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It was one of those rare days where Alice had a day off work, and there were numerous things she wanted to do with it. Finish her latest embroidery project, make some scones, perhaps even learn to play another song on her electric guitar. But instead, she was going to play nurse to Marianne, who was apparently seriously sick.
Last night, Marianne had texted her claiming to have been dying. Alice had initially not taken it seriously, assuming that Marianne was just being her usual overdramatic self. It was only when Marianne had called her and Alice could hear the sickness in her voice that she'd eventually decided to go over to Marianne's house. Now, her day off thoroughly ruined, Alice knocked on Marianne’s door impatiently.
“Marianne? Are you there?”
Despite not really wanting to doctor Marianne, Alice hoped she was there, otherwise she’d have spent all that time and money travelling for nothing. After waiting a few minutes and receiving no answer, Alice decided to call Marianne. She called Marianne twice, but there was no response. Alice scowled at Marianne’s door, thinking Marianne must have been fine and actually gone to work or something. That bloody overdramatic frog! Lamenting the wasted bus fare, Alice turned to walk away from Marianne’s house when she heard her phone start ringing. She fished it out of her bag irritatedly, ready to hit decline when she saw Marianne’s name flashing on the screen. She instead hit accept, ready to yell at Marianne for wasting one of her rare days off when she heard Marianne speak.
“Alice? Are you….there?”
All plans to yell at Marianne went out the window as Alice winced slightly at the sound of Marianne’s voice. She sounded much worse than she had last night, voice all stilted and slow and quiet in a way that was very unlike Marianne. Maybe she wasn’t exaggerating when she said she was dying.
"That depends on where there is. I’m outside your front door. Where are you?"
With Marianne sounding the way she did, Alice had absolutely no doubt that Marianne was not at work at the moment, meaning she was almost certainly still in her house, unless she'd either gone to the doctor's or to another friend's house.
Marianne sighed. “How nice. You came. I’m upstairs. You can come straight in.”
And with that, Marianne cut the call.
Despite the sympathy she was beginning to feel for Marianne, Alice rolled her eyes. Was Marianne seriously so ill that she couldn’t come downstairs to open the door for her? And why didn't she answer the door earlier? At least Marianne was at home.
Nevertheless, Alice made her way into Marianne’s house and upstairs into Marianne’s bedroom. It wasn’t actually just Marianne’s house; she shared it with two of her friends, Isabel and Julia. But they weren’t in, Marianne had explained earlier when Alice had asked why they couldn’t just take care of her. Apparently, Julia was staying with her sister and Isabel had gone out of town with her sort-of girlfriend. Just Alice’s (and also Marianne’s, she supposed) luck.
Alice had been in Marianne’s bedroom enough times that she was able to find it easily, opening the door to the left of the stairs and entering, only to do a double take at the sight of Marianne lying down in her bed.
Marianne looked awful. She was awfully pale with the exception of her cheeks, which were flushed a deep red. Her normally-pristine hair was splayed ungainly all over her pillows.
It took a few moments for Marianne to notice her standing in the doorway awkwardly, after which Marianne slowly shifted into a sitting position and looked at Alice with heavy-lidded, glassy eyes which seemed unable to actually focus on Alice. Alice had never before seen Marianne looking as bad as she did now, and they’d known each other for years at this point.Marianne blinked lethargically at Alice, and she waited yet another few moments before finally opening her mouth to speak.
“Alice. You- what are you…” Marianne trailed off with a sigh and let her head drop back down onto her pillows.
All of this was raising alarm bells in Alice’s nurse-trained head. She quickly hurried over to Marianne, gently placing the palm of her hand onto Marianne’s sweaty forehead, only to quickly take it off, shocked by the heat emanating from it.
“You’re boiling, Marianne!”
Marianne winced at the loudness of Alice’s voice, and she made a mental note to quieten down, in addition to the mental list she was already making of things she needed to do: Grab a glass of water for Marianne, check her temperature properly with a thermometer, give her medication, which she’ll probably need to eat something for, find a way to cool her down, and fast.
Alice sighed heavily. Trust Marianne to make her spend her day away from nursing people nursing her. At least she only had one patient to deal with instead of several.
“Marianne. When was the last time you ate something?”
Marianne simply looked vacantly at Alice, making no move to open her mouth and answer Alice’s question. Alice had waited patiently at first, realising Marianne was apparently very out of it, but after a minute she resorted to gently poking Marianne on the shoulder.
