Kevin & Dori | BACKDATED

[x-wither.livejournal.com]

Less than an hour before Yvette goes into surgery Kevin runs into Dori, literally, and decides they both need a change of scenery.

He was usually so very good at being still. Kevin could sit and stare at an unmoving person for hours studying the nuances of their face, the way shadows spilled across the folds of the fabric they wore, the posture they sat or stood in. Only Yvette was going into surgery in thirty minutes and he was so nervous, so anxious that stillness would not come. Outward calm refused to cooperate because the insides were so full of chaos. He kept going back and getting awful coffee even though he hated it but it gave him something to do with his hands. It gave him something to do with himself once the coffee was gone.

Now he was pacing down the hall. He went from the waiting room to the vending machines and back over, and over again. His gaze unfocused, Kevin walked without seeing, too overcome with the mind-numbing terror over the possibility of Yvette simply not making it out to care who or what was in the hallway. He spun on his heel as he reached the vending machine once more and collided full on with another body. Kevin immediately jumped backward to put as much space as possible between him and the other person as quickly as possible. Then his eyes combed over the body checking for damage though he only felt contact on his chest and arm, both of which were covered by layers of clothing. "Ah'm sorry, Ah wasn't payin' attention. You alright?" He hadn't even fully registered it was Dori until the question was out of his lips.

“Yeah,” Doreen said, standing up, “I’m okay,” she wasn’t really thinking that much about herself right now and it showed in small ways. There were small mats of fur in her tail, and though her hair was brushed, not much styling effort had been put into anything. It wasn’t often Doreen got depressed, but when she did, it tended to do more with someone else than with herself. “Are you okay?”

"Yeah, Ah mean, Ah'm the destructive one. Not like Ah was gonna get hurt if we collided wrong or somethin'." He knew she was just asking because normal people did ask if others were okay after bumping into one another, even when one didn't have the power to shave layers of your skin off with brief contact between you, but he wasn't thinking enough to register that thought. He took a moment to actually look at Dori as a whole and Kevin frowned a little. "Ah think you need to go find some sleep." The words were kind and concerned, not judgmental.

“No, no. I’m fine,” if people weren’t meant to live on caffeine and sugar, God would not have made Mt. Dew, “I don’t think anyone here is sleeping that much, really.”

"What, just 'cause no one's sleeping you don't gotta either?" He had a skeptical look on his face and raised an eyebrow at the younger girl. "Ah think sittin' 'round worrying all day does no one any good. Not us and not 'Vette. Maybe after she's outta surgery in one piece Ah'll have to drag you outta here, find you something to do to wear ya out and that'll force you to sleep finally."

“I have a lot of energy though, it’s really hard to wear me out, you know,” Doreen said.

"Huh." A thoughtful look came over Kevin's face, which was more composed than natural but he'd been working on not just looking like a emo, doom cloud toting fellow while Yvette was in the hospital. Maybe if he didn't look ready to slit his wrists everyone else would stop looking like that, too. It hadn't worked yet. "Guess Ah been outta the mansion long enough that people haven't warned ya how stubborn Ah am. Ah'm up to the challenge, no worries there."

Doreen’s head titled to one side, “I can’t fold the clothes though, my claws make everything rip up,” that was what they had everyone else doing, pretty much.

Kevin gave her a puzzled look. "How'd that use up energy anyway? Do Ah look like a nurse with lame ideas like that? Ah'm hurt. Really."

“No? But you could be. Mom says it’s not fair to judge these things on stuff, because you could be a nurse and then you might be insulted if I said you weren’t,” Doreen mused.

"Ah think Ah'd be okay without you thinking Ah wear scrubs and sneak around changing bedpans, thanks." Not to mention, Kevin as a nurse would probably equate into a Kevorkian sorta thing. Euthanasia, now with free cremation!

“Yeah, that would be kinda gross but it isn’t the only thing that nurses do, you know?” Doreen chirped, “They do a lot of stuff and not all of it is bedpans and scrubs. My mom’s a nurse. Well, she is now. She didn’t used to have to work.”

