First Three Rivers fic!
Title: Show Me How to Live Again
Author: asphyxiate_muse aka. ryukoishida
Part: 1/2
Fandom: Three Rivers
Spoilers: 1.03
Genre: Romance, fluff
Rating: PG-13 (for bad language)
Character(s)/Pairing: Brenda/Scott, Andy Yablonski
Summary: It isn’t love at first sight for them. But their need of a new heart and crave for a new life has bonded them more tightly than they have initially thought. (Timeline: 6 months prior to 1.03)
Word count: 2,217
Disclaimer: CBS owns the show; I own nothing. Title inspired by James Morrison’s “Precious Love”.
A/N: My first Three Rivers fanfic, and I’m going to write about the side characters. Yay! Brenda and Scott’s story is a little cliché, but in a very sweet way, so of course, I fell in love with them and I just have to write something about this. My limited medical knowledge comes from my grade 12 biology class, which was 4 years ago. I just did a little research on Wikipedia, so if I got something wrong, please bear with me.
***
i. Life, it taught me to die. - “Cannonball”, Damien Rice
He could feel it - the moment the magical substance hit the bloodstreams and was about to send his soul on a trip even more sublime than the heavens. He closed his eyes wantonly, all senses shut down from the environment around him (the stale smoke, the salty sweat, the pounding of the music on low, and other unpleasant things he’s rather forget) and he soared.
Like Icarus, he could feel the warmth of the sun beating down on his naked skin, and the gentle breeze teasing his locks and singing Greek nonsense in his mind. There was no limit, no middle way - only arrays of dazzling stars and aurora strands of colors, like silken threads, waltzing around his floating body, inside of him. He was weightless, like the feather on his invisible wings, like the cloud he thought he could touch, like the air he didn’t need.
He laughed, the tone a little hoarse and the tremor deep and dark upon reflection that was a second too late.
He never, ever saw it coming at all, but he fell. Just like that, he was yanked roughly back to the earth with a thud on his back and he was convulsing like crazy.
It came back like a wave towering over his head - that cruel bitch known as reality, in the forms of nauseating smells, the thundering, ludicrous metal music, and people murmuring and shouting on repeat. “It’s all right, Scott. It’s all right.”
And pain. He gasped, disoriented and uncomprehending. He placed a sweaty, shaky hand over his chest but it didn’t stop. He wanted to dig beneath the layer of skin and muscles and stopped whatever that was tearing his fucking heart apart. It hurt, he tried to tell someone. But either no one had heard him, or he simply couldn’t make his lips work properly (he couldn’t tell), the agony persisted and it seemed, to his delusional state of mind anyway, to have intensified.
He willed it to stop, and a few times, he assumed it had worked. He thought he saw figures in white and blue cloaks carrying him (‘Angels?’ Scott thought, chuckling inwardly). Before he could determine if this was just another illusion, he submitted to the more welcoming black, where he knew he wasn’t required to think at all.
The next moment he was aware of himself again, there was a blinding white light glaring into his eyes. He shut them tightly again.
“Son, can you hear me?” Someone tapped him lightly on the cheek. He would gladly tell the person to fuck off and stop touching his god-damn face, and that he was not her son (or anyone else’s son, for that matter) if it wasn’t for the fact that he was so damn tired.
“Yes,” he croaked out instead.
“Scott Becker?” Someone must have dug out his wallet from his pocket. ‘Duh,’ he thought.
“Yup.” He wished he could just get a sip of water or something.
“Do you know why you’re in the ER, Scott?”
“Chest pain,” he paused. “And getting high?” He hated his hesitant tone but fuck if he cared at this point.
The nurse sighed. “You have just experienced a case of cocaine-induced heart attack.”
He let the statement settled in his brain for a few seconds, trying to mull over its meaning. Then he giggled like the mad man he probably was.
