Piece Three
Everything smells very slightly of peppermints.
"Hello."
She mumbles, half-asleep complaints that don't make it past the duvet her head is buried in, and forces herself to blink blearily and push herself up. "Mama?"
"No, dear."
The voice, she realizes as she blinks sleep out of her eyes and her mind, is vaguely British. She groans, pushing herself up the rest of the way to lean heavily against the wall. There isn't anyone in her room besides the safely asleep man beside her. "Hello?" Her voice trembles a little and she blames it on just having woken up.
"I'm not there, not as you would think. As she listens, as her mind shakes off the haze of sleep, the voice does indeed seem to bypass her ears entirely, becoming a sound with the disconcerting feeling of not actually having heard anything at all. Don't think about it too hard, please, it's still sorting itself out.
"What?" A sudden burst of frustration that isn't her own overwhelms her for a moment. She winces, swallowing hard and trying to calm the abrupt nausea. "Sorry, forget it, old girl." She speaks absently, already distracted by the slightly pink countenance of the man beside her. He's snoring very quietly.
Old girl? The voice is quiet, confusion and speculation a slight fuzz at the back of her mind as she leans over him, blanching.
"Does he look flushed?" She places her wrist on his forehead. "Oh god, does he have a fever?"
Unfortunately, yes. I need your help. The voice speaks to, at once, the young woman and an empty room. An irritated sigh later, she's back, pressing a cold cloth to the man's forehead. A small first aid kit is in her hand and she's working open the buttons on his borrowed shirt quicker than she can mumble curses under her breath.
Angry streaks of red flare outward from the swollen red streak that yesterday night had been a bleeding cut. Her fingers dart lightly over the wound, never quite touching it, mumbling to herself all the while. "Infection? Activated the innate immune system, despite the antiseptics…no. Poison? Bloody man had to resonate the thing out of existence, of course, idiot doctor." She huffs, ignoring the murmuring at the back of her mind with a dismissive wave as she worms a thermometer between his lips. "Perhaps something to bring the fever down, and the swelling, antibiotics perhaps? But for what…."
LISTEN, Megan Rose Fairfield. Her floor, she has time to think, is a good deal further from her bed than she had ever realized. Then her mind is full of calculations she doesn't even recognize the math for and one long convoluted explanation she isn't sure makes sense. For a moment, she lies on the floor and stares at the ceiling. The nausea is threatening to force her stomach up her throat and there's something warm and thick trickling down her cheek.
Perhaps it would have been better to go back to sleep and never have opened that door. She wonders if she'll be thinking that for the rest of her life.