Invisible

Chapter Thirty - Sickness

Hey,

I bet a lot of you are kind of wondering if I dropped off the face of the earth or something. I'm sorry. I don't want to make excuses to the poeple that have still stuck by this story so I'll just say I'm sorry and I hope that you understand that sometimes life is just exhausting.

And btw (in case anyone cares) the last time I tried to finish this chapter the servers were crashed.

ANYWAYS I really sort of like this chapter too, so I  hopw you enjoy it. xox

Just as Brew lifted the last spoonful of dessert to her lips she heard the ringing of a phone. Jace sighed, pulling it out quickly only to silence the insistent ringing.

"Answer it. It might be important." Jace studied her, as if searching for the trick her answer concealed. She tried to keep her face honest to show him she understood that life didn't stop for one date. "Seriously, it's okay."

Glancing at his phone Jace's brow furrowed slightly before he lifted it to his ear. "Yea, Doc?...How many?...And your sure there's no one else?...I know, I know, I'm just...busy.......Give me five." He hung up the phone and turned to Bree mournfully, "Will you absolutely hate me if I ask you to cut this date short? Doc's at the hospital and it's apparently overflowing with patients and and it seems everyone has an excuse for why they can't come in. He pulled the it will give you experience card on me."

Bree laughed at Jace's horrible impression of the aging doctor. "It's okay. I forgive you. Anything I can do to help?"

"Seriously?" Jace asked a bit astonished that she would be not only willing to cut their date short but to help him deal with a bunch of sick people as well. When Bree nodded he grinned, "You just keep getting better and better."

A slight blush colored her cheeks before she slid out of her chair and head to the exit. After paying Jace caught up with her outside where he casually entangled their fingers and headed toward the hospital. 

The small waiting room was unusually overcrowded. Jace watched as just the sight of the smelly, noisy people pushed Bree slowly back into her shell. It was strange for him, after being victim to so much of her spit fire character, to watch her slowly try to become invisible once again right in front of him. He watched on with fascination as her shoulders slouched just the slightest. Her fingers delicately untucked the hair from behind her ears so that in fell into her face and she ducked her head, staring at the flooring. He noticed she suddenly looked smaller to him.

As he ushered her into the sterile office space that was, thankfully, empty he again was struck by her as she quickly reversed he earlier actions. It occurred to him that Bree had been trying to be unseen for so long that even now she seemed to do it almost unconsciously.

The doctor rushed in looking flustered. His hair was ruffled, his shirt slightly untucked and he was huffing under his breath. When he spotted Jace and Bree his eyes light up. "Thank the heavens!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air.

Jace chuckled. "What's going on here, Doc?"

"If only I knew. I just can't quite get a handle on things around here lately. Everyone seems to be sick with the  same thing and nothing I do or give them is really seeming to help." the doctor paused biting the inside of his cheek for a moment. "To be completely honest I think I'm going to have to make a report to the guards tomorrow morning. There seems to be a symptom of a loss of power in too many people. Something's going on I just can't figure it out."

"So how can we help?" Jace asked, 

"For now if you could show Bree how to fill out the prescriptions and then cover the extra room for me that would really help." Jace nodded and the doctor was off calling the next coughing patient into his room. 

Jace turned to Bree. "Still okay to help?" When she nodded brightly at him, he led her to a oversized oak desk in the opposite corner of the office. He then retried a stacked of papers from a folder mounted to the wall next to the door. 

"Okay so each paper has a patient name and number. The little slips stapled to the are the medications that are prescribed. All you have to do is translate that information into this computer here. Then the computer will do two thing: it will send a copy to the pharmacist and it will print out a little sticker like this." He showed her an extra sticker laying on the desk and then pulled out a drawer containing blank cards. "Stick the sticker on this and you're done. If you really feel up to it and you're getting low you can go ahead and pass the out in the waiting area, that should clear it out a bit."

Bree took a deep breath and nodded. "Got it...i think."

"You're amazing." Jace assured, leaning in to kiss her on the forehead before disappearing through the door.

Once he was gone and the blush that had developed had finally faded Bree set to work. She found she quite liked the repetitive task she;d been assigned. It gave her brain enough leeway to think about her evening with Jace. Being someone's girlfriend, especially some like Jace, terrified her but she also felt a secret thrill. He liked her. There was something reassuring about the way he made her feel her age, like she could be young and in love rather than worrying and hiding all the time.

She realized at the exact moment that she finished breezing through her pile of prescriptions that he made her feel seen and that maybe, just maybe, that was more important than she's ever realized before.

In the room right next to the office where Bree sat, Jace stood examining another patient. He returned to his chair to ask the routine questions. "Coughing?"

"Yep, horribly."

"Sore throat?"

"Yes."

"Fever?"

"Not so far."

"Sneezing?"

"Defiantly."

"Okay well how about you lie back and I'll just do a quick bar scan?" Jace asked calmly. He reached into the his pocket for the brand new deceive that would tell he at what capacity the patient's powers were functioning at. After positioning the machine over the patient's eyes he pressed the green button and waited for it to scan. Trying to avoid looking at the result Jace wrote a prescription for the patient and ushered them back into the waiting room. 

Finally he inhaled deeply and looked at the machine: 50% functioning. Exactly like even patient he'd seen.

Something was defiantly wrong here.