37. When a Demon Defiles a Witch
"Time to wake up!"
The bed creaked and wobbled, rocking Dora awake. She rolled over and found Mercy bouncing on the end of her bed. The sun beamed too brightly through the open curtains of her bedroom window, searing her eyes. She had not gotten enough sleep.
"Oh god, Merc, please stop," Dora groaned. "I don't feel so good." Curling up, she held her aching midsection. Already uncomfortable because of the welt on her breast from her adventure in Blüdhaven a few days ago, she had also been having horrible stomach cramps throughout yesterday. Now she was waking up nauseous, and Mercy wasn't helping.
"Are you sick?" Mercy asked, crawling up the bed.
The world spun and Dora's stomach lurched. The little girl shifting around the mattress was still too much to handle. Dora jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. She barely made it to the toilet before she vomited. A minute of puking later she was empty, but still retching bile, and her cramps were tying knots with her guts.
"Dora, are you okay?" Mercy asked, handing her a cup of water.
She found the breath to say, "I'll be fine, sweetie, I just need a minute. Use Mami's bathroom to get ready for school, okay?"
The little girl nodded and grabbed her toothbrush. But she lingered a moment, looking worried.
"I'm fine, go," Dora assured her.
After Mercy left, she kicked the door closed and heaved herself on to the toilet, pulling her underwear off and dreading the bad cycle she was going to have to endure. She scolded herself, thinking, This is what you get for taking expired birth con—
"Fffffuck!" she hissed in pain and nearly fell off the toilet seat. Red hot needles tore their way out of her as she peed. Oh god, something's wrong.
Ten minutes later, she stumbled into the kitchen, every single step pulling at the knots inside her. She was swallowing ibuprofen and sucking on crushed ice when Mercy came in, dressed in a Superman t-shirt and corduroy overalls.
The little girl walked up to Dora, who was hunched over on the table. She pulled her hair back and wiped the sweat from her forehead. "I think you need to go to the doctor."
Dora's vision blurred in and out of focus for a moment, framing Mercy's concerned blue eyes. She reminded Dora of her father.
Taking a quick inventory of her symptoms, she reluctantly said, "Ugh, I think you're right, Merc. But Mami's at work. I gotta make you breakfast and take you to school first."
"Don't worry about me, I can make myself some cereal." Mercy grabbed her step stool and reached into the cupboard. "The faster we get going, the sooner you can find out what's making you sick."
God damn, I love this kid. I don 't deserve her.
Dora wanted to know what was wrong too, if only to prove her suspicions wrong. She let her mind ramble as she got ready to go. The worst-case scenario was that she had gotten some sort of sexually transmitted infection from Jason, meaning he had lied to her about his abstinence before they got together. She could not shake the feeling that Jason still had secrets he was not telling her. They all claimed he hadn't, but Dora cringed at the thought of Jason rolling around with any of the Vermilion girls, especially Cali… But she also thought of Jessie, who had admitted to flirting with Jason before she met Dora. And now Dora couldn't stop replaying the forehead kiss Jason gave Jessie after her fight.
She mentally slapped herself for being such a pessimist. Why would Jason lie to her about that? He was obviously concerned with keeping his identity a secret and sleeping around would expose it.
But then again… he didn't need to take off his mask to have sex. After all, they had nearly done that once. And while the mask had been a dealbreaker for her… Dora had no problem imagining it might be a kink for plenty of girls. She had considered it once or twice.
Get your mind out of the gutter, girl, Dora told herself. It's probably just a UTI. You've been having unprotected sex nearly every other day.
Great sex.
Mind-blowing sex.
Absolutely earth-shattering life-altering sex with the man that literally taught you what sex meant …
But it's possible to have too much of a good thing.
#
Dora paced around the alley, kicking around some loose trash while she smoked a joint. She never considered herself a stoner, even now, but her cramps kept knotting and untying her insides—and weed helped. Jason smoked CBD-heavy marijuana regularly to help with his aches and pains—and after finally seeing firsthand what he put himself through, Dora understood why he had so many. It was testament that he was still alive and still had full range of motion.
Dora hoped he would retire sooner rather than later. She thought of her father's friends who were veterans, who served one tour too many and ended up disabled for the rest of their lives. Only Jason wouldn't get a payout from the VA.
