You Can Run To Me

Twenty-Nine

It took almost a week for Nat to sort of recover from what the nurse claimed to be a flu. Since it was a virus, all they could do was wait it out. Apparently it would be 'wholly unethical' to give her antibiotics, but the nurse was pretty free with the painkillers and surprisingly lax about visiting hours. She also seemed pretty happy letting every single one of Natalie's friends in there at once, who were very luckily (though rather miraculously) not affected by whatever flu strain it was that Nat had.

Having her friends coming to see her was almost strange. Whenever they did make an appearance they were all honey and sunshine, joking around trying to come up with dumb stuff to make her laugh until she kicked them out because she was getting worn out. When they were gone, she would either be trying to catch up on all the work she was missing (very reluctantly, but painfully aware that she'd have to do it sometime), sleeping, or compulsively drawing Ephren. It might be his eyes, or his mouth, or an arm lain out across the page – only once did she cave to drawing all of him on the same page. As it was, she would often abruptly stop drawing and start ripping up the paper into tiny little pieces which she would then split into two piles: one for the bin; one for her clothes drawer, which she would later slip into the bin when it had been switched over. Only when she very rarely managed to draw something that definitively wasn't Ephren would she keep it.

Most of her time was spent sleeping it off, though, no matter the time of day, meaning that sometimes her visitors would either have to be turned away, or wait in her room very quietly for her to wake up. They could be waiting for hours, though, since she had temporarily become notoriously hard to wake up. Most visitors would therefore either try and come back later, or perhaps hang around for a bit, and hope she'd wake up. Only Penryn, out of everyone, could wake Nat up that week, although she'd only do it if they hadn't already seen her that day.

When Natalie woke up in the infirmary one morning and briskly got up, showered in the tiny cubicle with those health-and-safety-overkill handrails and dressed herself in her comfy trackpants and sweater, balancing awkwardly on one leg to put her socks on, in the privacy of the toilet cubicle (which somewhat unnervingly didn't lock), then quickly returned to the warmth of her bed to await the nurse's morning round, she suddenly realized she wasn't really all that ill any more. It was at that exact instant that Nurse Kelly appeared from where she had evidently been waiting in the doorway of the ward with a stern smile on her face.

They spoke in unison, saying almost exactly the same thing, "I guess I'm ready to leave now."

They both laughed for a moment, and then Kelly bustled over and took Nat's temperature, which was now about normal. She wasn't exactly 100%, but she wasn't going to be fainting all over the place any more. Nat quickly changed into something a little more presentable, then the Nurse authoritatively helped Natalie tidy up her (who had brought it to her again? Penryn, she supposed) and together they had Nat ready to go off to Math in a matter of just a few minutes.

"You make sure you come right to me if you're ever feeling ill like that again," commanded the Nurse with a smile.

"Of course I will." Natalie was turning towards the door when she thought of something. She fumbled in her bag and produced a little A5 slip of paper. "Oh, I almost forgot. I drew this while I was here," she said, holding it out to the woman. "I thought maybe you might want it. I don't know, you don't have to if you don't want it, just..."

Nurse Kelly looked up from the drawing with broad smile. "It's lovely. Here, I'll tack it to your cupboard here, so I'll see it on my rounds... Not that there's anyone here at the moment," She added bitterly, then hastily tacked on, "- which is a good thing, of course."

With that, they parted ways and Natalie headed very cautiously (and reluctantly) on towards Math.