Hello all! Today is awesome, because it is indeed Cloud's birthday! (The day I'm typing this) Happy Birthday Cloud! Naturally, he's aged quite a bit since the game actually came out, but you know, I don't have the game with me to properly check the dates and therefore can't possibly know how old he really is. I suppose I could look it up myself...but...it's frustrating! Someone, anyone out there with the game, how old is my beloved Cloud?
It's a shame they don't put Leon's Birthday on his game. I would have had quite a lot of fun.
Anyway, in honor of Cloud's birthday, and being the quirky weirdos that Hito Me Bore and I are, we made cute little birthday hats for her Cloud key chain and her home made plushie—yes ladies and gentlemen, we sew as well! Later on, we're making a mini cake with "Leon Frosting." We have yet to decide a flavor... The whole experience is totally hilarious and will most definitely be repeated next year!
Thank you's:
Wends-Finally got the time to log in eh? Cool. Thank you for the review! Spastic Riku...I never thought about that...sounds kinda weird, so I guess you're welcome! Thanks for the tidbit on how to get the spaces back in, but I'll keep the X's. It's easier. And as for the type-O, whoops, I hate this spell checker and it's auto correct. (Actually, it was probably my fault because that's not even a word, but you know what? I'll blame it on the .5 of the time the auto correct actually works.)
Alright, I own nothing!
XxX
If told so at a later time, Leon wouldn't have believed the rate at which he was moving that night. After checking in on one patient, he would immediately go to the next, the next, and finally the next until he could go and visit Sora. Afterward the process started over again.
As he jogged down the hallway, he was scribbling down the status of a particularly grumpy patient—perhaps a relative of the woman with the projectile lipstick—and happened to run straight into quickly brewing trouble.
Seifer was perched acrimoniously on top of the desk, demanding that the masses stay way from him. Shouts rose when he held the box—that resembled the very heavy box of antitoxins—over his head and kicked at the crowd with his feet.
Leon groaned, rubbing his eyes. Perhaps putting Seifer in charge of a job so important wasn't the greatest of ideas. Carefully picking his way through the sea of people, he tugged on Seifer's lab coat.
"Ah! How did you people get behind me? Get ba—oh. Hey." He stopped attempting to kick Leon in the face and held up the box. "Here's your..."
"Antitoxin."
"Yep."
People began to notice in their fit of hysterics that Leon was also wearing a lab coat, which instantaneously meant rescuer, and they began tearing mercilessly at him for some sort of cure.
He grimaced. "Seifer, give me my box!"
"Take it!" He dumped it into Leon's arms, then swiftly returned to kicking people away from him.
"Seifer!"
"Hey, you try being civil with these people!"
Leon glanced up at the clock. He was supposed to have been checking up on Sora. "Look, just hurry up and administer the antibiotics. I don't have time for this right now."
"I was in the process! Then these...animals just started—"
There was a sharp cry as someone passed out in the midst of people. Silence followed only briefly before the sea of people became a raging tidal wave tearing even more frantically at the two.
Nurses were scrambling around, trying to push people back so they wouldn't crush the poor victim, and attempted to load him onto a gurney. Leon's eyebrows curved downward.
"I've got to go."
"Wait," Seifer said jumping off the counter, accidently knocking someone over. "Don't you want some of this?" He rummaged around for a moment, ignoring the hands scrabbling at his person, then produced in a gloved hand, a rather large needle filled with the antibiotic.
"I'd be more than happy to administer this painful shot in particular."
Leon opened his mouth to reply, but was blind sided by a sizable man that was determined to be treated first. Following suit, more members of the crowed noticed the glinting needle and were drawn to it in an almost trance-like manner. Patients being drawn to a needle: in times of crisis, the general flow of humanity was apparentlyreversed.
In seconds, Seifer completely forgot about Leon having been crushed between the masses, and was far more determined instead to kick hands away from him. This was a bit of a challenge, as one might assume, since he was surrounded on almost every side, and was trying not to stab himself with the needle in the process.
