#for what we thought was a stroke but turned out to be a viral infection causing stroke symptoms

[andromedasummer]

ngl it seems like everything has been going wrong for my dads side of the family these first two months of the year

[miraclehealthcarecenter]

What is the reason for vertigo?

Vertigo can make even simple tasks feel challenging. It’s not a condition on its own but a symptom of other health issues that make you feel like the world around you is spinning. Knowing the vertigo causes can help you manage it and feel stable again. In this blog post, we will explore the different reasons for vertigo and how you can manage it.

Common Causes of Vertigo

According to the leading ENT doctor in Gurgaon at Miracles Apollo Cradle/Spectra, Vertigo can occur from several conditions, most of which impact the inner ear or the brain. Here are some of the common causes of vertigo:

Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV): BPPV occurs when tiny calcium crystals in the inner ear shift and enter the ear canals. This can lead to episodes of vertigo started by specific head movements, such as turning over in bed or looking up.

Meniere's Disease: Meniere's disease is thought to be caused by fluid buildup in the inner ear. This condition affects the inner ear and is indicated by episodes of vertigo, hearing loss, ringing in the ears, and a sensation of fullness in the ear.

Migraines: Migraine is a condition known as migrainous vertigo or vestibular migraine, and can also initiate vertigo. People who experience these types of migraines may have recurrent episodes of dizziness or vertigo that last from a few minutes to several hours, along with migraine symptoms like a throbbing headache, light and sound sensitivity, and nausea.

Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA): Both conditions can disrupt the flow of blood to the brain, resulting in sudden vertigo along with other symptoms such as difficulty speaking, weakness, or confusion. If you experience any of these symptoms, consult an ENT doctor near you for immediate medical attention.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS): Multiple Sclerosis is a severe disease affecting the central nervous system(CNS). MS can lead to different symptoms, including vertigo, due to lesions in the brain that disrupt balance and spatial orientation.

Vestibular Neuritis: This is an inflammation of the vestibular nerve that is often initiated by a viral infection. Vestibular Neuritis can result in sudden and severe vertigo that may last several days, along with other symptoms like balance issues and nausea.

Medications: Certain medications may have side effects that include dizziness or vertigo. If you notice these symptoms after starting a new medication, consult your healthcare provider.

Head Injuries: Head trauma or injuries can damage the inner ear or parts of the brain that control balance, leading to vertigo. This type of vertigo can be temporary, lasting days or weeks, or in some cases, it can lead to persistent balance issues. Even mild head injuries can disrupt the vestibular system and contribute to a lingering sensation of unsteadiness.

Anxiety Disorders: Anxiety can cause symptoms such as dizziness or sensations similar to vertigo. Stress and panic attacks may sometimes mimic vertigo symptoms, making it essential to differentiate between them.

Diagnosis of Vertigo

To diagnose the reasons for vertigo, an ENT specialist typically starts with a thorough assessment, including a review of your medical history and any recent symptoms. Physical exams, hearing tests, and balance evaluations are common. In some cases, advanced imaging, like MRI or CT scans, may be recommended to get a closer look at the brain and inner ear structures.

Managing and Treating Vertigo

Treatment for vertigo often depends on the underlying cause. Here are some of the common treatment methods:

Canalith Repositioning Maneuvers (Epley Maneuver): For BPPV, doctors may recommend a series of head and body movements known as the Epley maneuver, which helps to move calcium particles out of the inner ear canals. This simple but effective procedure is usually performed by a physiotherapist or doctor and can significantly reduce or eliminate vertigo symptoms.

Medications: If vertigo is started by inner ear infections, antiviral or antibiotic medications may be prescribed. Additionally, drugs like meclizine, dimenhydrinate, or benzodiazepines may help manage symptoms like nausea and dizziness.

Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy (VRT): VRT is a form of physiotherapy designed to improve balance and reduce the frequency of vertigo attacks. Exercises in VRT focus on improving coordination between the eyes and inner ear, helping your brain adapt to inner ear changes and promoting better stability.

Lifestyle Changes: If Meniere’s disease or migrainous vertigo is the cause, lifestyle modification can make a significant difference. Reducing salt intake, staying hydrated, managing stress, and avoiding triggers like caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine can help minimize episodes of vertigo.

When to Consult an ENT Specialist?

While occasional dizziness may not be alarming, regular or severe vertigo episodes warrant medical attention. If vertigo is accompanied by sudden hearing loss, difficulty speaking, numbness, or difficulty walking, immediately consult an ENT specialist near you for medical care. Early diagnosis and treatment can make a difference in managing symptoms and preventing complications.

Conclusion:

Experiencing vertigo can be distressing, but understanding the vertigo causes and management options can help make life easier. From inner ear conditions to neurological concerns, vertigo has a range of causes, and effective treatments are available based on each individual’s needs. Staying informed and seeking professional advice are essential steps in regaining balance and moving forward without the unsettling spin of vertigo.

[missymurphy1985]

The Heartache (Cillian Murphy X wife!OC)

Warning - character illness / angst

This is written from Cillian's POV. His wife has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, writing this diary is his wife's suggestion, something to help him cope.

If this is something that upsets you, I won't be offended if you don't read it, and I'll remove you from the taglist with no hard feelings at all 💜

Taglist @queenshelby @margoo0 @being-worthy @peakyscillian @peakyciills @janelongxox @elenavampire21 @ysmmsy @cloudofdisney @lauren-raines-x @misscarolineshelby @screemqueen @peaky-cillian @misselsbells06 @datewithgianni @heidimoreton @jardinsecos @bitchwhytho @gypsy-girl-08 @queenofkings1212

So Lucy thought this would be a good idea. An outlet for me. Somewhere I could offload my feelings without it affecting her or the kids - somewhere I could be selfish, say what I truly thought...

In all honesty, I think it's probably the worst thing for me right now, but she's normally right about this kinda shit so here we are.

So where to begin... I suppose the beginning, right? Do I go back to the beginning beginning? I suppose that's as good a start as any...

I met Lucy in high school. She was my first and only true love. I knew from the day I set eyes on her, she was the one for me. Took me until we were 16 to convince her to let me take her on a date... We've been together ever since. I proposed to her on a hike in Kerry, down on one knee - nearly broke my fucking neck climbing that hill, but it was worth it when she said yes at the top. We married when we turned 22... My god she looked radiant... When I close my eyes that's the first image of her I see. Walking towards me down the aisle on her father's arm... Strapless, ivory, flowing dress.. ivory and red roses in her hand... Her dark hair pinned back with an ivory rose tucked behind her ear... I'm not ashamed to admit I choked. I couldn't believe this absolute queen had chosen me. I felt like the luckiest man on the planet.

