Sick
Santana Lopez prides herself on being the bravest girl in her entire kindergarten class- no, even out of all the other kindergarten classes too. She knew that she was the only girl who would play football with the boys and not care about being tackled or getting dirty. She was the only girl who would walk right up to someone who had a ball or toy she wanted and simply take it away from them, instead of going to the trouble and time to try to negotiate. She never got upset over skinning her knees or the blood that would come from it, and she would in fact look with fascination at someone else's injury rather than making faces or getting grossed out like other little girls. She would always climb the highest in trees and hang upside down from the highest spots on the jungle gym, and she would always make her swing go the highest in the air before jumping off. Santana was no scaredy cat and she made sure everyone knew it.
But there was one thing for which she had a weakness, one thing she simply could not stand to witness, look at, listen to, smell, or in any way be exposed to. Whatever her stoicism or bravery for anything else might be, Santana could not tolerate someone vomiting anywhere within her vicinity.
So when Rachel Berry, who had been looking very pale and lifeless for most of the morning, not even putting up her hand to volunteer answers or brightly informing everyone of factual information that Santana considered boring and stupid all day, put up a slightly drooping hand and whispered to their teacher that she felt sick, Santana's eyes grew wide, and she jumped to her feet while simultaneously shooting her hand up in the air, bouncing urgently on her toes as she fought for their teacher's notice.
"MRS. TURNER! I gotta go! MRS. TURNER!" she almost hollered, real urgency and anxiety in her tone. But Mrs. Turner barely paid her any attention at all, her eyes briefly flickering over Santana and then past her, giving her only one brief instruction before focusing on the other child.
"Santana, sit down and wait to be called on, you do not call out or jump up from your seat without permission. Rachel, where is it that you're hurting? Do you need to be excused to the restroom?"
"I…my stomach-" Rachel started, and Santana's features stiffened, becoming even more anxious as she remained standing, waving her hand frantically.
"Mrs. Turner, I gotta go!"
"Santana, sit down, I asked you once already," the woman reiterated, fixing a momentary stern look in the little girl's direction before beginning to walk towards Rachel, her brow creased with concern. "Rachel, come to the bathroom, we can get the nurse if needed-"
But Rachel was already getting to her feet, running to the trash can beside the teacher's desk. She had barely dropped to her knees beside it before she began to vomit, her small body shuddering with the force of it. As Mrs. Turner hurried towards her, reaching to push her hair back from her face and to hold the trash can steady, not wanting her to miss, most of the other children squealed or shrieked, making faces or jumping to their feet, as though fearing that even from a distance, Rachel could somehow soil them.
But Santana went above and beyond the others with her own reaction. No sooner had she heard the tell-tale noises of Rachel becoming sick did her own face began to drain of color, and although she squeezed her eyes shut and clapped her hands over her ears, the smell nevertheless wafted to her nostrils before she could find a way to block this too. Although she was attempting to block herself off to any awareness of Rachel, past examples of vomiting she had witnessed began to enter her thoughts and mental visions, and before Santana could do anything to stop herself, she too was vomiting.
The next five to ten minutes in the classroom were utter chaos. Mrs. Turner and her teacher's aid were faced with the unpleasant task of taking Rachel's trash can and setting it in the corner to be cleaned, contacting the janitor, steering all children away from Santana's mess and the two ill children themselves and attempting to busy them with activity while controlling their comments and disgust aimed towards Rachel and Santana. and then there was the task of the nurse arriving and attempting at gathering up Rachel and Santana themselves to take them to the nurse's office.
Rachel was compliant enough, although her legs were weak and wobbly, her face still pale; she would walk, holding the nurse's hand, when she was told that her fathers had been notified to come pick her up. But Santana was another story. The little girl didn't want to move from her now-kneeling position on the floor, let alone to be walked down the hallway to the nurse's office. She didn't want to accept the wet paper towels the nurse tried to offer her to wipe off her dress front and face the best that she could, nor did she want to let the nurse do it for her. She wanted to remain on the floor, hunched over and crying, even as her chest pulled painfully with the force of her tears and her stomach continued to roil, unsettled.
"I want my mami," she wept, in response to the nurse's attempt to get her to stand up, and she shook her head forcefully, tears dripping down her cheeks, small chest heaving. "I want my mami…"
When Noah Puckerman made a comment about her smelling, then mimed gagging and vomiting, Santana did not yell back at him or threaten to punch him, nor did she make a gesture to do so. Instead, her crying intensified to a near howl, and she dug in her heels, refusing that much more adamantly to willingly get up for her teacher.
"I want my mami! I want my MAMI!"
It was not Mrs. Turner, nor her aide, or even the school nurse that got Santana to her feet and to begin moving down the hallway. Instead, it was Rachel, grey-faced, solemn Rachel that approached the sobbing child, gingerly reaching out and patting her shuddering back. It was Rachel who timidly spoke over her cries, even as she gulped and swallowed frequently from the smell of the other little girl's sickness so close to her.
