Oh my God, I am the WORST
Bellamy rocketed up and out of bed to the sound of screaming. It was still dark inside his tent, dawn hadn't yet broken. He scrambled up and darted around, desperately pulling on his clothing as he tried to shake his dream off. He couldn't remember an awful lot, just smooth skin, supple and willing as he drove into the faceless girl. Let's be honest, that in itself wasn't the reason he was trying to forget. It's that she didn't seem to be faceless any longer. Lately, Bellamy had dreamt of blonde curls sticking to their skin, icy blue eyes struggling to stay open and the maddening scent of mint and rain clinging to them. He growled and physically shook his head once more, trying with all his might to dislodge the image of Clarke laying before him, naked and totally sated.
He stormed out of the tent into the biting cold. The snow from last night hadn't stopped, and it had blanketed the entire camp in its glory.
He heard the scream again.
Bellamy whipped his head around, trying to find where the sound was coming from. It was constant now, and someone was sobbing alongside it.
Twirling on the spot he rushed over to a cluster of tents that were in the shadow of the dropship, placed there to try to give them some semblance of shelter from the icy winds that swept over the camp.
He ran through them, ripping open doorways to find the source of the noise.
When he found them it broke his heart.
"Get Clarke," he commanded one of the onlookers who had gathered around the tent to watch what was unfolding. "Now!"
He pushed his way through the crowd and saw one of the younger girls, Astra, pushing down on the chest of another delinquent, one who was lying prostate on the bed. She was the one screaming. It was unintelligible.
The youngest of their troop, Christie (she was eleven) was sobbing and clinging to Astra's waist, begging her to do something.
Simon was on the bed, totally still apart from the constant pumping of his chest from Astra, eyes glazed and mouth dotted with blood. Bellamy had no time to think, he stormed forward and ripped Astra away, she was too weak.
She gasped and he saw her tumble out of the corner of his eye, but he would have to apologise later. All he could think about was the boy on the cot in front of him, the boy without a heartbeat.
He slammed his fists onto the middle of Simon's sternum and began the same motions that Astra had been attempting just seconds earlier, but with far more force. He was probably breaking the child's ribs but that didn't matter, Clarke would be able to fix all of that later. She couldn't do that if he were dead.
A sudden murmuring outside had Bellamy's head turning, though he didn't give up on the boy, continuing to press his hands onto his unresponsive chest. He almost laughed in relief when he saw Clarke standing just behind him.
She wasn't looking at him though. Her eyes were trained on Simon, grief and sadness etched into them. She wasn't doing anything. Why wasn't she DOING anything?
"Do something!" he shouted, breathing heavily.
Clarke looked him in the eye and shook her head slowly, tears pouring down her face, leaving tracks of clean, pale skin where the salt water cleared away the grime.
Astra, having fallen silent, let out an ear-piercing wail, loud into the night and collapsed onto the floor of the tent, sobbing, with Christie.
Bellamy hadn't taken his eyes of Clarke. "You can DO something," he told her, "Help him! He's dying Clarke!"
"He's already dead Bellamy," she returned softly, reaching out to clasp his wrist in her soft hand. "He's gone."
He swore at her in disgust, turning away and continuing to pump Simon's torso, with a desperation that was making his arms ache. No more death. Please God, no more. They'd been doing so well.
It was the deafening silence that finally caused Bellamy to slowly stop pushing on the young boy's chest after many minutes. Simon was gone. His skin was so pale that it was almost translucent, the veins on his forehead and neck visible, even though his heart had ceased beating minutes before.
He stared at the body for a while longer, unseeing. Then he whipped around to face Clarke.
"You didn't do anything," he said, sounding almost calm. "YOU DIDN'T EVEN TRY." This time he sounds furious. And the look that he had in his eye, oh how she was sure that she'd never see that again. It was in that instant that he despised her again, she was lower than scum to him once more, and it made her heart shatter.
"Bellamy," implored of him, "please."
"No," he told her, not able to meet her eyes. He twisted around and fled from the tent, throwing off Clarke's hand as she tried to capture his arm.
Clarke remained rooted to the spot, emotions flowing through her, coming and going like the tide.
Clarke tried to rid herself of the hatred that had been in Bellamy's eyes just before he left the scene by throwing herself into working. It was getting towards dawn when the body had finally been moved from the tent and into the dropship.
She stood over Simon, unsure of what she could do. She had seen him that morning, he was fine. Yet less than 24 hours later and he was dead, his body tiny and broken.
