Reposted with kind permission from Saetia of FurAffinity. :3

September 25th, 2013

Elizabeth was the kind of woman who always craved social interaction. Whether it was at the hospital, with her friends or even a few of the creatures she met in between, she loved to be around others. In fact, there were few pleasures to her that were greater than that, especially when combined with one or more of her favourite things. However, once she’d come home from the anime convention she’d spent with several friends of hers, she had three more days of her holiday remaining. She had only planned as far ahead as the convention itself, and now that she was home, there wasn’t much she could do.

While this wasn’t normally a problem in and of itself, there was something else that had ensured this occasion had ended on a low note. Sure, she had enjoyed herself immensely, and she had seen off each of her friends at the railway station before she drove home. Instead, what weighed on her mind was an occurrence that had led to her believing that some of her colleagues took her for granted. She was beginning to feel unappreciated, even when congratulated for having saved so many lives, and the week before the convention, when she had been unable to save a patient suffering from Endocarditis, his family had tried to launch legal action against the hospital. She had only received support from a few of her colleagues, and another had voiced his opinion that she should be fired, even though there hadn’t been anything she could do to stop her patient’s organs shutting down one by one as the blood flooded with lethal bacteria reached them. She had found herself wishing time and time again that she had been able to diagnose this condition far sooner than she had, but it was too late to atone for this now.

As she drove home, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Even her car stereo hadn’t been able to help her, and normally she played her favourite songs through it when her desired radio programs weren’t on the air. This was not the only matter on her mind, however – she’d had a crush on one of the colleagues she had sometimes shared the operating theatre with, another red panda who had one year’s more experience in the medical profession than she did. She’d hoped it would disappear, but her feelings for him only grew stronger as time went by, to the point that she was convinced it wasn’t just a crush – she knew this was love. However, when she had worked up the courage to admit her feelings to him just prior to an operation, he had bluntly told her that he wasn’t interested in any romantic relationship with her, and threatened to report her to her superiors claiming she had sexually harassed him.

Now, she’d discovered a message on her answering machine from him in which he’d promised that he would have her fired. What’s more, there was another from one of her bosses demanding that she attend an inquiry over the complaint. She didn’t know how he’d managed to get her number, but if this cold, calculating and pernicious individual was the kind of person she’d fallen for, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to play the game of love again. Consequently, she had reached the lowest point she had seen in many years. She had never felt so lonely before. She couldn’t tell any of her friends about what was going on, since she didn’t think there was any way they could help her now, her low mood convincing her that they would have no understanding at all. She wanted nobody to disturb her, wanted nobody to come close to her. She desired an escape from this desolation. She wanted to leave this state of isolation. But this was an escape that would never come as far as she could see.

The anime convention had been the only thing capable of taking her mind away from what was happening. On the way home, she’d bought a bottle of red wine from a run down petrol station, and as she lay on her bed looking up at the ceiling and at her worldly possessions, the bottle in her hand paws felt like it was the only friend that was capable of understanding her. Shedding a tear, she uncorked the bottle and took a heavy swig from it, the taste of the grape wine flooding her mouth and leaving a sweet aftertaste. Already she could feel her mind and her body start to relax, and after a period of time she didn’t bother to track had passed, she drank some more of it, feeling her brain patterns start to slow down. She desired anything, anything whatsoever to get away from what was happening. And as thoughts of her first day back at work began dawning on her again, she took another swig. How much wine would it take to completely blot it out?

Only the second of its kind to appear in my gallery, now we’ve got an image of Jinx at her lowest ebb. Poor thing looks as downhearted as she can get – she could really use a hug. Done by Saetia, I’m unsure of the exact circumstances that originally led to this image being made back in 2012, so I had to think of some of my own. It took a while to decide, but I got there eventually. :3

Original image: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/7535513/