who: adelaide & eve | @silverskies where: a hallway outside of the operating room triggers: panic attacks, ptsd
adelaide doesn't remember leaving the or. one moment she was closing fascia, the next she was staring down at her hands in the stairwell, breath caught somewhere between her ribs and her throat. maybe it was the beeping—cardiac, sharp, insistent—that had kicked it off, or maybe the yelling from scalpel slipping, just a hair, too close to what could’ve been. either way, her body had clocked the threat before she had. she’d bolted. now, the cold of the metal railing bites into her palms as she grips it like an anchor. her eyes are wide and unfocused, caught in the shimmer of the overhead fluorescents. mona sits at her feet, rigid and watchful, the vest she usually only wears for flights or full-on crowds fastened tight around her barrel. service dog. do not distract. medical response trained. the stairwell is silent, save for the low hum of building machinery and the tiny, rhythmic click of mona's nails as she shifts in place. adelaide focuses on that, on the weight of mona's chin pressed into her calf, on the way her lungs feel too tight, like trying to breathe through cotton. it wasn’t supposed to happen here. not here, not where eyes were always on her, where reputations calcified overnight. footsteps echo above. adelaide freezes. shit. she doesn't have time to disappear before the stairwell door creaks open. she doesn't look up, can't. her fingers tighten on the railing, white-knuckled, breath still shallow and fast. maybe if she stays still enough, quiet enough, whoever it is would just turn around and go. but the footsteps don't retreat. they pause. then come closer. adelaide hopes it isn't greg.
