to see how half my damn leg is gone?”

It is a fair point. Once Tess gets the blankets all pulled down, there’s no denying reality. He blinks for a while, feeling queasy and floaty again, but it’s shock instead of a fizzing high that makes his tongue go heavy as a rock. He’s glad that the words are out of him already, otherwise they’d have all stopped up in his throat and ended up choking him.

Joel says “okay” eventually, sort of airless sounding and with very wet eyes, but what else is he going to say? He reels forward to grab one of the sheets and yank it back into place rather than asking Tess, and he pays for it. His ribs ache, his head throbs.

Tess was right, again, as always – it was better to just get it over with. He's calmer.

“Is Ellie alright?” Her face had looked busted up, but in all the fuss he hadn’t asked… Worrying about it helps rope Joel off from worrying about himself, foolish as he is.

She lets him have his minute, lets the snippy remarks go, lets him make his own effort to cover himself up again. She rearranges the covers atop him, just so they're not crooked and too heavy in some places and not in others, and returns to the head of the bed. If he wants to be upright, she'll at least take the pressure off by figuring out how to lift the head of the hospital bed. It takes a moment; there is no luxurious electric-pneumatic-whatever systems, but it gets the job done.

"Ellie's fine. A bit of manhandling, pulled shoulders, but most of it is just worrying over you."

She allows herself a long, tired breath out.

"You're getting that second shot with her. That has to count for something, hmm?"

“Oh yeah, it’s a real second shot.” There’s that bitterness again, welling up just like his tears. He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes, one at a time, but when his arm lowers again to his lap, the wetness in his eyes has abated, but not the awful, hopelessness filling him. “Holdin’ this gun to her head, how long do you think I can guilt her into stickin’ around for?”

Joel rubs his hand over his mouth, not proud of himself for thinking it, angry at himself for saying it. Of course he’d be happy for a week, a month, the rest of his life: however long Ellie wanted to hang around for was more than he’d thought he’d ever get again.

But he can’t help but dwell on the timing of it all. How unsteady the ground had been since he’d fetched her from St. Mary’s the second time, and then the world had been further upended when she’d said she wanted to forgive him, and now he’d have to navigate everything with this fucking it up –

“I’m sorry.” Joel breathes it out quick, harsh. He reaches out for Tess as she stands up from messing with the hospital bed contraption and grabs for her wrist. “I know I’m an asshole.”

Tess's face falls listening to him talk like that, and when he reaches for her wrist, she lets him have it. She even scoots right in, shifting to sit on the edge of the bed, facing him. A baser part of her wants to lean into his chest and hold him, but he's barely vertical, even assisted. She reels it in.

"Joel, it was a complicated week even before this," Tess says, firmly. "You wanna be mad about it, then be mad, get it out."

There's an unspoken to me there. Ellie doesn't need that on her plate, but Tess can take it. World champion at mediating their tiffs and the fallout of their relationship. She gives in and reaches to stroke the side of his face, soothing.

"But the girl wanted to try even before this, alright?"

Edited 2020-07-21 03:33 (UTC)

He’s too tired for mad. He’s too tired for anything but holding onto Tess, catching her close. Looking at her and feeling tremendously off balance, there’s a complicated sort of gratefulness that fills him to have her there. The steadiest part of his life, like always, but he's so ashamed to be seen like this. Scared of it. He can only hope she’ll extend that offer to listen for later, and that she’ll let him storm and rage after the shock has run its course.

“If you say so,” he relents, but he’s not sure he means it. Joel wants it to be true, but there have been other moments between him and Ellie during the past couple years where he’d gotten so foolishly hopeful, then had to endure that searing loss all over again.

But he rests a moment with her cheek in her hand, letting the pain medicine and nausea and everything else sort of whirl into that white noise again. A lot of thinking going on behind that far-away stare, and judging by the stony quality of his deepening frown… none of it good.

"I do say so."

Tess sighs with an unexpected relief when he holds onto her. After all this time she shouldn't be surprised to see him vulnerable, but she's spent four days wound into the tightest efficiency she could manage, packing all her feelings away for another time. The surprise is, perhaps, for the blooming realization that he is alive, and the worst is over, and now they're left with the crushing fear that the road ahead is much, much longer than four days.

She rocks against him, careful to not put any actual weight on him. She could outright cradle him if she could get away with it. She settles for continuing to stroke his cheek, ruffling the fuzzy edges of his beard.

"You should rest," she remarks, but she doesn't pull away. Ellie's not back yet, anyway, but she will be soon.

He ought to feel better – and he does, sort of. It’s a relief not to have Tess looking right at him. He can tip his chin up, keep his glassy eyes on the ceiling and pretend they’re home. That it’s just another Beaver Cleaver morning in Jackson.

It’s a shallow sort of pretending, but his heartbeat stops thudding so hard as all the excitement recedes. “Yeah, boss? I’ve been restin’ for four days.” He sighed. “And I wanna talk to the doc.”

But hell if she isn’t right again: his headache is glowing so bright that he’d welcome another week of sleep, so long as he woke back up on the other end of it.

A knock at the door is Ellie returning with the doctor, though she lingers behind at the door for a moment. She's not sure where to be. At the bedside? Out in the hall? Part of her wants to run, and keep running until she's straight out of Jackson.

Maybe she'd stop once she reached Washington.

The other part of her--the greater part, fortunately--wants to hold onto Joel and never let go.

It just leads to her in an awkward middle, and she decides to go back to her previous spot on the opposite side of the bed as Tess. She figures Joel doesn't want her anywhere near the missing leg. Sitting, she listens intently as the doctor greets Joel and begins to ask him how he's feeling. Good luck with that one, doc.

Tess eases herself away when the knock comes to the door, and she's mostly got both feet square on the floor by time the doctor comes in. She jokes with the doctor immediately with that easy little edge –– "Now that he's awake, he can have the real fun painkillers, right?" She keeps a hand by Joel, fingers trailing over his shoulder where he can reach her.

And as the doctor talks, she makes eye contact with Ellie, serious but concerned. You okay?

He’s just woke up, and it’s all still a blur. Of the group, the doctor seems to be the steadiest – not so personally invested. Joel is glad to have Tess next to him, her hand skimming against his shoulder as first a penlight moves in and out of his field of view. The doctor comes way too close and tips Joel’s head back, listens to his heart, and starts to pick his brain.

What’s your name, what year is it, who’s the president, ha ha ha isn’t everything normal, isn’t everything fine. Joel’s glad that Tess is there to cut some of the tension, because he mostly just lets it brew as the doctor talks and talks some more. Lots more questions. Joel lies to a few – estimated pain level, which gets a shrug and a fine, and what he remembers, which gets a mumbled not much.

He just doesn’t want to hash it out in front of Ellie. He's glad to have her there, but it's... hard, being seen like this. Joel looks over and catches her and Tess in the middle of some sort of silent conversation. They’d gotten good at them over the years. Usually it’s tolerable, but in the moment he feels another flare of temper.

“When do I go home?”

“There are more tests, and then we’ll need to keep an eye out for infection –”

“Just askin’ for a timetable, doc,” Joel says, short. Not particularly kind or grateful to the woman who saved his life.

Dr. Nyugen quirks a smile though, and nods kindly. She’s good at her job. “The tests will decide the timetable.”

Edited (forgot my subject ) 2020-07-23 03:19 (UTC)

<33333

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internet is being fucky ;__;

noooo RIP

yeah idek dudes no discord tonight I'M SORRY <3

don't worry!! <3 you'll come back to us

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i gave up on discord but i'm with you in spirit!!!!!!!!