The characters featured do not belong to me. This work is not for profit and meant as artistic expression inspired by the original work.
Chewing Gum
by Beth
At night, every hospital turns into a dungeon. The walls move in, crushing every hope you ever had. The industrial beige turns rust-red at the edges with old blood.
When he comes in, Violet is standing in front of the bay window in the waiting room. Her eyes are closed, but her head moves unerringly, as if she could see Willy through pale skin and mauve eye shadow. She doesn't make a sound, but years with the Oompa-Loompas taught him how to understand body language.
Why?
"Charlie said we should come," he says, summoning a brittle smile. "And he still doesn't have his license, so even though you don't need a license for the elevator-" He laughs nervously.
Violet opens her eyes, which are purple, a trace of the old magic. Six, seven years ago now, and she's almost of a height with Willy.
"My mother won't die," she says. "She's a winner. Not like that."
Not from a botched plastic surgery, Willy understands. Not from a septic shock, not that simple, not that stupid.
She's trembling, very slowly, and it reminds him of the first time they met.
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "I've noticed that people like hugs when they're troubled!" he announces brightly. Then, with more hesitation: "Would - you... like... a hug?"
She nods and seems to understand how much that offer means, because she puts her hands on his shoulders gingerly and just lays her face on the lapel of his coat. After a moment, he puts an arm around her, because that's the way his father hugs him.
"You smell of chewing gum," Violet says after a while.
"I've been making a new kind. You can blow it into a series of bubbles and they stay blown - you can build whole structures out of them. It's very creative."
"I'm sure I'll love it," she says.
And later, when Charlie's unrelenting stubbornness wears out the hospital's reluctance about letting non-credentialed practitioners treat a patient, when the good doctors McCoy repay the favours they both happen to be owing Wilbur Wonka, when a woman is brought back from the brink of organ failure, Violet tries the Sculpti-Gum and pronounces it the greatest thing she's ever chewed.
FINIS