Riley pressed her fingers to the pulse point of the unconscious teenager and felt the erratic rhythm, letting out a groan as the symptoms started to form a picture in her head.
"Is Hailey going to be okay?" Monique, the one who called her, asked, gripping her friend's hand tightly.
"How long has she been unconscious for?" Riley questioned, taking note of the pale skin and the low body temperature.
"I called you when she passed out," Monique replied, biting her lip, nervously.
"What was she doing before she passed out?" Riley asked, already strongly suspecting the answer.
"Doctor Mathews, can't you just fix her?" Monique pleads, running one hand through her dark hair. She's a pretty girl, with tanned skin and manicured fingernails, but Riley has the feeling that she gets into more trouble than people suspect her of.
"Did you know that hypothermia is a symptom of alcohol poisoning?" Riley questioned, folding her arms as she stared the girl down. She was channeling her inner Topanga and hoping that it somehow led to a confession.
"You can't tell my parents," Monique wailed, her eyes growing wider.
"Why were you drinking in the middle of the day?" Riley asked, pulling out her phone to call for back up.
"We were at Tommy's house, skipping a couple of periods. You were young once, didn't you ever just want to do something crazy, something that makes you feel alive? Nothing ever happens here," Monique explained, trying to get Riley to understand.
A light dusting of snow covers most of the city, glistening against the multi-colored lights. It looks magical enough that she can almost forget, for a moment, that her life isn't the fairytale that she had always hoped it would be. It's beautiful enough to make her want to believe in a dazzling and bright future, even if it is far beyond the outlines of skyscrapers and even the stars themselves.
She knows that he's pulling away. She can feel the way the monotony is turning what they have into something mundane and ordinary. He craves the excitement, and it's something that, try though she might, she cannot give to him.
"There's a party this weekend," he informs her, the next day, leaning casually against the locker next to hers.
"I have a ton of homework," she offers noncommittedly, trying to avoid having him accuse her of another moral lesson. She can't help, but find something funny in the way his once unwavering moral compass has become skewed among the new environment of high school. His identity is slipping between two different people and she's having trouble seeing him clearly among the double-image.
"Maya will be there," he offers, giving her the smile that had once made her want to follow him to the ends of the earth.
"I don't know," she says, biting her lip and thinking of the number of things that could go wrong.
"We can leave if you aren't having a good time," he promises her, taking her hand as the bell rings for class.
"Okay," she agrees, not ready for him to let go.
She spends the entire party glued to his side, feeling as though she's watching herself from another perspective. There's drinking going on and couples disappearing into dark corners. There's laughter and dancing; music blaring loud enough to eliminate any real conversation. Someone has strung strands of Christmas lights across the roof-top and she can't help, but think that it's every bit as stunning as the snow-covered view she had glimpsed, not that long ago.
The atmosphere is enough to make someone feel alive, but as the night progresses the illusion starts to thin and she sees the cracks in the edges. Nothing on the roof is real and while the others seek out something to make them feel alive, the same things feel as though they are slowly killing her.
She holds Maya's hair as she throws-up in a patch of shrubbery, unconsciously rubbing her back and murmuring soothing words. She knows that Lucas is in better shape, although his eyes are slightly unfocused and he seems to be putting a fair amount of his weight on her. She hadn't seen him drink all night and she finds herself wondering how he managed it with her by his side.
"Did you have fun, Riles?" Lucas asks as Maya finishes and she ushers them in the direction of home.
"Did you?" she counters skeptically, narrowly avoiding tripping on the sidewalk and taking both of them down with her.
Maya's next bout of queasiness interrupts their conversation and Riley finds that her shoes are suddenly damp and discolored. The smell is enough to make her want to gag and she hesitantly starts breathing in air through her mouth.
The hardest part of watching the people around her change is feeling as though she has remained the same. Her illusions of the knight in shining armor die out day by day as Lucas's flaws come to the surface and she is finally forced to face them. She can't help, but wonder how many of her own he is facing himself. There's something in the way that he looks at her now that she can only name as disappointment.
"How did that work out for you?" Riley questioned, forcing herself out of the unwanted memory.
The phone continues to ring and she starts to worry that Blake is on his lunch break when he finally answers, "Health clinic."
"You know we're a private practice, right?" Riley corrected him.
"Harding and Mathews is a mouthful," Blake protested, "And I'm a nurse, not a receptionist."
