Work Text:
“Can someone help her out? Should we be calling an ambulance or something? She looks like she’s in pain, why would she be in pain? Does anyone even know her name?”
Oh, God. There had to be nothing worse than fainting in the middle of the cafeteria on your first day of college. This was so embarrassing, she wasn’t even wearing a bra, she’d just come out of hibernating in her new dorm room to get some mac and cheese, she didn’t think mac and cheese would ever betray her like this.
When her vision cleared, she realized the bossy voice she woke up hearing was coming from a redhead with a mess of curls, also wearing pajamas. She’d been talking to her, just before she passed out, she’d bumped into her cause she wasn’t paying attention, listening to Rick Springfield with her headphones on. The redhead had her hand on her arm, the arm that hurt. Left arm pain was a sign of a heart attack?!
“Hey! You’re okay!” she says, as soon as she realizes Luisa’s awake. “Can I get you some water or something, you should stay lying down– did you hit your head? You hit your head, didn’t you?”
Luisa didn’t know. Everything was still fuzzy, everything still hurt, her arm still hurt.
“Don’t move, we’ll get someone, we’ll get a– the person we’re supposed to get! Can someone get one, of the people?”
When an RA finally came and agreed they should call an ambulance, and when the ambulance finally comes– and not a moment before then– the redhead finally removed her freckled, concerned hand from Luisa’s throbbing arm. And… the throbbing stopped. As if it was never there. Her arm no longer felt like it was going to shoot off of her body like a rocket.
“Where does it hurt?” a paramedic asked her.
“I-It doesn’t,” she replies hesitantly.
They later determined she did hit her head, and she did have a concussion, and her arm probably never actually hurt because they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. (And no, she was not having a heart attack, she only asked them fifteen times cause, as she made very clear, she’s pre-med and knows the signs of a heart attack in women, they’re different than signs of a heart attack in men, that’s why so many women die from them and she was only nineteen she was far too young to die! They politely pointed out that it was her right arm she was complaining about, not her left. And women don’t usually get the arm pain when they have heart attacks.)
The redhead, whose name was Rose, so she was told, had made sure she’d made it into the ambulance okay but didn’t come to the hospital with her. She didn’t come see her afterwards. Luisa made it through a slow, concussion-hazed first ten days of class without even so much as catching a glimpse of red hair as she roamed the halls. It was like Rose was hiding.
She was. She was hiding from a lot of things, Luisa was indeed one of them. And she’d done pretty well so far, holing up with her textbooks in her single dorm, leaving only to attend class or go to Starbucks. She’s managed to avoid the residence cafeteria at all costs (she’d eaten a lot of pizza this week).
She hadn’t been completely honest about the whole situation. It didn’t settle in until after the braless, brown-and-blue-haired girl, whose name was Luisa, so she was told, was swept away in the ambulance, that’s when her head was back on straight and she could interpret what happened.
Luisa said her arm hurt, the arm Rose had her hand on. She thought she was comforting her, she was trying to comfort her. But, maybe she was the one who was hurting her. It wouldn’t be the first time she meant to help someone but really just ended up hurting them more.
There was this myth, everyone knew it and everyone knew it was a myth, and yet last night while she lay in bed it danced through Rose’s head like visions of sugarplums. It said that when two true soulmates touched, they could feel each other’s pain, just for a moment. The pain they held so deep inside them that they thought nobody could ever reach, their soulmate could. Apparently it wasn’t as horrible as it sounded, the deep heavy stuff lessened over time, you weren’t always putting your soulmate in agonizing pain just because you had some emotional scarring that you’d learned to deal, but to them it was new and foreign and painful. But it was a myth, it was just a myth.
Then why did Luisa pass out as soon as she bumped into her yesterday? And why did her hand hurt, why did Luisa’s arm hurt? Why didn’t she just keep her hands to herself, she couldn’t hurt anyone like that.
The pain Luisa shared with her felt different than the pain she’d shared with her, she could guess. It was more of an ache, an intermittent, distracting heartbeat, the kind that ate away at you and left you exhausted, and that she imagined never left Luisa alone. Whereas her own type of pain, that was different. It must have felt different to Luisa too, for her to react the way she did. It took you by surprise, it came out of nowhere, just when you thought you were safe, it shows up and stabs you in the back. It shot through you suddenly like a shockwave, left its mark on you, then left as quickly as it came. It left you feeling off for the rest of the day, but not necessarily in pain. If it took an unsuspecting victim by surprise... she could definitely understand why the poor, small girl passed out. And it was her fault.
But it was just a myth.
There’s a knock on her door. Probably an RA checking in on her, finally starting to become concerned about the amount of pizza delivery boxes she’s accumulating. She opens it without so much as looking through the peephole.
And there on the other side is not an RA, but a girl with brown and blue braids, a rainbow striped t-shirt, and an urgent look on her face. “I need to talk to you.”
She knew. Rose nods, and peeks open her door. “Want some pizza?”
They made sure not to touch each other, even by accident. Just in case, you know, it wasn’t a myth after all.