thecapitol | Anger and No One Can Heal It [Closed]

Swann isn't any more surprised than the nurse, no old family Capitolite would be. The Honeymeads in general have escaped some of the carnage that plagues all of their bloodlines, by pure virtue of being a small family, never more than two or three children in a generation, with many of the men ending up childless. She doesn't even really look at Jason, instead trying to rack her own brain for any of the more open things that he might miss, known diseases or issues that would be public knowledge, or else known to her from where the Compson and Honeymead lines made the occasion intersection.

Jason reaches for her and she sighs, leaning forward to take his hand in hers. "It's all right," she reassures him, stroking his knuckles with her thumb. "Everyone does it. Yours just hasn't been updated in a long time, so they need to do it now. It'll be over in a second."

"It's not that I'm afraid of needles. I'm not afraid," he repeats with a sort of childish insistence. "I just don't see why you need to check my blood when I didn't come here for liver damage or cancers. I don't even drink. My liver's fine."

It's more just talking to fill the silence, idle, frantic bitching to keep his mind off the results. The nurse, to her credit, doesn't roll her eyes, and explains they'll do an allergy panel too. She withdraws the blood and leaves the room, explaining that the doctor will be with him shortly.

Jason's squeezing Swann's hand tight enough that his knuckles are white and fingers are pink.

She has lost all feeling in her fingertips, which are now an angry red from the blood being trapped in them. Swann doesn't say anything though, and just lets him keep holding her hand.

"Well, see? An allergy panel, that could be good. What if you get migraines because you're allergic to something? It's much better to know, and it can't really be bad, obviously you don't have any lethal allergies to peanuts or anything."

She's filling the silence as much as he is, trying to be as calming as she can be, focusing on the things that he can't be nearly as upset about.

He realizes how hard he's holding her hand and relaxes his a bit, feeling like he nearly is prying them away.

"Right. I know they get set off by certain smells. And I used to be allergic to seafood, back in the day. If they're set off by something maybe I can get that fixed too."

The optimism doesn't sit well with him, and he rubs at the bridge of his nose with his fingertips until there's an evident red mark. The doctor, a man about Swann's age, comes in with a labcoat. Jason lets Swann go entirely and sits back up straight.

"Mr. Compson." They shake hands, although Jason looks as if he's being asked to do so with a dog. "I'm going to go over this-"

"I only care about the headaches. Don't waste my time with anything else."

"But-"

"I only want a doctor's note that I have them. You can manage that, can't you? You are a doctor and not just some trash they brought in from the street and dressed up?"

Swann looks sharply between the two of them, until Jason gets too rude and she feels the need to speak up, to stop him before the doctor retaliates by refusing to go on with the appointment.

"Jason," she says, an edge of warning in her voice. "Of course he's a real doctor, stop that. Let him do his job, please? You'll get the note, but I'm sure the doctor has protocols he has to go through. There are laws about these things, you know. So... you know, you can tune it out if you want, but please just let him get through it."

She's wringing her hands, gaze fixed on Jason, pleading, silently begging him to just let it go before things start to blow up. Because they always do, when he's like this.

"Alright, alright. Have it your way." Jason glares at the wall, pausing as he reaches for a cigarette and stops when he realizes he can't smoke in here. "I don't care. I can bear it."

The doctor shoots Swann a look, as if asking if her boyfriend's always like this, then has Jason follow his pen with his eyes to test his reflex speed. "Your initial bloodwork looks fine - you should probably quit smoking, because your oh-two to blood count is a bit low and your pressure's high, but other than that you're fine. Headaches aside, you seem to be in pretty good health. Neuro's going to want to do a scan on you to make sure you don't have anything structurally wrong, but my professional opinion is that the migraine problem is psychiatric in nature."

Jason looks away and Swann rolls her eyes with relief that he's not fighting, a clear sign to the doctor that yes, he is always like this. Always. Usually worse.

Everything is fine (Swann herself has mentioned the smoking, so that one can't be a surprise) until the doctor says the word psychiatric, and Swann swoops in before Jason can, actually standing to physically place herself between the doctor and her boyfriend, her hand on Jason's knee as if to say "stay down".

"And when you say that, what, exactly, do you mean, doctor?" she asks, and her wording is so careful, so deliberate, that even Benjy would get the point that these are dangerous waters. "Do you mean they're from stress?"

Please be stress. Please be stress.

And it's a good thing she does, because Jason jerks forward as if to stand up until she touches his knee, and he sits back down, like a dog chastised by its owner but still growling at its foe. His face has flushed, and his lower lip shudders a bit. His breath is hot in his throat, and for an instant he sounds like he's choking.

The doctor backs up, aware that he's stepped into a landmine but unsure why. "I mean they're exacerbated by stress, but obviously not everyone who has stress gets blinding headaches. Is there- is there a problem here?"

She doesn't even look back at Jason, only keeps the physical contact so that he doesn't lose himself in his own rage, so that he keeps well aware of where they are.

