Chapter Text
Lately, Abigail Brooks would run through her doctor's appointments in her head before she went to them. Repeatedly, until some magic number of rehearsals was reached, and she felt the tiniest bit more prepared.
“Forgetful, irritable, dizzy, nauseous. Out of breath, feeling off, tired a lot, can't sleep.” Abigail repeated under her breath, mumbling it over and over as she stared ahead at the office, over her steering wheel. The words came out slightly mashed together in her effort to say them all in one breath. “Forgetful, irritable, dizzy, nauseous. Out of breath, feeling off, tired a lot, can't sleep.”
A person standing near the doors, maybe waiting on a ride, realized they were at the end of her thousand-yard-stare. They raised a brow at her, squinting.
“Oh my god.” Abigail murmured, immediately averting her eyes in embarrassment. She ran her hand through her dark hair; it tangled halfway down and she grumbled, freeing it after a few seconds of twisting and pulling. Rubbing her face with both hands and taking a deep breath, Abigail let out a little gust of a sigh before noticing the time: 3:58.
“Time to go,” She breathed to no-one in the empty car, then cringed a little and sighed. Let's go remind him why I'm his patient...
It felt like the next half hour was a test of how long Abigail could keep the list of symptoms in her head before getting too nervous or tired to remember all of them. Eventually, her doctor made his appearance: a graying, no-nonsense type that was certainly professional, but lacking bedside manner. He looked nonplussed, tired.
They made small talk for a while and re-iterated everything Abigail had just told the nurse, before he asked the dreaded question:
“What brings you in today?”
The paper crinkled noisily underneath her and she had to put effort into keeping her nervous sigh inaudible.
“I just... I'm really forgetful lately, and I've been irritable. I keep getting, like, dizzy spells. Nausea. Feeling really out of breath, like I just ran a marathon.” It did not sound rehearsed. Abigail smoothed her palms over her legs, staring down at the denim briefly before glancing back up at her doctor. He hummed and flipped through some paperwork for a couple seconds before turning back to his computer.
It had all come out too unsure, too nervous. She'd need to be more confident next time.
“When was your last menstrual period?”
“I, er... I guess it was last month.” She'd already told the nurse this.
“Do you have these symptoms each month?”
“It's not my period.” Abigail's voice took on an edge without her intention, and when her doctor glanced at her sidelong from his desk, it took great effort not to appear apologetic. “This isn't normal for me and it doesn't line up in a meaningful way with my cycles. It's been getting worse.”
Instead of pressing the issue, he nodded.
“I remember taking you off of your medication a few months ago – Lexapro, right? 100mg?”
It took everything Abigail had not to groan out loud. She forced herself to remain neutral.
“Yes.” He definitely noticed the strain in her voice.
“These symptoms could be anxiety-related.”
Abigail felt her heart begin to pound uncomfortably in her chest. This is the moment she couldn't get past in her rehearsals, the moment where she'd stop and tell herself to come back to it in a minute or two.
“I'm telling you, this isn't normal for me.”
“I would like to try ruling out anxiety before we look at anything else.”
And really, how could she argue? After a curt few moments, she bit the inside of her cheek and nodded, eyes fixed on a cracked tile just to the left of the examination table. Her heart kept skipping in her chest, and even now, it felt different – like there was something else twining itself with her anxiety and supercharging whatever it was doing to her body.
“Alright. Let's put you back on Lexapro; we'll start you off at 25 and work you back up, since it's been a few months...”
All Abigail could do was nod.
She clenched her prescription in her fist as she walked out of the doctor's office, feeling like it was scorching her skin and turning to ash in her palm.
Her period. Her anxiety. An appointment that took longer to get to than it lasted.
It was so incredibly cliché that she almost had to laugh, almost did it right in his face; I've been irritable, she'd said, and Abigail was feeling it now, simmering in her stomach as she yanked open her car door and all but tossed herself into the driver's seat, slamming the door closed behind her.
Abigail's huff of frustration was loud in the stagnant silence of her car, and she placed her hands on the wheel to ground herself (after flinging the script into her passenger seat like it was a used napkin). She watched cars pass behind from her rear view mirror, and, appearances be damned, she slumped forward and rested her forehead on the wheel with a quiet groan.
