unOrdinary: An Old Friend Returns

Ailing Elaine

"We need to get her on a cot right now. I cannot examine her properly on the floor."

Shoot! Thirty seconds. I extract the USB as soon as I see that it has reached a hundred percent then dart back on top of the cot, sliding the USB into my bra, its sleek black case still warm.

Dr. Darren and a male student enter the infirmary carrying a girl. Behind the privacy curtain that obscures my cot, I can see their outlined bodies moving around the cot to my left. The male student gently lays the girl down on the cot and then steps back to allow Dr. Darren to get a closer look.  He bends over her and uses a stethoscope to check her breathing. Her breathing must be worrying because Dr. Darren moves her over onto her side, into the recovery position.

Dr. Darren moves away from the cot and motions the male student over, father from the privacy curtain so I lose sight of their shadows.

"I'll handle it from here, Wilson. You may return to class."

"Dr. Darren, will Elaine be alright? She seemed so pale and when she fainted everyone in the class was worried. She seemed fine yesterday, but today its as if all her energy was drained out of her. What should I tell everyone?"

"Wilson, you will not say anything further. I will look after Elaine and see how she feels by the end of the day. Dismissed!"

Wilson's footsteps are heard exiting the infirmary just as Dr. Darren pulls back the privacy curtain a bit on his way to his medicine cabinet. Closing my eyes, I resume pretending to be asleep, keeping my breathing uniform and my pulse calm. My meditation regime has been a boon in being able to adjust my breathing at will.

While my eyes are closed, my other senses are heightened. Dr. Darren's keys jingle as they are removed from his belt hook to unlock the cabinet. As he looks for the right bottles, he scans two shelves, gently pushing aside those drugs he does not need. He extracts a bottle and then returns it to the shelf. Finally, with the correct bottles in hand, he returns to his workstation. From underneath he pulls out a couple of glass containers, their clinking on metal distinctive from plastic or another metal. They are probably a graduated cylinder and a volumetric flask. He pours out the liquid from one bottle and then transfers it to another glass container. Soon the sloshing of liquids means that he is close to being finished.

Unlike my own, the vapors from this concoction do not smell like week-old trash. Instead, the smell more closely resembles that of mint. Dr. Darren begins returning items, cleaning up his work area. I hear him stopping at his desk, and my blood goes cold. Did I forget to log out? But he doesn't go on his computer as his keyboard is untouched. He seems to pick up one of my vials. Finally, he returns to Elaine's bedside.

Bending over her head he uncorks the vial, my stinky, foul-smelling tonic, and wafts it under her nose. The effect is similar to smelling salts, the gross odor awakens even the most stubborn of Sleeping Beauties.

"Uhh. Urgh. What?"

Dr. Darren puts his hands on her shoulders to keep her from rising.

"Dr. Darren, where am I?"

"Elaine, you are in the infirmary. You collapsed in your English class, nose bleeding profusely. Ms. Wilderberry called me in, worried sick about you. Wilson carried you all the way here. Now, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Elaine's hand goes up to her head.

"My head. It hurts. I don't remember getting to class today."

Dr. Darren hands her the glass of mint-smelling liquid, helping her raise her head so that she is upright. She drinks it slowly; the smallest of gulps being heard past the white curtain.

"Elaine, you have drained your aura to the point of exhaustion. Any more and you would be in the hospital's ICU. This is no joking matter. Your life was in serious jeopardy."

Elaine lowers her head and starts to sob. Her body shakes from the strength of her sobs. Soon she has exhausted what strength she had, and she falls asleep. Dr. Darren looks her over and brings her a box of tissues that he leaves on the bedside table.

Dr. Darren mutters to himself, "This is too much even for me. I'll have to bring this to Vaughn's attention."

He walks out of the infirmary door, on his way to the headmaster's office, on the other side of the school and one the second floor. This will buy me even more time, so I slide out of bed and tiptoe over to Elaine.

Though I had been eavesdropping since she came in, nothing could prepare me for the difference in Elaine from the night before to how she looked right now. She was a pale, sickly version of the girl I saw on the training field. Her skin lay shrunken over her now-prominent cheekbones. The lack of color in her skin made the blue-purple of her veins that much more ghastly. Her nose-bleed may have stopped but her nostrils still bear the sign, the dark dried blood caked onto the insides.

Closing my eyes for a moment to steel myself, I open them again and look past her skin, her muscles, her bones, at the aura flowing through her body. It is weak, like an almost dried waterbed. Small tendrils reach from her heart to her brain and her lungs, but the rest are almost invisible. Once they disappear, she will disappear.

I know what I must do. I lay my hands over Elaine, one on her forehead and another over her sternum, and I call forth my own aura to feed hers. As my aura meets her emerald green one, they wrap around each other. My aura spreads through her core out to her extremities until her aura again flows, as strongly if not stronger than before.

Pulling away and severing my aura from hers, her skin stops glowing and returns to its pale sheen. It will take the rest of the day to regain her natural complexion but from the slight smile on Elaine's lips, I can sense that she is feeling better already.

Before I return to my cot, I kneel beside her head and whisper, "Take care, Elaine. As a healer, you are the most precious resource one can have. You are not a tool to be used and discarded. Do not let others drain you for their own personal gain."