A/N: Uh, sorry if this didn't make a whole lot of sense. I was reading about how everyone sent Alex cards when he had "appendicitis," and this sort of popped into my head. I was going to post it by itself, but it's too stinking short, so I attached it to Grapefruits. (It seems as though I have a AR drabble fetish. :D ) Any glaring mistakes please point out, and any criticism feel free to let loose.
Alex stared at the faded white ceiling tucked under his sterile white sheets and listened to the slow beep… beep… of the monitor and the whirring of the machines attached to his chest and IV drip.
He was in the hospital again. 'Considering my line of work, this isn't a surprising statement,' he reflected absently. 'But it isn't even M16's fault this time.'
An unsmiling, burly nurse let herself into his room. Her orthopedic shoes made a dull thumping noise on the cheap linoleum. She looked over the clip board at the foot of his bed, and surveyed the readouts from the machines. Alex began to say something, but thought better of it when she flashed him a look that said she clearly couldn't care less. The hefty nurse then proceeded to take his blood pressure and temperature.
'You'd think they'd care a little more considering I've just undergone surgery' he thought. The nurse stood up, paused a moment to see if he was going to say anything, and left. He lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling some more. The inescapable boredom was beginning to creep back, and this time, he wasn't even well enough yet to take nightly jaunts. Bored, he reflected on life, luck, and karma. 'Karma has a cruel sense of humor,' he though, referring to his current predicament. 'I wonder which excuse the school is getting, considering this one has already been used.'
#
"Rider is in the hospital," Ms. Jones reported to her boss. He sat in behind a desk, reclining slightly in his industrial strength office chair.
"Really?" he asked barley able to feign interest in the fact that his subordinate was ill. It did put a damper in his plans to send the boy to Guam on another mission, complete with a rich manic and weapons of mass destruction, but he didn't really feel like telling his fellow agent that. "Anything I should know about?"
Ms. Jones frowned slightly at her superior's obvious lack of concern, but she proceeded, "He had to undergo major surgery. Ironically enough, the housekeeper, Jack, had to lie about why he was in the hospital." Blunt was beginning to look slightly comatose, but she continued anyway. "Yes, it turns out Alex has appendicitis, something he's already been "afflicted" with."
#
It was past midnight, and Alex was still awake, staring this time at the sterile wall painted a sort of industrial, pea green. He sighed. Tom had come with a card, right before the hospital closed. "Sorry about "getting your tonsils taken out," it said. Underneath it, in sprawling, impatient print, Tom had written, "a better excuse would have been that you'd hurt yourself saving the world. Get better soon mate, English class is killer without you." If nothing else, it made Alex smile.