It was just growing dark by the time she made it to her neighborhood, though she hadn't been paying much attention. She could have walked herself right into a ditch, her body moving on muscle memory to get her home. Anything could have happened, but she just felt apathetic right then, like nothing mattered.
Emma arrived at home, and the first thing she saw when she let herself in was Janice. It hit her first that she could see, realizing as she glanced around that some candles had been lit and placed around the room. She wondered where they'd come from and how long they would last. They didn’t seem to be the scented ones her sister was always using, though.
Her grandmother seemed to be confused again, but the look cleared before Emma had to go through the now routine of reminding her grandmother of who she was and the situation going around them.
"Ah, Emma. There you are. Did you know there aren’t any lights on anywhere?" Then she smiled. "Oh! How was your day at school?"
Janice kept forgetting. It was the nature of her condition, she forgot random things, sometimes she would remind her but the older woman would act as if she didn't know what Emma was talking about. She was lucky this time Janice had recognized her without prompt, but she'd forgotten everything before the accident, and Emma wondered just how much. She wondered if she was going to have to tell her about all of it, explain everything that had happened to her, as if living through it hadn't been bad enough.
No.
The word quivered in her mind, not strong enough to be a thought. She didn’t want to, but after the awful day she'd just had, she burst into tears.
She had been trying so hard not to think about it, but she couldn’t handle her grandmother right then. It wasn’t the older woman's fault, and when she saw, through her stream of tears, the older woman's face crumpling in concern, she only cried harder.
Somewhere inside the house, Chase must have heard her, because Emma could just suddenly hear loud, thumping footsteps through the sound of her loud sobs. He came running, and Emma was suddenly enveloped in warm, strong arms, like so many times before. Forget trying to be strong, she let herself fall into his embrace as she continued crying her eyes out.
He was saying something, rather than hear it, she could feel it where she pressed against him, vibrating through his chest. They stood like that for some moments, but then he pushed her away. She felt panic spike her chest, but he didn't let her go, keeping his hands on her arms and shaking her a little.
Emma wiped at the tears flowing from her eyes until she could see his face. The twisting of pain and concern in his own face made her try to calm herself down. After a moment, she managed to calm her near hyperventilating to ragged breaths. Her body gave one hard shudder, and she could see his concern ratchet up a notch. Once she calmed down a little, he was speaking again, and Emma heard him this time.
"Emma, what is it? What's wrong? Did something happen to you?" he fired rapid, frenzied questions at her, asking them too fast for her to answer even if she could have.
But the itch in the back of her throat wouldn’t let anything out. So she just shook her head, but for his sake, she tried not to lose herself again. As long as she wasn’t alone, she would have to be okay.
He stopped the questions, seeming to realize she couldn't answer and he wasn’t making anything easier acting so panicked. He let her farther inside the house and she followed to the living room where he sat her down on a seat. The candle in the room was somewhere out of her vantage point, and she remembered the night he walked into her room with a candle and noticed it was irritating her eyes.
Chase was always making her feel better, looking out for her needs, and Emma didn’t know why. She didn’t know what she'd done to deserve it, but she was so lucky, and so glad she had him around to look after her.
When he tried to leave, she felt the panic again, hands shooting out, one clutching at his shirt, the other his arm.
"Don’t!" The word was so low, just above a whisper, but the urgency in it must have carried.
He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her for a quick squeeze, and then he was pulling away again.
"It's all right, Emma. I'm not going anywhere. Just let me see to your grandmother and I'll bring you a glass of water, okay? Then we'll talk."
But she didn’t want to talk—she didn’t even want to think. She let him go as he moved away, wanting him back almost immediately. But she couldn’t see to Janice herself, and the poor woman was probably still standing out in the hall, confused and panicking.
He was back in not so long with the promised glass of water. Her hands shook when he transferred it to her, and he had to help her hold up the glass. It actually helped, the cool, soothing water washing down her throat and over the itch in the back of it. She was left sniffling, her tears not completely gone, but she wasn’t the mess she had been mere moments before.
Chase set the glass on the table, and put a hand on her knee, but didn’t touch her anywhere else.
"Now, why don’t you tell me what happened?"
Her breath hitched, and for a second, she thought she would go back to wailing again. But she didn’t. Instead, she told him, all of it.
