lovesguinness: (212)
Detective Euan Fitzpatrick ([personal profile] lovesguinness) wrote in [community profile] muserevival2015-02-04 11:56 am

085.2. Muse prompt (Quotes)

"We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance." - Harrison Ford

The last year and a bit of Euan’s life had been game-changing. It had felt a lot like karma for his (many) past wrongs was finally catching up with him. He wasn’t generally a person to believe in shit like that, but it became very real when shit started to hit fans at rapid pace. There was so much shock, so much pain, so much fear. Life wasn’t all that easy to start with. It had just gotten worse recently, though it wasn’t without the few patches of happiness here and there. He had gotten married, and he loved his family. That balanced things a wee bit.

But for the last ten months, he had been battling his way through chemotherapy following a diagnosis of non-hodgkin’s lymphoma not long after their wedding. It looked very likely that his past contraction of Hep C could have been the cause, but it was impossible to say for sure. In a way, his fucked up past had caught up with him, and it had impacted on his whole family. Something he fucking hated. He hated knowing he hadn’t been strong enough to take care of them for a lot of the preceding months. That was his sole purpose in life, and he had felt like he was failing them.

It was a huge cross to bear. He couldn’t even work, so that was another kick in the balls. Ten months had felt like a lifetime, and there hadn’t been a day that had past that he hadn’t wished it would all just fucking stop to give his family back some peace. So he could go back to providing for them. It didn’t even have to go back to the way it was. In a way, he knew he couldn’t. You don’t have cancer and just pick back up where you left off like nothing happened. You have the onus of grief to carry with you for a long time. You have to live with the fact your family went through so much pain and heartache because of it. If you even got to live at all…

He had been prescribed ten months of intensive chemo. For a time there, he even had a driver that he had to carry with him that administered a constant dose. He had days where he was bedridden, could barely function because he was so sick. It was a fucking atrocious thing to live through when you promised your young kid - who had a chronic illnesses himself - that you would always be there to take care of him. That had been the hardest thing for Euan to cope with. He had made all these promises to Ciaran and he hadn’t been able to deliver. Fuck, did he keep trying. He kept trying every day, but there was only so much to do. God love the wee lad, though, he shouldered if the best he could. Some days, on the worst days, he would come and just lie on the bed with Euan and cry his eyes out. Those were the days Euan threw all his own beliefs out the window and fell back on those of his departed parents, trying to pray in case there was anyone listening to the fucking pleas.

Sitting there that day in the doctor’s office, Euan felt like he was stepping up to the fucking chopping block. Ten months and he didn’t feel any better. Granted, chemo handed you your arse on a weekly basis. He had spent so many night praying to the porcelain god that it was a miracle there weren’t grooves in the tiles form his fucking knees. He hadn’t wanted to come to this appointment. He wanted to live in fucking denial and not have to go home to his kid and tell him he was dying. Was that what this appointment was about after all the tests he had been through in the previous days? To give him his death sentence. HIs wife sat beside him, holding his hand tightly. She was so fucking beautiful, and so fucking strong. Many a day he felt like he didn’t deserve her, but he didn’t know how he would have made it through without her. He felt sick. He felt like he wanted to bawl his eyes out, and he usually wasn’t much of a crier. That had changed his getting his son into his custody, going through the pain of learning he was ill and it would be a struggle for the rest of his life. He had cried even more since he was diagnosed with cancer. No one in the world with a human beating heart can face that and not cry. It eventually caught up with you, on the days where all you had left were tears.

He was bracing himself so much that his muscles had a physical ache in them and his feet were almost cramping up. He just wasn’t prepared for the worst. Fuck, he was usually tough enough to cop a hell of a lot of shit. You weathered that the more shit you went through. He had prided himself on how much he turned his life around to be able to deal with whatever came his way. Maybe it had hardened him up to the point he had little tolerance for dumbarses, but there were plenty of other people in the world who could waste their precious life time dealing with the dumbarses. He had his own family to take care of. Which is exactly why he wanted to fucking stick around longer. He wasn’t done yet. He couldn’t fucking die.

Then all of a sudden, like he was hearing it through a long tube underwater, came that word:

“Remission.”

Euan thought he heard wrong. He had to have heard wrong. He looked up his Oncologist, Irish to the core just like he was and blinked. He blinked and frowned, words not even coming. There was very little in this world that could render Euan speechless. Then there was Julie beside him bursting into tears, like she had been trying to hold them off but it was impossible. “What th’fuck…?” was his final response and he took the offered piece of paper with his test results. It was in mostly black and white with the danger zone markers from his previous tests in red. All the current tests were in normal range. He actually checked his name and date of birth to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. “R-Remission? No more fuckin’ chemo?”

After that, everything sort of blurred into a big emotional mess. Complete and utter shock on his part, Julie smothering him in a hug that hurt it was so tight, and his ears ringing because it was a complete mindfuck to hear this news he had been so convinced he never would hear. It hit him then just how convinced he was that he would die. Now everything had changed. He had to pick up the pieces, figure out what the fuck had to come next.

The only question was, what the fuck was that?

Euan Fitzpatrick (Original Character)

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