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Little Talks Chapter 2:

Just Hold my Hand

Silent tears. I've cried a lot of them over the years. Not that normal crying is good. Still I would prefer it over salt ridden books, with no babbling of any kind. It's almost not a natural way to cry, something learned not innate. I know I learned how to cry like that from my parents. I'm not going to sit here and tell you I've had the worst experience coming out to my parents, no, but I will say it wasn't pleasant. Although not accepting of my homosexuality I have to say they had their own unique brand of rejection. Instead of the religious nonsense that being gay was a sin, they were more frustrated with my lack of progeny.

I was a complete and utter failure to them all because I could not fill their 'child' role and give them offspring the good old fashion way. Their rejection hurt, as anyone could expect, but when I cried it just intensified their anger towards my failure. At least if I was quiet when I cried they weren't quite as angry, they just turned their backs on me. Their feigned ignorance was their bliss and as such they were happy, so I was not bothered. I preferred being shunned by them over being the victim of their aggression anyway. I didn't want to find out if one day it would lead to physical abuse rather than just the verbal assaults I had already endured.

The first person to ever notice my silent tears was an individual that saved my soul from disparity, and thus possibly my life from ending. So right now I couldn't bear that he too had learned to cry silent tears, I was having an even harder time coping with the fact that I was causing them.

A few drops of these silent tears landed on my hand as I was bandaging my handiwork on his tail, fresh from Trist's wells. Looking at my paw the darkened wet spots formed a small disfigured heart. I had to make Trist better, if not I'd never forgive myself. I had to help the man who mended my damaged heart.

"I'm sorry," Trist started softly, "I didn't mean to get your paw wet."

I grabbed the white roll of medical tape and with an all too practiced flick pulled an amount of tape that was satisfactory to me. "It's no problem at all Trist, now don't do this like me you can damage your teeth. Just don't tell anyone I did a no-no." After winking at Trist I tore off the medical tape with my teeth and finished off my bandage on his tail. Looking up at him from my hunched over position on these silly plastic chairs I slowly straightened my back. Once at eye level with him I wiped the tears from underneath his vibrant violet eyes one thumb for each eye.

"Thank you sir, I didn't mean to cause so much trouble."

"Trist the only trouble you could ever cause me is worry. Do I ever have to worry about you hurting yourself again?" I asked with my paws still on his face so that he could not escape my gaze.

"N-No nurse, never ever again."

"Good, that makes me very happy Trist," and I smiled. I really smiled, a real smile not just a 'work' one. Despite where we were, what he had done, and the whole situation we were in he managed to make me smile a genuine smile. I smiled becauseTristalways kept his word, and that fact would never change, no matter whatTrist's new psyche was.

"So all done?" Trist asked with fresh tears. I knew it still hurt him a great deal. The constant thrum of pain should subside for him soon though, over stimulation of the exact same kind causes your brain to turn off the recognition of those pathway stimulations. It's similar to the reason you stop feeling your shirt until you either think about it or the stimulation from your shirt changes. Just in case though I would get Trist some pain killers prescribed to him so I knew he wouldn't have to feel his "shirt" anymore. One more wipe for his tears as he hadn't asked me to move my paws yet.

"Yup, all done, just give me one moment to go talk to the nice lady at the front desk and we'll be out of here faster than two shakes of a..." I looked to double check the species of our not so friendly female lord of triage, "mare's tail."

One small 'work smile' for Tristbefore I got up and reminded him to stay still and took a quick walk to the desk. Except now the ward clerk wasn't alone. No she was with the emergency room doctor, the one who was supposed to perform the minor surgery I had just finished up. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, the doctor would just shrug and say 'one less thing for me to do, busy busy busy' but it just had to be her.

Dr.Nolanwouldn't make this easy on me, especially because I was the son of the man who got picked over her to represent this hospital at last year's medical conference. I'm beginning to think that today was specifically designed to be a 'let's see how hard we can make this day on Christian' day.

"Nurse Hardman, were my eyes deceiving me or were you just doing my job, in my ER, without working in this hospital?"

"Just trying to keep things from slipping through the cracks doctor," I smiled and contemplated her overuse of emphasis on words. Hopefully I could brush this off as quickly as possible and get Trist home. I had wanted the doctor to prescribe some pain killers for habibi but seeing who it was I had a better chance of sprouting wings.

