Ghost Fever (story)

"Oh, no, that's a nosebleed. No problem, I know what to do."

"There you go, now just hold the tissue like I did and you should be good."

"... hm? Oh, got blood on my hands too, whoops.  Whatever, I'll wash them later."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Karina returned home to find Hannah asleep face-down on her bed, taking up as much space as her body could. Maybe she stayed up too late again? Maybe she just had a tiring day. Clothes were still scattered across the floor -- something Hannah had promised to clean up today -- and every other available surface was covered in technological bits and empty glass spheres. At least she hadn't filled the room with empty pop cans yet.

Karina took off all her winter gear -- none of that was needed in Entela, where there was no end to the summer -- and hung it on the back of a chair that a certain girlfriend of hers had put a heavy machine on. She then planted herself next to Hannah and placed a hand on hers. Instead of the calm warmth that Hannah's body usually held, it felt more like fire right now.

“You doing alright?” She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Probably just a fever. She pulled back her hand to tap at her transceiver -- the metal magical computer attached to her wrist that received information about Hannah's vitals. Occasionally it alerted her to big problems, like major injuries or high fevers. Otherwise, it was just something she could check if she wasn't at home. Most importantly for now, it kept track of Hannah's 'internal energy', the little flowing elemental motes of aether and magic that she needed to survive. Karina didn't really have much context for the numbers it gave her, but some clever people had figured out how to tell her what Hannah's average was, so if it was ever too far up or down, it could tell her.

Right now, Hannah's 'Fire' energy was way too high -- which, as far as Karina understood it, meant nothing other than she had a fever. Her 'Dark' energy was also too high, but she had no idea what that meant. Everything else was a bit high, but close to normal. This sort of 'more energy than normal' event was the way Hannah got herself sick all the time.

"Work got you again, huh?" Karina remarked, mostly to herself. Hannah's job was more dangerous than she talked about. While Karina learned how to help Hannah recover from it, the fact that mere exposure to her engineering caused sickness like this was nothing short of terrifying. If her body's aether stayed unbalanced, a fever could get worse, and maybe her body would start thinking it's under attack.

Karina rolled Hannah over to help her breathe, and was overcome by an immediate sense of panic. Her shirt was covered in blood. Her transceiver didn't tell her about this. Why didn't it tell her? She reached down to pull Hannah's shirt off, to find any source of injury, and...

She was fine. No injuries anywhere. Where else could she have gotten this much blood from? “Hannah?” her voice cracked. A trembling hand carefully lifted Hannah’s head. There was no blood on her face. Probably not internal damage so… was the blood not hers?

“Contact,” she called to her transceiver. Contact who? Did she need to be healed? Was this some new exhaust symptom? All she knew is she couldn’t do nothing. “Contact, Seiva.”

Seiva answered almost immediately. “Hi, what’s up?”

“It’s Hannah. She’s covered in blood from I don’t know where, her Fire and Dark and *everything* is too high, and she’s,” her breathing was so loud. Deep breath. “She’s not waking up, and, and, I don’t know what to do, I don’t…”

“... is the blood hers?”

“Uh, I don’t… I don’t know where else she could’ve gotten it from.”

“Your transceiver has a function for that. Should be the… hold on…” Seiva went silent for a minute. “Third page of Hannah’s vitals page, if the documentation’s right. Just hold it over the blood, it’ll figure it out.”

“Uh…” Yep, there it was. She poked the button, and like Seiva said, held it over the blood… aaand it said it wasn’t hers. “Okay, so, uh, where did it come from?”

“Right, so, calm down. She was at school, right? I’ll ask around tomorrow, see if anyone saw her. Don’t worry about it. It’s not hers? She’s fine.”

“If you’re sure… Probably just, someone at the school spilled it on her and she was just too burned out to change? I hope?”

“That’s what I’m figuring. Maybe someone cut themselves making lunch or something. Try to calm down for tonight.” And the device clicked off.

Karina could still feel herself shaking. It didn’t add up enough, but Seiva didn’t seem worried. More likely that Hannah had just overworked herself again than she had some Volaria sickness that Seiva had never heard of. She focused instead on getting the bloody shirt off Hannah, then finding somewhere in the cluttered room to put it without it staining anything else, or getting lost before they could figure out where it’d come from.

She sat on the bed next to Hannah as best she could and began breathing deeply and slowly. Aether exhaustion overheated her, and unlike the fevers Karina might get, the only thing they were hurting was Hannah. As long as they could keep her cool for the night, she’d wake up just fine, if still exhausted.