Ava joined us a couple of years after we married. I found out while I was filming 28 Days Later. Hard to concentrate when you're told your wife is pregnant, all you want to do is go home and be there for her... Danny Boyle's kindness was overwhelming. He increased the filming schedule so I could be home sooner.

I will never forget walking through the front door that Friday evening after my flight... Lucy was in the kitchen tidying up, with the most beautiful of baby bumps. Only 4 months pregnant, but blossoming.

I wrapped my arms around them both, stroking her belly softly and kissing her neck, promising to be home more. Work could wait - my family couldn't. We made love twice that night and she had never looked sexier to me. Carrying my baby.

When Ava was born, Lucy was incredible. The strongest I've ever seen her... Even when she lost so much blood, and needed a transfusion, she never complained once. Discharged herself from hospital after a week, desperate to be home with us, be a mum to Ava. And my god, what a mum... From dealing with night feeds and nappy changes, suspected meningitis that thankfully turned out to just be a nasty viral infection, she took it all in her stride. I was the one panicking, she just dealt with everything thrown her way like a warrior.

We tried for more children, but it never happened for us. We were happy enough with Ava. A sibling would have been nice for her, but she had so many cousins she never felt alone. She grew up with my brother's daughter, Lila, and Enda's son Niall.

After 28 Days Later, I was in demand... Movies and plays followed, but I always made sure I had a minimum 6 month gap between any work I did. No press, no filming, just Lucy, me and Ava. Nothing in the world was more important to me. And nothing could come between us. We were riding on the greatest wave of happiness, lost in our own little bubble.

Until that day. That day, nearly a month ago, that our lives were turned upside down...

The day I found out that something could come between us... And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.

Chemo and radiotherapy is our life. Weekly appointments in the oncology ward. A nurse assigned to us from McMillan, helping us through the pain and the fear...

It started with pain. Lower back pain that wouldn't go away. She had physio, did yoga, Pilates.. nothing helped. Finally, she was sent for an MRI scan, and they found the shadow in her pelvis.

She took the news like the warrior she is. Stoic. Strong. I crumbled. Couldn't be in the room. Ran out and found the nearest toilet, and threw up my breakfast. Fun fact - bacon and eggs does not taste good in reverse.

She told me off. Said I needed to get a grip for hers and Ava's sake.. obviously she's right. She's always right. She always knows what to do, what to say. So I need to man up now. My turn to take the lead. My turn to take care of her now.

Pain... how long had she had the pain? Was this why we couldn't conceive again? Why didn't we investigate it.. we could have caught it sooner, we could have cured her, we could have saved her...

That's the fucking question of the year isn't it?

Ava's 7 now. She knows her mama is sick.. and she's a trouper just like her. She lays with Lucy in bed when she's home from chemo and too ill to do anything other than lie there with Ava in her arms. All I can do is learn how to be strong for them. How to accept that this is our reality now.

How?

[shoelace-noose]

#118 | Protect Him

Connor Rhodes/Din Djarin. The baby is sicker than he thought.

Word Count: 909

No one wants to be the one to give the Mandalorian the results on his child’s blood work. It’s viral, which they suspected, but there are signs that the infection is working its way not just through the body, but into the blood. It’ll mean fluids, treatments, probably intensive care that the Mandalorian doesn’t seem like he’ll take well to, as well as being a time consuming process. Connor’s medical recommendation would be admitting the baby to the NICU and treating aggressively. The thing is dehydrated, has low sugar- it hasn’t been eating, according to the Mandalorian. They need to intervene to save it now, before it gets worse. 

Connor loses that game of pulling straws. He’s the official doctor on the case, he’s the only one the Mando even seems to put up with. He hesitantly steps into the treatment room, where the baby is asleep for now, nestled up in his father’s secure hold. Poor thing. He steps forward with his tablet in hand, waiting to be noticed so he won’t startle. The last thing he wants is that blaster in his face again. He’ll probably pass out.

“Hey.”

The Mandalorian gets to his feet, looking at him silently. Locked away behind that helmet, but humanity shining through in the gentle grip he has on his child. 

“So his labs came back.”

“You can give him medicine now?”

“It’s uh…” Connor hesitates, setting the tablet aside. “It’s not that simple. Your baby is really sick. The um- the thing that’s making him sick is getting into his blood.”

“Isn’t that how sickness works?”

He knows that travelers often have a pretty rough life, a poor understanding of their own health and safety. How long has it been since he’s seen a doctor, and how long has the child been in need of care before coming here?

Connor comes closer, reaching for the child’s small face. Surprisingly, the Mandalorian allows it, and the leathery ears twitch under the slight touch. “Not really. When it gets into the blood, also called ‘septic,’ it can be fatal. Your child needs to be admitted to the hospital. We’ll give him fluids and medicine, and do everything we can for him. Viruses can be tricky, and we don’t know his species, so we’d hope his system fights it off on his own.”

“We can’t stay.”

A gloved hand twitches toward the holstered blaster, and the baby is tucked half underneath the Mandalorian’s cloak, like he expects to have to fight his way out of here. This is a hospital. Connor glances over his shoulder to security, praying for protection. The smell of singed fresh still haunts his dreams, and now his waking hours as he looks at the blaster.

“Look, I- I know this is a lot, but we really are just trying to help. If we don’t do anything, if you leave, he could die.”

That gives him pause. He relaxes his posture a little bit and turns his face toward the child, contemplating Connor’s words. There’s nothing he could really do to stop them if the Mandalorian does try to leave, but he can see the amount of love the warrior has for that baby, and can’t imagine him intentionally endangering it. But he still seems ready to leave. 

“He needs to be here. We can give him more than you can, because we’re a real hospital. I don’t want to step on your toes, Mando, but I know neither of us want anything bad to happen.”

Still, there’s hesitation, but then the Mandalorian softly asks what they would do. How they would help. And it’s progress, he realizes, that he’s being listened to and treated like he knows what’s best for the child. He could cry with relief. But first, he needs to focus on the patient, and when he holds out his arms, the Mandalorian carefully hands the baby over. 

