Ruby sat in the hospital bed staring out the window at the clouds slowly crawling past the city of Vale. The city wasn't large compared to Atlas where she'd lived up until recently, but it wasn't some small town either. The city was large enough for it to be necessary to divide it into the north and south districts between which a mid sized river ran from a mountain to the ocean. By this description, you'd expect there to be at least a few beaches nearby, but the closest one was a two hour drive south of the town.
Ruby sighed as she waited patiently for someone to come through the door of her room. It had been a testament to her luck that the day she was to start school at Beacon's north campus, she'd suffered her second incident of a deflated lung.
Primary Spontaneous Pneumothorax is what the doctors called it. All that meant was for no reason whatsoever, her lung had collapsed. Ruby had experienced it once before, but the doctors at that time had told her there was no reason to worry. She'd even been allowed to resume attending her track practice after the doctors were convinced her lung had healed. The doctors had even gone so far as to assure her that it would never happen again.
From her current predicament, they'd been wrong. Again, she was being treated with a tube in her chest cavity and a wheezing machine slowly allowing her lung to reinflate.
Her uncle who she'd be living with had been busy with work but had luckily been at home when she stumbled in, clutching her chest and gasping for breath. Even though she didn't see him often and had only really gotten to know him when he visited her and her father in Atlas, he'd jumped at the opportunity to take her in when her father found it necessary to travel to the Mystral region for work. But right now he was at work at the elementary school he taught at on the other side of the river.
"Hey there! How are things today?" The dark skinned nurse asked. She was looking over a clipboard that hung at the end of the bed while brushing her bright green hair back behind her ear. She was smiling kindly as if she felt at ease while checking on her patients.
"About as good as you'd think." Ruby replied sourly. "I guess I do get some extra time to read though, so it's not all bad."
The nurse looked up to see Ruby was holding a worn classic novel with a vampire on the front. "So you finished The Human Corpse, huh? You might even be faster than me! I took two days on it."
"Heh, maybe." Ruby replied. It was nice to find someone else to talk about the books she liked with, but it was kind of unfortunate that she had to be in the hospital for it to happen. "Speaking of, did you know the sequel came out last week?"
"I haven't heard about that. I might need to go get it then!" She laughed as she wrote numbers from the machines attached to Ruby onto the clipboard and replaced it on the bed. "Thanks for letting me know."
"No problem." Ruby replied, watching the nurse walk out of the room. When she was just at the door Ruby spoke up again. "Emerald? If you do get it, would you mind letting me read it too?"
"Definitely, kiddo. Nobody else here seems to appreciate the art of a good horror anyway." She winked as she left the room.
Ruby sighed and opened the book to where she'd placed her marker. Alright Helsing, how do you get out of trouble this time?
BR
"Excuse the interruption!" A cheerful voice spoke as the door to her room slid open. The drapes were still dividing the room from when they'd taken the tube out of her chest, so Ruby couldn't see who had come into the room immediately. After a moment, two girls about her age walked into view.
The first one was blond with a modified school uniform that made the skirt rise just above her knees. Long yellow stockings covered her legs from the still frosty air of the spring, and she still had a single petal from the few cherry trees that were still shedding their petals stuck in her bushy curls. The second girl seemed much more confined. Her expression was best described as passive, with her barely there smile and distance she kept when the two stopped in front of the bed. Her uniform was unmodified, but she too was wearing a long pair of black stockings. Her amber eyes seemed to pierce through Ruby as if they were trying to look below her skin, eliciting a shiver from the hospitalized girl.
"Hi there! Ruby Rose, right?" The blond asked with a smile. "I'm Yang Xiao Long, and this is Blake Belladonna."
"Nice to meet you." Blake nodded without once losing her eye contact.
"We're representatives from your class at Beacon. We came to see how you were doing." Yang explained while she dug in her bag for a moment. "The whole class signed this card for you."
"Thanks…" Ruby replied, taking the offered card and finding the signatures oddly neat and lined up rather than spread around the card how she'd seen other cards signed. "I'm doing better now, thanks to the doctors. I should be out next week and in school shortly after."
"That's good to hear." Blake's smile grew just slightly for a moment before returning to her usual passive state.
"So… is it okay if I ask what happened?" Yang asked curiously. "You don't have to say if you don't want to."
"No, that's okay." Ruby replied. "My lung just collapsed. It's nothing that could have been stopped, and it's the second time it's happened. The first time was about six months ago. The doctors say its no big deal."
"Well, I'm glad that you're okay." Yang smiled.
"As am I." Blake nodded.
A short silence befell them as Yang exchanged a glance with Blake who nodded almost imperceptibly.
"Actually, we also had another reason to visit you." Yang started and trailed off with another glance at Blake.
"We have a few questions for you from the class… officer." Blake said with a pause. "Have you ever been to Vale before?"
"Well, I don't think so…" Ruby thought back as far as she could. She only ever remembered that her uncle lived here. But the only time she'd seen him was when he'd visited them in Atlas. "No, I haven't been here before."
"Alright." Blake nodded, taking a small notepad out of her uniform's pocket and jotting a quick note.
"If you need to find your way around, or need a map or anything, just let me know, okay?" Yang offered. "It can be easy to get lost here."
"Thanks, but I think I'll be fine." Ruby replied. "I just moved from Atlas, and the whole city is just one big maze. Vale seems much easier to navigate and the air is much fresher."
"I guess so… I got to go to Atlas last year on the school trip, so I know what you mean." Yang smiled.
"I thought the trip was for third years?" Ruby asked in confusion, having been looking forward to a big trip later in the year.
"In our school the second years go on a trip." Blake supplied.
"Oh… I was looking forward to that." Ruby sighed.
"Well, you'd just be going to Atlas again anyway, so you didn't miss much." Yang smiled sympathetically.
"There was one more question we had to ask. Was anyone in you family lived, worked, or gone to school here?" Blake asked.
"My Uncle Qrow has been here for around six years I think? He works at Signal." Ruby said with a shrug. "Other than that, I couldn't tell you anything. Why does it matter?"
"I'm sure the class officer has her reasons. She would have been here today, but she fell ill with a cold." Blake said, closing the notebook and putting it back into her pocket. "We should be going, Yang. Ruby needs to rest."
"Sure, it was nice meeting you!" Yang waved and stepped back.
"Shake?" Blake asked, extending her hand to Ruby.
Ruby hesitated for the barest of moments as she recovered from the odd request. Not many people were into shaking hands in this day and age, but she guessed things were different in smaller cities like this one.
"Sure." She replied extending her hand to take the black haired girl's.
Blake held her hand after the shake for a few seconds, while her eyes narrowed slightly at Ruby. She let go and her expression resumed its original passive look as she stepped back.
"It was nice to meet you, Ruby. I hope you get well soon." Blake bowed slightly before turning to leave. Yang followed her with one last wave to Ruby, leaving her once again in silence.
That was… interesting. Ruby thought to herself as she flexed her hand and stared at the curtain that blocked the now closed door. But it was nice of the class to send me a get well card when I haven't even had my first day yet.