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Ocean, for one, is no stranger to pain.
Such is the way of life when you have a family like hers. She’s had to deal with pain from a very young age, teaching herself to hide her injuries and sickness from anyone who may be charitable enough to offer her even a sliver of concern. Smile and nod, brush off the worry, come up with an excuse and lie through your teeth—that’s what she has drilled into her own head. She’s better off enduring whatever is bothering her than letting other people waste their precious time fussing over someone like her. That’s how it’s always been.
However, when she wakes up that morning, for the first time in her young life, Ocean is tempted to disregard that rule and ask for help because the pain in her back is worse than anything she has ever felt before.
It’s in the lower right side of her back, and it feels as though someone is holding a whirring saw blade to her body, ripping away flesh and muscle. She rolls over to try and alleviate some of the discomfort, but it doesn’t stop. In fact, it seems to worsen.
This isn’t good for a multitude of reasons, the main one being that if she’s sick, she’ll have to stay home, and if she has to stay home, she has to miss school, which is a punishment equal to the pain. Another reason is that medicine isn’t exactly that easy to obtain in her house, and she doesn’t think her parents’ CBD oil will do much for her when she hurts as bad as she is.
She just has to endure this, as she does with everything.
But if her back can stop throbbing for, like, five friggin’ seconds, that’ll be great, thanks.
Constance will be here soon to pick her up for school, so Ocean hauls herself out of bed. The moment she’s on her feet, the muscles in her back spasm wildly, and she slumps back down onto the mattress, hissing through her teeth. Desperate claws grasp tightly at that area, trying to squeeze away the pain, but the pressure only seems to make it hurt even worse. Because of course.
On knocking knees, Ocean shambles her way to the bathroom to shower. Usually, she dutifully scrubs herself down every morning, trying to make herself smell as nicely as possible to get rid of the weed-incense odor her house tends to coat her in, but today, she can barely even move her arms. Standing up is a chore, and she ends up just sitting down, then laying down when sitting was painful, too, under the hot spray of water, trying to breathe through the pain. Her eyelids are heavy all of a sudden, and she finds them slowly drooping shut. Surely it won’t hurt to just rest for a little while longer… She’ll feel better when she wakes up again…
BAM BAM BAM.
Ocean flinches in shock, sitting up straight. At first, she thinks the pain in her back has become completely audible somehow, as it certainly feels like someone had just violently rapped her on the side, but then she realizes someone is just knocking on the bathroom door.
“Ocean?”
Her mother’s smoke-thick voice cuts through the hissing of the shower faucet—and Ocean’s own heartbeat in her ears.
“Yes, ma’am?” Ocean calls back, sticking her head out from behind the shower curtain, still sitting on the floor.
“Constance is here,” her mother says.
Crap. She thought she had more time. How long had she been out?
“Okay!” Ocean says. “Tell her I’ll be out in a minute!”
Her mother says she will, and then her footsteps depart down the hallway.
As quickly as possible, Ocean gets ready for the day. She washes her hair and body, dries off, gets dressed in her uniform, brushes her hair and teeth, and puts deodorant on in record time, all while fighting through a vicious pain that seems like it’s trying to bring her down to her knees. By the time she’s finished, she certainly feels like collapsing. Everything is spinning, and she feels hot all over. Like, fever hot. And not just because she had taken a shower.
Come on, Ocean. You can do this.
Stop being so weak.
Doing her best not to limp or act like anything is wrong, Ocean exits the bathroom and walks downstairs to the living room. On the last step, what feels like an invisible knife plunges into her lower back, causing her to pitch forward off the staircase. She stumbles unsteadily, nearly kissing the unforgiving hardwood beneath her, but she manages to regain her footing. When she looks up, Constance and her parents are all staring at her like she had just transformed into a lobster and broke out into a perfect routine of the Hand Jive.
Somehow, Constance looks more concerned than her actual mom and dad.
“You didn’t have a bit of a blow before school, did you, Ocean?” her dad jokes.
