trans_9 | Go to Sleep, This Won't Hurt a Bit

Sherry had gone to the media library for some relaxation. Sure, other people ran off to the sensoriums, but Sherry liked reading. It relaxed her, even if the pages weren't paper, and she found something calming in the series of words on paper. Besides, her mother wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon, and Sherry was tired. Purplish smudges from too many hours trying to stay awake decorated the skin under her eyes. She had lost some sleep over Claire, and knew she'd fallen asleep awkwardly over a chair in a way that had probably looked uncomfortable.

She hadn't been, but that was beside the point. Sherry removed her headband and put it beside her, fluffing her hair and combing it out with her fingers. She was thinking too much, and that wasn't relaxing at all. She returned to her book of short stories and blinked at the screen.

May 16. I am ill, decidedly! I was so well last month! I am feverish, horribly feverish, or rather I am in a state of feverish enervation, which makes my mind suffer as much as my body. I have, continually, that horrible sensation of some impending danger, that apprehension of some coming misfortune, or of approaching death; that presentiment which is, no doubt, an attack of some illness which is still unknown, which germinates in the flesh and in the blood.

Sherry looked down at the screen in sympathy. Guy de Maupassant, I know exactly how you felt. She continued reading The Horla, but soon, her eyes drifted closed and she slumped over, her cheek pressed against her omnicomm.

The last words she read still repeated slowly in her mind, She was already half asleep on a reclining chair, overcome with fatigue.

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"I'm," Lam made a sharp gesture as the scanner blipped discreetly. Immediately, the scanner shifted to zoom in on a collection of cells located in Sherry's abdomen, "not entirely sure what this cell cluster is, but..." She sighed softly. "If it's okay, I'd like to try drawing some blood. It's entirely possible that you picked up some sort of illness somewhere and your body's fighting it. That's what we doctor's like to hear, generally speaking. Would you mind if I took some blood to analyze?"

She flicked the scan off and let it to a deep, lightless scan which was about as non-invasive as it got.

"I'm pretty sure I can make it painless. We've got some pretty fancy tools down here for blood drawing." She flashed a warm, reassuring smile. The more tests she could run without freaking Sherry out, the better.

"... I told you," Roxie mutters, and her hands twine together.

"Be quiet," Sherry muttered at Roxie, still mostly unwilling to believe she was right ~~stubborn is as stubborn does~~. She turned her attention to Lam and tried not to make her lower lip jut out in a spectacularly special pout.

"I... I guess so. Are you going to tell my mom and dad?" She asked, worriedly. Did they know? Did they? Sherry wanted to hope that her parents hadn't, but it wouldn't be the first time someone had just not told her something.

"I can't tell them anything you don't want to to tell them," Lam said patiently, pulling of a pair of gloves that made a soft sucking sound as the slid over her hands pretty much by themselves. She wasn't sure she was going to get used to gloves doing that, but they were incredible. "Besides," she hummed softly, pulling out a slender tube with a tip to it that lit up when she passed it over Sherry's arm, "I'm not even sure what we're dealing with yet." There was a soft hiss and the barest of stings, which quickly faded, and Lam withdrew a full tube of blood.

"See?" Lam said softly. "All done."

She kept her gloves on while she popped the vial into one of the odd analyzers and padded back to the bed.

"You tell me what you'd like to do," she murmured.

Sherry laid her head back on the bed and thought for a moment. She didn't like the idea of keeping this from her parents, but she also didn't like the idea of having them worry over nothing. She winced more out of reflex to the sound of the needle-thing, rather than from the pain itself.

"Well... I'll tell them, just..." Sherry pursed her lips and took a deep breath. "Will you just send me a message over the comms when you're done looking at it?" She was taking this quite well, and surprised herself. Idly, she wondered when the weird was going to hit her, and noted it would probably be at the most inopportune time. That's just how these things went. "I'll... I'll tell them myself," she repeated, mostly for her own benefit.

"Hm," Roxie half-murmurs, looking between Sherry and Lam. She doesn't like the relatively gentle approach, not at all. After all, what if something happens in-between?

"Sure," Lam said gently, "I'll let you know exactly what I've found when I know what we're dealing with. If you or your parents have any questions, I'll be right here and you can give me a call any time."

Sherry breathed a sigh of relief and nodded, "Okay." She had questions now, but most of them seemed to be born of pure panic. Sherry disliked that. She slid off the bed and looked at Roxie.

"What is it?" she asked and put her hands on her hips. Roxie should've been satisfied that she was right, so why was she sounding so... displeased?

"... if it stays, it might get worse," Roxie finally says.

She's unsettled, and enough that a little of the worry is starting to leak through her calm appearance. She's quite simply out of her element... this isn't one of the cho things, that much is obvious, or Sherry would have already been subverted, but what if it's similar?

"At the moment," Lam said in a careful voice, "all I can do is tell you to try and get some rest while I figure out what I can do about that cell cluster and if it can be removed safely. I don't want to risk a surgical removal if I don't have to. I'm fairly certain I can deal with a successful surgery with the tools Stacy's given us, but still, I'd like to be as certain as possible. I don't want to do something that will ultimately make you worse. Right now, we'll play it safe and I'll get to work on figuring out what that is, you tell your parents, and if you start to feel worse, you come straight to the medbay."

Her eyebrows arched.

"Does that sound reasonable?"

"I can certainly do the 'rest' part," Even if sleeping seemed less than comforting at the moment, the little girl was almost overtired. Her head felt fuzzy, as though her scalp were trying to crawl off and find some sleep without her. "And I'll come if I feel worse," though she felt perfectly fine otherwise. "It's very reasonable, doctor," Sherry agreed.

She turned her attention back to Roxie, who seemed almost kind of unsettled by this, but in a purely Roxie fashion. It certainly took some of the venom out of Sherry. She reminded herself that the older girl was only trying to help. "If it gets worse, then it gets worse. But it hasn't yet, so don't jinx me."

"... fine ..." Roxie mumbles, in a way that suggests she's neither particularly comfortable nor particularly familiar with anything that might approach counting as a compromise on this kind of thing.

"If you'd like to stay here for awhile, you're welcome to a bed. If not, I'm sure Roxie, right?" Lam hesitated to make sure she'd gotten the girl's name right. "I'm sure she'll see you safely home. I'll run some tests on your blood and review the scans we took as quick as I can, talk to the other doctors, and we'll go from there."

Her smile was soft and warm.

"Try not to worry too much about all of this, Sherry," she murmured. "You'll be just fine."

"No, no, no, no, that's okay!" Sherry said quickly, holding up her hands and shaking her head firmly. "I'd, um, like to spend as little time as possible in here, if I can avoid it." No use in being in Medical if you weren't actually sick, right? Sherry skittered away from the bed and closer to Roxie.

"I won't worry," she lied. "But, I am going to head home now." She looked at Roxie. "I'll... see you later, I guess." And with little more than that, Sherry nearly ran from the medbay.

Go to Sleep, This Won't Hurt a Bit

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