Post by fiona on Aug 19, 2009 12:22:58 GMT -5
FIONA.KATELYN.CLARKE
"fiery, reckless, dying"
HEY, MY NAME IS 'LITA' AND I'M 'SEVENTEEN'. I'VE BEEN ROLEPLAYING FOR THE BIG SUM OF 'SIX YEARS' MY OTHER CHARACTERS WOULD
BE 'NONE'
- - - name, "Fiona Katelyn Clarke. I was born with the last name Baker, though."
- - - nicknames, "What can you pull out of Fiona? Ona? Fee? It's mostly just Fiona... or Baldie... but that's only if you're really rude."
- - - gender, "...really? Need you ask? I know I don't have hair, but my features are feminine... aren't they?"
- - - sexuality, "Who's gonna date a girl with no hair? At all? I like boys, though."
- - - occupation, "Dying girl. No, seriously, it's a full time job."
- - - species, "I'm human. Don't let my withering body fool you."
- - - eyes, blue
- - - hair, "Are you trying to be smart with me? Look for yourself."
- - - build, short, skinny
- - - weight, 100 lbs even
- - - height, 5'0"
- - - fashion sense,
Fiona mostly wears sweats -- it's what she's comfortable in. Since she hangs out around the house a lot, what, with all of her chemotherapy and radiotherapy going on... it wears on a girl. Most people don't see a lot of her until she's on a good week. When she's feeling up to going out, though, many precautions must be taken. In the off chance that it's sunny, she has to apply copious amounts of sunscreen on because chemotherapy and sun? They don't mix. On top of the sunscreen, Fee also likes to cover up her bald head with a hat or bandana. That way, people don't stare as much. Plus, if she gets embarrassed, she can pull the hat down over her eyes. It's great, and that's part of the reason she likes it. When Fiona is out in public, she likes to wear nicer clothes -- because really, if she drops dead in public, the sarcastic teen says she "wants to look damn good" in her casket. Though it's usually just jeans, or anything to cover up her ravenged body, her clothes are usually pretty enough. Though they're cast offs from friends and her cousins, Fiona's jeans always fit nicely and look good, and her shirts are usually stylish enough... Sometimes she doesn't care what she looks like -- if it has a stain on it, who cares? She's dying. She can look like it every once and a while. Sometimes she even takes her hat off and lets the bald show. Most of Fee's clothes fit her body style -- short, slim, and whatever fat there is... mushy from chemo. Her shirts hide her soft belly, and her jeans, though usually too long, hide her knobbly knees and her bone-thin legs. She usually wears long sleeves to cover up her arms and doesn't wear V-Necks so that she can hide her port-a-cath. All of her clothing is coordinated to hide the fact that she's very, very sick, and that she's probably going to die.
- - - loves,
- - - loathes,
- - - overall personality,
If you know one thing about Fiona Katelyn Clarke, it’s that she doesn’t like the predicament that she’s in, but she’s not one to complain. She doesn’t claim to be much – she doesn’t think she’s strong about this leukemia, or that she’s a brave, valiant fighter when it comes to getting well again, but she doesn’t talk about how bad she’s feeling. She doesn’t like to talk about cancer much at all, though if she’s asked about it, she won’t beat around the brush. Fiona tells it like it is when it comes to her disease, though she does try to spare feelings. Cancer is a mighty touchy subject, and she has to be careful about how she explains her disease and her own outlook on how she thinks things are going to go down. She doesn’t ever say, though, “I feel like crap” or “God, I wish this wasn’t me.” Because even if she does feel like crap, or even if she does wish that she didn’t have leukemia, she wouldn’t say it out loud, because Fiona feels that other people don’t need to be bothered with her disease. It’s not right to plague other people with her worries, and she hates that even her parents have to hear about her disease so often, worrying about if their kid is going to make it or not. Fiona doesn’t like to burden others. Though she doesn’t consider that the reason she doesn’t complain (“I just think it’s pointless.”) she knows that if she starts talking about how badly she’s hurting, people are going to worry about her. She doesn’t want that. Fiona tries to be very self-reliant on her comforting, and so she doesn’t really seek solace in others. This is a bad thing, because she could probably use someone to spill her guts to, but she doesn’t.
