For notjackkerouac

[dreamtofbeing]

The Royal Marsden hospital with its tasteful interiors and its panoramic views of central London tries visibly hard to make its patients feel cared for by the best specialists in the country. It's what all the brochures said, a stack of leaflets insisting that if you wanted to breeze through your treatment like you would through a holiday cruise in the Caribbean, all you had to do was check yourself into the oncology department of London's finest cancer hospital.

Sitting in a chair in the fourth floor patient common room of this posh establishment, the Doctor can't help but find the upscale sterility of the place unsettling and irritating. Possibly this is because he's never been in a hospital that didn't make him feel unsettled and irritated, but leaving his personal dislike of hospitals aside, the Royal Marsden still seems like a place he wouldn't be sad to never have to visit again. He's not sure what annoys him more, the motivational posters of smiling, bald women plastered on the notice boards, or the discreet, hushed tone adopted by the staff, as if the patients on this floor were too fragile to be talked to in a normal volume. Which, admittedly, most of them look like they are. The Doctor doesn't quite feel like one of them yet, though, so all the hushed voices are doing are making him want to talk extra-loudly and jovially.

Not that he's feeling particularly jovial. About a week since the surgery, and they only started to let him get up three days ago, after the last of his drainage tubes had been pulled. He's been through enough surgeries and hospital stays to know the routine--walk to the sink and back on the first day, one corridor length on the second, two on the third, but only if you're feeling up to it. And no matter how much you want to do more, those will usually be your limits before that deep, throbbing wound ache gets too much to continue pushing. He's feeling it now, a dull, pulling pain along his right side, but he's not quite yet at the point of giving up and going back to bed.

They started giving him the chemotherapy today; just another IV, but this one in a shiny silver bag rather than the transparent plastic bottles that the normal fluid IVs come in. It felt both daunting and surreal; mental images of the other patients on the ward, sunken eyes and bony wrists, competing with the Doctor's inability to picture himself in that state. The thing that made him abandon his bed in favor of the common room chair was his roommate Pete, a heavyset prostate cancer patient in his mid-fifties, mocking him for refusing to shave his head. The Doctor has a feeling that being a cancer patient himself, Pete missed out on the bandwagon of heart-felt support the entire rest of the oncology ward seems to have gotten on. He supposes he can't really blame him, but that doesn't mean that he has to let Pete mock him, either. If the chemotherapy will make his hair fall out, fine, his hair will fall out. The Doctor doesn't feel like he should be helping it along, though.

He taps his fingers on the chair's armrest and puts his chin in his hand, looking out over the rain-swept Chelsea roof landscape. He should have brought a book, but going back to get it would exceed his two-corridor-lengths limit for today. So he supposes he'll just sit here until it's time for dinner. Either that, or until his hair starts falling out. Whichever will happen sooner.

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[notjackkerouac]

It's the hospital again. That's what they told him, two weeks ago. Two weeks, and an ultrasound, sitting on the bed in one of their ridiculous gowns, knees pale and knobby and hairless, with gel smeared across his belly, listening to the doctor drone on in a calm, detached manner. Jack thinks she might have been shooting for sympathetically competent; if so, she missed.

He doesn't remember much of what she said. He weren't particularly paying attention. Her tone alone communicated the gist of it, Spark Notes version, all the important phrases highlighted in the air—not responding to treatment—recommend another cycle—chemotherapy still the best option—I'm sorry.

And that were the worst of it, really, that last. The bloody sympathy. Giving out hope and taking it back with the same hand. They won't give him dates, won't give him a time-frame—and he doesn't want it, but James might, bloody useless James, bloody useless sodding James who won't have the sense to know when that's that and—. But they keep playing him like he has all the time in the world to sit in hospital and get poisons pumped into him. Must be like being in the army. Hurry up and wait.

Once upon a time, he went to the pub on Fridays. Now he goes to bloody chemo.

It's been eight months, this; eight months and he can't fucking stand it, for all it makes him an expert at navigating the oncology ward.

Second verse, same as the bloody first: little bit louder and a little bit worse. That used to be a song. He used to sing it, drunk and high on life, staggering down the street with Gibbs, or Bill, or Elizabeth. Or James. Buggering, beautiful, stubborn, stupid James.

He doesn't sing now. The stagger is still with him a bit, towing the IV stand along behind him, line swaying and dangling and threaded up to the cathetar in his thigh, growing out of his skin like a corrupted jellyfish of plastic. The muscles are sore today, from when they put the line back in yesterday evening, flexing around something thick and foreign and unnatural. It gives him a bit of a limp, a slow hop-drag of one bunny-slippered foot, making the open sides of his robe sway.

