27 Cantina time (1/2)

A subtle hum crawled under Karen's skin as the blood pressure gauge continued to pump air into the cuff around her arm. Its grip growing tighter, while Linda clutched to her wrist.

"No moving around. Try to hold it still."

Despite her friend filling the role, the situation felt as unsettling as it always had. Overly friendly stranger in the waiting room, the morbidly detailed anatomical wallpapers in the examination room, and her inner split about what she wanted the doctor to tell her. If deemed sick and being allowed to crawl back to bed, but alone for the rest of the week, or being sent back to class… ugh, work.

But the similarities were just too great to not feel like a child again. Just as afraid of the potential syringe, and just as intimidated by the view of organs at the wall. Well… maybe even more now…

Barely noticed by Karen stopped the humming, replaced by a beeping sound from the device that interrupted her rising memories for good, and announced the end of her examination. Followed by a brief glance from her friend at the results, and the overly dramatic removal of her glasses.

"Hm… better than I expected. You're still quite pale."

Linda kept staring while toying around with her visual aid, the light brown eyes assessing her patient, who shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"Yes, I know. But it's probably just because I skipped breakfast. I feel already way better after that coffee."

With the mention of her makeshift treatment, tapped her friend the frame against her lips. Now throwing an accusatory glance at her.

"I see. Did you take anything else that could mess with my results?"

"What… no, of course not! I just thought it would help against the dizziness. Stephanie had said the same… I…"

Karen barely got to raise her hands to defend herself, before the corners of Linda's mischievous smirk slipped through behind her pensively held glasses. Exposing her poor attempt at humor.

The smile disappeared in the next moment, when the woman bent over to remove the cuff. Her brown ponytail complimenting the reflection of strictness on her face that she wanted to convey.

"Dizziness, sleep problems, and loss of appetite. Do you know since when you first had these symptoms?"

Puzzled by the negligence of her friend regarding the traumatic incident and the lack of empathy towards that topic, Karen slid involuntarily away from her as she approached. Almost missing the addition of an arbitrary new symptom to her diagnosis.

"I… no… wait. I just forgot to eat. That's not…"

"So you are hungry?"

"Of course! I just… forgot. And the cantina doesn't open until nine."

Even more ironic was the interrogation that her doctor seemed to expect she would endure. Nevertheless, grew the bitterness in her tone, and with it her defensive posture.

"And a brief halt by the gas station to get yourself a snack was out of the question?"

"Gas station? What do you mean?"

"The one right down the street. No five minutes for both ways. Open twenty-four hours, and where we went to get pastries, the last time the cantina was closed."

A spiteful remark died halfway down her tongue before Karen remembered the day in mention. Which made it pain all the more that her friend refused to back down from her act.

"I forgot that."

"You seem to forget a lot."

The unashamed, smug smirk that flashed now at her was the drop that caused the barrel to overflow, leaving Karen to share her frustration with an unexpected outburst.

"Would you just stop! I really… I'm fine. Just give me something against the dizziness and some sleeping pills, then you can make all your jokes once I'm gone!"

Linda's smile disappeared in a second, replaced by an agonizing expression of pity. Her heart pounding inside her ears, Karen sat back down in her chair, bewildered by how she left it.

Gone was the anger she felt, but a moment ago, it remained only the burning fire of shame within her face. With the eyes fixed to the tip of her shoes, waited Karen for her pulse to settle, or her friend to leave. Which made her meek response even more surprising.

"Hm… might be a little old-school, but I thought I was the one doing the diagnosis, Karen."

With the dry answer set in the guilt and so her eyes only moved further away from her friend.

"I didn't mean to… sorry, Linda. It's just been much these last days."

"No, I understand. Was just trying to cheer you up. Pretending like nothing happened. Silly, I know."

A sense of normalcy sounded quite tempting currently, too bad that she had misunderstood her intentions. How foolish.

"Then what now?"

As weak as the plead was, Karen didn't even expect her friend to hear it. Yet a chair scratched against the floor in response. Linda had already stood up as Karen dared to look her way, the doctor's coat in her hands.

"Now we're going to get you something between the gills. The cantina might not be open just yet, but I'm sure we can organize you something."

Baffled watched Karen as her friend put on her clothes, picking up the glasses from her desk with the same enthusiasm she displayed earlier. Both of Karen's eyebrows furrowed while she tried to understand the quick twists and turns that the mind of her friend went through. The question stayed unanswered as Linda turned around, pointing at Karen with her visual aid and a playful smile on her face.

"That way, I can also keep an eye on you, you caffeine junkie."

The lighthearted tease left Karen defeated. Confused about what else to do or feel, twisted her mouth to an awry smile. Even if her left brow remained stuck in place, the reaction still seemed to encourage her friend. Only a quick twitch of Linda's eyes broke the absurd display.

"Oh, almost forgot. I have to take a brief look at another patient of mine. Can you stay in the waiting room for a moment?"