-
ii. We can fake it for the airwaves, force some smiles, baby, half-dead. - “I’ve Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth”, Fall Out Boy
These plastic, colored patches on his skin, all wired up and connected to various beeping machines that were guarding his bed, were getting irritatingly itchy by the second, and he had a really strong urge to rip those things off.
‘When the doctor leaves,’ he promised himself, as he gave the man clad in a white coat a stare that was meant to convey his bottled up annoyance. The man with the hazelnut-colored hair and eyes that were several shades darker, who couldn’t have been more than thirty-five years old, didn’t even flinch. Instead, he was frowning slightly, and his wide, brown eyes looked straight back at the young man.
Swiftly, Scott’s eyes landed on the blue bedspread, as if fascinated by its lack of pattern.
“So, what’s going on, doc? You know, they’ve just done a check-up on me ten minutes ago.” He figured a friendly attitude would get rid of the older man quicker. Didn’t they always go easier on the goody-two-shoes type - those damn doctors?
“First of all, it’s Dr. Andy Yablonski,” he corrected smoothly. “I’m here to talk to you about getting you listed for a heart transplant. But I see here,” he nodded pointedly at the thick stack of his patient’s medical background in his hand, “that we’re having a few problems that we need to talk about first.”
“Do what you have to do, doctor,” Scott smiled brightly and with as much charm as possible. He eyed the folder that Dr. Yablonski was holding with slight hostility when he turned his attention to the monitor display over his head, already able to guess what was printed on those pages. Medical history wouldn’t be the only thing in that file, Scott was sure of it.
“It says here that you had binge alcoholism at thirteen, and you started using cocaine when you’re fifteen,” the doctor placed the thick file gently on the table by the window, and slowly walked back to his bedside. He didn’t want to look up to see what kind of expression the doctor was wearing; he didn’t think he could stand another judgmental, or worst, a pitiful look. Who was he to tell him what to do, anyway? So, like the defiant boy he had always been for the majority of his life, Scott tore his gaze off the sheets and forced himself to look up, only to see that Dr. Yablonski’s face displayed something he was rather unfamiliar with. A sense of understanding, perhaps?
‘But how the hell would he understand?’ he thought harshly, and his face fell to its usual mask of calm. Adults, he figured out pretty early on in life, always thought they were superior, as if they knew everything. But they were so wrong. All the time.
“Your point?” It was getting more difficult to maintain that cheerful, easy grin on his lips; it was becoming painful - a burden.
“From the x-rays, we know that the heart attack you had a few hours ago was because of cardiomegaly and CHF,” the doctor pressed a few buttons on the small remote control and an x-ray image popped up on the monitor to show his point. The young patient on the bed raised his eyebrow, clearly waiting for some kind of further elaboration on the indiscernible medical terms mumbo jumbo.
“That’s congestive heart failure,” he told Scott, and continued, “We also did a cardiac ECHO, which shows chamber dilation and regional wall abnormality. We are positive that these are the toxic effects from the prolonged usage of cocaine. In other words, you will require a heart transplant.” He turned to him, his eyes scrutinizing a bit, as if expecting the boy to give him some sort of reaction; however, his patient simply nodded, indicating that he understood the situation.
“In order to get you listed on UNOS - that’s the United Network for Organ Sharing,” Dr. Yablonski explained, “You’ll have to stay clean for six months. That means no drugs, no alcohol, no nothing. Can you do that?” Scott shrugged casually in response - a very non-committal gesture he was quite proud of. Apparently, the doctor was not satisfied with his answer.
“Look, Scott,” he took a step closer to the bed, but not enough to stifle the young man - yet. “I don’t know how or why you’ve gotten into drugs, nor do I have the right to ask about it unless you want to volunteer the information.” (‘Damn right you don’t, doc,’ Scott retorted in his head, but his face displayed no change of expression at all.)
“But if you’re not going to trust me, or if you’re not willing to commit to this at all, then we’re just wasting our time here,” he made a spreading motion with his arm. When it didn’t seem like the boy on the bed was going to give him a firmer reply, the doctor sighed softly.
