This looks bad... (Peter, Tasha, And then whomever Tasha rings...)

[father-peter.livejournal.com]

Aly was gone. Peter knew it was just for a little while. Thomas had gotten through to him the previous night. He knew Aly wasn't going to leave him for accidentally hurting her. He knew she didn't blame him. He also knew he blamed himself. Guilt had always been one of Peter's greatest vices. Guilt and alcohol, as the two had a terrible knack for going together. And now was no different. Peter was willing to fight for his family yes. He wasn't giving in. That wasn't what it was about. It was about forgetting.

There was a bottle hidden in the back of the cabinet in the kitchen where they stored the things they never used. The decorative red blender that hardly worked, but Aly had wanted it because it was pretty. The melted plastic strainer that Lydia had accidentally put in a bot of boiling water, and then called modern art when it had twisted into a shape resembling a mutant seashell. Peter pushed it all aside, odds and ends clattering against the wood, as if they were trying to resist moving after sitting still for so long. Peter's knees ached from kneeling on the floor of the kitchen, but he felt his hand hit the smooth glass of the whiskey bottle and he managed to extricate it from the junk without incident.

Peter stood and he set the bottle on the kitchen bench in front of him and he stared at it. He knew he shouldn't. He knew it was failing himself and his family, and his friends, but for just a little peace...just a little? Deirdre was gone and Tasha was working and the house was empty save for MaryAnne and Angie and Peter couldn't spill his guts to them. They wouldn't understand.

The lid cracked as Peter twisted it off breaking through the metal seal. He didn't even bother with a glass. He just held the bottle to his lips with a trembling hand and tipped it backwards. The first wash of the burning liquid over his tongue felt like freedom. Like welcoming an old friend home after being separated for far too long. And Peter swallowed quickly so he could drink more. It was as if he couldn't drink it fast enough. He gulped desperately at the bottle, sputtering here and there when he remembered he needed to breathe. And then, when he had drained the bottle nearly halfway and his head was spinning quite pleasantly, he slammed the bottle back onto the bench to take a short break.

Peter's breath came short and sharp. Something was buzzing in the room somewhere...something other than him... He could hear it. It was like he could hear the electricity in the walls. Then his nostrils were assaulted by an almost overpowering smell. Like burning rubber. "Augh!" Peter gasped, covering his nose with his wrist. "Oh, fuck, gross!" Peter grabbed his bottle and he tried to stagger from the room, anything to get away from the smell. The buzzing was growing louder. Maybe the walls were screaming at him for giving in. The house was chastising him by smelling bad and sounding annoying.

The bottle was in Peter's hands and he took another swig from it as he made his way towards the door. His head felt light, and Peter was enjoying the feeling of drunkenness as it washed slowly over him, but then there was a wave of nausea and he stopped in his tracks. It wasn't just being drunk he was feeling. The sounds. The smells. His head. Oh good fuck..... "H...help!" Peter croaked out, but his voice was weak, almost like a whisper. Someone had to come. He had to get someone's attention. This was going to be bad. He could tell. "Help!" Peter cried out, but it was no louder than his first plea.

Pain erupted in Peter's head, burning white hot in his skull. Peter dropped the whiskey bottle, and it exploded into shards on the floor, amber liquid scattering with force through the criss-cross pattern of the grooves between the tiles. Peter fell to his knees then, shards of glass digging into his flesh, tingeing the amber slightly pink with blood. The pain didn't let up. In intensified, along with the rising sound of the buzzing and the terrible smell of sulfur. Peter let out a pained yowl, his hands on the sides of his head. Before he even had the chance to feel another wave of sickness, he leaned forward and vomited forcefully, all over the floor.

I didn't do this! It would have happened anyway. I didn't do this to myself. I'm fighting, dammit! I'm fighting!

Peter's thoughts were desperate and guilty, and they were distracting him from what he needed to be doing. Most of the time when he had a seizure and then a vision, there was no warning. It just happened. This was something else. This was something deadly. He had to get to a phone, though in his current state, that seemed just about as difficult as learning to fly.

Some people can. Peter thought to himself. Some people can!

Crawling forward through the mess of his own making, Peter groaned as more glass found it's way into his legs. The phone was just ahead of him. It was on the kitchen bench, and a sunbeam was hitting it, illuminating it in a way that made it look like some sort of mystical implement high on a sacred shelf. Stupid world mocking him. Inch by inch, Peter closed the distance between himself and the phone, though the pain was building. His head was growing fuzzy. Black spots were starting to dance in front of his eyes.

