A way away

7. Blood

The sadness I felt when the pale man stopped coming hit me like a train.

I had no idea I had fallen so deeply for him until it was taken away from me. I tried everything. Going to our spot every evening. Going to our spot two hours later, to match the time we had first met. I started taking my walks (I hated walks but did it anyway because I knew they were good for me in my otherwise Sedentary Lifestyle, TM) past his GP practice. I went to the grocery store every day to get me a little something - a chocolate bar, crackers, strawberries (on sale but still expensive as fuck) - just to ensure I would see him because he would have to buy food at some point, right? It was impossible to get food delivered to you on our tiny island so he must go to the grocery shop like everyone else! Right?

Finally, I cracked. It was on a Sunday evening, the day before I was going back for another week at work. I was usually excited for Mondays, but now, I felt exhausted. 

I sat down to read a book to take my mind off things, but I didn't understand the letters. I frowned, tried to deconstruct the meanings of the weird-looking squiggles, but they didn't make any sense to me. I panicked, stood up and, without putting on my raincoat, went out into the pouring rain. I was stumbling as if I were drunk, so going to Madara's cottage took me about twice as long as was strictly necessary. I knocked on his door before I had time to realise I had no idea what I was doing there, or what I was going to say.

He opened the door, and immediately saw something was wrong. Anyone would because why else would someone be out in the rain drenched without a jacket?

"Izuna..."

"Madara!" I wailed, and I threw myself into his arms.

"Izuna, what happened?"

I tried speaking, but ended up just wailing words as incomprehensible as the letters in my book had been. Madara took me inside, put me on the thick carpet in front of his fireplace, and let me cry it out while he held me. When I had calmed down, he made me hot chocolate.

"Now", he said, putting a blanket around me as if I were child. "Tell me."

And I immediately started crying again.

"I'm sorry! It's so stupid! It's just so stupid! I hardly even know him!"

"The doctor?" Madara asked. 

I wasn't even surprised I was so easy to read. And so, I told him everything.

"Why haven't you told me?" Madara asked softly. "You don't need to carry these things by yourself, you know?"

"Because it's stupid! I have only said hi to him! It shouldn't affect me this much!"

Madara looked at me sternly. Then, he grabbed my hand. I prepared myself for a long talking-to. But there was none.

"Sometimes", he said. "Sometimes you just know."

And that was the only thing he needed to say. For both of us. 

I stayed over at Madara's place that night. He kept a toothbrush for me, and told me to take his bed, but I accidentally fell asleep on his couch. When I woke up, he had put a blanket on me. He was already up making me pancakes for breakfast to cheer me up. It worked. I smiled and stretched and looked inside a book Madara had at his coffee table. I could read it fine; yesterday's fit of being illiterate must have been due to anxiety.

We walked to school together, and I felt much better, and the children made me happy as always. They must have sensed something was off, because they were unusually well-behaved.

So it caught us completely off-guard when one of the boys, Harry, caused havoc by accidentally cutting himself on his fingers on a pair of scissors, nipping an artery which caused the blood to pump out.

"Shit!" I said before I had time to think about Language, please!

I immediately got to work, using the skills from a first aid course that had also helped me that day the doctor had arrived. I made a tourniquet made of my shirt, leaving me in only my white T-shirt, but it soon bled through. I fetched Madara so he could calm the rest of the children down while I took care of the wound, but when Madara said all the blood on the shirt I had tied around the scared boy's fingers, so much now that it was dripping to the floor, he would have none of it.

"You need to take him to the doctor", Madara said.

I knew he was right. We had no school nurse or anything of the sort. Usually, me and Madara could handle things that happened on our own, but in the cases where we couldn't, we had to send the children to the local GP.

"You go", I said, turning to the children. "I'll take mine in to your classroom."

But Madara grabbed the back of my T-shirt, preventing me from walking away.

"No", he said.

"Then call his parents."

"They work on the mainland this week", poor Harry said. 

"Madara, please!!" I begged.

It didn't work. 

"I'll phone his parents to inform them", he said. "You go."

So that was how I was finally forced to go to the GP practice of the man I had fallen for so deeply.