Karina had a cold spell, but just thinking about it made needles run up her arms. Deep breaths. She could do it this time. Karina took Hannah’s hand as best she could and closed her eyes. In the darkness, she remembered ice covering her arms, digging and biting when she tried to escape. Deep breaths. This was for Hannah. She could do it for Hannah. She exhaled, and tensed as the freezing air from it met her skin. Another exhale, broken up but still chilling the air around them. She peeked at Hannah’s vitals on her transceiver, stopping whenever her temperature fell close enough to normal. Ice could be okay, sometimes.

Eventually, the air began to warm back up, and her temperature would creep up again, and Karina would cool it back down again. She lost count of how many times. Something was buzzing against her arm now. It took her a few seconds to piece together she hadn’t taken off her transceiver, and now her morning alarm was going off. She wasn’t even sure she had fallen asleep. Hannah was still out cold–or rather out hot. Her fever was back. She was now completely drenched in sweat. Is this something that normally happens? Karina put effort into cooling Hannah again, and once again, her fever went away. Maybe she got up in the middle of night and tried to go back to bed?

… Nope. The fever shouldn't still be here. It was time to call Seiva again.

"Contact Seiva." She announced into her transceiver. It beeped at her. Then it beeped again.

Then Seiva's voice picked up. She had far less energy than last time Karina had talked to her. "What's up?"

"Hannah's not waking up. Maybe it’s an aether thing?  I don’t know, it’s weird."

"... can you be more descriptive?"

"Uh......"

"Got it, I'll be right there." Her transceiver clicked at her.

Karina held Hannah's hand, reassuring herself that Hannah would be fine and that this is normal for her sickness. She got fevers all the time, especially when she was overworking herself. This must just be a particularly bad one. And yet, even being full of too much warmth, Hannah's skin was paling... not a lot, maybe most people wouldn't even notice it, but Karina did.

It took around 15 stressful minutes for Karina's transceiver to relay her another message from Seiva: 'Here.'  In that time, Hannah's fever had returned. Karina rushed to let Seiva in. Today, Seiva seemed to be wearing blue pajamas and long socks. Her hair wasn't brushed, her eyes were barely open. She was holding a thermos, too, but its contents remained a mystery.

"You know it's, like.... 5 in the morning, right?" Seiva asked.

"I... didn't really know what else to do..." Karina moved out of the way.

Seiva wasted no further time walking across the carpet of clothes and sitting herself next to Hannah. She waved her arm over her, muttering "that's way too high", and "why are you..." under her breath. She then tried to do the same thing Karina did -- use magic to quell the fever. And, just like Karina had discovered, her fever came back, resulting in the widest eyes that Karina could imagine a tired Seiva being capable of.

"That usually works," Seiva noted.

"Mm-hm."

"Not aetheric, then?" Seiva proposed. "Hope not. I can't do much about not aetheric." Karina started to feel Seiva grabbing magic again, touching parts of Hannah's body and disrupting what looked like a film of sweat that covered her.

"So, uh, what do we do?" Karina questioned, her eyes trained on Hannah, watching the steady breaths as they went in and out.

"I've got a few more things to try... I was hoping it would be the simple fix, but when you're as stubborn as Hannah is, you can kinda shut off a lot of those options by pretending you're fine."

"Will she be okay?"

"As long as it's aetherics, I'll figure it out. Hopefully it stays that way." Seiva said nothing more while she worked on weaving magic, so Karina occupied her time sending a message to her supervisor, letting him know that she had a bit of an emergency to attend to and describing as much of the situation as she could.

Karina was about to ask Seiva for an update when a brief but loud alarm erupted from her transceivers. One of the bad alarms. Before she could even check it, Seiva had already asked, "What's it say?"

Looking at her transceiver, she struggled to find the breath to speak at first. She needed to force the words out. She needed to. "Low... low oxygen."

Seiva looked up at her. She was definitely awake now. "What." She looked back down at Hannah. Hannah's skin was even paler. She was breathing fine, the transceiver said her energy was all higher than normal, so what was going wrong? "Get Solari. Something's very wrong and it's not something I can fix."

Karina was already running out the door before Seiva even finished commanding her. Solari, doing the best impression of a god of life in Volaria, could probably fix whatever was wrong. She could get breath into Hannah. Even four years ago, Karina could have done something as simple as telling her transceiver to call Solari and she'd be able to appear. Now, though, she had a room she was occupying, and because the transceiver Entela gave her was constantly in a call, Karina couldn't call it anymore. Even if she could, there was no guarantee Solari was watching her at that moment.

