Henry fidgets with the tapes in Eileen's purse for the entire car ride. By the end, he's still unsure he's got it right, but it might be passable.
Eileen may pull herself together in the amount of time it takes to walk up to the desk, but Henry has to do everything just to keep from looking like he belongs inside. He can really only make himself look like he's out of it, so he does that rather than trying to be pleasant or friendly.
He's incredibly relieved as well when the guard just tells them to sign in. He does so, then finds a spot against a back wall to lean.
Dr. Kazan doesn't take very long. He's a older man, with peppered hair and kind eyes, and he talks to Eileen as soon as he comes out. "Hello, Mrs. DeAngelis told me you were both coming. It's good to meet you, Miss...Galvin, is it not?"
"Mm hmm. And this is Henry. Townshend. It's nice to meet you," she replies, warmly shaking his hand, though she can't entirely erase stress from her face. Being here under the auspices of friends of a troubled runaway, though, that's luckily not too likely to count against her. "Thanks so much for seeing us on such short notice. I know... this must be a hard time around here." And it's not even empty sympathy; she remembers the odd, delicate way that some of the doctors and nurses in St. Jerome's looked at her when she returned after disappearing from within their walls and their care
( ... )
"Yeah..." Eileen can probably tell that this is Henry's automatic response, that he's not thinking about what she's talking about right now. He does seem to eventually drift back to attentiveness, though, and he adds, "Uh...I guess it's better to make it look more comfortable? I don't know."
He eventually gets up and walks around, feeling too anxious to read. He looks at the paintings on the wall, on the portraits they have near the window. They seem to be the therapists at the hospital, and-
Her automatic response is a distracted mumbled, "Hmm?" The hush in his voice only registers after. At full attention now, she flips the magazine closed in her lap and gives him a look of concern. Only, he's not looking back. Following his eyesight to the little array of staff physician plaques, middle-aged men and women smiling comfortingly out from above small bronze nameplates
( ... )
Doctor Keeler stares at the two of him, his concern mostly covering the analyist wanting to leap out. "Certainly," he says carefully, and he sets the box of tapes on the coffee table in the room. "Did you know Dr. Abernathy? We all miss him a great deal here, even though he wasn't with us for long. Brilliant man."
Henry frowns so deeply that it's actually apparent that's what he's doing. "Doctor...are you saying that he disappeared, too...?"
Keeler seems surprised. "Yes, he did. I'm sorry, I thought you knew. Did you-?" Henry must have given him some sort of look, because he recants the question even before he's asked it. "But I was going to give you some privacy, wasn't I? I'll be back in a few minutes, just ask for me if you need me sooner, all right?" He nods and walks out of the room.
Henry walks slowly to the couch and just sort of collapses into it. "I...I don't know if we should take these now....but we have to, don't we...?"
Eileen's response is the most unnatural of all possibilities: silence. She stares at the box for a moment, then at him, virtually motionless. Processing. Considering. It is not a question she likes, not a question she wants to answer, but without anyone else in the room to defer to, an answer is what she has to give him
( ... )
"Oh...okay...." He knits his brow and grabs the pen. Soon he's scribbling, trying to be careful of the lettering. It helped to have something to do, something other than focusing on what Troy's face in that photo meant. He keeps his face as blank as the tapes, and hands her the one she was reaching for.
Eileen doesn't bother being perfectly careful with aligning the label on the fresh tape, doubting that anybody would notice that minute a change. She doesn't hear footsteps sound on the linoleum in the hallway, but luckily they pass right by family consultation room D. Tape #5/5 gets the same treatment, its label plastered on a blank while it gets situated in her purse. Two will have to do; any more than this will mean a very obvious rectangular bulge to her handbag, and neither of them could conceal one on their person. Her coat is too thin, and he, naturally, didn't wear one at all.
Cold and clammy hands fret with the bag until she thinks it's doing a decent job slung over her shoulder of hiding their little (or very big) crime. Standing in front of him, she looks up with unfocused eyes. "Does it look okay?" she whispers.
