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Camilla finds her curled-up with her knees pressed tightly against her knees like a fetus trying to make herself fit inside a womb, or a child trying to prevent her vital parts from being hit. None of these interpretations sat still with Camilla, so she kneeled down by her torso and gently, very very gently, placed her palm on her shoulder.
Nona jerks awake almost immediately and sits up to turn around and face her, as if her touch was electric. Her eyes were bleary and red from tears, or maybe overexertion—judging by the scent of vomit from across the bathroom, she’d figured it was both.
Nona whimpers. There’s fear in her eyes.
“Not mad,” Camilla answers without the question being needed. The answer has always been needed. “Not mad, Nona. Tell me what happened?”
Nona took a shallow, shaky breath, the frames of her shoulders trembling in response. Camilla reaches out to rub the back of her shoulder blades to ease some of that anxiety instead. “Take your time.”
“Sick,” She manages to mumble out, a couple breaths later. “M’sry.”
“No need to be,” Camilla nods, petting the back of her hair, now. They’re damp with sweat; most of the strands are already escaping the day-old pigtails Pyrrha had done for her this morning. She just hopes that none of them had been in the way of her sick. “How about we move to bed.”
Camilla always has this thing where it seems like she was giving a suggestion, a room for choice, but it wasn’t actually—it was just so that Nona thought she had a say in it. This worked effectively on Nona most of the time, as Camilla was usually open for discussion or lengthy compromises, but this time is different. Nona shook her head abruptly, hard, and looked like she’s about to be in tears once again. “No,” she whines, “no, no…”
“OK—alright,” Camilla scoots closer on her knees to soothe her. “Tell me why?”
“I’ll be sick again.”
“That’s alright. We’ll get you a—”
“No. No. I’ll make a mess.”
“We can clean it up.”
“No.”
“You won’t be comfortable down here.”
“No.”
“Nona—”
“ No! ”
Camilla raises her eyebrows, a bit taken aback, and Nona must have digested this little bodily gesture, too—because one moment her lips were quivering, and the next she was openly sobbing. These big, heaving sobs, her shaking hands gripped tightly into a fist on her sleep shorts.
Before Cam could calculate a measured response to this, a voice from down the hallway calls, gruff and weary from sleep, but worried nonetheless—”Nona?” Swift thumping footsteps. Pyrrha appears by the bathroom doorway a second later, shirtless with only her boxers worn, and looking indeed very worried. “Hey, hey. What’re you doing down here, sweet cheeks?”
Nona shook her head and coughed wetly. “I don’t wanna be sick.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Camilla tries, but Nona only shakes her head harder.
“Okay, darling,” Pyrrha says, edging her way around the two of them and into the bathroom to approach Nona. “You’re alright. Come over here?” She held her arms open, and Nona lethargically scoots closer towards her until she ends up within vicinity of her arms. It’s only then that Pyrrha closes them around her, and they swallow her trembling body whole. “Oh, baby… you’re shaking. God, you’re sick .” She passes a frown to Camilla then, silently saying, like, real fucking sick.
Camilla nods just as Nona cries, “I’m sorry!”
“You don’t need to—” Camilla tries again, but Pyrrha beats her to it. She holds the girl tighter and presses the bridge of her nose against her damp forehead, and murmurs something Camilla can’t hear, on and on. She only watches a fraction of Nona’s face very slowly turn from fear and into a guarded, momentary calm.
“OK,” Pyrrha says, a few moments later. “Would you like to move to bed? It’ll be much nicer. It’s soft, and warm.”
“You can make a mess,” Camilla adds. “We won’t be mad at you. You know that.”
Nona’s answer remains the same despite the reassurances—a hard shaking of her head—and neither of them try to poke that one again.
“Right,” Pyrrha sighs. “Let’s camp out here, then?”
Camilla nods and rises up from her kneeling position on the bathroom floor. She leaves Nona to calm down with Pyrrha and makes a mental list of everything she needs as she travels around the house for supplies. Lysol wipes, washcloths, water bottles. Pillows and blankets and sheets, and the strawberry-shaped gel warmers she uses during particularly terrible periods. She comes back to the bathroom periodically to drop them in batches, and notes the way Pyrrha held her similar to how one would hold a newborn baby—one arm supporting the bottom and the other wrapped around the head area, and she’d rock right, and left, until by the time Camilla finishes lining up the floor with bedsheets, she was already fast asleep.
“You’re sure you don’t want to move her to bed,” Camilla asks, trying to make it sound like a suggestion. It wasn’t exactly—she doesn’t like how cold and stiff the bathroom floor is. It’s certainly no place for a very sick girl. Nona would only be more sore than her sickness had already made her.
But Pyrrha shook her head. “Don’t betray her trust.” And Camilla would never do that, could never bear to do that no matter how ridiculous, so she sat on the floor and watched her gently drop Nona’s head on the pillow and cover the rest of her body with a big, fluffy comforter that swallowed her whole body.
“We’ll do shifts,” Pyrrha says. “Go back to bed.”
