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“Nathan,” I said, though my voice felt small and thick. “I can walk.” I thought I could. My head felt a little fuzzy.
“Shush, Trouble,” Gabriel said. He walked alongside Nathan and reached for my face. His rough-skinned fingertips caressed against my forehead as if trying to ease away whatever had come over me. “You’ve been looking ragged for days now. I thought maybe you were on your period, but I guess you’re sick or something.”
My cheeks heated. “I’m fine, guys. I was just lightheaded and then tripped or something. We can go back.”
“She doesn’t feel hot. No fever,” Gabriel said, ignoring my protests. He dropped his hand.
“Text Dr. Green,” Nathan said. “Tell him we’ll meet him at his office.”
After a minute, Gabriel responded. “He said meet him in the nurse’s office. Where is that?”
I closed my eyes, feeling disoriented as Nathan carried me through the hallways. He clutched me to his body. My hand landed on his chest, and I felt the swell of muscle. For a split moment, I thought about Karen and how she’d touched me and I wondered what the difference was. From Karen, I cowered. From Nathan and the boys, I craved. I waved the thoughts off. My mind had a hard time staying on task. I blamed my tired state.
I didn’t open my eyes again until he stopped in front of an office door with a glass panel. Nurse’s Office was marked in black lettering along the bubbled surface. Gabriel held the door open, and Nathan angled me inside.
Dr. Green’s face swam into view the moment we got inside. His light green eyes had darkened with worry, but lit up when I faced him. Sandy-colored hair hung in front of his eyes and heart shaped face. “Hello there, gorgeous. Didn’t I just see you in class?” he asked, his voice soothing.
“Hi Dr. Green,” I said. I blinked heavily, trying to swallow back the dizzy feeling.
“She passed out,” Nathan said. “During warm up exercises.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t feel sick. Just a little lightheaded.”
Nathan planted me on a cot. I sat on it in the middle. I flinched at seeing Mr. Blackbourne standing off to the side, quiet but focused on me.
Mr. Blackbourne was perfection in a gray suit and red tie. His short brown hair was brushed away from his face and his lips were solidly pursed. His trim figure was leaning against the wall, his arms folded over his chest. Nothing in his face or steel-colored eyes behind those black-rimmed glasses revealed what he was thinking.
It made me embarrassed to be there in the first place. It was like showing him I couldn’t keep up. I wasn’t good enough for the Academy.
The nurse’s office was a big room, but we were in a section that was cut off by a movable standing wall. Other cots were positioned across the room, mostly masked by similar short walls. Some cots were occupied. I couldn’t see faces, only the feet and part of the legs. From what I could tell from the shoes, there was a girl and a couple of guys, though I could have been wrong as nearly everyone was wearing sneakers.
Where was the regular nurse? If kids were sick, is that why Dr. Green had been in here? Is this what he did at Ashley Waters when he wasn’t teaching the Japanese class? It seemed wrong to draw Dr. Green’s attention if there were others who were really sick.
Even as I thought about it, my body quaked and I felt a wave of dizziness coming over me. I swallowed back those feelings, not wanting to worry anyone. What was wrong with me?
Dr. Green had a flashlight in his hands. He examined my eyes one at a time. “Tell me what happened,” he said in a soothing voice.
“I was just doing warm up exercises,” I said. “The next thing I know, I’m waking up on the ground.”
“She fell over,” Nathan said.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “I thought girls fainted all graceful. She just crashed.”
I tried to make a face at Gabriel but Dr. Green’s hands spreading my eyelids apart made it difficult.
Dr. Green put his flashlight down. “Were you up late last night?”
“I was in bed by ten,” I said. I looked at Nathan to help me confirm.
“Yeah,” Nathan said. “She tosses around for a couple of hours, though. She does that every night, before she goes to sleep.”
Heat rose to my cheeks at his revelation. “I do?”
Nathan nodded, his face grim. “It’s usually not an issue with you, though. You’ve done it for a while. Like you can’t sleep for a couple of hours and then you settle down and sleep. So if you want to be technical, you’re not really deeply asleep until after midnight.”
