1053. About health, 1
(Armylè)
Things were going well.
I was generally happy hearing how things went for my daughter. I had not liked the esoteric experiment but thankfully had not needed to do something about it.
Even though I wasn’t myself a master of science, I had expected my fellow colleagues to have at least similar awareness on realistic logical thinking.
I had been surprised by him, more than my daughters’s doings.
But anyway, that was a minor detail.
I was happy and confident with them as they grew. Because they might be sharper than me.
As weeks passed, I was able to paint again.
My first painting of my two adorable little daughters. One of many more to come!
Looking at the painting taking shape, that they were sisters no one would doubt. That they were twins, few would think of it.
Prume caught a cold and coughed occasionally. She was alright, maybe just a little more sensitive to the cold.
They were easily turbulent on their own but were rapidly be obedient when I asked things firmly. So things went well.
They could be good girls, probably better than I was at their age and rather good against others I heard about around me. Lucky me!
At their age, children are very happy to go to school. They were all smiles on the way outside, and all excited the evenings to tell me about their experiences of the day.
I was giggling often. Being happy and eager to go to school, I knew that too wouldn’t last.
I could already imagine that not so long from now, I would have to drag them out of their beds, press them to eat and dress, and toss them outside to go to middle or high school. That might be even harder if I become their teacher.
I picture them well in these future fantasies. Elyne still has her horn but both of them have the same teenager height and have long smooth haircuts of similar fashion. Only one of them has pink locks of hair, and the other one red or purple ones. They both make gross faces of unhappiness when I tell them to hurry to highschool before they’re late.
They tell me they want piercings and tattoos just to annoy me. But I tease them back saying I’ll get matching ones. They’re horrified at the prospect and vehemently protest, claiming I’m not allowed to. I cackle, I toss them out while they grunt.
Then the fantasy ends.
I’m holding my face and sigh, looking in the distance. I have some masochistic eagerness to these upcoming days of lousy teenage years. I did consider getting tattoos all over my back when it was my time. But the desire passed.
I wanted something symbolic, with four blue wings. But in the end I never really needed to do this to remember what they mean.
I’ll eventually tell them about what their genealogy and family history had been, I recall thinking along these days.
I couldn’t envision what it might mean next to the world’s history.
~
Still so young, their personalities had already begun shifting sensibly.
They had since birth, but now that they could talk and run away, it was even more obvious.
I had to spend a growing amount of time running after Elyne before she would herself again climbing onto things or testing her strength against something bigger than her. She was an extravert.
Prume meanwhile could spend hours thinking, reading, entirely absorbed into what she was doing. She was an introvert. Her sister could make a scene around, if Prume was focused, she wouldn’t notice.
But generally Prume preferred to doodle and read, in whichever order fancied her. All the books and albums given to her became naïve works of art, sooner or later. She might have inherited something from me that one.
Elyne clearly preferred physical activity from art. I guessed she took that from her father? It must have been some recessive genes of mine.
When Elyne was climbing above the cupboards and shelves containing all sorts of hazardous tools, Prume might be the one admiring and encouraging her success, if not downright laughing. Prume could have quite her fun and laughter admiring her rasher sister doing dangerous things.
Generally just loudly enough to alarm me and get me running to stop these adventures. Elyne was a real cat when it came to going high places. I scolded her, and Prume a little despite her laughter. Elyne would do it again the next day.
~
Another month in nursery school. They were at ease.
Prume had a bit of a cold and coughed again that morning but I made not much of it. Autumn was there and the weather was changing.
On that random day, all the children in their school were doing some painting, learning for the first time how you could mix things to produce unexpected colours and shades.
The twins were even more interested by it as they recognised to some level things that I was myself sometimes doing. I hadn’t share much of this knowledge with them directly.
Elyne was doing a collection of circles with a brush.
Prume was in deep thinking, facing a graded wash of greens, from lime to turquoise, mint and night aqua.
It was another peaceful moment in time. Prume was naturally breathing.
The thin vapours from these innocuous products somehow attacked the poor child. Her body overreacted and she began suddenly coughing very strongly.
It grew violent rapidly, she was suffocating and unable to control her cough reflex going wild. She was choking in a messy way.
