Miraculous Kat

Part Seventeen: Well That Happened.

"What if we use metal bars?" Marinette asked. She and Kat were hunched over a large paper covered in sketches of gloves. It had taken a few ideas for Kat to settle on fingerless ones, and now they were trying to figure out how to reinforce them.

"I don't know about that. If the metal's put under enough force it might bend and break my fingers."

"Right. Um...what about..." Marinette sighed. "I don't know."

"Maybe we could just pad them. Like boxer gloves." She pantomimed a boxer and winced. Her hand had, indeed been hurt. A hairline fracture across the middle bone in her hand and she had sprained her wrist, too. (Please note that I have never had worse than a scraped knee, so any portrayal of injury that I may or may not try to write about will not really be completely accurate.)

"That's a great idea!" Marinette paused and looked at Kat's wrist, which was swelling up and purple. "You should get someone to look at your hand."

"I'll be fine."

"Kat, it's purple."

"Ya got me there."

"Are you scared of the hospital or something?"

"Nah, I'm just used to toughing it out. Granted, I've never been hurt quite this bad, but if I don't move it—"

"Come on. I'm taking you to the hospital."

"Fine," Kat sighed, "just let me whip up some tears."

"What? Why?"

"You'll see."

Kat got onto the fifth step up to Mari's bed, forced herself to cry, then jumped down and landed on her feet. The landing created a huge thump.

"Just roll with it," Kat cried. Marinette looked at her in confusion, but decided to roll with it. The two hurried down to the bakery.

"Girls? What was that sound?" Mrs. Dupain-Cheng asked, already at the bottom of the stairs.

"I just tripped and fell on my wrist," Kat sobbed, squeezing her arm a little so that pain leaked into her voice.

"Oh dear! Let's get you to the hospital." Mrs. Dupain-Cheng told her husband that she'd be back, and they left. An hour later, Kat had a cast, Marinette had finished planning Kat's gloves in her head, and Mrs. Dupain-Cheng was having a very, very hard time with the paperwork.

"Kat, have you ever had...here read that...have you ever had that?"

"Nope. I've never even heard of that. I don't think I can even pronounce it."

"What's muscular dystrophy?"

"That's where your muscles like disappear. I think it's mostly in boys," Kat added, "so no, I don't have it."

This went on for a while, and when they got to the family questions (does x disease run in your family?) they just gave up. Kat had a very large family (on her mom's side) and had absolutely no idea on any of it. They took the papers up to the receptionist.

"I'm sorry, I can't accept those," the receptionist said. "You need to fill out everything."

"We don't know everything, ma'am," Mrs. Dupain-Chen's replied.

"Why not?"

"Kat fell out of a..." she looked at Kat.

"A portal, I think," Kat said. The receptionist rolled her eyes.

"That didn't happen. Just fill it out."

"It did happen. One minute I was in my bed, the next I was in a classroom."