Steelhands - Jaida Jones [68]
To be honest, so was I.
TOVERRE
As much as I loathed the entire concept of a physician’s checkup—and I did, with both body and soul—I was beginning to feel that there was some personal slight in their choosing to overlook me. I’d had an initial appointment along with several other members of our dormitory floor, but they hadn’t even so much as drawn my blood! Rather I’d merely been asked about my medical history and summarily sent on my way. If that was to be the standard of care for those of us at the ’Versity, I was going to be sorely disappointed. It was practically no better than home.
Gaeth had been to at least two by my count, and Laure had returned from her first last week, only to be summoned back almost immediately.
“They probably just want to give me my blood back,” she’d told me, the image very nearly making me sick. “I’ll keep it in a little locket, like a lover’s trinket.”
All these trips to the physician were leaving me on my own with nothing to do and no one to talk to. I’d given up my trips along the Rue to follow Hal—that affair, it seemed, was doomed before it ever began—and Gaeth was as elusive as marsh fog, which had always disappointed me as a child for its ability to disappear right when you thought you’d caught up to it. I’d stopped by his room on multiple occasions to try to return the gloves he’d given me—surely his “mam” was suffering from very cold hands indeed, by now—but every time I’d knocked, there had only been silence. I’d even had Laure try it once or twice, so I knew he wasn’t avoiding me.
In the absence of her and Gaeth, there was no one in the first-year dormitory building who warranted any real or prolonged conversation, and not just because none of them seemed interested in talking to me.
If Laure was sick, then I was going to have to write home to my mother for reinforcements just to make sure she was taking care of herself properly. My Laure was the kind of person who’d walk outside in a snowstorm when she was running a fever just to cool down a bit, and she’d end up winning a few snowball fights with the local farmhands in the meantime just because she didn’t like staying indoors.
I looked out the window and cast my gaze onto the all-too-familiar and now-quite-dreary sight of the ’Versity Stretch in awful, never-ending winter. It was going to either snow or rain, because gray clouds had gathered above the buildings, casting everything in a miserable light. On the street below, men and women were hurrying to get their business over with before the storm began.
I did hope Laure wasn’t caught in it on her way back.
She never took an umbrella with her anywhere she went, much less a parasol, and her new coat would be absolutely soaked in a winter storm. My father and her father would both be very distressed indeed if I failed to protect my fiancée from the dangers of city life—even though I’d been doing my best with what little I could, and, though they didn’t know this, it was more often Laure who protected me than the other way around.
Lost in my idle thoughts, I didn’t hear the knock on the door—at least, I assumed there must have been one I missed—as a moment later Laure burst into the room, hair frazzled and coat undone.
“Don’t feel well,” she said.
A moment after that, she was sick all over my floor.
In the chaos that followed I managed, most bravely, to keep my wits about me. Nor did I panic, though I wanted to. I moved as in some kind of dream—or some kind of nightmare—guiding Laure from the doorway to my bed, avoiding the site of the mess completely.
I knew, of course, that no one who worked in the building would come to help me clean any of this up because in this place no one ever saw fit to clean anything. It was a losing battle, one that would require constant work and round-the-clock vigilance, and we were only simple students. It was up to me to make this better, as quickly and as quietly as possible.
I didn’t want to make Laure feel bad for having done it, now did I? Nor did I want any of it seeping into the floorboards.
Laure curled