(This one's your Cindy.)

Warning: Yeah, you'll probably know what it's for after the first sentence. I usually keep swearing to a minimum but it hinders me from writing about the experience of most everyone I know my own age. It's gratuitous, absolutely, but it's true.

Except for the fuck weasel.

23:01

"Shit-eating son of a fuck weasel!"

You drop a shard of glass into the shallow metal pan beside you (a pretty delicate tinkle) and look at the girl with genuine interest.

"What's a fuck weasel?"

"A weasel that doesn't give a – cock-sucking manwhore."

It's hard to distract someone when you're tweezering glass out of the soles of their feet. A pretty delicate tinkle as you add another piece to the rest.

"Do you need a rest, hon?" you ask.

"Yeah? Like, it doesn't hurt when you're not poking at it. If you've got something else to be getting on with, you could come back after or something. It'd be cool."

You smile. "There is always something to be getting on with or something. We've a wee way to go; I'll be back in half an hour." Pat her knee, stand and stretch the muscles in your arms loose.

"Shit, I got blood on your scrubs, sorry. I'm sorry."

"Only a couple of spots; it's a quiet night. And the hospital laundry's got to earn its keep somehow."

The girl – the name's completely gone from your head, you should really check the notes – isn't reassured. If anything, she looked happier when you were pulling glass out of her foot. Crapballs, you did not need this to get complicated. Why couldn't the night just stay quiet?

...

23:25

You notice the mousy-looking guy from earlier hanging around again. He starts towards the curtains that are pulled around the bed where – you really need to look at the nurse's notes – the girl with a shit-ton of glass sticking out of the soles of both feet is waiting for you to come back. He realises you're looking and freezes, little black eyes twitching, whole body quivering, then is out the door fast as.

A nurse comes over with a stomach-pump and alcohol-induced injuries that has your name all over it.

...

23:42

"Hey," you say, tweezers in hand, smile on lips. "Sorry about that, didn't mean to make you wait so long. How're you feeling?"

"Bored."

"That's the way. Ready for another round?"

The – screw it – girl lies back with a grim nod and grits her teeth. She hisses as soon as you touch tweezers to glass.

"Have you got anyone here with you?" you ask. "Didn't see how you came in."

"Oh, not really, eh."

You pause to consider her expression – there's a caginess you've learned to recognise and fear because it means you're going to go home feeling sick at heart whether you like it or not. Perspective and detachment, wouldn't it be nice. "Then I'll make sure the guy hanging around doesn't bother you ... tallish, light hair, mousey-looking."

"Him." She squirms. "You don't need to worry about him, he's just a bit, like, weird, and no hable englasias, you know?"

Yeah, and doubtless he speaks Spanish as well as her. Another long splinter of glass, slightly curved, is extracted and she screws up her eyes and bangs the back of her head against the bed until she can talk again, "Fuck, fuck. Just leave him alone; he'll probably disappear at midnight anyway."

A noncommittal nod to hide your thoughts sifting through the proper authorities you could pass this on to. It would be so nice just to pass this on.

Beeps of doom issue from the pager clipped onto the waistband of your scrubs, and you flick the tweezers onto the tray. "'Pologies, it's all hands on deck; I'll be right back."

...

23:57

"Where were we?" you ask.

"Glass. Pain. Fuck weasels."

"Reckon a honey badger could take a fuck weasel?" She huffs a laugh and groans. "We're on the homeward stretch, I promise. Just a couple more and it's antiseptic and bandage time."

She gets through it with a stream of curses to keep her sane, and you smile as you swap tweezers for a swab. "So, are you ready to tell me how you did this?"

"I told you, there was a broken window; I wasn't careful." Hiss from the sting of sterilisation but it's nothing near what she's already been through. A clean, healing pain.

"That's right, sorry. Was it an old window? Some of the pieces are curved and greenish – usually means old. But if it's any consolation it matches the colour of your dress. Painful for sure but a bold statement of style."

There's silence, and you're only looking at her foot as you pass bandages over and around it, but you're watching for the change, for the crooked-nail of trust.