Her glance drifted up and she saw a security camera aimed at one of the back-doors of the Park Row Clinic. A wave of bitter nostalgia swept through her.
Ten years ago, Dora and Jason were fourteen. They had been dating about year, then he lost his mother to a heroin overdose. He spiraled out of control, ran away from his foster home, started hanging out with bad people and doing bad things. Dora tried to help him, but then he went too far. At the time, she was a volunteer at the clinic, and he used her access to steal drugs.
Dora could not forget the sting of that betrayal. She loved him, but he took advantage of her. He tried lying her about it, but that security camera had caught him red handed. Jason broke her heart, so she broke his in return. They wouldn't reconcile for almost two years, but he broke her trust again when he ran away to Qurac without telling her and got himself 'killed.'
Which is why as much as Jason had changed in the past eight years, as much as she cared for him now, and as much as she loved being with him… she still couldn't shake off her doubts. She wasn't ready to fully trust him again.
The back door to the clinic opened, and a dark-skinned young woman with shortly trimmed hair and dark-rimmed glasses walked out. She wore blue scrubs under a white lab coat. She crossed the alley to where Dora stood, out of the camera's line-of-sight.
"Lara! So good to see you!" Dora said, giving the girl a careful hug. Her breast was still bruised and healing.
"Yeah, glad you called me." Lara said, patting her back. "It's good to see you too. Looks like you lost some weight."
Dora looked down at herself. She hadn't given it much thought, but her clothes had been sitting a little loose lately. She had never been fat, but she was thinner than she had been in a few years. Training with Lily and Jason, on top of skipping meals because she was so busy had trimmed a few pounds here and there. Her ego was flattered, but the nurse inside her told her it might because of malnutrition, considering how sick she was feeling right now. "How about you? How have you been?"
"Really good! Tom and I are engaged now." She showed her the glittering ring her doctor boyfriend—now fiancé—had given her. "We announced on Facebook. I'll send you an invite to the engagement party once we get it all set up."
Dora fiddled her own promise ring and put her hands in her hoodie's pockets. "Congratulations! I, uh, see that you're a fully registered nurse now."
"Yeah, I… finally graduated," Lara said, securing the clip of her ID badge.
Suddenly the air between them changed. An elephant had taken a seat in the alley.
"Yeah, I figured," Dora said with a little pang of… she wasn't sure. Regret? FOMO? She and Lara had been brought up through the clinic together, working as certified nursing assistants while attending Gotham University. If Dora hadn't dropped out of college and quit the clinic, she would be in the same position as Lara today. How different would her life be? Would she have met Jason again?
"You know…" Lara reached out and rubbed Dora's arm with sincerity. "It's never too late to go back to school. And I'm sure Leslie has a job waiting for you here. We're always short CNAs."
Dora shrugged her off. "That's the reason why I called you. I wanted to avoid getting that pitch from her again. I can't come back." In truth, she didn't want Leslie's condescending judgment and disapproval of the decisions she'd been making lately. She wouldn't understand. Dora closed her eyes and took a breath, shoving down her pride and the embarrassment rearing its ugly head. "We just reconnected, so I hate to ask… but I need a really big favor."
"What's up, honey?"
"I've been feeling like shit lately. Think you can test me for a few things? Discretely? I don't want Leslie to even know I was here."
"Um…" Lara broke eye contact, biting her lip.
"If it's too much to ask, I understand. I don't want to get you in trouble."
"No, no, it's alright. Are you okay? What are your symptoms?"
"PMS stuff, but way worse than usual. Cramps, aches, nausea… but I think I have some type of infection. I got a fever and… and…" Dora shuddered. "Well, it hurts when I pee."
Lara's eyes widened. "Yikes, infection all right. C'mon."
Sliding her hoodie up and turning her face away from the camera, Dora followed Lara in through the back door of the Park Row Clinic. Dora kept her head bowed and tried to hide her face with her long bangs, glad she hadn't trimmed her hair in a while. She didn't want her old co-workers to recognize her and start asking questions, or alerting Leslie.