She told him all about her day, from when she left the house, then her day in the hospital, and seeing people die. Chase didn’t interrupt or move his hand from her knee, not until she finished. She was just crying silently, too exhausted to give into the heavy, body shuddering sobs from before.
"So I came home, and.... Chase, I'm not sure if I can go back there," she admitted in a whisper, sounding ashamed of herself for doing so.
Chase pulled her into a hug, then, rocking her body lightly from side to side as he murmured soothing words into her hair and rubbed at her back. She let him calm her down, knowing it brought them both relief, until she was lying limp in his arms.
"You have no reason to feel ashamed. A lot of people wouldn't want to be in that situation."
"But there are plenty of people already in it," she complained weakly.
Out of choice or not, Carol was there, and she hadn't hesitated. When Emma met her eyes after, they were full of remorse and sorrow, but Emma was pretty sure it was more directed at her. It seemed too easy, but it made her wonder what the other nurse had seen that made her harden her heart and mind so well.
Because Emma didn’t think she could live through it, and she knew that after surviving the past three days. She would move on because there was no other choice, the rest of the planet wasn’t going to wait for one person to try and play catch up.
How could the world have gone to hell in three days? They hadn't even survived the first week yet, what was the first month going to be like?
Her body gave a hard shudder at the thought, her hands gripping tighter to Chase.
"Look, think of it this way. At the very least, you went, and you gave it a try. At least you helped out and didn’t back down. And in the morning, you should find a job more suited to you. Because this one isn’t."
She felt pain in her chest when she thought of quitting, not going back there the next day. She felt bad, but more than that, she felt bad for being so relieved. She'd psyched herself up the entire way there, but there was no way she could survive going back, not after seeing that.
"Don’t feel bad about it. I know you can't help it, but you can't help your reaction either. I would hate to do it, but I wouldn’t mind picking up the pieces every time you come back here with your heart broken. But try and think about your sister, your grandmother. If you're going to be here for them, you'll need to do something that doesn’t leave you broken at the end of every day. This isn’t anything like your teaching job where you had to. Just find something else you can do, a different way to help."
She nodded along with his words, knowing she could count on Chase to tell her the truth, whether she liked it or not. She held him close, breathing in his clean scent and letting it fill her. Emma calmed herself down, made herself pull away so she was seating beside Chase instead of lying on him. Her mind reached for a distraction, and she grabbed onto Chase's hand.
"Sorry about losing myself like that. What about you, how was your day at the house?"
It was the first time she'd left him completely alone in her house and she was a little curious. She felt like it was too much to hope for that her sister had behaved herself.
He looked like he was going to argue her first statement, but then he just sighed, relaxing into the seat and pulling her hand into his lap, playing with her fingers as he looked down. She chewed on her lip, wondering how bad it had been.
"It wasn’t bad, exactly," he started, hesitantly. "Nothing really happened, after you left we all stuck inside the house. I was... a little disturbed by the things Merry was saying about the apocalypse," he admitted.
Emma felt her body freeze, but he ignored the flex of her hand, continued playing with her fingers, and she calmed down by degrees. Far from angry with her sister, she was just tired. Of everything. It wasn’t quite the apathy from before, but something pretty close to it.
"What did she say?"
He hesitated again, and she wanted to lean down so she could see the look on his face. But then he just sighed, interlocking their fingers as he looked up.
"I... can't repeat a lot of the things she said. They freaked me out, Emma, and I'm a guy who used to watch horror and suspense shows for fun." He winced. "I don’t want to worry you, you have enough on your plate especially after the day you've had, but your sister seems to be getting worse."
Unknowingly, he'd handed her the one thing she'd needed. When she was having trouble, or getting too lost in her own head, dealing with Merry usually took up all her concentration. She would have loved an older sister that acted the part, but taking care of her was one other thing that could help Emma achieve some peace of mind. Because she'd done it for so long it was now becoming second nature.
So she sighed and gave Chase's hand a squeeze. "I know. I just don’t know how to handle it. But I will talk to her."
The sooner the better. She was out there seeing true horrors, she didn’t want her sister throwing around fantasies about what she was 'seeing.'