I'm so tired. Why am I so tired all the time? Why does everything take so much more effort now?
Such a simple line of questioning with possibly endless complex answers; hot tears of frustration pulled a sheen over Abigail's vision and she had to blink a few times to dry them. There wasn't time to cry right now, there wasn't energy to cry right now, and she wasn't going to cry in this stupid parking lot. She sniffled on an inhale and huffed again on the exhale, shaking herself a little and starting the car.
The entire drive was an exercise in trying not to rile herself up again.
Each red light she got stuck at, each asshole that cut her off - they only made the day that little bit extra shitty, to the point where Abigail was still mumbling to herself clear after she'd gotten to the pharmacy counter about someone who had run a stop sign ten minutes before.
This is why you talked to him, Abigail tried to reaffirm herself as she waited at the counter, tapping her foot absentmindedly. This isn't you. You're not... pissy like this. Something's wrong.
Even the sight of the pill bottle in her hand incensed her as she stared at it, after she'd ripped it from the confines of its paper bag like some kind of fucked-up christmas present, after she'd sat and stared at the bag, too.
Abigail removed two of the pills – her dosage – and dry swallowed them out of spite.
***
The next couple weeks passed as predictably as possible for someone in Abigail's condition – whatever that was. A dizzy spell here, an off day there, waking up nauseous once or twice. This was something Abigail was concerned about, but had ultimately grown accustomed to, she had to; she had a job to work, rent to pay. And while she had been convinced anxiety wasn't an issue, she had to admit, she was feeling slightly more at ease...
Until things got much, much worse.
The dizzy spells were now full-on fainting episodes. The nausea turned into frequent trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night to empty her stomach. A sense of dread so strong she was sure she was dying would wash over her sometimes, seemingly for no reason at all.
And maybe the most disruptive – Abigail felt like she was so much more forgetful, so much slower on the uptake. Like she'd gotten dementia, or something.
Maybe I need to sit down and draw a clock after lunch, She thought, narrowly avoiding snickering bitterly out loud in front of her coworker, Candice – they didn't choose to walk together to the break room, but rather fell into step halfway there.
“Hey, Candice,” Abigail tried her best to sound breezy, even while feeling oddly anxious. “How's it going?”
As Candice replied, going on about a call she'd been procrastinating on, they reached the break room; at the same moment, the room spun and Abigail gasped softly as her hands shot out to grab the nearest stable object: the conference table. In her peripherals, she noticed Candice frown and lean over the table next to her.
“Abby, seriously. You said earlier you didn't feel well. Just go home! I can take care of the rest; it's not like you don't have stellar attendance.”
Abigail stared down at her forearms as she tried to reorient herself. Her skin felt hot compared to the cool, smooth texture of the table, and her white dress shirt was beginning to stick to her back with cold sweat. The walls swayed, using her body as their axis.
“I'm– I'm okay. Really. Just... haven't eaten yet.” She gave a shaky thumbs-up to Candice and straightened, keeping her palms flat against the conference table. The edges of her vision were still hazy, and she tried not to focus on it. It felt like a heavy gauze sheet had been thrown over her head, like she'd then been spun by the shoulders about ten times before being shoved off in one direction. After one last worried glance, her coworker nodded slowly – like she was completely unconvinced – and left the break room.
Carefully, Abigail poked her way to the fridges on the other side of the room. However nauseous that whole experience had made her, she still needed to eat. Some nonspecific spot deep within her skull ached. Distractedly, almost on auto-pilot, she unzipped her lunch bag. Removed her silverware. Pulled out her microwave meal. Gently tore it out it from the box.
Abigail gave the package a quick once-over for cooking instructions, then tossed it into the trash. She crossed the room to the microwave, slid in her meal, and poked one finger out to type in the cook time.
The cook time – what was it again?
She rolled her eyes and quickly walked back across the room to the trash, delicately lifting it from where it sat on the top and taking a quick look. A minute thirty, then stir, then two minutes. Nodding curtly, she flung the box back into the trash and returned to the microwave.
She paused, her finger pointing uselessly in the air in front of the buttons yet again. It could've been comical, if it weren't utterly irritating.
No. No fucking way.
Out loud, Abby growled, and crossed the room in three or four strides, heels clicking loudly. She snatched the box from the trash, traveled back across the room, closed the microwave, jabbed the buttons after muttering the cook time under her breath yet again, and finally began cooking her meal.
