Fic: Flashbacks 5/?
It’s four days later, since the wedding, Monday morning, Santana is back at work, working like a machine. As always she’s efficient, diligent, courteous to clients, but even some of her colleagues can not deny that something has nudged the pillar that is Santana Lopez, she’s never been the life and soul of the office but something has vanished from behind her eyes.
Santana hasn’t slept in four days for fear that when she opens her eyes she’ll still be seeing black. Neither has she eaten in four days, her stomach went from growling out in hunger initially, to meekly moaning, yearning for sustenance now. Santana tried, but as soon as she’d swallow she’d be retching in the nearest sink. So at the moment, Santana is functioning off of the odd glass of water and her mantra of appearances are everything.
She can’t remember what happened after Brittany left her in the bathroom, and really she doesn’t want to relive it, but she can’t stop herself. Everything went black; she could feel the cold, hard tiles for a split second, then there was nothing. The next thing she knows she’s in her bed, Quinn is perched beside her, and for a passing second Santana would like nothing better than to beat the girl’s face into a pulp, while she’s looking at Santana with such pity and worry, but optimism, like Santana is fragile or something. But then Santana’s crying, she can feel the tears silently rolling down her cheeks, her vision is swimming before her and no matter how hard she tries to blink them away, they still come, unrelenting in their torrent. They rack her frame, pull at her insides, her throat feels worn away, Quinn holds her but she remains unsteadied, a lost ship at sea in a storm.
A day later and she’s still in bed, Quinn brings her food but she doesn’t touch it. Two days later she gets up, Quinn has to go, but she’ll be back she affirms squeezing Santana’s hand like that will magically make everything better. The next day is non existent to Santana; time means nothing, a constant replay of the past 26 years of her life spin around her head, Santana tunes in and is taken over by the scenes of eight years ago and, more often, three days ago. She sits in the truck, hose in hand, ready to hook it up and start the ignition, although how long she sits there Santana can’t say. A loud bleeping ruptures her thoughts, the screen brightening up the shadowed garage, a light in Santana’s darkness. It’s her alarm for work. She gets out of the truck, showers, dresses and gets herself ready, drives to work and proceeds to do her job.
She spends every day doing her job, even at the weekend, because if she’s doing that she’s not thinking about Brittany as much. Quinn drops by mid week and assumes that Santana working is a good sign, that she’s getting on with life, healing, and says she’ll stop by at the weekend ‘just in case,’ like Santana can’t be trusted by herself, like she has to do as Quinn says, like she’s been misbehaving recently and needs to be disciplined. In that moment Santana hates Quinn again.
Quinn’s round, again, that weekend, but there’s no answer at the door or the phone, but she’s still as sharp as ever and somehow had gotten hold of a spare key. Apparently she found Santana unconscious on the kitchen floor; Santana can’t remember much, just the darkness and the cold, hard tiled ground.
The doctors said she passed out from exhaustion, her glucose and iron levels were running on empty, she needed rest. Santana spends the next week staring up at white ceiling or at the cheerful ‘get well soon’ balloon from Quinn, but it’s not that simple. The doctors are telling her she’s showing signs of depression and she wants to tell them to fuck off, but she also doesn’t want to end up in an institution, she doesn’t have any issues of mentality, it’s heart break, the whole thing sounds ridiculous to her, there’s nothing physically wrong with her heart, it’s Brittany, but the doctors wouldn’t treat it seriously. They want to give her tablets, but Santana would rather not go there, she doesn’t think it would be good to replace whatever this is over Brittany with tablets. She’s dealt with a ton of cases to do with drug dependency and addiction and she doesn’t want to go there herself, not that she necessarily would go that far, she has self control, it’s just she remembers her extreme morbidity of a few weeks back and is smart enough to realise that putting her on tablets might work in the short term but not for the long haul. She cuts a deal with them; counselling sessions.
For the next couple of months, every evening Santana is forced to relive everything, from the very beginning, to a man with a bald patch the size of Alaska and glasses that spend more time being waved around or chewed on in thought, then in front of his eyes.