"There's no problem," she says, and her voice is a very purposeful sort of calm. "Obviously not everyone reacts to everything in the same way, but we're pretty sure it's just stress. If all you can tell us is that his migraines aren't caused by any sort of blood problem or disease, then we'd like his note and for the neurologist to do their scan. Anything else is unnecessary. Thank you."

Swann's gone steely, her face and voice set, her fingers curled very slightly into Jason's knee.

"Alright then," the doctor says, looking miffed and even a bit concerned as he writes out a note. "But ignoring problems don't make them go away. I seriously recommend a psych evaluation, especially with that family history."

Jason sits there, blinded not by a headache but by anger, feeling as if the sound of his breathing is filling up his entire head, chewing his tongue. He grips the edge of the seat. He knows he shouldn't be having this reaction, that this sort of nuclear result doesn't come from a logical place but from some deep-seated fear being ignited, and yet it's all he can do not to lunge forward and throw the doctor against the wall. He lets him walk away and flinches when the door closes behind him.

"Yes, thank you," Swann says loudly over the doctor, snatching the note away when it's offered. "I recommend you return to medical school, so I guess we won't take each other's advice."

The doctor finally leaves, and she can't do much more than hang her head and exhale hard, bringing her hand away from Jason to rub her forehead. Her eyes are closed tightly, and she doesn't even want to really look over at her own boyfriend, for fear of what kind of froth is leaking from his mouth.

"Here." She offers him the note.

He takes it, unable to hide how his hand is shaking, and shoves it into his pocket without regard for whether it gets crumpled or not. Then he gets up, resisting the urge to just shove all the equipment on the counter over. He settles for kicking the trash can hard enough against the door that it bounces back and hits him in the shin.

"Damn it!" He kicks the can to the side again. "Let's go. Hell with waiting for the neurologist. We got what we came for."

Swann visibly flinches when Jason kicks the trash can, the noise rattling her a bit, but looks up at him and nods, grabbing her coffee and purse and opening the door. She doesn't much see the point in waiting either, not with how worked up he is. Nothing will ever get done with him in this state.

She's right, of course. The fragile spirit of cooperation is completely broken within him, and he slams the door as they leave, startling the people still in the waiting room. He keeps several steps in front of Swann because he feels liable to strike at anything that comes to close to him, and he even kicks up some fresh-planted flowers outside the office, running his hands through his hair and tugging at it as if some solution just needs to be dragged from his scalp.

"I should file a damn complaint." He stretches his hands as if being bunched into fists has sprained them. He looks at Swann with the just-cooled wildness of having just escaped whatever circumstance was setting him off, but being a long way yet from calm.

"You should."

She's walking quicker than normal, less to catch up with him and more to avoid being left behind. She runs her fingers through her hair, her long bangs styled into a curl. Jason's looking at her but she doesn't have much more to say, so she just nods and widens her eyes sympathetically, hoping it will placate him enough to calm down.

Jason breathes deep and takes the note from his pocket, looking over it, and then he seems to sink, the anger guttering out into defeat. He makes a moaning noise, something earthy and hopeless as he hands the note to Swann again, urging her to look at it.

"We need to stay. It needs the neurologist's signature too."

Swann takes it, brow knit, and looks it over, pausing and standing in one spot as she does. "Okay, well," she says slowly, following some of the finer print with one finger. "Maybe we don't have to get the scan, I guess unless you want to. It just needs a signature, not proof of examination. I mean, unless the doctor says that it's really necessary, it's just a waste of time, right?"

"I don't care about the scan, so long as I don't get charged too much for it. If I have a tumor or a clump twin or whatever, at least that'll show them not to dismiss it." He clenches his fist over his hair again, rocking back and forth on his heels. He feels sick, harried, filled with a sort of abstract fear he can't give words to, and he reaches over and takes Swann's hand. He rubs his thumb over that bone of her wrist and closes his eyes and takes deep breaths.

He really should thank her for coming with him, because even he knows he's being irrational, even with all his justifications about the costs of doctors and the idiocy of this entire experiment.

"Alright. Let's just get this over with."

She finds herself really hoping he has a clump twin. It will make all of this so much easier.

When Jason takes her hand, Swann looks up from the note and sighs, moving to wrap her other arm around him, quiet as she spends a moment holding him. She pulls back a bit and touches his cheek with her free hand, nodding.

"Okay, let's go back in."

He lets her hold him, wrapping his arm around her in turn as if the two of them could freeze time and continue putting it off forever. After she touches his cheek he leans in and gives her a kiss, no longer afraid of their evident relationship being caught in public, and shoves his hands into his pockets and heads back in.

It's strange to feel as if his entire life is starting to unravel around him, and he doesn't know if it's the headache or fear or the fact that he feels enough for Swann that it warps his sense of self, but it leaves him on-edge, out of control even by his standards of anger and fury.

He doesn't apologize to the receptionist or to the facility, just tells them in a clipped, short voice that they've decided to stay and wait for Dr. Burns, and they're directed back to the examination room they left earlier. He doesn't care that they're not supposed to smoke in here, because he takes his vaporizer out anyway and rubs at the bridge of his nose and his temples. He's already starting to develop a blind spot in one eye, a whorl where vision dares not enter.