"Santana…they are going to make us feel better," she told her softly, her eyes wide and soft with empathy for the other child. "They are going to get your mami, okay? We have to go to the nurse so she can make us feel better and get our parents. You won't feel better until you get up and get clean and then your mami will come…okay?"
Santana sniffled and gulped in several shuddering breaths, raising her hands to scrub at her still-streaming eyes, but she did look at Rachel after a few moments, and she did slowly get to her feet. In fact, she even let the other child keep her hand on her back- and after a few seconds, she reached for Rachel's hand, holding it tightly in hers.
If Rachel was surprised by this, she didn't show it. She held Santana's hand, and as the two followed the nurse out the door, Rachel whispered to Santana, leaning close. "You should not listen to them, Santana. They are being very mean right now," she told the other little girl earnestly, as some of the other children giggled and called out mocking comments at them at their retreating backs. "Just don't say anything, okay? It's okay. You are going to feel better soon. My dads always make me feel better so I'm sure your mami will too."
She held Santana's hand all the way down the hall to the nurse's room, and once seated on the cot inside, she held her hand there too, even as Santana sniffled and sobbed, her eyes shut even as she squeezed Rachel's hand in one hand, rubbing her eyes and under her nose frequently with her other hand. Rachel didn't say much else to her; she was concentrating on controlling her own nausea. Normally, the brunette would have been more upset herself at being ill, but with Santana beside her, so clearly distraught, a strange sense of protectiveness and compassion for the other child had impacted her, causing her own discomfort to seem considerably less to her than it normally would. Instead, she was focused on Santana, wanting the other little girl to feel better, wanting her to know that they would eventually be okay.
So in the nurse's room, as they both waited for their parents to come for them, Rachel continued to hold Santana's hand, absently swinging her legs over the side of the examining table they had been told to sit on as she intently focused all attention on the other little girl. She even dared to reach up to pet Santana's hair briefly as she spoke gently to the other child, ignoring the continued churning of her own stomach.
"It's okay, Santana. Your mami is coming. She'll make it better. Do you know what my dads do when I'm sick? They change my clothes for me and they give me a bath in bubbles, and they give me lots of drinks and ice cream sometimes, and soup. And they read me stories and sing me songs and we can watch my favorite movies. My favorite movie is Funny Girl…have you seen that? It's exceptional. I want to be just like Barbra Streisand when I grow up. I also get lots of hugs and kisses. It hurts to be sick but it's only for a little while, and it will get better."
It seemed for a little while that Santana was listening to her, and even calming down. Her crying had subsided to sniffles, and she had let Rachel talk to her and pet her hair, had even let her keep hold of her hand. Rachel, as tired, achy, and nauseous as she had felt, had felt good about how she was helping Santana, had even almost forgotten that it was she, not Santana, who was actually ill.
But then her stomach had cramped up hard, and she had found herself dropping Santana's hand, jumping off the examining table, and running for the trash can beside it to vomit for the second time. As the nurse had come to attend to her, rubbing her back and wiping at her face, Santana had lost it all over again. She hadn't even made it off the examining table before she threw up again in response to Rachel. This time, she had tried to hold the vomit back by putting both hands over her mouth, but this had only succeeded in her soiling her hands and arms as well as her clothing. And this time, there was no consoling her, and Rachel herself was feeling too sick to try.
"I'm all gross!" she howled, holding her arms out at herself at arms' length, sobbing so hard that she was almost gagging, nearly making herself sick yet again simply from the forcefulness of her tears. "I'm gross and smelly…and my tummy hurts….and my mouth is nasty…I want my mami, I want my mami, I want my mami!"
It was at this time, as the janitor attempted to clean the floor and replace Rachel's trash can, and the nurse attempted to clean the bawling Santana the best that she could, without actually stripping her down, that one of Rachel's father's arrived. As Mr. Berry came into the room, he had eyes only for Rachel, still hunched on the floor over a new trash can bag. Squatting down beside her, he immediately began to rub her back and stroke her hair, his voice obviously gentle and concerned as he addressed his daughter.
"Baby, I'm so sorry you're not feeling well. You'll come home with me while your daddy is at work today, and if you're still sick tomorrow, your daddy will take care of you while I work, okay, honey? We'll take care of you, baby, it's going to be okay? Do you need to throw up again?"
When Rachel shook her head, Mr. Berry took her into his arms, holding her for a few moments in a gentle embrace and kissing the top of her head as he continued to rub her back. Santana watched, even through a storm of tears, as the man cradled the other little girl, as Rachel's arms wound around him, her face burying in his neck, and even as she observed this, focused on her own misery, she felt a strong stab of envy that she could not have put into words, tempered with equally strong grief.
