Love in Theory and Practice

First Impressions

I sat in the emergency room, staring stupidly at the glass wall in front of me, a reminiscent of what I was doing in the airport hours ago. I was persuaded to go; both Anita and Kari insisted that I should have myself checked as my rashes had escalated to angry red spots running down my arms. I looked worse than I felt, which I voiced out when the topic of a hospital was brought up. Anita was a nice woman, too nice in fact that I couldn't say no. My good side was immediately side tracked though when their son snorted in disbelief and annoyance at my display of bravado, immediately masking it as a coughing fit. Apparently, he decided to sleep at his parent's house right after his band had arrived from Germany for their 'tour', citing he missed his mother's cooking and ended up being mauled by a cat in his own bedroom. He looked quite well and calm for someone who survived the ordeal, but his parents insisted he come too, seeing he got the worse of the damages no matter how much he tried to appear nonchalant. He sported a sour look, surely unable to say no to his parent's reasonable request. I had to bite my cheek to keep from smirking, which he still caught on judging by the scowl he sent my way.

The emergency room bit was not as bad as I thought it would be. The procedures were fast and efficient and the ER itself was spacious and well lit, not something like it came out from horror movie with the screams and smell of death, which I was accustomed to back home. There's an even less number of people too: a few strugglers from a drinking fiasco, some drunk people from a sauna, a couple of young men from a drunken brawl. It said a lot of the Finnish people and their love of drinking, as stereotypical as it sounded. At least to the population of the ER at that moment.

My companion however was not entranced as I was. He was sitting a couple of seat away from me, arms crossed and face on a perpetual frown. He was waiting to be called on for his quick checkup and the Valo couple was nowhere in sight, leaving me in an awkward silence (or so for me) with their son. He was wearing his beanie again, this time worn too low it was almost covering his eyes. He also had a black coat on, covering the ruined shirt, and he got a purple scarf wrapped around his neck. He was ignoring me, which I was thankful for. At least I didn't have to flaunt my sterling social skills, as limited as it is.

With nothing better to do and tired of staring blankly at the darkness outside, I started reciting the values of Pi. I stopped at the 345 value, bored, and started putting together the mathematics for the theory I was working on, all in the safety of my head.

"Will you please stop doing that?", an annoyed whisper catapulted me back, just when the flow and the balance of my equations were starting to make sense.

"Huh?", I blinked and found myself staring at Ville Valo's reflection in the glass wall, him glaring at me from his seat. I turned to face him and didn't notice that he had moved closer to my seat, probably to hear better what I was saying. "What did I do?", I whispered back.

His brow furrowed even deeper and said matter of factly, "You've been staring at me for half an hour now and muttering.. it's quite unnerving."

I frowned at that. "What? Why would I stare at you?

He studied me for a second, an incredulous look on his face. "I don't know, you tell me."

"Well, if you must know", I snapped. I was minding my own business here and this guy was just being so vague. "I was thinking of important things. Beautiful things."

"Oh?", he intoned back, his eyebrow raised up in an arc. "What important things?"

I shrugged and maybe a bit patronizingly, said "You won't understand".

"Really." He seemed to consider me for a moment and slowly leaned towards me, like in a pretend conspiratorial whispered. There was wicked gleam in his eyes. I leaned away involuntarily as far as I can. "Does it include me?", he whispered, voice low and teasing.

I just stared at him, confused. He blinked and then I felt my cheeks turn red as I finally caught on. Damn, I was slow for the uptake.

I crossed my arms and retorted, "Sorry to burst your bubble mister but I'm not interested."

He grinned and leaned back to his seat. "Suit yourself. I'm not interested either. Just quit the staring and keep the muttering to yourself, sweetheart".

My face burned with embarrassment and I fought the urge to stick out my tongue, for the lack anything witty to say back. Well there was one, "At least I didn't scream like a girl", I said mockingly. 'Your mama' a good follow up but I didn't want to disrespect Anita like that.

It had the desired effect however. "Look, miss- ", he began, eyes narrowed.

He was not able to finish what could have been an angry diatribe as his name was called to go to one of the emergency room's cubicle. With a final scowl at my direction, he stomped towards the nurse's station.

I had to stifle a triumphant laughter, realizing that I had at least got the last word, no matter how petty. It was short-lived though when I realized I shouldn't have done that. I stared after his retreating back, thinking of ways to apologize to the man. After all, his parents were kind enough to offer me a place to stay for the night and it was not a fun experience being mauled by a cat while drunk. As I dwell on how to get to Ville's good graces and salvage my reputation, the giggling and whispering behind me had been more pronounced. It had been going on for some time and I paid it no mind, but it became louder as soon as Ville's name was called. I couldn't help but listen in when I heard repeated instances of his name. I chanced a peek to the seats behind me and sure enough, a couple of teenagers (one of them with her arms in a cast) were looking at his direction and were in an animated whispering. Curious but not enough to approach giggling teenagers, I turned away and was about to resume my stare down with the wall when the front cover of some magazines piled up at the nearby coffee table caught my eye. Making sure no was watching and with all the nonchalance I could muster, I picked one up. Ta-da. The man I just saw get mauled by a cat and had perfected the art of scowling was looking back at me rather intensely from the front cover of a music magazine, beckoning me to drop my... something. Wow, this guy was really famous here. The closest I got for a magazine cover was with Physics Weekly, and that was with other scientists 'under 30 to watch out for'. Erin had a cut out of it framed and hidden somewhere in my office, saying I need to document my achievements no matter how small it may seem so that when I win the Nobel Prize, I could have pictures for my auto biography.

It was my dream: the Nobel Prize. The thought of being acknowledged for my achievements, advancing the reaches of mankind... I already had a draft of the speech I wrote on a whim and I imagined myself standing in that podium. Everyone who mattered will be there and Erin would mostly likely be crying in joy from her seat (she was emotional like that). I would also have tears threatening to fall from my eyes to show I was overwhelmed (but not surprised) and that framed cut out tightly held against my chest, thanking my father's support and the hardships I have to go through to be there..

I heard someone cleared their throat. I almost jumped up, realizing I was still in the waiting area, in the hospital in Helsinki. I looked up guiltily, and found Ville looking down at me, a funny expression on his face and his eyes fixed at the magazine clutched in my chest. Realizing his printed face was pressed against my... breasts, I hurriedly stood up and dropped the offending magazine like a bag of weed.

"Look, I...", I stammered, and praying to all strings in the known universe to create a wormhole I could crawl into to get to another universe where I still have dignity.

He looked away and cleared his throat some more. "Let's go. Mother is looking for you", he said without looking at me. Not waiting for any response, he turned on his heel and walked away.

The giggling and whispering continued, hopefully not on my account.

Lets now add up mortified and stupid to the list of things I became when I stumbled out of the plane to the land of northern lights and sauna.

Clearly there's something wrong with the water here in Helsinki.