Solari's door was never locked. She didn't exactly have possessions right now anyways, and she couldn't operate the locks even if she wanted to. On the other side was Solari's almost sterile metal room. It had a bed and doorways to a kitchen and bathroom just like Hannah did, but it had no other furniture. A transceiver hooked up to a power supply was hidden under the bed.

Standing in the middle of the room was a small elf girl in a glowing yellow dress. This was the avatar of Solari, the body she took to be in the world. Normally, she would be laying down, in a bath, or not even here, so... something told Karina that she already knew before she started explaining the situation.

Which only took another second. "Right, grab the transceiver," Solari commanded. "This is going to take some time."

"What, what's wrong?" Karina dropped herself to the floor to pull the device out from under the bed. This was the only way Solari could manifest her body right now.

"Need to cast some spells to figure that out, but I bet it's blood," she decided. Karina pushed herself back to her feet, transceiver and battery in hand. "Seiva tried, it's not an aether problem, that's really bad. Run as fast as you can, I'll try to keep up."

And again, Karina was already running before the end of that instruction. Every moment wasted is another moment without breath for Hannah. Every moment without breath was another moment for her body to start falling apart. And who knew how many of those moments she had.

An eternity had passed before Karina finally came back to Hannah's cluttered room. Solari was nowhere to be seen, but her transceiver was still in hand. Hannah's breathing was far too shallow. It had been maybe an hour since this morning, when she only had a fever. What went so wrong?

Karina wasn't sure when she got there, but Solari was already inside. She had taken a position on Hannah's bed, kneeling over her and casting spell after spell of various forms of healing magic. And then, at some point, she felt the same spell cast around 10 times in quick succession. Seiva backed away to let her do whatever it is she was doing.

"Her blood is dying. Rapidly." Solari observed. "What is this."

"What do you mean her blood is dying?" Karina asked, far more forcefully than she wanted to.

"Something's killing her blood.  I'm replacing it.  It's trying to race me.  I've never seen something do this before.  Can you copy my spell?".

"I-I, maybe, but it won't be as good, but..."

‘Anything to help her’ was the line that she wanted to say, but she was already busy trying to do what Solari was doing. What was she doing? Was she making new blood from scratch? Reyhsia taught Karina to manipulate blood, but never anything like that. Surely she couldn't replicate that power, but maybe she could do something kind of close?

Maybe Karina had something for this. In Zerospace, she had a gauntlet with six fingers. That could let her do it. She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling her way to Sanctuary, to where her chest was. The gauntlet was in there. And then, it was here. She hesitantly put it on. Energy surged through her as it doubled the strength of her spells for a few precious minutes. It was probably still nothing compared to a god, and she would be truly useless once it ran out, but anything she could do…

Solari’s power felt way too large. Whatever limits she had, she was pushing it. Karina couldn't figure out what she was doing, either. But, in at least some way, it felt like it was helping. At least a little bit, Hannah was regaining some color. But... She couldn't -- and didn't want to -- say it out loud, but Solari already knew too. The two were keeping Hannah alive, but they weren't saving her. The moment they stopped, whatever was hurting her would come back.

“What’s going on? Can we — can you fix it?” Karina asked.

Solari didn't answer her. She thought about asking again... then decided that she really didn't want to hear the answer. She just kept focused on whatever magic Solari was doing, hoping that Seiva had some kind of plan. Seiva had finished whatever she was doing on her transceiver and hadn’t said anything, so maybe that was something?

And then the loudest person in Entela found out what was going on. Hannah's adoptive sister, Mikara, wearing some kind of heavy armor from a world away, pushed her way into the room. She, much like Karina, was probably on the way to work.

"The hell is going on," she demanded.

"H-Hannah..." Karina couldn't get any more of the sentence out. She had to focus on Solari's magic to keep herself from devolving into useless tears. Tears wouldn't help Hannah.

"Her blood is disappearing and I don't know why." Solari answered.

"... what. How.  How long?" Mikara stared at Hannah. "Bad fever too?"

"Yep," Seiva answered. "Been at the top end of 39 since I got here."

"A-and she was like that last night too," Karina added.

"... how is she not dead?" Mikara asked. "She should've been in a hospital days ago! Okay, cool, we’re doing that now.”  She pushed herself past Karina and looked for the best way to pick Hannah up.  “This is Ghost Fever, it’s a really bad sickness everyone and their mom is vaccinated against on Virilin.”