“At least talk this through with your parents,” he advised, and then he remembered something. “That reminds me: you should give the contact information of your guardian or parents to the front desk, so they’d be informed first-hand about your condition.”
Before Scott could stop himself, he snorted. “As if they’d give a damn.”
“Scott?” Dr. Yablonski was about to step out of the room, but he stopped, turned around, and looked at the lone figure still sitting on the stiff bed.
“They’ve disowned me,” he told him matter-of-factly, as if he was answering a math question in school, like it was the absolute truth. In those few short seconds of exchange, Scott’s expression had returned to its previous blank and imperceptible façade. It was a kind of look that wasn’t usually seen on a supposedly vibrant teenager his age.
They didn’t want him anymore, Scott wanted to whine like a child. They were sick of him getting ass-drunk, and always getting high, and getting knocked unconscious by unknown substances, and ditching school, and being there for him all the fucking time when he was in serious shit. ‘They had had enough of me,’ Scott told himself, and the answer reassured him. He didn’t need to answer to anyone else but himself.
“Don’t worry, doc. I’m a big boy. I can take care of this myself. So don’t mind what I’ve said.” He smiled widely, but now Dr. Yablonski realized that that easy way he stretched his full lips never really touched the boy’s dark eyes all along.
-
iii. I’m nothing but a tin man, don’t feel any pain. I don’t feel any pain. I’m rusted from the rain. - “Rusted From the Rain”, Billy Talent
He was trying to read an article on immunology that was slowly gaining popularity among the general public in a health magazine, but he knew that he had been reading the same sentence five times and still didn’t understand the meaning of the words. He frowned, and placed it on his bedside table with a sigh. Getting stuck inside a hospital was the worst predicament Scott had found himself in so far; it wasn’t as if he could just up and leave with the clothes on his back or something as drastic as that. The doctor - what was his name again? Dr. Yoblondi? Yablonski? He was bound to get the police involved, and with his kind of scratchy background, having the damn police on his back was the last thing Scott wanted.
And so he was going to be stuck here for the next six months waiting for a god-damn heart while staying sober. That sounded just dandy, didn’t it? He tried to put some enthusiasm into his self-directed question, but even in his own head, the thought was dripping with acidic sarcasm.
The fact was: Scott just didn’t give a damn.
He could avoid the drugs for half a year, get that heart surgery done, and nothing would have changed. He couldn’t picture himself not getting wasted, always remaining clear-headed enough to suffer whatever the real world threw in his face; he couldn’t imagine living in the reality without some kind of outlet - some kind of emergency, temporary escape route when he couldn’t handle it for the moment. He didn’t dare imagine a life in which he had to deal with the fact that his parents would rather cut their ties off from their only son than to put up with his shit because, if he was being honest with himself (and he did when no one else was around, though he tried not to make it a constant habit), it hurt.
It hurt so much that, at some point, he almost gave in to the urge to pick up the phone and call them, beg them to take him back, promise them that he would be the good boy they had always hoped he would be. But he managed to wind himself back at the very last minute every time, telling himself that he didn’t need them, and that he was doing fine without them and their damn expectations all these years. ‘Right,’ Scott had thought.
That dull pain would then transform itself into a new surge of anger, and that prompted him to do more of those things that his parents loathed and hated.
Scott thought he was beyond caring at this point. Life or death - did it matter for a fuck-up like him? Of course not, he answered his own question with a strange sense of decisiveness. No one would care if he lived or died; the world would not stop spinning, other people would not stop living simply because of him, and certainly, his dear mother and father would appreciate his effort to rid, or redeem, himself of all the trouble he had caused.
But he didn’t want that. He stared out at the window, but only the reflection on the glass glared back at him, and he hated himself for thinking all those horrible things.
He wanted someone to cry because of his absence. No - to mourn for his death. He wanted someone to care. Was it really such a difficult thing to wish for?