Fragile

5. Mistake

"I know right, pretty cool huh." I answer and go closer to the frog terrarium.

"Does it have a name?" Fox asks and follows me until be both stare closely at the frogging green thing.

"I call it Slimy." I confess.

"Why?" Fox laughs.

"I once picked it up while being here and it was so slippery. Try it." I challenge him and smile. He wasn't bad company at all.

Then he actually puts his hand into the terrarium and a disgusted face appears to his face when he pets Slimy. "Ew." He whispers and pulls his hand back, making me laugh once again.

"Told you it's Slimy." I say and get a chuckle out of Fox.

"You weren't kidding." He says back.

"Alright let's go get our acids." I say after looking at the frog for a while. "Do you know where nitrous acid and nitric acids are?"

"I have no idea." He shrugs off.

"I'll show you." I answer and I lead him behind the shelves to a tall and large glass shelf which was full of all kinds of acids.

"This place is huge." Fox says and looks around while I'm trying to find N letter starting acids.

"Yeah, there was a snake last year in here, but I don't know where it went. Oh and frog organs in the freezer." I mutter, still not finding the acids anywhere.

"Really? That's disgusting." He mutters.

"Fox, do you find N anywhere?" I interrupt him.

"Hmm..." he starts looking too and after a while he spots it. "It's up there." He says and points to the top shelf.

"Can you reach there?" I ask him since he was quite a bit taller than me.

"Do I look three meters tall to you?" He smirks and makes me laugh again.

"There's ladders, I can climb up and get them." I say and quickly move the ladders to place.

"Isn't that pretty dangerous?" He asks frowning.

"It's not that bad." I shrug off and start climbing up. The ladders shook a bit causing me to stop halfway through.

"You okay?" Fox asks noticing quickly how I wasn't moving.

"Yeah, these are just a bit shaky." I mutter, gather myself and start climbing again. Gosh this would be so much easier if I wasn't this chubby. Another reason to lose more weight fast. I hadn't eaten today at all, it was causing me a bit blurry feeling.

Finally I reach the top shelf and get my nitrous and nitric acids. Only carbonic and sulfurous acids were to find but I had picked them up last time I was here, so I knew where they were.

"Be careful." Fox says and stares at me trying to climb down with hands full of acids. In the middle the ladders start to shake violently and I lose my balance. With a yelp and panic in me, I grab the ladders with one hand, destroying the nitric acid bottle. I fall down a couple steps but thanks to my hand, not all the way down. When I find my balance again, I feel it. The burning feeling of nitric acid on my hand's wounds that the broken glass made. It burned and the pain made me want to scream. I gasp when I see my hand that was now covered in blood.

"Livia!" Fox yells sounding freaked out. Shit.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." I say it more to myself than to him. I quickly climb down trying to control my panic, nitric acid was toxic and even without wounds it hurt like hell. The pain started to kick in hard when more of the acid went through my skin. Mr. Perry would probably be disappointed in me.

"Oh gosh, we need to wash that off." Fox says and grabs my hand leading me to the water faucet. He puts warm water on and then my hand in there. My eyes start to water and a quiet yelp escapes my lips. It hurt like bloody hell, my whole hand felt like it was burning away. A lot of blood was still dripping from my hand and there was glass in my hand, but the acid made it about a hundred times worse. My vision was getting blurry, probably from the pain. Tears rolled down my cheek but I didn't even feel embarrassed since I was in so much pain. I wanted to collapse to the floor but Fox held me up.

"It's over soon, just hang on a while." Fox said with a tune that calmed me down a bit. He held my hand in place and he comforted me. I had started to shake uncontrollably. What if I lose my hand? I was bright enough to know that that couldn't happen but the thought still scared me.

After a while the burning finally started to fade away, the wounds still bled but at least the worst pain was over. My body was trembling when Fox turned the water off and placed me to sit on the floor. "I'm gonna take out the glass now, it's gonna hurt just a while, okay?" He said calmly. I nod, no words came out of my mouth. I give him my hand that shook violently, but he took it to his hand to stop the trembling.

"Ouch." I yelp when he starts taking out the glass pieces.

"It's over soon, I promise." He whispers encouragingly, continuing to pull out sharp glass pieces.

"This is the last one, you're doing great." He says and I prepare myself to another stinging torture. He gets it out and it actually does feel a lot better. Pain is finally starting to back off. "Better?" He asks.

"Yeah." I answer and wipe my tears away. Now that the pain was almost gone, embarrassment started to kick in.

"They still bleed a lot." He says examining my hand carefully.

"It's okay." I whisper to him, scared that my voice might break down.

"No it's not, you're bleeding." He says gently. "I'll go find some bandages, wait here." He gently touches my shoulder making sure that I'm steady enough to be left alone for a minute.

He comes back after a minute and softly starts to bandage my hand, making sure that it didn't hurt at all. He was so gentle and patient. "You should've been more careful." He says after a while.

"I know." I sigh, disappointed in myself. Or maybe more like embarrassed. How was I so clumsy? Maybe next time I shouldn't climb up three meters with zero energy and blurry mind.

He finally finishes banging my hand, making sure that it doesn't bleed anymore.

"Thank you." I whisper to him. "Now let's get the rest of the acids." I say and stand up. We've already lost so much time for this nonsense. Mr. Perry is probably worried or they think that we're making out here... gosh we are in trouble when we get back.

"What? No way I'm letting you do that, you're not okay yet." Fox says still sounding worried. But my head was clear again and the pain was mostly gone. I felt pretty fine.

"We have to get to class." I say, I am okay enough.

"Livia you need to go see a doctor for this." Fox hisses softly. He's still frowning.

"Oh come on it's not that bad. It doesn't even hurt anymore." I reply.

"That was acid, who knows what will happen to you? I can't just let this slide if it could be dangerous to you. Let's get you to doctor." He insists but it starts to annoy me, I was fine.

"Fox, I'm fine! I swear, I've read about these situations and nitric acid isn't that bad. It's not so toxic that it'd need medical care. I had an A from biology, trust me I know. Let's just get back to class please." I plead him. I hadn't really read about nitric on skin, but I wasn't about to go to a doctor for this. No way.

"Are you sure?" He asks looking deep into my blue eyes, probably trying to decide if I was lying or not.

"I swear." I lie.

"Fine, but promise to tell me if it starts hurting again. Okay?" He insist, still staring at my blue eyes.

"Sure." I say and we move back to the acid section. "We should probably clean this up." I mutter seeing the mess I had made. This would take a while.

——————————————————

Words: 2082