Hesetation

Burning Both Ends of the Candle.

Seven texts exchanged between Aurora and Delia in the just under a month she'd been on placement at Mercy General.
"Heya" Aurora had written
"Hi! I'm so sorry, I'm going to be super flat out with clinicals for the next few weeks. I'm sorry if I'm super quiet" Delia had said.
"It's fine" wrote Aurora. "Hey. Just checking in. You alright?" she added, about two weeks latter. But Delia had been silent. Even as Auroras phone lay on the sofa behind her, open to the last few texts. In light of the heavy assessment period for the bands three members, the music had taken a back seat to their respective studies. Their instruments were beginning to gather dust in their absence. Despite the heat  spewing out by the radiator, she sat bundled in all the blankets in the house and several of her own hoodies on the floor at the living room coffee table. Her notes and papers littered its surface, some covered in annotations, others crumpled. The litreture review on which her paper hinged, lay under her face and and it was getting harder and harder to focus on the words. Her eyes blurred and her head swam and pounded. Her throat was raw. A wave of nausea crashed over her and she took several deep breaths to fight it off. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes against the popping lights. Gosh it's tempting to leave them closed. She thought bitterly to herself. She shivered, resting her head in her elbow on the table and letting her eyes remain closed. She must be running a fever, she thought because for the life of her she couldn't seem to get warm. Time faded to the periphery of her senses as the words on the paper swam.
The image of her mother flashed up in her mind and a white hot fireball raged inside her abdomen. Was it longing? Did she miss her? Or was it whatever bug she'd managed to contract? She didn't know but the image of her mother was looking at her with worry in her eyes. Worry that hadn't been in them for a long time. It looked awkward on, like her high school jumper. Her head remained in the crook of her elbow, sweat dripped and soaked into her paper from her brow and she quickly fell into a fitful sleep even as the deadline for the paper she worked on loomed.