knowthyexits | (no subject)

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george

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It's been long enough and it's time for Sarah to start facing the music. She can't imagine that two weeks later, George doesn't have some kind of results for her and so she drags herself from bed and forces herself to march right over to him and ask. She's so used to demanding answers that now that there's an answer she desperately doesn't want to hear, she's scared.

She's scared and she's alone and that has never been a good combination with Sarah Connor.

Enough is enough, though. She steels herself and takes a deep breath, waiting for George's Clinic Day before she visits. She lingers outside the door, pacing back and forth, and waits until it's empty to enter.

"George," she says, voice steady and subdued. "Can we talk?"

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There were moments that any doctor, no matter how much they loved the job, hated. It wasn't the lack of sleep, it wasn't the lack of a social life, it wasn't the long surgeries or stubborn patients. The worst part for George, above anything else, was giving a patient bad news.

Worse even when he liked the patient.

Add to that the inability to do anything to treat it on the island, and George had been dreading seeing Sarah again. He knew she was avoiding the clinic even though her results had been long done, and he couldn't blame her; it was for the same reason that he hadn't gone searching her out.

His stomach fell when she finally came to find him in the clinic, but George did his best to keep it off his face. He was out of practice, and wasn't sure how to tell Sarah Connor that a terminator was right and she did have cancer.

"Of course," he said, immediately turning around to go find her chart. With it in hand, he gave her a smile, and gestured to the door of what he was starting to consider their room. "Come on."

Sarah follows him and wrings her hands. There's no point avoiding what she knows. He has the results. He knows and soon she's going to and in this moment, all she wants is John. Not that she would tell him -- she wouldn't want to worry him -- but to have her eyes on him and know he's safe, that's all she wants. "Let's not beat around the bush," she requests, her hand shaking slightly as she brushes her hair out of her face. "What do my tests say?"

He hated doing this, but George knew dragging out a diagnosis this bad was worse than giving it in the first place. The best he could do was soften the blow as much as he could, even when Sarah asked as bluntly as she did. "They say...you have cancer, Sarah. I'm sorry."

They say that when you receive bad news on a scale like cancer, you stop hearing and thinking. As far as Sarah is concerned, she's known to her very core since Cameron told her after the time jump. It doesn't diminish the pain she feels in her chest to know that she has cancer.

"How long do you think I have?" she asks, her gaze fixedly on the wall.

"That's the good part," George said, eager to move on to what little good news he could give. "You've still got years ahead of you. It's hard to tell exactly, since we're so limited, but we found it early. You've got time."

"Back home, it takes seven years for me to die," Sarah says, a depressed fatality overcoming her. "George, what are we able to do here without chemotherapy or options? What's time become reduced to?" She's already half-given up. Without John here, it's hard, some days, to remember why she fights.

"It's gonna shave a year or two off," George said frankly. "You're looking at a good five years, which is...it's more than most people get when diagnosed."

All she can think about is what will happen after five years. What happens if John shows up in five years and she's not there any more and it's not a disappearance, but death. Sarah takes a deep breath and keeps herself steady. "How badly are the treatments going to hurt me?"

"Normally, I'd tell you all about how chemo would affect you, but..." Here was the one thing George hated most about this job he loved. He hated being the guy giving bad news, he hated telling someone he liked as much as Sarah that there was nothing to do for her but wait to die. "We don't have anything here. I've been going through everything we have, all our inventory and research, and — we can't do anything to treat you, Sarah. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, you didn't do this to me," she replies instantly and without emotion, her voice steady as she stares forward and keeps her eyes on the wall. "So what can I do? Nothing? Eat well, exercise, no medical treatment while I live out my last years?"

"I'm sorry because I like you and I don't like being the one giving you this news," George pointed out. There where a million platitudes on the tip of his tongue, meaningless words he wanted to say in an attempt to make Sarah feel better, but they wouldn't work. They hollow words, sentiments that would only make himself feel better for a little while.

Sarah presses her fingers to her cheek, absently pushing her hair back over the ear, cataloguing what she ought to do and what she felt like doing. "So when do I visit you next?" she asks, evenly. "When do we start looking at whatever limited options I have?"

George hated hearing those words from Sarah, if only because they were the truth. She had limited options, and even those would do near nothing as time marched her on to the inevitable end.

"We can give it a couple of weeks, if you'd like. There's— there's no rush, and I can start putting options together for you."

"Please," is her singular request. She doesn't think she needs to say more than that and she's not sure the words would be there for her if she tried. Words, sometimes, fail her. Actions speak loudest of all and she reaches out to give a press of her fingers to his hand, squeezing lightly.

It's the best way she has to promise that she knows he's done everything he can and will continue to do so.

He squeezed her hand back, a little tighter than he might have with anyone else, touched that Sarah was reaching out in the first place. He wasn't sure if she was reassuring him or herself, but it was the first time she'd made any sort of gesture like that.

"I'm going to do the best I can with what we have, Sarah. I promise."

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