Chapter Text
The wind was blowing softly, like it was taking its time, moving the leaves in improvised dances. It must have been autumn because the leaves were nice shades of orange, red and yellow, making circles around Laura as if they were happy to see her. She took a deep breath, a small smile playing on her face as she closed her eyes and embraced this rare moment of peacefulness. Even with her eyes closed she could still see the beautiful garden surrounding her, seemingly endless because of the fog around its edges. She could hear the birds chirping in the distance, and a shrill voice calling her, shaking her arm roughly.
“Doctor Hollis!”
Laura jolted awake, jumping up from the uncomfortable chair in the hospital break room.
“I wasn’t sleeping!” she shrieked immediately, but then added, biting her lip sheepishly, “but if I were, how long was I out for?”
“Only a few minutes” The nurse smiled at her, “they need you in the ER”
“I’ll be right there” Laura masked a yawn as she approached the coffee machine. She still wasn’t sure what kind of dreadful concoction that thing distributed, it sure as hell was not coffee, but it was the closest thing she had and she needed all the help she could get if she wanted to stay awake. And she needed to stay awake. She was up for a promotion as hospital attendant and she would be damned if she let that snake of a man steal it from her. After she downed her cup, she quickly exited the lounge and made her way to the ER, but bumped into her obnoxious colleague on the way.
“Hollis”
Theo grabbed her by the shoulders to stop her in her tracks.
“No need to go down to the emergency room anyway. I took care of it while you were sleeping”
“I wasn’t-“
Laura tried to reply indignantly but he was already walking away, winking at her while mouthing ‘you’re welcome’. She huffed before turning to go check on her other patients. She really despised that man.
She checked old Mr Jenkins’ blood pressure and kindly accepted his daily marriage proposal, stitched up a guy who cut his forehead falling off a tree, diagnosed two kids with mono, begrudgingly stopped a drug addict from strangling Theo, taking the time to smirk at him while mouthing ‘you’re welcome’, then went on to perform two surgeries, eating a total of three carrots in that entire time. She relied mostly on the liquid sustainment of the cafeteria’s wannabe-coffee. Her only short breaks had been to the girls’ bathroom, where her colleagues moaned about their kids and husbands, telling her how lucky she was that she didn’t have anyone else in her life to worry about and she pretended she didn’t notice the pity in their tone, only giving them a tight lipped smile.
Her other time-off had been a quick phone call from her friend Perry, who was making sure she hadn’t forgotten about their dinner plans that night. She still had no idea how the curly haired woman had convinced her to go on a double date, a double blind date with her. She was very reluctant at first but her friend knew her too well and managed to bribe her with delicious cupcakes and all kinds of sweets from her bakery. Plus, she knew this was important to the redhead; she had finally been asked out by a client she couldn’t stop babbling about for months now, a client who had insisted she bring a date for their friend as well. Between Perry’s puppy eyes and home baked goodies, Laura caved pretty fast.
Still, having to go out after the longest shift, tired and grumpy, for a possibly (probably) doomed date with a complete stranger wasn’t exactly something she could get excited about. She didn’t let her mind wander too much though as she had many patients yet to see, and she was just about to go do that when her superior, Doctor Cochrane, approached her and Theo.
“Doctors. How long have you both been here?”
“12 hours, ma’am” Theo said smugly, flashing her the toothiest smile she’d ever seen. The elder doctor looked at Laura expectantly.
“I uhm, just a few more” she avoided her eyes, biting her lip.
The doctor regarded her knowingly, humming in response before telling Theo to go scrub in for a big surgery they had coming. When Laura was about to protest, her superior stopped her.
“I know you’ve been here for 26 hours, Laura. And as much as I appreciate your dedication, you need to sleep. In a real bed, for more than 10 minutes at a time. Doctor’s orders” she added, as the girl still looked unconvinced.
“Yes, ma’am” she mumbled, defeated, and started walking away, but turned back around when her superior called her back.
“Oh and Laura? I am not supposed to tell you before tomorrow but, you got the job as attendant. Congratulations” she gave her a warm smile and walked away.
