Strange Light

Stuck

The nurse was nice, but Anna didn't want nice. She wanted truth. She wasn't getting it from anyone, including the nice lady in scrubs who cheerfully told Anna that she needed to take her temperature and blood pressure. The nurse was in the same full protective gear. She moved around the room with expertise, but it was a little awkward because of the bulkiness of the suit.

Anna was watching the nurse when it suddenly happened again. It was the third time. She'd seen the heat coming from a tech, too, when he came into the room to move some equipment around. Now, she saw the nurse's silhouette through her protective gear, red and orange and yellow compared to the cooler shades around her.

"How are you feeling?" the nurse asked.

Anna blinked. The heat didn't go away.

"I can see your body heat," Anna said.

The nurse laughed. "I am a little sweaty in this thing."

"No, I mean... I can see you like infra-red goggles. Like I can see the heat... heat signature."

The nurse didn't respond right away, just moved to put the blood pressure cuff around Anna's arm.

"Have you always been able to do that?" the nurse asked.

Anna realized suddenly that the nurse didn't believe her.

"It's... it's one of the things," Anna tried to explain. "Like, one of the things that the virus causes. The same thing my sister had. I guess I can see heat. I told Dr. Claude."

"How interesting," the nurse said. "I hope you can't see too well!"

"I can just see shapes. Like, you look like a human shape because you're all red and orange and yellow. And everything around you in blue-ish." Anna blinked. It was starting to fade, and the nurse was returning to the normal figure in a hazmat suit.

"Kind of like a superpower," the nurse said, watching the blood pressure machine beep.

Anna felt that she was still not believed. She tried to hold onto the heat signature, looking for anything that could prove what she was seeing. She noticed a white-ish shape on the nurse's side, like in a pocket.

"You have a bottle of something in your pocket," Anna said, pointing. "Something cold."

The nurse looked back at Anna with a strange expression. Anna thought that she must be right, the nurse seemed like she had been surprised.

"100/60," the nurse said. "Good. Temperature in 98.3. You're in good shape, I'll let your doctor know."

Anna watched the nurse leave. She hoped that the nurse would also tell Dr. Claude that the heat thing was back. She didn't know what it was still, but it was less scary every time it happened. In fact, she had started to wonder if it was something she could eventually control. Like, maybe it was... a superpower?

That was ridiculous. No one actually had superpowers. And if they did, they would have known about it before, right? Anna couldn't possibly be the first one ever, right?

It was a crazy thought, but it was something to distract her from the other, more unpleasant thoughts that wanted to creep into her brain. Like if she was going to get better, if the doctors were going to find out what was wrong with her, or, worst of all, what her classmates thought of her after they'd seen her thrash around on the floor of a classroom...