Catching Fire: The New Story

Chapter 37

Katniss's POV 

When I wake the next day, my mother has me changed and out the door in before I could say good morning and think straight to even put my clothes on right. I think my shirt is backwards, but my mind is still fuzzy with sleep I want and need. I realize it is late when I first walked outside. Noon, I think, maybe even past that. My mother and Prim let me sleep all day yesterday and all of today’s morning away. I do feel better. I am sick no longer, I don't feel like I am going to puck my stomach out at least. I guess that’s a good sign.

I kiss Prim on the forehead goodbye and my mother and I begin a long walk. 

"Where are we going?" I ask quietly after a while of walking. My mother looks down and doesn't answer me. "Where?" This time I put force into it.

"The doctor’s.” Her voice is filled with fear and is quiet, something not unusual for my mother, but worries me because it is different from the other fear and quiet she holds in her voice. There is a doctor in Twelve? 

"What?" I ask and stop. She turns to me, her cheeks flushed. 

"Yes, the doctor’s office. Now let's hurry, we’ll be late.” She motions for me to come along with her while she begins walking as if I were a disobedient child who wouldn’t move from this one spot. 

The sun was hidden in the clouds today, the sky an awful looking gray as though a storm would come in later. I thought that gray of the clouds might be the gray Peeta is always fussing about, the one that looks entirely like the shade of my eyes, along with my father’s and Gale’s, that gives him a headache trying to make into a perfect paint color. It wasn't too bright or warm today. It was quite cold, yet warm enough for a late winter day. 

My mother pushed the door in for me once we reached the small green building far too deep into the richer part of town for my liking. The paint was chipping in the corners of the room and some spots on the wall, the flower pots filled with weeded and dying plants. An elderly woman stood behind a counter with glasses at the tip of her nose, scribbling away on a paper. She looked familiar, the gray hair straight, the color light, almost like she had blond hair, her eyes a dark turquoise when she looks at me. Almost like my – no. 

"Hello,” she said. She looked up at us from her book when she heard the ringer on the door sound out. "Oh, wow,” she says astonished at the sight of my mother. She brings her glasses to the table and leans forward. “I never thought of seeing you here again.”

"What?" I ask, looking back and forth between the two woman. 

"Hello mother,” my mother said. Wait, what!

"Wait... you’re her... and she's you’re... so you’re my..."

"Yes. I am your grandmother. You have an appointment today Miss Everdeen,” says my grandmother. 

"It's Katniss. And, I do?" I ask. She chuckles and pulls me along with her into the back where a spare room was waiting for me. I look back to my mother. She sits down and smiles to me reassuringly, no one else was seated in the waiting room at this time of day, so she was alone. I guess I am alone too, once again.

"Okay, Katniss, what are your symptoms?" asks my grandmother once I have sat down. I grow nervous. 

"Um, well, I don’t know where to start,” I say. She gives me a surprised look and smiles comfortingly. “I've been sick in the morning and have had headaches a lot. I’ve had a bit of really bad cramps. I have been really tired, more tired than I've ever been." I stop to watch her write down everything I have stated. 

"Anything else? Pains? Hunger?" she asks. 

"Yes."

"Oh, which ones?"