The Rise of Lydia Rowe ↠ Jasper Hale (ON HOLD)

[2.07] sick

LYDIA COULDN'T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME she'd gotten sick. She was an unusually healthy little kid—when half of her class caught the flu, she was still as healthy as ever. Her immune system had always been in tip-top shape, keeping her healthy throughout her life.

But of course, with the luck she'd been having lately, the first time she really got sick was on her eighteenth birthday. 

Gwen was a better sport about Lydia's cancelled birthday plans than Lydia was, and she'd brought over some soup her dad had made to hopefully make Lydia feel better. As good as the soup tasted, Lydia couldn't keep it down. She couldn't keep anything down.

Tracy took the thermometer out of Lydia's mouth, reading the temperature with the same worried frown that had been etched on her face since Lydia had gotten sick early that morning. "104," she murmured. "It's getting higher." She looked to the doorway, where Johanna was watching with worried eyes. "We should take her to the hospital. I know it's not what any of us want, but maybe they'll know what's wrong." 

As much as Lydia would rather lay in bed and wallow in her misery, she agreed to go to the ER. 

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The doctors at the hospital didn't know what was wrong with her, and after another day spent miserable in an uncomfortable hospital bed, they let Lydia go home with some antibiotics to ward off any infections that the tests may have missed and recommendation for Lydia to take some form of acetaminophen to bring her fever down. If Lydia had had the energy, she might have snapped that they'd already tried that and it didn't work, but as it stood, she was too exhausted and in too much pain to express her mounting anger.  

Johanna and Tracy helped Lydia back to her bed, and she spent the rest of that evening falling in and out of sleep, always waking up quickly after falling asleep due to the excessive heat her body was producing or the severe cramping in her stomach that made her feel like jagged, rusty knives were being stabbed into her abdomen repeatedly. If she hadn't just gotten off of her period a week ago, she would have wondered if this was some extreme form of PMS. 

At some point, Lydia woke up to see her mother sitting on her bed, pressing a cool wet cloth to Lydia's neck and forehead. Johanna smiled softly at Lydia as her daughter opened her eyes tiredly. "How are you feeling?" 

"Same as before," Lydia mumbled. "Happy birthday to me." 

"I'm sorry, baby," Johanna said, her eyes sad. 

"Not your fault I got sick," Lydia whispered. 

The look on Johanna's face almost looked like she disagreed, but she just gave Lydia another small smile. "Gwen called. She wanted to see if you were up for a visitor—what do you think?" 

Lydia nodded a little. 

A short while later, there was a light knock on Lydia's door. She looked up from the Criminal Minds episode playing on her TV to see Gwen in her doorway, giving her a small smile. "Hey." 

"Hey," Lydia murmured, patting the space beside Lydia for Gwen to sit. Gwen did, sitting cross-legged as she faced her best friend. 

"Feeling any better?" Gwen asked quietly. 

Lydia shook her head slightly. "I still feel like every pore is filled with hot lava," she mumbled. "Last we checked my temperature was 106." 

"Jesus, that's high," Gwen breathed. "What did the doctors say?" 

Lydia shrugged, wincing at the way the motion made pain flare up in her shoulders. "They didn't find any infections or anything unusual besides the fever and the stomach pain. They gave me some antibiotics, but that's all they could do."