On September 12th, 2035, Cara Mavi stays out late roller skating, the way she does every Wednesday.
She'll be tired the next day, of course, but it's worth it! She has a blast and passes out almost as soon as she finishes rinsing off the sweat, exhausted but happy.
As expected, she is a bit dead on her feet the next day, and so when her life changes forever a little past 10 pm, she doesn't really notice.
(She probably wouldn't have noticed anyways. Her backlash creeps up on her quickly, and one of the things it takes away is the ability to meaningfully feel it, without some external stimuli to make it obvious.)
By the time Kal messages her for hoping for some help with his big project due tomorrow that he is suddenly very far behind on, she's already lost the ability to say no.
He pulls an all-nighter to get it finished; she pulls an all-nighter to help.
Cara's phone tells her to take her meds and go to her study group, so she does.
While she's there, someone suggests she go get coffee for the group, so she does. (She stumbles on her trip back, spilling the coffee, and so she has to go back and re-order, which takes a while.)
If she looks exhausted to the point of mild dissociation by the time she gets back, well... she's a grad student with a busy social life. They all know how it goes.
Her phone has her schedule in it: guided by notifications, she goes to her morning classes and does nothing noticeably unusual in them (she's uncharacteristically quiet, of course, but sometimes the students are tired.)
At the end of her 11 am class, the professor encourages them to go outside, sit under a tree, and enjoy the fall leaves, so she does.
Some amount of time later, her phone tells her that she has a TA shift, and off she goes.
Cara shows up to her shift about five minutes early with a leaf in her hair and seeming like she's having a bad time, but when Prof Meadows asks what's wrong, the girl just looks at her in confusion and doesn't answer.
She's quiet, and obviously tired, but she does her job just fine, answering questions and performing tasks with an almost mechanical efficiency.
When the class ends, Cara needs to be gently reminded to leave the room.
She lingers in the hallway for some amount of time; with no input to guide her next action, she droops against the wall and struggles to keep her eyes open.
Then the exhaustion and dehydration catch up with her and she gracelessly collapses.
When the medical staff comes, they have enough trouble waking her up right away that they make the call to take her to a hospital and get an IV in her.
Once she's there, they do manage to wake her with enough stimuli, though she's clearly horribly exhausted.
They ask her when she last ate or drank or slept; those are questions she can answer readily. (They do not like the answers she gives, and chide her for being so irresponsible.)
They ask her how she's feeling, if she's experiencing any unusual pain or discomfort, and other such questions. She stares at them blankly and doesn't answer.
They ask her if she heard them. (She did.)
They ask her to repeat back the questions. (She does.)
They ask her the actual questions, and get only silence.
The attending nurse sighs. "Cara. Is there something confusing about the question I just asked you?"
"...no." The question makes sense to her.
Eyeroll. "Then why didn't you answer?"
Long pause. "...because I don't know."
It's been a long week; Samah is tired and does not have a ton of patience for this.
After another five minutes of trying and failing to get useful answers out of her about her current state, they learn that she lives alone and does not have family nearby she could ask to watch her. The attending doctor marks her down for an overnight stay, light observation, dextrose via IV, and whatever hospital food she'll tolerate. The girl hasn't slept in almost forty hours and presumably she'll be more coherent in the morning.
They are professionals and can get that cleaned up, though they are not so professional that there isn't some ambient weariness about it.
She can answer most questions just fine, which makes it all the more frustrating that she just looks at them blankly when they ask ask why she didn't press the call button to ask to use the bathroom.
"Do you need to use the bathroom now?"
No answer.
"Can you tell us when you need to use the bathroom?"
A long pause. "...no?"
The attendant doctor gets the report, fucks around with the medical charting software for a while in front of the nurse, and triumphantly finds and marks the psychotic break or esper awakening box.
"Contact her family. They can overrule us if they want, but by default we'll hold her for a week in LTC; if she doesn't get better by then, we can ship her to a mental ward."
Her parents have a phone number on record.
The man who answers interrupts before the nurse finishes explaining. With a bit of edge in his voice, he explains that his son, Alex, stopped talking to them years ago and presumably doesn't want them involved in whatever his latest medical mistakes are, but they can tell Alex that he can call them and get back in contact whenever he wants.
Then he hangs up.
The rest of the week isn't very eventful, from a medical perspective. They put a catheter in her, keep giving her dextrose via IV, monitor her vitals, and mostly leave her alone.
One of the nurses, bored on a night shift, asks her some rather personal questions, which she answers without delay or vocal inflection. She turns out to be a good source of embarrassing high school stories! Her sex life misadventures, especially as a part of her search for puberty blockers, are too juicy not to share with a few friends...
Over the next four days, a number of people find some kind of excuse to be in her room and then ask her about what was a pretty unpleasant and stressful time in her life and then laugh or snicker or smile sadly at her answers.
She doesn't react, of course.
She's asleep when it ends, which is in some ways a blessing - the backlash doesn't go away instantly, and she gets her pain recognition back online before she gets the ability to act on it. (She shifts uncomfortably in bed, and makes distressed noises.)
Eventually, she wakes up and cries out in pain, the dozens of assorted aches built up from a week in bed with no will to move around to be more comfortable hitting her all at once.
Given the timing and the total remission of symptoms it's pretty clear she's an esper!
(Several gossipers immediately decide to never speak of this again. Out of respect.)
They can check her over where she hurts, if she'd like?
No, actually she wants to leave this hospital basically immediately and will be doing that unless anyone tries very hard to stop her.
...they're definitely not going to argue with a visibly distressed new esper, she can do that.
Tubes are removed, she's good to go, congrats here's a one page primer for new espers don't use your powers without a compatible partner for backlash management, bye!
Okay. Deep breaths. Her phone and laptop are both dead, but she knows the bus route around here just fine.
She manages to keep herself together until she gets back to her apartment and stuffs her face with junk snack food. (She's so hungry.)
She turns on the shower to mask the noise (the last thing she wants is a neighbor coming and checking on her now) and soaks herself in near-scalding water as she sobs uncontrollably.
She gives herself about five minutes of that, and then pulls herself together.
Okay. Come on. It wasn't that bad. And that's the worst part, and it's over.
She turns off the shower.
Cara dries herself off, checks herself out in the mirror thoughtfully, and slips on one of the dresses she uses as house-clothes.
It's late at night, but her brain is buzzing. She pizza to order, friends and colleagues and a loving aunt to update, a college to drop out of, and mixers to find and attend.
