there's a lack of color here {izzie}
This was supposed to be the other fic i was going to post yesterday...whoops
Title: There's A Lack Of Color Here
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Izzie | Izzie/Alex
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 424
Prompt: #5 - Grape for 25_foods
Summary: Post 5.13 -- takes place sometime after that. She remembers the same date last year, distantly.
Izzie remembers the same date last year, distantly.
Mostly she remembers that she was smiling. One of those smiles that lasted so long and went so far that your face hurt at the end of it all. There had been a birthday cake, candles she blew out on the first try, because that had been how her luck was going at that point. The two men she loved the most had watched on.
Today, she runs her fingers up and over crudely constructed cardboard containers and Styrofoam cups, and not once does she smile. She does slit her finger on a too-sharp corner of too-thin cardboard, squeezes the skin around it until she can see the tiny drop of blood. Blood never bothered her, if it did she would have quit long ago, but now she almost has a fascination with it. They’re always doing tests and taking blood, and it feels like all she sees anymore amongst the white walls, and the white sheets, and the white lab coats like the ones she used to wear, is the blood. Crimson, representing not the absence of something but the presence of it.
Life.
There are days, more and more often, that she needs to be reminded of it. That it exists outside of the hospital. That she’s still in its ranks.
Today is her birthday.
Today is a day that, thirty years ago, a life that she hasn’t been living for months started. There’s a poetic part of her, the part that’s now stopped looking for band-aids and stop-gaps and has now found it’s way into the how’s and when’s, that thinks if it just ended here that would be fine. Good, even. It’s not that she wants to die; she’s just tired of trying to live and breathe and get to the next day and then start over again with the same damn mantra.
She’s just tired.
Later - the hospital will come with her lunch, and Alex will come like he does every day, kiss her on the cheek (the look she gives him stills any wishes he might have on his lips; she doesn’t want that reminder), sit by her bedside and tell her about work and all the surgeries she’s missing. She will pick at her lunch, swallow the grapes like she swallows the lump in her throat, practiced, capable (she used to be a surgeon), and make herself put that smile back on her face, for his sake, for their sake.
Even her smile feels like a frown these days.
Title: There's A Lack Of Color Here
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Izzie | Izzie/Alex
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 424
Prompt: #5 - Grape for 25_foods
Summary: Post 5.13 -- takes place sometime after that. She remembers the same date last year, distantly.
Izzie remembers the same date last year, distantly.
Mostly she remembers that she was smiling. One of those smiles that lasted so long and went so far that your face hurt at the end of it all. There had been a birthday cake, candles she blew out on the first try, because that had been how her luck was going at that point. The two men she loved the most had watched on.
Today, she runs her fingers up and over crudely constructed cardboard containers and Styrofoam cups, and not once does she smile. She does slit her finger on a too-sharp corner of too-thin cardboard, squeezes the skin around it until she can see the tiny drop of blood. Blood never bothered her, if it did she would have quit long ago, but now she almost has a fascination with it. They’re always doing tests and taking blood, and it feels like all she sees anymore amongst the white walls, and the white sheets, and the white lab coats like the ones she used to wear, is the blood. Crimson, representing not the absence of something but the presence of it.
Life.
There are days, more and more often, that she needs to be reminded of it. That it exists outside of the hospital. That she’s still in its ranks.
Today is her birthday.
Today is a day that, thirty years ago, a life that she hasn’t been living for months started. There’s a poetic part of her, the part that’s now stopped looking for band-aids and stop-gaps and has now found it’s way into the how’s and when’s, that thinks if it just ended here that would be fine. Good, even. It’s not that she wants to die; she’s just tired of trying to live and breathe and get to the next day and then start over again with the same damn mantra.
She’s just tired.
Later - the hospital will come with her lunch, and Alex will come like he does every day, kiss her on the cheek (the look she gives him stills any wishes he might have on his lips; she doesn’t want that reminder), sit by her bedside and tell her about work and all the surgeries she’s missing. She will pick at her lunch, swallow the grapes like she swallows the lump in her throat, practiced, capable (she used to be a surgeon), and make herself put that smile back on her face, for his sake, for their sake.
Even her smile feels like a frown these days.