I don't want the curtains to eat me on Hospital Wing

Dorian Montoir

May 25, 2018 10:50 AM

I don't want the curtains to eat me by Dorian Montoir

Dorian kept his eyes closed shut. He really did not want to face the day. Everything was achy and wrong-feeling, and having his eyes open seemed like it was likely to lead to further pain and misery. Besides which, he would have to face Vlad. He knew that Vlad wouldn't be mad at him about last night, because Vlad was nice. And because he knew that, being sick, it really hadn't been his fault. But it was all still rather embarrassing. He was starting to understand why roommate friendships were some of the most solid and enduring: you simply knew far too much about each other to ever risk the other person disliking you. Not that he felt that way about Vlad - he wanted them to stay friends because he genuinely liked him - but he knew enough about how the Pureblood world worked to know that having information on someone was like gold dust. On top of last night, in just over a year together, Vlad had already found out that he was afraid of balloons (easily the most ridiculous thing about him as a person), and had seen him almost cry, not to mention the general level of just… not at his best that Vlad was exposed to on an almost constant basis. You could fake being normal and proper and decent for most of the day, but it wasn't a show you could put on from the second you woke up. And their room was also the place Dorian retreated to when he was just done for the day. Had studied enough, had enough. On his best days, this meant that Vlad just got the worst examples of Dorian's botched English and multilingual chaos as he wound down for the day; on his worst days, he would come in and fling himself facedown on his bed, feeling like a loosely held together and only semi-human pile of goo and not talk for several minutes.

Forcing his eyes open, he found that Vlad seemed to be out. He felt bad thinking of Vlad as ‘one less thing to deal with' but… Although he hadn't woken himself up again, and his dreams had not becoming so terrifying again, they had been no less vivid, and he wouldn't have been surprised if he hadn't been the quietest sleeper for the rest of the night... He would have to check when he saw Vlad, and he was fairly sure he owed him several more apologies but that right now he could barely construct a sentence in French or Chinese, much less English. But as Vlad was out, that could wait. That just left dealing with the fact he was ill… He had known that, of course, when he had started having nightmares vivid enough to wake himself (and Vlad) up shouting, but somehow in the middle of the night, the hospital wing had seemed much further away, coupled with the self-conscious feeling that they really shouldn't be out past curfew, and it had just seemed easier to apologise several times, and then go back to sleep and deal with it all in the morning. He was slightly regretting that in that he was sure he was now feeling considerably worse, and somehow the fact that there was now daylight didn't seem as helpful or deeply relevant as he had promised himself it would be.

Wishing that everything didn't hurt and that he could stop shivering, he forced himself out of bed, collected his clothes and went into the bathroom, Whilst it was acceptable to stay in one's pyjamas when ill at home, he was not at home, he was at school - he couldn't stay in his own bed, which was what made pyjamas acceptable at home, but had to go to the hospital wing, and walking through school in his pyjamas was not something he thought appropriate. He stared at his reflection for a moment. He looked all wrong. He was far too pale and his eyes were glassy - he almost had the sense that the person in the mirror wasn't really looking back at him, because they seemed so disconnected and far away. He realised he was zoning out just… staring, and began to take off his pyjamas, finding that this seemed substantially more effort than such a simple task really should have been, and quickly abandoning his plans to have a shower before getting dressed, deciding that he could cut himself some degree of slack due to being ill. The exact dividing line seemed be that skipping over his shower was acceptable but not brushing his teeth was not and so, once he had struggled into his clothes (it took him three attempts to button his shirt right), he made a half hearted effort at doing so, before stumbling off towards the hospital wing.

“Get into bed,” was the healer's immediate advice upon seeing him, “But stay awake long enough to take some medication. It's up to you whether you change into hospital pyjamas or not. What's your name, year and house?”

“Dorian Montoir, second year, Teppenpaw” he answered, catching the simple questions whilst his brain sluggishly processing the rest of the information. He was sort of vaguely sure he wasn't meant to get into bed in his clothes, but he thought that an adult had just given him permission to do so, and given how hard they'd been to put on, it seemed preferable to not to have to undo all of that and convince his limbs and fingers to co-operate into getting him into a new set of garments. Bed… just getting back into bed… That sounded very good.

Aisha tried not to look surprised, having pegged him for a first year, and went to retrieve his file.

“Are you allergic to anything?” she asked.

“Pardon?” he asked.

