The Runt of the Litter

Evening at Jody's

Note: I'm gonna be real. I have no idea why I wrote this one, especially since I wrote it while I had two requests I should have been working on instead. I am a terrible person.

But I did accidentally hint at some info about the character that I don't think I've mentioned yet, so maybe some of you will catch that.

And, since you all are so incredibly awesome, I'm hoping you won't mind the randomness of it. Thanks for all your awesome selves leaving awesome comments, votes, and views. I appreciate you and your awesomeness.

And to the two of you who made requests this last week: I love you and I am going to write them. I've even got a good start on one of them. I swear. Cross my heart and hope to not die because I just watched that episode of Supernatural with the angel that killed everyone who said they wanted to die even if they didn't mean it, and I'm just not ready. I gotta get that psych degree first. And if I die, who's gonna take over this story???

Wow, that got chaotic. My excuse? It was late when I prepped this chapter. Little sleep and much caffeine will do that ^^^ to a person.

Anyway... In this one, Anna is seventeen.

Evening at Jody's

Her left side and leg thrummed with pain, her stomach churned with nausea, her head ached, her eyes burned and body cooked with fever, and to top it all off, the Doctor Who marathon playing on the TV was being interrupted for the premiere of some new show that Anna didn't care about. The remote was too far away for her to reach without getting up, which she couldn't do without enduring a hell of a lot of pain-- and that was if she could even manage it at all-- and for the first moment she could remember all day, there was nobody standing over her with a thermometer and a glass of water asking if they could get her anything or demanding that she let them check the wound in her side.

All day, she'd been short-tempered and tired as she lay on Jody's couch, sleeping off and on, and all the hovering had annoyed the hell out of her. But now Anna wished for some company if only so they could change the channel and then place a hand on her forehead and ask if she was okay.

As she lay in place, staring at the TV where that stupid new show was playing, Anna stewed a little longer. No, she decided. She didn't want somebody to come in and change the channel, because she didn't want to be here at all. She loved Jody and the girls like family, but she hated anybody to see her under the weather, especially when she couldn't do a damn thing for herself. She felt like a little kid, and it was just so embarrassing.

She wanted to go home, damn the pain of riding in the car for a few more hours. The bunker wasn't so far from Sioux Falls. But they'd stopped because Jody had been only fifteen minutes from the case she'd been hurt on, and fifteen minutes was approved by the ER staff, but three to four hours was not. Anyway, Jody was adamant that they stick around. She probably wouldn't have let them leave even if the doctor hadn't instructed them to wait a week before doing any real traveling.

Fed up with everything, Anna suddenly couldn't bear having to look at that stupid premiere on the TV. She squirmed a little, trying to roll onto her back. It hurt like hell moving anything below her neck, though, so she quickly gave up and growled out her frustration. Things couldn't have been worse. She threw off the blankets that had been layered over her throughout the course of the day as she'd shivered with cold thanks to her fever. There was no way she could sit up to get them back if she grew cold again, but Anna hadn't thought that far ahead. It didn't matter anyway, though, because she was on fire.

In front of her, on the TV screen, a red-haired woman walked down the street looking pensive. Anna glared at the close-up of the character's face. The show had been playing for almost fifteen minutes now, and she was still stuck watching it. The temptation to pick up her phone and text someone an SOS was real. But Anna resisted. The worst part about all of this was having to be helped with every little thing, not to mention the inconvenience that was to everybody else in the house. She craned her neck to see the remote. It was on the armrest of the chair just a couple feet from the end of the couch. But it might just as well have been miles. There was no way Anna could stand up and retrieve it when she couldn't even roll onto her back or raise an arm above chest height.