The thought occurred to him that he should perhaps give himself another dose—being as reluctant to do the job as he was, naturally the first shot went directly to him—but he didn't even have a chance to decide before the needle was knocked out of his hand behind the counter, rendered completely useless.
XxX
Cloud was sitting on his own counter with his arms folded, and watched the spectacle before him with a weird mixture of disbelief and gratitude. Perhaps doctors weren't such horrible beings after all. Irritating, yes, but not horrible. Cloud himself would have gone ballistic if anyone had tried to attack him as they were attacking Leon—now missing—and that other blond doctor, but the two seemed relatively calm for the situation.
He watched as a needle was flung out of Seifer's hand. People tumbled over each other to reach it, even though it was dirty. He grimaced, remembering those horrible shots.
Riku and he had waited around far more patiently than the surrounding group until their turns had come up. Dr. Almasy—as he had announced himself through multiple layers of masks—had a small cart stocked full of little brown bottles, on which script too hard to read was printed. On one side was a metal box that housed multiple individually wrapped needles.
Never being particularly affectionate to them as a child, Cloud didn't much fancy the idea of getting one plunged into his arm, but on further inspection of the coughing and wheezing people around him, he soon found that he didn't much fancy getting sick either.
He didn't have much time to consider the pain as the needle was sharply driven into his arm and then he was pushed out of way so that others would have their turn. At least he didn't have to go through the embarrassing display of tears as he usually did when faced with shots.
Riku had seemed too preoccupied to even notice the administration of shots, and only realized after he had been yanked, stabbed and pushed away. Cloud guessed that he had been thinking about Sora and his condition.
Now though, the whole experience was over and he was stuck sitting on the counter top next to Riku and a long ago emptied coffee pot.
He looked up again to watch what was happening. Leon had somehow managed to resurface, clinging to the counter and trying not to get knocked away. Seifer was again standing on top of the counter, repeating his question rather loudly and holding up another needle. Leon said something Cloud couldn't pick up then waved him away—more or less —and tried to make his way to the back of the hospital. Seifer seemed to shrug, instead jamming the needle intended for Leon into another person that Cloud thought could easily pass for the world's most ferocious looking human being.
Leon's attempt to make it to the back of the hospital toward the rooms was somewhat hitched when a woman with enough children to fill a daycare center charged through and politely flung him backwards. He narrowly missed getting his face smashed by the tiny feet of her kids, and stood up to collect himself.
Cloud made no effort whatsoever to hide his amusement, but when Leon glared up at him, he stared briefly before quickly turning his head upward toward the ceiling. But...
There was something in his eyes...
Cloud frowned, looking back down at Leon, who had returned his attention to the task at hand. He felt something positively irritating welling up inside him.
In just that moment, Cloud had felt something, something that had only come after he had received that distempered glare from the equally as distempered Leon, and suddenly watching him get stomped over wasn't nearly as amusing. He sank down into the counter. It made him absolutely sick when he realized what this feeling was.
It was...admiration.
XxX
Leon stood briefly in the hallway, which was quite a bit clearer than the waiting room and the area near the front desk. The staff had taken liberty to set up a sort of blockade between that area and the back rooms so that they would be able to work without being hassled.
As he stood, catching his breath from the somewhat difficult task of getting through, he began to feel the effects of a hard day's work. Even though all medical reason told him otherwise, he was positive his head was going to explode, and the levels of pain in his back and feet were at another measurement entirely.
He quickly decided to get to work, as when he was working, he couldn't feel it as much. He dashed down the hallway to Sora's room.
Sora's room had been equipped with quite a bit more machinery since the night before. Other than the standard equipment such as heart and blood pressure monitors, he had also been hooked up to a respirator and an IV containing Erythromycin, the same antibiotic Seifer was still struggling to administer in the front.
Leon knocked quickly before entering the unsettling darkness of the room. The brilliant white light from the hallway sent a piercing line straight up the bed side before fanning out over Sora's face. Fitting his mouth with a trained half smile, Leon greeted him.
Sora bobbed his head up and down as a sort of reply as Leon closed the door behind him and turned on the yellow tinted light of a small lamp on the night stand.
Since the previous night, Sora had gotten considerably worse very quickly.