“Marianne? Hello?”
Marianne blinked, and seemed to re-enter reality, attempting to focus her gaze more on Alice (not that she was succeeding).
“Yeah?” She mumbled.
Alice felt her worry for Marianne grow. She must have had a serious fever, to be spacing out so much. Still, Alice pressed on.
“When did you last eat?”
“Maybe… hmm. I don’t remember. I ate, a protein bar. On,” Marianne paused for a second, eyes growing unfocused as she attempted to remember when it was she last ate, which in itself was a bad sign.
“Tuesday, I think.” She eventually concluded.
Today was Friday.
Oh goodness.
“So you haven’t taken any medication then, have you? I’ll be back shortly, I’m going to get you some.”
Alice didn’t wait for an answer, but instead hurried downstairs to grab the tools necessary from Marianne’s kitchen.
No wonder Marianne had gotten so sick, if she hadn’t eaten anything in three days. She was also going to be very dehydrated, assuming she hadn’t drunk anything as well.
Alice rifled through the kitchen cupboards, unsure which one would contain medicine. For some strange reason, after her first attempt at making cake went wrong, Marianne, Isabel and Julia had unanimously permanently banished her from their kitchen. Their loss.
She found their tableware relatively easily, and quickly pulled out a tray, a plate and a glass which she filled with water.
Alice made three slices of toast and butter, one for her and two for Marianne.
Whilst waiting for the toast to cook, she continued looking for where the medicine could possibly be. She eventually found it in a little drawer underneath the cutlery, and spent time thinking about what she thought would be best for Marianne. Unfortunately, that meant she forgot about the toast until she heard it pop up suddenly. Cursing quietly, Alice checked to see how bad the toast looked. Luckily, it wasn’t too burned, but it was definitely still darker than what Marianne normally liked to eat. Still,she didn’t want to keep Marianne waiting too long, so she buttered them up and served them anyway, with Alice keeping the most burnt one for herself. She ended up spending three minutes deciding what medicine was appropriate(and throwing away all the out-of-date bottles) and another two desperately searching for a thermometer, before eventually giving up and realising there probably wasn’t one around. She eventually put all she’d assembled together on the tray and carried it up the stairs, careful to avoid spilling. Luckily, she made it to Marianne’s room without incident.
Marianne, still lying down with a vacant gaze, didn’t appear to have noticed Alice until she’d placed the tray on Marianne’s bedside table and dragged a chair over to her bedside.
“You’re back.”
“I am back, and I’ve got toast for you. Unfortunately, the toast is a bit cold. And a bit burnt. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Don’t care. I’ll eat anything.”
And those were words Alice was certain that Marianne and her fussy palate had never said before.
Nevertheless, Alice waited for Marianne to slowly lift herself into a sitting position before giving her the toast and the glass of water, in case the toast irritated her throat. Marianne took one bite and promptly winced, immediately drinking some water in order to soothe her throat. Alice was glad for her foresight in giving Marianne the water, but cringed at her reaction anyway.
“Do you want something else to eat?”
She hummed her disapproval and continued eating her first slice of toast with water, but refused to eat the second slice.
“If you’re not going to eat the toast, you have to eat something else.”
Marianne tried to disagree by saying she wasn’t hungry, but Alice wasn’t having it.
“No choices, Marianne. You said it yourself, you haven’t eaten since Tuesday. No buts, you need to eat. So what do you want? I won’t force you to eat the toast if you don’t really want to, but you must eat something.”
“Toast.” She said, eating the second slice before Alice could say anything otherwise.
Alice left briefly to get another glass of water and a protein bar only to find Marianne had only eaten half of the second slice when she came back, but Alice decided to just let it be, considering the toast was pretty awful.
“You’re not going to eat this protein bar, are you? Honestly, Marianne, that’s not healthy. But anyway, you need to take medication. Because apparently nobody in your house gets sick, the best I could do for you is some ibuprofen. Here.”