“... and is aether resistant, I guess?” Solari added.

“Guess so,” Mikara agreed. “Right, who else has been in contact with her?”

“Just… the people here,” Karina answered. “Seiva, Solari, and me.”

Mikara looked up at Seiva. “You’re the only one at risk there. Kari’s a planeswalker and Solari only has, like, half a body. You’re coming with us.”

Seiva shook her head. “I don’t have time. I feel fine and I’m busy.”

“I bet she thought she was fine too,” Mikara pointed out. “So you’re coming with us, even if I have to physically drag you.”

Seiva was about to argue, but Mikara kept a firm stare on her, exercising authority over Seiva that she didn't have. Seiva hired her. And yet, she accepted Mikara's command. "Alright," Seiva agreed. "What do we do?"

"Start walking to the tunnel," she commanded. "I'm gonna call up an ambulance so they can take over for Solari once we leave Volaria. Head advisor," Mikara directed forcefully to Seiva. "Get Master Sara to keep people out of our way. Get her to set the tunnel to Hanashi.  Don't want any fluids getting on people.  How'd she get it anyways?" Mikara looked around for the closest shirt she could find and threw it on Hannah.

"Her shirt was covered in blood?" Karina answered. "It wasn't hers?"

"... really." Mikara checked the shirt she just put on Hannah. No blood. "Anyone else touch that shirt?"

"Just me."

"Gonna have to do laundry once we have Hannah in the hospital. It and anything else that blood touched. That's hazmat stuff now, it could get her or anyone else sick again.  … and apparently you can't use magic for it." She reached her arms around Hannah and lifted her onto a shoulder. "You're so wet. Right, let's go."

Karina grabbed Solari's transceiver and followed behind the fastest suit of armor in Entela. Unlike when she was following Karina, Solari glided along the ground, keeping as much magic on Hannah as possible. Her transceiver decided that Hannah was no longer short on oxygen — welcome news, but not good enough on its own — but she still had a fever somewhere above 39 degrees, which Karina understood to be 'bad'.

Probably the result of it being 6 in the morning, there was no one in the hallways of the Entelan complex. There was no noise louder than the footsteps on the metal floor. Karina couldn't keep up with keeping magic on Hannah anymore. She kept eyes everywhere instead and tried her best to avoid panic and tears. The moment the gauntlet caught that she was done using it, she could also feel it pulling on her energy, preventing her from trying to do anything that looked like a spell for the next little while.

The room the group ended up at was a wide circular room that contained the Tunnel. In the floor and ceiling, there was a circle outlining where to stand, just large enough for a couple people. A small glowy human girl in a black dress with yellow stripes along the bottom was in charge of the controls — this was the Master Sara that Mikara talked about, normally in charge of all of Entela, but right now acting like a normal engineer just waiting for the group.

Mikara shouted to the group. "Okay, Kari, leave Solari with Master Sara. You're gonna take Hannah and go through.  Tell them you're her final partner, not that you're her girlfriend, got it?"

Karina swallowed as her head nodded slightly on its own. "Y-yeah, I can do that." She rushed over to Master Sara and left Solari’s transceiver and battery with her.

"After you're through, I'm going to come through with Seiva. She's less likely to drop dead without immediate medical supervision. Right, let's do it."

Karina stood in the center of the circle. Mikara leaned down and let Karina take Hannah's limp body. She couldn't carry Hannah far, but she could keep her standing for a bit.

The moment Mikara was clear, Sara pushed a few buttons, and above her, a hole opened in the world, surrounded by crackling pale energy and displaying a white-carpeted room on the other side. The hole dropped around her and Hannah, and within moments, they were no longer on Volaria.

Two men dressed in white, standing next to a bed on wheels, motioned her over, and she did her best to get Hannah over to them. "Hannah," she said aloud.

One of the men took over and lifted her onto the bed. He talked into some kind of communication device while he and the other man started rolling the bed down a hallway, "Ghost Fever, severe blood loss. Blood type…"  He looked at Karina. He apparently took her expression as a sign of panic. "Unknown. Need a transfusion as soon as possible."

Karina rushed to follow them. "I'm her final partner." One of the men nodded. "She's had a bad fever since last night. We thought it was an aether thing, but then it didn't get better, and…"

"Don't worry, we've got it," the man said. The hallway was a straight path to the outside, carpeted in white and walls painted in Entela's black with yellow stripes. Outside — other than the midday sun, apparently — was a bus loop, where theoretically people could take buses from where she was — the Entelan Academy for Interplanar Youth —  down to the city of Minei. Karina hadn't been on one of those buses yet, and today looked like it wouldn't change that. A vehicle that looked roughly the same as every ambulance she'd ever seen was ready and waiting. It had back doors that opened, with a woman sitting in the back, waiting with all the meters and tools.

