Invictus || Book 1

C.09 - Hestia

Every hour, Hestia is asked the same three questions.

Can you open your eyes?

Can you push against my hand?

Can you move your legs?

The first two are manageable, although she is exhausted when she's pulled from sleep to complete the tasks. Yet, once the haze of barely achieved unconsciousness is shaken Hestia doesn't mind all that much and is more relieved than annoyed when she can move her fingers and feel the reassuring pressure of the nurse's hands against her own.

The third task is less successful. 

She's asked to wiggle her toes, bend her knees and at one point is propped up against Orlan and told to attempt taking three steps forward. The first trial is a fail, as well as the second and third rounds but by the fourth attempt Hestia has recovered enough feeling in her toes that when she stubs it against the wooden post of her bed she ends up taking down a surprised Orlan in her determination to curl in on herself.

By the time it hits a point in the medical bay where the worst of the patients have either fallen asleep, been dosed up or have left, Hestia is left staring up at the ceiling, vaguely aware of Orlan's aggressive tapping as he attempts to beat Hestia's high score on one of the games she still had on her phone -a surprising feat, considering it had survived an entire ocean and an hours worth of screentime wracked up by Orlan himself when a nurse had returned her clothes. They'd found her phone in the pocket of her jeans.

"Hestia? It's time to administer the last of the loli richo."

Hestia acknowledges the familiar voice with a brief nod but continues quietly observing Orlan, catching the way his eyes flicker from her phone to the nurse walking towards them. Hestia briefly wonders whether Kiron would have thought it appropriate for Orlan's focus to be taken up by a game but reasons that the answer doesn't matter because she isn't planning on telling Kiron. In the end, all thoughts of the intricacies of soldier decorum and hidden object games flee from her mind when she's gently nudged further onto her side and the sharp head of a needle pierces the skin over her spine.

Wincing, Hestia tries to push away the image of a blue glowing liquid coursing nauseatingly through her body.

Hestia had been told that the way the potion worked was the components in it acted as a stimulant for the nerves while simultaneously fighting to kill off the paralytic residue of whatever drug she'd been hit with. It all went in one ear and out the other with Hestia, but it had made enough sense that she was content enough to continue the treatment.

"Your body is accepting the loli richo quite well." Elmira, a stern but gentle nurse Orlan had informed Hestia was a transfer from a neighbouring kingdom upon first being introduced to eachother, murmurs before tucking the sheets Hestia had made a mess of back under the mattress. Hestia settles into her pillow once more, slightly more perkier.

"So, when do you think I'll be able to leave?"

Elmira pins Hestia down with a pointed stare. "When you can walk to the viru without the aid of young Orlan...and then an hour or so after that. Now, try to get some sleep."

Hestia sighs, but quietly thanks Elmira. Only when the older woman is out of sight does Hestia turn and yank her phone from Orlan's grasp, her usual shy restraint having been abandoned sometime during the long walk to the medical wing after Hestia had thrown up inches from Orlan's shoes. She figured there wouldn't be any point in remaining awkward after that mortifying ordeal. Of course, that decision hadn't been hers alone.

Orlan -strange man that he was- had taken it upon himself to tell a rather embarrassing story of his childhood where he'd once been hiding from a friend and had taken to running through a particularly rowdy inn. Hestia, still horrified and ill, had wondered where Orlan was going with the story only to scrunch her face in amused disgust when Orlan proceeded to inform her that in his urgency to outrun his friend, he hadn't noticed a puddle of a drunk man's sick, to which a younger Orlan had slipped on, concussed himself on a bar stool and then passed out in said vomit.