“We’re going to get him an IV- a needle into his arm that will give him fluids and medicine- and put him in the NICU,” Connor says, setting the baby down in the little crib. The crying starts almost immediately, making the Mandalorian rush to hold one little green hand and coo in a surprisingly soft voice. “We’ll put him on the monitors to keep an eye on his vitals. And we’ll do everything we can, I promise.”

“Protect and care for him with your life.”

The Mandalorian leans down and presses his forehead to the baby’s in a tender gesture, and then he’s pressing his blaster into Connor’s hand. It’s such a turn around from the way the warrior has acted so far that he’s terrified it’s a trick, that he’ll be killed, that his life is about to end. But the blaster is cold and heavy in his hand and it feels like the Mandalorian is staring into his very soul.

“I’m coming back for him.” The words are simple. Flat. “I have to take care of a couple things. Take care of him.”

“I-”

Gloved hands cup his cheeks to still him, and the cold metal of the helmet is against his forehead now, like with the child. He feels frozen in time. The Mandalorian’s thumbs gently stroke his cheeks for a long moment before pulling away. He’s left standing there with the child, confused and concerned, and knowing that he will guard this child like his life depends on it.

It very much does. 

[sharpnothashtag]

The Good Ship CrushWay, Chapter 27

Bev, exhausted from a day of surgery and tutoring, collapses in her bed.  Seven of Nine immediately enters her quarters.

Bev: We just had a 17 hour day, Seven.  What could you possibly need? Seven: I wanted to update you on the number of Borg we have in the recovery chamber. Bev: And that couldn’t wait until morning? Seven: There are surgeries in progress right now.  The number might change. Bev: FiNe. (is so tired she starts to change in front of Seven and prepare her bed for the evening) Seven: (in proper Seven fashion, unphased) We have 20 humanoids recovering from surgery right now.  Erin is able to speak in full sentences and sit up on her own now.  I predict she will make a full recovery. Bev: (wearing her blankets as capes) Splendid.  Now go away. Seven: (on autopilot, not budging) Counselor Troi reports that her counselors are beginning week 2 of their studies, and the results in conventional trauma volunteers are promising. Bev: (in the middle of a hot milk toddy, in a comfy nighty, sitting on the bed) Brilliant.  Leave. Seven: The Doctor--(interrupted by the sight of KJ coming out of the bathroom.  KJ sees the look on Bev’s face of pure exhaustion.) KJ: Seven, you’re dismissed.  That’s Starfleet for “Get out.” Seven: (as if back on Voyager) Yes, Captain. (turns and leaves)

KJ snickers and lays down next to a weary Bev.  Bev rolls over to face KJ.

Bev: Tell me about your trip here.  I’m really glad to see you. (small kiss)  KJ: (kisses back briefly) Bev, we can talk about that tomorrow when you’re not asleep with your eyes open. Bev: No, (yawn) no.  I want to know about your day.  What about your mother? (through a yawn) What did she say about u--(sleep)

KJ smiles.  She kisses Bev on the forehead as if to say, “Sleep well; I love you.”  She rolls over and tries to fall asleep.  As she does, visions of the last week fill her head.  She flashes back.

Gretchen Janeway: Katie.  My Katie. KJ: Hi, Mom.  (they hug for a while. from the hug)  GJ: I thought I’d never see you again. KJ: (confused) You’ve seen me since I got back from the Delta Quadrant. GJ: (incredulously) Are you forgetting you fought the Borg since then? KJ: Well...I, uh--I guess I forgot you knew about what was going on. GJ: (finally letting the hug go) Katie, I’m old, but I’m not blind.  Or deaf.  Do you know how many people ask me if we’re related when I’m out walking Rocco and Molly? (on cue, two large Irish setters emerge from behind the dog gate and tackle KJ) KJ: (laughing) I am so glad to see you guys!  (petting, loving on, and playing with them)  GJ: (sitting down on the floor) They’ve missed you so much. (Beat) She asks about you, you know? KJ: (a look as if her blood ran cold) You mean she woke up? GJ: It’s touch and go.  The last time she was awake, though, I told her how you were coming home. KJ: After all the damage done, she still remembers me. GJ: You’re her sister.  Of course she does. KJ: But her brain...it’s being eaten, cell by cell. GJ: You don’t have to put it that way. KJ: Yes, I do.  That’s what’s happening. GJ: Just because that’s the science of it doesn’t mean you have to actually phrase it that way.  KJ: What would you rather me say?  Hmm?  Would you rather me say that my baby sister tried to kill herself?  That she was dead for an hour?  That the doctors thought they saved her? GJ: They did save her, Kathryn. KJ: She had a stroke! GJ: One of their interns had asked to be in on the original surgery.  She wanted to know exactly how to repair a spine from that kind of fall.  She didn’t know she was sick. KJ: Is that supposed to make me feel better?   GJ: The intern was immediately terminated from her position.  Phoebe was supposed to make a full recovery.  They spent another full day in surgery to try to make sure they cleared all signs of the virus. KJ: Phoebe is literally being eaten alive, inside out, by an infection.   GJ: WHY do you have to say it like that?! KJ: BECAUSE. (struggling, trying not to sob) If I say it the way you want me to say it, I’m going to lose all my shit. GJ: (taking her to the couch gently.  Molly whines at KJ because she knows she’s upset.  KJ pets her absently and goes to the couch.  Molly hops up on the couch with her and tries to distract her.) Katie, come on.  Phoebe is dying, yes.  She won’t be with us anymore.  The way the doctors talk, it won’t be long now.  Before too long, she’ll be completely wasted away in front of us.  But the way I see it, this way, I get to say goodbye. KJ: What do you mean? GJ: If she would have succeeded, I would have never gotten the chance to tell her I love her one last time.  I never would have gotten to replicate her her favorite breakfast, or help her paint, or dictate a story she came up with.  I have cherished the last few years. And now that you’ve come home, I want you to cherish this time with her, too. KJ: What do I do? GJ: She’s your sister.  Treat her like you would normally. KJ: Okay.

GJ and KJ join hands.  They walk to a room.  The door opens on a very sick woman.  She’s completely emaciated; her collarbone juts out.  She’s in a lot of pain, but upon seeing KJ, she smiles broadly.   Rocco goes to her with a proud sense of loyalty.

Phoebe Janeway: Katie! KJ: (chuckling in spite of herself) Hey there, Pheebs.  (looking around, she sees a portrait of her, standing on a starship bridge with her hands on her hips.) What’s this? PJ: Didn’t you know? KJ: Know what? GJ: Oh, Katie.  You’d better sit down.

