Cool Kids [p. parker] || SLOW UPDATES

FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
( HOSPITAL TALKS )

HOSPITALS FEEL LIKE ALTERNATE dimensions to Nick. Time doesn't feel real, and the atmosphere is so different than right outside on the streets and roads. Life was given and taken, and sometimes life could be saved. Nick felt like an entirely different person in hospitals; he felt out of place yet safe, but the silent halls of the large building made chills run down his spine despite the temperature being relatively comfortable. But there were different silences. Down one hall a floor floors above, it was a lively silent. Babies were being born, and even though that process isn't easy in the slightest, people were still very much filled with hope despite that fact that anything could go wrong. Down another one hall or where the ER rooms were all, and near the ICU, it was a quiet he didn't like. Everything was more tense. Less alive, almost.

Hospitals also smelled weird. And he wouldn't be surprised if he saw a horse, because that would be weird, and hospitals to him are weird. Life and death in the same place. Definitely a dimension of sorts, Nick thought, or a portal, or something, to a different one. He let out a small breath of air and let his eyes travel back to the phone screen where the second episode of the first season of Skam was playing.

Evie Green had pulled up beside Nick and Olivia just a few minutes after Spider-Man had left, and they went to the hospital, all three of them worried for Ryan Berry. They met Nick's dad there, and they wanted to see how Ryan was doing but unfortunately they had to wait; no one would tell them anything about his current state other than that he had been sent to get some surgery done. So, while Dan and Evie talked between themselves on one side of the waiting area, Nick and Olivia sat beside one another near an outlet as the girl's phone charged. To get their minds from worrying too much, they decided to start Skam, but Olivia was quick to fall asleep, curling up on herself in the uncomfortable chairs, one earphone in her ear, so Nick continued the Norwegian show without her.

Nick frowned at realizing he had looked away earlier right when one of the characters had started talking, making him miss the subtitles so he was able to see what was being said. He rewinded it and was careful to pay attention better, staying focused on Eva Mohn and the weird hospital smell instead of the anxiety inducing thoughts of his uncle's wellbeing. A few more minutes went by of him watching and ignoring everything else, even the messages on his own phone where Marty and Anita were texting him asking why he wasn't replying back to their memes.

He had to stop watching it, though, as a small body forced itself into his lap. Valley Berry sat in her big cousin's lap and wrapped her arms around his neck without so much of a warning, and Nick quickly paused the show and gently put Olivia's phone in her lap, the earphone he had been using falling out.

"Hey, it's going to be okay," Nick whispered as one arm went around the nine year old, using the other to push himself into a better position. "He's going to be okay." He then looked around, not only noticing Valley's mom but his mom as well, the two women talking to his dad and Olivia's mom. He tensed up for a split second before wrapping his arms securely around Valley so she wouldn't fall; the girl wasn't exactly in a good position.