Chapter Text
She was standing at the patients room. Watching Rose while the day or at all, the last two days were running through her had.
Ben and his PTSD, herself treating her residents sometimes like she never wanted to treat anyone. She had almost yelled at Shaun which was more than unlikely for her. Claire had tried to help her but how should she get helped when she couldn’t even explain what was going on with herself.
“I thought I felt someone her”, Rose woke up and turned her head towards her “you’ve had a long day.”
Which was clearly an understatement. She hadn’t slept really the last night, again, so she went off her bed at 5.30 am, now it was almost 22 pm.
“You have Prinzmetal’s Angina Rose”, Lim went to her bed, “a heart condition but it’s very treatable. It explains all your symptoms and it’s exacerbated by stress, which is likely what caused your heart attack. You need to stop seeking out other people’s pain. It’s literally killing you.”
“You’re the Chief of Surgery. You could’ve sent somebody else to tell me this.”
“Sure. But then I’d miss my chance to gloat”, which was part of the truth. The other part was that she didn’t know where to go. And she couldn’t be alone at the moment.
“You’re here because you’re hurting”, Rose pointed out the truth, “and you don’t know where else to go.”
“Go ahead. Use your magic. Tell me what’s wrong with me. How do I stop feeling like this?” Lim said honestly. Because this was nearly the whole truth. She was experiencing something she just didn’t know what it was and how she could make it go away.
“It doesn’t work that way. I don’t have a magic wand. I can only hold up a mirror, make you slow down, look at the parts of yourself that you’ve been trying to ignore, because you’re afraid if you look to closely, you’ll break”, she gave Lim a second to think about it, the Dr. was trying to catch her breath, “maybe you will. I don’t know. Maybe breaking is the point.”
Lim couldn’t hear one more word. That was exactly what she didn’t want to hear. She couldn’t break. She had fought so hard to make her dream come true, she couldn’t break, this wasn’t an option. So she turned away and went out of the room.
“You can’t outrun your pain, Dr. Lim. If you keep trying, it’s gonna kill you.”
Lim heard every word and she could hardly hold her tears back. She needed air, now. And speed. She almost run to her office, took her jacket and the rest of her motorcycle cloths.
And five minutes later she was on her bike. Speeding it up way higher than the allowed speed. And way higher than it was good for controlling the bike. But she needed it, she had to run away.
The flashback run down her head. The monitors beeping, herself saying time of death for the thousandth time, the helpless feeling, Melendez’ face, their first kiss, their last talk, again faces of the people she couldn’t save during the pandemic, again Melendez, again the patient who died yesterday because she had given Shaun to much responsibility for a first – year – resident. All of this run down her head and then it happened. She lost control over her motorcycle.
She stood up, listened to her body. She felt like she had thousand bruises. But it didn’t feel like there was more damage on her body. She looked to her motorcycle, went to it. Well, this wasn’t something you could say about her Ducati. That looked damaged. She looked up to the stars and rolled her eyes. Well, great. She had no idea how to get this bike home. She sighed and then took her phone, run through the numbers at her phone. Most of them were colleagues and there was no way anyone at the hospital would find out about her accident.
Then she found a number, maybe he could help her. She dialed it and called her old friend Mike, honestly it wasn’t really a friend. It was just a guy with a motorcycle shop and she had slept with. Well, it wasn’t real good sex, but he’d get the job done.
An hour or so later she was back at her apartment. Like she’d thought, Mike had helped her without asking that many questions. He brought her bike back to her garage and herself either.
Now she went to the shower, felt a little dizzy. She went under the shower. Her head hurt, technically her whole body hurt. She checked herself while the warm water was running down her body.
She couldn’t see any major injuries. She leaned at the wall in her shower. She felt herself getting more dizzy and also her hands were shaking.
Her body run down the wall and she sat down, the warm water was still running. She felt her tears again and there was no way of holding them back any longer.
Her whole body was shaking and her tears become more. All the thoughts were back. His face, their kisses, their talks, the people dying during the pandemic, the work, the phone calls, her staff literally breaking down, nurses, doctors crying because they were so exhausted. Herself running from a to b, trying to be there for her staff, trying to get enough tests for her patients, for her staff to feel safe, trying to get enough PPE for all of them. Worrying about all of them, again feeling her grieve and couldn’t let it happen. The end of the pandemic, all of them getting back to normal, except her. She hadn’t slept more than 3 hours in a row for the last year. First because there wasn’t a real chance to get some sleep during the first weeks of the pandemic and then her head not calming down anymore. Her tears were still running down her cheeks like waterfalls, she couldn’t catch her breath, she was shaking.
She had no power anymore. She had pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them. Her head was leaning on her knees. The water was already getting cold.
She woke up the next morning in her bed. She hadn’t an real idea how she had made it into it. Where she had taken the power for pulling on a hoodie and a leggings and getting into bed, but she did it.
And she’d slept. It hadn’t been a good sleep, she had been waking up like a thousand times but she felt asleep every time again so it was actually more than she has had in the last few weeks.
She sat up. Her head hurt. Also most of her body hurt. She turned to her bedside table and pulled out some pain killers. Then she took a deep breath after she took them.
She had no idea what had happened yesterday after she went home. That must have been what a breakdown looks like.
She took another deep breath. When did she start feeling like that? She knew Rose had been right. She couldn’t look closely, she’d break. Also it was ridiculous. She had run a whole hospital during a pandemic, nothing of that had happened back then. And now everything was alright again why should she break now? It was just ridiculous. And annoying. The pain got better, she had to get up.
She went to the bathroom. Great. Couldn’t be a bigger bruise right at her forehead. She put on some make up, it didn’t help really.
She took a deep breath. Well there was no way out, she had to go to the hospital. She pulled herself some clothes on and then poured herself some coffee.