Ocean’s nose scrunches up in the way it always does when she’s disgusted, upset, or angry—this time it’s in disgust. Both of her parents know she doesn’t like to smoke any of their gross crap, and yet they still make jabs at her about it. At this point, it feels like she’s being peer pressured into becoming a druggy like they both are.
“Uhh— no, sir,” Ocean replies to him. She can feel Constance’s worried gaze burning into her, and it makes her want to squirm. She hates being looked at like she’s something fragile, something breakable, something weak.
She just needs to get away from this situation.
“Anyway, we’ll be off now!” Ocean says, rushing for her bag hanging on the back of one of the dining table chairs. She shoos Constance out of the house. “Bye!”
Outside, the air is clean and refreshing compared to the suffocating smog of her house. She wishes she could say that it makes her feel better, but it doesn’t. The invisible knife is still wedged in her back, using her body as some morbid, fleshy sheath.
“Are you okay?” Constance asks.
There it is. The question Ocean always dreads hearing.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ocean answers. “I’m fine.”
She then glides past Constance and heads to the minivan parked on the side of the road, feeling the eyes of her friend bearing into her from behind. She hopes Constance doesn’t see the wobble in her step.
In the car, having her back pressed up against something helps the pain slightly. Not by much, but it’s better than standing.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Ocean?” Constance’s voice sounds like an echo in a cave. “I can turn around if you want. You don’t have to go to school if you don’t feel well.”
Shit.
Ocean blinks at her, trying to play dumb. “I already said that I’m fine,” she says. “Why do you ask?”
“Aside from the fact that you nearly collapsed for seemingly no reason, you’re, like, super pale,” Constance points out. “And you don’t look too good in general…”
“I tripped in my house, that’s all,” Ocean says dismissively. “And about me being pale, well, I AM a ginger. We’re all pasty. It’s, like, an entry-level requirement to being a redhead.” She shifts in her seat, feeling the invisible knife wiggle uncomfortably in her flesh. “Can you just start driving already? I was already late this morning, we don’t need to be tardy because of it.”
Constance blinks at her, her concern growing. “Ocean… I have started driving.”
Looking around dazedly, Ocean sees that they are, in fact, in motion.
“Oh.”
Constance pulls over on the side of the road and then turns fully to Ocean with a serious expression, and Ocean feels the acidic taste of dread well up in the back of her throat. Or maybe that’s just bile. She doesn’t know just yet. What she does know is that she isn’t going to enjoy this conversation one bit.
“Ocean, seriously,” Constance says, her voice firm but warm at the same time. “What’s wrong? You can talk to me, you know?”
Ocean looks into her eyes, taking in all the comfort and care her friend is offering to her at that moment, then relents with a sigh.
“I just— I’m on my period, and it’s sorta kinda making my life a living Hell right now.”
Constance’s eyebrows raised. “Oh! Why didn’t you just say something? You usually talk about your period to anyone who’s willing to listen.”
Ocean laughs a little. It pulls painfully on the flesh of her lower back. “Yeah, well… Today is just one of those days, you know?”
Constance nods wisely. “Yeah, I get it. Do you still want to go to school like this? There’s no shame in staying home.”
Ocean shakes her head. “No, I’ll be fine,” she says. “Can I borrow some Ibuprofen or something, though?”
“Go ahead! It’s in the glove box.”
“Thanks.”
Sure enough, Ocean finds a bottle of Ibuprofen in the glove box, as Constance had said, and takes three of the pills.
She doesn’t like having to lie to Constance about this, but she doesn’t want to try to explain what’s really going on with her even more, half because she doesn’t even know what’s happening. This isn’t her period, that’s for sure. This pain is like nothing she’s ever felt before, much worse than any menstrual cramps she’s ever had to deal with, and she never would have thought she would be thinking such a thing, but here she is.
She can’t believe she’s saying this, but she would much prefer period cramps.
Because at least period cramps are off and on. They’re incredibly painful, yes, but they come and go, offering her some respite before the discomfort starts all over again.