Marianne took and swallowed the pills with a grimace, quickly followed by the rest of the water. As soon as she’d finished it, Marianne sank back into her bedsheets and closed her eyes, obviously intending on going to sleep. Alice waited a few minutes to be sure that Marianne was truly asleep before pulling two of the bigger blankets off her, knowing that keeping them on would do nothing to help lower her temperature. Since Marianne would be sleeping for a while, she decided to use this opportunity to clean up downstairs and read. She cleaned up in around half an hour before heading back upstairs to check on Marianne, who was already sleeping deeply. With a sigh, Alice pulled out her phone to check the time: 12:30.pm.So she’d only been here for around an hour. Alice sighed, before turning to Marianne’s bookshelf, in an attempt to amuse herself by reading. She picked a book at random to read, only to have to put it back as the book was in French, and Alice’s French was nowhere near good enough to read an entire novel in it. Eventually she decided to read an extensive English book Marianne had on René Descartes. The thought of fashion-obsessed Marianne Bonnefoy being into philosophy was a strange thought to many except those who knew her personally.
Alice had probably spent around 2 and half hours reading when she was interrupted by some speaking. Alice turned to face Marianne to see what it was she wanted, only to find that Marianne was still sleeping. Marianne had started tossing and turning around an hour ago. That had been of no concern to Alice, however, as she knew from (painful) experience that Marianne tended to do that sometimes. What Marianne didn’t normally do, however, was sleep talk. Marianne spoke again, in garbled French. Alice didn’t have to understand her French to know that she was probably having a nightmare. Her breathing had become heavier and sweat had started to drip off her forehead.
She continued tossing and turning whilst speaking in her broken French whilst Alice watched helplessly.
There was nothing she could do but wait for Marianne to wake up. Nothing. Not even running her hands carefully through Marianne’s hair and quietly whispering words of comfort to her would help. Not that Alice would do that, even though Marianne would never know. Alice continued doing this for ten painful minutes before Marianne’s French suddenly stopped and her eyes snapped open. Before Alice could even do anything, Marianne was throwing the blankets off and staggering in the direction of the bathroom.Alice hastily followed Marianne into the bathroom, watching as she dropped to her knees and instantly began dry-heaving. Alice instantly reached to hold Marianne’s hair back, feeling like that was the only thing she could do at the moment to help Marianne.
The acrid smell of vomit filled the air as Marianne spent what felt like ages throwing up, despite claiming earlier that she hadn't eaten in days. Alice did her best to avoid wrinkling her nose in disgust. She'd been working in a hospital for around two years at this point, and whilst she could handle blood just fine, vomit still made her feel like she herself would throw up if she wasn't careful. Marianne eventually stopped vomiting and pulled her head out of the toilet, though she continued to breathe heavily.
After taking some time to reorient herself, Marianne turned around to give Alice a weak smile.
"Nice of you to hold my hair back, huh?"
Even though Alice was certain Marianne had just thrown up everything she'd eaten in the past few hours and that therefore the medicine had no time to actually kick in, she looked more lucid than she had when Alice first met her.
"Are you alright? It's a really bad sign that you've just thrown up. Maybe you should go to the doctor's."
"Why go to the doctor's when I've got you? Just you being here's been enough to make me feel better! My headache's already gone down in intensity."
"But it's still there, isn't it? You should probably have some more medicine."
"Not now, I may still throw it all up again. And I don't want to go through that again. I'm going to brush my teeth, and then I'll go back to sleep. I've done nothing but sleep for three days, and I'm still exhausted."
Alice was seriously considering just dragging Marianne to work with her when she went back tomorrow. The only reason she hadn't currently called a doctor was because she knew Marianne didn't especially feel like seeing one ( because Marianne wanted to see Alice, and that made her so happy she didn't want to ruin it by sending Marianne to hospital, regardless of what she actually needed. Some doctor she was, huh.)
Marianne slowly rose up from the floor, flushed the toilet, and, after taking a few moments to steady herself, headed towards the sink to wash her hands and brush her teeth, giving her face a clean whilst she was at it as well.
When she finished, Alice had to help her walk back to her room, holding onto Marianne tightly as she stumbled into her bedroom.
Alice took that opportunity to reassess Marianne. Despite claiming she felt better, she certainly didn't look better.
Her eyes were still glazed over despite her sudden clarity, her footsteps were clumsy and awkward and her hands were clammy and sweaty in Alice's grasp.
When they got to her bedroom, Marianne immediately crawled into her bed and threw her one remaining blanket back over herself. She tried to grab one of her other blankets off the floor, but was easily stopped by Alice.
