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 Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 1:30 pm
Imo was having tests done today, much to Aggie's regret - spending the days with her re-discovered best friend was much, much more fun than staring blankly at the wall opposite her bed, or even trying to make her own map of the ward.
Plus, the time spent with the other girl had slowly but surely unfogged her memories of the people she'd met at Barren Pines; there were still a few exceptions, but according to the doctors she was moving along at an impressive pace.
It helped to have something to look forward to, it seemed, and remembering all the good times she'd spent with Imo in the year that she'd been at the school was her ultimate goal! Aggie had never had a best friend before Barren Pines, but she was certain that Imo was the best best friend that existed (no-one could beat the other girl at anything whatsoever as far as she was concerned).
But as always, being in the hospital brought tests by the plenty and the collective amnesia of all the students-slash-victims had the doctors baffled.
And baffled doctors meant even more tests.
Which was why Aggie was currently stationed in her bed, bored out of her mind and staring blankly at the faded might-once-have-been-mint-coloured walls. A hospital room was, by definition, boring. Some hospitals had televisions and game stations, but since they'd had to find a whole ward for the students, the Barren Pines survivors had to contend with what they could get.
Which was, in Aggie's case, a barren room with a couple of ratty old chairs for any potential visitors and a dresser that'd seen better days. It really wasn't all that exciting.
Unfortunately.
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 1:56 pm
To say that Tallulah Cowden liked to volunteer was to make the understatement of the year. Tallulah Cowden loved volunteering. One might even go as far as to say that Tallulah Cowden lived for volunteering, but that probably verged on exaggeration, because she had other hobbies. Just none of which looked so good on college applications as volunteering. Usually she restrained herself to the animal shelter and the food pantry, but the advent of a whole ward of recovering organ trafficking victims who happened to be her same age was too good to pass up. Tallulah got her a** down to the hospital and volunteered to candy stripe.
This chain of events led to her assignment to the 'meals-on-wheels' cart, delivering bland grub to patients who were mostly either absent or asleep - but then again, no one had promised it would be glamorous. The inhabitant of this room looked to be awake, or at least had their lights on. Tallulah put on a smile that was less than half forced, and rapped on the doorframe.
"Hi," she called, peeking in. She waved to the girl in the bed. "Are you hungry?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:02 pm
"Oh, um, n-not really. I think I'm supposed to eat something a-anyway, though." She looked a bit sheepish - if there was one thing the regular staff at the hospital trumphed through, it was the importance of regular, healthy meals, commonly in the form of whatever grub was on the cart this time.
You had to eat it no matter how awful it was, the nurses checked. It was standard fare in any hospital.
"And umh, hi!" Aggie threw her best, brightest smile at the other girl; she seemed new, a bit young for being one of the nurses, but then again, she'd never known a whole lot about the requirements for being employed as one. Maybe nurses this young were normal? "A-are you new here? Only I don't think I've seen you before, but I'm very sorry if I have and just forgot, it's nothing p-personal! Y-you look very nice, and um. Sorry."
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 10:19 am
"Don't worry, I'm new," Tallulah assured her as she got things together on the cart. A moment later, she stepped in carrying a covered tray. "Let's just pretend that this is silver and you're in a fancy-shmantzy hotel where they bring you breakfast in bed," she giggled, setting the tray down on the night table and swinging it around over the bed on its swivel.
She took the lid off the tray with a flourish and more giggling. The food looked at least edible even if it was a far cry from anything appetizing. "I think that used to be beef," she said, pointing to an oblong slab of brown nestled up against some baby carrots. "And the macaroni looks safe."
The macaroni, in its vivid orange 'cheese-flavored' sauce, did indeed look "safe," although whether its dressing had ever been even remotely near to a cow was debatable.
"Do you want anything to drink?" added Tallulah. "I've got water, milk, and OJ."
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 9:35 am
Ohh, so she was a nurse! But a nice one, and with more humour than any of the other nurses Aggie had met (bless their hearts).
