I'm Fine (An Arrow Fanfiction)

Chapter Twenty-Two

After what felt like hours, Oliver's name was shouted through the speakers. He jumped up quickly, aching to get out of the waiting room.

"Mr. Queen?" a tall brown-haired nurse asked.

"Yep," he said with a forced smile.

"Alright, come this way, sir."

With a last glance to Diggle, Oliver followed the lady down the hall.

Once Oliver was gone, Diggle sat back down, relaxing for a minute. Oliver's constant fidgeting and coughing had been freaking him out. He understood that Oliver didn't like the waiting room, neither did he, but God damnit, he was driving the whole room crazy. Each time someone coughed, sneezed, or even moved quickly, Oliver would literally leap from his chair. 

Diggle flipped open a magazine, skimming through the various articles. Suddenly, he noticed a photo of a man who very much resembled himself. As he backtracked through the long crinkling pages, he realised that it probably was him. Oliver was in the news quite a lot, and Diggle was almost always with him in public.

When he finally found the page again, his thoughts were confirmed: it was a photo of Oliver in his business suit, trailed by Diggle. Looking closer, he noticed that it was a recent photo, very recent, actually. Oliver's face was pale and his his eyes and nose were pink. The unflattering light in addition to his worn out expression made him look pretty bad. In dark bold lettering, the words "OLIVER QUEEN SICK?" were scrawled under the photo.

Disgusted, Diggle shut the magazine. Don't journalists have better things to write about? Where did they get the photo in the first place? It had been only a few days since Oliver had started feeling under the weather. He wondered if Oliver was used to it by now. He had probably been in some magazine or other for the majority of his life. Diggle took a deep breath, imagining what it would have been like. Every single decision, every mistake splashed across the cover of a gossip magazine.

Diggle let his thoughts drift as he spent the rest of his time looking through the other magazines and checking his watch, waiting-a bit impatiently-for Oliver; though he wasn't as intense as his boss, he had no desire to sit in a waiting room echoing with coughs.