(➲) (...action) (dated an hour after locusts depart)
With sundown and eerie quiet, her nerves have either driven her to a different manifestation of her own off-again on-again functioning, or she has grown close to stupid with a purpose. Whichever it is, Emma finds, knowing what a night like this in scripture entails, makes a decision and that decision is what brings her out of her apartment on near tiptoes in heels (somehow) with an overstuffed shoulder bag of stuff and an umbrella fully open. She makes a peculiar sight, donning a raincoat that reaches well down to her ankles, all of which are out of place where many things are on the forecast but rain not among them. It makes her more easily able to pretend nothing will happen to her, that if she masks herself on the way that it is not such a long walk to the hospital. Twenty-four hours ago she would have said nothing could get her out of the flat, not for much of anything, but this isn't just anything she leaves for.
She has seen blood and flesh doctors and a few nurses, secretaries and so on there, but there are the non-human things as well and it unsettles her to think of the ward she has frequented for a while now. Children are sometimes frighteningly fearless, of course, and maybe religion's ill intent is something they can wrap their minds around in a way that lets them think we're not scared, but she knows there are other kinds of children too. It helps that she was one of them. In ways, perhaps, she still is and she thinks that whether nothing or something awaits first-borns and their friends, it could be nice to have someone there to tell them the sometimes-lie of it will be okay.
Her fingers clutch hard around the strap of her bag, the corrugated pattern pressing into the palm of her hands, comforting because even something as small as this, at least, is in her control. Emma heads for the hospital, all awkward quietness and wanting to be more confident than she really is, and it isn't such a selfless act as some might color it for the children. No, the truth--and well she knows it--is that she goes for her own sake. Sad, maybe, but it's a whispering truth that helps keep everything contained. Children have this way of making her feel needed and what is more, what is more, is that she feels like she can actually offer them something. Where high school students back home cross into adulthood will always be a strange line for her to watch as it is stepped over, time and again, but even that is all right. She can watch them go and hope she gave them something to take with them that is useful, and really that is the most she could hope for--getting to see them before they become too old for that brightness, before they become the Sue Sylvesters or the Emma Pillsburys or what-have-you of the world. It grounds her seventy-eight regular anxieties, and sometimes even more than just those.
Of course paying visits to the children's ward is not quite the same but she is closer to those little beings than anyone else she can think of in this drug-trip of a place. There could be others but she finds excuses not to reach out, or they find them for her without knowing it and she takes them once half in sight. Adjusting the shoulder bag, a hum of a sigh escapes her and the evening is a little too loud with it, so she walks a bit faster and click...click...click becomes click, click, click.
[action; open to on-the-way to the hospital route, or if you work in the hospital...and are still there...also open to that /flexible if slowpokeish ]