Already Gone

Yellow

"Don't you have something better to do?" I mumbled, my eyes closed.

   I was laying on the couch with a cool rag on my forehead and a bucket on the floor next to me. The bucket was there so that I didn't have to throw up on their nice rug.

"Something better than making sure you don't accidentally kill yourself?" Dr. Robbins scoffed, "Yeah right."

   I felt the bile start to make its way up my throat again and I rolled over onto my side, just in time to hurl into the bucket.

That's what it was for anyway.

"What about the other kids?" I asked, my eyes still closed, "The dying ones. The ones that are going to die. The ones that might die."

"They're in great hands with Dr. Karev in charge," Dr. Robbins replied though it almost sounded like she was trying to convince herself while telling me that. "And not all of them are dying or are going to die. A lot of them are in stable condition you know."

   I snorted, "Yeah, for now..."

"Okay, just because you're in a bad mood doesn't mean we all are," Dr. Robbins told me, "Most people who work on the Peds floor are usually bubbly and happy!"

   I hummed, "Mhm...yeah, sorry that I kind of feel like crap right now."

   That was true. I felt like crap. I looked like crap. One moment I was sweating, the next moment I was freezing. My knees hurt, my elbows hurt, it hurt to move but it hurt to stay still. If this was "feeling fewer symptoms", I sure didn't want to know what it would feel like to go cold turkey.

   Dr. Robbins looked at her watch, "It does look like your next dose is coming up."

Those words were music to my ears.

   It alarmed me a little bit how excited I got over each pill I took now. Not that I didn't get excited before, it was just that I thought my perspective on these pills would have changed when I told Dr. Torres that I was willing to give them up. 

   It made me wonder if I was actually ready to give this up, or if I was just telling myself that. I tried not to think about it though.

   Just as Dr. Robbins had told me, it wasn't long before she shook out two pills into her palm and handed them to me along with a glass of water.

"How do you feel?" She asked once I had swallowed the pills and drained the entire glass of water.

   I set the empty glass on the coffee table before laying back down with a groan.

"What kind of question is that?" I muttered under my breath but Dr. Robbins heard me.

"That's fair," Dr. Robbins chuckled softly, "You know, I don't know much about you. Why don't you tell me more about yourself?"

   I closed my eyes and tried to ignore my pounding head.

   Well, first of all, I've lied to you this entire time since my name isn't Stella.

"My favourite colour is yellow," was what I told her instead, "Like a bright yellow."

"That's nice! Yellow is such a happy colour," Dr. Robbins gushed, "Like sunshine, and daffodils, and omelets and corn."

   I could see why sunshine and daffodils could be related to happiness but I wasn't sure where the omelets and corn came from. Unless you really like omelets and corn, then maybe you could correlate those with the feeling of being happy.

   Dr. Robbins commented about something else, but I wasn't listening to her anymore. Yellow was indeed my favourite colour but Stella wasn't my name. Funny, the things I chose to lie about.