"Yeah, Ah could stick people with needles, torture 'em with cold, metal things in uncomfortable places and stuff. This might be my future career, now that you mention it. This is a way better idea than art!" Kevin smirked at her and got images of sculptures made entirely of hypodermic needles in his head.

“…That’s not what you should be doing!” Doreen squeaked.

Kevin actually laughed. "No? Bad plan?"

“Yes! That’s totally not what you’re supposed to do. Nurses are supposed to do some stuff like that, but you don’t torture people,” Doreen stated.

"Hey, some people call it 'taking blood' or 'fluids under the skin' and other people call it 'ow ow, the pain!'" He shrugged. "To each his own. Well, my mom would say that. Ah don't think Ah used it right there, though."

Doreen shook her head, “I don’t think you did either. Because they’re not supposed to be screaming, you know. The patients that is.”

Kevin scratched the back of his head. "Who said they was screamin'?"

“When something hurts you scream.”

"Maybe you do," he said quietly. "But Ah don't hear nearly enough screamin' for all the hurt that's goin' on 'round this building."

“That’s because everyone’s on morphine. Can’t you smell it?” Doreen asked. Sometimes it could get confusing, what everyone else could smell and what they couldn’t.

Kevin blinked at her. "No, Ah smell that hospital disinfectant." He paused, then asked with genuine curiosity, "You can smell the morphine?"

“Yeah. And the alcohol in the disinfectant. And the smell of sick people. I don’t mean to sound mean, but they smell different, and the sooner Yvette doesn’t smell like that the better,” Doreen said, sincerely.

No wonder she looked so wrecked. It was one thing to be worried about Yvette and be stuck around here waiting like they all were, but it was another thing entirely to be able to smell the drugs and the illnesses. "We need air," he decided suddenly and looped an arm around Dori's shoulders. He made sure that she didn't come up too high above his shoulder, pulled his hood over his head and nodded in the direction of the nearest exit. "She's goin' into surgery. We can't do anything but go crazy, so we're goin' outside."

“…Okay,” Doreen said, after thinking about it. “I guess there really isn’t that much they can do. I hope she’ll be alright.”

"Yeah." Kevin's voice was at once hushed and still. If Dori's hearing was as good as her sense of smell he wasn't worried about her hearing him. Someone with human level hearing, though, might not have caught his words. "Me. too." His expression had closed down to something distant and not present, not unlike what he'd looked like when he'd collided with her.

Kevin cleared his throat and started to walk the pair of them down the hall to the exit, arm still around her. He spoke more loudly, closer to his normal level of soft volume, "C'mon, we're gonna go find somewhere we can do some good. They'll let us know stuff when there's anything to know."

Doreen did catch it, but didn’t say anything. Someone willing to walk around and be seen with the rodent was something she was getting used to, and the close comfort was more than welcome. Her tail twitched, but didn’t go up as high as it normally would’ve. “Yeah. I mean, they have to, I think. I hope they would anyway. I’m just glad right now they found a donor, you know?”

Kevin nodded. "Yeah, Ah know. We'll find Angel or someone on the way out and make sure someone calls my cell when Yvette's outta surgery, okay? That way they know we're not here and that they gotta call us. And we know who to blame if they don't. Deal?"

“Deal,” Doreen said with a nod, “At least outside it won’t smell as bad, but it will smell different. I don’t know if I like the way this place smells anymore.”.

"No one likes the way hospitals smell. That smell sorta carves itself into your memory and pops up every time you think of hospitals. Misery without even havin' to be in one." Until now Kevin hadn't spent much time in hospitals, but he was decidedly not a fan.

“My mom works at one, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, even the way this country smells. I don’t like it anymore,” she said, another twitch of the tail. She hadn’t been able to stand it. But she stayed anyway. Stayed to make sure Yvette was alright. Because she still felt responsibility for what had happened on some level. Because it was only right to stay

He wasn't sure what she meant about how the country smelled, but Kevin figured he probably wouldn't be able to understand it even if she tried to explain it so he didn't bother asking. Instead all he said was, "We'll leave soon. Once Yvette's alright we'll all go home."

“Yeah,” Doreen said, “At least I know the air there.”