The time its taken to get the tapes together has let the errant thoughts in Henry's head settle. So when she finally asks him what he thinks, he looks carefully at the bag, then replies with a decisive, "It's fine."
And because they both need a comforting gesture by now, he puts his hands on both her shoulders and kisses her forehead. It helps ground him, and he feels less like he's drifting away in a heavy current. He hopes it helps her the same way.
"I love you, Eileen." The statement's been used for many different purposes- by accident, to show that he's happily amused, that he's touched, that he's incredibly moved, that he's comfortable with her when he never has been before. But it's never been like this. Serious, almost dour, it's a statement of strength. She makes him stronger and together they'll get through this. He squeezes her shoulder, then starts heading towards the door.
The downside of having someone there to stabilize you, draw you a little further back to reality, is of course the abandonment of the more comfortable distance of shock. But that's not gonna work, she has got to keep it together, can't think about it all at once. In reality is sadness, anger, fear, where everything's sharp and she can feel every inch of being shaken to the core. She resists. She can hear a vow in his voice, feel his touch and his presence, smell his aftershave and the rain off the ocean and the bland sterility of this room, but she can at least close her eyes against the sight of him comforting her
( ... )
Henry had actually been intending to talk to Kazan himself, maybe let him know that they didn't see anything, and they had better just give up for now. Thanks for the time, and they'll let him know if they see anything else. But this time Eileen needs to leave. And since he hadn't seemed to help with his assertation, he can at least afford her that.
The guard doesn't stop them on the way out, thankfully, and they're soon free. Or as free as they'll ever be, anyway. Henry feels the rain pressing in on him. The closeness of Eileen helps break the bubble, though, so the isolation is dulled at least somewhat.
What she says stops him in his tracks. "Yeah. I do." He doesn't look at her as he says it, nor does he do so when he starts walking again. "...I'm sorry," he adds, and he is. But that's not going to change anything, and he knows that.
After all the work and hassle of keeping him out of the damn place. Scheduling visits to require leaving from an outing with girlfriends, deciding 'spur of the moment' to go and leaving a note behind, standing her ground in disagreements and extracting promises to the contrary, and now he's going to have to go anyways
( ... )
"No." The correction is one of the few things he does sound certain about. "We don't have to. But...we're going to." And that was almost as bad. If it didn't kill them this time, he'd be really surprised. "We'll find a way....we'll look for others. We'll...we'll figure it out." He's remarkably less certain by this point
( ... )
She understands perfectly well what he's saying, but speaking back is a different kind of task than it usually is, and her response is not as diplomatically phrased as she'd usually prefer. She's at least tactful about not rudely contradicting him with some childish variant on 'No to your no, we do have to!' "It wouldn't be a life, thinking every night about who we left to die." She pales a little at her own mention of death, squeezing her eyes shut and bringing a hand to her mouth. Looking a little crushed, but at least no crying today. "O-oh God. Christ, I, I just..." Just wants the impossible, as she imagines he does as well. To do the right thing and have her safe normal life too, these two things mutually exclusive yet that's exactly what she has to try to pull off
( ... )
"If..." That word hangs in the air as he thinks it over. There were so many 'ifs' about this, and more of them involved something awful happening to the both of them. He puts one hand on her arm, needing the contact possibly more than he's trying to comfort her. It's a difficult thing to say, and difficult for her to hear. But maybe it's necessary. "If you can't...then we won't. There's....god, you know how much it's been. For you, for both of us. It might- it might never be enough, but...we've earned some peace."
He wouldn't be saying this if he was alone, but Eileen deserves better than all of this, and it makes him angry that she has to be reminded of it again and again. Every time they touch that damn place, it's like nothing's changed. He'd never admit that being angry about something is a lot easier than being scared.
He adds on just a little bit to what, for him, is almost a speech. "And I'll...I'm going to be there with you, no matter what happens." He wishes he was more sure than that.