"Well, I need you to be a nurse and come help me with a case of alcohol poisoning outside of the high school," Riley informed him.
"You are aware that you're an OB/GYN, right?" Blake asked and Riley resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
"I went to medical school before I specialized and went through an internship in an ER, I know alcohol poisoning," Riley snapped, her patience wearing thin.
"You're in a bad mood. I'll see you in five," he promises, hanging up the phone.
"You can't let Doctor Harding see her like this," Monique protests as soon as she sets the phone down.
"I can't just not tell Doctor Harding that his daughter has alcohol poisoning. She's going to need an IV and constant monitoring, not to mention she'll be in his practice," Riley groaned, checking for a pulse again.
"Can't you take her to a hospital?" Monique suggested.
"They can't treat her without parental consent and it's a two hour drive away. You made a bad decision and now you have to live with the consequences," Riley informed her, regretting the tone in her voice the minute it came out of her mouth.
"I called you because you're supposed to be cool," Monique huffed, "I didn't think you would judge us."
"I'm sorry that I snapped at you, I'm having an off week," Riley forced herself to calm down, "But I could lose my license, not to mention my place in the practice, if I don't do things the right way."
"I don't know why you want to be here so bad. I would kill to live somewhere like New York," Monique sighed.
Riley could see Blake pulling up and was relieved that she could let the conversation drop before it went somewhere that she didn't want it to go.
"It's not all you would expect it to be," Riley answered her, moving so that Blake could help her load the unconscious girl.
"Roy is going to kill you," Blake said gleefully as they loaded Hailey into the back of his car.
"I didn't give his daughter alcohol poisoning," Riley pointed out, sliding in to sit with Hailey. Monique climbed into the front seat, although she looked entirely unsure about her decision. Her eyes kept flickering back towards the school.
"Oh, I meant to tell you, someone called for you earlier," Blake said, as he got into the driver's seat.
"Did you have them schedule an appointment?" Riley asked, surprised that he was mentioning it to her. He usually just wrote her appointments on the calendar that hung just inside of her office.
"They weren't a patient, at least I don't think they were. I didn't realize you were branching out from women's health," he gave her a pointed look through the rearview mirror.
"This was a favor, it's a small town. What did they want?" Riley pressed, interested all of the sudden.
"They wanted me to tell you that you need to stop ignoring your friends and families phone calls and that Maya won't get married without you," he said, reciting the words as though he's taken the time to memorize them.
"You went on a humanitarian trip, didn't you?" Riley asked, resisting the urge to put her head in her hands.
"9 months with Doctors Without Borders, why?" Blake replied, surprised at the sudden turn in the conversation.
"Were your friends and family able to find you there? Because apparently the middle of Wyoming isn't nearly remote enough," Riley complained.
"I told you that you shouldn't set up a website for the practice," Blake reminded her, "We should have just kept sending out those cute little magnets with our number."
"That website is the only thing keeping them from descending on this town like a herd of locusts. I've given them plenty of communication channels before they decide to invade," Riley replied, nearly falling out of her seat as they came to an abrupt stop outside of the building.
"A group of locusts, isn't a herd; you can call them a plague, a cloud, or a swarm," Monique spoke up from the front seat.
"Your family can't possibly be a plague," Blake pointed out, coming around to open the door.
"They can when they think I'm ignoring their calls. Who was on the phone, anyway?" Riley enquired.
"He had a weird name that sounded made up. I think I wrote it down somewhere," Blake replied, pulling the girl into his arms as Riley moved to open the practice door.
"Farkle?" Riley suggested, as she moved ahead to open an exam room.
"That sounds right," Blake agreed, setting her onto the table and going to retrieve an IV bag.
"What's going on?" Roy demanded as he paused outside of the door, "What happened?"
"You want to tell him, Monique?" Riley suggested, trying to keep her voice gentle.
"We were drinking, Doctor Harding," Monique admitted, her eyes downcast.
"You think she has alcohol poisoning?" Roy turned his attention to Riley, his face expressionless.
"I do," Riley agreed, resisting the urge to act as uncomfortable as the teenager in front of her.
"I want to know where you got the alcohol from and we'll be heading down to the sheriff's office, as soon as I'm sure that Hailey is stable," Roy snapped, disappearing from the room. Riley winced as a door slammed from down the hallway.
"My parents are going to kill me," Monique groaned, sinking down into a seat along the wall.