As much as Rachel had assured her that her mami would come, the reason that Santana was so upset, the reason that she could not calm down, was that she knew her mami would not. It would not be her mami but her abuela would take her home, and it would not be her mami, but her abuela, who took care of her. There would be none of the things that Rachel had described her fathers doing for her; there would be no one coming to speak sweetly to her and reassure her, no one to come scoop her up and rock her and hold her, as Rachel's father was doing for her now. There would be none of that until her mother came home from work, and that was if Santana wasn't already asleep. Santana knew this, and watching Rachel with her father hammered this knowledge into her so much more strongly that she let out a renewed howl, unable to voice this in any other way than how she had already been stating this, pressing both fists hard against her eyes as though to prevent herself from having to see the other child getting exactly what she so badly needed.
"I WANT MY MAMI!"
She didn't expect anyone to acknowledge her; she didn't' expect anyone to care that she was upset, other than to try to make her quieten. So when Mr. Berry, still holding Rachel, turned towards Santana and even stepped towards her, addressing her aloud, Santana was almost stunned out of her tears.
"I see you're not feeling very well either, are you, sweetheart?" he said to her kindly, shifting Rachel to one hip and still rubbing her back rhythmically even as she came closer to Santana. "I'm sure they called your mother, honey, and she'll get here just as fast as she can. How about this, though, why don't Rachel and I wait here with you until she can get here? I'm sure it won't be long."
Looking down at his daughter, he asked her, "Rachel, I know you're not feeling well, baby, and we need to get you home, but is it okay if we wait for a few minutes until your little friend here can be with her mommy?"
When Rachel nodded against his shoulder, he kissed the top of her head, then sat down beside Santana on the examining table, addressing her directly. "We'll keep you company, sweetheart. Now tell me, what is your name?"
Santana was sniffling and sobbing still, unable to draw in her breath enough to answer. It was Rachel, breathing into her father's neck, that answered for her.
"That's Santana, daddy. Santana Lopez."
"Santana Lopez. Well, that's a very pretty name. Did you know, Santana, that there is a whole band named after you? And your name, it means saintly. That's a lovely name for a little girl to live up to," Mr. Berry told her softly. He reached out to stroke back some of Santana's hair from her face, then, reaching for a tissue from the box beside the table, offered one to her. "Here, sweetheart, why don't you wipe your face and blow your nose? It's hard to feel better with a dirty face!"
Santana accepted the tissue from him, scrubbing it across her cheeks, but she was still sniffling frequently, her breathing coming in hiccupping gasps. When Mr. Berry reached to pat her gently on the back, both he and Rachel were startled when the other little girl suddenly reached out to him, wrapping both her arms around his arm and hugging it fiercely, leaning into his side. She was still crying a little, seeming to find it difficult to stop. Mr. Berry, shifting Rachel to one knee and keeping a supportive arm around her, extracted his arm from Santana gently and instead wrapped it around her shoulder, lightly patting the other little girl's arm.
"Hey, sweetheart, you'll be okay," he told her softly, unknowingly echoing his own daughter's words to her. "You'll feel so much better tomorrow. It will be okay."
But the entire atmosphere of the room changed when Santana's appointed guardian for the day came for her. As Alma Lopez stepped into the nurse's room, her shoulders drawn up, her face set into a grimace even before she saw the figures inside, a noticeable change came into the air, a heavy tension that had been absent before. And when the older woman took in the sight of her soiled, teary granddaughter, leaning into the circle of Mr. Berry's arm, her expression darkened, her mouth flattening into a harsh, thin line, and her brows drew together so sharply she appeared to be barely swallowing back a scream. She swallowed, then strode forward, her voice intent and barely controlled as she addressed her granddaughter insistently.
"Santana, you are filthy. If you were ill, you should have asked to be excused to take care of the matter. I know you certainly are able to speak up as you frequently do so whether or not it is appropriate, why would you not do so when you were ill? Stop carrying on and come here….and turn HIM loose at once."
Almost immediately, Santana obeyed, trying to swallow back her tears as she reluctantly shrugged out from under Mr. Berry's arm, again rubbing the tissue he had handed her over her face as she slid to the floor. She didn't reach for her abuela, nor address her; she seemed to know better than to try, though her body was still angled towards Mr. Berry and Rachel, her eyes on them, as though she were still wanting, or perhaps hoping, to be left back with them. Mrs. Lopez did not touch the child, nor address her again; her eyes were instead fixed, narrowed, upon Mr. Berry, her voice fierce as she now spoke to him.
"I can care for my own grandchild. I thank you to refrain from putting your hands on her in the future."
With a terse calling of the little girl's name, she then left the room, with Santana slowly trailing after her. As Rachel remained huddled in her father's arm, she looked after Santana's retreating form, beginning to feel that for the first time, she could understand just why it was that she had wanted her mother- and specifically her mother- so very badly.