"Your temperature is probably hot enough as is, Marianne. I don't want you overheating, even if you think you're currently freezing."
Alice then leant down to give Marianne another temperature check with the palm of her hand.
"Still too warm, just as I was expecting, I really need a good method of cooling you down."
“You know, Alice, you’re always freezing, aren’t you?”
Marianne piped up in a voice pretending to be innocent. Alice glared at her, instantly picking up on what she was implying.
“Not a chance.”
“Yes. You took all my lovely big blankets away and now I’m cold. If you get into bed with me, I’ll feel warmer.”
“Didn’t you just say I was freezing?”
“It’s the perfect solution. Your cold skin will cool me down, but your internal body heat will make me feel warm. Alice, please!”
“I don’t want to sleep with you when you’re sick, especially since you’ve just been sick.”
“I had no problem sleeping with you when you had laryngitis that one time, even if it wasn’t that fun since you weren’t that loud. And I was perfectly healthy at the end of it.”
Alice felt her cheeks heat up with embarrassment.
“You pervert! That’s not what I was talking about and you know it!”
She didn’t even have to look down at Marianne to know there was a massive smile spreading across her face.
“If you’re well enough to make such perverted jokes, you’re well enough that you should be able to sleep on your own just fine. I’ll finally get you that cold flannel for your forehead to cool you down, and I might just let you have another blanket. Which I probably shouldn’t do but, hey, I warned you.”
Alice got up from her chair and tried to leave to get that flannel. Key word being tried. With surprising strength for someone as sick as she was, Marianne wrapped her hand around Alice’s wrist and tugged her into her bed.
Stunned, Alice couldn’t react as Marianne rolled over and trapped her in a tight hug, making escape impossible.
“That’s such a bad attitude to have, Alice.” Marianne whispered directly into Alice’s ear, causing her to shiver slightly.
“A good nurse should do her best to keep her patients healthy, shouldn’t she, instead of causing them harm because they’re being difficult. I’m one of your patients. Shouldn’t you be trying to keep me healthy?”
Alice was grateful Marianne couldn’t see her expression at this moment, embarrassment and anger colouring her face.
“I was going to let you have an extra blanket. You should stop complaining in case I decide to take that back.”
“But Alice,” Another whisper, another shiver.
“It’s not the blanket I want.”
Marianne then squeezed her sides even tighter together.
“It’s you.”
Alice rolled her eyes, ignoring the flutter in her chest resolutely.
“You’ve already got me. I haven’t left your side all day, have I?”
“Yeah, but that’s not enough. I want you close to me like this so it feels like it’s only us here. It’s been ages- I bet you didn’t even hug me when you first arrived.
“I don’t even think you remember when I first arrived, you were so out of it. And like I said, I don’t want to get sick. I have to go back to work tomorrow, although this hasn’t felt like much of a day off thanks to you.”
“Work, work, work. You’re always busy with work. I never get to see you anymore because of it. It’ll be nice to just sleep together, no dirty business at all. Unless you really want to, of course. I know you’re probably feeling very tired right now, aren’t you? So, please. ”
Marianne was right, to be fair. The work of a nurse was very demanding and they lived at opposite ends of the city, meaning they didn’t get to actually spend time with each other like this. And she couldn’t deny she’d actually liked being with Marianne. With that, Alice gave in.
“I’ll sleep with you, sure. But,” she warned before Marianne could get too excited.
“When I say sleep, I mean that literally. Don’t get any ideas. I'm also tired. And you have to let go of me, you’re seriously still really hot.”
“Aww.” Alice could practically hear Marianne’s pout.
"But I won't get the full benefits of sleeping with you if we're not hugging, will I?"
Alice sighed a deep sigh of mock frustration.
"Fine, but you have to physically get off me. I swear, you're just as bad as some of my worst patients, sometimes."
"Yeah, but I'm your favourite, aren't I?"
"I suppose you've been surprisingly docile today by your standards, which really means you only complained half as much as you usually would."
"Alice."
Marianne said with surprising sincerity.
"Thanks so much for taking care of me. I know I was probably really difficult, but thanks for being there."
"No problem at all. You weren't at all difficult, in fact you really are one of my favourite patients ever.
Marianne squeezed Alice tightly from her new position on Alice's side, clinging onto her like a koala.
Alice found herself drifting off to sleep quicker than she'd expected. Marianne had really tired her out. Not that she minded much.