KJ in the present wakes up in tears.  She goes to the living area.  She replicates a fuzzy blanket and some coffee.  She takes a few sips of coffee and then, lying down on the couch, starts a few breathing exercises.  They don’t work, and she continues to try to cry quietly.

Bev wakes up to go to the bathroom.  When she sees KJ isn’t in bed, she gets up to look for her.

Bev: Kate? KJ: (sniffling) Yeah? Bev: (going to her on the couch)  Kate!  What’s wrong? KJ: (sobbing profusely) My sister killed herself because of me. Bev: What?  No.  (obviously still exhausted) What happened? KJ: Three years ago, when Voyager was declared lost, Starfleet command asked my sister to paint a portrait of me to hang at headquarters. She went up to the roof of her apartment building, and she began to paint. Hours later, when she was done, she sat back to look at the painting. My “death” weighed so heavily on her that she threw herself off the roof. Bev: Oh no, Kate.(stroking her hair) KJ: Someone found her immediately and got her to medical. Her spine and skull were severely fractured, but the doctors got right to it. One of the interns asked to assist in the surgery for first hand experience of how to fix a spine and skull that were so badly fractured. She didn’t realize she was very ill until halfway through the surgery. She became ill within a sterile environment with an extremely vulnerable patient unconscious before her. The doctors did all they could to clean her wounds out, but the day after her surgery was over, she had a massive stroke. The viral parasite was in place, and there was nothing they could do to remove it. Bev: Viral parasite? KJ: Basically, it’s a strain of a virus so vicious that it’s comparable to a parasite. (Bev nods) while I was home, she told me all this. Bev: and you think if you wouldn’t have left, she wouldn’t be like this. KJ: she would be alive and well and able to be my maid of honor if I get married. But she’s...not. She’s dead. (rocking back and forth, sobbing profusely) Bev: Computer, replicate weighted blanket, ten pounds, jersey knit. (Bev retrieves the blanket and places it over KJ’s shoulders. KJ relaxes a bit, but still collapses into a puddle of tears in Bev’s lap.) Kate, I am always going to be here for you. The late nights, the tears? I signed on for that, too. I will be there at the funeral, right by your side. Nothing is more important to me than you right now, right here. So cry all you need to. I’m going to shut up now and just hold you for as long as it takes. I love you.

[carrietrekkie]

Crossroads - Part II

Save in my arms.

Hey!

First, thank you all for your fb, likes and reblogs. I´m so happy your still following my story!

Now it gets a little romantic, a lot of comfort and fluff in this part. Chris helps Cathrin to get through some hard hours, in his very own way. (Part 2/3)

Part I - I´ll never wanted to do that.

Please leave me a little fb, if you don´t mind!

Tag: @bold-brave-courageous @allthetrek @reeselivesforeverinmyheart 

The skin regenerator hummed softly, did its work and the cut on my upper arm disappeared. "Any other wounds?" Pollard looked at me. "Um." I narrowed my eyes for a moment, then shook my head. "Blue spots sure, but no, nothing serious." "And the other thing?" The doctor lowered the tricorder. "Alright." I waved off. "Really." I knew she didn´t believe me, but she was fine with my answer, for now. "That was good work with Tyler's shoulder." She put a hand on my arm, then smiled and left. "Thanks." I looked to the left, where Tyler had just been taken care of by a nurse. I watched her until she finished her work and left.

"How are you?" "I already felt better." He grinned slightly. "But also significantly worse." "I know that." Somehow, I wrestled with a grin, then I looked at my hands. I had washed them and I knew it was impossible, but I still had the feeling of them being stuck with blood. "It's getting better, believe me." Tyler tore me out of my thoughts. "Don´t be mad at me if I'm not necessarily inclined to believe you." Before we could go on, Captain Pike entered the infirmary, relieved to smile at us, then stepped between our chairs. "I had expected worse when we caught your distress call. Nice to see that you are doing well. " "Thank you Sir." Tyler nodded, I did the same, but said nothing. "What happened? That should be a short reconnaissance flight. " "A few Klingons thwarted us, they had something known as blood fever." "Will you clear me up?" Pike crossed his arms. "It's a viral disease that destroys the nerves, which leads to inevitable death after a brief period of madness and aggression." Tyler sighed. "It only rarely breaks out, but if." "Understand." "In darker times warriors have often been willfully infected with it, the result." "I can imagine it vividly." I swallowed, I had listened to this all in silence. I knew that Tyler was doing this only so broadly because he wanted to cheer me up, but it didn´t help. I felt like I started to panic, my brain bombarded me in an endless loop with the seconds in which I had to do something that I had not imagined in my darkest dreams. I heard Tyler shouting, myself screaming and the horrible growl of my opponent before collapsing in front of me with an equally horrible rattle. "Cathrin."

I winced when Captain Pike spoke to me. Quickly I blinked and wiped my face, I didn´t realize how I started to cry. Both men looked at me and I couldn´t bear any of these looks, so I jumped up and ran. Just out here, somewhere else, where I could crawl into a dark hole and wait until the darkness had completely swallowed me up. ++++ Pike turned to Tyler, but he anticipated the question he wanted to ask. "She had to shoot the Klingon who attacked me." He hung his head. "I was unconscious, otherwise I wouldn´t have allowed it." "Shit." He looked at the door, then Ash again. "Can I leave you alone?" "Yes, of course, I´m okay." Then Pike also ran and hoped that he would reach her as soon as possible.

****

 I ran into Linus with full force, he catches me and starred at me with his big black eyes. "I'm sorry." I felt the air go away as the crew members standing by us looked at us. "Really, was not an intention." I turned away from him and refrained from running again, but my fear, panic and disgust for myself continued to drive me through the corridors. "Hey Cathrin." I spun around as Tilly approached me. As soon as her eyes fell on my face, the smile died on hers. "What's happening?" "Not Silvia." I raised my hands, I didn´t want her to speak to me. "Leave me." Then I ran again and left her standing there, stunned. Only a few seconds later, the captain ran into her arms. "Tilly did you see Cathrin?" He was already looking around. "She took this way, sir!" She pointed in the direction I had disappeared. "What's going on?" "I don´t know yet." Then, more to himself then to Tilly. “But I fear nothing good.” I kept walking, the crew's looks and shouts behind me, and it happened, what had to happen. At some point I lost my bearings and ended up in a dead end by one of the viewing windows. I clapped my hands over my mouth as I felt how a scream crept up my throat. I didn´t want anyone to hear me, just didn´t really help. I could hear the echo from my voice and couldn´t believe that this sound belongs to me.  

