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intheheartAuthor: Kat
Title: Blossom
Rating: PG.
Summary: Summer goes home.
Date: 2031
Notes: An experiment.
Warnings: very brief mention of murder and suicide.
It's well after six by the time Dr. Kendall finishes the autopsy, and even later by the time she's cleaned up, washed her hands, and collected her notes. Time and past that she went home, let go of this face she's been clinging grimly to for the last few hours. She stretches, cracks her neck and knuckles, eases aching muscles, and slips off her lab coat, the first step. Second is collecting her purse, her keys, miscallaneous belongings. Third, and most important for the morgue stage of her becoming, she takes off the chain around her neck and slips her wedding ring back where it belongs, and just like that she's not Dr. Kendall anymore, but Summer.
She sighs, relaxes as the weight of responsibility slides off her shoulders. Then she turns off the light in her autospy bay and leaves the morgue.
Cops don't make much, and medical examiners, at least at her level, don't make that much more-- almost all of her colleagues take the Metro. But Summer has had enough of subways, of descending underground and cramming into a long metal tube with God only knows how many other people, all of them breathing into each other's faces and pressing against each other in the fight to get home. There was a time when she had no other choice but to brave the New York subway, a time when she would get home overloaded and shaking and spend a good hour recovering.
That time, thank goodness, is far behind her. She hails a cab.
The drivers around here all know her on sight, so she doesn't even need to say anything, just settle back into the upholstry and let the driver carry her home. She's more grateful for this silence than she thinks they know. On good days, she uses the ride to collect herself, to remember who she is behind the mask she must wear. On bad days...
But today is a good day. She need not think about the bad days.
She closes her eyes, relaxes into the rocking of the cab, and lets the events of the day flow past her. The coronary victim whose last meal was a candy bar and a whole orange -- she'd been so surprised to find the rinds still in his stomach, letting out a burst of sweet-scented air when she cut the organ open. The overdose victim, his pockets stuffed full of Turkish money and marshmallow Peeps-- the EMTs who brought him in told her he was a suspect in the mugging of a recently arrived dignitary; she supposed that explained the money at least. The poor man who'd pulled over to fix a flat tire and been hit by an out-of-control cab-- he was wearing socks with toes, and she wonders if he would have been embarrassed to be caught dead in them. All of them adults, caught off guard by fortune-- no murder victims, no suicides and thank God, no children. Death by misadventure or natural causes. Their ghosts flow past her and away into the night.
Unburdened, she opens her eyes on the lights of her neighborhood, and smiles.
The cab driver lets her out at the end of her block, underneath a dogwood tree in full, fragrant bloom. The cherry blossoms are blooming too, across town by the Potomac basin-- she resolves to take her husbands and a picnic out there this weekend, to watch the birds and tourists investigate the flowers. She loves flowers, loves the pink-and-white beauty of the velvet-soft petals. It's late enough in the season that a sudden gust of wind will send them showering down around her, caressing her cheeks, filling her lap, dusting her hair with pollen. It's beautiful, and there is so little beauty in this world.
Some of that beauty is waiting for her inside, in her warmly-lit living room. She knows her husbands will be waiting for her-- Zack on the couch with a book, Felipe at their dining room table, doing paperwork. She will walk in the door, water the plants in the kitchen, kiss them both, correct Felipe's grammar, and sit down in front of Zack for a shoulder massage. It will be easy, as it is every night, sliding back into her own skin, her own being.
She doesn't have to be another person, not with them. She fits just as she is.
Summer takes one last breath of the dogwood-scented air, and goes home.
Title: Blossom
Rating: PG.
Summary: Summer goes home.
Date: 2031
Notes: An experiment.
Warnings: very brief mention of murder and suicide.
It's well after six by the time Dr. Kendall finishes the autopsy, and even later by the time she's cleaned up, washed her hands, and collected her notes. Time and past that she went home, let go of this face she's been clinging grimly to for the last few hours. She stretches, cracks her neck and knuckles, eases aching muscles, and slips off her lab coat, the first step. Second is collecting her purse, her keys, miscallaneous belongings. Third, and most important for the morgue stage of her becoming, she takes off the chain around her neck and slips her wedding ring back where it belongs, and just like that she's not Dr. Kendall anymore, but Summer.
She sighs, relaxes as the weight of responsibility slides off her shoulders. Then she turns off the light in her autospy bay and leaves the morgue.
Cops don't make much, and medical examiners, at least at her level, don't make that much more-- almost all of her colleagues take the Metro. But Summer has had enough of subways, of descending underground and cramming into a long metal tube with God only knows how many other people, all of them breathing into each other's faces and pressing against each other in the fight to get home. There was a time when she had no other choice but to brave the New York subway, a time when she would get home overloaded and shaking and spend a good hour recovering.
That time, thank goodness, is far behind her. She hails a cab.
The drivers around here all know her on sight, so she doesn't even need to say anything, just settle back into the upholstry and let the driver carry her home. She's more grateful for this silence than she thinks they know. On good days, she uses the ride to collect herself, to remember who she is behind the mask she must wear. On bad days...
But today is a good day. She need not think about the bad days.
She closes her eyes, relaxes into the rocking of the cab, and lets the events of the day flow past her. The coronary victim whose last meal was a candy bar and a whole orange -- she'd been so surprised to find the rinds still in his stomach, letting out a burst of sweet-scented air when she cut the organ open. The overdose victim, his pockets stuffed full of Turkish money and marshmallow Peeps-- the EMTs who brought him in told her he was a suspect in the mugging of a recently arrived dignitary; she supposed that explained the money at least. The poor man who'd pulled over to fix a flat tire and been hit by an out-of-control cab-- he was wearing socks with toes, and she wonders if he would have been embarrassed to be caught dead in them. All of them adults, caught off guard by fortune-- no murder victims, no suicides and thank God, no children. Death by misadventure or natural causes. Their ghosts flow past her and away into the night.
Unburdened, she opens her eyes on the lights of her neighborhood, and smiles.
The cab driver lets her out at the end of her block, underneath a dogwood tree in full, fragrant bloom. The cherry blossoms are blooming too, across town by the Potomac basin-- she resolves to take her husbands and a picnic out there this weekend, to watch the birds and tourists investigate the flowers. She loves flowers, loves the pink-and-white beauty of the velvet-soft petals. It's late enough in the season that a sudden gust of wind will send them showering down around her, caressing her cheeks, filling her lap, dusting her hair with pollen. It's beautiful, and there is so little beauty in this world.
Some of that beauty is waiting for her inside, in her warmly-lit living room. She knows her husbands will be waiting for her-- Zack on the couch with a book, Felipe at their dining room table, doing paperwork. She will walk in the door, water the plants in the kitchen, kiss them both, correct Felipe's grammar, and sit down in front of Zack for a shoulder massage. It will be easy, as it is every night, sliding back into her own skin, her own being.
She doesn't have to be another person, not with them. She fits just as she is.
Summer takes one last breath of the dogwood-scented air, and goes home.