Another thing about Fiona is that she’s a highly impulsive individual. When she wants an ice-cream, she goes out and buys one. If she sees a dog on the side of the road, she doesn’t think about the fleas getting into her parents’ house, she just takes the dog home. It’s who she is. The fact that somewhere, Fiona knows she’s dying has made her so very impulsive. She feels like if she wants something, she needs to act on it before she’s gone. Another reason Fiona might be acting so instinctively lately is the fact that she is trying NOT to think about dying. By just doing, rather than thinking, there isn’t much time for her mind to wander to the deep, scary place in her head where thoughts of death and being buried in the ground float around. If she’s kept busy, she doesn’t have to think what will happen if the chemo doesn’t work, or if she happens to get into a car accident or something. Death is a bad, bad subject to occupy her thoughts. It scares her, and makes Fiona feel as though she’s out of control. Being out of control isn’t something she really likes unless she chooses to be out of control. It sounds stupid, but Fiona likes stability. She likes to have her stuff together and organized, for the most part (not literally, of course, because no one appreciates the lived in look like Fiona does) and leukemia has taken that away from her. With leukemia, Fiona takes the backseat, and the disease is the one calling the shots. Fiona hates that like someone wouldn’t believe. One could call Fiona Katelyn Clarke a control freak, but really, she just wants to be back in control to make her own choices. That’s all she’s ever wanted, actually – to be able to have some stability, something to stand on. Cancer has pulled the trap door on Fiona, and she’s just been clinging onto the edge her whole life. She wants to climb back up and take charge again, but the sad thing is, her fingers are slipping…
Fiona is a tad defiant. When she was well enough to go to school, the teachers noticed that she had a little bit of a rebellious streak in her. For Fiona’s entire life, she’s been reigned in. At school, too – teachers always had their eye on her to make sure she didn’t pass out from exhaustion, or get anemic or something. Anything. Fiona hates being held in. Now that she’s getting older, she’s trying to get more freedom. She’s not your conventional cancer kid – truth be told, she’s not sure if she wants to continue treatment. Fiona’s the kid who takes her dad’s car for a joyride because she can, and she’s afraid that she’ll die before she gets her driver’s license. Part of her rebellious nature is instilled by fear, but another part is there because she doesn’t WANT to be afraid – she wants to be brave and crazy and be herself, and not what leukemia makes a person – terrified, meek… She wants to be strong! She wants to go run, and after that run NOT have to go lay in bed for a whole day! She doesn’t want to be tired anymore! Does no one understand that!? Fiona sure doesn’t feel like it. She hates it. She hates every single bit of her cancer, and so she rebels. She does bad(ish) things. She talks back. She’s snappy with adults, with her peers, with EVERYONE.
When Fiona’s on a good day, in a happy mood, she can channel some of her true self into her attitude. Deep down, she’s a thrill seeker. Really, she’s very crazy. Fiona is actually one of the riskier, crazier people you’ll meet. She seems like she’s constantly a little out of her mind, and her impulsiveness and spontaneity sometimes shock people and overwhelm them. Fiona is just a bit too much for some people. She speaks at top speed, and the sad thing is, it’s as though she’s trying to cram fifty or so years into whatever time she has left. And it’s not working very well, either. Fiona performs at top speed, and then sleeps the whole next day because she doesn’t have the kind of energy to do that. Sickness isn’t something that you can be choosy with. You can’t take a week off from being sick, and Fiona knows that the best of all. She does not want a disease. She does not want to be held back. She wants to go out and be happy and cheerful and the way she would be if she weren’t ill. She wants to go out and be a thrill seeker. What do thrill seekers do? They seek thrills, and then they do those thrills. Some days (even the majority of her days, depending on how desperate she is to get out and do something with herself) Fiona doesn’t even have the energy to seek out the thrills, let alone do them. It sucks. She hates it, but she can’t change a thing. She can’t make herself get better, faster. It’s not like she can take more chemo and get better faster – things just don’t work that way, and Fiona hates it. Her craziness is just that she likes to do more insane things. She likes to take risks, do fun things that she doesn’t have the energy to do… She’s also quite funny, and rather silly. Fiona’s good at making people laugh, even when she can’t laugh herself. She’s good with voices and just doing random things to make people laugh. She’s pretty clumsy, too (chemotherapy does NOT contribute to grace, thank you) and is just not very coordinated or together at all. She’s prone to “spaz attacks” and flails around quite a bit.
