Too much love will kill you

Silent Witness

A/N: This is my 100th published part!!

Rachel's POV:

The next week spelled disaster for me. I woke up on Monday morning with a raging sore throat and when I opened my mouth to tell Mam this, it appeared that my voice had disappeared overnight. Mam gave me a cuddle "My poor baby, I'll make you a Dr's appointment for after school. I'll see if we've got any of that dissolvable paracetamol, you can put that through your tube"

I nodded and grimaced as I swallowed down some tea. Mam made me a smoothie for breakfast which was nice and soft on my throat and she made me another one to take to school with me for my lunch. Fran called for me and we walked to school together. She found it mildly hilarious that I was losing my voice and I walloped her with my notepad "Ow! That hurt, you know"

I just glared at her because it hurt me too much to talk. We got on the bus and we shared my headphones and we listened to one of my playlists. Mia and Jake got on a couple of stops after us and they waved to us before taking their seats. The bus pulled into the school gates and everyone filed off, me and Fran waited till last like always for the driver to let the ramp down for me to get off and I wheeled down it. Fran helped push me up a particularly difficult part as she did every morning and we made our way to our form room, we waited outside of our form room along with everyone else as we were all early and I fanned myself as it was particularly hot in the corridor, without warning I slid off my seat onto the cold floor.

The next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor, Fran was beside me fanning me with the electric fan I kept in my bag. I couldn't really see very well for a few moments because I still had tunnel vision but slowly my vision returned and I was mortified to see that the teacher that was hovering around me was not in fact my form tutor but my health and social teacher. Turns out that my form tutor was running late and my health and social teacher was the only free teacher, Fran slowly helped me to sit up against the wall and I took a few sips of water, adding an electrolyte sachet to it. "Are you feeling better now Rachel? You didn't half give me a fright when I walked down the corridor and found you passed out on the floor like that" She asked

I carefully swallowed and looked at Fran who understood "Oh yeah, she can't talk. She's lost her voice"

"Right okay. Let's see if we can find you a whiteboard or something so you can communicate, it's going to be awfully quiet in my class" She said smiling

She found me a whiteboard and pen and Fran helped me back up into my wheelchair and wheeled me back into class. Once form time was over, I wheeled out of the classroom and we headed to our first lesson of the day. Everyone else had two hours of PE, which either meant that I could join them and sit there bored out of my brains for two hours or I was allowed to go to the Success Centre which was just like a small house at the bottom of the school grounds where we all went if we needed extra tuition or if we were excused from lessons for any reason. It was always quiet there and I could work on some of my homework or health and social coursework or even read a book, the teachers that ran it didn't really care what we did as long as we were quiet and didn't disturb those that did want to work. I headed Fran, Rosie and Lindz off at the top of the school grounds, I made a quick detour to the canteen and brought myself a hot chocolate- technically we weren't supposed to take hot drinks out of the canteen but Miss Alistair who ran the Success Centre didn't mind us taking hot drinks in there as long as we didn't spill anything and as long as we disposed of our rubbish. I tucked the little cardboard cup into my cup holder and wheeled down towards the centre, there was two little steps to actually get down there and usually, if I was with someone I would get them to help bump me down them but on this occasion, I decided to attempt it myself, I carefully wedged the whiteboard and pen under my seat cushion and clipped my belt on. I approached the steps and carefully popped a wheelie and successfully bumped down them, I freewheeled down the rest of the gravel patch being careful not to career into the fence. I went inside and went into one of the rooms, Miss Alistair was sitting at a desk at the end of the room and she smiled at me as I entered. I positioned myself at a desk and quickly scribbled something on the whiteboard as a way of explanation for the lack of my usual chatter. She read my scribble and she looked at me sympathetically "You poor thing, is your throat very sore? You get a lot of sore throats don't you"