thismaskiwear | Entries tagged with emma

After Emma's funeral arrangements had been taken care of, Katchoo had headed straight back to Fandom, too preoccupied with ~~moping~~ ~~feeling sorry for herself~~ formulating a way to explain this to Francine to be aware that she'd been spotted.

She felt like her suitcase looked, and from the looks of it the trip through baggage handling had been rough (and what the hell was that black greasy looking stain, ew). In a stellar example of brilliant social interaction skills, avoiding Francine for a couple of hours seemed like a good idea, so here she was. Sitting on a bench in the park ~~where it is not snowing despite the icon~~ with her feet propped up on the suitcase, staring off at the duck pond in the distance.

Totally not moping, except she was.

[OOC: Expecting one, conversation NFB.]

Because there hadn't been enough frustration in her week, today was the first day Katchoo had actually gotten to see Emma; first there'd been the fact that the only flight she could wrangle had a connection in Tampa (Baltimore to Tampa to Toronto, what the hell) and then getting booted from the overbooked connection and waiting a day and a half in a terminal without a damn open outlet to charge her dead phone, to fly standby the rest of the way. She'd finally shown up here at the hospice, where the sisters had been expecting her, but they'd taken one look at her and escorted her straight to a room where she'd collapsed into a long unconscious sleep and only just now woken up.

Under most circumstances Katchoo wasn't much for religion at all, and she had especially little patience for the pomp and circumstance of Catholicism, but this place -- just outside the Toronto city limits -- really was peaceful. It was a good place to go, if you could choose where to die.

( 'She took a turn for the worse right after you left three months ago,' said Sister Jordan as she led Katchoo down the hall to Emma's room. 'Slowly at first, but lately much more pronounced, and I'm afraid there's just nothing more we can do for her.' (Character death and lots of images behind the cut.) )

[OOC: NFI, NFB, OOC and Kleenex welcome. Dialogue taken and adapted (with some additions by me) from Strangers in Paradise Volume 2, Issue 3, "Echoes of Home," as are the comic panels. Sorry for the image-heavy but narrative text just doesn't do the artwork in this scene justice.]

When the phone rang, Katchoo nearly smashed it for having the audacity to wake her. Clocky sympathized with the phone, which was saved by virtue of Katchoo's fist missing and sending it skidding off the nightstand and onto the bed instead, where it bounced off her forehead.

"Ow! Sonofa --" she started to growl when she saw the caller ID and snapped the slider open, all thoughts of being relieved about being herself again on hold. "Hello?"

The woman on the other end of the line spoke in a soft French-Canadian accent. "This is Sister Jordan at Saint Mary's Hospice in Toronto. I'm looking for Katina Choovanski."

Shit. "Yeah, this is she," Katchoo answered with none of her usual gruffness, and fell silent, listening to what the woman had to say. The details of it weren't important the way the strangled sob Katchoo let out in response was. "Okay. I understand," she said, her fist half jammed into her mouth to keep from crying. "Okay. Please tell her I'm on my way. I'll be there as soon as I can."

She snapped the phone shut and rolled over long enough to let out a muffled, frustrated yell into her pillow, then got up to throw on some clothes and pull the suitcase, already packed, from its place under the bed behind the pile of empty liquor bottles. She'd told Arthur she'd try to tell Francine the truth, just yesterday. Hard to do that now, wherever the hell Francine had gone after their fight (over not telling the truth, funny, that) last night, and now this. Thanks, universe, best timing ever.

Katchoo ripped a page out of her sketchbook and started to scribble a ( quick note: )

Tossing the note onto Francine's bed, she headed out the door, already on the phone and mentally cursing out hold music.

[OOC: Establishy. NFI unless the roomie wants to react to the note.]

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.]

Katchoo had gotten Emma settled in comfortably at the hospice -- it was a Catholic hospice, run by nuns, and there was irony there that both of them had to laugh over. Emma was having a bad spell today, though, and since Katchoo'd never actually seen one of them in person before it left her rattled.

And out in the hallway, making a phone call to the only person she could think of to talk to.

For whatever reason, she couldn't get through and it went straight to voicemail. A million things to say ran through Katchoo's head before the tone.

*BEEP*

And she couldn't bring herself to say any of them, so all that came out was "Francie, it's me. I miss you. Be back as soon as I can, okay?"

She hung up and went back to staring out the window at the birds frolicking in the courtyard.

[OOC: NFB, NFI, I'm litening to the Cartoonist talk right now. :D]

Katchoo was perched on the roof of the cabin, having a cigarette and idly sliding the new cell phone that Francine had given her open and shut.

Katchoo had, in point of fact, lied when she told Francine it wasn't like anyone else would call this phone, because nobody else had the number; one other person did. Which was why, when the phone rang and she recognized the area code on the caller ID as originating in Toronto, she snapped the slider open so fast the phone nearly went flying.

( Why, yes, there would be a phone call. )

A quick call to Portalocity booked her a trip to LaGuardia airport, and she planned to get a plane ticket to Canada from there -- it close to Fandom, but not quite close enough, just in case, because no way in hell was she trusting the full trip to a portal. Not for this.

Duffel bag slung over her shoulder, Katchoo headed out like the situation was bad. To all appearances, it just might be.

[OOC: Establishy! Details of phone call NFB, please. :) Also, OMG, PEOPLE, THE ICON IS NOT DIRTY OKAY. I KNOW IT LOOKS LIKE IT.

ETA: Cabinmates, since

blondecanary asked, are more than welcome to spot the note, yes.]

Katchoo generally hated waking up in the morning, but today she hated it a little bit more; the end of another day was one thing, but the end of another year was way more momentous, and not in a good way. Pretty soon getting up and going to work was going to be necessary, but she was putting it off just a few minutes longer.

( That little beach house in Hana, Hawaii was a long way from Fandom. )

. . . or maybe that was the deafening ring of her cheap-ass alarm clock.

Muttering a string of completely unintelligible yet vitriolic invective, she lashed out from under the covers with one arm, hard, and smashed the alarm clock into the wall. (For the record, it was the tenth cheap-ass alarm clock done in this month.) The day already sucked; might as well just go to work, now.

[OOC: NFI and establishy, but OOC welcome. This post inspired by a combination of reading SiP Vol. 2 last night before bed and driving through UNEXPECTED EVIL ZOMBIE FOG this morning.]

"No," Katchoo said dully, her voice even more hoarse than usual. She didn't quite believe herself, though, because one look at Emma's bearing when she walked back into the house had told her it wasn't good.

( Emma managed a smile that tried for brave but faltered at the outskirts of dulled optimism. (Somewhat image-heavy post follows, possibly triggery for illness.) )

[OOC: NFI/NFB due to not being here yet, OOC happily chomped; "I Dream of You" lyrics taken from SiP and written by Terry Moore, who I believe owns a piece of my soul now.]