Fiona may be a slob, but she likes to have control, in the end. Her whole life, she’s never been able to sit at the reigns. She’s always been controlled by one force or other – her leukemia, her parents, her teachers… – and it’s not in her nature to be controlled. Fiona doesn’t very much like the fact that she can’t control how fast she gets well, or if she’ll get well at all. She doesn’t like that she has no say in whether she’s allowed to stop treatment to save her parents some money that they can spend on themselves once she… you know… kicks the bucket. Fiona longs to have that kind of handle on her life. And that’s where her impulsive, spontaneous-ness comes in. If she decides quickly and without letting other people know, she can have a bit of freedom. If her parents don’t know what she’s doing, they aren’t controlling her. If she can only decide on the fly, if she can just make herself impulsive and spontaneous and crazy, than she’s in control, right? She’s calling the shots, even if they’re crazy and mis-firing… she’s making them, isn’t she? Even if her plans fail epically, it’s still the thought that counts, isn’t it? The fact that she’s in control? Does that matter? Fiona just wants to be in charge of her life. Is that so much to ask for? Maybe so…
.
- - - hometown, She doesn't really know, because the adoption was closed, but she was raised in Dublin
- - - family,
Ava Marie Clarke
"I love my mom, but she's stubborn as hell... just like me. It's weird we're not really related and she and my dad are spending so much money to keep me alive, but I'd do the same thing... that's a little differen't, though. They raised me. I'm sort of obliged to want to keep them alive... Mom won't take no for an answer, though, and she's really strong. I love her to peices."
Theodore "Teddy" Andrew Clarke
"Dad's a bit more easygoing than mom. I love him for that... I do something reckless? He's not the one who's going to punish me. They fight about that sometimes, because Mom's afraid that it'll make me love him more, but it's not like that. I love them the same for different reasons... does that make sense?"
- - - pets, "I have a puppy named Beowulf. I call him Killer, though."
- - - overall history, Fiona Katelyn Baker was born on August 31st. She was a tiny baby of five pounds and ten ounces, and she was unwanted, to say the least. Her mother was a teenager of only sixteen years old, and the pregnancy had been difficult for her. Tessa, Fiona’s mother, was a tiny girl herself, and she hadn’t even the strength in her to carry the baby full term. Fiona was born premature, and Tessa signed the papers and left, leaving little Fiona to the foster-care system. Fiona’s mother never wanted anything to do with her baby – sure, there was a connection on some level, and she may have regretted it later on, but she really couldn’t handle a child at the tender age of sixteen. So Fiona spent the first year of her life with the Straulina family. They had a daughter named Alex who swooned over the kid, and another named Annie who was only three years old when Fiona came to the family. Fiona had a wide array of brothers and sisters while she lived in Seattle with the Straulinas, and so she usually took second fiddle to someone else. Her first year of life was spent in a crowded house with lots of other small children, and yet she found happiness there. The Straulinas, though, were a temporary family, and Fiona was given to the Clarkes after a year with the Straulinas. The Clarkes, Ava and Teddy, were a couple with no other children, who loved Fiona like she was their own kid, and treated her just as so. She got more attention than she had with the Straulinas because the Clarkes were unable to conceive, and thus Fiona was a gift to them. She was spoiled rotten during her second and third years of life, puttering around the town where the Clarkes lived. Eventually, the Clarkes adopted little Fiona, and she took their surname. It wasn’t a big change for the kid – she didn’t really understand much about families and how to tell if you were a part of one, but the Clarkes were thrilled that now Fiona was officially their child.