“Allergic,” she repeated, slowly and clearly. She had picked up the accent as soon as he spoke, and now had a file in front of her confirming that his first language was ‘French/Chinese.' “Are you allergic to anything?”

He shook his head and climbed into bed. The thermometre came over. He opened up obediently, but nearly spat it out in shock when it proclaimed he had a temperature of one hundred and three. He would be dead. And then he remembered that Americans were strange.

“Quest-ce que c'est ca en centigrade?” he mumbled, not really expecting an answer. The thermometre however, although it did not speak French, could recognise the final word in that sentence, even though it was strangely pronounced.

“Thirty nine point four,” it replied, before floating back to the cupboard.

Dorian allowed himself to groan, deciding it was entirely fair that he felt as awful as he did if that was the case. He had only ever had one fever worse than that… When he'd had dragonpox, he had hit forty degrees, and it had been accompanied by vivid hallucinations that there were monsters in the curtains that were going to attack if he didn't stick to speaking Chinese. He doubted he was going to be out of here in time to meet the Club of Tongues…

“Wǒ yīnggāi huìjiàn wǒ de péngyǒu,” he informed the healer, lapsing without realising into the language he'd been thinking about, and which he associated the most with being ill, as of course it was his mother who looked after him when he was.

“I don't speak whatever language you're speaking right now,” she informed him gently, handing him a vial of sunshine potion. She had half a dozen sentences of Spanish, and could understand some Bengali because of her grandparents but hadn't grown up with enough of it to speak any. That had sounded more like Chinese than French, if she had to guess, but either way, she was clueless as to what he was actually saying.

“Oh,” he blinked, realising what he'd done, “No… Um… I meet friends,” he managed, losing the word ‘supposed to' or any kind of tense in translation.

“No. You are staying here,” Aisha informed him sternly.

“No. I know…. I…” he searched in vain, only able to come up with ‘I want to meet friends' which was not right and had all of the same problems as his last sentence. “I now cannot meet my friends.”

“You want to send them a note?” she asked, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that on a good day he spoke much better English than he was currently managing, otherwise she somewhat doubted his ability to function. “Do you want me to write it?” she offered.

“No. I can. I do in French. They understand.” Well… He was confident Jehan, at least, would get the jist. The healer brought him some parchment and a quill. It was entirely possible that Vlad had told them by now that he was ill anyway, but he felt rude missing their meeting without saying anything.

'Cher(e) Jehan et Tatya,

Je me vois malheureusement obligé de rater notre réunion,' he began, incredibly formally, because how to write a polite letter of apology or refusal was something that had been drummed into him since an early age. But they were his friends, and he wanted to explain why, and thus the letter continued, losing both its formal tone and some of its coherence, with 'Je suis malade avec la fièvre (et c'est presque aussi mauvais que le moment où les rideaux ont essayé de m'attaquer),' it hadn't technically been the curtains, but the monsters in curtains… but… they would know what he meant…. His preoccupation with what he was missing showed in the final sentence, as the letter concluded with the rather nonsensical, ‘La medique dit que je dois rester dans la bibliothèque et que je ne peux pas venir à la bibliothèque. Dorian.

He folded the note, scribbled ‘Club des Langues' on the outside of the parchment and (at the healer's suggestion that an actual person's name would be helpful in directing it where it was meant to go) added Jehan's name in brackets underneath this. He watched the note zoom away, and leant back against his pillows. He wasn't sure whether to close his eyes or not. He felt exhausted even though he hadn't done anything, and part of him wanted to just give in and go back to sleep. But he was sure he was in for some pretty vivid dreams if he did. If he stayed awake he was spared that, as he wasn't hallucinating this time. Although he thought the walls might be trying to move - they weren't moving when he looked at them, but whichever part was in the corner of his eye seemed like it might start trying if he didn't keep it in check. Maybe he could close his eyes but try to not fall asleep…

OOC - Dorian's letter reads ‘I am unfortunately obliged to miss our meeting. I am ill with the fever (and it's almost as bad as the time that the curtains tried to attack me). The healers says I must rest in the library and I cannot come to the library. Dorian'

If anyone wants to visit Dorian, you can decide whether he is still awake or asleep as suits your purposes. However, please don't cover a stretch of time going from asleep to awake, as I think sleeping Dorian probably will have a few things to say...

As this is kind of a continuation of the Teppenpaw thread, I'm going to go with it happening during the week that was posted, and therefore before the formal ware sale, should that end up mattering.

13 Dorian Montoir I don't want the curtains to eat me 1401 Dorian Montoir 1 5