Show and Tell
Jul. 22nd, 2009 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeCharacter: The Sorcerer
Prompt: Show and Tell
Community: Theatrical Muse
Pizza for lunch. You had to eat it with a knife and fork because it was so greasy and slippery it just fell off your fingers when you tried to pick it up. He sat by himself on a corner of the thick white tables, poking carefully at it with the plastic flatware. His hands were too small for the flatware and it slipped out of his fingers when he tried to pick it up. The sounds muted themselves around him so that he could concentrate.
Then the teacher tapped his shoulder and asked him if he was all right and it was over.
He pulled the box up to the front of the class when they were done. He heard the whispers around him but they didn't matter. The common box turtle was in its box, its legs scuffling around on the cardboard making dry sounds like leaves in the grass. He looked down at it while the teacher hushed the rest of them, but they didn't matter either. None of them mattered. She was beautiful, black and yellow and shades of brown. She wasn't scared, so he wouldn't be scared either. It would be a much braver thing to be not scared in a box in a strange world than it would be to be brave in your own classroom, wouldn't it?
"This is the turtle." Not a turtle, the turtle. This was the only turtle in his world. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. The turtle spoke for him.
I am a turtle. You see my little turtley legs, my little turtley head. You see me looking at you, wondering what you are and why my legs don't touch the ground anymore. I eat plants. Fruits, leaves, ve-ge-ta-bles. I eat berries. I bother no one.
The world slipped sideways and fell over. The turtle was still talking but no words were coming out of his mouth and he didn't think anyone else heard the turtle. The teacher picked him up like he had picked the turtle up and he moved his arms and legs like the turtle had moved them but he couldn't move. She picked him up and carried him away and the turtle looked up at him and bobbed her head good-bye.
"I... see things. I hear things, in my head. They say it looks like this."
He turned the scans around. MRI, CAT scan, PET scan, alphabet soup of medical tests that amounted to putting him in a big tube and making loud noises by banging things on the outside, or that's what it sounded like. He didn't know what they expected to prove or discern from that. He knew he was insane. Batshit crazy. He would have enjoyed it except that it never made him feel good, and it made him act in ways that other people didn't like and then they made him feel worse. Locked him into tiny rooms. Put him on a shelf, on display. No, that was his mind playing tricks on him again. His doctor said so.
"I see..." Which was doctor speak for I'm looking at this medical marvel and not paying attention to you. He had been in and out of hospitals since he was six years old. He knew what that meant.
It didn't bother him anymore. It had when he wanted to be normal, when he was looking for answers and wanted to be just like the other boys and girls and play in their reindeer games. But it didn't matter now. He was different. He had always been different, always would be, and nothing anyone could do was going to change that. His mother had tried. She had taken him to his first ten or twenty doctors, one after the other, begging on the mercy of the state and endless stacks of envelopes and papers piled higher than he was, all of them telling her that he was unsalvageable. That she should put him in a home and moved on with her life.
He would give her the credit of calling her mother, when she didn't give up on him and didn't put him in a home. She made a home for him until the day she died. He didn't know if she was his real mother or not. All memories before the age of six were gone.
He put his fingertip on the cold plastic and stared, wide blue eyes unblinking. "What do you see, doctor?"
The other man got nervous and avoided his gaze. They always did. Someone, a young woman he had once known had called it the psycho stare right before she had thrown her shoe at his head and screamed at him to get out. He had, and she had slammed the door behind him, punctuating it. He didn't know what that meant but he knew staring at people made them uncomfortable so he looked away except when he wanted them to be uncomfortable. He wanted the doctor to be uncomfortable. He wanted the truth.
"You have..." the doctor said, and then swallowed. "You have a le-lesion. On your brain. It's causing your hallucinations, distorting your perceptions..."
There was more. Medical talk, doctor talk, all of it. Distorted perceptions. They were the ones who had the distorted perceptions, he just wasn't seeing right. Things were too close or too far, his arms were too short and his legs were too long, his neck too long, head floating above the balloons. The last part of him claimed that that was what the doctor meant. The doctor would bring his head back down and make his limbs all the right sizes again. That was what the medication was for.
"What do I take?"
Medical hands in latex gloves twisted over each other again and again. "There isn't anything on the market for this currently, not even in the testing stages. There is the option of surgery, but I don't know what kind of surgery would heal the lesion and cutting away the tissue would in theory induce the brain to regrow the connections but it would leave you debilitated in the meantime..."
Words. All of it amounting to the fact that the doctor couldn't help him and he would do better to go back to his doctor, who at least could give him the pills that worked. The pills that made him even for a little bit of time. Instead of all the time dead, or broken, like this. Which is what the new doctor was saying until he put his hand over his mouth until he stopped talking. The doctor stared at him with wide, wide eyes as he left.