The teacher lifted her and ran to the infirmary with her over his back, guessing a hyper-alergenic reaction.
Elyne had not been able to react. She saw them disappear and felt shocked, unable to react as she was left behind.
The classroom of busy children had not really turned chaotic since most of them didn’t quite realised what had happened.
But Elyne for the first time in her life felt the sharp pain of loneliness.
~
Down the corridor, a young medic was bored. Johann K.G.O.
The young man had never wished to be there. He would have given the world to be somewhere else.
His normal studies were incomparably more interesting than this part time job he was mandated to do there.
Him... A scientist and passionate physicist, he was forced to waste months of his time changing diapers and bandaging scrapped knees.
He hated it. But he was bidding his time in silence. To validate his diploma, he had to complete this time of civic service. These humanistic units were forcing students to have insight even in things they had interest in. The pretence or aim was to keep giving them some broader perspectives on things.
That was the most stupid of principles he ever had to cope with, from his perspective.
These rules he judged being of the muddiest stupidity were enraging him.
The arrogant young man was most urban by duty all the time, but his feelings permeated nonetheless.
On this day he had been reading a scientific article holding interesting new prospects for him. It was rehabilitating some older considerations to explain under a new perspective some leptons comportments in specific conditions.
But he was interrupted in his worthy meditation by sudden visitors.
A bearded teacher of the kind he didn’t like was rushing inside the infirmary, to drop near him a little girl apparently choking.
The medic without joy but absolute seriousness put his reading down on the spot and forgot about it already, to focus on helping this kid.
Prume was seated with their help, with ragged and wheezing breath, before a new series of violent coughs got to her. Her face was swollen and messy from tears.
Johann didn’t get the time to prepare anything, before Prume was leaning forward and spitting out a crimson lump of mucus that splat on the ground in bloody stains on the floor.
The teacher who had witnessed this was horrified and began calling the hospital.
The medic was trying to keep Prume steady and breathing but this was proving impossible. Prume was almost suffocating, expelling more of these while panicking.
The teacher heading out stumbled upon Elyne who had eventually followed them there. She had been waiting before the door, too scared to enter so far but already sobbing.
The man considered things, and hearing from behind the door that the coughs seemed to have calmed down, he considered maybe letting her inside. The medic nodded it was okay for them to come in.
Elyne met the tall blond medic, but mostly was looking at her sister lying there apparently sleeping.
Johann threw a syringe away and helped Prume remain steady, fluids slowly flowing out of her open mouth continuously.
J - I gave her a mild sedative to keep her steady while the ambulance arrives. She’s okay.
- Thank you Johann... See Elyne? She’s simply asleep. She will be fine.
He cleansed Prume’s mouth from the excess mucus accumulating. Some blood was still mixed with the fluids. He was throwing the tissues in the biological waste bin regularly.
He checked again her pulse and breathing. She was fine now. Elyne was still petrified. The teacher tried to reassure her but she didn’t seem to hear him.
Johann moved to leave more room for Elyne to see and get closer.
She was lying down on the table unconscious, mouth partially open, hair falling over her face. She might look somewhat asleep. Her face was returning to normal slowly.
- Should we return to the classroom Elyne? I’ll call your mother as well.
Elyne refused. She nodded negatively. She whispered something they didn’t hear.
Johann felt a mixture of disdain and disgust, but also some pity for them. He intervened against the teacher.
J - She’s just a kid. Just leave her here if she wants to stay. I don’t mind...
The teacher thought about it and agreed. He entrusted the other sister in his care as well, so he could return to the classroom. Johann wasn’t happy about it, but he preferred this to hearing another child yelling in the hallway.
Elyne sat quietly on a stool, looking at the lying body. The teacher felt something weird looking at them and finally left.
Along the corridor, he digested this unsavoury feeling and expressed it into a word he would eventually share with me. The idea that surmised his encounter with my kids back then.
Fatality.
That was the literary concept that kept creeping to his mind as he spent time with them. A weird and slightly unpleasant sensation of foreboding. A bad feeling about them and their destiny.
He was imagining some thin filaments of fate like threads binding them to some sad omen.
For this day, he returned to his classroom to do his best.
Meanwhile, Johann was taking care of Prume and Elyne for me.
~
