falling like rain / jack harries fanfic

vii

noelle } nov. 6 } 728 days before

i blindly patted around my bed for the tissue box that was likely empty, holding my nose to stop the flow of my nose. i groaned when there wasn't a single tissue in the box.

i flopped out of my cucoon of a bed and tried to find the bathroom. my entire flat was dark-- any more light would induce more painful headaches. i managed to find my bathroom and squint my eyes in the light of it. i fumbled around in the bottom cupboard for a roll of toilet paper and crawled back to my tissue covered bed.

i called in for a sick day yesterday and today. normally, i'd go to work with this kind of illnes. i really hate calling in sick as an intern, mostly because part of me doesn't want to appear weak in front of my future coworkers. yeah, age 21 and still oddly competitive.

but this 'cold', to say the least, was different. on monday morning, i had started to get small headaches and fevers that were minorly distracting to my work. by midday, my head was practically throbbing and my nose was starting to flow. by the end of the day, i had used the entire offices tissue supply and insisted that the lights were turned down to the dimmest level possible. by then, everyone came to the agreement that i needed a sick day.

but now it was 2 sick days. and it even seemed worse than the first. yesterday i had spent most of the day in bed, occasionally going on my laptop if i was alive enough. the majority of the day was spent sleeping, blowing my nose, and making myself tea and toast.

the only human contact i've had is the daily facebook messages from my mother (she insists that she will never 'text') that usually reminded me to drink lots of tea with honey in it and sleep a lot. other than that, i've pretty much shut off my phone. it's not like anyone is really all that concerned about me anyway.

jacks p.o.v.

10 text messages, 5 voicemails and 25067 billion thoughts sent to noelle. zero answers. monday morning we had walked together and had talked about going to dinner tuesday night. dinner. like an actual, legitimate date. on tuesday night.

tuesday she was no where in the park. i texted her about her absence but alas; no reply. i even considered calling her but i thought that would be a bit too....concerned. the entire day went by with no reply about where she was or about dinner. by the end of the day, i figured that we weren't going to have dinner.

so here i am, waiting in the park on a wednesday morning for a girl who can't figure out how to answer her phone.

i shuffled my phone out of my pocket and dialed noelles number. not like there's any point, but you never know.

to my surprise, the phone was picked up immediately.

"hello?" a groggy voice that didn't resemble noelles at all croaked out.

"noelle?"

"i'm sick."

"you sound terrible." i was actually lying about that. for some reason, sick noelle sounded oddly cute.

"i know."

"hey, um, so dinner last night..."

"oh my god, i am so- i turned off my phone, i thought no one would - i was so -"

"no, no, you were sick, it wouldn't have been much fun for you anyway." i chuckled.

"hey, listen, we can do something tonight if you -"

"noelle, you're sick. seriously, get better."

"i ran out of tea, jack. there's nothing i can do." she moaned.