Next chapter up. It feels much sooner than what is usual now. Reviews, comments, tips, ideas, etc are wonderful. Erik is OOC right now. I know. Don't worry about that though, I know how that's going to be fixed, and probably most of you know too. Enjoy.

"Damn."

One second, Destler was talking with her, the next he was lost in thought, and now? He was falling over. Maria scurried to catch him before he hit the floor. The last thing the man needed was a concussion on top of everything else. She managed to catch him in her arms, and to her surprise, he was reasonably easy to support. Much lighter than what she had him pegged at. That didn't mean that he was a light weight. She still struggled to drag him across the floor and into a chair.

Backing away, Maria contemplated what to do with her seemingly unconscious housemate. She wasn't strong enough to drag him across campus, really, it wasn't even worth the thought. Calling the nurse would be pointless, they hadn't managed to wake him last time and there was nothing to indicate that they could wake him this time either. Calling security? No. Sure, they'd be able to provide one of the school golf carts, but after that, they'd be less useful than the nurse. Leaving him in her classroom seemed like the only thing to do. Really, the only thing she could do. That left the question of whether or not she should stay with him. Did she have anything that she needed to be at? Saturday... Soccer. Soccer on Saturday because they had Wednesday off. Right. Did she really need to be there though? The team did have another coach, and that coach tended to bring her soccer playing husband along, and todays practice was probably going to be cut short anyway because of the impending rain...

Maria grabbed her ipad and shot an email off to her co-coach telling her that she couldn't be there today. With any luck, they hadn't left yet, and would get it. If not, all-well. Nothing that she wanted to do about it. Besides, taking care of a fainted housemate was much more important than teaching students how to kick a ball properly, right? Then again, she wasn't going to be doing much more than watching him breath. Maybe she could make some homework for the next week or so, or finish grading those tests. It was just a matter of looking at her answer key and marking stuff wrong at that point.

She sighed and walked over to her desk to grab the tests and a green pen. She wasn't a fan of the red ones because they looked so intimidating next to the students pencil marks. And she had a rather bad history with that color pen. A memory, more of anything. She had once gotten every single answer wrong on a test, and her teacher had delighted in scribbling the entire page red. Bright, bright red. Vibrant. Brighter than those slinky red dresses that celebrities wear. It was painful. The worst part, is that it had all been stupid mistakes. Very, very stupid mistakes. Mistakes that were bad enough that their answers were in the next question down. It was horrible. And the only thing that she had ever failed. There was a reason why she wasn't a bio teacher.

It wasn't that she had failed bio that year, just that one test put her off of it forever. Up till then, she had actually quite enjoyed it. It was neat, finding what made living things work. The mutations, in her mind, were always the most interesting part of bio. Mistakes in the DNA or chromosomes, different, but sometimes necessary for survival. Only sometimes necessary though. Some of those DNA/chromosomal mistakes only bring about disease, suffering, and misfortune.

Isse forced herself to focus upon her work. Biology was not her profession, nor would it ever be. She was quite content in her chosen field. It was a fun, a never ending challenge, more changing than new sudoku problems, or even kenken. Her math was not something that she would part with willingly. Besides the fact, she had gone to college for math. It was too late to change her degree unless she really wanted to. Not like she personally had the money to afford going back to a college. Sure, her family came from money- at one point, they were one of the wealthiest families in France, but she had never liked flaunting that. Well, she might have when she was a child, but that changed around the time she was thirteen. She had a friend that had gone to the same boarding high school as her who was there nearly solely on financial aid. That girl had had over a 90% ride. She and Maria had been roommates. Just something about that girl had worn off on her. Maybe it was the fact that she didn't care about wealth because she didn't need it for she was surviving fine enough without it. Maybe it was that the girl earned her own paychecks as soon as she turned fourteen, making young Maria feel guilty somehow at that time. Whatever the case, since then, it was not something she often shared or acknowledged, so if she was to ever go off to college again, she would find a way to pay for it herself, without her family.

What was she doing? Biology? College? Math? Math. Math... and watching Erik breath. The latter thing would probably hold her attention longer than the first right now. She just couldn't seem to focus! It was exceedingly unusual. Well, not really. At least she wasn't ADHD like the vocal music director Longacre. That man could jump from one subject to another within the blink of an eye and continue on like nothing had happened. And the fellow was just plain creepy on occasion. There was no good reason behind that which she had found. It was just a fact of life, equivalent to some quirks that she might have, and Erik's memory failure/loss/whatever he was going to refer to it as.

Maria frowned. Erik. For some reason, his memory thing didn't quite fit into her 'facts of life' category. Really, it just didn't seem right to her. From what she knew of him, he did have a really good memory- it was able to retain dates, facts, faces, music, just about everything. Everything except for his pesky past. What could have caused something like that? A form of amnesia, clearly, but how? How could that have happened? Had he gotten a concussion? It would have needed to be one hell of a concussion to make someone forget their life. Traumatic event? Maybe he had PTSD. Really though, he didn't show any of the signs. Then again, if he couldn't remember what he went through, how would he have horrifying memories of something like that? But what about Alzheimer's or Huntingtons? Closer? Possibly. Correct? No. But what else was there for memory problems? She frowned some more, wracking her brain for something remembered from the past. There was something she had read a few years ago. Memory related. Came from some Latin root or whatever. D... d something. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't right. But what was it? It would irk her until she could remember, much like that song that she had sung in chorus during fourth grade. Dem. De-m. Two latin words. Why hadn't she taken latin? It really wasn't coming to her. Quite suddenly, she smiled. Google existed for a reason. Why only bother to search for one measly memory disorder though? The internet had lists...

Dementia! That was it. Dementia. But... no. A wiki search had left her with the symptoms, and they were not what she was looking for. Sure, they included memory loss, but also had reasoning issues, thinking problems, and all sorts of other things that were not wrong with her housemate. It seemed that whatever he had was not going to be determined by quick internet searches. Perhaps, though, perhaps the library had something, if she could narrow down her search parameters. The library was, of all things, the envy of many of the other rival prep schools. It was large. Very, very large, with at least a book on almost everything. But what would she narrow her search down to? Fixed past memory loss? Non-progressive loss of memory? Memory loss -alzheimers, -degenerative, -injury? There was only one way to find out. Sighing, Maria wheeled the chair behind her desk to one of the students desks, sat down, and put her feet up, but not before grabbing a spare notebook, a pen, and her ipad. She settled in and prepared for hours of research. With any luck, Destler would wake up soon enough to help her. Until then, though, she was on her own, and there was no better point to start than then.

And if any of you have ideas for what disease/disorder she might narrow it down to, let me know. Please.