inspired by: "maybe in another lifetime." - "maybe."
And this amazing fix I read: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25780453?view_adult=true
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Emily was barely keeping her head above water. Barely staying alive, weakly grasping at the last few straws of her dwindling sanity.
A small cottage had been rented for JJ and Emily to get settled in. It was nothing fancy, just a little house on the top of a hill, with wild roses crawling and twisting their way up to reach the roof of worn-down walls littered with cracks, chipped faded paint and an overtly askew and an overall out of place look that seem to fit so excellently in the idyllic surroundings.
Surrounding the cottage was nothing but green fields with heaps of sheep, and a little dirt road leading into a neighboring town of Paris.
The days went by in monotone blur of lazy days spent getting water from the little well on the backside of the house and cooking the food they had stocked on their way there.
There was so indescribably quiet in the outskirts of Paris. The silence filled to the brim with unspoken words of endearment and love.
There was never really anything to be said, was there? JJ had her life back home, and she had hers. Emily had never been willing to depend on anyone, and she wouldn’t start now. JJ was leaving in a few days, and then life would continue.
In the moments Emily took to herself she walked aimlessly around in the fields. Here she would allow her mind to wander, if only just for a few minutes, because she knew the consequences of her going out too much and essentially compromising her identity – or rather lack thereof.
But in those quiet moments, she would tally all the touches, the words of encouragement, the whispers of sweet nothings uttered in the golden afternoon sunlight seeping through their shared bedroom. The feeling of warm fingers running up and down her body and the heavy breathing and moan of her name. She really didn’t think any feeling would ever measure up. But there had been a reason for her not letting the tower-tall walls falter for even a slight moment of time. JJ was leaving. She kept the fact on loop in her head, and it consumed her thoughts, endlessly plaguing her mind.
They would go on morning walks through the little sunbathed trail in between the endless fields. JJ’s soft, warm hand reaching behind her and without a word or look interlacing her hand with Emily’s cold one. She couldn’t help but glance at her, with a furrow of her brow and a questioning look, but JJ not as much as looked her way, so she let it happen.
It was time to say goodbye, they had stayed in bed hoping the soft and warm covers would hide them from the real world, the inevitable. JJ was already almost packed, had never really unpacked in the first place. With a heavy sigh and a heavy mind, she got up and walked the two and half steps to the bathroom to get her toothbrush.
The car was idling on the winding dirt road waiting to take her away in the pitch-black darkness only illuminated by the cold white light of the endless night sky.
JJ faltered in her otherwise decisive step towards the black car and looked back at Emily, who was only half a step behind her. Emily, startled by JJ’s abrupt stop, fixed her gaze into the eyes of the woman opposite her. She looked at her quizzically trying to figure out what caused this sudden change in demeanor from just a few moments ago where JJ had almost aggressively packed the last of her things and scowled at anything and everything while simultaneously staying as eerily quiet as they had been from the moment they arrived at the peculiar house. JJ lifted her eyes to meet the eyes of a stranger.
“Maybe in another life.” Whispered JJ, almost as softly as the wind that blew a strand of hair from its place behind JJ’s ear. Emily looked into eyes now filled to the brim with tears, that JJ for the life of her would not let fall.
A look of surprise and uncertainty came across Emily’s face as she searched, looking over every inch of the face she had gotten to know so dearly over the years, and so intimately over the last two weeks, to find any sign of retraction of her numbing words. But found none. Found nothing.
With chilling finality, blurry eyes and a numbness slowly creeping its way into her mind and heart Emily replied,
“Yes, maybe.”
There was no doubt anymore. Nothing to reach out to her and tame her storming mind, break her unbreakable walls.
Emily let the water fill her lungs, she was definitely drowning.
It’s so easy to get lost in my head and forget how the whole world has turned upside down with the pandemic. My whole life (or at least my medical life) I’ve never imagined I’d skip residency (even temporarily) for a cureer in academics and research instead. Then the pandemic happens and it turns all my priorities upside down, hails my momentum to a full stop. I have no idea what I’m doing or if it’s the right thing to do.
Everything is so foggy and weirdly reminding me of how Neil Gaiman once described writing a novel. “It’s like driving through the fog with one headlight out,” he said. “You can’t see very far ahead of you, but every now and again, the mists would clear.” I just want the fog to clear for just a moment so I can see where the hell I’m going for once.
