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She still had several hours to kill before her flight back to New York and subsequent portal back to Fandom, so Katchoo was spending it the best way she knew how: sitting atop her duffel bag in a corner of the departure-level sidewalk outside the terminal, smoking her way systematically through one cigarette after another, trying to find some kind of amusement in the gigantic bilingual health warnings on the latest pack of Export As she was rapidly depleting.
All the money she'd managed to squirrel away from her job at the art store this past year, which admittedly wasn't much, was pretty much gone now, having been handed over just yesterday to St. Mary's Hospice for Emma's care. The hospice's number was programmed into her phone now, and they had hers, and said phone was in Katchoo's non-cigarette holding hand, the slider being snapped open, shut, and open again. Francine's number was still highlighted on the Contacts screen, but Katchoo's thumb was nowhere near the dial button.
( Her thoughts were about two and a half years away. )
Katchoo jarred herself out of the memory with a sardonic laugh. God, that was ironic now, and not in a fun way, huh? And how was she going to explain this to Francine? How the hell did you tell your best friend that you'd taken off unexpectedly to take care of the dying woman who'd brought you in off the streets of L.A. by recruiting you as a call girl, when all that time she thought you'd been living with a nonexistent aunt in Cleveland? Promises of I'll still love you, no matter what sounded great, but unfortunately, doubt was what happened when Katchoo's cynicism mixed with her awareness that Francine's life had been so sheltered.
And so she sat on her duffel bag, burning cigarette after cigarette into ashes, looking at Francine's name on her incredibly short phone contact list and keeping her thumb well the hell away from the Call button.
[OOC: NFB, NFI, OOC okay, flashback dialogue from Strangers in Paradise Volume 2, Issue 1.]
All the money she'd managed to squirrel away from her job at the art store this past year, which admittedly wasn't much, was pretty much gone now, having been handed over just yesterday to St. Mary's Hospice for Emma's care. The hospice's number was programmed into her phone now, and they had hers, and said phone was in Katchoo's non-cigarette holding hand, the slider being snapped open, shut, and open again. Francine's number was still highlighted on the Contacts screen, but Katchoo's thumb was nowhere near the dial button.
( Her thoughts were about two and a half years away. )
Katchoo jarred herself out of the memory with a sardonic laugh. God, that was ironic now, and not in a fun way, huh? And how was she going to explain this to Francine? How the hell did you tell your best friend that you'd taken off unexpectedly to take care of the dying woman who'd brought you in off the streets of L.A. by recruiting you as a call girl, when all that time she thought you'd been living with a nonexistent aunt in Cleveland? Promises of I'll still love you, no matter what sounded great, but unfortunately, doubt was what happened when Katchoo's cynicism mixed with her awareness that Francine's life had been so sheltered.
And so she sat on her duffel bag, burning cigarette after cigarette into ashes, looking at Francine's name on her incredibly short phone contact list and keeping her thumb well the hell away from the Call button.
[OOC: NFB, NFI, OOC okay, flashback dialogue from Strangers in Paradise Volume 2, Issue 1.]
