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It had been two days since a familiar dark-haired figure had been put in a room with Fallon. Two days during which Jada Chamberlyn had done little else but sleep; those times when she was awake were very blurry, with vague little answers. The first night had been a nightmare; Jada had flung herself off her bed, screaming, trying to rip out her own IV until doctors had used restraints to keep her from writhing. "Don't worry." a nurse had assured Fallon, who was looking at the commotion with wide eyes, hand hovering over the emergency buzzer they had given her. "She's just in pain." The doctors had blown off her moans and whimpers as being damage done to her back.

The first person to visit Jada had been a small plump woman with gray hair and equally gray eyes. "Dr. Anberlin." the woman had introduced herself. A private practitioner, who'd been taking care of Jada since the day she was born. She was plump, grandmotherly, and pitched little jokes at Fallon while she looked the unconscious girl over. Clucks and disapproving little sounds, narrowed eyes full of concern; the focus was definitely on Jada's back, which Fallon had not yet had the opportunity to see. "Do me a favor and call doctors if she starts to thrash too much, or tries to roll onto her back." the older woman had instructed Fallon before she left. Fallon had nodded agreement, curious eyes watching Jada's facial twitches.

The next woman had been short and slender. Szelem Chamberlyn had stepped straight off the pages of Vogue, with pitch black hair and eyes colored a lime green. Her voice was nasal and prim as she introduced herself to Fallon. "Ah, that girl that Jada rides with." had been her only response to Fallon's name. Culture and class pouring from her pores in nauseating amounts, Szelem had simply watched her daughter sleep with a mix of disappointment and disgust before leaving the room. A few hours later, three little children and a tired-looking man had entered. Michael Chamberlyn was the tired man, and he'd given Fallon's hand a little shake. He was there maybe five minutes before his cell phone rang. A kiss was pressed to Jada's sleeping forehead and he was gone. He never came back, and the blonde woman had taken charge of the three children.

The little boy, Lucas, seemed more interested in staring at Fallon than worrying about his sister. He'd hauled himself up on Fallon's bed, short legs kicking, and introduced himself and the two little girls. "And that's Nanny." he pointed at the voluptuous blonde. "Mama hired her. She wasn't always that pretty." the last part was confidential. Plastic surgery was part of the Chamberlyn employee Healthcare plan? He'd pointed at the little redheaded girl who shared her sister's bright eyes. "That's Zora." he'd waited for Fallon to nod before pointing at the little blonde girl. She had her mother's eyes, and her mother's haughty demeanor. "And that's Kayley. She's a snot." (He'd confided the last bit to Fallon with a smile.) Fallon had awkwardly patted him on the back.

They'd left at three, and no one else had come to visit. Jada had spent the rest of the day moaning, tossing and turning as she mouthed something under her breath. Fallon had tried talking to her, when she saw Jada's eyes crack open, body moving like someone was shaking her, but the other girl wasn't responding. A seizure? Fallon had pushed the button, and watched as the doctors upped her roommate's pain medication. Keeping her unconscious was the best option? Well, they were the doctors.

The nurses brought Fallon her breakfast the next morning, and hooked up another saline drop to Jada's IV. They lowered the medication levels, and hooked back up the restraints; they were going to allow her to wake back up, but they couldn't have her flinging herself back off the bed, or worse, ripping out her IV again.

***

Jada came to slowly, opening her eyes to a fuzzy white blur. It hurt and so she closed her eyelids again. She tried to move her hands, but she couldn't. A small whimper spilled from chapped lips as the young woman tried to shift her weight around. Her back was burning! The last thing she remembered... was Dylan, sitting in a chair. Alexandros. Salamanders? Her stalker! Oh go- no, that had been a dream. It had been a dream. She shifted. The air was cold. Why on earth was it so cold? Her legs drew up towards her middle and her face scrunched up. Slowly, purple eyes drifted open again. She was in a hospital. Ugh. Ugly, ratty curtains like the ones she'd so hated in Elke's room. There was another... "Fallon." she mouthed the word as she recognized the other person. It didn't found like she'd gotten the name out properly, to her own ears, more like a little moan that would be barely recognized as an attempt at a name.

Clothing scratched over the front of her body, but the back was open. She wasn't wearing anything but a hospital gown? The sheets were scratchy on bare legs. She looked at the other girl, swallowed, and tried again. "Fallon?" her voice came out clearer. Jada cleared her throat, the sound rusty.

Hospital? She mouthed the word, exhausted. It took much longer than the three seconds that Fallon had allotted for her to respond. "Don't need the nurse." she murmured. Her mouth felt fat, and full of cotton. It was typical of being heavily medicated. Or so she had heard. Medicated. Right. The remembrance of a nurse, asking her about a phone number. She gave her friend a weak smile. "I was gonna come visit you." the sentence was slow but clear as medication slid through her system. Her eyes focused on the room, the tiles on the ceiling, the dirty-looking curtains. She tried to roll over, blinking in confusion as she found herself restrained. Worst of all, her back hurt.

