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[It was meant to be two months. She had been told that she would have two months of respite from the constant swirling agony that had been a part of her since she was thirteen, the grief of everyone around her, the grief of strangers she would never know and the cumulative grief of her family line stretching back centuries and all the grief she collected as she howled out to warn a loved one that death was coming.
For the past few days the pain has been building somewhere in the base of her skull. She's been distracting herself, talk of tea parties and a job, trying to make the little place here she has look nice even if it's missing everything that makes it home. It's been so bizarre for her to not be in some sort of pain, to go to bed and sleep for hours waking up fresh as a daisy, less snappy than she normally is but she knew it was coming, she knew that it would be back and although she would never wish to be something other than she is, she's been this way for a decade, grief and pain in her blood and in her bones.
So it's a waiting game. Trying to go about her business but at the same time unwilling to go out in public and make a scene. Instead it's a day indoors, watching the minutes crawl by, her fingers a staccato counterpoint to the ticking of the clock and she lets out a scream, not the real scream for no reason beyond wondering if she's slowly going mad as she brings up the option to call Helen because Helen would be able to help, they had a discussion very much like this, about Helen helping but it feels too much like defeat. So she waits more and eventually manages to sleep and dream fitfully of all the faces that are home, Cedric and Cassandra and her parents, her grandfather, Blair and Corbin. It warps into the Dullahan as she and Corbin killed it, the crows screaming as they circled down to feast on the rotten head.
It's dark when she wakes up and she fumbles for the phone, hits the broadcast button before an ungodly sound is broadcast, not a sound the human throat should be capable of making (then again, she's not human, not really, banshees are different and they only look the same) that stretches out for an impossibly long time. When it's over, there's silence. No coughing, no wheezing, no sound of anyone falling over or of anything worse, just absolute silence. And then the phone is picked up after a few minutes, Shirley taking a quiet little inhale as she wipes her face, hoping she doesn't look like shit.
Except she does. White as a sheet, her eyes damp - no tears yet, she's a little too shocked to manage them - with dark circles beneath them. Her voice doesn't crack when she speaks but it does waver, hesitant and small.]
Helen? I-I think I need a hand.
[Oh bollocks everyone saw this.]
Sorry, I thought I'd have more time to prepare for...this.
[And that's all she'll be saying for a moment but you know, feel free to ask or to bitch her out while she waits on someone coming to give her a hand because yeah, she really needs to just be gone for a while somewhere quiet where she can ignore the real world until she can remember how to deal with constant pain again.]
[[ooc: don't click the link if your speakers are turned up really loud - it's angry baby owls hissing/shrieking.]]