Love your cobert drabbles and fanfics!! Please write more!! Hope you are doing well 😘🥰😉
So I had a very, very old request for a long-lost prompt list. They requested #18 which was an angsty “All you had to do was stay.” I do not know where that request went, so I am answering this more open-ended one from 2020 instead. Thank you Anon of Bygone Times. I am doing well! And I hope you are, too.
Just felt like doing a little something! Hurt/Comfort really. Post ANE. Please forgive the clunkiness xoxox
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Angst #18 - All You Had to Do Was Stay
Her mouth felt as if it was stuffed with cotton and her tongue felt dry and thick. It was over, but the taste remained: mineraly and sharp, a bitter tang. It filled up her entire mouth and nose, the taste and smell indistinguishable from each other. She needed water.
Cora opened her eyes and immediately blinked. She worked for a moment to adjust her vision, pressing her eyelids softly and then peering into the afternoon rays of sun coming in at an odd angle to the room. Oh, her head pounded and throbbed. Water; where was the water?
She closed her eyes again and rested her head back against the thin pillow. She’d prayed it wouldn’t be like this. The first few times she’d done the treatment, as Doctor Clarkson had called it, she’d gagged, of course. But she managed the small measured portions of raw liver she’d been prescribed to eat over the course of the day. She could have the injections just as soon as they were shipped from London; this would get easier—less frequent. But after a week, and with the shipment still missing, she found she could no longer stomach it. She managed her portion at luncheon, just barely finding the strength to swallow the gelatinous mush in her mouth that had once been neat cubes upon her plate. But then the vomiting began at tea. And it didn’t stop. The smell of it, the vomit a dark red in the basin, set her mouth to watering and nose burning as a precursor to even more retching.
So Robert had taken her here the next morning—this morning—, in spite of her protesting, to the hospital.
Cora groaned. Whatever strength and newfound energy she’d enjoyed before was completely depleted now and what remained were aches and fatigue. She wouldn’t think of what it may mean—that the incessant vomiting of the last day and night had undone all of her progress—but instead tried her best to look at the bright side. The injections would be in soon, and there’d be less liver. Not no liver, she knew. But less. She could stomach less.
With this, she opened her eyes again. Late afternoon, she could tell. The hospital bed beneath her felt stiff and narrow. The quilt was rough. She attempted to ease herself up slowly, the blood in her head thumping and her stomach sore from its terrible labor.
But then the small creak of a wooden chair to her right, and the warm weight of his hand upon her blanketed shin stilled her.
“Lie back.”
“Robert,” her voice croaked softly, her protest pitiful and weak. “I’m alright.”
“You aren’t. You need rest.”
Despite her scoff, Cora did lie back. She hadn’t even the energy to roll her eyes. “I’m alright. Really.”
“So you said.” His voice was gentler in his contradiction than before, and even though her eyes were closed, Cora could feel the way he shifted in the wooden chair. She could feel the way he leaned closer to her, and she felt his hand move from her leg and to her arm. His fingers encircled it, and she felt him draw a soft line along the thin and fragile bone of the inside of her wrist. She sighed; her head hurt a little less. “We were pleased to see you’ve kept down the last portion.”
She hummed a reply. “Best not to speak too soon.”
“Doctor Clarkson says if you can keep down the next, he’ll send us home to bed.”
She swallowed down what she wanted to respond: She didn’t want another portion. The very thought of it prickled up beads of cold sweat upon her hairline. She did groan, but took in a long breath to steady herself. “I’ve been resting all day.”
“Yes. And he has given you direction to rest as much as possible tomorrow. That is, if you’re well enough to leave.”
“Oh, Robert,” she opened her eyes. “I don’t wish to take up a bed for anyone who may really need it.”
She felt the way his fingers moved upon her wrist. “I suppose you think you don’t?”
“I don’t need it. I’ve been ill, yes, but not ill enough for constant monitoring.” She shook her head, closed her eyes, and swallowed down the dry burn of her throat. Her voice was hoarse from the vomiting. “Besides, I’d like to see you try keeping all that liver down.”
His fingers tightened. The chair creaked. And in the absence of what she thought would be a low chuckle, Cora slowly opened her eyes to find him looking down at her.
“I wish I could do this for you.”
She sighed. “Do what?” she asked, even though she knew.
“All of it.”
She knew. Her chest ached when he looked away from her, his chin trembling. Yes, she knew. For she felt the same when he was lying in this bed a few short years ago and she was the one on the creaking chair praying that somehow they could exchange places. She’d suffer it for him, she knew. And he would suffer this for her. “Oh, darling.“
“I hate seeing you so ill. Last night. I’m so terribly sorry you must endure this.”
It took more energy than she thought she had to slip her wrist from his grasp and for her fingers to find his hand instead. She squeezed, quickly and firmly, and smiled when he at last met her eye.
“No. I don’t want that. No apologies or pity. Hmm?” She smiled wider for his sake, and she tried her best to level her voice, to not sound quite so weak. “All I want is this. For you to stay beside me. Holding my hand.”
He chuckled, softly and sadly. “You’ll have some of my pity. It can’t be helped.” At this, he brought her fingers to his lips and pressed them. They felt warm against her skin. “But I will hold your hand.”
Please ma’am, can we have some more???