"I don't like you, doctor. I'm going to get a second opinion."
Prompt: Show and Tell
Community: Theatrical Muse
Pizza for lunch. You had to eat it with a knife and fork because it was so greasy and slippery it just fell off your fingers when you tried to pick it up. He sat by himself on a corner of the thick white tables, poking carefully at it with the plastic flatware. His hands were too small for the flatware and it slipped out of his fingers when he tried to pick it up. The sounds muted themselves around him so that he could concentrate.
Then the teacher tapped his shoulder and asked him if he was all right and it was over.
He pulled the box up to the front of the class when they were done. He heard the whispers around him but they didn't matter. The common box turtle was in its box, its legs scuffling around on the cardboard making dry sounds like leaves in the grass. He looked down at it while the teacher hushed the rest of them, but they didn't matter either. None of them mattered. She was beautiful, black and yellow and shades of brown. She wasn't scared, so he wouldn't be scared either. It would be a much braver thing to be not scared in a box in a strange world than it would be to be brave in your own classroom, wouldn't it?
"This is the turtle." Not a turtle, the turtle. This was the only turtle in his world. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. The turtle spoke for him.
I am a turtle. You see my little turtley legs, my little turtley head. You see me looking at you, wondering what you are and why my legs don't touch the ground anymore. I eat plants. Fruits, leaves, ve-ge-ta-bles. I eat berries. I bother no one.
The world slipped sideways and fell over. The turtle was still talking but no words were coming out of his mouth and he didn't think anyone else heard the turtle. The teacher picked him up like he had picked the turtle up and he moved his arms and legs like the turtle had moved them but he couldn't move. She picked him up and carried him away and the turtle looked up at him and bobbed her head good-bye.
"I... see things. I hear things, in my head. They say it looks like this."
He turned the scans around. MRI, CAT scan, PET scan, alphabet soup of medical tests that amounted to putting him in a big tube and making loud noises by banging things on the outside, or that's what it sounded like. He didn't know what they expected to prove or discern from that. He knew he was insane. Batshit crazy. He would have enjoyed it except that it never made him feel good, and it made him act in ways that other people didn't like and then they made him feel worse. Locked him into tiny rooms. Put him on a shelf, on display. No, that was his mind playing tricks on him again. His doctor said so.
"I see..." Which was doctor speak for I'm looking at this medical marvel and not paying attention to you. He had been in and out of hospitals since he was six years old. He knew what that meant.
It didn't bother him anymore. It had when he wanted to be normal, when he was looking for answers and wanted to be just like the other boys and girls and play in their reindeer games. But it didn't matter now. He was different. He had always been different, always would be, and nothing anyone could do was going to change that. His mother had tried. She had taken him to his first ten or twenty doctors, one after the other, begging on the mercy of the state and endless stacks of envelopes and papers piled higher than he was, all of them telling her that he was unsalvageable. That she should put him in a home and moved on with her life.
He would give her the credit of calling her mother, when she didn't give up on him and didn't put him in a home. She made a home for him until the day she died. He didn't know if she was his real mother or not. All memories before the age of six were gone.
He put his fingertip on the cold plastic and stared, wide blue eyes unblinking. "What do you see, doctor?"
The other man got nervous and avoided his gaze. They always did. Someone, a young woman he had once known had called it the psycho stare right before she had thrown her shoe at his head and screamed at him to get out. He had, and she had slammed the door behind him, punctuating it. He didn't know what that meant but he knew staring at people made them uncomfortable so he looked away except when he wanted them to be uncomfortable. He wanted the doctor to be uncomfortable. He wanted the truth.
"You have..." the doctor said, and then swallowed. "You have a le-lesion. On your brain. It's causing your hallucinations, distorting your perceptions..."
There was more. Medical talk, doctor talk, all of it. Distorted perceptions. They were the ones who had the distorted perceptions, he just wasn't seeing right. Things were too close or too far, his arms were too short and his legs were too long, his neck too long, head floating above the balloons. The last part of him claimed that that was what the doctor meant. The doctor would bring his head back down and make his limbs all the right sizes again. That was what the medication was for.
"What do I take?"
Medical hands in latex gloves twisted over each other again and again. "There isn't anything on the market for this currently, not even in the testing stages. There is the option of surgery, but I don't know what kind of surgery would heal the lesion and cutting away the tissue would in theory induce the brain to regrow the connections but it would leave you debilitated in the meantime..."
Words. All of it amounting to the fact that the doctor couldn't help him and he would do better to go back to his doctor, who at least could give him the pills that worked. The pills that made him even for a little bit of time. Instead of all the time dead, or broken, like this. Which is what the new doctor was saying until he put his hand over his mouth until he stopped talking. The doctor stared at him with wide, wide eyes as he left.
"I don't like you, doctor. I'm going to get a second opinion."