g r a c i e l a (aheavenlycause) wrote in valesco,
@ 2008-03-31 20:55:00

Entry tags:

Alexandrakis!
The rubber of the gloves she had to wear to touch her son---it was the most painful thing Graciela had ever felt. He looked so small, and it was so completely mind-blowing that just earlier this week they'd been cooing about how big he was getting. Such a big boy! He could almost roll over, he was just about getting there, and then one night he had just...he had just started crying, and crying. At first Graciela had treated it like a normal night, trying to feed him, coddle him, sing to him---after nearly two hours, it was obvious that it was something more. His fever hadn't been that bad, but---deus, if she had just taken his temperature earlier, maybe the healers could have stopped it, or---or maybe the milk wasn't at the right temperature, or it could have been...it could have been...

Her chin slipped from her hand and the sudden movement jolted her awake. Graciela was sure neither she or Alex had slept since coming to the hospital, and her eyes wearily looked around the small room they'd warded off for Zacharias--they didn't want to put him with the other patients with the same symptoms, but they couldn't have him in the nursery. She was sure Santiago had lent a big hand in giving them privacy, but it was still daunting to have all the large room for such a tiny person.

She pouted lightly when she finally caught Alex's eye, the gloved hand inside the...what was the word, she supposed it was an incubator of sorts...her fingers gently brushed along Zac's arm, and the lack of actually feeling his skin made her chest ache.

"When are they supposed to be back? The healers?" She couldn't remember if it had been five minutes or five hours since they'd last poked and prodded her son, it seemed like they'd been there a millennium.

(Post a new comment)

alexandrakis
2008-04-01 02:39 am UTC (link)

Alex looked tiredly up from the floor to regard his wife. He'd been staring at that same tile for about twenty minutes straight now, trying to count the little grainy dot... things... that were embedded into the material. It was tedious and wasn't getting anything done, but it was that or look at the weak, tiny body of his son--the mind-numbing task put to him by the tiles was better. Much better.

"In another ten, I think," he muttered, eyes turning quickly to the clock above Graciela's head and then back down again quickly to the floor, grazing over Zacharias too quickly to get a glance. He didn't want a glance, not when he was looking like that. All it did was fill him with pain and guilt--guilt because he was his father, he shouldn't be sitting there completely useless. He was--he was supposed to protect him from things, not let him lay and suffer, burning up with a fever.

He had heard the whispers, of course, seen the sympathetic looks of the healers whenever they went near the room. They were saying he didn't have a chance, that as a baby there was no way his immune system was strong enough to fight the virus that had gotten a hold of him. It was just--it made Alex want to go and deck each and every one of them for saying things like that, for not having hope for Zac. But then somewhere deep down, there was a voice telling him that he knew that everything they were saying was true. Babies just didn't have the ability to fight disease like adults did, especially not babies as young as him. Alex wished very hard that that voice would just shut up, because he hated sitting here, counting spots on a tile, feeling tired and defeated. He wanted to go over there and touch him and put an arm around Gracie and be able to look at him because he knew everything was going to be okay, but...

Bloody healers. Who cared when they were coming back? Apart from Santiago, Alex never wanted to see another healer as long as he was here. He needed someone to really fight for Zac, he needed someone who would believe that he could get over this.

Groaning in frustration, Alex ran his hands over his face furiously and leaned his head back against the wall. He closed his eyes and let out a deep breath of air. "I can go look for one of them if you want."

(Reply to this)(Thread)

aheavenlycause
2008-04-01 03:20 am UTC (link)

"No, that is...it's okay," she muttered, sitting up but not pulling her hand out of the incubator. Graciela wasn't sure when it was, the last time she moved up from this seat---probably when the healers came. They always made her jumpy, the hospital, the charts, their tone of voice. Santiago made her angriest when he took on his healer-tone, even if he didn't realize it (though most of the time he did). She'd been in the hospital a lot when she was younger, once for an appendectomy, and before that, well...she just used to get sick a lot.

