Disclaimer: This was the first X-Men fan-fic I ever wrote so I'm sorry if it's quite corny. If you'd like to read my most recent just click my pen name and you'll find it. Oh right, I don't own any of the X-Men characters, sadly, nor do I own the rights to the Tim McGraw song "Live Like You Were Dying," but I think for the sake of creativity they won't mind if I borrowed them for a bit! ;) Enjoy!
Live Like You Were Dying
I walked through the living room into the main hallway, opening doors without touching them, reading a book without turning the pages with my hands.
I was reading 'Beauty And The Beast', it was my favorite book. I had read it four times since I had gotten to school in late August, and it was only mid October then.
It was my first year attending the school at which I was staying. It was Professor Xavier's boarding school for 'gifted youngsters', or mutants, whichever you preferred.
"Lee!" I heard someone call out.
I looked up from my book, it was Rouge. Rouge and Bobby with someone I had never seen before, but judging from what I had heard Rouge and a few of the other girls from the school, that someone was Logan.
"Hey guys," I said, walking over to where they were standing.
"Lee this is Logan, Logan this is Lee," Rouge said, introducing us.
"When did you get here?" He asked as he reached out his hand to shake mine.
"This summer," I said, leaving my book in mid-air.
"Lee…isn't that a guy's name?" He asked with a coy smile and a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah, and Logan is the name of a road house." I said with a wink then turning back to my book I grabbed it and closed it. "See you guys later."
I tossed and turned but I couldn't manage to fall asleep. I looked over at my alarm clock; it was two thirty in the morning. I let out a long sigh, and then stumbled out of my bed to find my house shoes and a hoodie. Once I found my way out of my room and took the elevator down to the first floor, I walked into the kitchen to see Bobby and Logan talking, while Bobby was eating ice-cream.
Logan was drinking some sort of soda, while standing up against a cupboard. He was wearing a pair of tight blue jeans with a tight, white wife-beater. His chest muscles pressed tightly against the fabric.
'Not too shabby,' I thought to myself.
"Morning," I said before pulling out a carton of mostly eaten ice-cream from the freezer. I grabbed a spoon from one of the drawers and then sat down across from Bobby. I looked at the cabinet above Logan's head, opened it, picked a Coco-Cola bottle and sat it down in front of me. I picked it up and twisted the top off before taking a sip.
"So that's your thing, telekinesis?" Logan asked.
"You got it," I said, taking a bite of my ice-cream.
"What's with the sweat-shirt, it's burning up in here?" he asked.
"I've got a medical condition where I'm constantly cold. No one knows what caused it, but its been like this for quite a few years, now, you learn to live with it."
"So, what's the deal with your parents, do they know what the school is for?"
"Yeah, they know about it…well, my mom does," I said, "my dad doesn't know. But, I haven't seen him since I was around eight, or something. My step-dad knows and he's really cool with it."
"Are you from here, or did the Professor find you?"
"Does it sound like I'm from here?" I asked. I had a fairly thick Southern accent.
"No, it doesn't," he said with a smile. "Where are you from?"
"Tennessee, yee-haw." I said sarcastically taking another bite.
He laughed. He had a very nice laugh.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
He thought for a second and let out a long sign before running his fingers through his hair. "I don't remember, kid."
"You don't remember anything?" I asked.
"No about where I lived. All I remember is the last fifteen years."
"I'm sorry,"
"Don't worry about it,"
Once I finally finished eating, I emptied the rest of my soda and announced that I was going back to bed.
"Yeah…I think I will, too," Logan said. "I'll walk you."
"Alright, night Bobby," I said, walking to the door.
"Night,"
Logan and I walked to the elevator, and once we had both gotten in I pressed my floor button and leaned up against the wall. I was starting to feel drowsy.
"Gonna' make it to your room?" He asked in his deep, scratchy voice; I had never heard one quite like it.
I gave a little laugh, "I don't know, I'm feeling pretty tired. I think it just hit me all at once." I said, stepping away from the wall. I suddenly felt very dizzy and grabbed onto one of the bars in the elevator for support.
"You alright?"
I tried to concentrate on the floor to make it stop from spinning, but I couldn't keep my balance and fell down on my knees, onto the floor of the elevator. I kept my hand held tight onto the bar and my other against my head, but it was no use. My sight slowly turned to tunnel vision before everything finally faded black.
"Kid, you okay? Can you hear me?"
I slowly lifted my eyelids to see Logan bent down in front of me.
"What happened?" I asked, looking around. We were still inside the elevator, but it had stopped.
"You passed out,"
My head was killing me.
"I just need some sleep; I'll be fine in the morning," I said, "thanks for the help, though."