Wait, she'd already thought all these things. Hadn't she?

She opened her mouth, intending to ask Fallon why she was hear, when a slender older woman bustled in, giving Jada a bright smile. "Miss Chamberlyn! You're up and about already? Good, good!" Up and about? Jada bared her teeth in a mockery of a smile, already hating this woman. "We have so many people wanting to ask you questions." Jada shook her head, tired. "Especially about that phone number on your back. One heck of a calling card. We saved it for you, just in case."

You're not quite rid of me yet.

She couldn't help but give a little smile. "Can I give the interviewers rain coats?" she stopped, discombobulated. They didn't need rain coats. "Rain Checks." she corrected slowly. Looked over at Fallon for support. "What day is it?"

"No morphine." Not until she couldn't stand it anymore. Jada still carefully took note of the location of the button.

"Saturday?" Jada's eyes widened. Saturday. There was something important about this Saturday. She couldn't remember what. "I need a shower." she told the nurse, trying to sit up in her bed. "Potty. Hairbrush." All the things she thought of, and in the order she thought of them. "Shirt." she plucked at the hospital gown.

"Not a chance on the shirt, Miss Chamberlyn." the nurse's face was friendly and stern. But she undid Jada's restraints, helping the young woman sit up.

"Ow." it was all Jada could say, eloquently.

"Ow indeed." the nurse's voice was cheerful, and when she turned, Jada bared her teeth in a very unfriendly look.

I hate her. She mouthed to Fallon. It was probably the first time she'd said anything mean in the other girl's presence. "Saturdays are our days." she told the other girl finally, trying to push to her feet behind the nurse's back. Her black hair fell down her back, making her hiss. "Couldn't leave you alone on a Saturday."

It was the hiss that made the nurse turn and cluck at her disapprovingly. "Young lady, DOWN." she snapped. Pulled the mass of black hair off of Jada's back, exposing it (and the upper part of her bare bottom) for the first time to the other girl's view. Red and welted, there was a slash across the lower left part of her back that looked as though it had been inflicted by some kind of a knife. But the worst part was the burned skin, blistered and frankly... painful-looking.

Jada couldn't feel it right now. Logically, she knew it was there, and turned her body to hide it from sight. "Need a back." she murmured.

"Lets go see about your other requests first." the nurse said finally. Pushed Jada back onto the bed, though in a sitting position, and vanished from the room.

Purple eyes looked over at Fallon, and her lips curved in a faint smile. "How is the food?"

Jada gave Fallon a weak smile. She really hadn't thought she'd need to think about a cover story that soon. Briefly, she debated the truth. Truth would, frankly, be the best cover story ever. "Well, there were Salamanders, and I was gonna get eaten, and they melted the subway." she shook her head. She probably sounded like a loon. "And then a prince saved me." Jada gave her friend as much of a shrug as she could manage. She swallowed, glancing at the door. The nurse would be back any minute.

"I can't really feel anything." she confessed finally. "I don't know if it is because of the drugs, or because of..." she shook her head. Memories drifted through her mind, making Jada want to scream. Instead, her face just twisted, confusion and agitation at war. "Tell me the truth." Jada said finally. "You saw my back. I haven't." she'd gotten a brief glimpse, she thought, in the mirror before Dylan had brought her here. Please, Fallon, tell me it isn't bad. Tell me it isn't going to scar, and it wasn't going to ruin me. Tell me it will be okay. she wanted to plead with her friend, but more important was that her friend tell her the truth.

Pity. That was what she thought she was reading. No, she didn't want pity. She never had. She thrived on admiration, not peoples pity.

Logically, beyond the wishes, Jada knew that it wasn't a first degree burn. First degree burns didn't go numb like this. First degree burns wouldn't scar as often. This was second degree if she was lucky. Feeling pain was good, though. And she did feel pain sometimes, past the medication. A third degree would have had her feeling numb, as the nerves of her back would be dead. A third degree burn, and she wouldn't be in a room with Fallon, she'd be in a burn ward.

So second degree it was- it had to be. She could work with that. There was a chance that if she was very careful, she wouldn't be ruined. Her slim body gave a shudder. For her to be scarred would be worse than if she'd died in that tunnel. Her entire life she'd relied on appearances.

It's... bad. The words made Jada flinch. It was what she'd expected, not what she'd wanted to hear. "She'll be back in a few minutes." Jada said finally, and started to fall backwards onto the bad, catching herself a moment before her lower back could touch the sheets. "I just need a shower. I hate feeling dirty." The thought of the fact she'd been unconscious for several days disgusted her. Biological necessities, and the fact she'd been unable to properly care for herself... ugh. "I need a hairbrush. Do you think they'll let me have a hairbrush?" Avoidance tactics? Focus on the small problems. "Maybe they'll have some yummy-smelling shampoo. I don't want to smell bad."