"N-no champagne?" She tried out a teasing grin once the giggles she'd caught from the other girl's antics died down. "Fancy-shmantzy hotels a-aren't what they used to be!"
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 7:39 pm
"Sorry," laughed Tallulah, happy to have found someone with a sense of humor after the progression of boring rooms. "I can try to sneak you some Sprite later?" she added, a bit more seriously. "I don't think I'll get in trouble for that, it's just I haven't got anything else on the cart."
She went ahead and got a bottle of water for the other girl, as it seemed like the safest choice. "My name's Tallulah," she explained helpfully as she set it down. "What's yours?"
She really wanted to ask about what had happened at the school/organ trafficking site, but wasn't sure if that was appropriate. Probably not, she told herself. This girl had been through enough, and what if she had lost friends or something? (The body count was in the several dozen range, according to the news - it would have been hard not to have lost friends, she realized.)
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 7:49 pm
"That'd be v-very nice of you!" After being in the hospital for this long, she was starting to crave anything that wasn't hospital food. "I'm Aggie - or, um, well, no, my name's a-actually Dagmar, but Aggie is much easier to say, isn't it?"
She smiled and took a sip of the proffered water bottle before setting it down on the small side-table every bed in the ward had. "Um, are you r-really a nurse, though? Only the other nurses around here are uh, a lot older. Um, or maybe you just look really young, I guess?"
She was certainly more entertaining the the elderly man that usually came around with the food cart, that was for sure! So far, Tallulah had actually displayed a working sense of humour and a willingness to stay around and chat. And Aggie was drowning in boredom at the closed ward, so anything even remotely entertaining was more than welcome - and Tallulah was both entertaining and friendly!
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Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 8:00 pm
Tallulah blanched momentarily, the color draining from her suntanned face. "No," she said, and laughed, "No no no no." While she appreciated what she supposed was a testament to her responsible air and good bedside manner, she hoped that no one had honestly taken her for trained medical personnel.
"I'm just a volunteer," she explained, her color returning. "I'm a junior at Meadowview. It's nice to meet you, Aggie." Aggie, she decided, was most definitely easier to say than Dagmar, although Dagmar sounded Scandinavian and she was willing to give it a try later on. After all, when you were Model United Nations Representative For Finland, you had to try these things. In the name of political correctness. (In her mind, Tallulah always capitalized the entire title of her position. It was that important.)
"What school are you going to go to?" she asked, and decided that skirting the topic of Aggie's last school was not off-limits, even if directly asking was.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 12:58 am
Oh gosh, how embarrassing! Aggie's face flared up - a junior?! Tallulah was actually younger than she was and she'd mistaken her for a nurse!
"I'm so, so sorry. I just.. I don't know what I was thinking of! It's not that you look old or wrinkled or anything, really, I-I just--" Deep breaths, Dagmar, deep breaths! Once she'd calmed down a bit, she attempted a more meek; "I'm sorry."
"Um, I'm going to go to Meadowview too, I guess. Senior, though." She smiled weakly, still feeling a bit awkward about her earlier outburst. "I-it'll be nice to know s-someone already going there..?" Which was Tallulah's cue to get the bugger out of the room unless she didn't, by some unfathomable margin, mind the awkward mess that was Aggie (and was most likely going to find her at school and do her very, very best to become at the very least pseudo-friends with her).
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:50 am
Tallulah did not get the cue to bugger out. Instead, she clapped her hands together and grinned at Aggie. Clearly, school was a subject she loved to talk about. "Great! Do you know when you start? I'd be happy to show you around your first day!"
It was probably fortunate that Aggie did not know Tallulah's reputation around Meadowview as a busybody and a know-it-all, otherwise she probably would have fought her way out of the hospital bed and run screaming down the hall, IV lines trailing behind her, at the prospect of being recruited as her friend. Maybe that was an exaggeration. Maybe that was what certain parties within Meadowview would have recommended Aggie do. The jury was out.
"Meadowview's pretty big," she continued, "so yeah, I think it'll definitely be good to know someone before you get there."