"Pphhhh...." The left side of Peter's face drooped then, as he lost muscular control. "Heee...heeelll..." He couldn't form words anymore. It didn't matter. If he got to the phone and he dialled any of the speed dial numbers, someone would come.

Peter reached the bench and, as he was left-handed, he tried to raise his left arm to grab for it. Nothing. Peter made a swipe for the phone with a clumsy right arm, but he missed and fell forward, crashing into the wooden cabinets. The phone was now unreachable and Peter let out a frustrated and pained groan. It was over now.

Have to keep fighting. Must....keep...

Peter's eyelids started to flutter, and he sank to the floor without resistance.

His wife's birthday was in two days. It was supposed to be his second wedding anniversary. He wanted to shout to the world that he remembered. This wasn't supposed to be happening. He remembered everything. He was fine, dammit. He was supposed to be fine. His daughter was going to come home and find him. Just like she had found the evidence of her real parents' deaths. Poor Tasha....

No. Fight. Must. Fight-

Pain so debilitating it nearly made Peter vomit again, arced it's way through his body as his brain started sending haphazard electrical signals all over the place. The seizure in the bath had started a bleed from the site of Peter's original surgery. Insignificant at first. So insignificant no one had seen it. But every seizure that had happened since has worsened it. And now, as the seizure that he had been fighting off for nearly five minutes slammed into his body, taking his consciousness with it, the bleed opened wide. A vision Peter could do absolutely nothing about burned into his subconscious. As Peter's head repeatedly bashed itself against the wooden cabinets and the floor, it did it's damage, spreading through the vessels of Peter's brain until he lay still, seven minutes later, in puddles of his own piss and drool.

Peter's heartbeat was fluttery at best and his breathing so shallow, one might even miss it. but even unconscious on the floor of his kitchen with a bleed in his brain, he was fighting.

Comments

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

There was never a shift working for the London Police force that wasn't tiring, especially now. After the destruction of Iris and Delford, people who still had homes in other areas near London were flocking to what they perceived as the relative safety of the city. At the same time, state security and even military forces were locking things down tight. The borders were getting harder to get in and out of. People were afraid. A few spot riots had flared up. None of them had been too bad yet, but if the fear kept up, they'd come. Violence was creeping back into London, slowly but surely. As always, there were those who were afraid, and those who were taking advantage of that fear. Paul, Tasha and their colleagues were doing their best to stem the tide, but how did you even pretend you could protect people from destruction of the magnitude afflicting the nearby towns?

So it was with heavy footsteps and a sense of relief that Tasha made her way home, despite the fact that the house was dark and quiet. Dark and quiet were things that she could appreciate, in a way. The pall of worry hanging over the place, though... not so much. It was almost as if walking into the place caused the sickness to infiltrate her senses. While logically she knew that not to be the case, she couldn't shake the feeling. It felt wrong here. Infected.

For a moment, Tasha had to stop. It was a strange feeling, almost of deja vu. The sense of darkness, a heavy weight of sickness... but it left as soon as it came. She was just so tired. She needed something to eat too, probably. She made her way to the kitchen, and at the doorway was where the smell hit her. This was real. She could see the trousered leg sticking out from behind the bench, twisted badly. The pool of various liquids, some alcoholic and some quite unsavoury, with broken glass spread throughout. She could see traces of blood.

"Oh god," she murmured. "Oh no..." She rushed forward and dropped to her knees, immediately turning Peter onto his side. She checked his airway, mostly clear. He hadn't drowned in his vomit, but his vitals were terribly weak. There was no way she could save him on her own.

"This is Kemp," she spoke into her radio. "I need an ambulance at 55 Prince Albert Road immediately. My father's had a seizure. It's a brain tumour."

The request was radioed through, and Tasha did what she could to make Peter safe and comfortable, not that he was conscious. Her heart thundered in her chest, pounding in her ears. She could feel that her face was drained of colour. When she'd done everything she could for Peter, she went for the phone. The first person she thought to call was Liz. This was Peter. Of course it was Liz.

[elizabeth-long.livejournal.com]

Liz had been playing gin rummy with Johan and Werner when the phone rang. "Just a moment! Don't you dare go out, Werner, I see those eyes!" She said, and she ran to the phone smiling as she heard him chuckle behind her. "Hello?" She said as she answered it. She wondered if it were her wife, who was at work. But it wasn't. It was Tasha.

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

"Liz, I need you," Tasha said without preamble. There was no time for niceties. "It's Peter. He's had a seizure, and he's... it doesn't look good. The ambulance is on its way, but we need you." She gripped the phone tightly in her hand slick with sweat, so tight it almost slipped from her grip.