Nathan slept over more than anyone else, so I suppose he would know. When I thought of it now, I realized I probably did stay awake for a while after I went to bed. I thought it was normal. Like relaxing before you actually slept. How long does it normally take people to fall asleep?
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “Now that you mention it, she does do that. Unless she was worn out that day. Then she passes out real quick.”
I sighed. “I’ve been tired today. That’s all. I just need to go to bed earlier I guess.”
Dr. Green took my hand, his comforting fingers massaging my palm before he turned it over. He examined my fingertips closely. “When’s the last time you ate something?”
I opened my mouth to reply but stopped short when I realized I couldn’t remember. I turned to Nathan to help. That was embarrassing, too, that I had to look at other people to answer for me. I blamed my tiredness for my memory temporarily not working.
He seemed perplexed, too. He scratched at the back of his neck. “You had coffee this morning, didn’t you?”
That jogged my memory a little. “Yeah, I had coffee. One of those bottled Frappuccinos.”
“And what else?” Mr. Blackbourne asked sharply, surprising me. Was he angry? “When did you last eat something?”
“Luke and I split a bag of potato chips yesterday,” I said. I paused for a long moment, not wanting to reveal the truth. “And another coffee that morning. But last night I was up late with homework and—”
“So you haven’t been eating,” Mr. Blackbourne’s voice rose a notch. He unfolded his arms and started forward until he was standing behind Dr. Green. He nudged the doctor out of the way so he could plant a palm on either side of my thighs, bending over a little so that his face was level with mine. “Why?”
Heat spread over all of my face. I wanted to look at Dr. Green, or Nathan, or anyone else for help, but Mr. Blackbourne’s steel eyes were unrelenting, holding me captive under his silent demand for a response. “I don’t know. I wasn’t hungry. I forgot. We’ve been busy.” As I said the words, I knew it was the completely wrong answer. I was rattling off excuses. They were my reasons, but I should have known better. Why hadn’t I realized this before? It seemed obvious now that he pointed it out.
His eyes steeled and he turned on Nathan and Gabriel. “Why haven’t you made sure she eats?”
My mouth popped open. Why did he make it sound like it was their fault?
“I thought she was,” Nathan said.
“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “But ... I guess now that I think about it, I only really see her at lunch time during the week, and then she’ll say she’s not hungry or she’ll split food with people.”
Nathan sighed. “She was in the bath when I ate last night. I thought she’d already eaten when I was out.”
Mr. Blackbourne sliced his hand through the air to silence the excuses. “I want everyone on task to make sure she eats, and to make sure she gets to bed an hour earlier for a while.” He turned to me again, standing fully. “Miss Sorenson.” His tone this time was clear. He wanted my complete attention.
“Mr. Blackbourne?”
“I’m going to have Dr. Green write an excuse for you to be relieved of gym class for the rest of the week. No Academy tasks for a while. No strenuous activity. If I hear you’re not taking it easy and eating like you should now and through the weekend, I’ll have Dr. Green put you on bed rest for a week and I’ll ground you myself
.”
He might as well have said he’d command lightning to strike me down where I stood if I didn’t obey. If he had said so, I would have fully believed it. “I will.”
Dr. Green dug through a drawer and found a white bottle. He checked the label. “I’d like to give you these vitamins, but they expired two years ago.” He slammed the drawer shut, tossing the vitamin bottle into the trash can. “This school is ridiculous. Yesterday I ran out of bandages.”
“Mr. Griffin,” Mr. Blackbourne barked.
“I’ll get her new vitamins,” Nathan said.
Mr. Blackbourne nodded. “And Mr. Coleman, if you don’t have anything pressing...”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Gabriel said, sounding as if he was planning to anyway.
A rough cough started up from one of the other beds. One of the other sick kids, who I thought was male, twisted where he was lying. His feet picked up off of the edge of the cot and it jerked out. It slid against the tile and crashed against the side table and the wall. The movable wall tilted. Dr. Green dashed over, but the wall tumbled before he got there and it crashed to the ground.