"Well I'd like to not see you damaging things in my ER. Please wait down the hall while I make sure you didn't screw it up too badly." I began to contemplate making a little game of the number of times she put emphasis on words in her sentence, just like when you count the number of times a girl uses the word 'like'. I turned to walk down the familiar halls to find a place to wait, knowing that even thoughDr.Nolan was a bitch she still wouldn't take it out onTrist.

The knowledge that habibi was in the clear eased my mind enough to remind me of how much I hated this hospital. To me the opaque walls were just a cover for the crushing oppression that it represented. My mother and father ruled these walls and they would crush their little failure with them if just commanding the concrete to fall on me could do the trick. Although I don't know if they'd think I was worth the time. My absentee parents sometimes came across as an enigma to me; I think they were just so conflicted with how to feel when it came to the world of grey I represented.

The problem was that I didn't fit into their mold. This mold that they carefully casted for me after baking my cookie dough in my mom's oven. Then they were just supposed to be able to cut me out and "ta-dah" one big happy family. I'd be their cookie. The problem was that I wasn't a cookie per-say. If I'm going to keep the food analogy I'd say I was more like soup, splashed across their mold. I fit in it a little bit, but I wasn't the flavor they wanted where I fit, plus I was all sorts of outside their lines. I was a boy. Good. I was homosexual. Bad. I was in the medical field. Good. I was a psych nurse. Bad. I just wasn't ever going to be good enough or right enough for them. My happiness wasn't the right flavor and my lifestyle was outside of their mold.

This basically meant that they loved me when I was inside their mold and hated me when I was outside it. It made for some sort of odd dysfunctional relationship that made me believe that nobody in my family was sane.

*click* The door to the odd hall way between hall way's swung open and before I could react a blur of dirty gold was upon me.

"You!" snarled the angry lioness, digging into my chest with a severely pointed claw, repeating the jabbing to make each sentence she yelled more poignant. "I can't believe you actually preformed it you IMBICILE! No level of explanation you could possibly offer could make this right. You should get your license revoked! I'm embarrassed to be in the same field as someone as incompetent as yourself. I-I don't even know what to say anymore!" She threw her paws up in the air and turned to me once more, "Do you even realize what you've done?" The number ten popped up in my head. Game on.

"No doctor, please enlighten me." Okay one for me.

"Twenty. Five. Millimeters. Dear lord and heaven above do you know how horrific and terrifying it is to know that stitch work that varied by twenty five millimeters was preformed in my ER?!? I can't have shoddy work like that being done while I'm around." Seventeen, and yes I'm counting twenty as one and five as another.

"Well that really is a shame doctor, becauseTristdid a very good job holding still while I basically tortured him with a half dozen stitches because guess what? We had no anesthetics or pain killers of any kind because his triage nurse declared him unworthy of your presence. You should go back out there and apologize to him!"

"No Hardman is going to-"

"Dr. Nolan-Reigal!"... Fantastic. The lioness and I turned to see a tall aged husky with smoldering dark brown eyes briskly walking down the hospital corridor to where I was being reprimanded by my doctor friend. Who had only made it to eighteen words emphasized in our little spat. I think I was proud of her.

"Dr.Hardman," she readied as she turned to face our newcomer in the most confrontational position possible, "you need to explain to your travesty to the name of medicine here that-"

"I do not see MY anything here. What I see is a capable nurse who, given the circumstances, did his best within his duty as a psychiatric personal care provider. This means that even if he makes a non lethal mistake it means nothing in the context of him DOING HIS JOB properly. Answer me this doctor, did he save his employers appendage?"

"Well yes but-"

"But nothing, nurse Hardman's pristine record in combination with the patient's satisfaction and a level of work, that is something that should be admired by any fur whose initial attempt was anywhere close to as professional, should be enough for you to grant our nurse here a pardon for infringing on your territory." The glare that followed his short monologue that bore out of my father's eyes truly was something that would wither even this fierce doctor's will to reprimand me. Such nostalgia in that glare, something that always followed a night away from home with Trist. Almost amusing, I'm certain that's not the correct feeling my father had been trying to instill in me as a child. Although at first it had his desired effect now it just reminded me of holding a boy I cared about all night long.

"Fine," she scoffed, "but if I ever see horrific work like that coming from nurse Hardman again I will be reporting him to the ethics committee and getting his registration revoked." With that the fiery queen cat strode down the hall and out of sight. It was almost silly the way she stomped down the hall, only because of how small she was. I think my patients are starting to get to me, my fathers rage is nostalgic and the most frightening person I've ever met is eight inches shorter than me. Completely normal I'm sure. I turned to my savior once I was done admiring his handy work on the queen of the Keebler elves.