Lara led her through a familiar labyrinth of hallways and tucked her away in an empty exam room. After taking a sample of Dora's blood, Lara left her alone with a cup and bedpan to produce a urine sample.
A few minutes later, Lara held the cup of pee up to the light and squinted. "Piss is a bit dark, honey. Do you want to me take a peek under the hood?"
Dora scoffed as she washed her hands, still out of breath and sore from filling the cup. "I know you're being professional and thorough, Lara, but I'll spare you the trouble. How soon can I know?"
"I'll lean on the folks in the pathology lab to get us blood results in a few hours, but a full urine work-up will take at least a day to culture, no matter what."
"Thanks. Best I could hope for."
"Um… do you mind if I ask what you've been doing?" Lara hesitated, putting the bedpan on a waste cart in the corner. "Or rather who?"
In this room, Dora had no one to hide from… except her own shame. She pulled up her hood, reclined back on the exam table, and stared at the ceiling. "The guy I've been seeing is… uh… pretty popular, I guess."
"Um… do you think he's been cheating on you?"
Dora laughed through her nose. "I guess we'll find out, won't we? I was clean before we got together. I haven't been with anyone else since Roy and I split up."
Lara clicked her tongue, clearly feeling awkward. "Could be any number of things: chlamydia, gonorrhea, trichomoniasis, vaginosis—"
"Yeah, Lara, I know the whole STD alphabet soup," she groaned, feeling nauseous just hearing them all. "We took that course together, remember?"
"Well, then you should remember it's best to get ahead of the game. None of those infections are serious or life threatening if you deal with it early enough. Whatever you've got, you'll need antibiotics." Lara sighed and crossed her arms. "But I can't write prescriptions."
"Yeah, I was hoping you could get one from Tom, maybe?" Dora asked. Her fiancé was a resident physician.
Lara frowned. "I can't steal his pad. That's illegal."
"Not if he writes it himself. Give him my chart. Make me his patient on the down-low."
Lara still didn't look at ease. "He still has to check you himself."
Dora sat up and took her hands. "So pretend he did. Please, Lara, I'll owe you a big one." She was desperate and didn't want to feel like she was birthing a cactus the next time she took a piss.
"I don't know…"
"You can have free drinks at the Alibi for a night."
"Dee, you know I don't drink like that."
"You and friends?"
Lara still didn't look convinced.
"Okay, how about you can have your engagement party at the Alibi… with an open bar?"
Lara's eyebrow arched, interested. "Really?"
"Yeah, but well drinks only. I love you, but I gotta stay in business."
"That still sounds really good, actually.
"What are friends for?"
Lara rolled her eyes and smiled. She pulled Dora into a hug. "Thanks, sweetie. I'll see what I can do."
Patting her back, Dora said, "And if Tom can't do it, it's still okay. Offer's still on the table as an engagement present."
Notes
And we're back! It was a year long hiatus, but damn, I needed it. In the last post I said I would post a few chapters in December, but that's when life started piling everything on. As some of you know, I'm a teacher, and teaching during Covid is more than twice the work… then I was working on my Master's degree on top of it. But well… it all paid off. I did it. I finished my course work and I graduated. No more grad school and I'm finally free to write during my evenings instead of doing homework.
I know a lot of writers here start and abandon their stories, and I'll admit I've been guilty of that, but One Bad Day is special to me. I want to see it through to the end, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many times I have to pause it. I will always pick it back up eventually. I'm so excited about the ending of this story and I want to share it with you so badly. The only way we're going to get there is by holding on and never giving up.
As far as specific notes for this chapter: I titled this "Reality Check" in my plot outline and this whole upcoming arc is called "Dissent." That's because the story turns a corner here. The romance will still be there, but the honeymoon is over and now the challenges to the relationship get harder. We'll see if Dora and Jason can tough it out.
This chapter features a special cameo! Not a canon character, but of another of my friends from the writing community! Lara is based Lyn Harkeran (on FFN), aka TarnisisLH (on Ao3). She actually helped inspire Dora's character when I commissioned her to write a one-shot featuring Harley Quinn and an early version of Dora. It's called "Midnight Rendezvous" so go and check it out and show her some love from me.
Song reference: "When a Demon Defiles a Witch" by Whitechapel
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