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"How long have you had these symptoms? Bloody coughs, abdominal pains, vomiting, weight loss?" The doctor did not sound happy.
But why would she? Her most troubled patient got hauled into her clinic at 6 am by the person that put her there more times than she could count. If anything, the doctor was handling it very well.
Of course she had been shocked when Jacob Seed practically kicked her door down with Eden in his arms, but she had to get over it fast to assess what was wrong with the Deputy. She tried to understand Eden's mumbling as best she could but it was hard. The best guess the doctor could come up with was a ruptured stomach ulcer and had to rush her into a surgery to prevent any further bleeding.
Surprisingly, Jacob demanded to stay in the waiting room all day long. The surgery was hard to do with one person but it didn't take very long to cauterize the stomach ulcer and get Eden all stitched back up.
Once Eden woke up (she had passed out from pain and extreme bleeding before she even got into surgery) the doctor had to ask her a lot of questions, which is what she was doing while Jacob sat in a chair in the corner of the room.
"I don't know, maybe two months? Could be one, not sure, the days start to blend together after a while." Eden shifted her weight in the bed, grimacing when she impacted the surgery area, a long cut that spanned across her stomach with staples holding it together.
The doctor didn't like to hear that. "Why didn't you mention anything last week in your check up?"
"Because I knew it was bad, but I thought that if you didn't know...then maybe I could stay in the meetings, keep things going." The doctor was about to say something but Eden held her hand up to stop her. "And besides, it wasn't that bad, a bloody cough here and there but I didn't feel the pain."
"That's because of your pain killers, which are probably what caused this. What about the vomiting and weight loss?" The doctor scribbled notes on her clipboard and waited for Eden's response.
"No vomiting, but I have been losing weight, I thought being on super strong medications and being chronically injured just normally brought that on." Eden admitted with a hint of annoyance and the doctor shook her head.
"I'm going to be honest with you. Eden, you had a stomach ulcer that was 5 centimetres wide, that's not something that just pops up. You need to tell me all of your symptoms, dizziness, confusion, pain, all of it. Ok? That way you don't die in your driveway or pass out at a meeting or have a heart attack or something worse. I'm not discharging you, what you need right now is to heal and the best way I can ensure you do that is keep you here." The doctor finished and left no room for argument.
She put her pen in her jacket pocket and left the room, glancing at Jacob as she turned to walk away. Jacob just listened silently, not saying a word. Eden would have been more comfortable if he just said something, anything.
"Is this what you've been hiding?" Jacob's gravelly voice made Eden look up at him. He was sitting back in one of those uncomfortable clinic chairs, just watching Eden. "In all of those meetings when you cough into your handkerchief, every time you lock yourself in your house, every time you fight to stay in those fucking meetings? You thought you were going to die anyway so you were tidying up loose ends." He didn't sound angry or betrayed, if anything he sounded too calm.
"It doesn't hurt to tidy up your life, but I didn't think I was going to die."
"You've always been a terrible liar, at least to me you have been." Jacob said simply and glanced down at his hands. Eden only just realized that he had blood all over his shirt and jacket, the dark corner he was sitting in concealed his clothes but she could make out the dark hue staining his sleeves and abdomen.
"I've been doing my job." Eden said and she heard something she didn't expect to. Jacob laughed, it wasn't deep or chesty, it was softer than that. Almost like he didn't want to frighten a small animal. The laugh was quiet and airy, a tiny chuckle that would have been lost if he was standing in the wind.
Jacob looked back at Eden, his expression not matching his light laughter. His face was dark and set, a certain anger (or was it disappointment?) had settled over his face.
"When will you quit? When will you finally stop beating yourself around like a toy?" He asked her, his voice was low but earnest.
"When the world is on fire and there's nothing I can do to stop it." Eden responded, barely louder than a whisper.
Jacob stared at her, his face showing his usual expression that masked any real emotion. He got up from his chair and locked his jaw, almost like he wanted to say more but didn't. Eden watched Jacob keenly as he slowly walked over to her bed, looking at something in his hands.
He held it up so that she could see it, his eyes connecting with hers for a moment before he went back to looking at the object. It was his wolf whistle, stained with her dried blood.
"Pure luck." Jacob marvelled and ran his fingers over the part that came undone from his carabiner, a frayed piece of string. "You're one of the luckiest unlucky bastards I've ever met, every time you do just about anything there are repercussions that are...astounding. To the Project, to the Resistance, to you.
"The only reason you're alive is because of luck, but I've been trying to tell you for months now that your luck is going to run out. It has to, that's the way of the world, it's nature's law, what goes up must come down, the pendulum swing of life." Jacob monologued, using his hand to replicate the motion of a pendulum swinging.
"I know all about nature's law, Jacob. I know I'm lucky, I know it's going to stop, but I don't care about luck. I have a job to do, I'm going to do it until the very end." Eden said defiantly and Jacob looked up at her.
His calmness didn't stop freaking Eden out but she was not going to make a comment about it. Seeing him covered in dried blood, staring at her while monologuing about nature's law...it reminded her too much of their first meetings. Everything was going so well last night, why did Eden have to rupture a stomach ulcer? Couldn't her body just let her have one good day?
Jacob nodded and looked back at the whistle in his hands. "Understood." He said and turned around like he was going to walk out of the room.
"Where are you going?" Eden asked, almost hitting herself for asking.
Jacob paused and glanced back at her, not fully turning around. "I've got another string to find." He said and held up the whistle one last time, before disappearing through the doorway.