Whatever she’s going through at that very moment doesn’t come and go. The pain never dissipates for a few minutes or even a few seconds. It’s been present since the moment she opened her eyes that morning, and it only fluctuates in its sensation when it’s making her hurt even worse.
Little does she know that this is nothing compared to what she’ll be feeling by the end of the day.
By the time Constance has parked in the school parking lot, Ocean’s become more nauseated than she was before, and the pain in her back has spread into her side. Even opening the car door is painful; walking is worse. And on top of all of that, she has to pee. Like, really bad.
“If you change your mind about being at school, let me know, okay?” Constance says as they’re walking toward the building. “I can take you home.”
“Your parents won’t be happy about you ditching for me,” Ocean points out.
“They’ll understand when I explain it was for you,” Constance says, and that makes Ocean’s heart flutter in her chest. The Blackwoods have always been more of a family to her than her actual one.
“Alright,” Ocean says. “I probably won’t take you up on the offer, but I appreciate it regardless. Thank you.”
Constance smiles at her. “No problem. I hope you feel better soon, Ocean.”
“Me too.”
With that, they part ways to get to their respective classes.
Well, Ocean has to take a small detour at the bathroom first because her bladder literally feels like it’s about to explode.
The bathroom is mercifully empty, which is the only good thing to happen this day so far. She does her business, but it feels as though she’s trying to piss out literal car keys, and if anyone else had been inside with her, they might have heard the high-pitched squealing sound she made in reaction.
That isn’t normal.
What the hell is wrong with her?
The bell suddenly rings, and Ocean curses underneath her breath. She abandons worrying about what’s going on with her to put her focus on something more important: school.
After rushing out of the bathroom, she dashes to her classroom, and moving so quickly nearly makes her black out. She actually goes blind for a few seconds, bright red-white dots of color blurring her vision, but she has this place mapped out perfectly, and she manages to get to the room without getting lost or hitting anything on the way.
Ocean is never late for class ever, she’s usually the first one there every day, sometimes before the teacher can even show up, which is why her tardiness is so strange on this one occasion. Or maybe it isn’t strange. Maybe nobody else cares about her being late, and she’s just getting in her head about it all, but it doesn’t matter. She apologizes to the teacher, offers an explanation as to why she wasn’t there on time, then takes her seat. Noel shares this class with her, and she can feel his eyes drilling into her, almost as annoying as the knife still present in her side. She does her best to ignore him.
First period is English. An easy, laidback class. Nothing to worry about. She can relax. Or, well, try to relax. It’s a little hard when you feel like you’re being gored open by bull horns.
When the class breaks out into independent work, Noel comes over to her desk. Ocean does her best to pay him no mind and focus entirely on her worksheet, but his presence lingers like a fly buzzing around her ear, and she finally gets fed up, despite him not doing or saying anything at all.
“Yes?” she snaps, jerking her head to the side to look at him sharply.
“You look horrible,” Noel points out matter-of-factly.
“Did you just come over here to criticize my state of living?”
“Not right now. Maybe later, though.”
Ocean snorts, and that alone causes a sharp sensation to burst through her lower back, stabbing all the way into her side. It feels like glass just exploded inside of her, tearing up her guts with serrated edges. She manages to bite back a whimper or whine, but her eyes still slam shut against her will as she tries to rip herself away from the jagged webbing of pain that is so desperately trying to overwhelm her.
“Are you good?” Noel says, and his voice is like resounding thunder in Ocean’s ears. Her whole head feels so hot. She’s struggling not to pass out.
“I’m fine,” Ocean says back, but the words come out mumbled, sticky like rotting caramel molding on her tongue.
“Can’t say I believe you,” Noel says. “You look like you’re about to puke your guts up.”
God, she feels like she is.
“And if you do,” Noel continues, “you better not get it on me.”
“Now I’ll be sure to aim for you,” Ocean manages to tease him, and he glowers at her for it, though there’s a distinct lack of heat in his gaze. They’re only messing around, which Ocean is grateful for. She doesn’t think she’d be able to handle one of their real arguments, and the last thing she wants is for Noel Gruber to have the satisfaction of winning in a quarrel against her because she was feeling too sick to properly retort.