It's his one from home—home: the flat, James, and maybe it shouldn't be anymore; maybe he shouldn't think of like that anymore, try to distance himself—ages old and worn thin, silk and oriental by design. It clashes horribly with his tartan boxers (also James's: HUGO BOSS ostentaciously printed on the waistband in black block letters, mockingly high-end), the bright pinks and oranges and greens, flowers and hummingbirds, faded but still overpoweringly colourful admist the beiges and browns and calming blues of the ward. Left open and too short to cover much, his legs bony and bare, all muscle definition (hell, all muscle) gone, the robe itself serves little purpose besides doing just that. Bit of colour; bit of life.

The common room doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment. Few magazines, few forgotten books, but it's too quiet in here even for a telly. Musn't disturb anyone seems to be the rule of thumb about the place, nothing rowdy or lively. If Jack were a cynical man, he might make a crack about Rest in Peace—but he's not, so he doesn't.

He doesn't have much need for entertainment anyway. His stint here is two nights, and only then because they couldn't schedule someone to put the line in today. He's out-patient; by every petulant, stubborn, argumentative, annoying instinct he's doing his treatment out-patient (and his boyfriend is—was, were—a lawyer, so it's not like he's out of practice when it comes to debates). For two days, he can manage the doldrums of boredom staring out the window from the corner chair. The hospital actually has a decent view—Chelsea rooftops, and the river scrolling into a green speck on the horizon. Everything's lower out here, except the hospital, and it opens up the sky on clear days, grey and extending forever.

It's nice, or a bit of nice. As nice as you can get around here. Except when he finally hobbles to the chair, someone's in his spot. Bored- and sick-looking, the man looks proper hospital material. He's still got his hair, the bastard. It's nice hair. Jack's hair is just starting to grow back—no chance of that now—prickly and too smooth and making his face look too sharp, too severe, a bit like one of those stupid teenagers up in Camden with the bandana on.

His jumper as a hole in it and makes him look like a tramp, so he figures it evens out.

"You're in my spot," he says, sighs more like, tired, and leans heavily on his IV stand to flap a hand towards the window, explaining. Its wheels squeak. "It has—mrr, views."

[dreamtofbeing]

The common room being as quiet as it is, without even a television interrupting the ambient hospital noise, the Doctor hears the footsteps approaching before they even reach the common room. Under normal circumstances, he would turn around to see who it is, but as he's very recently had his ribs spread open and his chest interiors rearranged, he's going to give the turning around a pass. Instead, he listens, his focus shifting from a car that is trying to parallel park two streets over to the sounds that are being produced by whoever it is who's approaching.

All he can tell by listening, though, is that the person who just entered the common room is most likely a patient. The footsteps are the muffled shuffle of slippers rather than the purposeful clicking of a nurse's work shoes, and there's the low squeak and clatter of an IV stand being pushed along. The Doctor turns his head to the side and tries to catch a glimpse from the corner of his eye, but the angle is wrong. He has to wait until the person is almost standing next to his chair before he can get a proper look at him.

The man seems tall-ish looked at from this angle, but the Doctor is fairly sure that if he were to stand up, he'd be a good few inches taller than the new arrival. Possibly also because the man's posture is that of most people on this ward--slightly hunched over, leaning on his IV stand, his robe hanging loosely on a bony frame that says "chemo patient". He's also wearing a bandanna, undoubtedly to cover up chemo-induced baldness, and the Doctor shifts at the uncomfortable thought that this might be a mirror-image of him three or four weeks down the line. Possibly except for the incredibly colorful robe. It's a good robe on its own, it just seems a little out of place in the muted-colors atmosphere of the oncology ward. But then, that might actually be a point in its favor.

"Oh, am I?" The Doctor raises his eyebrows at the man's statement, his eyes following his gesture. "It does, yeah. No particularly exciting ones, but it's better than daytime television." He looks around at a row of chairs lined up against a nearby wall and indicates them with a head-tilt. "Maybe you could use one of those. Excuse me if I don't get up, but I've only got about half a corridor left today, and I'll need that to get back to my room."

[notjackkerouac]

The man does not move. Instead he makes eyebrows—oh, eyebrows: Jack remembers those; they're the things on your face with hair—at Jack and babbles something about daytime television.

Jack has no idea what daytime television has to do with his spot, or the man sittng in it, or the man moving from his spot, which Jack can't help but notice he's not doing. He stares for a moment, in case more words are intending to come out of the man's mouth, but they've seem to have run dry for the time being.

Half a corridor, the man said, which means nothing to Jack. Or no; right. It means something. Means something because this is a hospital and hospital are notorious for never putting things in clear English. Everything's a code. And Jack's met his type before: that sallow, haggard look every patient in the world has but not from chemo. Too much hair for that. Surgery, then; must be.

"Sure they'd give you a pass for five steps."

The chairs the man indicates aren't much farther than that—five, six, nine steps. It wouldn't be too much to walk, not in the man got here from his room in one piece and hasn't started in on the zombie drugs like the rest of them. It's a b-flick horror film in the making in here: all of them looking like corpses, the walking dead, shuffling along. At least them with giant blue tubes stuffed up their groins, like Jack.

