Housefic50
Title: Go with the Dead
Characters/Pairing: General Series (Gabe)
Prompt: 012 "Grey"
Word Count: 643
Rating: U
Spoilers: Cursed
Author's Notes: For housefic50. The other Gabe in Cursed.
Go With the Dead
He’s been here more than fifty years. Sweeping and cleaning and smiling, pushing his cart through the corridors of the hospital. Like a ghost, walking the same routes over and over, his steps becoming slower, his back more stooped. Knows everyone and everything, and Gabe is as much a part of the hospital as the bricks and cement. Holds it together just as well, just as secretly, and never tells the things he learns.
Been here fifty years, and he’s seen his wife and child pass in those same rooms he bleaches every day. Walks into the maternity ward with a bucket in his arms and remembers holding his boy. Tiny thing, all fragile bones and soft hair. They’d been young then, him and Elsie. Too young, and they’d done nothing right. Too young to wed, to have children, and they’d listened to no one. Gabe had held his boy in his arms and let it breathe his life away. Elsie had been sick, tiny thing like the boy, and there had been too much blood during the birth, her skin too pale, and Gabe didn’t know where she’d been taken. Whispered instead to his son, of all the things he’d never get to see, all the people he’d never get to grow into. About loving his momma, about the taste of apples, of walking and breathing and being. Talked his boy right through his death, and they’d named him Thomas so there’d be something to put on the grave. Elsie never quite the same after that, never able to have more children, and there’s something missing from her.
Gabe walks into the lab that used to be a hospital room, and in the middle of the test tubes and refrigerators and machines he doesn’t understand, sees simple beds, white sheeting, silence. A single occupied bed and Elsie, hair gone prematurely white and breathing shallow, living her last in the same place her boy died thirty years before. Trails his fingers along worktops, looking for dirt, and his wife, his Elsie, died right here, right where the neat lines of tubes and pots rest, piss and blood and shit of the sick and the careless. Cleans it all anyway, fills his nostrils with the stink of bleach and whispers apologies to Elsie. Walks back on down those corridors, and they’re more familiar than his empty home, than dinners for one, and a single coat on the hook downstairs. Gabe grows old, and the hospital ages with him. Cracks and dust, and only one of them can be repaired.
There’s this cough that won’t go away, and he stops by the clinic one morning. Talks to the pretty girl doctor, the one with worry and pity in her eyes, and she takes blood, lays him in some of those big machines that clank and whirr. Sees him a couple days later, and she has Wilson with her. Oncologist. Cancer. Wilson’s eyes are soft, and he wants to talk about how long Gabe has left, what they can do for him until then. Gabe listens politely, and spends the afternoon cleaning out the maternity ward, listening to cries and life and the long-ago breaths of his son. He won’t die here. Knows that like he knows the feel of every corridor in this place, every turn and step and brick. Not here.
He wakes one night to find Elsie standing by his bed. Whispers a soft ‘Oh,’ as his heart stops, and he sits up. Elsie holds out her hand, smiling, and when he takes it, they’re young again.
“Been waiting for you,” he mutters, and he lets Elsie lead him out the door. It’s her and him again, the way it should be, and the hospital is far behind him, can only claim his dead flesh, and somewhere out there, his boy is waiting.
Characters/Pairing: General Series (Gabe)
Prompt: 012 "Grey"
Word Count: 643
Rating: U
Spoilers: Cursed
Author's Notes: For housefic50. The other Gabe in Cursed.
Go With the Dead
He’s been here more than fifty years. Sweeping and cleaning and smiling, pushing his cart through the corridors of the hospital. Like a ghost, walking the same routes over and over, his steps becoming slower, his back more stooped. Knows everyone and everything, and Gabe is as much a part of the hospital as the bricks and cement. Holds it together just as well, just as secretly, and never tells the things he learns.
Been here fifty years, and he’s seen his wife and child pass in those same rooms he bleaches every day. Walks into the maternity ward with a bucket in his arms and remembers holding his boy. Tiny thing, all fragile bones and soft hair. They’d been young then, him and Elsie. Too young, and they’d done nothing right. Too young to wed, to have children, and they’d listened to no one. Gabe had held his boy in his arms and let it breathe his life away. Elsie had been sick, tiny thing like the boy, and there had been too much blood during the birth, her skin too pale, and Gabe didn’t know where she’d been taken. Whispered instead to his son, of all the things he’d never get to see, all the people he’d never get to grow into. About loving his momma, about the taste of apples, of walking and breathing and being. Talked his boy right through his death, and they’d named him Thomas so there’d be something to put on the grave. Elsie never quite the same after that, never able to have more children, and there’s something missing from her.
Gabe walks into the lab that used to be a hospital room, and in the middle of the test tubes and refrigerators and machines he doesn’t understand, sees simple beds, white sheeting, silence. A single occupied bed and Elsie, hair gone prematurely white and breathing shallow, living her last in the same place her boy died thirty years before. Trails his fingers along worktops, looking for dirt, and his wife, his Elsie, died right here, right where the neat lines of tubes and pots rest, piss and blood and shit of the sick and the careless. Cleans it all anyway, fills his nostrils with the stink of bleach and whispers apologies to Elsie. Walks back on down those corridors, and they’re more familiar than his empty home, than dinners for one, and a single coat on the hook downstairs. Gabe grows old, and the hospital ages with him. Cracks and dust, and only one of them can be repaired.
There’s this cough that won’t go away, and he stops by the clinic one morning. Talks to the pretty girl doctor, the one with worry and pity in her eyes, and she takes blood, lays him in some of those big machines that clank and whirr. Sees him a couple days later, and she has Wilson with her. Oncologist. Cancer. Wilson’s eyes are soft, and he wants to talk about how long Gabe has left, what they can do for him until then. Gabe listens politely, and spends the afternoon cleaning out the maternity ward, listening to cries and life and the long-ago breaths of his son. He won’t die here. Knows that like he knows the feel of every corridor in this place, every turn and step and brick. Not here.
He wakes one night to find Elsie standing by his bed. Whispers a soft ‘Oh,’ as his heart stops, and he sits up. Elsie holds out her hand, smiling, and when he takes it, they’re young again.
“Been waiting for you,” he mutters, and he lets Elsie lead him out the door. It’s her and him again, the way it should be, and the hospital is far behind him, can only claim his dead flesh, and somewhere out there, his boy is waiting.