Footsteps caught my ear and as I looked up I could see Pike approaching me. I didn´t want him to see me like that but I was unable to move. Meanwhile, my breath was only flat and hectic, the running around just had not helped and sooner or later I would run out of air. Even now, stars flashed in front of my eyes. "Cathrin!" He didn´t run any more, but came quickly to me, then grabbed me by my shoulders.

"Breathe in!" He looked hard in my eyes, but it didn´t help, I gasped more and more, my nerves were completely overwrought, I couldn´t think straight and now my stomach began to rebel. I choked, but managed not to vomit in front of him, but the illusion that he had missed that, I didn´t gave in.

"Come on." He grabbed my arm and after I still didn´t knew where I was, I had no idea how long it took him to lead me through a door and close it behind us. Again I choked and this time, I wouldn´t be able to hold it. "In there." He pushed me gently but firmly towards a bathroom and I collapsed just in time in front of a toilet. How long I crouched there, I don´t remember. All I could do was feel how with each further vomiting, everything in me cramped more and the dark hole in me grew bigger and bigger and stifled every clear thought in the bud. At some point I was so exhausted that I could barely stand on my knees. That's when I felt the first time, how he gently stroking my back. A towel pushed into my field of view. My fingers were shaking so hard that I could hardly reach it, but I didn´t want to give myself the nakedness that he would help me with this. Everything starts to hurt already, and I needed my last bit of strength, to stop myself from breaking down. I wiped my mouth, then closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, my gaze fell on the blood that still sticks on my uniform. So I tried my best to get rid of the jacket, but I couldn´t even reach for the zipper. Immediately that caused a new wave of panic shoot through my body and I started hyperventilating again. All at once I felt like I was suffocating. Again, my body rebelled as if trying to push my thoughts repel. But it wouldn´t succeed this time either.

 I felt Pike grabbing at me, ripping open the collar of the uniform together with its zipper and pulling the jacket off my arms just as fast and hard. He threw it out of the bathroom, then pushed me against the wall and dropped to his knees in front of me. His blue eyes bored into mine green. "You must try to calm down."

He also began to take off his jacket, sat down in front of me, pulled me astride his lap and wrapped his arms around me. He held me so tight that I could barely breathe, but strangely enough, it calmed me down, albeit infinitely slowly. Had my brain worked, I would have guessed that he was doing exactly what to do in such a situation. Body contact and pressure, no matter how awkward that would look.

"Breathe slowly." I heard his voice right next to my ear. "Try adjusting to my rhythm." I nodded hectically. I closed my eyes and held my breath for a moment, then adjusted my breath to his. My chest felt tight, every time I breathed it burned my lungs, but part of me imagined that it helped. "Relax." "I cannot." Tears came to my eyes again, they burned like fire on my skin, but I couldn´t stop crying. "You must." He tightened his arms around my torso. "Otherwise I'll have to take you to the sick bay." That had the opposite effect he hoped for, I felt as I tensed again. "I didn´t say I would do it."

"I shot him." Only now did I manage to put my arms around his shoulders to hold on tight. "You saved Tyler's life." He released his grip a little, carefully began to stroke my back. He had to feel that my muscles were still cramped up. I did, it felt like I was turning to stone. "That doesn´t undo it, but it will help you." "But." "No buts. Both of you would be dead or worse if you had not. " I began to shiver, my body eliminated the adrenaline that it couldn´t use anymore, and apparently had no desire to help my brain continue to crack. Carefully, he slid his hand behind my back, and I flinched when I felt his touch on my skin, it hit me completely unexpectedly, but just as quickly he pulled it back.

"You're freezing cold." He released his grip enough for him to look at me. I couldn´t see it, but I could not look particularly good. "Your lips are already turning blue." "If you say that." It struggled every fiber of my body as he loosened his grip, somehow managed to push me with a fluid motion off its lap, while rising from the ground. "Computer increase room temperature by three degrees.” Pike went through the room and turned on the water of the tub, set a temperature and left the room briefly. Trembling, I slid against the wall, leaning my head back and closing my eyes. That was not a good idea, immediately the events of the last hour flashed in my mind. I gasped sharply as I felt a hand on my shoulder and someone shook me softly.

"Don´t fall back again." "Captain?" I blinked at him, apparently my brain had trouble understanding what was real and what was memory. My eyes darted past him. "You have a bathtub?" "It also has to have one or the other advantage when you're the captain,." He smiled slightly at me, then he reached under my arms and pulled me from the floor. I did my best to help at least a little, but that couldn´t be much, and I felt him holding me. "Sit down."

 "Okay." He placed me on the edge of the tub and I already felt the warmth of the water under me. "You'll undress now and lay in there." I somehow managed to throw a look at him, which in the beginning expressed what shot through the small part of my brain that was not spinning. "I'm waiting outside, no worries, I'm not looking." He grinned at me broadly, even making me smile a little.

"I picked some things out for you." He pointed to the small armchair in the corner. "Not very fancy, but it will do. On the sink is still a fresh toothbrush and I'm sorry, I have only my shower gel here.” "Never mind." I blinked tiredly. "I like how you smell." Why the hell did I say that? "Excuse me." His answer was a smile, then he crouched down in front of me. "I'm outside when you need me." Then he grabbed my hands, squeezed them briefly, got up, and went outside. As soon as he had left the room, the previously transparent glass surfaces became milky and opaque and I was alone.  I took a deep breath, then struggled up from the tub and headed for the sink. The sight in the mirror was pure horror. My eyes were fire-red, deep circles underneath, and the runny and smeared mascara didn´t make it any better. I was pale and when I raised my hand, it was still shaking. I turned on the tap, threw a load of water in my face and then began to brush my teeth. That was really necessary, as soon as I spit out, at least the strange feeling disappeared on my tongue. I slowly undressed and tried to pile up my cloth in a way, that didn´t look quite desperate.