Oh. Oh, how had she never thought about this, before? Maybe she really was the reason Zac had gotten sick. Because! Because he hadn't seen Kostos in a long time, because he'd been sick so it was just natural to stay away, so that wasn't possible so---had she given her son a weak immune system? Deus, they---well! He has not been alive for a very long time, how could they know if he had a strong one or not? Ay, the idea that he hadn't been alive long made her chest clench once again and Graciela had to pull her hand out of the glove and incubator. What if she was the reason he got sick, what if she was the reason he---

She put her chin up to rest in both of her hands, elbows pressing into the table under Zacharias, or whatever it was. Graciela knew she was mentally overreacting, but on the lack of sleep and the---the lack of Alex, for he had been over in that chair for far too long---it was making her feel more and more uneasy and uncomfortable and deus. How much would she give to have the healers tell her that all Zac needed was a new bottle of milk and he'd be all better?

"How long will you---for work, how long can you be off?" she asked, because, maybe if this was a normal cold, she'd suggest he go and she'd stay, but Graciela couldn't do this alone.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

alexandrakis
2008-04-01 03:53 am UTC (link)

Did it make him a bad person, a bad father and husband, that Alex was disappointed when Graciela denied his offer? He really wanted an excuse to leave at this point, even the other half of him wouldn't be able to live with himself if he stepped out of that room and away from him now. He was already doing so little for him, so how could he take away the one thing he did give to Zac--his presence?

And yet that didn't stop him from wishing he could leave. Get up, walk out, and maybe while he was walking some sort of epiphany would strike him on how to cure his son and he would come back and everything would be better. They would take Zac home, where he would grow up happy and virus-free for the rest of his long, long life. If that could just happen, then everything would be fine. But of course not, of course it couldn't all be that easy, and that thought did nothing now but to make Alex feel even more useless than he already did.

"I haven't taken any days off yet, so... a couple weeks, I guess?" he answered. "I should probably only take one, though, in case I need the days later--he won't be sick that long, will he?" Of course she didn't know any more than he did, but he sure did wish that was the truth. "I mean, didn't Santiago say something about... something about fevers breaking around a certain point? Maybe his will break early."

Or he would die, but that was one place that Alex was actively forcing his mind not to go. He didn't know how he would handle it if Zacharias didn't get better from this; he didn't know how any of them would handle it.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

aheavenlycause
2008-04-01 04:26 am UTC (link)

Graciela nodded quickly, biting her tongue at Alex's questions. Oh, what did she know? She wasn't smart like her brother, she just listened to what he said, if---if Santiago said that Zac's fever could break any day now, then, then it could. She would believe him, but she didn't know. It was rare moments like this that she questioned her faith. Graciela, for almost every day of her life, was held together by her faith in God that she and her family would make it to the next, but---what if that hope wasn't enough? Someone had died from this, someone had died and it was going on nearly a month since things had first started to show--so---they...

Something solid, they needed something solid and not just words she muttered to herself before she went to bed, or repeated every Sunday at church, no---they needed, a...cure because her son was sick and he needed to get better or Graciela was sure there would be nothing to believe in anymore.

"Yes---he said---Santiago said...he said...oh, ¡estúpida! His! It is his birthday!" Graciela pushed back into her chair, hands pressing to her face as tears sprung to her eyes. Deus, she knew that there was no reason to get this upset about it, that her brother's birthday wasn't the real reason why she'd suddenly burst into tears, but Graciela hadn't allowed herself to show more than severe concern for the past few days and---she couldn't hold any of her emotions back,

"He is going to hate me!" she sobbed into her hands.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

alexandrakis
2008-04-01 05:18 am UTC (link)

Alex's eyes widened slightly at Graciela's sudden outburst of tears, and he was out of his chait before he knew it, then--he stopped. He craned his neck forward slightly to try and make out what she was saying, something about Santiago and... his birthday, oh. She had forgotten it was his birthday, well, that wasn't good, but why was she crying? She had to know that the last thing her brother could ever do was hate her, so--oy, what in the hell was going on?

Tentatively, he stepped forward again, making his way around Zac's bed-thing, and sat down in the chair beside his wife. Alex slipped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his chest lightly, other hand moving in circles on her back, because... He had no idea what was really going through her head, but well, that's how you comforted your wife when she was crying, right?