“Seriously, though,” Noel says. “Are you okay? Because, again, you look just a little diseased. No offense.”
“None taken,” Ocean says. “I’m well aware, trust me. I feel diseased. But don’t worry, it’s nothing that I’m not used to already.”
Noel gives her a confused look, so she states, “Period.”
“Ah,” Noel nods. As irritating as he can be at times, Ocean can, at the very least, appreciate that he’s not one of those men who act disgusted at the mere mention of a woman’s menstrual cycle. “Also I wasn’t worrying about you.”
“Uh huh,” Ocean nods as she looks back down at her worksheet.
“I wasn’t!”
Ocean laughs a little. At that, the knife pulls out of her skin, and an axe takes its place, cleaving straight into her side.
And then it all goes downhill from there.
“Torture” is the only word Ocean can use to properly describe how school plays out the rest of that day. She’s sure she’s some kind of victim, and her life is the torture chamber, and she wonders who the torturer is in this situation. Maybe the Devil, maybe God. Maybe her own body. She doesn’t know. Maybe it doesn’t even matter who’s hurting you when you feel this bad.
During the walk to her second period, she’s bumped into by another student in the clamored hallway, which sends white-hot bolts of agony shooting through her entire body. She barely manages to keep herself from screaming, and she thanks every deity in existence that she hadn’t vomited right then and there.
The pain persists all throughout the rest of her classes, slowly growing worse and worse and worse until it’s gone from excruciating to mind-shattering. The Ibuprofen she had taken from Constance only made it so she could breathe normally; they didn’t make it ‘go away.’ Her lower back and side have still been shredded to a gruesome pulp under the assault of the unbearable sensation, but she can also feel it throbbing against her cervix, a pain so pure and profound that Ocean doesn’t even know how such a thing is possible without completely killing her, and she’s genuinely starting to consider suicide just to escape it.
But it’s not just that, though. Because of course it isn’t.
A proper fever sparks inside her at some point, making her body feel even heavier than it already is, but at the same time, she’s wracked with chills. She’s always terribly dizzy, and she’s so nauseous, and she has to pee all the time. Except when she actually goes to the bathroom, nothing ever comes out. It’s like a watermelon is lodged in her urethra, making it impossible for her to urinate like a normal person. The pain is still present through the struggle, though. It always is.
She’s dying. She is DEFINITELY dying, and she finally reaches her breaking point at choir practice.
By that point, Ocean is starting to regret not taking Constance up on her offer to take her home. For once, she’s actually looking forward to going back to the house, ready to collapse into her bed and sleep this discomfort away.
If she even survives the night like this, that is.
She knows she should tell someone, especially when she’s hurting this bad and can’t fucking piss, but she can’t bear the thought of burdening someone else with her problems. If she does that, then they’ll surely think she’s weak, and that’s something she simply cannot handle. So, she endures it all, keeping to herself, trying to tough it out.
And then, she can’t even do that anymore, and that’s it.
In the middle of practice, she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She doesn’t expect her bladder to actually cooperate with her, but this time, something is different. Something happens.
It’s like unclogging a pipe that was obstructed with trash, maybe, except what comes out of her urethra isn’t urine but blood. Lots and lots of blood.
It feels as though she’s just pissed out a cactus, sharp spines dragging through her and gouging open holes in the tender, sensitive tissue of her urinary tract. She fails to perceive reality entirely for a few horrifying seconds as everything goes blindingly white. She can’t hear the muffled sound of the choir singing beyond the walls of the bathroom, and she sure as shit can’t move or make a sound, even though her mouth is split open wide, and her throat aches like she’s actually screaming. Like that, her very being just collapses into a singularity of searing pain, and it’s remarkable how terrifying such a sensation can be without properly killing someone outright.
Ocean can’t hold it back any longer—she vomits all over the floor.
