I JERKED AWAKE at the sound of clanging metal and winced as a million tiny pinpricks of blinding light stabbed at my irises. I shielded my eyes with a hand and turned my face into the softness of Cullen’s T-shirt. His arms felt warm against my back and the crook of my legs.
The sound of running footsteps and squeaking wheels grew closer.
“Set her down,” a voice said. “What’s wrong with her?”
Cullen laid me down gently on a gurney and my head sank into the soft pillow. “She passed out on our walk back from the woods. She has a fever.” Cullen’s voice shook, and I wanted to reach out and touch his cheek with my fingertips, to reassure him somehow, but my arms felt like iron weights.
“I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse said. The soles of her shoes squeaked across the infirmary’s shiny floor that they kept waxed. Without fail or delay, the janitor had waxed that floor once a week for as long as I could remember.
I felt Cullen’s palms cradling my face, and I peeked an eye open, squinting against the harsh light. His face was flushed and his forehead glistened with sweat.
“You’re going to be okay, Marris,” he said firmly. “You hear me?”
Nodding, I gave him a slight smile despite my exhaustion and closed my eye.
Suddenly, his hands left my face and I was moving. I lifted one droopy eyelid again. Cullen stayed back by the infirmary entrance. His furrowed brows seemed to deepen the farther away I got. I cast a shielded look around as walls and ceilings and doors with room numbers passed by.
Dr. Roben was walking at my right. She glanced down at me, frowning. She squeezed my shoulder and said, “You’re going to be fine, Marris. We’ll patch you right up.”
I nodded and blinked back tears. I was unsure of what she meant. Would it be another vaccine?
A month ago, all of the kids, including me, received our yearly vaccines along with a concoction of vitamins depending on which ones our lab tests showed we were deficient in. The testing lasted for several days, and then the vaccines were administered. Over the next two weeks or so, most of the kids got sick. It was like a rotation of illness throughout the orphanage. It seemed like once a kid got better, someone else got sick.
The nurses and teachers were abundantly cautious for the first three weeks. It was almost like they knew what bug or virus was going around and they wanted no part of it. Lucky for them, classes had been cancelled, and while they kept their distance, we were left to keep ourselves busy. Not that we could do much, being sick and all.
Classes had started up again three days ago. Most everyone was feeling back to normal. Everyone except me.
The gurney stopped rolling and I opened my eyes again, squinting against the bright light. The all-too-familiar confines of the hospital room’s stark white walls loomed above me, closing in all around me.
Dr. Roben grabbed a blood pressure monitor off the small counter and wrapped the armlet around my bicep. Then she swung her stethoscope over her head and fitted the earpieces into her ears.
The monitor had a digital pressure gauge but she always backed it up with her manual count. I asked her once why she did it that way, why not let the machine do the work, and she said if she didn’t keep up on the manual process, eventually she’d become worthless as a doctor and could then be too easily replaced with a robot. She said the medical industry would always need qualified doctors because there were too many variations in medical cases. A robot couldn’t possibly figure everything out and wouldn’t have the capacity to handle highly complex cases. I figured that was a good thing, considering I was studying for pre-med.
She pressed the round sound receiver against my bare skin, making me flinch at its smooth, frigid surface. After a moment, she swung the stethoscope back over her head, draped it over her shoulders, and then removed the cuff from my arm. She sank down onto a padded stool and settled her dark green eyes on me. With furrowed brows, she asked, “How are you feeling now?”
I turned my head and stared at the room’s sole window that looked out into the nurses’ station. A nurse in blue scrubs walked by without looking our way. “I’m really tired.” I paused to glance at her and to swallow a lump in my throat. “And I feel sick to my stomach, like I’m about to throw up.”
Dr. Roben nodded. “It’s probably just a reaction to the vaccines,” she said. “But I’ll have one of the nurses get a blood sample so we can run a few tests.”
I pressed a hand to my stomach and willed myself not to throw up as I asked, “Is it normal to have a reaction this late after a vaccine? I’ve been sick for the last four weeks.”
