Leaning back against the elevated head of her hospital bed, Kim Possible sighed and stared at the cream colored walls of her private room in the Middleton Medical Center. She plucked briefly at the sleeve of the hideous gown she was forced to wear and tucked it more firmly beneath her, letting the weight of her backside hold it securely closed - until the next time she moved, anyway. "I hate this," she thought, squirming awkwardly and carefully not thinking about what aspect of her current situation she was referring to.
A math textbook lay beside her atop the coarse fabric of her sheets, but as had happened frequently during her stay in the hospital, she found herself unable or unwilling to concentrate on her schoolwork. "More homework to do. Great."
Sighing deeply as she yielded to the boredom and frustration of her isolation, Kim's nose wrinkled as she drank in the smell along with her breath. As was typical for hospitals in her experience (usually while escorting or visiting Ron), the dominant odor was a mix of bleach and antiseptic overlaying a plethora of less pleasant scents.
"So much for a special, magic moment," she thought morosely, turning the hospital admission band that encircled her wrist around and around, revealing and concealing over and over the neatly typed text and barcode that listed her personal information and the cold, impersonal, clinical, description of the reason for her admission to the hospital. "Ten minutes of awkward, sweaty fumbling in Bonnie's parent's room; not exactly roses... and candlelight... and soft music... and the beach, and..."
A gurgle from her midsection brought her internal monologue to a sudden halt and made her consider running for the bathroom - again. Fortunately, her intestinal discomfort faded before the urge became overwhelming.
She stared up at the IV rack sitting idle by her bedside (idle only until her next dose was required) and tried to convince her stomach that everything was fine. The stainless steel of the hook that soon would once more hold a bag of intravenous antibiotic solution glinted evilly in the sunlight pouring so cheerily through a window, and Kim had to look away from the device as her stomach lurched once more.
Kim had originally thought the hospital stay her mother had dictated was intended as a not-so-subtle form of punishment. "As if talking with mom about painful urination isn't punishment enough," she winced. Despite what she'd contracted, she'd certainly felt well enough to go to school, but her mother had insisted - and Kim was eventually glad that she had. The first time her stomach had churned in reaction to the heavy course of antibiotics she'd been prescribed had quickly disabused her of the notion that it was an unnecessary step. "I can't imagine myself sitting in Ms. Lopez's class when that feeling hits - let alone being in front of Mr. Barkin."
Thankfully, her mom had been more concerned with taking care of the matter once it had been accurately diagnosed than in assessing blame or punishment. "The look on her face was bad enough," she thought. Even now, the memory of that discussion was enough to bring a heated flush of embarrassment and discomfort to her cheeks.
"I wonder why she asked if we needed to bring in Ron for testing too?" she mused momentarily. Dismissing the idle thought, she turned back to her textbook and tried to study, resolutely trying to put all thoughts of her uneasy stomach and the slow march of time until the next phase of her treatment (when the process would start all over again) safely out of her mind.
"Paging Doctor Possible... Dr. Possible, call 6231. Dr. Possible, 6231."
Kim looked up from her desultory attempt at studying as Wade's voice rang out over the hospital loudspeakers. "That's unusual," she commented aloud, setting her textbook beside the pitcher of ice water on her bedside table.
Pulling out her Kimmunicator, she hit the call button. To her surprise, Wade didn't immediately answer. She waited for several minutes as a test pattern of colored stripes was displayed on the screen, her curiosity and mild irritation growing with every moment that passed.
When Wade finally responded, Kim swallowed her irrational ire at being made to wait and asked, "What's the sitch, Wade? I heard you page mom."
"I was going to call you next, Kim. Mr. Barkin contacted me; apparently Ron is at school, and he's a little out of it. He wants you and your mom to come take care of him."
"My mom?" Kim's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Not his?" she asked.
For a moment, Wade just looked at her, his expression impossible to read, then he said only, "She is a doctor, Kim."
"Wait," Kim began. "He's hurt? How bad? But wait, what's he doing at school if he's... ?" she frowned suddenly as a thought struck her. "Wade..." she scowled, her brow creasing in irritation.
"What?" Wade asked.
"I thought we agreed not to tell Ron," she angrily began, but fell silent when Wade interrupted.