It’s throwing up that somehow snaps her out of her agonized reverie, and she knows then that she desperately needs help. To hell with being seen as weak or a burden—if she doesn’t get to the hospital soon, she’s sure she’s not going to live past this day.
She barely has the brain function to wipe and pull up her underwear from around her ankles before she’s staggering out of the stall, ready to finally suck up her own stubbornness and take Constance up on her offer, but she doesn’t even make it to the bathroom door. She’s had all this time to get proper care, but she refused because of her own stupid insistence on keeping up her “image,” so now her body belongs to whatever agonizing parasite has taken root inside of it.
The muscles in her back and side contort, and her knees buckle together, causing her to collapse, and the moment she hits the cold tile of the bathroom floor, that’s when she finally screams.
Like knives carving through her vocal cords, the full-throated cry of sheer agony explodes from Ocean’s lips, and she can feel the wretched noise rattle around like loose teeth in her chest. A moment later, she’s throwing up again, cutting herself off with a gargled gag, and the caustic sting of bile burns her nostrils as it comes from her nose. Tears pour from her eyes, and she doesn’t think she can possibly get more pathetic than this. She’s starting to have second thoughts about getting help; she doesn’t want anyone to see her when she’s like this.
But it’s too late. The choir heard her scream, and they’re suddenly in the bathroom with her, appearing like a flock of frantic songbirds.
She doesn’t ever want to know what she must look like to them, all curled up next to a pool of her own vomit, wailing like a small child, shuddering in pain. She’s not supposed to be like this, so feeble, so pitiful. She’s supposed to be strong and knowing, someone other people look up to and want to be like, and in her head, she finds herself begging, Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, don’t look at me!
But they do. They look. And they see.
They see her for all that she truly is beneath the layers of pride she thickens herself in like honey, bearing witness to a version of her in all her messed up, deplorable glory: a lamentable, yellow-bellied wretch of a human being that is too weak to even haul itself out of a pool of its own vomit.
She wants to die.
Constance is down by her side in an instant, with Mischa and Penny not too far behind, while Noel and Ricky linger back nervously, but they all have the same expression of panic and worry in their wide eyes, and Ocean so desperately wants to hide away from it. It makes the shame she feels burn worse than even the bile still oozing from her nose, and she doesn’t want to say that she doesn’t think the situation can possibly get any worse than this because she knows that it will since that’s the way the world always seems to work for her.
“Ocean, oh my god,” Constance says, her voice all worry, and that worsens the pain Ocean feels so goddamn much because she doesn’t deserve this. She hasn’t earned this concern at all!
Don’t look at me, please don’t look at me—
“Holy shit,” she hears Noel say. “Is she— fuck, is she okay? Is she alive?”
“She’s alive, she’s alive,” Constance assures him, assures all of them. “She’s breathing. But I don’t know if she’s— Ocean, are you okay?”
“Of course she’s not okay!” Mischa says before Ocean can even conjure up the willpower to rasp out comprehensible words. “Look at her!”
“Right, yeah,” Constance says. “Definitely not okay.”
“What do we do?” Penny asks, looking between them all. “What’s going on with her?”
“I guess it’s her period?” Constance answers her. “She told me that she started this morning. I thought she would be better by now…”
“She told me that, too,” Noel adds.
Ocean somehow finds the strength to shake her head as she croaks out, “No. Not— not my period. Worse. Don’t know what it is. It just— it hurts.”
She feels like a pig on a spit, slowly rotating over a fire ignited by her own humiliation. This whole situation is her worst nightmare, and she so desperately wants to wake up.
“What do you mean?” Constance asks her, setting a hand on her shoulder, and Ocean wonders if she can feel how badly she’s shaking from that touch alone. “Ocean, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Ocean answers, sobbing on the last word, and her brain is screaming at her to stop talking, but her mouth seems to have a mind of its own, and the words just keep coming out. “Something— something is wrong. I need— I need to go to the hospital. Please. I think I’m dying!”
She doesn’t need to say anything else after that; the choir has already started moving.