Despite her sleepless state, Laura couldn’t contain her excitement and jumped about a little, fist pumping in the air before realising what she was doing and forcing herself to calm down, glancing around her to see who noticed her goofy outburst, but catching only a couple of nurses smiling at her. She smiled back and made her way to the locker room. At least she had something to be happy about even if her blind date turned out to be a disaster, like she suspected. She didn’t let her encounter with Theo on her way out of the hospital ruin her mood either. She had to admit the tiniest part of her enjoyed seeing him squirming uncomfortably while he mumbled his congratulations and walked away without any of his usual sexist and just plain rude remarks.
She got into her car still with a happy smile on her face, calling Perry to let her know she’d be at her place in a few minutes and then blasting the Hamilton soundtrack, letting herself enjoy the slight breeze coming in from her window while singing along as loudly and as badly as she liked. She didn’t even see the truck coming full speed towards the right of her car, and when she turned all she could see was a blinding white light, followed by the darkest black she had ever known.
“Nope” Carmilla was no more than 5 feet into the house and she simply turned back on her heels and walked back out. The tall redheaded woman tried to hide her annoyance as she closed the door she had barely finished opening.
“What was wrong with this one?” she walked the leather-clad girl down the stairs and into the streets.
“I asked you for a furnished apartment”
“It was!”
The estate agent said more forcefully than her usual professionalism would allow.
“If you call two pillows and a rock garden furniture”
“It was a Japanese theme!”
“Well we’re not in Japan, are we now?”
Danny closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to compose herself, reminding herself that throttling a client was not a good idea, no matter how obnoxiously indifferent and ostensibly bored they were. She put on her best fake smile and guided Carmilla to their next location.
“As you can see, plenty of space. And the brick wall is very in right now”
Carmilla eyed the two-foot-tall portrait of a random dude, she suspected the owner of the dreadful open space she was standing in right now, barely listening to what the agent was saying. She glanced at the backless and seemingly horribly uncomfortable couch, in the same modern and utterly distasteful style of architecture as the rest of the place. Danny was still talking about the wonders of the apartment when the shorter girl cut her off.
“Yeah, no”
Again, she just walked out the door, the estate agent trailing behind her, trying not to roll her eyes back into her skull.
As Carmilla walked back onto the sidewalk, a gust of wind made a poster collide with her leg. She threw it back into the air but it soon came back to hit her right in the face. She groaned as she heard the woman beside her trying to hide her snickers. Grabbing the offending piece of paper, she was about to crumple it up and throw it out for good when she noticed it was actually an ad for subletting an apartment. When she looked at the address, she realised it matched the beautiful house right in front of her. Without thinking twice, she started marching towards it, ignoring Danny’s protests that a building like that would have hundreds of requests and would be impossible to get.
A few minutes and some calls later, the two women were walking into the house. It was a big space, with plenty of rooms. Carmilla was pleased to see it had a normal sized couch and a pretty big bed, both on the top list of her requirements, since how she was planning to spend her days would inevitably involve one or the other. Walking through the place, she noticed a small door leading upstairs and followed it to the roof of the building.
“A private access to the roof? And look at the view!”
She barely registered Danny’s comment, and only shortly glanced at the skyscrapers of Toronto which she could see from where she was standing, choosing to focus on the small dying plant left in a vase nearby. She polished it a little, pouring some water that had gathered from the rain in a bowl on the ground. The redhead regarded her strangely, getting more convinced than before of the girl’s insanity, before breaking the weird moment to speak.
“it’s an amazing apartment, of course, but there’s a catch: apparently they only sublet on a month-to-month basis, they had some kind of family tragedy, they didn’t really get into details, and the price is-“
“I’ll take it”
Her days went on as expected. She went to bed really late and woke up even later, spent most of her waking hours between the bed and couch, sleeping, eating, reading and drinking. A lot of drinking. She had been living in this new house for almost a week and she was quite enjoying the calm and the silence. She sipped on her newly opened beer as she made her way back to the couch. She almost had a heart attack when she turned the corner.
“Holy shit!”
“Who the frilly hell are you?!”