Starring:
Date: May 31, 2010
Summary:
Janet comes home and is rather startled to meet her new roommate.
"Someone's Been Sleeping in My Bed!"
Janet's Apartment
It's morning and as usual, Janet is just getting home. The apartment down opens after some random hollering from Mrs. Rodriguez about her making too much noise again (she wasn't even home… this is impossible to say the least… unless Parker raised his voice several octaves… seriously, she just gets stranger and stranger as time goes on). "Parker~" she virtually sings as she walks into the door. "I brought pastries~" yes, she brought food. Good food. With a broad grin she glances at the kitchen with no sign of him, but then it's still early. He's likely in bed.
She raps gently on the door before peeking into the room. "Paaaaarkeeeeerini~ I got your favourite~!"
Carrie rolls over in the bed, a cascade of shaggy brown hair falling away from her face. Unless Parker's gotten a whole lot of surgery, it's a baby bear moment - someone is sleeping in my bed, and here she is. Carrie wipes the sleep from her eyes. "Hullo?" she murmurs. "Home… brought your… Oh." Carrie blinks again, still sluggish. "Are you Janet?" she asks finally, untangling her necklace from her sleeping shirt. Janet would probably recognize the orthopedic plate she wears for a charm immediately. It's the kind you'd use to patch a broken cervical vertebra.
Cue scream.
It has happened.
Parker has become a girl.
Until… oh. It's not Parker. Clutching her hand over her chest, wide-eyed with wonder she nods, still in shock and for once in her life rendered speechless. Normally such things would cue incessant chatter. This time it cues something different. A wide-eyed kind of bewilderment. Her eyes blink hard as she stares at the girl and gropes for the frame of the door in an attempt to centre herself.
Door opens and shuts. Seemingly unaffected by what is — familiar — girlish screaming, Parker emerges from the bathroom, stepping into place right beside the bewildered Janet as he calmly maneuvers a tooth-brush inside his mouth. Covered with the purple wrap sweater he's come to liking while staying on the couch, he adjusts it with a shrug of his shoulders while glancing from Janet to Carrie to Janet again. There's a very unconcerned look on his face, until he glances down and happens to note that there's something in his best friend's hands. "Mmmf!" He exclaims happily around the toothbrush, pulling it from his mouth to note, "You brought pastries!"
Carrie rubs her eyes and sits up, nibbling thoughtfully at the cuticle of her thumb. This… is always awkward. "Parker kinda took me in as a stray." she says, at last. She looks up at Janet. "I c'n go if it's a problem. I'm Carrie." No sudden moves. You never know who has a gun in their purse, even in New York City, where it's practically illegal to think about guns. Or so her meth head friends from back home used to tell her. She looks over at Parker. "Did you forget to tell her you brought me home?"
Agape, Janet turns to face Parker and then back to Carrie. She's still blinking hard, processing exactly what's going on. She takes a deep breath and returns to her general Janet-ness. "I was totally surprised you should've called me Parker St. James you know how I don't like surprises surprises never work for me you know how that is I always freak out and scream and then I talk too much kind of like a squirrel on coffee you know how it is and the last time I talked like a squirrel on coffee I think someone slapped me to silence me because it wouldn't stop and we had this GSW in the ER and all I could talk about was that time when I went to the fair and they ran out of cotton candy because it was a clown on the bed and you know how I'm afraid of clowns. YOU KNOW HOW That is—"
Carrie perks up a little. "Gunshot wound? Is it bad? I…" She grinds to a halt and fidgets, twirling her fingers into her hair. "Um." She says. "Will the guy make it? I mean… gunshot wounds are tricky. They can go through and through and all you get is a sucking chest wound, or they can blow holes in all kinds of important stuff.
Very slowly, very calmly, and very professionally, Parker holds up two fingers — the others still occupied in holding his toothbrush — and brings them forward to press against Janet's mouth firmly, with enough pressure to at least make talking somewhat difficult. "I reeeaalllly didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal! She clearly needed help. I mean, look at her. It screams help." To which he maneuvers his fingers from her mouth to a full-fledged grip on her chin that he uses to turn Janet's face into the room to stare at Carrie.
His own head cocks in that direction to eye the rousing transient something considering about being apologetic, but not quite decisive enough to go with it. "She's speaking in the past tense. I apologize if that went to an octave you can't hear with your normal eardrums. Anyway. Carrie, this is Janbear. Jawonderful, this is Carrie. Look, she's talking about gunshot wounds. Bonding!" Chirping this last one out enthusiastically, he also plucks up the food from Janet's grip and wanders off — presumably to go spit out the start of his morning habits.
