The Red Eye [Open Novella Contest 2023]

Chapter 2

"Are you okay?"

Donna looked up in surprise. She had been staring so intently at the blue veins in her hands that she hadn't noticed the boy approaching her. Her hands were making her nervous, the way they always did when they ached more than usual. Unlike the rest of her body, which just stuck to aching when she was having a flare-up, the veins in her fingers took on a deeper shade of blue.

The boy made her jump. The motion, despite how much she tried to hide it, became painfully apparent when the joints in her right ankle and kneecap cracked. The loud snap— her ankles had always been loud— echoed sharply in the mostly-empty atrium of the hospital.

"Jesus!" the boy said. "Are you okay?"

Donna thought that question was a little strange, considering the person asking it had a nose cannula attached to their face. But she nodded. "Yeah, I'm okay. Thanks."

"Are you sure?" the boy said. "It sounded like you broke a bone."

"No, it's just—" Donna's shoulder cracked quietly when she shifted in her chair, and she stopped herself. "Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you."

Donna looked past the boy to see a group of people who looked to be teenagers spread across half of the atrium. All of them were wearing leisure clothes and had nose cannulas giving them oxygen. They lounged in the couches and armchairs like they owned the place, and all of them were nowhere near each other.

The boy seemed surprised. "You're not bothering us at all," he said. "It's just that you've been here a while and it's pretty late. Are you an overnight patient?"

Donna shook her head. "No, I'm going home. My car's out in the lot. It's just—" Donna twisted her aching and veiny hands nervously. She really didn't know where she was going with what she was saying, so she stopped.

The boy nodded, looking a little confused. "You're a patient, though, right?"

Donna nodded. She was actually a patient of two doctors, thus almost making her two patients, depending on how one looked at it. But anyone wearing portable oxygen to breathe was probably, like, eight patients, so Donna wasn't going to say anything like that. Her left eye felt like wool was over it and she longed to rub it. But she told herself she hadn't washed her hands since her appointment with Dr. Kumar began, and she also knew that rubbing her eyes was going to give her wrinkles. Her face was almost entirely pubescent, unchanged since her fifteenth birthday, except for faint crow's feet that extended from her eyelids when she wore makeup. She knew it was from her everyday bad habit of rubbing at her too-dry and easily-irritated eyes.

"Yeah. I'm with Dr. Kumar and Dr. Viola."

This boy probably didn't know Dr. Kumar or Dr. Viola.

"Oh, Sanjay's cool!" the boy said. "I like him."

As if this exchange couldn't get any weirder, this boy was on a first-name basis with Donna's gastroenterologist.

"So are you waiting for someone, then? Not that it's any of my business, it's just that it's pretty late and while this lobby is nice, it's not that nice."

Donna blinked up at him. Her eye was begging to be rubbed.

"I'm alone. I'll leave," she said. "I just—" she sighed. "I'm just a little nervous."

"Nervous?" the boy repeated. Donna looked at the tube attached to his nose. It went down the side of his body and into a bag hanging from his shoulder. She glanced past him and noticed the other teens were looking at them. A couple were smiling and checking the phones in their laps.