Dr. Burns is much older than the prior doctor was, and seems to have a much kinder demeanor than her predecessor. She comes in and closes the door behind her, taking in the sight of two stressed out people before her.

"I take it you want this all as quick and painless as possible?"

"Please." Jason looks at her with scrutiny and wariness, like a trapped animal. She asks him to describe his headaches, and he tells her about the symptoms, the smells and the auras and the blinding pain so bad he can barely walk and the vomiting. She asks him about when they started (childhood), whether he knows anything that triggers them (certain smells, sleep deprivation), what his coping mechanisms are (the cigarettes, breathing very shallowly, dark rooms and ice packs). Though Jason's clearly on edge and snippy, he does seem to relax a little at how straightforward she is.

"And you've never taken any medicine for the pain or nausea?"

"No, I don't believe in that stuff. My mother takes it and it just seems to make her sicker, so I'm not about to empty my wallet for a placebo."

"I understand. If I give you free samples, would you try them?"

Jason glances over to Swann, then back at the doctor. "Alright. Only if they're free."

The doctor writes something down and pulls out a hand scanner. "Hold still, I'm going to get an image of your head to make sure there's nothing out of sorts."

He does, closing his eyes and breathing deep.

Swann follows him back in, one hand between his shoulderblades, as if to remind him that she's there, she's there, she's not leaving. She doesn't seem any more eager to explain to anyone, and walks behind him in silence, sitting back down in the exam room chair. She is visibly more relaxed with Dr. Burns, though, as she always is with older women, and listens to what's discussed, quiet as she feels she should be.

Jason agrees to the painkillers and Swann smiles at him in what she hopes is a reassuring way, pleased that at least he'll get some measure of relief from his headache.

"Thank you, Dr. Burns," she murmurs quietly, and it's clear that she doesn't just mean for doing the scan.

"I'll try them today. I can feel one coming on."

Dr. Burns puts the hand scanner down. "Well, the good news is, there's no tumors or anything, no misshapen bone or swelling, not that that was likely."

Jason glances up, pausing. "So they're stress?"

"Yes, so far as I can tell. Some people just get unlucky and get the migraine card in life. Are you familiar with panic attacks?"

Jason looks over at Swann again, but just says "I know what one is. I don't have them."

"Some people have maladaptive ways of handling stress. They get panic attacks, or they get insomnia, or they get digestive problems. Your maladaptive coping mechanism is headaches." She raises a finger as Jason opens his mouth to protest. "That doesn't mean you're choosing to do it. That just means it's the way your body's found to process all the chemicals that come from anxiety and overstimulation. Now, when you smoke the herbal supplement is a mild anesthetic, but the nicotine releases a stimulant into your system that raises those anxiety levels."

"So you're telling me to quit smoking."

"I'm advising it. Obviously that won't cure it, but that might make them less frequent. And you're...it says you've had to enroll in anger management. I'm going to have that switched over to a general stress management evaluation. I think that'll cover both bases."

Jason wants to argue, but he doesn't. Instead he spitefully takes another drag from his cigarette. "Alright. I don't suppose one bullshit class is any different than another."

"Alright," she says. "Go check out up front and they'll give you the free samples."

In a way, Swann is extremely relieved to hear that his headaches are stress and not a tumor or a clump twin. Even if those would be so-called "quick" diagnoses, they were things that would be dangerous to fix, life-risking procedures that could render him worse than Benjy if there's even the slightest mistake, quiver of the laser.

She listens like her own life depends on it, eyes darting between the two of them, and when the doctor dismisses them, Swann leans forward a bit to rest her hands on her knee. "Doctor, is there anything we can work on to prevent the headaches? Things that we can do when Jason first feels them starting to flare up?"

"Well, taking a painkiller earlier rather than later can keep them from getting too bad. I have a lot of patients who swear by caffeine, but that's a stimulant too, so your mileage may vary. The best choice is probably to remove yourself from the stressor as soon as you start to feel it, Mr. Compson, try to cut it off at the pass, as it were."

It's the exact opposite of Jason's usual method of dealing with them, which is to push through them until they're incapacitating, and despite the fact that it makes sense he doesn't really plan on following the advice. As far as he's concerned, he hasn't been fixed or cured and so this entire ordeal was just an exercise in frustration.

At least it's over. When the doctor leaves, he takes Swann's hand and they head back out to the waiting room, where he checks out and is rewarded with a small bottle of pills, which he looks at as if it's the hot potato he wants to get rid of.

"Let's go back to your place. Eta can make us lunch and I'll take you out another time."

Unfortunately, Swann can read Jason well enough to know that he doesn't think it's worthwhile advice, and that makes her a bit sad, considering how nice the doctor is, and how easy the advice sounds. Walk away, that's all the doctor said.

She holds her hand out for the pills, so she can put them in her purse, and squeezes his hand. "All right," she says, looking at him like she needs to reassure herself that he's okay, that they're fine. That he won't lose it again when they get in the car.

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they need to get painkillers for shenanigans

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