The fingers do their magic and Dr. McCarty is silenced enough for someone anyone to get a word in edgewise. Flippantly Janet waves a hand in the air and shakes her head. "It was years ago. I think he lived. Maybe…" she stares at the ceiling in an odd attempt to retrieve the memory. "I was just a silly med student back then now I'm the doctor if I ever decide on a job." Big if all things considered. "ANYways." She stares at Carrie as she has little choice thanks to Parker's motions. "It's… it's fine that she's here, I just … don't normally have visitors in my house." Or EVER have visitors in her house. Ever. Except Parker and on odd occasions Erin (or Morgan… or whatever her name is now).
Carrie rolls rather bonelessly out of bed in that way that only someone who is 18 years old and barely notices her joints yet can. She looks a little deflated about the guy in the ER. Gunshot wounds are fun. But she perks right up. "A doctor? Oh awesome, I'm totally trying to find out how to get into med school." Carrie's starting to ramp up to at least the same speed Janet and Parker operate on, though her slow westerner accent will likely never keep up with Dr. CoffeeSquirrel and Mr. Fabulous from New York. "I've been reading up on medicine a lot, although not the last couple years. I've been away and haven't been able to use a computer or anything during that time. They kinda locked me up. But now I'm back out and I can't wait to get started. And thanks for letting me stay in your place a couple nights. I was still pretty fried from the bus across the country, and I think the meds they were giving me were still wearing off.
"She's not a visitor," pipes up Parker's voice from out the bathroom, over the sound of the sink running briefly, "She's like a… a you. A tiny, wannabe you." He clearly doesn't mind saying these things right in front of Carrie — or, at least, where Carrie can hear him. When he strolls back out,toothbrush abandoned, mouth rinsed, he wanders right past the bedroom door with a little bit of a shudder. "Med school," he opines wearily, "All I can remember is that I fell asleep five times during that neuro final because they wouldn't let me leave when I was done. Two and a half hours, my ass!"
"…" Janet's eyes narrow. "She's… staying then?" Her tone is skeptical and her gaze somewhat incredulous. "No one wants to be me. I barely want to be me! Honestly, after that last— " she clamps her mouth shut and forces the warmest smile she can muster while crosses her arms over her chest. "— never mind. It's fine. She can stay." This is a little odd. Two roommates after years of alone time. Her arms uncross as she flippantly waves a hand in the air, this time to avoid talking about why no one would want to be her.
Carrie 's mouth sort of flattens and she looks away, her enthusiasm ebbing a bit. "No, it's okay, I can go." she says. "I mean… I don't want to put anyone out of their bed or anything." She looks at Janet. "But I do want to be you. I want to do what you do." Carrie's hands twine nervously. It's mostly true, but… it treads on some kind of uncomfortable territory. "Can you at least tell me how to get in? I mean… I finished my GED inside,so I'm starting with more or less nothing."
Parker doesn't seem to think there's a problem, so clearly there's no real need for him to address anything. At least, not until he gets some food in him. His progress past the door continues him right into the kitchen where he finds it's just as interesting opening cupboards to play 'where did I last leave the boxes of cereal or maybe we're out and I'm going to have to go to the store but I'm just not feeling the store right now… I suppose one can have frozen yogurt for breakfast in emergencies'… as to pay any attention to the small girlish mess he's made in the hallway.
"Honestly, it's fine. You can stay," Janet quips, but sighs heavily. It's just one more thing on the list. She's not her usual upbeat self and she struggles to maintain that somewhat strained smile as she nods, "Being a doctor is good times… just watch where you end up working." She pales a little as she moves her hands to her hips. "And it's possible to get into medicine… I had a more direct route… I just…" She forces the same smile before rubbing at her eyes.
Carrie 's eyes get much larger, as though she expects Janet to say something in particular. Which Janet stops short of. She draws her hands behind her and squeezes them into fists a moment, forcing them to stop twitching. "You just what?"
It's a topic Janet has been unusually quiet on lately: work. Her job has been pushed out of her mind as something irrelevant especially after she'd actually left it. "Just be careful." Her lips press together into a thin line. "We can talk about this in more detail later…"
Carrie looks down, as though she's terribly disappointed. She nods. "Okay. Thanks. I'll… chip in on rent as soon as I find a job, okay?" Carrie looks at Janet a bit more. "I just… I see people get hurt. I'm around people who get hurt. And I want to help them. You know?
"Don't worry about it yet." Janet manages a more genuine smile now. "And yes, wanting to help makes a big difference." She sighs. "Just know that wanting to help doesn't always turn the way you think it will and people will use that quality and you just need to be on guard because you never know when— " she cuts herself off again. "I… need to … do something." Her cheeks flush as she backs away from the doorway and turns to her own room. Things just aren't easy these days…
Carrie nods slowly and thinks about it as Janet goes. "Okay." She doesn't keep Janet from the bathroom or wherever it is she's going any longer. "Thank you. Most people'd call the cops when strange people turn up in their apartments. Or worse."