"What if it wasn't a window." There you go. Another pause. "Do you believe in fairy tales?"

(Remember the twelve sisters last month with sleep deprivation and blisters – not serious enough to hold and sent away with a warning to keep minor things out of the E.D.?)

"What kind of fairy tales, hon?"

"The ones that don't work out."

(Psych ward, 2A. You tell your brain to shut up.)

The girl pleats the skirt of her dress in neat, straight lines. Smoothes them out and pleats them again, neater and straighter. Smoothes. Again.

"What if I told you, would you believe that a person could be a fairy tale? And two steps sideways through the fabric of the world are the fae, who make it all true." She whispers, barely audible – you might not have heard it at all.

(2A. Shut up.) "We're done here," you tell her like the coward you are, patting her knee, "Let's get you to the lounge and the tv, though I don't like your chances for what's on at this hour. When you're ready to tell me," you say with another pat on her knee, "I'll be here."

You pick up the shallow metal pan to only the sound of the tweezers skittering around inside. The glass is gone.

...

24:34

In the rec room, with a cup of scalding-hot coffee in a Styrofoam cup, its lip worried and scored absentmindedly by your short-clipped fingernails, you're thinking about the girl who thought she was in love with a beast. Room 2A in the pysch ward.

Her dad and sisters had brought her in for a psych eval and dumped her. For weeks, she chattered cheerfully about this wonderful animal so big and ferocious but always so gentle with her, who owned a house and servants (sometimes, out of all the crazy, that struck you as the weak link in her story – who the hell had servants anymore?) and listened as she read stories. She would laugh and say if she was in your shoes she wouldn't believe it either, and more often than not she seemed like the happiest, sanest person in the entire hospital. And then without warning, like a switch flicked, she started screaming and crying that she had to go back to her beast, he was dying and needed her, she'd promised. Psych staff had restrained her and after a few days of letting the whole ward know about it, she subsided. She was still there now, looking out the window of 2A, the light in her eyes swallowed up.

Someone's left the radio on, and Patti Smith is moaning Ah, take it. That day you said to me, 'It could never be'.

You've finished your coffee and chuck the cup in the bin. Thank fuck you're not in psych.

...

25:07

"Okay," you say to the girl. You're both sitting on the in-patients' couch, splitting worn blue leather, she with one leg hooked up under the other that swings free backwards and forwards. "Let's say, hypothetically, that there is a realm of the fae and that it somehow connects with this one. What does that have to do with you walking over cut glass?"

"It was three years ago," the girl begins then stops. Shakes her head a shrugs helplessly.

"My dad," she says, "he believed in it all. He believed so hard he managed to catch one of them. A lady with golden-green hair and eyes like mirrors. He grabbed her and he held her and she gave him two children which bound her to him, and she hated it. When he died, because of the kids, she was stuck here still with no one to turn on but me. Then I heard about a ball: there were a couple of things in the newspaper about cases of exhaustion, urban legends of someone's cousin's friend's sister finding a passage where it shouldn't be, shoes danced to pieces, twigs of silver and gold. And my stepmother got worse with every story that turned up, and I couldn't understand it until she let slip that she couldn't even get into that ball – but mortals could, were practically being invited to."

The girl pauses, and you wonder if you're supposed to say something – not that you can think of something to say.

"So I figured I'd go. I'd go as far as I had to, and be back before midnight so I wouldn't get caught. Find whoever was in charge, throw myself at their feet and beg that my stepmother and sisters be taken far, far away. It didn't not sound hard in my head but, fuuuck," she draws the words out long and low, "it was so much easier in my head."

"How does the glass fit in?" you ask.

Her mouth pulls itself into a smile that is pure self-hatred. "I told myself that it was like a passport, a token to see me through whatever gates I had to cross, but it was more like vanity. My stepmother, she has the most amazing things you wouldn't even believe. Dresses that catch the light and it's like the moon shining, and a harp that sings by itself, and ... I love her things. But she had these heels made of glass – each one piece spun out like a dream – and I took them because they looked like magic and I was going to a fairy ball.