It was a weird feeling to stand naked in his bathroom, so I hurried to get into the tub. The hot water tingling on my skin, but almost instantaneously my cramped muscles relaxed and with a comforting sigh I sank into the light foam. It really smelt like him and I felt how that relaxed me too, more than I wanted to admit at that moment. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and dived. The feeling of the water around me finally drove the cold out of my body, pulling away dirt and grime, and I fancied that some of it fell away when I reappeared. For a few minutes I just allowed myself to lie there and either close my eyes or look at the picture on the wall opposite. It simulated the warp plow, maybe it was also a projection of our current speed. "Is everything alright with you?" I turned my head to the side. I could see he was sitting on the floor in front of the bathroom, his back against the glass wall by the door. "Yes, thank you, all right." I smiled slightly. "Does that calm you?" "What exactly?" He turned his head slightly. "The picture on the wall." I looked at the stars. "Sometimes." He sounded tired too. I had no idea what time it was. It could be in the middle of the night. "It helps to think. This is something that doesn´t change, no matter how bad all is, the stars don´t care. " "Nice thought." I ran my hand through the last bit of foam on the water. "Don´t try to fall asleep. Otherwise I have to fish you out of the tub. " I pinched my lips, I don´t know how he found that thought, but I found it somehow exciting.

"Have I been in here for a long time?" "Maybe an hour or so." I couldn´t see him grinning, but I was sure he did. "What?" I sat up jerkily, a wave of water sloshing over the edge. "Oh crap!" "This is a spaceship, not a sailing ship." "Very funny." I looked around for a towel. "Um, where are?" "On your left." "Thanks!"

I found them where he said so I pulled my legs up, got up, and carefully climbed out of the tub. I wrapped myself in the warm towel and began to dry myself with another one. I stood briefly under the sound shower and let the ultrasonic waves blow the remaining drops of water from my body and my hair. I slipped into my underwear, then grabbed the things he had put out for me. It was a pajama pants that was, of course, too long and too wide and a t-shirt. I grinned when I saw that it was one with an Enterprise logo. I tied a knot in the side of the shirt, then pulled the strap on so tight that I wouldn´t lose it and left the bathroom.

 Pike was still sitting on the floor in front of it, a book in his hand, which he lowered as I opened the door. He looked up and smiled at me, I gave it back. "That looks much better." "Well, how to take it." I watched him get up off the floor, then tugged at the shirt. "Homesick?" "Sometimes." He raised his eyebrows. "I didn´t have anything else left." He also wore a pair of pajama pants, a T-shirt, his hair was a bit messy and he looked tired. "You?" "Sometimes." I smiled as well, then wrapped my arms around my upper body. I was tired too and started to feel cold again. "I should go to sleep." I pointed toward the bathroom. "Would you mind if I pick it up tomorrow?"

"You shouldn´t be alone tonight." He looked at me, and under other circumstances, that look would have softened my knees, but I was more likely to run away. "Don´t worry, I will not bite." He stroked my arm. "But it would be better, you stay. If you were in sick bay, Dr. Pollard will not let you go either." I nodded, though I didn´t really know what to think of it.

"Do you want to eat something?" "No, I'm not hungry." I stifled a yawn. "I just want to sleep." "That's the easy part." Pike ranged me his hand. I hesitated for a moment, then grabbed it and let him lead me to his bed. That was a strange feeling, I couldn´t describe it exactly. "Left or right?" He pulled another blanket out of the closet. "Anyway." I looked around uncertainly. "As you like more." He laughed slightly, then folded the blanket over the bed and sat on it. "What time is it at all?" I looked at him as he yawned a little and I had to smile. He had no idea how incredibly cute he looked at that moment and, terribly the reason for it, I couldn´t imagine anything better than to snuggle up to him and hope that I would sleep all night.

"Something between 23.00 and 24.00." "I'll keep you from sleeping." I remembered that I was no longer a teenager, but an adult woman, well, at least halfway, so I walked over to the other side of the bed and slipped under the blanket he'd brought me. "Just a little bit." He dropped back, rolled over and then faced me. I slid closer to him, feeling trembling again and he was warm.

"Thanks Chris." I put my hand briefly on his arm and he winced. "Sorry, I never have cold hands." I rubbed my fingers together. "Cold is an understatement." He grinned at me. “Come here."

I hesitated for a moment, but then the shivering triumphed over my timidity, and I slid closer to him, letting him put his arm around me, pulling me towards, so I could only lay my head on his chest. He threw the blanket over us and put his other arm around me. I closed my eyes and snuggled up against him. He was warm, smelled incredibly good, and he radiated a calm that caught me immediately and soothed more than any pill could have done. I still shivered, but I noticed how it got less.

"Better?" "Yes, much better." That he smiled broadly as I said that, I couldn´t see. I pushed a little closer to him, no way I would go out of here and if that damn spaceship exploded. "Tell me something about you." He started stroking my arm. "What do you want to know?" "Mmh." The sound made his chest vibrate. "Where have you always wanted to go?" I didn´t have to think about it for long. "I always wanted to visit Hawaii. All islands, preferably forever. The sea, the sun, the beach. "I sighed a little. "I always imagined what it would be like to live on an island." I had to laugh a little. "For me that was unbelievably far away, tens of thousands of miles and far too expensive." I put my hand over his heart and could feel it beating under my fingers.

"What about you? Where does it attract someone when you can fly to the stars? "He laughed a little, then slipped his fingers between mine, he sighed slightly. "Home. To the city where I was born. Mojave, in Arizona. "His chest was rising and falling evenly, along with the rhythm of his heart, the warmth of his body and the sound of his voice that enveloped me and carried me away. "When the nights are clear, you can see the Milky Way." "The picture in your ready room." I was almost asleep, yet the photo with the falling stars came to my mind. "Did you take that by yourself?"

 "Yes." He also sounded tired. "It's been a couple of years since I was there, it was in the middle of the night when I took this picture, the next day the Enterprise mission started." "You have not been home for five years?" "I hope I can do it when this mission comes to an end." "Mmh, sounds good." It was rude, but I kept on lulling myself to sleep.

Everything on me wanted to sleep, even if a part of me would have preferred nothing more than to listen on to him, but it was just hopelessly inferior. I closed my fingers around his and fell asleep.

 *****

"Cathrin?"

Chris looked away as he felt her breathing steadier and more and more relaxed. He raised his hand, brushed her hair back a little and saw that she had fallen asleep. Despite the tension of the last few hours, she now seemed to feel better.

She looked peaceful, a light smile on her lips, her hand still clutching his, one leg slightly on his and he could feel that she was slowly getting warmer. It was this moment, along with so many others recently, that he had to admit that he felt more for her and the thought that she might disappear as suddenly as she did into his life, took his breath away for a moment, but it vanished as she jerked in his arms, wiping that feeling aside. She made a sound that sounded like a little purr, then took a deep breath and he couldn´t help but smile. Chris got the idea that this was exactly what he had been missing in the last few years. That someone was there when he fell asleep and still was at his side when he woke up. Who stood behind him and still went their own way. Be there no matter how hard life and duty would be. Leaning slightly to Cathrin, he breathed a kiss on her head, then allowed himself to fall into the feeling that he was flowing through him.