The men wheeled the bed up to the back of the ambulance, lifted it up, and pushed Hannah inside. "Get in," one of them ordered Karina. Karina hopped into the back, sat down in a small seat, and opened Hannah's vitals onto her transceiver. Her oxygen wasn't low again yet.

"If you're uncomfortable with needles, look away," the woman warned.

"I'm okay," she said, more to herself than anyone else. Hannah was in the hands of professionals now. She should be okay now. The frantic commands of the paramedics, however, didn't do much to help that optimism. They needed to put blood in her more than once, and at one point they also mentioned some kind of drug.

The journey to the hospital took 20 endless minutes. The same way they got her in, the men pulled Hannah and the bed out of the ambulance — followed by Karina pulling herself out of the ambulance. They guided her inside, where Hannah was transferred to another rolling bed owned by a different group of doctors. This hospital, much like Entela's hallways, was sterile and metallic, with no impossible-to-clean carpet and no flammable wood.

“Volarian, 16 years old,” one of the doctors listed off from Hannah’s transceiver. “Unknown blood type, unvaccinated. Fever discovered 12 hours ago, rapid blood loss this morning. Received two O-type transfusions on the way.” They looked at Karina. “And who are you?”

“I, uh, Hannah’s final partner…”

“You don’t know her blood type?” Karina shook her head.

“It’s never come up! I can try contacting her mother, though. Is… is she going to be okay?”

“Mm… Probably, but she’s going to need to be here for a while. Antibiotics, IV drip, blood transfusions, antibodies. Have you contacted any of her fluids, blood, saliva, anything since she’s been sick?”

“Sweat, if that counts. And I’m a planeswalker, for whatever that’s worth.”

The doctor looked down at Hannah. “Well, if you feel any symptoms, come back immediately.”

“Uh, what are the symptoms?”

“Mm… Fever, fatigue, weakness, nausea, dizziness, chest pains. If you can get her blood type, that’d be great.”

The doctor pushed open a door into a small room with a bed. Most of the other doctors scattered to go get medical supplies, and Karina could only push herself into a chair in the corner to stay out of the way. She wasn’t even sure what all of what they were doing was, only that multiple needles were involved and that Hannah was changed out of her clothes into ones that weren’t drenched in sweat and whatever other fluids.

Karina sent a message to Hannah’s mom. She hadn’t talked to Hannah recently — or much of anyone else in Entela, for that matter — but she needed to hope she would get a response.

''Hannah’s really sick. The doctors need her blood type.''

While waiting for a response, Karina occupied herself watching Hannah’s vitals, and seeing the ‘low oxygen’ warning stay off her screen filled her with a small hope. Her transceiver dinged with a response from Karina’s mom. There was no questioning, no deep conversation. The message consisted of only a few characters.

B+.

After an eternity, the doctors called her attention. Hannah was hooked up to no fewer than three devices and two separate bags, one of which had a clear fluid and the other was definitely blood. She was now wearing a long, clean white robe, and her original clothes were nowhere to be seen. She had a mask to help her breathe, even though it sounded like that wasn’t actually her problem with breathing.

“So,” the same doctor from before started. “We’re going to take a blood sample so we know what kind of blood we can give her—”

“B+,” Karina cut the doctor off.

“— Excellent. With the state she’s in, she should be fine, eventually. It might take a couple days for her to wake up, maybe a week after that for her to be well enough to leave. She’ll have to stay on antibiotics for about a month to make sure it stays dead, so… make sure she doesn’t forget.”

Karina’s body shook with a ragged sigh of relief. “She’s going to be okay, she’s,” she let loose a pained laugh and sniffled as she tried to compose herself. “Okay. Okay. I’m not going to let her forget, don’t you worry. She’s going to be okay,” she repeats under her breath.

“Yeah. Your name?”

“Karina Oblay.” The doctor wrote a note down onto a sticky note and stuck it on one of the devices.

“Cool, you’re okay to leave now. We’ll call you when she starts to wake up.”

“I need to be here for her.”

“There’s nothing more you can do for her here. Best thing for you to do would be to make sure she’s got a clean place at home so she doesn’t risk a reinfection. That okay?”