"I took one step, two steps out of the apartment and they shattered beneath me. I didn't even make it to the lift."

If you were honest with yourself, you could admit that right now, in this moment, the girl's eyes are so brilliantly bright with tears and fury and broken dreams that you are terrified. Scared in your bones.

"Damn it, I didn't even make it three feet away from her – I didn't even taste the air outside. Lying on the ground wondering how to drag my stupid ass to the hospital if I couldn't even stand."

She slams the heel of her hand against the sole of the foot tucked up beneath her and you have to grab her wrist to stop her doing it again.

"You're not stupid, you're not. It's really good you came here."

"Whatever," she mutters. You've never been sure how people are expected to reply to that platitude either, but it's on the list: affirm the patient's choices.

Lighten up, darling. Cynicism always bites hardest after midnight.

"Really. I have to ask, what do you think about going home?"

The girl jerks her shoulders, shakes her head a little, takes a short breath, rubs her palms up and down her thighs slowly, gives up on answering and slumps against the couch.

"Okay, that's okay. You've done the right thing. Let's go back a step, do you think you'd be safe? Do you have anyone you can call?" One question at a time, damn it, you're tired.

She laughs. "I dunno. I don't know. This was supposed to be over already, this – I don't have any plans anymore. I don't know."

"There are people you can talk to. We have their numbers and I can give you pamphlets, but what you really need now, I think, is sleep. The world's brighter in the morning."

"Yeah. What's the time? I thought I heard the clock strike twelve."

You look at your watch with its steadfast second hand like a heartbeat. "You don't want to know."

...

03:00

You're pulling on your worn-soft, red jacket and stumbling your way through the sliding glass doors when you see him. Your heart falls at his feet in relief. You could do it alone, could survive the night on your own, no question – but when the shoulder's there, waiting in the freezing dark of three in the morning to offer itself, you'd have to be stupid not to lean against it.

"Why aren't you tucked up making sure the bed will be warm for me when I get home?" you ask.

"There was a party at a friend's place."

"Anyone I know?"

"No one you'd want to know." He grins, big and brash and gorgeous.

"My, what big teeth you have," you deadpan.

"All the better to eat you with, my dear." To labour the point, he ducks his head and nibbles along the line of your jaw, and you let him because it's three in the morning, and no one's around, and it feels good.

You sigh but halfway through it slips from pleasure into bonedeep weariness.

"What's the matter, babe?" he asks.

"It's just," you say and stop, fighting grey matter to wrangle this feeling into words. "There are no fairy tale endings."

"Is this Beauty and the Beast again?"

"No. She's still non-communicative but no." Your hand flutters against his chest uselessly. "Tonight it was Cinderella. Her glass slippers broke – multiple lacerations to the soles of her feet, spent the better part of two hours digging the glass out. Her father's gone and her stepmother hates her, and I want to be the fairy-godmother wrapping everything up with a neat little bow 'til nothing hurts anymore. Why do I keep doing this to myself?"

"Hey," he murmurs, "hey hey hey, none of this. None of this."

His lips touch yours and the world blessedly becomes nothing but him; his hands wrapped around your waist, the smell of leather, laundry powder and cologne surrounding you.

"Some things are easier if you tell them as stories," he tells you, takes your hand and rubs away the headache you hadn't really noticed yet. "The world is big and stupid and the stories we tell ourselves makes it feel like shit happens for a reason; don't you blame yourself for trying to stay sane."

"It hurts more when they don't end right," you say, and your throat aches.

"But you know fairy tale endings are overrated. You think we'd be together in a fairy tale? Nah, you'd end up with some fucking blonde golden boy who couldn't smoulder to save himself."

"I do love me some smoulder."

"And moral complexity. You get to play out the redemption of the bad boy fantasy."

"Yeah, you're a real villain, honey." You wrap one arm around his waist and turn you both towards home.

Finally you let your head rest again his shoulder; it gets jostled every step and is hella uncomfortable, but you keep it there. "I'm sorry. I'm such a fucking mess."

"It's the end of a long night. You're entitled."