She'd not been able to get much out of Astra and Christie, but from what they had managed to tell her it seemed that Simon felt ill just before dinner and went to bed. The girls didn't realise that he was dead until it was too late, they thought he had just been sleeping.
Clarke wasn't really sure how to go about giving a diagnosis. Simon had felt ill, and was dead within hours. She didn't know what sort of illness could have that effect on a person.
Feeling all kinds of guilt and shame, she slowly undressed the body, examining the skin as she did so. There wasn't an awful lot else that she would be able to do, it's not as though they had a forensics kit, and it seemed a waste to try to investigate further. There was nothing on the body that she could see anyway, the back, torso and legs free from anything that might indicate what had killed the child.
It was only when Clarke began to redress the body ready to be buried that she saw the angry rash underneath his arms. It stretched over his underarm, and his armpits on both sides, and was almost purple in colour. She dropped his arm and backed away, scared. There might have been a lot of things that had caused a rash like that, it might have been a plant, or an allergic reaction, or any number of innocent things. But the colour and the place screamed at her, her mind repeating the same word over and over, terrifying her.
Meningitis.
She flung herself out of the dropship, stumbling towards the group of children and teenagers standing by the fire pit. She knew she couldn't contract meningitis from Simon, not now, and that she was more likely to get it from one of the others (if she hadn't already been infected) but she was so scared. How was she meant to treat this? They had no way of stopping this if it turned into a pandemic, and without vaccinations everyone would be in danger.
"EVERYONE INTO THEIR TENTS NOW!" she screamed, aware that she sounded hysterical, but not able to calm herself down. "THIS IS A QUARANTEEN, WE'RE ON LOCKDOWN. NO ONE LEAVES UNTIL I TELL THEM TO!"
As she watched the delinquents shuffle into their tents, their faces a mixture of confusion and fear she held herself upright, trying to be strong for them. She didn't know where Bellamy was, and God knows they needed at least one leader to have it together.
As if thinking his name had summoned him, Bellamy materialised by her side, looking more furious than she had ever seen him.
"What the fuck do you think you are doing?" he hissed in her face, grabbing her arm and yanking her towards the dropship. "We already lost one kid today, and now you're terrifying them. The hell has gotten into you?"
"Not so close!" she exclaimed, pulling her arm free and wrenching herself away from his face, hoping that distance would keep them safe. They approached the body in the dropship and Clarke lifted Simon's arm to show Bellamy the rash.
"Bell," she said, beginning to sob, "it's meningitis."
She collapsed in on herself, finally allowing herself to be weak now that Bellamy was around to absorb some of the weight of the situation. She kept waiting for words of comfort, or an arm around her shoulders, but it never came, and she felt her blood run colder than the weather had already made it.
"We don't all have your medical know-how Clarke, so when you're done with the pity party then I'm going to need you to explain to me what it is and how we can stop it," Bellamy said, his voice hard.
Her shock at his words stemmed the flow of tears, and she hiccoughed.
"It – it's umm, meningitis. I think." She stared at the peaceful looking boy, prone on her 'operating table.'
"You think? What you think is not fucking good enough Clarke, not good enough. You have to KNOW," Bellamy stormed around to her and took her by the shoulders. Still somewhat expecting a hug she relaxed, only to find herself being shaken by Bellamy.
Which infuriated her. How DARE he question her as a doctor?!
She wrenched herself away and grabbed Simon's hand, stretching his arm outwards toward her.
"Look at this," she hissed. "Look at him. Does this look like anything you've ever seen before?" she demanded, seething with anger. As though any of this could be considered her fault. There was no curing this. Not with the sort of medicine she had access to, and she used that word in the loosest way possible.
"No. I haven't seen it before," replied Bellamy, just as pettily, "but then again, we didn't all have the opportunities you did, Princess."
The venom in his words had them locked in a stand-off, neither willing to lose face.
She broke first.
"I don't know for sure that it's meningitis, because we didn't have this on the Ark. I only ever saw it in old textbooks, but I just don't know what else it could be. I can't… I can't treat this Bellamy." She looked up into his eyes, desperately trying to convey her desperation, silently pleading with him to understand her situation, but he remained cold.
"If you can't help, then why the fuck are you still here?" he questioned. There was no emotion in his voice, and that was somehow worse than all the anger, the blame.
He swivelled on his heel and stalked from the dropship, heading for Miller and the rest of his rag-tag soldiers, apparently oblivious to Clarke crying his name over and over into the night.
Ah, the satisfaction of writing real drama. Sorry that it's been seven months x