Her eyes drift closed and she hangs her head with a faint sigh of relief. 'I'm going to be there with you' is a promise that's lost none of its importance or potency for her. It's been a long time since she woke up in a hospital battered and mutilated with his the only human face in sight, and a great deal has happened in the interim. But the primal terrifying need to keep company, especially his, closeby hasn't gone away. Perhaps because, unlike number sequences and umbilical cords, this is not something that made its debut in Walter's world.
A more permanent and peaceable assurance of his presence is very attractive, the reality is that if she can't manage to hold together a life like this in the end, it won't be for lack of trying. It's just the inescapable fact and that's all there is to it: "Two people. She's nineteen..." Her expression crumples a little at the thought
( ... )
Eileen may pull herself together in the amount of time it takes to walk up to the desk, but Henry has to do everything just to keep from looking like he belongs inside. He can really only make himself look like he's out of it, so he does that rather than trying to be pleasant or friendly.
He's incredibly relieved as well when the guard just tells them to sign in. He does so, then finds a spot against a back wall to lean.
Dr. Kazan doesn't take very long. He's a older man, with peppered hair and kind eyes, and he talks to Eileen as soon as he comes out. "Hello, Mrs. DeAngelis told me you were both coming. It's good to meet you, Miss...Galvin, is it not?"
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He eventually gets up and walks around, feeling too anxious to read. He looks at the paintings on the wall, on the portraits they have near the window. They seem to be the therapists at the hospital, and-
Henry freezes. "Oh, god."
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Henry frowns so deeply that it's actually apparent that's what he's doing. "Doctor...are you saying that he disappeared, too...?"
Keeler seems surprised. "Yes, he did. I'm sorry, I thought you knew. Did you-?" Henry must have given him some sort of look, because he recants the question even before he's asked it. "But I was going to give you some privacy, wasn't I? I'll be back in a few minutes, just ask for me if you need me sooner, all right?" He nods and walks out of the room.
Henry walks slowly to the couch and just sort of collapses into it. "I...I don't know if we should take these now....but we have to, don't we...?"
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Cold and clammy hands fret with the bag until she thinks it's doing a decent job slung over her shoulder of hiding their little (or very big) crime. Standing in front of him, she looks up with unfocused eyes. "Does it look okay?" she whispers.
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And because they both need a comforting gesture by now, he puts his hands on both her shoulders and kisses her forehead. It helps ground him, and he feels less like he's drifting away in a heavy current. He hopes it helps her the same way.
"I love you, Eileen." The statement's been used for many different purposes- by accident, to show that he's happily amused, that he's touched, that he's incredibly moved, that he's comfortable with her when he never has been before. But it's never been like this. Serious, almost dour, it's a statement of strength. She makes him stronger and together they'll get through this. He squeezes her shoulder, then starts heading towards the door.
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The guard doesn't stop them on the way out, thankfully, and they're soon free. Or as free as they'll ever be, anyway. Henry feels the rain pressing in on him. The closeness of Eileen helps break the bubble, though, so the isolation is dulled at least somewhat.
What she says stops him in his tracks. "Yeah. I do." He doesn't look at her as he says it, nor does he do so when he starts walking again. "...I'm sorry," he adds, and he is. But that's not going to change anything, and he knows that.
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He wouldn't be saying this if he was alone, but Eileen deserves better than all of this, and it makes him angry that she has to be reminded of it again and again. Every time they touch that damn place, it's like nothing's changed. He'd never admit that being angry about something is a lot easier than being scared.
He adds on just a little bit to what, for him, is almost a speech. "And I'll...I'm going to be there with you, no matter what happens." He wishes he was more sure than that.
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A more permanent and peaceable assurance of his presence is very attractive, the reality is that if she can't manage to hold together a life like this in the end, it won't be for lack of trying. It's just the inescapable fact and that's all there is to it: "Two people. She's nineteen..." Her expression crumples a little at the thought ( ... )
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