[elizabeth-long.livejournal.com]

Peter.

Alarm rose in Liz' chest, but she pushed it away for Tasha's sake. Peter was her little brother. She loved him almost more than anyone.

"I'm coming." She said firmly. And she set off towards the door without even telling Johan and Werner. "Tasha, should I meet you at the hospital or at home?"

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

"Meet me at the hospital. The ambulance will be here soon, and the fewer people they have to deal with here, the better." She could already hear the sirens in the distance, and she hoped they were coming for Peter. "It's probably best you make doubly sure they're ready at the hospital."

[elizabeth-long.livejournal.com]

"Alright, Tasha." Liz said, trying to sound calm when she really wasn't. Not even a little. She hung up because she wouldn't be able to talk and drive, and she climbed into her car, headed for the hospital.

[darker-demon.livejournal.com]

The sirens were in fact coming to get Peter. The ambulance from Peter's own hospital pulled up in his yard, despite the fact that Peter had been going to a doctor at a different hospital. They had been closer and they knew Peter well, obviously.

Katia was with them, and she raced into the house ahead of the paramedics. "Tasha! I...oh god..." Katia said, as she saw Peter's still form on the floor. "Oh, no...."

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

"I know," Tasha said, backing away so the paramedics could do their work. Her police training had of course involved the latest in first aid techniques, and even wound stabilisation, but there was no way her still-limited expertise could be of any use to the paramedics, unless they needed her for brute strength. "I don't know how long he's been like this..."

[darker-demon.livejournal.com]

Katia, who had been a fan of Peter Kemp for well on eight years now...ever since he came to Germany to save her from herself...slid her hand into Tasha's. She had come for her. She was a nurse, and not much use in this case. "He's still breathing." She said softly. "When you found him, he was breathing and that's...well it's a good start."

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

"Yeah," Tasha agreed, trying to bolster herself with the confidence Katia was doing her best to offer. "Yeah, it's good. Still breathing, still fighting." It was hard to get the words out, in a voice thick with wanting to break down and cry. She had to keep her head though. She had a responsibility here, as a daughter and as a police officer. If she handled this like any other case, she'd maximise Peter's chances, she knew. "Breathing is better than last time," she said quietly, mostly to herself.

[elizabeth-long.livejournal.com]

Katia didn't know what Tasha meant by that, so she stood there, holding Tasha's hand. When the paramedics loaded Peter into the ambulance, Katia pulled Tasha in with them. She couldn't drive. No way.

When they arrived at the hospital, Liz was waiting for them, white-faced and panicked. Peter was rushed immediately to the ER, and Liz watched him pass her by for a moment before rushing forward to take Tasha in a tight embrace.

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

Tasha held onto Liz just as tightly, and felt some of her forced strength melt into a simple clinging to a woman who, well not Aly, was still very much a mother-figure to her. She didn't know what else to do, now. Peter was out of her hands, the situation out of whatever control she had. A shudder finally ran through her body, and tears spilt down her cheeks.

[elizabeth-long.livejournal.com]

Liz was feeling quite that way herself. She had no idea what had happened to her little brother, but she wanted it fixed, now.

"I love you." Liz whispered, kissing Tasha's head. She led Tasha over to a chair and she helped her in to it. "Please...what happened?" She had to know.

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

"I love you too," Tasha said, and sniffed hard. She needed to pull herself together. She wiped the tears away from her eyes, and tried to focus again. "I came home from work," she began, "and I found Dad on the floor in the kitchen. He was already unconscious, and covered in vomit and... he'd wet himself, and there was blood. He'd cut himself on a bottle, it was broken all over the floor- shit." She hadn't even thought about that until now. She'd been too focused on helping Peter. "Fuck, he was drinking! Goddammit," she hissed. If - when - Peter woke up, she was going to rip him a new one for that.

[elizabeth-long.livejournal.com]

Liz breathed out, long and slow, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. Of course he was drinking. Dammit. "You did everything right." Liz said, pulling Tasha into her arms again. "Thank goodness you found him when you did. Tasha, I'm so sorry you had to see him like that..."

[empress-tasha.livejournal.com]

"Better than the alternative," Tasha said quietly, as she leaned gratefully into Liz's embrace. "I'm just glad we've given him a chance..." Her voice caught on the edge of tears again. A chance he may have had, but that also meant there was a very large chance that he wasn't going to make it. Everyone knew it, whether they said as much or not.