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Serena Pemberton ([personal profile] intheruins) wrote2017-05-09 10:15 pm
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The first couple of days, there's not much Serena can do. She's lost a lot of blood and there's a lot more to healing from a caesarean than there is a natural delivery, too. 

It's almost maddening. She can't even nurse her son. Every so often they wheel her into a room with strange machines and let her hold him. He's doing well, she's told again and again, and she tells them that he's a survivor. That it's in his blood. 

The nurses don't know what to do with her stoicism and it's only at night when they're off doing whatever it is they do when she's supposed to be sleeping that she lets herself cry, careful and silent. She doesn't know how to live without Pemberton. She doesn't know how to be a mother without a father. 

If she were a better person, she'd think of Rachel with sympathy but instead, she just feels scorn. 

At least she'd had the Widow Jenkins. 

Serena and her child have no one.

After her blood levels lift back to normal, the doctors encourage her to move around. She's never been one to stay in bed all day and so she does, as much as it hurts. Since they took the IVs out, she hasn't been taking much for pain. They don't stick around to see if she swallows the pills and why should they? 

She wanders about the maternity ward in a robe that's too big and slippers that are cheap and flimsy, watching as happy mothers are pushed around in wheelchairs, carrying their babies. They smile at her and she forces a smile back but the jealousy still bites. If she were back in North Carolina, if she had any control at all, no one would stand between her and her son.

Serena doesn't ask permission when she heads to another floor. There's the promise of a cafeteria and she hopes it has more to offer than the tasteless mush that is brought to her bedside. She's reading a map and turning to follow it when she suddenly feels weak, reaching out for a wall before she has a chance to fall.

[Dated May 11th.]
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[personal profile] cpthawk 2017-05-09 02:35 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a relatively quiet day at the hospital, which Hawkeye is both grateful for and bored by. Between the hospital and the classes at night at Barton Medical, he's beginning to remember what it's like to be tired all the time. The first few weeks in Darrow had been like a holiday, sleeping in till late morning, no choppers, no announcements, no wounded. No responsibilities. Darrow General is nothing like the 4077th had been, so he has that perspective, at least. Nothing is ever going to be as bone-draining exhausting as the war had been, but he is starting to mainline coffee.

In Korea it had been gin. He'd always made sure he was fit to be in surgery (with one, awful exception), but here things aren't quite the same. He still needs something to get him through the long days and long nights, so coffee it is.

He has a paper cup of it in his hand as he walks down the hall, on his way to try and find a sandwich at one of the vending machines. They have him back in residency, which is a blow to his ego, but necessary. He's sixty-five years behind and his ego can be as large as it likes, he still has enough presence of mind to know he's not able to just walk back into being Chief of Surgery. Necessary, but teeth-grinding all the same.

He sees a woman reach for a wall and Hawkeye puts the coffee on a table nearby and goes to her side immediately, a supporting hand on her shoulder. As soon as he's close enough he sees Aurora's face and he frowns. "Aurora?" He hadn't even known she was in hospital. He saw her not long ago and she'd been just fine, but he knows that's not necessarily any kind of indication.