That's it, he was sure. It was in every single one of her looks, in the little touches, in the gestures they shared. This feeling and everything that could become of it, he wanted. Forever. After a few minutes he fell asleep and slept better than he had in years.

Masterlist

[choilaura]

I replied to this! :D I wasn't gonna write much, but you all might as well have it! :D Tony woke up to the sound of a slight whimpering. It was the middle of the night, and Peter had some raging fever going on that had started yesterday morning. The whimpering was so quiet that Tony thought he was hearing things, until that whimper made its presence known with a nudge into Tony's side that let him know he wasn't alone in the bed. Tony yawned, and ran a hand through his hair, "Jarvis, what time is it?" He asked the AI, who responded "four-forty am, sir." Tony looked down at Peter, who was a shivery, shaky mess, his body tangled in the bed covers as he had tossed and turned to get some sleep, but with no luck. "Oh, sweetheart..." Tony cooed, switching on the bedside dimmer light. Peter's face came into view, his eyes tired, his skin a bit pasty looking. Peter looked at Tony with his brown doe eyes, and Tony couldn't not help but smile warmly. "Jarvis, do a full scan...I want to know what's making Peter sick.."

Would you like me to administer pain relief for Mr Parker?" Jarvis asked "it appears to be viral infection with fever..." Oh no, Tony would make the kid feel better all on his own, without jarvis' help, and Tony waved the suggestion off "that's okay Jarvis, thanks anyway." He turned to look at Peter, their brown eyes meeting. "Oh, Mr Stark...I feel like a zombie..I couldn't sleep all night..well, so far..it's morning now isn't it? I have to go to school ! Oh my god, I'll be late!" Peter said all this in a hurry, his mind thinking like it was juiced up on its little high from the fever. "Oh no, you're not going anywhere. You have a fever, and..." Tony leant down then, in the dimly lit room, to kiss Peter. Oh sure, he was going to get sick from this too, and he didn't care. He cared more about Peter than himself just lately. "...and we need to break this." Tony finished his sentence. Peter seemed happily dazed from the kiss, to which Tony leant in and deepened their next kiss. Ho-ly. Shit. Peter was on fire now, everywhere, and he lifted a leg out of the tangled bed covers to wrap it around Tony's waist to draw him in close, giving his groin a needy press against Tony's. "Easy...kid." Tony soothed. "I promise I'll make you feel better soon, just trust me.." he hushed. Peter was absolutely loving the kiss Tony gave him, and the two just kept that current kiss going, Peter's legs wrapped around Tony's torso, his breath becoming a little heated and flustered between kisses. "Wha-what're you gonna do, Mr Stark? We can't.. what if...if.." Peter didn't want this crap getting out, it was already mindblowing that he was sick, in Tony's bed...hang on, his mentors bed, too! Peter couldn't let his denial of his feelings get in the way anymore. Perhaps he was just sick as in...lovesick! Yep, that had to be it! Peter grabbed Tony's front, drawing him closer to his lips. Tony himself was getting hot under the collar, so to speak. "If you're too hot..you need to get out of your clothes.. you know, it'll be good to...cool you down." Tony didn't want to sound too suggestive, trying to use his medical knowledge to get around the excuse to get Peter naked, and in a few swipes of clothes, he had Peter's bare skin on his bedsheets. "Oh god, Peter..your skin is so..perfect." Tony spoke, and Peter shivered when that cold hand touched his chest. Tony kissed at Peter's neck, feeling that hot, quickening pulse beneath the skin of Peter's neck, and Peter couldn't help but groan, when Tony's hand went south to oh so gently grip Peter's hot length. "Calm down, sweetheart.." Tony soothed lovingly, his other hand crept around Peter's back, holding him up in the bed as his hand stroked Peter gently. Oh lord! Peter was so hard and hot and needy. He couldn't do much else but let Tony stroke him. "Mr Stark...ugh...!" Peter moaned into the crook of Tony's neck. "Call me....Tony..please. Enough with the formalities.." Tony insisted. Peter gave a sweaty nod, his hips moving into that hand to almost fuck himself into Tony's hand. The hand around Peter's back, moved up into his sweaty brown hair, gently kissing at his cheek, that hand around Peter would tighten like a vice. "Ugh! T-Tony!" Peter moaned heatedly. "Are you...you..sure we should be..doing this?" Peter gasped out. Tony smiled, though Peter couldn't see it. "If it makes you feel better, then of course.." Tony bought their gazes to meet, brown eyes upon brown eyes locking intensely. "I'm not wasting another second, honey.." Tony held Peter again around his waist, Peter's back was covered in sweat, from his little sicky and the feels Tony was giving him. The two remained tangled up that way for a few minutes, with Tony whispering words of encouragement, and Peter only able to nod and groan into his neck. Peter could soon feel that knot in his core that was bursting for release, and that whimper that came from Peter, was enough to let Tony know Peter couldn't stand it. "Do you want to feel better, sweetheart? Can you come all over my hand for me?" Tony liked a bit of dirty talk, and

Peter was close to tears, with how good it all felt. He was an emotional mess, fucking himself into Tony's now slick, sweaty hand, and his brown hair stuck to his skin. "Yes, Mister...I mean..Tony!" Peter exclaimed, and Peter was soon crying out "Oh MY GOD, OH MY GOD!" Peter couldn't hold back anymore, his back arched as Tony held him up and off the bed. Peter screamed his climax into the crook of Tony's neck, panting like he had been running a hundred miles a minute, that hot heat gushed into Tony's palm, and Tony worked Peter through his climax, with Peter soon crumbling into Tony's embrace, almost a near sobbing mess. "Tony...." Peter whimpered, his hands gripping Tony's forearms in shaky relief, his body still spazzing from his ground shaking climax. Tony had a cheeky smile on his face, wiping his hand on the bed sheets beside them. "Shhhh...it's alright Peter...easy.." he said softly. "You're shaking..." he observed. "Jarvis, bring Peter his favourite iced coffee..and some tablets to aid his recovery." Tony asked. Peter gently sunk back onto the bed, and was panting, looking up at Tony in a daze. "I...." he couldn't speak. What could he say?! Tony soon held Peter in another close embrace, running his now clean hands through Peters hair. "Good morning...well, It will be morning soon, I think.." he said softly. Peter's heart raced with feels, and soon that iced coffee popped up, and Peter took some much needed relieved sips from it, trying not to chug it all, but the ice was cooling him. "Thank you..for...the sex." Peter said, now in a doze. "No need to thank me for that, Pete.." Tony answered. "I think you've sweated out your fever..you feel cooler now...I'm glad.." Tony whispered. "Yeah..I bet you are.." Peter sassed teasingly, unable to stay awake anymore, and Tony allowed it, simply holding Peter now, watching as the sun came up with the mornings light, wondering just exactly how he'd become such a softy on the kid...and would continue to ponder that for the rest of the early hours..