"Let me get you to your room, I don't want you passing out in the middle of the hallway."
"Alright," I said, pulling myself up.
We both walked down the hallway as I propped up against him. I pointed him to my door and he helped me to it.
"Thanks, I don't know what hit me, I guess I'm my sleepy than I thought." I said, faking a laugh.
I knew exactly what was wrong with me; I just didn't want to admit it.
"Goodnight," I said, opening my door.
"Goodnight,"
I watched him walk away before going inside to sleep. It was a fitful night, but I didn't get up again. I didn't want to risk passing out and assuring myself what was wrong. I wanted to put it off for as long as possible, but that night I knew there was no doubt as to what was wrong.
I walked up to the door and before I could knock I heard; "Come in Miss. Brice,"
I opened the door and walked into Professor Xavier's office.
"Please sit down," he said, directing me to a chair in front of his desk. "I realize that usually Jean or Orro, and even on occasion, Scott have attended your doctors' visits with you in the city, but I'm afraid that they are all quite, regretfully, preoccupied this week."
"Oh, that's fine, I can go by myself-" I started.
"I don't think you should go by yourself, Miss. Brice, not with these fainting spells you've been having." It was mid December, two months after I had fainted in the elevator. "I've talk to Logan and he had agreed to take you into the city for your doctors' visit."
"Oh, okay, I guess I'll go get ready then. Thank you Professor." I said, slightly shocked, standing up.
"You're welcome,"
I walked back to my room excited. I had had a small crush on Logan since the night I met him, when he had helped me back to my room. And I was getting to go into the city with him, all by myself.
I heard a knock on my door.
"Come in!" I yelled from my closet.
"You get a room all to yourself? How do the other students feel about that?" I heard as the door opened; it was Logan.
I poked my head out to look at him, and gave him a quick smile before continuing my hunt for a scarf.
"They don't like it, but I have to keep my room at a different temperature and I don't get along well with everyone. The Professor knows that and thought I'd be better off in a room by myself."
"What do you mean you don't get along well with everything, you're friendly?"
I gave a small laugh as I finally found a scarf and tied it around my neck.
"Well, I get along with a few people, but I've got quite a bad temper."
"I know how that goes,"
I walked out of my closet and shut the door. It wasn't that big of a closet, but most of my clothes were scattered about my floor, so it didn't have too much in it.
"So, are you ready, kid?" he asked.
"Yeah, just let my grab my coat and we can go."
I grabbed my coat and slipped it on. It was a quarter length wool jacket, which sort of looked like a pea-coat. I pulled my hair out from underneath the collar, slipped on my gloves, and pulled on a hat, making sure that my ears were covered. I caught a glimpse of Logan with a sarcastic smirk on his face.
"Hey, if I have to wear a hoodie in the middle of summer just imagine how cold I get in the winter."
"I know," he said with a sigh, looking around. He spotted a picture of me with some of my family sitting on my nightstand next to my bed.
"Who's this?" he asked, walking over to the picture and picking it up.
"That's me with my brother and sister," I said, walking over beside him.
"None of you look alike,"
"Yeah, I know. My brother and I looked more alike when we were younger. I'm starting to look like my sister, though."
"Are you the oldest?"
"Me?" I said with a smile. "No, I'm the youngest. My sister's nearly four years older than me, and my brother's only a year older. They're both in college doing their own thing now. This picture's kind of old, I wish we would have gotten a more recent one down, but what can you do?"
He sat it down and picture up another picture of guy I knew and me.
"Is this your boyfriend?" He asked.
"Uh, no, he's my friend. We've known each other for as long as I can remember…but we don't speak anymore."
"Because you're here?"
"Sort of, yeah,"
He sat it down beside the other one and picture up a picture of me with my step-father.
"How about this guy?"
"Get over it, I'm single," I said with a laugh, "that's my step-dad."
"Do you get along with him?"
"Yeah, we get along great. He's funny, nice and smart. He's been the best thing in my life and I miss him a lot."
"Are they planning on visiting for Christmas, or anything?"
"I don't know, I've been so busy with doctors' visits and buying presents and all sorts of stuff I haven't had a lot of time to really stop and call them."
"Maybe they'll surprise you,"
"Yeah, maybe," I said.
"Okay kid, let's go."
"Alicia Brice," one of the nurses called out. We were at my doctor's office, sitting in the waiting room.
"You can come back with me, or stay out here, whichever you want. I don't care," I told Logan as I stood up.
He took a quick look around the room; sick, noisy kids, running around, loud people on cell phones, and a man who was quite large, had fallen sleep in the seat next to him.
