Chapter 5

Elle's morning wasn't going by much faster. She couldn't believe that she'd slipped up like that. She'd never even come close to doing that before, and all of a sudden she's nearly spilling her guts to some kid she's known for all of a day. "Yeah, he was friendly, and didn't seem to want anything, but even so it was stupid of me." She thought to herself. But at the same time, she couldn't help but be glad that she didn't push Jeff away with her attack afterwards, and that really shocked her. She wasn't used to caring about people, or what they thought of her. Not to mention she wasn't used to being around a real friend. Even the couple of friends she had she wasn't really close to; not in the sense that she could really talk to any of them about her life.

Yet with Jeff it seemed different, she felt like she could talk to him for some reason. He was easy to talk to, and she almost found herself trusting him, and boy was that a change of pace. After all, it wasn't just that Elle didn't trust easily -- she didn't trust at all. When she told him that she wasn't used to being around a friend she hadn't been lying, she could hardly remember the last time she had a friend, someone that she was comfortable and could relax with, but it had certainly been a long time ago. Katie was great, but Elle hadn't really felt totally comfortable around her for a while now, their worlds were just too different now. Katie was the good student, the hard worker, the good girl. In short, everything that Elle wasn't, and because of it she felt like she had to hide bits and pieces of herself around her. Which was strange, really, since most of those things could apply to Jeff, too. He wasn't the kind of person she usually spent time with. He really was a bit geeky, but she was comfortable with him.

She spent most of math tuned out like usual. Having math first thing in the morning was bad enough normally, it was a tough subject, but when you consider that she hadn't opened her book that year unless her teacher was staring at her, it made the class that much tougher. She'd been lost for so long that she didn't even bother trying to figure out where they were anymore, and that was fine, since it wasn't like she gave a damn about the class or anything. They had a pop quiz, and she knew she'd failed it -- after all, she didn't even try to answer half the questions. The teacher didn't even bother saying anything about it, just handed back the quiz with the grade and moved on to the next student. She was nearly invisible by now, just like she wanted to be.

Things didn't get any better in English, and she found her mind drifting again. This time it was back to thoughts of her mother, remembering the life she'd had before everything changed. More and more lately she found herself wishing that she'd died with her mother, rather than being left in the hellish life that she was leading. Her teacher broke her from her thoughts when he stuck a book in her hands and told her to read. After that, the class moved along quickly. Of course, the teacher kept her back after the bell to yell at her for not paying attention, but that was par for the course. With the day she was having, she wasn't really surprised. It seemed like the kind of thing that should happen after all. Anything to make the day worse.

As she finally made it into the hall, rushing to try and make it to chemistry without being late, she thought she saw Jeff a little ways behind her. She wasn't sure, but right then she really didn't care, either. She needed time to sort things out in her mind. She was confused, and didn't want to say or do anything she'd regret when she wasn't thinking clearly. Since her mind was on that, she didn't notice the classroom door starting to open just ahead of her.

Didn't notice it until it swung open right into her face, that is. She was moving at a good pace, and it was a solid, heavy door. It didn't take a straight-A student to understand that Newton was right; an object in motion stays that way until stopped. In this case, Elle was the object in motion, and the door was the object doing the stopping, and the door won. It hit her straight in the face, having been pushed open in a hurry, and sent her flying backwards knocked off her feet. She would've hit the floor hard if it weren't for Jeff being a few feet behind her. He saw the door hit her and pushed his way past the students between them, managing to get behind Elle just before she hit the floor. Unfortunately, there was no time for him to try and actually catch her; it was more like using his whole body to break her fall -- by getting between her and the ground. She crashed into him hard and the two of them ended up on the floor, her backpack hitting him in the arm, where he was already bruised, and he yelped in pain. The two of them lay on the ground for a moment, just taking stock of the situation and waiting for the immediate shock to wear off enough to be sure that neither of them had seriously injured anything. Jeff's back was throbbing, and his arm was screaming in pain, but it didn't seem to be broken at least.

Elle wasn't quite as lucky. She looked back to see who it was that she'd fallen onto and ask him what was going on when she felt something warm dripping down her face. At the same time Jeff noticed the blood pouring from her nose, which was swelling fairly quickly. It was about that time that Elle noticed the pain from her obviously broken nose.

"Fuck, that hurts! Ouch!"

"Yeah, it looks like it would," Jeff said, pulling out a couple of kleenex from his backpack and handing them to her. "Are you alright? Does it feel like anything else is broken?"

She pressed the kleenex against the bottom of her nose to try and slow the bleeding and grimaced again. "You mean besides my face and my head? No, I don't think so -- I think you took most of the impact onto the floor, it was just the door that really nailed me. "

Jeff nodded and groaned, feeling the bruise that he was sure was already forming on his back where he hit the floor, not to mention his arm. "We'd better get you to the nurse's office, that nose does not look good. I think I'd better get my arm checked out, too."