Eden waited on a hitched breath for Jacob to say something else, maybe a closing statement, maybe a threat, anything. But she was met with the sound of the front door slamming shut and Jacob's truck starting.
The clinic room had never felt so quiet, never felt so cold and unwelcoming before. As the sound of Jacob's truck became more and more distant, the hair on Eden's arms tingled with the feeling of stifling silence. She looked around the room and just sat there, not feeling angry or sad like she usually did after upsetting encounters with Jacob, just feeling empty.
Eden's pulse was persistent, she could feel it in every one of her staples, quietly pounding. The room around her was so quiet she couldn't believe that the doctor couldn't hear her heart beating through the wall.
This was the reason Eden always had Boomer with her at her house. The sound of his paws clicking across the floor or him barking out the window or him whining at her when he wanted to play broke the silence. Eden had no idea how bad silence could be.
Thankfully for her, the doctor walked into the room. The sound of her shoes' soft soles on the tile floor somehow soothed Eden, giving her a distraction from her thoughts.
"It's so dark in here." The doctor mumbled to herself when she walked into Eden's room and flicked on a lamp next to the chair Jacob was in. Turning the lamp on brightened the room dramatically, taking away many of those dark corners and shadows.
"Who would you like for me to call first?" The doctor asked and walked over to the phone sitting on a table in the room.
Eden thought for a moment. "Don't call anyone, please." She said and the doctor glanced back.
"No one?" She checked and Eden nodded. "You're not going to try and cover this up are you?" Suspicion crept into the doctors voice as she walked next to Eden's bed to check her vitals.
"Not cover it up, just not tell the full truth." The doctor eyed her carefully. "I'll just say you wanted to keep an eye on me when I said I had some sort of problem, that should give me a couple days to heal but then I'm out of here and I can go back to the meetings." Eden explained
"Are people really going to believe that? And what about Jacob? You really think he's not going to talk?"
"Just don't say anything, please? I really can't have the heat from this right now I mean you know my friends. Can you imagine Nick and Kim if they found out? Adelaide? Hell basically every person I know would be standing in line to block the door so I couldn't get out."
"I won't say anything, but maybe you should take a look at what your friends are trying to do. They're just trying to keep you safe."
Eden took as deep of a breath as she could manage with her incision. "I understand that, honestly I do, but I know my limits. I know how much is too much. I know when my body will quit and that's not now."
The doctor shrugged. "Eden I'm going to level with you as a friend cause I'm tired of the doctor shtick, your body's already quit numerous times but hey you know that. Just don't do anything stupid, ok?" She said and turned to walk out the door.
"Thank you, I just..." the doctor paused while Eden found her words, "I have to do this."
The doctor nodded and glanced down at her papers in her hand. "I get it. You know...I've been the 'doctor' here for over three years now?" The doctor walked back into the room and stood at the foot of Eden's bed.
"Yep. Three years. And I'm not even a doctor! The doctor I was working with as a nurse was my father, his father started the clinic. When he got killed by the cult, suddenly I had to run this place all by myself. I always had to be available no matter what time it was, I pounded myself into the dirt everyday and night to try and fix everybody's problems."
"And?"
"And I did it. But I nearly killed myself in the process. I attended to everyone expect for me and when my friends forced me to slow down I made it through. People say that it's so hard to take care of others, or to listen to others or to pay attention to others, but I know that it's actually harder to take care of yourself.
"I've been trying to help you with gentle nudges-" Eden tried to stifle a sarcastic chuckle and the doctor grinned. "Ok ok I know that I've basically done everything short of handcuffing you to this bed-"
"Which happened once." Eden pointed out.
"Yes I did do that, but I have been trying to tell you that if you don't focus on yourself every once in a while then you're not going to be able to save anyone."
Eden nodded and glanced down at herself in the bed. "I feel like I have been doing that, focusing on myself. I know that everyone like Pastor Jerome and Whitehorse are talking all the time after meetings, always trying to make things work or fix things while I'm in my house in too much pain to think. But I can't force myself to stay there, can't force my body to stand in those meetings all day and not feel completely exhausted afterwards. Before I got hurt like this I could put myself through anything, the trials, fight after fight after fight, dehydration, hunger, anything, and now? Now I can barely drive myself around."
"That's your body telling you to relax, give yourself the time you need to heal. I promise you Eden, if you take a break then you will be able to heal, properly, and after you finish healing you will be so much stronger." The doctor told her and Eden bit her lip, thinking about what the doctor said.
"Well I guess I can't leave for the next couple of days, right? Might as well try to get some sleep." She said and the doctor almost looked relieved to hear that.
"Might as well, go ahead get some sleep, do not think about meetings." The doctor nagged and Eden cracked a small grin.
"Fine."
"I'll go call Sheriff Whitehorse, I'll tell him I wanted to monitor your medication intake or something." The doctor said and walked over to the lamp to shut it off.
"Thanks, Doc." Eden thanked her gratefully.
"You can call me Jean." The doctor smiled and turned the lamp off. "Now get some rest, I'll be in the other room if you need me."
"Thanks, Jean." Eden gave her a nod and Jean nodded back. Then Jean left the room and Eden tried not to think about meetings or plans and just think about getting better.
When Jacob started driving he wasn't angry, he just felt numb. He knew what he had to do next. And he didn't like it at all. As he left the clinic in his dust, he glanced back in the rear view mirror at the small building. "I'm sorry, Eden, it couldn't be any other way." He mumbled to himself and made the turn to go to Joseph's compound.
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