"Thanks, dad-"

"I meant what I said earlier nurse Hardman, here you're not mine. I will treat you as any other nurse even though you're my son and guess what?"

"What father?"

"I know that because you are a Hardman you can do or handle anything, understand?"

"Yes father."

"Now," he took a quick break to sigh, "you can explain to me why on Earth you thought it was a good idea to perform any task in the medical field that which you were not previously trained to do."

I had to pause to take a deep breath, if this is how he wanted to play it, fine. I've gotten way too good at this game,

"Dr. Hardman, I don't see a minor surgery without the use of drugs as a possible detriment to the patient's well-being. The worst I could possibly do stitching up Mr. Montgomery was scar him if I-"

"Wait. Did you say 'Montgomery'?"

"Yes. What is the matter with-"

"Is this Trist Montgomery?"

"Would it even matter if-"

"Hell yes it matters! You know damn well-"

"Jesus Christ! Do you let anyone finish a sentence?" Father was the one person that could always make me lose my cool. No matter how many times I practiced staying calm around him, maybe this time the tension from my day just catalyzed the rage that was now surfacing.

"The risk was minor," I continued, "the surgery was minor, and the results were more than satisfactory. I'm sorry I'm not an MD but what people around here always seem to forget is that I have a Masters; I'm not the product of some technical degree that required 3 months of training and a high school diploma. I demand an ounce of respect! Just one, is that such a big deal?!?" By this point I felt like I was repeating myself. In fact I was. This seems to be all that I say/yell to people when I'm in a hospital. God I'm beginning to hate this place even more.

This yelling though... I know it will have immediate consequences. This argument over Trist is registering as a spill from over mold and my father ...lets just say he hates soup.

"Well we can always discuss your inappropriate relationship with your patient and whether or not you should be pulled from the case during Trist's neurology consult."

"Way to go dad," I should've expected reinforcements, "I guess you can talk it over with mom then on whether or not I can treat my ex."

"No flies on you huh? Well yes, if I want you pulled from a case where you're treating that faggot then I will. I'm sure your mother will support me in this and, if you want to know," he smiled at me something wicked, "the kicker? It will look legitimate on paper. So, my little problem child, if you want to drag our family name through the dirt by stooping to a nurses level fine, but I will not have you taint us any further by you treating your high school fling. That would be like setting a fire and burning down this hospitals name as well as our own. Do you understand me?"

I stared at him with loathing in my eyes, my multicolored onslaught dampened by tears and it could not move the mountainous brown eyes of oppression my dad impaled my will upon. This always happened; the consequences of living here are catching up to me already.

"Yes father. I understand," softly came from my mouth, loud enough for him to hear it though and turn to walk away. He had once confided in me that he had no idea why I wouldn't talk to him and my mother, the idea of not wanting to share every detail of my life with my parents apparently was beyond his belief. As far as he was concerned he was perfect, and perfect parents only turn out perfect children, unless of course they're faulty. I am apparently defective, a random mutation, not the responsibility of my mother or fathers genetics, has predetermined that I am not, and will not ever be good enough. Or so I'm told.

I walked back slowly to whereTristwas waiting for me. I couldn't even manage my 'work' smile for him.

"Nurse?" I looked at him and tilted my head, another thing genetics screwed me over on. I looked ridiculous, "a lion lady gave me this bag. She said you would tell me what to do with it."

Ah, so she did help him out. At least the lioness was a good doctor.

"Of course I'll help you out with thatTrist, come on we'll grab you some water and I'll show you how you can take them. Then we can get you back home." At this habibi froze. I didn't know what to do, except wait for him to either speak, unfreeze, or both.

"I-I can't," he stuttered and I frowned.

I let out a breath, "And why might that be?"

Shifting his weight from side to side he looked down and whispered, "I'm scared. I don't want to walk by myself."

Once again my head tilted, but I straightened myself out, smiled a real smile and comforted him, "Who says you need to walk by yourself? If you get scared just hold my paw and I'll walk with you my dear."

"R-really?"

I just smiled and held my paw out for him, when he took it all my troubles disappeared. All the memories of the things he used to do that made me so happy flooded back and washed over me. I felt warm, and I hoped he felt safe. For now at least.