unseentides | [DARROW] March 7th

I think at that point I was tired of talking about things but not ever doing them. It was so much like back at Hailsham, the elaborate fantasies we constructed but knew we'd never get to live. But the thing is, I could live in Darrow. I could be so many things I couldn't be before. I don't know what was holding me back, but at some point I just thought enough is enough and decided I was going to become something more.

And it's not that my job as a volunteer at the hospital didn't satisfy me. It really did. I guess, and maybe this is silly looking back, I just wanted something that said I was worth a little more than that. A certificate or a letter after my name or something that said I was more than someone who gave and never got back. That I was more than a donor. That I deserved something in return.

So I went to Darrow's community college and found myself some forms. I never even considered something other than nursing. I'd always thought I was a good carer - not to boast, of course, but I truly believed I was - and figured this came close. I figured it would be better, even, having patients that had a future that wasn't the abrupt ending of their lives.

I was shaking as I took the forms, carried them back with me to a coffeehouse where I ordered tea and sat. I pored over them like they held the secrets to all of life's mysteries, even let myself smile at the pictures of nurses doing duties on the front and back. I know how ridiculous that sounds. I know that they were only models meant to lure me into the degree. I'm not that naive. But they made me happy nonetheless. They allowed me to picture moving forward.

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He doesn't usually stop much in places like this. He doesn't really have a use for them. Though he drinks coffee, it isn't an addiction like it seems to be for some people, and he has a coffeemaker in his own apartment that serves him well enough. Those fancy flavored drinks, all the different varieties, they've never held any appeal for him, mostly because he doesn't see the point. He's been out, though, is carrying a bag from the hardware store in one hand, and it's chilly enough outside — one of few things he'll admit to being bothered by — that ducking inside seems like a good idea. When he spots Kathy sitting at one of the tables, he's glad he did, heading over to her table once he's gotten his coffee and smiling just slightly.

"Hey," he says. "What's all this?"

"Paul!" I couldn't help but smile at seeing him, although he'd pulled me out of my thoughts and I might have even jumped a little. I pushed the forms from where they were spread over the table into a neat pile closer to me and gestured to the seat opposite mine, hoping he'd sit. "Oh, it's just... I wanted to see about applying for a nursing program. I've been thinking about it for a while, now."

He waits until she's gestured to the chair, not wanting to intrude, but then he does take a seat, paper cup still in his hands. That's one more reason to have stopped in, anyway. Driving, he can wear gloves, but working on engines, he can't, and though it hasn't proved to be a problem, winds up feeling half the time like he needs to thaw his fingers. "Yeah?" he asks, out of interest rather than just a formality. "That's great."

"You think so?" I asked, pleased he'd chosen to take a seat. I both appreciated the company and the validation. And I know that I had received support from Faye and Sookie, others, too, but I really liked Paul, and for some reason or another his opinion mattered to me. I know that at the end of the day I was signing up for me, but it didn't hurt, I don't think, to have friends that believed in me. "I'm just hoping I get in, honestly. There's so many forms."

"I think there's usually a lot of paperwork," he says. It's not like he knows a lot about it when he's never needed to come close to doing anything like that for himself, but it's just the sort of thing he's picked up along the way. Besides, if it were too simple, it would probably defeat the purpose. While he'd like to tell her that she won't have anything to worry about, though, his knowledge doesn't extend quite that far. "You've been working at the hospital, right?"

"Volunteering," I clarified, although I'm not sure how much difference it made. Maybe I didn't want him to give me more credit than I was worth. He was right, too, there were always so many forms in life, and I think these were the first that I'd be filling out that didn't, somehow, signify an end. But I was so afraid that there was something they'd want to know that I didn't, having been born a clone. I didn't even have a last name.

"It's still experience," he says. Granted, he doesn't know how much difference that will make to the people who'll review this sort of thing, but if nothing else, it can't hurt to have some practical experience that she can point to. He never needed that. All he had to do was show Shannon what he could do with an engine. But then, he never even finished high school, and never intended to do anything that he'd need further education for. "Might help."

Experience, yes, but I still didn't want credit for what I hadn't yet done. I wondered, for a guilty moment, whether it was wrong to seek out to do such a similar thing for money. But it wasn't about the money, I don't think. I got by just fine. I always had. What I wanted was to be able to help as much as I could, and I knew so much of it called for a nursing license in a place like this. "I hope so. It'll be strange, going back to school."

"How long's it been since you went?" he asks, genuinely curious. Aside from her interest in medicine, and her obvious resemblance to Irene, he doesn't really know that much about Kathy. Of course, he's hardly forthcoming about his own life, so it isn't as if he's in any position to press for details, or like he spends time thinking about it or anything. Still, he likes her; he'd be interested to know.

"A while," I laughed lightly. It was funny how it felt sometimes like it was just yesterday, and others like it could have been a hundred years ago. "Maybe ten years ago. I didn't go to university or anything like that. Where I'm from, how I was raised, that's not what we did. But I finished high school and did some training for my job. Nothing like this, though. It all seems very... formal."

I'd researched and written part of my essay at the Cottages, a task they assigned us for the two or so years we found ourselves living there. Mine was on Victorian novels, though, so I didn't know anything about the scientific side of things beside what we learnt at Hailsham. The biology lessons that were told with the careful note that we were different.

"I think it is," he says, nodding. "But I've never done anything like it either." She knows that he left home as a teenager, so maybe it should stand to reason. He thinks it might bear mentioning, though. He never even finished high school, and that was a public school, nothing at all like applying to take college courses would be. But then, he would never have needed to. It's not like anyone ever required a degree to work as a mechanic, or any of the other various things he's found himself doing.

"It's really just a means to an end," I said with a shake of my head, lifting my cup and saucer to my mouth and sipping my tea. I'd been so absorbed in what I'd been reading, it had grown lukewarm, almost cold. "I just really want to be able to help patients however I can. And there's a lot of things I can't do if I don't have the right qualifications. Understandably."

"Right," he says, nodding. "So this'll be good." It's pretty admirable, honestly, someone doing that kind of work, though he wouldn't know how to say so. And it isn't as if he thinks less of what he does, but those just aren't his skills. They never have been; he doesn't see how they ever could be. Even having gone straight here, as it were, he's cut out for one thing, and that's been his life since he was a kid.

"I hope so," I said, nodding, smiling. Like I said before, I was doing this for myself (and for my future patients, I guess, too) but having Paul's approval still meant a lot. One way or another it was something that I'd always sought, as much as I liked to see myself as independent. I think that's just part of what makes us human. I wonder what Miss Emily and Madame would have to say about that. "I can only try. Anyway, enough about me. How are you?"

"I'm alright," he says, shrugging, easy, though he never knows what to do with any kind of scrutiny. His life here is a quiet one, mostly uneventful, and he's found that's how he prefers it, for the most part. Occasionally the quietness gets under his skin, but he prefers that to looking over his shoulder, never knowing what might happen. This, he reminds himself, is just normal, a thing that friends do. "Things at the garage are good."

[DARROW] March 7th

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