waltzmatildah

Title: E is for Eggs...
Word Count: 1000
Rating: PG
Characters: George and Lexie
Author's Note tonysgirl02 as part of the alphabet meme...

Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and all the characters, settings, and events thereof, are properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for profit, it constitutes fair use. Referral to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

Do you like

green eggs and ham?

I do not like them

Sam-I-am.

I do not like

green eggs and ham.

It is by some unspoken agreement that Lexie finds herself sliding an all too familiar key into a lock, worn stiff and achingly unchanged, at three am on a Thursday morning.

(though, truth be told, she'd have it no other way)

The door creaks open in protest, as though months have passed since it opened last, and maybe they have but Lexie doesn't think so. There are dishes discarded by the sink and a scarf draped casually over a kitchen chair, the curtains are open and slightly askew but, as a whole, the place is clean, really clean. Much cleaner than when she was more than just a visitor, tears and ruined mascara hidden under the cover of a moonlit night. Evidence of her still lingers, like cigarette smoke, a scent that won't wash out, and of that she is secretly glad.

She hasn't a clue what she is looking for specifically, guided only by a feeling that she will know it when she finds it. Toiletries and pyjamas are still an unnecessary cliché and will remain that way for some weeks to come.

I would not like them

here or there.

I would not like them

anywhere.

I do not like

green eggs and ham.

I do not like them,

Sam-I-am.

The hospital has become an unbearably grim place to be. Whether on shift or not no one is gone, like they all think leaving will tear apart the precarious sense of balance and order that has evolved in the wake of that terrible, horrible, blood curdling, bone chilling day. Lexie is so much a part of it and so completely and utterly not at the same time that she feels constantly on the edge of a window shattering scream. Like it is coiled within her and one wrong move or one wrong word and she'll fall apart at the seams. She'll finally rip and crumble and dissolve.

(like everyone else already has)

When your friend's chests only rise because machines do it for them, when orders not to resuscitate are ignored and bus drivers fail to notice and when everyone else breathes in time with the monotonous beeps, it doesn't take much for the fibers to tear.

You may like them.

You will see.

You may like them

in a tree.

I would not, could not

in a tree.

Not in a car.

You let me be.

She finds the book in a cardboard box of items that have been shuffled from house to house but never unpacked. It is worn and a page is missing, the last, which is kind of ironic since she's never read it before and therefore doesn't know how it ends. It is a hardcover copy, the first page inscibed, cursive writing, large and deliberate, as though written for a child to decipher, faded to a yellow, testimony to the years that have passed by.

(exactly what she is looking for)

She leaves everything else abandoned on the bed. Photographs of people, some she knows, some she doesn't, some black and white, some faded sepia, some bright technicolour. All of them memories.

A train, a train.

Could you, would you

on a train?

George breathes by himself two weeks and three days later and so, it seems, does almost everyone else. The air changes in that moment, when the tubes are removed and the machines stay silent and the earth shifts beneath their feet. She isn't in the room when it happens but she has her face pressed to the glass, watching through a film of salt water and steaming breath. The room is full and hands are clenched, white knuckle tight. He isn't awake just yet but he is one step closer.

(though it is to be alex that shatters the windows with a scream)

And so it is bittersweet, all things considered, as she begins to contemplate heading back to the apartment to collect up the memories she has left scattered, discarded, forgotten.

Not on a train,

not in a tree.

Not in a car,

Sam, let me be.

Despite the photographic recall she likes to read the words aloud from each page. Turning them triumphantly, like a pre-school teacher lost in the moment. Under different circumstances she's sure she'd have been stopped by now, told it was abnormal, unhealthy, more than a lot crazy, but this isn't those circumstances and she remains the least crazy of them all. She can't remember the last time an actual sentence, meaningful words strung together with coherence and precision, has been directed her way.

(but she's not crazy, even though she probably is, and she doesn't care)

She reads until the musty smell of the aged pages seeps into the tips of her fingers, until she is intimately familiar with every cartoonish illustration and every mind numbingly repetitive rhyme.

Say!

I like green eggs and ham.

I do. I like them, Sam-I-am.

And I would eat them in a boat.

And I would eat them with a goat...

And as she gets to the end she pauses, like she always does, while the words echo and her vision blurs momentarily.

(like it always does)

“I do so like green eggs and ham...”

And suddenly she is standing on numb feet, light headed, giddy.

“George? Did you... George?”

“Thank you.”

“Oh God, George?”

“Thank you... Sam-I-am.”

Lexie is grinning, madly, wildly, enough to make her teeth hurt. Her hands are hovering somewhere over the call button but she is hesitant to break the spell, to summons the troops, to signal the end and the beginning and the beginning of the end.

“What did you say?”

She is breathless, high, laughing. There is salt drying on her lips and stinging her tongue.

“It's the last page... you never get to the last page...”

And she realises, with a rush of relief that almost sends her to her knees, that this... this is how it ends.

AN: Quotes source.

Giesel, T.S. & Giesel, A.S. (1960). Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. New York: Beginner Books Inc.