"Only because they care," Riley pointed out, stepping aside as Blake returned to the room.
"How long until she's back to normal?" Monique asked, watching as Blake started the IV and went over her vital signs.
"When she gets all of the alcohol out of her system," Riley replied
Her long day, turns into an exhausting night, as she holds Hailey's hair, while she throws up until the early hours of the morning. Her father is too upset to do much more then watch them from the doorway before disappearing down the hallway again.
Monique's parents picked her up after the sheriff finished writing up an incident report and Riley gets the feeling that the two teens aren't the only ones who will be dealing with the police. Meanwhile, Blake falls asleep at his desk a little after midnight and Riley doesn't have the heart to wake him, though she knows he's going to have an awfully stiff neck the next morning.
"Riley?" Hailey asked, looking up at her with tired eyes.
"Yes?" Riley snapped awake, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and probably smearing most of her make up in the process. She had just been resting her eyes, but it had turned to dozing off.
"Are you upset with me?"
"Not nearly as upset as your Dad is," Riley replied, shifting so that she could look out into the hall. She couldn't see Roy in the darkness, but that didn't mean he wasn't there.
"Why is it that you can know that you're doing something wrong and still do it anyway?" Hailey rolled onto her side and her blonde hair seemed to shimmer in the moonlight. For a second, Riley was reminded of another blonde.
"When I was in eighth grade I snuck out of my parents' house to go to a party," Riley revealed, "I knew it was wrong, but I didn't want my best friend to go by herself."
"That sounds familiar," Hailey admitted, "So, did you get caught?"
"No, we both had a really good time and at the end of the night my uncle walked us home. My brother and my uncle knew that I had been out, but neither of them were going to tell on me," Riley revealed, smiling at the memory.
"There's got to be a moral in there somewhere," Hailey pointed out and Riley let out a laugh.
"It was my best friend who told my parents, which I think was a big deal for her. She wanted to act more grown up," Riley revealed.
"So, what you're saying is," Hailey trailed off as she tried to put the pieces together.
"Sometimes we do really stupid things, but we just have to do our best to learn from it and try to make better choices in the future," Riley offered.
They lapsed into silence as Hailey mulled over her words, "Was that really the last time you ever snuck out?"
"Sort of, I told a lot of half-truths to my parents in high school to do things that I knew they wouldn't approve of," Riley admitted.
"I don't think you're supposed to tell me that," Hailey pointed out.
"You're almost done with high school, I think you can handle knowing that I've made plenty of my own mistakes," Riley smiled, pulling her legs up to her chest.
"You turned out okay," Hailey said, shifting returning to her position on her back, "What happened to your best friend?"
The question was an afterthought and it hit Riley harder then what it should have. It had been such a long time since she had considered the good memories of her adolescence, that she was entirely unprepared for being struck with how far they had come since then.
"She's an amazing artist, in New York," Riley offered when she finally managed to gain her composure. She was convinced that Hailey had drifted off by then, but Hailey's head rose up for a few seconds before she dropped it back onto the table.
"Does it get any easier, watching them grow away from you?" the question took Riley off guard and it took her several heartbeats before she could answer.
"After a while, it hurts just enough for you to go numb," Riley sighed.
Her only response was Hailey's heavy and measured breathing.
I want to thank everyone who took the time to review, favorite, follow, etc. I have never gotten this big of a response for a story and I hope that I can live up to your expectations. I usually like to respond to all of the reviews that I get, but this is the middle of finals week and I've come down with an awful cold; so I figured I would focus my limited time and energy on getting you this chapter. In the future, I will do my best to respond to each review individually, just know that I am incredibly grateful.
So, this story started out as a one shot (appropriately called Hypothermia) and it focused pretty heavily on what happened previously to this story. About eight pages into it, I realized that to do this story justice, it really needed to be told in multiple chapters. That is why the first part of this story will contain some flashbacks showing them growing up and making the decisions that get them to the point they're at right now. This story also takes place in Wyoming and I know that some people were hoping that it took place in Texas. I figured that Riley is unconsciously holding onto Lucas enough to go to somewhere that reminds her of him, but she's also trying to hold herself together and I don't think that she could do that in his home state.
Things will start to pick up in the next chapter, as someone from Riley's past comes into town (Someone that you will recognize) and we get to see Riley actually do her job. Sorry, this note is so ridiculously long! Thank you for reading and please review! I love hearing all of your ideas!