Maybe taking a half day wasn't such a bad idea.
Soon, it was time to stir her food – just mac and cheese today – and she did so while blinking heavily, suddenly feeling a little exhausted. She was definitely going to talk to Ashley about dipping out early today, she mused as she dismissively plopped the plastic tray of pasta back in the microwave and shut the door. She glanced back at the box. Two minutes. The microwave started up again, and Abigail turned on her heel, meaning to return swiftly to a chair.
She was able to take two steps and a partial third before the microwave crackled and popped behind her, making her bubble out a startled shriek as she whirled around. The room lagged behind, but her altered vision was the least of her worries; through the window of the microwave, arcing blue jets of plasma danced and pinged between the walls like lightning, hissing and squealing and making an ungodly amount of noise as it did.
The fork! Oh god, I left the fork!
Another yelp pushed itself straight from her stomach as Abigail dashed forwards towards the microwave, but she came within a foot or so of the chaos and hesitated; should I get close?! If I could just unplug it...! After a second or two of keying herself up, she jutted her hand towards the outlet on the wall behind the struggling appliance and yanked, ending the battle with a suddenness that was, again, almost funny.
A couple stray sparks peeped inside the now dark microwave. Abigail stared, panting.
“What the fuck is going on in here?!” She heard Ashley hiss from the doorway to the break room, flanked by Candice. She looked a little guilty, but mostly concerned.
Abigail sunk into the nearest chair, tears pricking at her eyes. Both women's faces softened as they stared at her from across the room.
“I need to go home.” She croaked quietly.
***
After her keys had been unceremoniously tossed into the little wooden catch-all sitting on the table next to her front door, and after her heels had been shaken off carelessly in the path to her couch with a heavy groan, Abigail let herself collapse onto her couch.
With a morose whine – because she was alone, and she could be as dramatic as she wanted to – she slowly rolled herself over to face the powered-off television across the room and tucked her feet up onto the cushions, closing her eyes and trying to take stock of what was happening to her.
This had started months ago, after her latest urbex outing – an abandoned office building that hadn't been used since 2006, effectively stripped of any worthwhile finds but still littered with small remnants of daily life. It had sat empty all the way up until this year, 2018, until another company bought it with the intention of refurbishing the building and eventually moving in. Abigail figured if she wanted to explore it, she'd better get a move on.
The power was still on in some parts of the building. Abigail could hear the hum of machinery coming from somewhere deeper inside, somewhere inaccessible, and the florescent lights overhead were still lit. They flickered occasionally, and it struck Abigail how liminal, almost eerie the space was.
Old memos were still scattered across the desks, covered in thick layers of dust. Clocks that had long stopped still hung on the walls and told different times than the others. Once state-of-the-art computer towers and monitors sat uselessly in the stagnant air, boxy and hollow, dead.
Abigail poked around in some of the empty filing cabinets but quickly gave up on them after realizing they all screeched when she opened the drawers; the metal inside had maybe gotten damp at some point, and now it was course and grated against itself. With a final shudder at the sound, Abigail moved on.
As she moved deeper into the office, the carpeting began to smell dank and musty, like there was a leak in the roof somewhere that had gone unaddressed for a very long time. The scent might've put others off, but for Abigail, it was the scent of something interesting, something left behind.
Something like whatever this is, Abigail mused silently, raising one eyebrow and gingerly picking up what looked like a plastic VR headset – if VR had been invented in the 90's, anyway. The casing had yellowed and was caked in dust; someone had definitely smoked in here at one point. This was here when the place was open, then...
Was someone already working on virtual reality way back in the 90's? She supposed it was possible. If humans could think it, they would attempt to make it a reality. She turned the clunky piece of tech over in her hands, peering with squinted eyes into the dark eyepiece; seeing nothing, not even spiderwebs or debris, she chuckled to herself and shrugged before straightening the band attached and slipping it over her head.
“Pfft.” Abigail snorted, turning her head around blindly like she could see anything but black through the dead headset, feeling silly but ultimately vindicated – it was kind of cool. She brought her hands to the sides, patting her fingertips around.
Click.
It was supposedly the power button, the button she'd just pressed, but it did nothing.
