Too much love will kill you

On Fire

The next morning I woke up and it felt like my whole body was on fire. The entirety of my lower body was in agony, even shifting positions in bed was agony. I gingerly pushed myself up in bed and groaned as pain shot through my body, I swung my legs out of bed and reached across to pull my trolley with all my supplies on across to me, I pulled on a pair of sterile gloves and sterilised my trolley before setting out all of my supplies to disconnect from my feeds. I turned off my pump and disconnected the extension from my tube, I grabbed a q-tip and soaked it in rubbing alcohol and cleaned inside the extension set, I then flushed my tube with warm water to remove any leftover feed. I then carefully peeled off my tape and cleaned around the tube and replaced the tape with a new one. I set up my meds and pushed them through my tube, I found the liquid painkillers that the hospital had given me and pushed a strong dose through my tube. This took just over an hour and by the time I'd finished the alarm clock went off and Fran stirred, slowly sitting up and stretching her arms above her head. "Morning Rach. Thanks for letting me stay last night again"

"No problem. You'll have to borrow my spare uniform unless you brought yours with you" I said grimacing as i pulled myself upright

"Woah, what's the matter with you" She said spotting my face

"Nothing that my painkillers won't right in a moment, i probably just slept weird" i said sitting myself in my chair and wheeling across the room expertly avoiding Faith's bed

"If you're in pain you shouldn't be going to school. You'll only make yourself worse, they can give you lessons to do online, If you weren't so stubborn you'd see that i was right" She said removing a pillow off the floor that was in my way

"I'll be okay Fran i promise" I swore as i banged my leg off the doorframe

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"You're not okay are you" She smirked as we made our way to the cafeteria for lunch

"Shut up Fran. I'm fine" I glared as I handed over the money for my lunch. Mam had forgotten to go shopping for my safe foods so I didn't have lunch today so I was going to attempt to make my way through this bowl of chips.

"You know I'm right though Rachel. How on earth are you going to get through drama rehearsals after school in this state" She said as we made our way back to our table

When we'd finished lunch and headed to fifth period Fran pushed me for a bit giving my arms a break "thank you" I whispered

She wheeled me into the maths block which was heaving with people, Rosie walked ahead of us barging people out of the way so that Fran could wheel my chair into the lift .

We exited the lift and made our way along the corridor until we got to our classroom, everyone was already making their way inside so Fran pushed me inside and up to our desk. Unfortunately our maths teacher had split us all up this term, me and Fran were sharing a desk and then Rosie and Lindz were across the other side of the room. I got my book out of my bag and started writing in it today's lesson , the other side of me Fran groaned "I hate Simplifying Brackets it's so dull"

"It's not that bad Fran, pardon the pun but they are actually quite simple" I giggled

I got stuck into the work not giving myself a chance to think about my pain, I ploughed through 4 pages of maths work steadily. Once I'd finished I turned and helped Fran who was still muddling through the second page of sums "Here" I said taking a pencil from my pencil case and showing her a better way of doing the sums "It's much easier if you do them that way- it's a lot quicker" I explained

She soon picked up the method I'd shown her and by the time I'd completed a further page of extension questions she'd finished the final two pages.

I packed my things away ten minutes before the end of the lesson and Fran followed suit, my arms were smarting but I was determined to be independent so with great difficulty and a great deal of pain I pushed myself out of the classroom not giving Fran a chance to catch up with me. She ran up behind me puffing and panting trying to catch her breath "Look, why don't you just go home. Someone else can stand in for you at rehearsals tonight, it's one rehearsal out of how many more. It's not going to matter if you miss one or two is it, Connie's picking Grace up anyway so it's not like she's having to go out of her way is she" She took a hold of the handles on my chair and determinedly steered my wheelchair in the direction of the lift. "In fact I'm taking you straight to the car park, you're to go home and take a hot bath with some Epsom salts in and then rest as much as you can and do not even think about coming in tomorrow- You are going to make yourself worse by pushing yourself to your limits. I will get the teachers to send you the work that you missed and if you need to take the rest of the week off, I'll come round after school and see how you're feeling" She persisted