"Sure."

Her doctor slipped through the door without waiting for the hesitant answer, leaving Karen to gather the rest of her shambolic thoughts.

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Back straight and head high walked Karen back through the hallway, the fog in her mind slowly dissipating. Stretching her neck felt even more necessary after she had mostly kept it hanging throughout the day, burdened by things outside of her control.

The tension in her shoulders relaxed a little as she approached the doorframe that lead to the waiting room. She should probably thank her tone-deaf friend for pulling her head straight. Even if it was in her uniquely weird way.

Now with a slight smile on her lips, turned Karen to return to her seat, Aminata waiting where she had left her, sunken into one of the many magazines littering the table.

Karen stopped in her track, frozen under the doorframe, before she quickly slipped back around the corner.

Pressed against the wall, she could feel that tension again, just in the rest of her body now as well. Surely the extroverted woman hadn't seen her, had she?

Carefully peeked Karen around the corner, her breath held and her fingers pressed against the wooden frame.

No, she was still reading like nothing happened.

Turning back to her hiding spot, Karen waited. Her mind going through all possibilities available to her.

If Linda and the other chatterbox met, it could only spell disaster, and she had barely regained any resemblance of control. On the other hand, should Aminata see them back in the canteen, things would only get more awkward, and she found her still quite sympathetic, despite her troubles with boundaries.

A loud metal shriek echoed through the hallway. Followed by the recognisable sound of the same object bouncing off the ground as it settled.

Karen didn't even locate the direction it came from before the indignant outcry of an unknown man followed.

"Let go of me!"

Something else dropped audibly and Linda let out a surprised gasp from behind the door next to her. A moment later, Aminata ran past her, ripping the door open and revealing a bandaged angry man lying on the floor, with Linda beside him.

Despite her best efforts to help him up, struggled the man to remove her arms. An absurd maneuver, with his left arm and leg cast in plaster, flailing about while he simultaneously tried to push himself back up on his last two limbs.

"I don't need your help, lady! Get off me!"

Snarling through his clenched teeth, the injured stretched his head upwards, probably to affirm if the reinforcements were on his side or on that of his captor. Only to reveal the meager rest of a once impressive red-haired mustache.

Perfectly halved, the remains coaxed a snort out of Karen that got quickly punished by a furious glare from its owner. Her hand jolted forward to grasp her fleeting expression, obviously way too late, yet it still fit the sudden recognition that came to Aminata.

"Mr Lesage? What are you doing there?"

"Don't you stare like ordered but forgotten, freshman! I could ask you the same!"

For a moment stunned by the blunt rudeness, rushed the young woman to aid her senior in his hilarious efforts, shaking the confusion halfway through her aid off.

"What do you mean? I'm here for you! That Archdemon heavily injured you back there. It's a miracle you survived at all!"

Barely brought back to a semi balance, the irritated man spared no time to stumble forward, punishing Linda with a second devastating glare, as she tried to offer him a chair.

"You should really sit down and rest, Mr Lesage. You've received multiple complicated fractures in your left…"

"Stop right there, lady. I've got no time for your sensitivities, nor for your religious mumbo-jumbo, Aminata! That bastard did this on purpose! And you should be out there tracking him down, so I can kick that fat Alien ass back to the extra-dimensional colonialist trash world he comes from!"

Silence filled the room while everyone stared at each other, unsure how to respond to his rant. Which was obviously anything but the reaction he wanted.

"Don't look at me like I'm talking Spanish! Just look at what he did to my face!"

It was really hard not to notice what the man meant as he pointed at the burned half of his mustache, in complete opposition to how much effort it took Karen to hold her laughter at that sight back.

She could already feel the wide open, unbandaged green eye darting back to her, as Aminata pulled the ticking time bomb aside.

"You can't seriously think we can take that Demon head on, and of all things, on our own! No, we need our German allies in this fight. And after you're stitched back up, we might stand a chance at exorcising…"

Her partner groaned as soon as the word fell, and yanked his bandaged arm from her grip.

"Leave me with your nonsense! If you'd rather play pastor, then go to a church! But I'm gonna deal now with a very real, and not at all supernatural, bastard. And that alone!"

Emphasizing his sarcastic remark with both arms raised and gesturing quotation marks, left no room for any doubt in which reverence he held her opinion. A disposition that left the woman clearly hurt.

Albeit Karen felt similarly about such sentiments, it still felt satisfying to her, seeing what happened next.

Done with his act, Lesage dropped his arms and stepped towards the open door, his bandaged left foot slipping under his weight, and the furrowed face slamming into the floor with full force.

Quickly rushed both Aminata and Linda to help the failed actor. Who now spotted a defeated expression instead.

"Fine… we'll wait for our friendly allies… this time."

Soon he seated back on his bed, resting below a tight bedcover, and with only a now broken nose poking out, right above a tousled mustache.