Reaching Out

Warm Feeling (Part 1)

    When I woke up again, it was to the feeling of warmth and softness. I was swaddled in comfortable blankets, and the cold that had previously penetrated my body to its very core was absent. I yawned, a smile coming to my face as I snuggled slightly more into the makeshift blanket cocoon wrapped around me. Still sleepy, I didn’t quite register the person in front of me until they put their hand on my forehead, feeling my temperature. I blinked rapidly, my eyelids snapping open from where they had been drifting closed in the comfort.


    Instinctively, I jerked away from the touch, bristling as I stared down the familiar brunette who had taken me from the playground earlier. Half of me wanted to let him get on with his taking care of me, but the other half insisted that human touch - especially from a stranger I barely knew - brought pain.


    “Who are you?” I asked, wary. It would make me way more comfortable if this guy and I were on equal standing when it came to what we knew about each other.


    As he seemed to have a habit of doing, Nurse Boy sighed, and sat back on his heels as he analyzed me. His eyes searched mine, and as we stared each other down I started to get increasingly uncomfortable with having his eyes on me. They had a certain look in them - similar to a mother’s when you throw a fit, stern and exasperated.


    I swallowed nervously and broke the deadlock first, glancing down to the side and tilting my chin into my chest as I avoided looking at him. He finally spoke, replying, “I understand you must be confused. I’m sorry for pressuring you so much earlier, but it was necessary to get you into a warm place.” He frowned for a brief moment as he glanced at the blanket surrounding me, “However, you had a moderate but gradually worsening case of hypothermia. If you had stayed out there, you probably would have died.” Nurse Boy looked at me sternly again, but the worry was still there as he continued, “Why weren’t you at home? Do you not have someplace to go?”


    I felt like someone had socked me in the gut. His words were the equivalent of the days when Elias chose to come to school for once and immediately make me his punching bag.  I couldn’t breathe. First off, I’d had a case of gradually worsening hypothermia, which could have killed me, and secondly, I didn’t actually have anywhere to go home to at the moment.


    My stomach dropped out through the floor, plummeting down to the core of the Earth. I was so very, very screwed. Was my only option really to go back to that place? I didn’t have the luxury of running away from home since I had nowhere to go, no way to live. While my father may be an abusive drunkard, he did get decent pay from his job as a mall janitor over in Luton. It was more than I made at my part time job as a kid’s storyteller at the library, that was for sure.


    Nurse Boy must have noticed the fact that my mind was running on a looping one-way track, because he did an expert job of disrupting and fixing the rails to be straight once more. He had reached behind him while I was preoccupied and not paying attention to pick up a mug of warm hot chocolate, and was now offering it to me with a pleasant smile. If I teared up at how kind he was being to a total stranger, he kindly pretended not to notice.


    He helped me sit up slowly from my position on the couch - a gentle hand supporting my back since I was still weak - before he handed me the cocoa. I stared down at the warm, sweet drink, and a sudden thought stuck me.


    I quickly looked up at Nurse Boy, and then switched my gaze to the ceiling nervously as words started to tumble out of my mouth like they so often did. “So, I just realized – well, not just realized exactly, more like realized earlier but now realized again – that I don’t know who exactly you are. I mean, I’m very grateful that you saved me from certain death but you’re still a total stranger to me. It would probably also be polite of me to use your name when I thank you, and I can’t exactly call you Nurse Boy - like I have been in my head so far - when I thank you because that would be weird. If you want to know my name first I could tell you, it’s not that big of a deal really anyway and--”


    He looked a bit surprised at the amount of words shooting out at him from nowhere and struggled to keep up for a few seconds. Suddenly, I felt a hasty hand clap over my mouth to shut me up, and I flushed in embarrassment. I had been caught rambling yet again. He quickly took his hand away when it was obvious I was quiet now and I coughed, avoiding his eyes as he said,“Just…please try to slow down. You were talking at a million miles per second. Give me a short version?”


    I nodded, and took a deep breath to calm myself as I slowly repeated, “What’s your name?”


    I could almost hear the laughter in his voice as he replied, “Oh! My name is Sebastian Coste. I’m a nurse at the hospital nearby, Saint Bartholomew’s.”


    My eyes widened as I snapped my head in his direction so fast that I thought I’d get whiplash for a split second (and I instantly regretted it, my muscles were still aching). I choked on air, and my voice was weaker than it had been before as I gasped from the lack of air I was failing to pull into my lungs. “Sebastian Coste? The Sebastian Coste?! The one who was obsessed with Hogwarts, and was the most adorable dorky little boy ever? That one?”


    His brain didn’t seem to process the cannonball of words for a moment as he slowly blinked. Then, it all seemed to hit him, and he cried disbelievingly, “Elizabeth?!”


    I myself was hopelessly and utterly baffled but I nodded slowly, eyeing the boy across from me with wonder.


    Sebastian smiled so wide I thought it would break his face for a second, the big grin stretching from ear to ear as he enveloped me in a (still gentle) hug and he exclaimed, “It’s so good to see you again! I thought I never would after you moved away from London.”


    I stiffened at the contact, my spine going rigid and straight as a ruler as the two parts of my brain battled once more. One half wanted to push him away from me and retreat from the human contact, while the other half just wanted to melt into his warm hug and accept the love that nobody else gave me. After an painfully long moment of him hugging me and me just sitting there I settled for the best my brain would allow, a hesitant patting of Sebastian’s back.


    “I missed you too,” I murmured, still wooden and awkward. He pulled away quickly, noticing the tension lying thickly in the air. I breathed an inward sigh of relief as I relaxed my muscles.


    Sebastian’s lips thinned and he asked, “Liz, what’s wrong? You’re covered in various bruises, you have a black eye, there’s a medical patch on your cheek, and you look like hell with those dark circles under your eyes. What happened?”


    My shoulders hunched against his pressing questions. It was too much, too fast. He’d been the best friend I’d ever had, I wouldn’t deny that, but we hadn’t seen each other in at least five years. I couldn’t tell him the things that were on my mind with easy trust like I used to, it just wasn’t possible for me. I couldn’t lean on him like that anymore.


    So, I told him an answer that I knew he wouldn’t like but he’d have to deal with. “Nothing happened. I’m just clumsy.”


    His eyes bored into me intensely but I kept my neck bent over with the weight of my guilt on it, staring down at my lap and slowly sipping my lukewarm hot chocolate. It was terribly sweet. Sebastian seemingly hadn’t changed at all in that respect. I hummed in the back of my throat in thought.


    His voice was low and tight when he spoke next. I could almost hear the furrow of deep-set frustration with me in his brows as he replied, “It’s not nothing, Liz. I’m worried for you. Tell me what happened to you.”


    My grip around the mug tightened, and my shoulders hunched further inward as I refused to look in his eyes, continuing to state quietly, “Nothing happened, Sebastian.”


    His hands gripped my knees and he was much firmer in tone, almost snappish, as he asked again, “What happened, Liz?”