The nurse stepped back into the room. "Your doctor approved a shower, as long as we're very careful with your back. It'll be like going to a salon, washing your hair." Jada's eyes were almost wild as she cast a helpless look back at Fallon. Not this nurse. She would try and throttle Miss Chirpy. She wanted a human right now, not someone who was all smiles and perk. "Aren't you so lucky?"

"Lucky." Jada parroted. "Can I walk myself?"

"One step at a time, dear." the nurse patted the hand that didn't have an IV in it. "Miss Fallon, we'll have your roomie back in a jiffy. You may want to take this opportunity to have a nap, perhaps?" From outside the door, she brought in a wheelchair, helping the slim figure into it.

Out the door, away from view.

Half an hour later, and Jada was brought back with her dark hair neatly washed and plaited, braided pigtails, one over each shoulder to keep her hair off her back, dressed in a fresh gown. She looked pink-faced from scrubbing, nice and clean. And the moment she was hooked back up to her morphine drip? She pressed it, once, shuddering. The water had hurt her burn, but nothing like the ointment they had rubbed over her lower back.

She settled back in the bed, gripping a magazine she'd harassed a nurse into getting for her. "Did I miss anything?"

When Jada returned, Fallon was not napping. She was doing needlework in tight loops with a thin silver pin. It wasn't clear what she was creating, some type of flower maybe. She set it down in her lap when Jada crossed to the bed and offered a consoling smile. "All better?" The girl looked slightly improved, even if annoyance created a mask over her typically pleasant features.

"You missed the grass growing outside the window. I think somewhere there is paint drying." She waved a hand dramatically, but stopped when the door swung open to unveil a familiar blunette. "Audrey!" Liliana had come to visit the day before and she'd received a few texts of concern, but this was the first she'd seen of Audrey since the makeover.

Fallon wanted to get out of the bed, but she was still hooked to an IV. Something about rehydrating her, delivering some pain medication for her ribs. Something like that. So she smiled twice as wide. "If you try and walk without your doctor-prescribed crutches, you might get your wish and take up a bed in our room." There were chairs on either side of the room, some closer to Jada's bed and the others closer to Fallon's. Audrey certainly had options.

She eyed Audrey's legs. "What happened to you?" The irony was lost on her.

That was probably the most noticeable difference about Audrey, was the fact that her legs were bare to the world. No pants, no stockings, just small denim shorts baring quite a lot of scraped and white leg down into the boot brace around her right calf and foot. The scrapes on her arm were less noticeable beneath the traditional zip-up sweater, and the cheek and jaw ones unmistakable. Hobbling slowly into the room, Audrey dragged a chair between the two beds and dropped her crutches ceremoniously with a distasteful look on her face.

"You won't believe me, but I fell down the stairs. Haven't been sleeping too well because of some stupid nightmares, and I guess I wasn't looking where I was going. Bam, right down. Tried to break the fall on my face, but I guess faces aren't meant for it and I tried my leg. Hairline fracture." Resignation and a bit of sorrow tinged her voice, the second making little sense. Of course, she definitely wouldn't be believed if she'd said she tried to kill her senshi boyfriend because the Queen of the Negaverse was about to kill her as well. There were things you didn't just say. "Maybe you guys should let them know to keep a room ready for us, and we can personalize it. Interesting things like a real tv and decent food. Unless you guys like this crud. Then I'm going to have to have you examined again!" The teen half-smiled, stretching her scabs somewhat painfully as she leaned over to pat both Fallon and Jada comfortingly.

"I'm in better shape than you two, at least. Are you guys doing ok?" Concern was rich, it wasn't nice having friends that were injured, and she'd become too used to this place while Khaldun was in his convalescence.

He had waited as long as he could. Honest. But after no call, no way of getting in touch, Marlo assumed the worst. Jada had simply not wanted to spend time with him. He probably chased her away. Sighing, Marlo pulled the pizza he had made from the bag. A gift to Fallon. Handmade from scratch, pure, ethnic, simple. She might enjoy it, she might not.

At the hospital, he started to feel a little better. While he wasn't close to Fallon by any means, but he knew her, she was polite, and she was in the hospital. A certain formal part of him felt it only right he come and say hello.
The chef in him knew she must have been dying.
So, good, well made pizza.

That was the plan at least, until he walked in and saw- "Jada? Fallon? Uh-" he didn't know the bluenette, but he felt odd. Like he just crashed a very private party. "I can wait in the hall. The smell of the pizza filled the room. He looked at it. "...I suppose this explains our canceled ride today then." Pink cheeks. "I guess I should have made more then." Marlo should have made more guesses, but he then, he never was a gambling sort.