When Fiona turned five, she really started talking. She had babbled meaningless things when she had been three and four, and had learned to talk right on time, but now she was saying more meaningful thing. She asked questions that weren’t exactly welcome with her Mommy and her Daddy – questions such as, “Why is my hair different than yours?” or “Why do you and Mommy have dark skin and I don’t? And Daddy, why are your eyes different than mine?” That year, the couple had to explain, the best they could, that they were her mommy and daddy now, but they hadn’t always been. To say the least, Fiona had been confused, but she’d gotten over it. Something else was happening to her and nobody understood it. She didn’t have time to be worrying about why she didn’t look like her mom and dad – she was getting tired quicker, bruising easier, and paling right up. Now, Fiona hadn’t ever been the healthiest of kids – she’d often had a fever that the doctors couldn’t figure out, or she’d gotten a bruise in a strange place… But the pin-prick red spots that appeared all over her weren’t normal – they couldn’t be explained by anything. Ava was fed up with her daughter’s pediatrician having no answers for them, so she took Fiona to the ER. When they stated that it wasn’t an allergic reaction of any kind, Fiona was admitted to the hospital and subjected to a barrage of tests. She was pinched and poked, scanned and surveyed, and the worst of it all? The needles. She had a Lumbar Puncture, which, to even the best, hurts like Hell, and she got vials and vials of blood taken. Fiona was exhausted, and the whole family was just about at the end of their ropes when the doctors reached a frightening conclusion – Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Now, to Fiona, they were just words, but to her parents, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia was something infinitely terrifying, even though they really didn’t know much about it.
Teddy Clarke’s first words after hearing the doctor’s diagnosis was an uncultured, “Huh?” but Ava, who had studied to be a nurse (she was now a secretary in a school office because she found that she couldn’t deal with blood) knew a little about diseases, and while she wasn’t entirely familiar with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, she knew one thing: it was cancer. Her baby girl had cancer. The doctor referred the family to a different doctor (an oncologist) named Haleigh McCabe – the Clarke family would get to know her quite well – after explaining a bit about what Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Fiona was discharged from the hospital, and then the little family drove an hour from their home to meet this Dr. McCabe. After reading Fiona’s reports, Dr. McCabe gave her a treatment regimen to give to the doctor back in Seattle. Luckily, they were able to receive the treatment at the Seattle hospital. Ava had asked about pills, but Fiona was too young to swallow them, so a port-a-cath was installed in little Fiona’s chest, and she received harmful chemo-drugs from a needle poked through the skin to reach the port-a-cath. Fiona responded well to the treatment, but it was a long four months. Puking, headaches, fatigue… and her hair. Fiona lost her lovely red locks of hair, the ones that were so different than her mother’s and father’s hair colors, which were brown and black, respectively. It took a long time for Fiona to get over it, but when she went into remission, she was thrilled, and the only thing she could say was, “Momma, HAIR!”
Fiona was already in school when she was told she was in remission. She had come to school bald, and since none of the children had even encountered a child like Fiona, they teased her. Fiona also endured teasing about her dry skin – chemotherapy made her hands and feet dry and wrinkled, and whenever the class got into a “holding hands circle”, no one wanted to hold hands with Fiona, because along with her bald head, she had grandma hands. It didn’t help that Fiona didn’t have the typical Quileute pigmentation – her skin was paler. She didn’t fit in very well, and had trouble making friends. First grade was a horrible time for the kid, when she should have been happy that she was finally healthy. Fiona did make a friend, though, eventually. Her name was Rita, and she was the only one brave enough out of her friends to approach Fiona and ask about her hair and her hands, which had been smoothing out since the discontinuation of her chemotherapy. Rita had approached Fiona two months after her chemotherapy had stopped. “Why is your hair like my Gam Gam’s?” she had asked bluntly. Fiona’s hair had just started coming in and it had given the kids something else to tease her about – it was fine and pale and wispy, and it had to be treated tenderly, or it would break off. Fiona had crossed her little arms and said, “I had Ay-cute Lyphoblasmic Lakemia.” Rita had responded with a confused, “Oh” and ran off to her friends, who had been drawing with chalk on the blacktop. Fiona had been confused by the exchange, but the next day, Rita had come back and asked her if she wanted to play with her and her friends. Fiona had excitedly accepted, and the last two weeks of school were blissful. The best part? By the last day of school, her wispy grandma hair had been replaced. In its place with thin brown curls that covered her whole head. Fiona was in heaven.
That summer, Fiona’s hair lightened to its original color and grew down to cover her ears. Her mother cut it into a pixie cut so that it had, quote “Some sort of style”, and Fiona spent the days running through the neighborhood with Rita. The two girls were inseparable – like sisters. At one point, they started finishing each others’ sentences. Fiona Clarke and Rita Boyd even got into the same class in September. Second grade was a breeze with her best friend at her side. Fiona even made a few other friends – Rita introduced them, and they all got along fine. They even started a “secret club” that only they could be members of. They played house together, and they were always having sleepovers. Third grade passed by much the same, but it also marked the end of Fiona’s maintenance therapy – the stuff that would keep her cancer in remission . She went to school, and for the first time in her memory, she didn’t have to take any pills before she left (save for the gummy vitamin her mother had pressed into her palm.) Third grade was wonderful for Fiona, too. All the girls could do was talk about who they had “a crush” on and who was the cutest boy in the class. They did all of the girliest things together ; makeovers with their mothers’ “borrowed” makeup, Would You Rather?, and dress up games. But fourth grade brought on a double whammie.
