From Dawn (published)

Ten

Saturday

11:30pm

"I sneezed on Brian."

"Excuse me?" The harried man behind the desk looked confused at her abrupt announcement.

Dawn waved her hand in the direction that the nurse had gone. "That nurse, she said they were running tests on Brian. I sneezed on Brian and now he's here in the ER and his girlfriend has a nosebleed just like me. I think this is all my fault!" Dawn's voice rose as the gravity of the situation sunk in.

She didn't know how, or why, but Dawn was sure that she was somehow involved in whatever was wrong with the cashier and the pink haired girl. Alarm bells were screaming inside her head, making it harder and harder to think clearly, but she knew that the two sick teens were somehow all her fault.

"Ma'am, are you ok?" The man stood up from his seat and glanced around the room like he was looking for help.

"No! Don't you see? I sneezed on the cashier, and now that girl's nose won't stop bleeding!"

"Dawn, what's going on?" Kay grabbed her by the arm, clearly concerned.

"Kay, I have to make them understand!" Finding the words to express herself seemed to be beyond Dawn at that moment. She was left frustrated and with an intense sense of impending doom, as she struggled to say what she meant. On some level, she was aware that she must look and sound crazy to everyone in the room, but she didn't know how else to tell them that this all linked back to her.

"She's not normally like this," Kay explained apologetically as she grabbed a tissue from the box on the desk. "Here. Dawn, your nose is still bleeding. You need to keep something under it."

When had she let go of the bloody tissues she'd had in her hand? She hadn't even noticed the trickle of blood that was slowly working it's way toward her chin. Dawn turned around in confusion, putting the new tissue to her face. The world seemed to keep spinning even after her feet stopped moving, and Dawn's vision blurred as she found the dropped tissues sitting in the middle of the waiting room floor in a bloody heap.

"Whoa, ok there. Let's get you sitting down," the man appeared next to Dawn pushing a wheelchair and grabbed her other arm to help her sit. The bruise on her upper arm throbbed and burned when he touched it.

Dawn sagged into the seat, suddenly exhausted, muttering, "I sneezed on him. I sneezed on lots of people." The same nurse who had been trying to clean the stain from her scrub top earlier appeared in her line of vision and looked at her with obvious concern.

As the wheelchair started moving, other patients who were avidly watching the commotion that Dawn had been making shrunk back and away from her, but Dawn was too preoccupied to care. There was something that she needed to tell the nurse, something important, but she couldn't quite grasp what it was at that moment.

She barely noticed when the nurse pushed her through the swinging doors, Kay following close behind. They passed the pink haired girl in the hallway. Dawn pointed at her, but the nurse kept going on by, in a hurry to get her to a private room.

She turned around in her seat to yell loudly back to the girl, "I'm sorry I sneezed on you!"

Any feelings of empathy she had for the teen evaporated when the girl looked at her like she was crazy. Dawn wasn't crazy, she was sure of it.

And if she could sneeze on the girl with the pink hair again, she'd do it.

She had sneezed on a girl with pink hair, hadn't she?

When her vision blurred again, Dawn gave up trying to sort out that riddle and turned back around in her seat.

"It's going to be ok, Dawn. We're going to run a few tests, and we'll have this figured out in no time." The nurse wheeled Dawn into a room and pulled the curtain closed. "I have some questions. Do you think you could answer them?"

Dawn started to nod, but Kay cut her off. "Yes," her friend answered the nurse. Dawn thought that it was rather rude of them to talk around her, but she was too tired to protest.

"Ok, has Dawn traveled out of the country lately?"

"No."

"Has she been exposed to any exotic animals?"

"No," Kay sat on a chair next to Dawn and reached to hold her hand.

Dawn listened to the nurse ask questions, and Kay answering. She allowed the woman to begin taking her vital signs, and didn't protest when she rolled up her sleeve to look at her arm.

"Dawn, what happened here?"

Dawn didn't answer the nurse. She was busy contemplating the small drops of her own blood that had stained the front of her shirt.

"Has she eaten anything unusual?" The nurse was back to asking questions.

"Not that I know of."

That perked Dawn up. Kay didn't know about the meal she'd eaten before going to the bonfire. "Chicken," she informed them both.

"You ate chicken?" Kay asked hesitantly.

"Was good," Dawn went back to staring at her shirt.

"She's a vegetarian," Kay sounded baffled as she explained the strangeness of the food choice.

A few seconds passed, and then the nurse asked, "Dawn, is it ok to take your sunglasses off? I need to look at your eyes."

That caught her attention. The lights were already painfully bright with the glasses on. She'd never be able to tolerate it if they came off.

"No!" Dawn surged to her feet, knocking the nurse back. The world spun and she lurched sideways into the computer that was attached to the wall. The nurse called for help as she climbed back to her feet. Staring at her friend in shock, Kay still sat in the chair, mouth hanging open.

"Not again! What is going on around here today?" More scrub clad people rushed into the room. "Honey, you need to calm down."

Dawn finally managed to stand back up on unsteady legs and glared at the newcomers. No one was removing her sunglasses if she could help it.

"Be careful. That guy from earlier bit someone on the early shift when he got like this. I don't know what they're on, but it's making them violent." a tall woman in blue scrubs warned the others. "God, I hope no one else took any of it."

Her vision fuzzed in and out. Dawn blinked hard, trying to see, but to her dismay, the people standing just feet away stayed out of focus. Everyone in the room froze, as if waiting to see what she would do next.

"Dawn? Can you hear me?"

That voice was familiar. Her last conscious thought was spent trying to figure out who it belonged to.