Camilla frowns. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’ll handle this for a bit,” Pyrrha answers. Then added, to her skeptical face, “I promise I’ll wake you up in a few hours.”
“Two,” Camilla says before she leaves. “Not more.”
“Promise,” Pyrrha nods. “I’ve got her.”
Camilla could barely sleep thinking of Nona, and her situation, and the things that may or may not have happened from The Before, so she just laid in bed and turned around lots—but still careful not to wake Palamedes up. He’d just gotten back from work four hours ago, while they all were already in bed; he didn’t need to be roped into handling this as well. They could do perfectly fine without.
Camilla comes back to the bathroom an hour and a half sharp after she leaves. Pyrrha is leaning against the wall not far from Nona’s curled-up body under the blankets, fast asleep laying perfectly still, and Pyrrha isn’t that far off. Her eyelids were half-lidded and barely awake when Camilla’s footsteps startled her from her uncomfortable half-sleep.
“Shit,” Pyrrha shook her head, straightening her back upright. “Is it two hours yet?”
“Yup,” Cam simply says, taking her place by Nona’s side. “Anything happen?”
“Bit of dry heaving here and there, bit of bile,” Pyrrha sighs. “Fever’s 101 last time I checked.”
“Medicine?”
“Got the fever syrup in her not too long ago.”
“That’s good,” Cam hums, absently stroking the top of Nona’s hair. “I’ll see how she does. Go to bed, Pyrrha.”
“I can stay with her longer, if you’d like,” Pyrrha offers, but she knows she was just reluctant to leave Nona.
“You’ve got a nine am shift tomorrow,” Cam reminds her. “You don’t want to doze off during a fire call.”
“Hm,” Pyrrha only hums. “Fine. But call me if anything happens.”
“I will.”
Pyrrha squints her eyes at her. “Promise me—”
“I promise , Pyrrha,” Camilla says again, a little bit dramatically drawn out to underline her statement. “Go to bed. Now.”
“Yes, mommy,” Pyrrha smirks as she rises up to leave the bathroom, not forgetting to press a gentle kiss to Nona’s temple. “Feel better, squirt.” And lowers her hand to ruffle Camilla’s hair, which she swiftly avoids.
Camilla hadn’t realised that she’d fallen asleep against the bathroom wall when she jerked awake in surprise to the sudden rustling commotion of sheets. When the haze in her eyes clears, Nona is clawing the tangled blankets around her body with hurried sluggishness, and looks pleadingly at her with tears in her eyes when she moans, “M’gonna be sick.”
“Shit,” Camilla breathes, hurriedly peeling off the tangled blankets off her body and jumps up on her feet to almost drag her towards the very little space between her camp and the toilet. Nona heaves just as Camilla finished slamming the lid open, her entire body rolling forward with nausea, her spine going taut with each wet retch. Camilla already has her hands wrapped around her body when she decides to rub soothing circles around her back, the other reaching downwards to do the same around her belly—when Camilla gets ill, her sternum was the part where the pressure hurts too much.
“Shhh,” she hushes, low and gentle just above her ear. “You’re alright. Get it up.”
Nona whines between her short, nauseated breaths. “Hurts.”
“I know,” Camilla says, “I know, love, I’m sorry. Take big, slow breaths,” she says, rubbing on her sides to encourage her. “Come on.”
It takes a while for Nona to even throw up at all. It was mostly the heaving, and the pained whimpering, before vomit comes out and splashes against the porcelain with a shuddery exhale. And then again, and again, while Camilla soothes her through it, rubs her back and her belly and combs her hair back. Murmurs to her that it’s okay, big breaths, it’ll be over soon. I’ve got you.
She’s been too focused on keeping Nona comfortable despite the vomiting that she didn’t even realize Palamedes had come into the bathroom. He’s watching quietly from the corner near the blankets when Camilla senses him nearby, and his widened eyes almost scared the shit out of her, if she weren’t already holding Nona.
“Shit,” Palamedes only says, long after Nona’s vomiting had decayed into uneven breathing and queasy hiccups. “She’s really sick.”
“Yes,” Camilla only responds. She took her eyes off him to reach for the tissues and clean up Nona’s mouth and chin and the half-dried tears on her cheeks, and then reached up to flush the evidence away.
“You didn’t call me,” Palamedes says. “I could’ve helped.” He then rummaged around the cabinet in the back of the sink mirror to look for something. “Did you get her your gel pad?”
“Yes,” Camilla says again, gently settling Nona back down on her makeshift bed. “Needs reheating, though. Could you also get her some water? I have some gatorade in the fridge.”
“No, those are mostly sugar—I think there’s still a bottle of pedialyte or two in the cabinet, though,” Palamedes nods. “I’ll be right back.”
“Shit. Shit, Cam.” The constant frantic beeping of the thermometer doesn’t help their rising panic. “102.6. Fuck . That’s bad.” Bad is an understatement. Nona’s entire body is trembling, her legs shaking so terribly under the blanket that Camilla fears she might wet herself. “We need—we need to strip her down. And washcloths all over. And more tylenol—no, no, she needs your ibuprofen. We can crush it and mix it with some pedialyte.”