Fiona went in for a routine checkup (well, a check up on her cancer, that is) and it was found that she had relapsed. She would begin treatment two weeks from that day. Two weeks from the date of her checkup was not only the day before school started, but it was also the day that Rita told Fiona she was moving. Fiona was crushed – the girls cried together, and Rita came with Fiona to get her chemotherapy, and then they slept over Fiona’s house for three days in a row. Rita went to school with Fiona for two days before she had to start packing. A week later, she was gone, moved off to Florida with her father after a bitter divorce. Fiona was lonely for months, and sort of isolated herself from the group of friends she had made because of Rita. Eventually, she was too tired to come to school because of chemo, and her parents got her a tutor so that she could be homeschooled. Fiona spent the rest of fourth grade at home. Eventually, she reconnected with all of the friends that she had cut herself off from, but it was never the same as Rita. It was hard for the girls to make phone calls because of the long distance between Florida and Ireland, but they kept in touch using their parents’ emails, and eventually their own emails once fifth grade rolled along.
But Fiona had made a new friend in the unlikeliest of places. When she was getting chemo, she met a girl named Cadence. Cadence was fifteen, which was older than fifth grader Fiona, but Fiona looked at Cadence like she was the big sister she’d never had. And the thing was, they found out that they both were taking the same chemo drugs AND they had the same type of Leukemia. Cadence was bald, but she had a wig – Fiona did not, because her parents weren’t the wealthiest of people, and so she had to go around with turbans and baseball hats on. Fiona started fifth grade back in school with permission to wear a baseball cap to cover her head. She and Cadence kept touch over emails. The sad thing was, that eventually, the emails stopped. They stopped quite abruptly, leading Fiona to think that Cadence had been keeping something from her. Maybe she had gone on vacation? But a week after the emails stopped, Fiona got a letter in the mail. It was an invitation to Cadence’s funeral. Fiona was grief stricken for months. All she could think about was “That’s going to happen to me.” And she didn’t want that to happen to her. She didn’t want to end up like Cadence, who had a wig on in her casket, just the way Fiona wouldn’t have wanted it. Fiona would have wanted to have hair when she died, because she wouldn’t have wanted to die from cancer. She knew the statistics – not many people survived a relapse, and the odds were stacked against her.
But she went against the odds and was told she was in remission in sixth grade. Fiona was so pleased. It was the middle of the year when she stopped her maintenance drugs, and by then her hair had, once again, returned to its original color and texture. It was a little curlier than it had once been, but Fiona couldn’t complain, because really, she had HAIR! Seventh and eighth grade flew by. Fiona had her first boyfriend, she was in the school play… she was so, so happy that she could finally be normal. She told Rita everything that she was doing, and found that Rita had found happiness, too. Rita had a steady boyfriend and was going on a cruise in the summer. Everyone seemed to be happy, and bad days seemed to be behind Fiona. But things were never that easy. Not ever.
At the end of her sophomore year was Fiona relapsed. She knew that the odds of surviving the relapse were slim, but her parents pushed her into doing chemotherapy and then radiotherapy on top of that. Fiona was a wreck. She knew her medical bills were much more than what her parents could pay off, and she couldn’t stand the guilt of it. She confronted her parents about it, but they dismissed the accusations she threw at them, saying she was their daughter; they would do what was in her best interest. Fiona, currently, doesn’t know what to do. Does she refuse treatment? She can’t – she’s not of age. She’s afraid of dying, and wants to go back into remission, but she knows it’s not likely that she’ll live much longer, and she a.) wants to live a full life, and b.) wants to stop putting her parents into what she assumes is heavy debt. Not that they’ll admit it, though. As of now, she visits the hospital once every two weeks to receive chemotherapy, and three days a week for radiotherapy. She’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, and she doesn’t know what to do.