She trailed off momentarily, looking for something else to talk about, and settled on the subject of extracurriculars. "What kinds of things are you interested in?" she asked, and settled into the chair on the other side of the nightstand. Standing and talking was getting a bit awkward.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 12:23 pm
"You.. you would?" That was a new one, for sure. Not at all unwelcome, however, "I'd love that! I don't think I'd ever be able to f-find my way around the school alone if it's really that big and wow, you're so nice! I, um, start next week, I think."
She beamed beautifically once the other girl took a seat; maybe she should have been worried about disturbing a volunteer during their work, but really, she was making a friend (that was what they were doing, right? Making friends?) and this was much, much more important than any old boring thing like that!
"Well, um, normal stuff." Geography, but that was a bit embarrassing and not at all mainstream enough for high school in Aggie's experience. Divergence time! "What about you? Are you like, in any clubs or anything?"
Clubs were a bit of a mystery to Aggie, one that was both alluring and baffling. But hey, if you were in a club with someone, that automatically made you count as friends, right? And this was definitely a phenomena that needed research.
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 12:39 pm
"Uh-huh!" nodded Tallulah. If you wanted to talk about clubs at Meadowview, Tallulah could give you an index of them, alphabetical by name or area of interest, right off the top of her head. "I'm on the swim team," she said, "And in the Model United Nations! I'm Finland!"
Apparently, based on her excitement when she said this, being Finland in the United Nations was a super big deal. At least if you were Tallulah Cowden. "And I head subcommittees about nuclear weapons control and animal rights!"
Somehow, she managed to say this in a way that made it sound like heading subcommittees about nuclear weapons and animal rights was equivalent in excitement to the final quarter of a World Cup soccer match tied three to three.
"Why?" she asked, calming down a bit. "Were you thinking about joining some clubs?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:43 pm
Aggie duitfully ooh'ed and looked very impressed (she was, actually - no-one she'd ever met had sounded so happy about this stuff; obviously, she'd underestimated the fun involved in pseudo-political matters).
"T-that's awesome! It sounds like very important stuff. D-do you do like, campaigns like real politicians?" She was very good at getting caught in the mood, actually. By this point the maroon-haired girl looked nearly as excited about model UN as Tallulah did. "Um, yeah. I've never been in a club before and it.. it sounds fun."
She looked rather bashful at the admission. Clubs hadn't been a big thing at the school she'd gone to before getting accepted at Barren Pines, but it sounded like it was important at Meadowview. Good thing she had Tallulah to help her out before she'd made a stupid mistake at her first day in school!
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Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 6:51 pm
"Not... we don't really campaign," answered Tallulah, a bit lamely. "But we learn about different current world issues and then talk about them and try to make decisions like they would in the real United Nations. Sometimes we do, like, crisis drills. Our faculty organizer gives us an event, like an earthquake or a nuclear strike, and we have to figure out how to deal with it, and everyone gets really into it. It's cool."
Well, if you were the kind of person who thought that starving peasants in foreign countries and what to do about them was cool. Most of the school thought the Model United Nations was sort of nerdy. "You don't have to join if you don't want to," she added, only partially hoping to entice Aggie's interest further, "It's just what I'm into."
"Oh!" she said suddenly, after a moment's silence. "And we go to conventions where we compete in crisis drills against other Model United Nations groups from other schools, and talk about politics, and things like that? There's one in New York City in April that we're probably going to go to, but I really want us to go to the international one in The Hague over the summer if we can get the funding. That's in the Netherlands."
Because going to the Netherlands for two weeks in June with your fellow MUN-ites was the height of cool.
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Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 7:04 pm
It sounded like the sort of thing aspiring politicians and government officials would do, Aggie thought. Mighty useful, but quite possibly not her strong side.
And then again, who knew? "Oh, um, I didn't think you'd force me to join or anything." She gave a nervous laugh - Tallulah wouldn't try to, would she? She wouldn't, right? "I-it sounds neat."
"You do?" Oh gosh, model UN was a really big thing! Now she certainly looked impressed. "So how a-are you going to get the funding? Do you like, ask your parents and stuff or, um, what?"
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