She gave Chase's hand a last squeeze then got up. It was dark, going up the stairs, but she'd used them enough to not have to see to know where she was going.
Her door was left slightly ajar, and there were several candles turned on in the room, only these ones were scented and made Emma's nose wrinkle. She knocked lightly, waited a couple of seconds, then pushed the door open wider and let herself in.
If she cared her privacy was being invaded without her express permission, she didn’t show it. She was busy sorting through her assortment of crystals. When Emma closed the door behind her and took a step further into the room, Merry looked up with a tiny, barely there smile.
"Hey, Emma," she murmured, her voice sounding calm, as it only could when she was in her own personal space. "Why don’t you sit down and I'll read your tarot?"
Emma sighed, crossing her arms over her chest, taking a couple of steps closer but making no move to sit.
"I'm not in the mood, Merry. We need to talk about whatever it was you said to Chase today. I invited him to stay with us so you're not allowed to chase him off."
Merry just snorted, and then reached for her cards. When Emma didn’t move, she patted the space in front of her.
"Sit," she insisted. "Let me read your tarot cards. It's been a while since I've done it."
Emma didn’t want to, though. A lot of what Merry said was nonsense, but sometimes she hit cords within Emma with her words, and Emma felt unhinged already, she didn’t need to hear anything her sister had to say.
But her sister was getting that slight frown that meant she was going to be difficult to out stubborn. Arguing wouldn’t change her mind, and they could be there for hours, before her sister either lost interest or diverted her attention and pretended Emma didn’t exist.
Merry crossed her arms and gave Emma a firm look. "I won't speak to you until you allow me to read the cards."
Emma narrowed her eyes. She didn’t want to give in to Merry's manipulations. But knowing she needed to speak with her, she gave in and allowed her to read her cards.
Merry didn’t seem to require verbal acknowledgement, turning to her cards and waiting for Emma to sit down. She moved, feeling weary, but at least her sister was on the bed this time and she wouldn’t have to sit on the uncomfortable floor.
She watched silently as Merry held the cards in her hands with her eyes closed and her face slightly lowered. Then she shuffled the cards a little, before taking the top on in the deck, and laying it down. She put down several other cards that Emma didn’t bother looking at, in a pattern that never seemed to stay the same and one that only her sister seemed able to understand. Once the last card was down, Merry held the remaining deck between her palms, touching her fingertips to her chin.
Emma held back a sigh as she waited for Merry to explain what she saw.
"So much has changed since the last time. I wish I could have done this sooner." She bit her lip, and Emma had to refrain from telling her she wouldn’t have allowed this before. "I predict love, danger and death coming your way. I saw the other two before, the last one is kind of a given as the world is now, but danger... there'll be a new danger, separate from what's already happened so far."
Emma purse her lips, and then gave into her need to sigh. The love bit, she just outright didn’t believe. The other two were both a given as the world currently was; she didn’t need her sister telling her that when she was the one out there experiencing it all first hand.
"Merry. You can't keep doing that. Keeping all this stuff to yourself is one thing, but please try not to drag other people into it, especially Chase. He isn't used to dealing with you, and I don’t want him worrying."
Her sister raised her head, looking unconcerned. "He engaged me in conversation, Emma, what was I supposed to do, talk about the weather?" she scoffed. "I know he was just trying to be nice, no one ever wants to talk to the 'crazy'' girl, right? So I repaid him by telling him information that would be useful to him in the near future. Can you fault me for that?"
That... was a surprise coming from her sister. Merry wasn’t the most considerate person, too lost in her own head sometimes to care much about those around her, and rarely when it was people outside of the family. But she shook her head, she wouldn’t let the words distract her. She'd come here for a reason. They may not be able to talk properly, but Merry needed to realize and accept the boundaries.
"Merry, your fantasizing needs to stop. You're a grown woman now, and you need to accept that though you've had a difficult life, you don’t need to project your fantasies to explain everything. sometimes life sucks, and now, it really sucks. Doing this, isn’t helping anyone, least of all yourself.
Instead of looking affronted, even annoyed, Merry just smiled. It wasn’t one of humor, Emma couldn't exactly decipher the emotion behind it, but it made foreboding shivers run up and down her spine.
"You may not believe me yet, but you eventually will. And you will beg for my forgiveness."