Karina gritted her teeth. “No. But if that’s the best thing I can do… alright.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hannah felt Karina’s hand in hers before she could open her eyes. She couldn’t think straight, or move on her own. She couldn’t really even hear anything — but maybe that was because it was nearly silent. A soft, constant beep was all that was around. She could feel cold. She could feel that her transceiver wasn’t on her arm. Karina’s hand was the only thing she cared about.

The beep changed. It didn’t get any louder, but the pattern changed to something more resembling a heartbeat. “Are you awake?” Karina softly asked. Hannah couldn’t respond with all the words she wanted to say. The first that came to mind was an apology. The next was a necessary ‘I love you’ that she hadn’t been allowed to say for who knows how long. After that were questions about what happened and why she was cold. Her mouth couldn’t say any of those things. She squeezed Karina’s hand instead.

“You had me really scared…” Karina added. “Seiva didn’t know what to do, Solari didn’t know what to do… apparently you caught some kinda Virilin bug that’s not a big deal until you aren’t from Virilin.” Hannah tried her best to make some kind of sound, but breathing was the best she could do.

“They think you’ll need to be here a couple more days. I guess I can… kinda see why.” Hannah continued to try to will her body to do any of the things she wanted to do, and she felt like she was kind of making progress. The top priority to her was opening her eyes. “They have you on, um, antibiotics. I don’t know if you know what those are, since you don’t have that kind of sickness on Volaria. They’re kinda, like… this medicine that kill things that’re trying to infect your body.” Hannah squeezed Karina’s hand again, so she knew she was being heard.

Her eyes pretended to open, causing Karina to stop whatever she was talking about. It wasn’t much brighter with her eyes trying to open than with them fully closed. She still couldn’t vocalize anything, but maybe if she could just… see. After a minute of trying to open her eyes, she relaxed herself again.

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” Karina pleaded. “I’ll wait as long as you need. I’ll be here.”

Despite the request, Hannah tried to will her eyes open again, to… moderate success. She couldn't keep them open, as if she was just woken up in the middle of the night, but she had enough to get a faint understanding of what was around her. Karina was on one side of her bed. The walls were dull and metallic, but didn't faintly glow like the ones at home did.

"You, uh…" Karina hesitated, but the weight of even the few seconds pushed her forward. "You lost a lot of blood. Doctors were saying it might take weeks or maybe even a month or two to get back to the amount of blood you're supposed to have.  I've got a list of food you're supposed to eat.  Your skin went white and my… transceiver said you had low oxygen and then Solari said all your blood was dying and we fought to make sure you had blood…  Mikara said she didn't know how you weren't dead…"

Hannah could hear Karina sniffling. She tightened her grip on Karina's hand, hoping to remind her that she'd be okay. She tried again to force her eyes open, to prove that she was getting better. And, for at least a little bit, she succeeded. Her right arm had tubes stuck into it with needles where her transceiver was supposed to be. Her other arm had a tight bracelet hooked up to a machine with a metal knob trapped under it.

"Mmmm…" Hannah tried to produce sound. Surely her body hadn't forgotten how to do that. Whatever. It got Karina's attention, and that's all she really wanted. When Karina had wiped her tears away, she looked up, and Hannah's eyes locked with hers. Hannah lost herself in Karina's gaze. That was the sight she was hoping for. She could feel that her smile was weak, but it was a smile.

Karina returned a smile for her. "I’m so sorry, sunshine. I just let you… I thought this was your normal… I…” She sniffed and tried to catch her breath, “I should have done more, if Mikara hadn’t, hadn’t…”"

"Hm…" Hannah lightly tilted her head, not entirely sure what message she was trying to send. "..n…not…" she struggled, but forced the word out anyways. Karina needed to hear her talking. "Not… dead… yet."

"That’s right," Karina replied with a pained laugh. "Not for a long, long time. I just want to hold you and cover you in kisses, but they’re not letting me do that with all these needles here.  I can just… tell you you’re going to be okay.  Tell you I love you.  It’s not enough, but it’s all I can give you right now."

Hannah tried her best to make the roll of her eyes obvious. "Needles getting in the way," she put together. "Love you too… can't things." She squeezed Karina's hand again.

Karina gently squeezed back."It’s just gonna take some time. I know you want to fight until you’re back to normal, but it’s okay to take your time. Let yourself rest when you need it, okay?”

"I'll… be fine."

"I know. I'll be here waiting for you.  You don't need to rush." Karina waited for a moment, and smiled at her. “Also, if the doctors ask, we’re final partners.”