Near x Reader- Collaboration

Doubt

Image Source: http://gemma-chan.tumblr.com/post/22641897300/original-%E3%81%A8%E3%83%BC%E3%82%84

Crying did not become a distraction that Nate had anticipated previously. Nora would wail on occasion like any other baby, but she was quiet. As the girl and himself stood beside one another at their daughter's crib, they endured yet again the painful sounds of her coughing. The girl cried in silence as he frowned deeply.

"Her medicine isn't working, what the Hell is wrong with it?" She asked.

"She is barely one year old in age, it is likely that the medicine alone could be lethal, let alone the respiratory virus."

Nora growled a few more times before breathing with a bit less labor. She found sleep soon; she should have been silent, but the airflow through her lungs did not go unheard. Any progress she made on breathing was solely due to the oxygen tube in her nose. She held onto the bear her father had given her at birth.

The young genius discretely massaged his temple in a vain attempt to thwart his sudden migraine. He dismissed it as a symptom of the particularly extreme stress he had been handling in recent times. The girl had implied that looming over their daughter would bring no benefit to his own health. In response, he gave a final glance at his daughter, began to walk away from his family and went to his monitor to continue his tasks.

"What I meant was you should really get some sleep or at least lie-down. You haven't relaxed for a moment in almost a month."

His tongue remained sheathed within his mouth. The lazy attempt of a sideglance waned and his attention returned to his monitor and spreadsheets. The papers were a bit passed the point of being handled, so he had propped a bulletin board upon an easel and pinned the information to it. He couldn't rationalize having it anymore.

Halle shuffled into the room, holding a heavily filled folder against her person. The poor woman never looked unhealthier; her hair dulled greatly, though that could possibly be attributed to the lack of shampooing it has received in the past month, her nails were chewed to half of their length, and she sported a few break-outs on her fair-skinned face.

"There's more inside, but the brief of it is that in the last week, there have been two-hundred and fifty-four reported deaths, all by a sudden heart attack. There was no trend we could find. In fact, most of the deceased haven't had a personal or family history of heart disease.They just dropped."

She paralleled her own final sentence by dropping the folder on the floor after being met with cold silence. The woman began walking toward the exit, but the girl halted her movements by grabbing her arm.

"Please, I need to talk to you, alone," the girl whispered.

The two ladies left the room and sat upon the couch in the living room.There was no sitting for Anthony nor Stephen, the former cross-referencing data on three separate monitors and the latter making phone call after phone call. The girl already felt like she was hindering their efforts, so she made a mental note to make her list of grievances short.

The girl rested her head upon Halle's shoulder, "He's never been an emotional or sensitive person, but he's acting really cold, especially for him. Even with other cases that stumped him before, he still was nice. I mean I can deal with him being rude to me, but you guys are only helping him."

"Well, you shouldn't deal with him being rude to you. You deserve his respect, especially as the mother of his child."

"It's just that it's really, really, odd. It's-It's like it's really not him. Like his brain is messed up."

"Oh honey, we can't-"

"I know, we can't think that way," she sat upright, "But I have no other conclusion, and I'm sure none of you do, either."