Remembering You

Cure?

I pulled myself out of the memory painfully, needing to pull myself together for Anna's sake. I slowed my breathing down forcefully and focused on the lab in front of me. Anna was lying on the table, still not moving, her eyes closed, and I was terrified to look too closely and see if she was alive or dead. If she was alive, I had just minutes to figure something out to save her with no blood and not much real medicine.

A large needle and tube caught my eye from the supplies cupboard, and I got a horrible but perhaps life-saving idea. I was feeling okay comparatively, so sharing a little of my blood shouldn't be an issue. I made up my mind and rushed to her, ready to insert the line. She had lost so much blood her veins were practically nonexistent, making the process more difficult than it would be normally. I poked around on her hand, trying to find that vein, and she didn't seem to come around from the pain until my third try. Her bright blue eyes opened weakly, watching me insert the line, never complaining about the pain that she must have felt.

I tried to hide my hands shaking from her, but I could barely get the I.V. in me from how badly they were trembling from both the virus weakening me and the terror of losing her.

"You'll die faster. You don't even like me," she asked once I was done, realizing what I was doing.

I pushed her blond hair out of her face gently, taking in every detail with guilt and love.

"Foolish child. Of course I do. I love you with everything in me," I told her with total honesty.

She seemed confused, but the exhaustion took over, and she passed back out, having made peace with death more so than I did, or perhaps just more exhausted than I was. I watched my blood transfer slowly from me to her, buying her precious time and taking mine away like an old-fashioned pocket watch.

Ethically, it was completely immoral of me to use my blood to save her, considering I was one of the only doctors who had the knowledge to end this virus. Her life was not more important than the millions of lives I could potentially save if I was alive long enough to find a cure or way to treat it. I felt a little guilt as she slowly picked up, and her breathing became a little deeper. Some choices were easier than others.

I thought I was feeling fine, but after about 30 minutes, I started getting woozy. I held her hand, exhausted from being up for days straight researching, and laid my head down on the table next to her, hoping I wouldn't sleep more than a few minutes with how important every second was.

Anna POV:

Waking up was possibly one of the most unpleasant things I had experienced in my life. My head was killing me, and I felt weak and shaky all over my body. Death would have been more merciful. I grimaced and sat up, taking in my surroundings. I was a right mess, covered in dried blood, and I had somehow ended up in Jason's office. I had been so out of it I didn't remember even coming down here or how I got here.

More surprising than my location was the fact that Jason was sleeping on my legs, clearly exhausted, and he was holding my hand in an affectionate way. He wasn't the type to show affection easily, so he must really have been worried to bother with such dramatics. I tried to disentangle my hand from his, but we were attacked by an improvised bloodline.

"Idiot," I mumbled under my breath, realizing exactly why I was still alive. He should have let me die and just focused on the virus. I very carefully untangled him from me and disconnected the I.V. line. He was so exhausted he only started a bit with all the commotion, breathing my name at one point before settling back into what had to be a very comfortable nap.

I grabbed the I.V. tube and took it to the microscope to look at what I could find. He was still alive despite sharing his blood with me, and he actually looked somewhat okay. Clearly, his body was fighting off the infection somehow; the question was how.