"Might even sneak it by the nurses. Have one over of them. They'll never know." He gives the man something like a smirk, cajoling.

Sneaking something past the nurses is about the only fun to be had around here, for those up to it. Like being kids again in school, knocking off, rebelling just for the sake of rebelling. The nurses treat everyone here like they're fourteen anyway; might as well act like it.

"Besides." Jack points with a finger. "There is a view of the Thames. From that spot. What you're sitting in. There—" he flicks his fingers to the line of chairs the man appointed "—is a view of, mmm, cars parking at the leisure centre across the way and that block of flats." He blinks at the man like his argument is flawless, obvious, gorgeous. For the closing, he tries to put a bit more verve in his voice, some of his old sales technique, charming and sharply friendly; it's exhausting. "You've the best seat in the house, mate."

[dreamtofbeing]

He's being given a once-over, that calculating glance of one contestant assessing another. It makes him shift and run an unconscious hand through his hair--his hair, which is a solid indicator of the fact that he's not on chemo, something setting him apart from pretty much everyone else on the floor. Or it would be, if his hair actually meant what the man assessing him thought it meant. He's aware that if he had followed the nurses' advice and shaved his head this morning, this conversation might be going very differently.

The judgment that's being passed on him, excluding him from the chemotherapy patients' community of martyrdom and slotting him into a more able category than most people on this floor, combined with the smile he's being given, a cajoling smirk that looks eerily out of place on the other man's haggard, bony face, almost makes him relent and vacate the chair. But then the man starts going on about the view again, his tone more that of a salesperson than a martyr, and the Doctor changes his mind.

"Mhm," he says, nodding. "I think I do. I think I'll keep it. If you don't mind." He looks up at the other man, giving him a friendly smile. Friends? They don't have to hate each other just because he took your chair. Not that he's entirely sure this is your chair, considering he hasn't seen you around before. "Could stay and chat, though. Wouldn't say no to some company. View or not, the place isn't exactly the height of excitement."

[notjackkerouac]

Apparently his sales technique is a little lacking from disuse. The man smiles back at him, wide, friendly-like, unnerving, and seems decided to keep the chair instead.

That hadn't been Jack's intention. It's not that he pouts—he's a grown man, and Jack Sparrow besides—so it must be a frown that turns down the corners of his mouth and puffs out his lower lip. He wants that spot. He likes that spot. It's one of the only things that makes this place bearable, and he's tired, and he's standing here, with the muscle of his inner thigh burning, and the man (with hair!) won't move.

It's not a pout.

The smile, however, is apparently meant to be genuine. Jack eyes the interloper suspiciously. "You're not from around here, are you?"

The man's new, or at least Jack's never seen him before and he's been around enough now to recognise most faces passing through—the nurses, the porters, the other patients. Been coming here long enough to have seen a few waves pass through, those who have left for other jobs or other wards, and those who have recovered to go home to their families. And those that don't, who go elsewhere, the ones Jack doesn't want to think about.

Despite the standard comings-and-goings of the floor, Jack more means London itself. Royal Marsden is one of the best hospitals in London (James informed him of that, of course, in a shaky, dry barritone, with lots of the throat clearing, trying and failing to hide his nerves when he offered up the findings of the secret research he'd done on Jack's case; just like a lawyer), which makes it one of the best hospitals in the country, and people come from all over. And the man's accent is generic, hard to place, which means he could be from anywhere and probably is; no one sounds like that without hiding something.

More than that, no Londoner suggests sticking around for a chat. Londoners pointedly, politely ignore one another, stuck in their own little bubble of oxygen in a sea of restless humanity. Jack likes Londoners; they're easy to startle. This man seems good at that—or poor at that; Jack isn't sure—and that strangely, irrationally makes Jack almost warm up to him.

"Could do with a chair. If you're wanting for conversation." He nudges his IV stand, a tangle of lines looping down to thread under the hem of his boxers. "What's your name?"

[dreamtofbeing]

The smile seems to have worked. The man loses some of his suspicious air, and now the once-over he's giving the Doctor is more that of a native assessing a foreigner. Which, the Doctor supposes, is fair enough. The accent isn't quite one-hundred percent genuine, but it's close enough to be that of a naturalized Londoner. And anyway, any human would be able to claim native status anywhere on Earth before the Doctor.

"It's John. John Smith." He gives a slight, perfunctory smile; yes, he knows it's a boring name. "I'm sort of new here. Been stuck in my room for the past four days or so, or we might have met earlier. I've come down from Cardiff."

He glances around the room in the hope of spotting a second, easily accessible chair, but without success--mostly due to the dull, persisting throb in his side that prevents him from turning around properly. He gives a small sigh and looks back up, jerking a thumb at the line of chairs by the wall. "You can have the chair if you help me drag one of those over here."

Nothing like jointly overcoming an obstacle to start building friendships. And this place is so good about providing obstacles. No wonder it's all about the heart-felt support.