Elizabeth nodded and made to stand up, making it but starting to waver as soon as she was fully upright. The hallway seemed to be spinning, and her eyes just didn't seem to want to focus clearly on anything. She leaned against the wall for balance, trying her best not to fall over.

"Do you think you can walk?"

"Well, my legs are alright at least, but I'm very dizzy all of a sudden, it feels like the hallway keeps spinning around me, so I don't know how steady I am," she said, swaying as she tried to take a step, almost falling back against the wall.

"That's okay, lean against me, I'll support you," Jeff said softly, wrapping his arm around her back around her arms and helping to steady her. He noticed that she winced and sucked in a breath when his hand tightened around her shoulder as she started to sway again but didn't have any time to dwell on it as they stumbled down the hall towards the nurse's office.

What am I going to do? Elle thought. The nurse is going to want to look beyond my nose and face, and she'll be able to tell in a heartbeat. How am I supposed to... That train of thought was stopped in it's tracks when her stomach decided to make itself known, announcing that it wasn't happy, either. She mumbled something impossible to decipher and held a hand in front of her mouth, desperately trying to force back the rising tide of bile, moving as fast as she could towards the nearest bathroom, with Jeff trying to help steady her.

She didn't make it.

They made it as far as the water fountain when she couldn't hold back anymore. The contents of her stomach, albeit meager and mostly liquid, came back up in a flood. On top of that, the retching seemed to only aggravate her already sore ribs, leaving her leaning over the water fountain trying her hardest to catch her breath, gasping and sucking in breaths.

The rest of the trip to the nurse's office went almost equally slowly. Elle trying to figure out how she was going to explain things to the nurse, and Jeff unable to help but feel like things were about to get much, much worse.

They walked in to the waiting area of the nurse's office and found it empty. Jeff yelled in for the nurse and she came rushing out, to find the two students looking like they'd been in a fight - and lost. Elizabeth's nose was still bleeding, and she still had the kleenex held against it trying to catch the worst of the blood. On top of that it looked like a black eye was quickly worsening, and at first glance it looked like her eyes weren't quite focusing right. Jeff looked better, but not a whole lot; his arm was clearly in pretty bad shape, and he was walking rather gingerly as well.

"Okay, follow me into the back, it looks like you both took quite a beating, what happened?" the nurse asked as she led the pair back into one of the treatment rooms in the office.

Jeff spoke up. "Well, Elizabeth here had a rather intimate meeting with a door, and I saw it flying open and figured she was going to take the brunt of the damage, so I tried to get behind her and catch her. I succeeded, sort of, I caught her, but wasn't able to stop both of us from falling, so I landed hard on my arm and back, which are both hurting. She mostly landed on me."

The nurse nodded and looked back at Elizabeth sitting on the cot, grimacing in pain. "Okay Elizabeth. Where does it hurt besides your nose?"

"Where doesn't it, it's a shorter list. My nose, my face, my ribs are killing me, I'm dizzy as all hell, and my shoulder isn't feeling too great either."

Mrs. Martens nodded again and took her pen light to look into the girls eyes, and frowned. "Well, it looks like you're definitely going to be taking a trip to the hospital this afternoon. I think you probably have a concussion, and from the looks of your face I wouldn't be surprised if your ribs were either bruised or cracked, too. That's not something that I can do anything for here. And if your nose is badly broken they may need to try to reset it too, but that may take an x-ray to tell."

Elle grimaced again. A trip to the hospital would certainly make the day worse, that was for sure.

"Go ahead and lie down for the moment Elizabeth," the nurse said as she lifted the head of the cot so it was almost vertical. "and try to relax. I'll get you an ice pack for your nose while I check out Jeff over there. Then we'll figure out how to get you to the hospital, after we know whether or not Jeff is going to be keeping you company."

She walked over to the other side of the room, where Jeff was sitting on a chair cradling his arm. "Let's take a look at this. Can you roll up your sleeve, or would it be easier to just take your shirt off? I can take you into the other room if you'd rather."

"No, it's okay, I don't mind. I think I can just roll up my sleeve," he said as he started doing just that. He winced in pain just before it got to his elbow and changed his mind. "On second thought, I'll just open my shirt, that really hurt."

"That's fine, while you're doing that I want to take another look at Elizabeth, let me know when you have it off your arm and I'll take a look at your arm and your back."

Jeff unbuttoned his shirt and started sliding his left arm out, wincing again as he moved it and his shirt slipped over his bruised elbow.

"How're you feeling, does anything else hurt?" the nurse asked, running her hands over Elle's shoulder lightly to feel whether there was damage worse than a bruise, and noticing when the girl flinched hard.

"Not really... My head is still throbbing and I'm still a little bit dizzy, but it's not as bad as it was before I got in here, the ice seems to be helping my nose and my headache."

"Good, that's what I was hoping. You still need to go to the hospital, but it seems like you're more with it than you were when you first came in which is good. I'm still worried that you probably have a nasty concussion, and your nose is definitely going to need to be looked at, but it seems like you're breathing okay, which I was afraid might be a problem if you'd bruised your ribs."