Pointless McSutcliffe

One Shot - Her Majesty (Genderbent)

Everything was a blur.

Her head ached, her soul ached, she wanted to scream but her throat felt cloged up with something.

From a distance, Stella could hear her mother's worried cries and her brothers' stomping feet, but her mind was too fuzzy to comprehend what really was going on.

***

The hospital room they'd assigned her was stark white and it reeked of disinfectant.

Her mother looked after her every waking hour for the entire week she was in there.

Apparently she'd suffered a brain hemorrage, result of an aneurysm probably brought due to... She couldn't remember. Too much medicine, too much light.

There was something wrong in her head, but at least she didn't saw things or heard voices. She'd just have to be extremely careful, for the rest of her life, not to get too shaken by... Well, anything.

Tough luck.

***

Her parents had been silently arguing for days, not that Stella even bothered to properly listen.

More like, her mother kept putting the blame for her condition in all and any thing she could think of, and her father kept telling her to shut up and serve dinner already.

For the while, Stella was banned from leaving her bedroom, or her bed. She also wasn't allowed to paint, or draw, or take pictures or even talk to her friends on the phone.

She wanted to argue back, say she wasn't handicapped, just a bit shaken, that she could talk and walk and move and live, but her mum just wouldn't give in.

It was suffocating.

***

Joan popped in for a visit, to bring her some missing homework and just generally cheer her up.

Mrs Sutcliffe quickly tossed her out, screaming all sorts of recriminations, calling her a lowlife and a troublemaker, amongst other, worse things.

Once again, Stella felt helpless, wanting to tell her mother that Joan had deffended her, rather than thrown her into the fight, but she couldn't quite find her words.

Her mum had hated Joan Lennon since she first showed up in her house, taught her daughter to wear trousers and smoke indoors, and just generally 'twisted her upside down', as she put it.

It was funny at first. Later on, not so much.

***

Stella missed her independence.

Mum had graduated from terrifyingly overprotective to regular overprotective, which meant she could walk around the house and do her art and her homework alright, but she still couldn't leave.

She often wondered what the flat looked like, now that Joan lived alone there. It was probably a mess. She missed that mess more than anything.

Charles Powell had been delivering her their assignements in Joan's name. He was a nice fella, dressed kinda posh with his sweaters and his hair all slicked in place. Mrs Sutcliffe approved.

Stella didn't understood what Joan saw on him, though. He was friendly, but she didn't saw him as her type. There would always be bias and resentment in that judgement, though.

At least he was polite, unlike Her Majesty, Mary Pauline McCartney.

***

Pauline visited sometimes, also in Joan's name. Stella couldn't even begin to understand why.