"I'll go back with you,"
We followed the nurse back into a small, white room. I sat down on the examining table, after taking off my coat. Logan sat in the chair beside me and I placed my coat in the empty one beside him. I pushed up my sleeve so that the nurse could take my blood pressure. Then she asked Logan, "Are you Alicia's father?"
"No, I'm not," he said quickly. I looked over at him; he was flipping through a Woman's Day magazine. I rolled my eyes and smiled.
"He's one of the Professors from my school," I said. I wasn't quite sure how else to explain a man of his age staying at a school, if not to teach.
"Oh, well the two of you look alike," she said. I looked at Logan as he cocked his eyebrows in questioning and gave me a quick smile.
I had never thought we looked anything like each other, but I suppose we did. We both had brown hair, although mine was longer and curly. We both had similar colored eyes; his were hazel and mine were a dark green. We were both fairly tall; he was around six foot three and I was probably five foot ten. That was really it, though, nothing else.
After going through all of the same questions they asked me every time, the nurse left, saying that the doctor would be with us shortly. They always say that, then it's another hour before he actually gets to your room, he spends all of twenty minutes at the most, before leaving again.
"So, thrilled out of your mind yet?" I asked with a sarcastic laugh.
"Just about," he said as the doctor knocked on the door and walked in.
'That was quick,' I thought.
"Good afternoon Miss. Brice, how are you?" he asked, looking through my chart that the nurse had filled out.
"I'm doing pretty good, thanks,"
"Good, good," he said still scanning my chart. "So, about these fainting spells,"
"What about them?" I asked.
"Well, how many have you had this month or since your last visit?"
I thought for a moment, "I guess about ten altogether this month and six since my last visit."
"Are you aware that they're becoming more of a regular occurrence now that the weather has changed?"
"Yes," I said.
"What does the weather have to do with her passing out?" Logan asked.
"Well," the doctor began, "because of Miss. Brice's condition, he cells are freezing themselves in her body. When the temperature drops like it does in the winter it's harder for her to get her body heated up. This means that more and more cells are freezing, which is stopping blood from getting to her brain and causing her to faint."
"There's nothing you can go to heat her body up?" Logan asked.
"We've gone over the possibilities of something similar to a tanning bed, but there's nothing that we've found that wouldn't put her up for the risk of possibly getting skin cancer. We don't want to trade out one thing for another." He said with a small, practiced laugh. Apparently it was doctor humor.
"What about moving somewhere warmer?" Logan asked.
"That is something we've talked about as well, but the actual possibility of relocating isn't likely. There's not many doctors willing, or able for that matter, to take on a disease such as this, but to find one in an idealistic location for her to more, just doesn't seem realistic. Other factors to take in would have to be her family moving with her, finding new jobs, buying a new house, for Miss. Brice to find a school that caters to her as much as her present one, and still continue her doctor's visits. The cost of that would be almost too much for most families." It was all old news to me; I had asked and heard it all. There was nothing we could do but wait and see what happened next. "We would have liked for her to have continued living in the south, the winters are a lot less harsh there, but she wanted to attend school here, so that's her decision."
"What's been done in the past to treat this disease?" Logan asked.
I let out a long sigh.
"That's the tricky part you see, I'm afraid that she's the first to have it, or at least to be recorded, anyway. This is a very rare case for someone to take on, but I think we'll be able to look out for it, and possibly cure it, ahead of time if it happens to start showing up anywhere else."
"So what is she supposed to do then?"
My doctor took a deep breath before letting out a heavy sigh. "Watch it, and monitor it, make sure that she's keeping herself as warm as possible, that's about all we can do at this point."
"If her cells are freezing why doesn't she feel cold?"
"They're freezing on the underside of her veins, keeping most of them warm, although her feeling should be cold to the touch."
Logan looked at me to explain.
"My feeling is like a numb feeling," I started, "you know how when you stay out in the cold for too long and your hands and feet start to get so cold they sort of go numb and tingly? That's what it feels like. I just feel numbness when someone touches me. It doesn't hurt or anything, it just feels weird. Although, if someone's really hot I can feel a bit of warmth from them, but they would have to be at such a high temperature for me to feel it that most people would die of heat stroke before being able to be hot enough to make their touch feel normal to me."
I felt tired and worn out, I didn't want to go over it again.
Logan looked at me and I had never seen him look the way he did at that moment. I could literally feel his sadness and sympathy. His eyes were filled with paint. He wasn't one for words but I knew he felt all of it for me, I just didn't know why.
"So, where to now?" Logan asked as we stepped outside of my doctor's office.
"I don't know, back to school I guess," I said.
"We could," he started, "but why not play hooky? They don't know we're done yet."
I smiled. "Yeah, you're right, I hardly ever get to go anything except for the doctor every time we come to the city," I said, "what do you want to do?"