This is home.
@withnosleep
Evelyn had been dismissed by her coworker after being brought to the hospital alongside her younger acquaintance unconscious. The both of them looking like some kind of twisted romance the way they were positioned on a bench in her Garden of Eden. As if they’d both been lovestruck and died together. Or, that’s what her brother picked it off as when he called the ambulance to report his findings. The two bloody and crumpled, typically sleep-deprived and inseparable in their sleep as of late. Or at least when one finally did sleep.
So when she awoke in the medical cot with minor injuries, doped up on some kind of pain killer--Evelyn wasn’t surprised by the strange smiles she kept receiving and the lack of clear communication. When she’d been denied access to his room, she checked herself out of the hospital; swapped into a pair of spare scrubs in her locker and out of the dingy hospital gown, and clocked in to work. She could use the overtime and it would probably be short, but it’d get her access.
On his next routine check up, she stumbled into the room with a frantic heart rate and clammy hands locked around his patient file. This had also been the moment she met his father. Of course they’d called his family. ‘And of course they’d described how he was found. “Oh. Um, his vitals still seem to be stable.” She spoke out loud as if trying to ease the atmosphere, the stitches on the tip of her cheekbone making her wince when she tried to force a tense smile. “Can I..? Just say I’m sorry..? I get it. He looks... not in the best condition, but-!” She bit her tongue there. No. That was his news to bring his father. Thankfully, the finger he’d removed from her body was re-attached to her dominant hand and was stuck into a splint as she couldn’t use it for much at the moment.
“He has a lot to tell you. It’d be best if I just let him explain. I’m not like him, y’know? I just-. For medical reasons I can’t introduce the next dosage of Pain Medications until he’s awake enough to agree for me to. He’s eighteen and it shouldn’t be long.” With that excuse; she called her friend’s name and began to gently squeeze on one of his fingertips with her own. A gentle way that woke a bodily sore wound patient that she’d been taught in her years of nursing. She had stitches strewn across her body and was stiff and sore as well. The nurse being extremely tired and having to squint without being able to use her currently broken glasses that the monster had ruined. ‘But Quentin was given a long background of injuries compared to her wounds and she bared nothing that would keep her in hospice nearly as long as him. The demon only used her to hurt him. To lure him back. ‘And she felt awful.
The day she’d finally spilled the information of him beginning to haunt her was the same day the religious, messy haired boy cursed his own god. Tearing off his necklace and tossing it to the ground in the staff room while she tried to downplay the effects she’d been suffering. Her eyes lost it under the staff couch and she quickly tried to calm the fire burning in his eyes by reminding him of how close they were and that he was just beginning with her. If anything, she’d bought him time and that was more than fair enough for the selfless woman.
She had the necklace in her locker since that afternoon after he’d left her home to return to his and now she’d thought it was best the pendant return to its owner. It being safely tucked into her off-hands’ pants pocket for when he awoke. ‘And when he stirred, along came the fluttering of her heart against her ribcage again. Her breathing coming through her nose as her mouth had also bore a split from the claws of Kreuger. ‘And she’d easily do it again and again if it were for the young man who’d tried so hard for her life and his own. Brown, dewey eyes locked onto his face at the first spot of movement--leaving his father’s harsh gaze. She was so glad his father seemed to care so much about his son, she just wished he wouldn’t be focusing on her as if she’d offered him up.
