#sorry donna

[villanevedenier]

Donna Tartt for the NYT, 1995, photo by Stephan Haskell

[endymion-in-stasis]

Charles Macaulay trying to excuse his alcoholism like

[endymion-in-stasis]

Shitpost * * *

Fruitcake François is done with your shit

[parasadist]

@hallucineugenics​ sent: “ i  beg  your  pardon . ” (for cass :3) 

       MOTHER always says to not repeat yourself. that any company too incompetent to understand the first time around wasn’t worth the hassle of something so inane as saying a statement twice. does that same rule apply to donna beneviento, when her rank in the village nearly equals that of alcina’s ? these petty politics are why bela is far better suited to these tasks - cassandra simply has no desire to be involved. 

       “ mother says angie isn’t welcome to come back to the castle again, ” cassandra enunciates, pronouncing each word slowly as though her inflection could aid in donna’s understanding. the other lords do little to command cassandra’s respect, but donna is  … fine. more tolerable than heisenberg, less stomach churning than moreau. the black lace of her cape flutters on a nonexistent breeze as languid strides carry her around her aunt’s sitting room, leather clad fingers brushing against the porcelain cheek of one doll in red. it’s cute, but far too fragile for her tastes. 

         “ not until she learns to stop interrupting mother when she’s speaking in front of mother miranda. ”

[fancyfade]

i like both cassie and donna as wonder girl, but cassie is definitely winning in fashion points

[kodawrites]

I've made a huge mistake....

I've gotten into BTS

[i-just-tardis-blue-myself]

Okay, I'm going to rewatch series 3 of Doctor Who , because Martha Jones, that's why.

[epea-pteroenta]

Arise

Donna had been a ward of the state her whole life, and the state had gotten used to making her decisions for her. That's not the same as getting good at caring for her. She was frail, not because of any unavoidable disease, but just because she'd been left to sit too much, probably in a couch in the dayroom with the television on, with nobody available to take her by the hand and move her around enough to keep her strong, keep her bones healthy. I'm sure there were caregivers around, but only enough of them to do the must-do things, always having to come to their own terms with never getting to the good-to-do things. A time came when she'd decided to get up on her own. I imagine it came as a surprise, that it was unexpected. I wonder if there had even been anyone to see her fall. The fall must've been painful enough, to judge from the widespread pools of subcutaneous blood all over that side. I imagine it must have hurt enough to begin with, and I imagine it must've hurt even worse to try to get up, with her hip broken as it had been. Those kind of situations can be quite a learning experience, with the loss of control paired with that much pain, but what you might learn from it depends on so much else already past. She'd been brought to the hospital, anaesthetized to unconsciousness, and when she woke up, where she had merely hurt before (that mere hurt she probably had considered to be enough by itself) she now had been cut open and stitched back up. I'm not sure that anybody could have explained to her that the pieces of her broken bone had been affixed to a rod to hold them in place until they healed, I'm not sure if anybody tried. In order to be released to go back to the home, she had to show that she could manage to get around there again. That included both walking on level surfaces and traversing 5 stairs to get in and out. It would have been difficult to get Donna to explain that to me, and if I'd managed to get her to answer, I'm not sure I would have trusted what she said. Much of what she wanted to talk about I had difficulty following, since it referred to nothing of our circumstances or relationship. She said "Hi" many times, offered to shake hands, wanted a hug. Her requirements had been made clear to me in her chart as my requirements for the next three days. She was very clear in her opposition to working on any of that: "I doh nwanna channnd up!" "It's okay Donna, it's been fixed, it won't hurt like before. How about we just start by trying to stand..." "I doh Nwanna Channnd Up!" "I know what you mean, but you do want to. You want to stand up and show how you can walk, and go up and down the stairs, so you can go Home." That had some pull for her. She wanted to go Home. She wanted to get out of this strange and cold place where there wasn't a couch for her and she didn't know anybody but me, and she kinda wished she hadn't seen me enough to know. So, she wanted to go, but that didn't change her attitude about the means to get there. "I doh nwanna channnd up!" I heard it while transferring her into the wheelchair, while rolling her down the hall, in the elevator, as I put the brakes on at the end of the parallel bars, as I'd removed the footrests. "I doh nwanna channnd up." I ducked under one of the bars and stood in front of her and held out my hands to help her. "You do want to stand up, you don't want to be stuck in that chair, you want to get yourself back again (did she?), and that starts with standing up today." "I doh nwanna channnd up." When she said it now it was with resignation, with finality, with resolve. But she doesn't get to make decisions for herself, certainly not ones that anyone else thinks are self-negating. I tried to talk her into it for another quarter hour, tried charming, tried clever, tried tricky, tried pleading, but at the end of each it was the same. "I doh nwanna channnd up." So finally, I squatted down, blocked her knees with mine, lifted her by her elbows that I held tightly to her sides, and put her on her feet. Alex rolled the chair away from behind her and put it at the other end of the bars. She still tried to sit back down once or twice, but I kept her up while explaining that she had to walk to the other side of the bars to find her chair. She was able to put weight on her leg without any noticeable instability, and we walked the 15 feet of the bars in about 30 steps, with her repeating her mantra each time before putting that foot back down. I asked her to forgive me when she was sitting again, tried to get her to self-assess, that it hadn't been that bad. I had to apologize again after making her stand outside of the bars, after making her walk across the floor, after making her go up and down the stairs. In five sessions over two and a half days, she managed everything she would have to do to go Home. With each effort, with each imposition, with each supplication, I got the same response. "I doh nwanna channnd up." My patients tease me sometimes about how I always ask, how I always say please, how I always try to be respectful. They think it's quaint, I suppose. I'm just trying to avoid feeling that guilt again. Years away from that hospital, in a completely different setting back in that same city, I'm still carrying that with me. Today, Jacqueline was done on the table and ready to start on another piece of equipment. I asked her if she'd please stand up and come with me, and in the back of my head, the first response I heard was, "I doh nwanna channnd up."