Constance rushes out, shouting something about “getting her car.” Mischa picks Ocean up as if she weighs nothing, and if he cares about her vomit-soaked hair getting on him, he doesn’t show it. His touch is painful, and Ocean can’t keep back a yowl in reaction to it. It feels as though some kind of monstrous giant is reaching inside of her and pulling her guts apart.
Much of what happened after being carried out of the bathroom is a blur to Ocean. It all seems to go by quickly, and she’s much too dazed and in pain to keep up. What she does remember is the tense car ride, her fevered head laying in Penny’s lap while Penny’s fingers card through her sweaty red hair. She remembers Noel holding one of her hands, his thumb stroking her knuckles as he assures that she’ll be fine. She remembers the worried whispers of all her friends, and Constance driving ten miles over the speed limit to get to the ER faster, and the way she screamed and cried like a dying animal, begging for her mom.
And then, she remembers the emergency room. She remembers Mischa carrying her in because she was in too much pain to walk on her own. She remembers the bright white, glaring bulbs stabbing into her teary, tired eyes. She remembers feeling the cold, antiseptic air of the hospital but not being able to smell it because of the bile still in her nose. She remembers having to wait in the waiting room and feeling like every breath was going to be her last.
And then, there’s the hospital room, and that’s when full consciousness swam back to her waking mind. She’s lying in a bed, and the whole choir is inside with her, and she wonders how they managed to all come along, but she doesn’t mind. As humiliated as she is, it’s better than being alone.
A nurse comes in and starts asking Ocean all these questions—how old she is, when the pain started, what her symptoms are—and then she says that Ocean needs to give a urine sample they can run tests on. Ocean wants so badly to say no to try and retain at least a shred of her dignity, but she knows she can’t. There’s nothing she can do but agree.
The nurse gives Ocean a small plastic cup and tells her where the bathroom is. Mischa helps her get out of the hospital bed, and then Constance speaks up to her, her voice so warm and gentle.
“Do you need help?”
Constance doesn’t have an ounce of embarrassment from asking such a thing, but Ocean does just by being on the receiving end of the question. Even with her fever, she can feel the shame blaze once again, threatening to incinerate her completely.
“Umm… Just getting to the bathroom? That’s all.”
Constance nods, offering her a soft smile. “Yeah. Of course.”
With Constance’s help, Ocean is able to get to the bathroom without issue. Urinating comes easy, but it’s as painful as the last time, and she’s surprised she didn’t throw up again or even pass out.
On her way out of the bathroom, she catches a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirror. The blood vessels in her eyes have burst from vomiting, turning them a ghastly shade of red, and her skin is drained of all color, even on her lips. She looks like a corpse.
When Ocean gets back to the hospital room with the urine sample, she notices that the whole choir is staring at the wall like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. They’re not looking at her or the cup of her own bloody piss, which she gives to the awaiting nurse, and she’s extremely grateful for it.
Back in the bed, Ocean is hooked up to an IV, and the tube sliding into the flesh of her inner elbow sends strings of fire shooting up her arm. She finds herself grabbing onto the hand of the nearest person—Noel—and not letting go until the stinging subsides. Noel doesn’t seem to mind.
“I’m going to be giving you some morphine, okay?” the nurse says after returning from delivering the urine sample to god knows where. “It should help with the pain.”
Ocean nods. She watches as the nurse adds something to the drip, and she can certainly feel something cold spreading through her whole body, but there’s no change in the pain. She thought morphine was supposed to numb anything and everything, but it seems like that is very much wrong.
She gives it a few minutes.
Nothing. She still feels awful.
“Umm… Ma’am?” Ocean says, her voice a weak rasp that scratches the back of her dry throat. She really needs some water.
“Yes?” the nurse says back.
“How long does it take for the morphine to kick in?”
The nurse freezes in her process of scribbling something on a clipboard and slowly raises her head to look at Ocean, her eyebrows drawn together.
“You shouldn’t be asking me that.”
The morphine isn’t working? Ricky signs, and Penny translates this out loud for the nurse.