“It’s rare, but it can happen. Once we get your test results from the lab, we’ll know more.” She patted my shoulder. “I’ll give you something to help with the nausea. I’d like to keep you here overnight so we can monitor your vitals.”
I sighed. “Can I see Cullen?”
Dr. Roben smiled warmly. “Of course. I’ll have a nurse bring him in.”
As she left the room, I stared up at the white ceiling tiles that surrounded the fluorescent lights. I heard the squeak and heavy footsteps of someone running on the waxed floor and then Cullen appeared through the glass of the window. He hurried into the room, sat down on the guest chair, and took my hand in both of his.
“Does she know what’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “She ordered blood tests.”
Cullen lowered his head to our hands. I brushed my free hand over his head. His hair felt silky against my fingertips.
Rebecca, one of the nurses, walked into the room and glanced at Cullen as she pushed a metal cart up to the head of the bed. She asked for my arm and then set to work on finding a vein. I tried not to watch as she removed the wrapper from a butterfly needle. The needle prick at the side of my wrist didn’t even make me wince. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Or maybe I was getting used to the routine. After all the blood draws they had done in the last five weeks, it wasn’t a surprise that I had become desensitized to the pain.
I closed my eyes and focused on the touch of Cullen’s hands on my flesh, his thumb gently caressing my knuckles, the pad of his index finger barely brushing over the tendons of my wrist, making my skin tickle.
The loss of blood from the draw made my head whirl as I rolled my head against the pillow, feeling its coolness against my left cheek. It seemed they always took too much. My small five-foot frame never handled blood tests well and it took a good ten minutes to recover every time.
“You’re all set, my dear,” Rebecca said, closing a heart rate monitor over my index finger and then patting my arm. I lifted my heavy eyelids and nodded. Cullen squeezed my hand. “Dr. Roben wanted you on an IV of fluids and antibiotics for the night. Get some rest now. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.”
Her eyes shifted to Cullen. “You can return to your class, Mr. Hendricks. Marris will be fine here. She needs her rest.”
Cullen shook his head. “No way. I’m not leaving her side.”
Rebecca gave him a disapproving look before she turned on her heel and left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.
Standing up, Cullen let go of my hands and pulled the bed sheet and blanket over my legs and up to my shoulders. He tucked the blanket gently around my arms, being especially careful with my right arm that was attached to the IV, and then touched his lips to my forehead. The touch was so gentle it sent shivers down my side.
“How do you always know what I need?” I asked, smiling.
He laughed. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said, shrugging. “You just looked cold.”
“No, not that,” I replied. He gave me a questioning look. “The kiss.”
He waved it off. “A kiss on the forehead doesn’t count. Just wait for the real thing. When you get out of here and you’re feeling better, we’ll have a picnic in the woods and I’ll show you what you’re missing.” With a wide grin, he winked at me, making me laugh.
“How come you haven’t kissed me already?”
He looked down at his hands for a moment. Then looking back up at me, he shrugged. “I didn’t want to rush anything. I’m not like the other guys. I care about people other than myself. I care about you.”
He was right. He wasn’t like the other guys. Despite the strict rules and punishments, they were quick to get into a girl’s pants whether she liked it or not. Any reports of wrongdoing, also considered immoral activity, were handled in a variety of ways. I only knew of two: with a whip or with solitary confinement in the basement.
Most of the boys chose the whip. Especially after several boys were relocated to the psych ward after spending a solid 72 hours inside their dark cells. Some of the kids thought they could hear wailing coming through the heating vents from the basement. I didn’t want to know what they were wailing about. Just the thought gave me the shivers.
“It’s smart,” I said. “If they were to catch us doing something immoral, I’d hate to suffer the consequence.”
“Well, you wouldn’t,” he replied, sinking back into the chair beside the bed. “No girl has been punished for such a thing. None that I’ve heard about anyway.”
“I could claim it was all me. That I seduced you.”
He patted me on the head, kissed my forehead again, and smiled. “That’s just nonsense. I think you need your sleep.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?”
