Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 3 • Initiative [NB]

AUTHOR GAMES: THE ABSENT EMPRESS - TASK THREE

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. 

The light was too bright. Searingly so, white and shining as mornings in California (too sunny a place) probably always were. The sterility of the walls didn't help, reflecting the sky's gift against everything else in the vicinity, including Nora's eyes - oh, her eyes. An arm flung itself lazily over them, tan skin pressing against brow-bones. It was better that way. No dust multiplying in the sun's rays. No sun's rays. Pure and perfect bliss, and so sleep began to creep...

A slap of thigh meat hit the plasticky-fabricky material of the medical exam table, knee having slipped out of its bent position. Sensation of falling, but in that limb only. It thwacked and she flinched awake, sucking in air and expelling it angrily. I didn't sleep at all last night. The breathing became coughing. The coughing became hacking. The hacking became black phlegm, spat into a metal tin when all was done and finished. Nora leaned back, arm where it was, and moaned in quiet agony. Oh, fuck me. And not even in the pleasant way.

All night after the attack had been a hellish ordeal, and quite an unfair one at that. There were a few others in the medical clinic sharing in this plight, somewhere asleep behind curtains while the gory holes in their flesh recovered, but for the most part, all the team had to worry about was flushing out the adrenaline in their veins and the anxiety causing the shake in their wittle fingers. Now, Nora hadn't been shot, but having smoke formulate itself in, take over, and exit your lungs up through a now raw and choked esophagus felt a little bit like the impact of a bullet, she would think. Everything burned with every breath of air, every exhalation - and so not even she could find comfort enough to sleep.

She hadn't even asked for this. Would've left after flying out that window, too, but evidently it was a little hard to take off when there was a shitfest thriving in your airway.

And so she stayed here. Exhausted and pained and hungry - all the sustenance she'd had was some honeyed-down drink the nurse'd given her to ease whatever the hell was going on inside. What was going on, exactly? Hell if she knew. "I fuckin' regret this decision so muh-" And thus, the hoarseness was interrupted by a spasm of coughing and wheezing. Again, and again, and again. Was this what karma felt like?

A delicate voice donned in buttermilk tones brought calm between the violent waves. "You don't have it nearly as bad as it should be. Consider this a miraculous outcome, Miss Belasco."

Nora clenched her fist, feeling the tendons tighten against her forehead. "I started coughing up blood a little bit ago. And when I sneeze peppery-lookin' bullshit comes out."

"Ah," the wrinkled nurse said, "but your throat didn't close up like!" She clenched her own fist in dramatic fashion, lips popping in amusement. "Perks of being super, I'd say."

You know what'd be super? Not being super. I don't see anyone else with sooty lungs, unless we've got longtime smokers in here. She pondered if only to pass time. That girl with the one leg, probably.

A little while passed in as good as silence would get before another disturbance entered the room, long legs clicking under red hair. The boy cast a brief look to Nora, very brief, as any hospital visitor is supposed to do with anyone other than the person they are visiting. Acknowledgement without meaning it, and automatic pity. And then moving on, because it's not polite to stare.

There were no rules against the pitied patient watching the visitor, though.

She stared him down, eyes trailing the back of his head with every step he took. He squirmed a little bit, but perhaps that was just because Nora had pretty strong eyes. Obviously. But then he ducked behind a nearby curtain, and all was lost.