“Isn’t morphine supposed to be, like, the strongest painkiller there is?” Noel adds.
“Not exactly,” the nurse says. “Let me give her a higher dose.”
She does so, and Ocean ends up getting doped up to the gills in morphine, but there’s still no reduction in the pain whatsoever. There are a few brief moments of relief, but the pain always comes storming back, worse than before each time. She starts crying again, overwhelmed and afraid that she’s actually dying and nothing can help her, the drugs loaded up in her veins making her dizzy, that dizziness scaring her further. The choir soothes her to the best of their ability, and she’s sure she must look like a huge mess in that hospital bed.
The nurse then says they need to run a CT Scan on her, and Ocean has no other choice but to comply. It’s a strange experience, and she absolutely hates having to be out of the bed, but the nurse assures her that she’ll be medicated once she gets back to the room. After the morphine didn’t work, Ocean doesn’t believe her, but this time, it’s the truth.
Ocean is given Tramadol through her IV, and the moment it hits her veins, all of the pain is completely gone. In an instant, she goes from debilitating agony to feeling nothing at all, and she has almost forgotten what it’s like to not be hurting so much. It was like a light switch, almost. Pain, then no pain.
“Oh my god,” Ocean whispers as she relaxes back into the pillows of the hospital bed, relief thick in her voice. “Holy crap…”
“Better?” Constance asks.
“Much better,” Ocean answers.
A collective sigh of relief sweeps through the hospital room at that.
“Oh, thank god,” Noel says. “You scared the hell out of us, you know!”
“I scared you?” Ocean says. “I scared myself! I thought I was actually going to die!”
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Penny says, getting a nod from Constance at her side.
“I—” The Tramadol may have sedated the pain, but not even her shame can be tamed. Ocean looks away from all of them, her cheeks going hot. “I didn’t want to bother anyone. I thought I would be okay, but, well…” She sighs. “I wasn’t.”
Mischa comes forward and grabs Ocean tightly by the shoulders, startling her. “Don’t do that ever again. Please. If something had actually been horribly wrong… If you had died…” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to think about that.”
“He’s right,” Noel says. “Do you know how quiet it would be without you running your mouth all the time? Don’t take that away because you’re afraid of being too much. You are too much, but not like that. You’re just what we need—and want. And we don’t want to lose you.”
The other four nod in agreement, and Ocean stares at them all in shock. A whimper tickles at the back of her throat, and tears fill her eyes, and she bows her head low as she utters out a soft, “Okay…”
Then, Mischa’s arms wrap around her, pulling her into a comforting embrace, and it isn’t long until the rest of the choir has joined in, and Ocean can’t remember the last time she was held like that by anyone.
It feels so nice.
The nurse eventually comes back in with a prognosis revealed by the CT Scan. Two simple words.
Kidney stones.
Tired eyelids flutter open. Pale yellow light is bleeding in through the crack between drawn curtains. A heating pad is draped over Ocean’s side.
She blinks, trying to regain focus in her eyes. She quickly realizes that she isn’t in her room back at home but in Mischa’s basement, and she can only vaguely recall being brought here after leaving the hospital. After being diagnosed with a kidney stone, which would take a few days for it to pass completely, she was prescribed more Tramadol to help with the pain. She can still feel the aftermath of that pain all over, exhaustion and soreness riddling her entire body. She winces.
There’s then a noise from some direction she can’t quite discern just yet. She turns her head and sees her friends hovering nearby. Mischa and Noel are holding a banner that says “IT’S A BOY!” but the “boy” is scratched out and replaced with “kidney stone,” so it actually ends up reading, “IT’S A KIDNEY STONE!” Constance has a cake in her hands. Penny pops a party popper. Ricky blows on a party horn.
Ocean stares at them all tiredly.
“Have you guys just been standing there like that, waiting for me to wake up? And did you just have that on hand or…?”
“Yes,” Mischa answers vaguely.
“It’s a kidney stone!!!” Penny cheers. Ricky blows the party horn again.
Ocean can’t help it—she laughs.