The machine was well and truly dead. Even the button was difficult to depress; she'd had to increase the pressure of her fingertip until it almost hurt before the button unstuck and shifted into place, then clicked back outward forcefully, like it had been waiting for the second her finger would leave and it could return to where it had stayed for decades.
The rubber on the back of the headband was beginning to catch Abigail's hair in that uncomfortable way swimming goggles did when they rubbed for too long. With some difficulty, she pried it from her face and grunted quietly as she freed her hair from the rubber strap.
Gently, she sat the headset down, and walked away to find something more interesting.
There hadn't been anything particularly abnormal about that day. No stagnant water, no cuts, nothing ingested. It couldn't be that.
So, what was it?
Whatever it is, the medicine's making it worse, Abigail thought decisively, pulling a neatly folded blanket down from the back of the couch and tossing it over herself, kicking her feet a little to straighten it. Which means...
Abigail groaned out loud, closing her eyes and snuggling in tighter.
I have to go back to my doctor.
***
“I'm feeling worse, not better. There has to be something wrong.”
Abigail didn't rehearse this time. She didn't need to. She wasn't nervous in the parking lot, didn't fidget in the waiting room, didn't stutter through small talk with the nurse. She spoke confidently, looking her doctor directly in the eye – when he was looking at her and not the computer, anyway.
“It's clear that Lexapro has lost its efficacy for you. Like I said at your last appointment; I would like to rule out your anxiety before going further and referring you to a specialist.”
His matter-of-fact tone was frustrating; like she was the only one who couldn't see the logic in what he was saying, like she was just another anxious young woman who was probably PMS-ing. A frustrated growl bubbled from Abigail's throat and she gestured with one hand.
“But what if this is ruling it out? Lexapro worked fine for me before! What changed?” She almost winced at the strident sound of her raised voice in such a quiet room, but showed remarkable restraint in keeping it off of her face.
“It's possible you've grown tolerant of the medication. It happens sometimes; we just have to find a suitable replacement.”
No. No, someone doesn't grow tolerant in a year and a half. At least, Abigail was pretty sure they didn't. But pretty sure didn't cut it; not from her doctor, and not from her.
“We don't have to anything. I want a second opinion.” She said clearly, confidently.
“Are you refusing treatment?” He raised an eyebrow, picking up his clipboard and a pen, holding it over the page.
“Yes.”
He wrote something down, nodding, and to Abigail's endless irritation, he had the nerve to narrow his eyes as he spoke.
“Alright. Well, I don't think we have anything further to discuss.”
***
“Ugh!” Abigail slammed the door behind her as she trudged back into her apartment, tossing her purse unceremoniously onto the couch.
A crinkle as she stepped down claimed her attention momentarily; she frowned and lifted her foot. A very official-looking piece of mail had been dropped through her door slot at some point today.
She bent down to pick it up, not bothering to move from her doorway to open it.
NOTICE OF CLASS ACTION SETTLEMENT
Your legal rights may be affected if you are a member of the following class:
Any persons experiencing adverse side effects after taking part in clinical trial or otherwise exposed to medical technology used by DAVIS-ANDERSON BIOTECHNICAL (formerly C&A INC.) at any time from December 6, 1994 to April 28th, 2018.
A FEDERAL COURT AUTHORIZED THIS NOTICE.
THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION FROM A LAWYER.
YOU HAVE NOT BEEN SUED.
The court has preliminarily approved a proposed settlement of a Class action lawsuit...
“What in the world?” Abigail muttered, turning the notice over once in her hand to inspect the back before flipping it and reading the front once more.
A class action lawsuit for some clinical trial, some medical technology. But Abigail didn't do clinical trials. Was this some experimental new medical tech she got exposed to at a perfectly normal doctor's appointment, completely unaware that it was giving her super-cancer or something?
Choosing to shelve this for now – she'd probably only see like $2 of it anyway, that's usually how this stuff worked – she strolled to her fridge and secured it to the front with a magnet. She stared at it for a moment, then nodded.
That was all the attention Abigail Brooks paid to the letter before she turned on her heel and nabbed her cellphone from the counter, quickly typing out a message.
Hey. Are you going to Triangle tonight? I need a drink so bad.
Almost instantly, a reply came back:
Already here. I'll get your first one