"No, we didn't agree on that. What happened was you told me not to tell him, and I agreed not to disobey you. And before you start, no, I didn't tell him. But it is kind of my fault that he found out," Wade elaborated.
"Wade! Wait, no, er, huh?" Kim stammered, irritation giving way to confusion as she tried to parse out the distinctions. "What?"
"I didn't tell him, Kim," Wade repeated. "But he was on a mission today, and..."
"Ron went on a mission?" Kim demanded, sitting up in the bed while irritably jerking the uncomfortable gown into a better (and more covering) position. "Without me?"
"He's gone solo before," Wade reminded her, "and he did fine today, too. That's beside the point; the point is he had a Kimmunicator..."
"Ron-unicator," Kim prodded.
"Whatever," Wade rolled his eyes, "anyway, he had one, and I've got them pre-programmed to automatically use backdoors and or automatically log you into the sites you visit most often so that you don't have to do anything to get total access. It's a preset feature for Club Banana, GJ, Disney Channel, the Middleton Space Center... and the Middleton Medical Center, among others."
Kim scowled, but didn't comment as he continued.
"Once he found out what you had been admitted to the hospital for, it was a pretty simple matter to look it up - he just had to cut and paste the name into a search engine and he had his answers. I've checked the logs, and he visited a few public medical information sites; that's all it took to figure out what the sitch was. He had plenty of time to look before the GJ transport plane reached the drop zone."
Kim swallowed her response as her mom bustled into the room, pulling the door closed behind her, and sweeping the privacy curtain across the small window. "Put these on," she ordered, tossing a pair of sea green surgical scrubs onto Kim's bed. Kim had a brief thought that this must be what her mom had been like back when she'd worked her rotations in the ER - distracted, abrupt and impatient.
Before Kim could react to or protest her mom's orders, Mrs. Dr. Possible had plucked the Kimmunicator from her daughter's hands and was talking to Wade, turning the device so the visual receptor was facing away from her daughter. "Wade? I'm here. Can you stream the medical data for me?" Looking up from the screen after a moment, she frowned as she noticed Kim hadn't moved. "Hurry, Kimmie, we need to get to the school as quickly as possible."
Reluctantly, Kim slid from under the sheets and slipped out of the ill-fitting gown that she had been wearing. As she shook out the surgical scrub pants, the legs fluttered and a pair of slippers that had been wrapped inside their length clattered to the floor.
Her mother briefly looked up from the screen at the sound, but quickly turned back to the monitor. "I don't like the looks of the blood pressure reading; it's fluctuating too much... Can you get me a visual? And a list of any medications or treatments he might have received from Global Justice before the flight back? Have you tried contacting him on his Kimmunicator?"
Despite her earlier irritation, Kim began to get worried as her mother quizzed Wade more and more intensively about the readings she was viewing and on Ron's condition in general. She quickly finished dressing in the scrubs, leaving the hated gown wadded in a loose ball by the side of the bed. "Ready," she said.
Without looking up from the screen, her mother gripped her by the arm and headed out through the door, still continuing her conversation with Wade. "I've had the EMTs put a kit in my car, and we should be there in 5 minutes or less. If you can, please ask Mr. Barkin to try to keep him calm - though I suppose if he could have done that, he wouldn't have called. Thanks, Wade," she smiled, then hurried down the hallway, pulling her daughter along with her.
"Hey!" Kim half protested over Wade's "No problem, Mrs. Possible."
"Come along, dear," her mother instructed. "We have to hurry."
When they reached their car, Kim's mother helped her climb into the front passenger seat of the family's orange station wagon before getting into the drivers' seat. As she started the ignition, she handed the Kimmunicator back to her daughter, "Please keep an eye on this for me while I drive, and if any more of the readings move into the yellow or the red, let me know immediately."
"Okay, mom," Kim sighed, sinking back into her seat. Kim's eyes widened as her mother - who usually drove even slower and safer than her father - left streaks of rubber on the asphalt as she zoomed out of the parking lot. "If mom's driving like this, how bad off is Ron?" Kim wondered, as her eyes riveted themselves to the Kimmunicator, trying to make sense of the readings displayed there.
For the first time in days, she felt a queasiness in her stomach that was wholly unrelated to the antibiotics. "Oh, Ron..." she breathed, her emotions swirling in confusion.