His blood pressure had dropped sharply just hours after Leon had discovered the disease and removed Riku from the room. His heart rate had increased, and earlier Sora had described to him—via pen and paper—that his throat was so sore he wasn't able to speak.
Then there was his appearance.
He looked positively awful. So awful in fact that even if his illness wasn't contagious, he would not have let Riku enter for fear that he'd completely lose it. His face was pale and slightly sunken. He looked weak and terribly tired for someone with his amount of stored energy.
Ignoring all of this with the mental condition of the patient in mind, Leon held up the box Seifer had guarded in the lobby.
Sora gazed up at it slightly confused.
"This is the antitoxin, it just arrived." He tried to widen his smile. "It appears as though you are the first to receive it."
Sora's face seemed to brighten a little and he watched quietly as Leon opened the box of little brown bottles. There seemed to be hundreds of them packed in neat and tight to protect them from bumps, shakes and flamboyant medical professionals like Seifer that needed to make a scene with everything they got their hands on.
"Alright Sora, I'm going to start you off with a fairly heavy dose." He began hooking up an IV. Sora didn't seem that bothered that he was having yet another needle inserted into his arm, this time it was secured.
"40,000 units may seem like a lot, but I assure you, it's all to help."
Sora nodded, and waited while Leon studied the machines that whirred behind him. He hadn't had the energy to complain properly about it, but he was rather annoyed at those ridiculously noisy mechanical pests for keeping him awake. It hadn't bothered him when Riku was with him, but now that he was gone and more equipment had been added, it was all he could do to keep himself from tearing the wires right out of his body—assuming he had the energy to do so. That would give those hunks of metal something to really whirr about.
He also wasn't too keen on being forcefully secured to a bed. Riku had started that nonsense when he insisted on bundling him up tight enough to extrude his intestines right out his ears, but once Leon had come in claiming he knew what was wrong, he quickly pushed every needle in the entire hospital into his body. Both Riku and Leon would be given a hefty piece of his mind once he was released.
As a whole, he really didn't like this experience at all. In fact, he loathed it. He wanted out immediately. It was a shame that Leon and the rest of the infuriatingly thorough hospital staff didn't agree.
Leon stood up, apparently finished with his tinkering and adjusting and looked Sora over with an expression Sora wished he could read.
"Okay, I have other patients to visit, but I'll be back. Is there anything, I can get for you?"
Sora's eyes flicked downwards, toward the pen and paper pad resting on legs.
Leon got the message, tucked the pen in Sora's hand and moved the pad so he could write.
Weakly, but still very pronounced, he scrawled, "NO"
Releasing a sigh, Leon nodded, clutched his clip board and headed out the door. Only a dozen more patients to look after, and then he would get to...start over again.
Riku was sitting swinging his legs back and forth over the counter and watching the masses, just as Cloud was doing. The activity hadn't slowed even with all of the drugs having been administered. Seifer was still batting away helplessly at the crowd who apparently weren't satisfied with a simple antibiotic. They wanted treatment, and they wanted it swiftly!
XxX
Cloud shifted next to him, and Riku noticed his frown deepen. He followed Cloud's gaze to the back and watched as a flash of white darted around before disappearing down another hallway.
Leon.
"I...really dislike that guy," he muttered.
"You've said that...numerous times."
"I mean it numerous times."
Riku reached behind the counter and produced the coffee canister and a filter.
"You don't really get along with anyone, do you?"
"Not if I dislike them, no."
Riku nodded, pulling a lukewarm jug of water from under the counter as well. "He's not that bad a guy."
"In your opinion."
"And...he's helping out Sora. Hey, open the lid for me."
Cloud pulled the lid off the canister without looking up. "Whatever."
"And," He stuffed the items back under the counter. "He's really the only guy around here that does anything."
"I disagree."
"And, he works really hard." He flipped the switch on the coffee maker.
Cloud snorted. "So what's your point?"
"My point is," Riku grinned as the coffee maker began to steam, "You should bring him a cup of fresh coffee."
XxX
Okay, that's it for chapter seven. Please Read and review!