“OK.”
They got to work immediately—Camilla running six washcloths under lukewarm water and wringing it as Palamedes worked—struggled—to keep Nona upright so he could remove her shirt. It was just that as soon as he’s gotten it halfway over her torso, Nona’s eyes snapped open, frantic and afraid, and she screams.
“Shit—Nona, Nona my love it’s Palamedes, it’s Pal, it’s okay— ” Palamedes tries to keep her from struggling away from him, but she really is so strong, even raging with fever. “Nona don’t be scared, it’s just me, Nona, please—”
It’s Camilla who manages to restrain her in place, even though she doesn’t want to. It’s hard to see her so afraid like this and knowing the only thing she can do is restrain her. Camilla wrapped her arms around her tightly and hushed, low and long and gentle, this series of shhh-hhh-hhh strung again and again until Nona felt calm enough to stop bucking and struggling away from her.
“Listen to me,” Camilla says, very slowly, once she judged that she was calm enough to understand basic words. “You have a bad fever, and it’s very high. It will hurt more if we don’t get it down.”
Still stuck between her arms and pressed against Cam’s beating chest, Nona whimpers.
“To get it low we need to take your shirt off, and then slip a few warm washcloths under your armpits and between your legs. Alright?”
Nona shook her head and sobbed. “Don’t want my shirt off…”
“I know, love. I know. But we have to, so you don’t get more sick.” Camilla is already taking it halfway off as Palamedes helps with her arms. “I know it upsets you, I’m sorry. I promise you you’re safe, and we’re taking care of you. Do you trust us?”
Slowly, hesitantly, Nona nods, and lets Camilla slip the collar free from her head.
“Thatta girl. You’re doing good. Keep breathing, nice and even.”
They both worked to slip the wet washcloth under her armpits, her legs, the back of her neck. Washes it all over her face before pressing it against her forehead. Palamedes kisses her temple and hums a tune to her ear, and Camilla prays that the next task of drinking crushed ibuprofen in pedialyte will go as relatively smooth as this one.
Nona awoke much calmer than before in little periods throughout the night after that, when they turned down the lights and left her to sleep her sickness off. About the fourth time her eyes fluttered awake, Camilla searched for signs that she was about to be sick in the illumination of the dim hallway light, but only recognized some discomfort.
“Hey,” she greeted anyway, low and calm. “Feel alright?”
Nona’s face scrunches up, just slightly. “Hurts.”
“Show me where?”
Her hand reaches down towards her belly, and Camilla hums.
“Alright. Where’s the heating pad…” she shook Palamedes’ leg to wake him up from his sleep and murmured apologetically if he could get it heated up again. When Palamedes leaves, she returns her attention to Nona and slips under the covers with her to get closer. “C’mere. I know a trick for that.”
She spreads her whole palm open and rubs it in circular motion over the underside, applying slight pressures to her taut muscles. “My older sister Kiana taught me this, when I had my first period.” She hears Nona let out a shuddery exhale and breathes in evenly again. “There you go. That’s better?”
Nona nods.
“You know,” Camilla starts, “it’s alright to us if you make a mess, Nona. Or an accident.”
“You’ll get mad,” Nona murmurs.
“Proportionally,” she answers. “Means—if we know you’re sick, and you can’t help it, none of us would get mad.”
“What if m’not sick? Just an accident, like a mistake?”
“Depends,” Camilla says. “I’d chide you, maybe, but Nona—we’d never hurt you. Ever . You know that.”
Nona thinks about this for a while; she could see it in the way her eyebrows knight slightly in a frown. Camilla thinks, then, that she would die for this girl, and kill everyone who has ever harmed her.
“Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmhm.”
“Alright,” Camilla says, and moves closer to slip an arm under her head and cradle her. When Palamedes returns, she helps press the heated pad against her belly, and Palamedes declares with a hand stroking her forehead that her fever has gone down.
“Hey. Hey, darling, wake up.” Palamedes is rubbing her back and lifting the blankets away from her bare shoulders when Nona wakes up. Immediately, a rush of nausea greets her body. “You were heaving in your sleep, baby, I think you’re going to be sick.”
Nona whines. She’s too tired to say it, but she doesn’t want to be sick.
“I know,” Camilla murmurs, hooking her chin over something crinkly and plastic, and Palamedes’ soft palm keeps on massaging over her neck. “You’re alright. Get it up.”
She’s so, so tired, so she closes her eyes and lets her body do whatever it wills. Her stomach heaves and burps up into the bag, and what little consciousness she has knows that she at least needed to be embarrassed for it, but all her carers do is soothe her through it, pet her hair and rub her back in return.
“More?” Cam asks, and she responds with another rush of sick. “Alright. Take your time.”
By the time she’s done, she’s sweated through her shorts too, and the sheets below her. Palamedes tells her that it’s good, and it means that her fever is going down, and it’s going to be over soon.
“Would you like to move to bed with me?” Camilla asks, softly. This time, Nona rests her head against Cam’s open chest and nods.