"Hey, hey... Calm down, Gracie," he muttered into her dark hair, still sounding confused. "He's not going to hate you, you know that. We've all been so preoccupied with Zac, I bet you he didn't even remember. Come on, it's fine... What's really the matter, why are you crying like this?"

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

aheavenlycause
2008-04-01 05:38 pm UTC (link)

She pushed herself hard into Alex's chest, immediately feeling some sort of relief. Even if she couldn't stop crying, Alex's body gave her something real to hold onto and feel--not like those gloves that didn't let her really touch her son. For months throughout the pregnancy Graciela had feared she would never grow those motherly instincts she'd been reading about, it seemed like the baby was just making her big and round, not actually growing a person, but--but as soon as Zacharias arrived, Graciela's heart had swelled to the point of bursting, and she had no idea how she could love anyone more. Zacharias and Alex, the two people she would give up everything for, and she couldn't do anything for Zac.

Graciela sniffled in silence for a moment, arms wrapped tightly around Alex's torso as she tried to gather her thoughts. She didn't want to upset him even though she'd probably already done that, but deus why was this so confusing? She probably needed sleep, but she couldn't sleep, and she couldn't possibly leave---

"I--we cannot help him," she muttered with a crack of her voice, the tears starting to well up again. "If---I should have...I should have...his fever, I did not notice it until--Alex, he...deus, I am sorry, I just---we...he..."

Graciela pulled her chin up to frown up at her husband, shaking her head lightly. What was there to really say, other than her jumbled thoughts? That with each passing hour it was getting harder and harder to believe that their son was going to survive this? Even her devoted faith couldn't bring her to believe otherwise.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

alexandrakis
2008-04-03 12:25 am UTC (link)

The tentative, uncertain carriage of his body relaxed itself the instant she responded to his hold. She was admitting now, too, what the real reason for her tears were, and that relaxed him too, because now he could relate, he could--fuck, well, he didn't want to cry with her and he had to force away the stinging in his eyes and tell himself that he was going to be there and not upset her more, but... he related.

And she was talking about what was going on, a far cry from the idle, sparse conversation they had been having throughout the rest of their time in this room, and somehow that made him feel a little better. It shouldn't, talking about the way that their son was laying there all fragile and sick and on the edge of death, but it did. Somehow, that was so much better than avoiding it, and now Alex, for the first time in several hours, brought his head down to gaze upon Zacharias.

He locked his eyes upon the baby over the crown of Graciela's head and watched his chest shakily rise and fall and wondered what he had been so afraid of. Seeing him alive was much better than staring at the ceiling and imagining him dead.

"You didn't do anything wrong," he spoke, eyes still on Zac even as he tried to console Gracie. "Neither of us did anything wrong. There was nothing we could have done to stop the fever, that's that Santiago and the other healers said, and---we brought him in, didn't we? Instead of trying to just let it pass for a couple days? Don't feel like it's your fault, I bet you Zac doesn't blame you."

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

aheavenlycause
2008-04-03 08:22 pm UTC (link)

He struck a chord; Graciela's chest tightened as Alex told her that Zac didn't blame her. She didn't know what caused her to suddenly believe his words when she was condemning herself to hell just a few moments before, but Alex was Zacharias' father, he would know. At least, that's how it felt, and she somehow managed to hug her husband even tighter than she had been before. Ay, yes, she was already feeling much better now that he was beside her and not so far away, how had she allowed him to be out of her reach for so long?

Graciela shut her eyes and pressed her forehead to Alex's chest, trying to calm her breaths and relax some. It couldn't do any good to create a tension filled room, sim? That if the mood around Zac was better, then maybe he could feel the good feelings vibrating off of them and...well, yes, that made sense---if she started to believe that he'd be okay, and hope and pray...okay, it was coming back, see---only a very short, insignificant lapse in faith, perdoname deus--

"Do you think he is going to be okay?"

She whispered it softly, not pulling back, but her eyes opened as she awaited his answer. If Alex didn't believe Zacharias would make it, Graciela prayed that he would lie to her and tell her that he would. She hoped that he lied to her until the last possible moment, because then she could truly find it in herself to keep up the faith in her infant son.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

scribbld is part of the horse.13 network
Design by Jimmy B.
Logo created by hitsuzen.
Scribbld System Status