Because I’m sick right now I can’t help imagining Peter being sick and Tony looking after him.

Peter lying in bed feeling like death and Tony cuddling him even though it risks him catching it too. Tony holding Peter to his chest and rubbing soothing circles into his back, murmuring quietly, “you’re alright, sweetheart. I got you. You’re okay, honey. I love you so so much,” and Peter smiling despite how crappy he feels because he can’t think of a medicine in the world better for him than Tony Stark comforting him like this 🥺🥺🥺

[crimsonandclover-kataclysm]

Chapter 7- Fighting for air

Crimson and Clover- Read on Ao3 Chapter 7- Read on Ao3 March, 1985. Hawkins, Indiana

So maybe going to a bacteria-infested party in the dead of night during one of the coldest spells of the year wasn’t the best idea. Bedside table covered in old mugs of tea and soup, Diana was wrapped up in her comforter staring despondently at the trash bin, overflowing with used tissues. She was freezing, and it was her third day of misery.

On Saturday, she started feeling a little under the weather. Woke up a little later than usual, drudged around the house all day, had a couple of sniffles, and ignored the scratch in her throat. Sunday was a whole different ball game. Barely able to lift from her bed, she shuffled into her kitchen, where her mother was making coffee. “Dying,” she croaked, Sandra’s eyes darting up to see her daughter, pale and splotchy, with her entire comforter wrapped around her like a cape. After taking her temperature to see just under 100 degrees, they decided to hold off on the doctor’s visit.

Another mistake, it seemed, because on Monday, Diana woke up to a violent coughing fit, throbbing headache, and nasal passageways so blocked that she spent a good ten minutes lamenting about the days she used to be able to breathe normally and how she’d never take them for granted again. The women in the Dristan commercial had nothing on Diana Miller.

But even Dristan wasn’t helping. Her fever was up to 102, and Sandra had scheduled an appointment for 2:00 pm with Dr. Simmons after canceling all of her classes that day. Hazy thoughts and blurry vision compounded with having everything but the top of her head completely covered in warm fabric caused the time to go fast, and when Sandra pulled her out of bed, she groaned incessantly.

“This is why you are never allowed to get sick,” Sandra huffed, wrapping Diana’s neck in the longest scarf she could find and tugging a furry, brown bucket hat over her ears. “Because for such a great, mature kid, you turn into a big, whiny baby.”

Diana pouted beneath her scarf, a line appearing on her brow as her heavy-lidded eyes tried their best to narrow. When it didn’t work at all to guilt her mother, she relaxed and took the travel mug full of steaming hot chocolate gratefully from Sandra’s hands. Feeling a bit like Randy in A Christmas Story as she waddled down the steps in her largest, warmest coat. She laughed a donkey-like guffaw as she got stuck in the car door, causing Sandra to have to push her down into her seat. Forgoing the seatbelt because as Sandra put it, “If we crash, you’re not going anywhere anyway.”

Blank white walls and stark tile floors left the doctor’s office feeling cold and sterile, and it made Diana shiver. She hated hospitals more than almost anything, mainly out of fear. Being in a hospital rarely meant good news for Diana, like that time she broke her arm, having fallen off the small hill that housed the train tracks in the woods outside town. Or that time that Kenneth’s mother had a stroke when she was seven years old, and she had to watch her grandmother, not two days before lively and vibrant, revert to behavior patterns of a baby. This wasn’t a hospital, but it was the echo of one, and Diana wrapped her puffy arms around herself for warmth and comfort.

Based on Diana’s lowering spirits and heightening delirium from the fever, walking out with the flu was much better than the nine-days-to-live, crippling pneumonia scenario playing out in her head. It did mean she couldn’t return to school until at least twenty-four hours after her fever had broken, so when they got home, she made sure to drink a glass of water with her prescribed antibiotics while Sandra prepared another mug of tea for her. Setting down more chicken noodle soup and some saltines at the table.

Though she had basically no appetite, Diana picked and prodded at her soup with her spoon, taking small sips of the chicken broth and attempting to swallow some of the solid stuff to appease her mother, in spite of the burning in the back of her throat. Wanting only to return to the toasty confines of her bed and sleep.

She didn’t remember getting there, but the next thing she knew, her room was overtaken by darkness and the quiet still of night. Kicking out her feet a little to stretch her sore muscles, she felt something heavy at the foot of her bed. Sitting up to see what looked like the silhouette of a pile of books, she flipped on her lamp, scowling at the sheet of paper covered in Sandra’s lilting handwriting.

Monday

Calculus: Pg. 203 #21-32 (show your work)

French: Conjugations of the passé composé and imperfect forms of aimer, croire, and vouloir in complete sentences

History: Outline summary of —

At that point, Diana stopped reading, knowing that she had three more subjects to account for and that she was in no mental state to do homework. Throwing her head back on her pillow and grabbing another to cover her face, she squealed in voice-cracking frustration, cursing her mother for being responsible and helpful. Of course she’d have to do homework on top of feeling like she swallowed razor blades while submerged in green Jell-o.

Swiftly afterward, she fell back asleep.

Two full days. Two full goddamn days since Billy had seen Diana Miller. He thought he was dying. Okay, admittedly, that was a little dramatic. But he was at least waning. The weekend was fine- he noticed her light was off a lot more than normal- but he could handle Saturday. Sunday, he got a little antsy thinking he should at least hear from her. Knowing in the rational part of his brain that it was just a kiss with just another girl, and really, he should just write it off in his ledger of girls whose tongues had been down his throat.

The problem was that he wasn’t thinking with the rational part of his brain. No, his blood was too busy occupying one primary organ of his body, and he was going nuts. I mean, it was a good kiss, right? Replaying that night in his head over and over and over again. The soft skin of her leg in his hand. Her gentle, hesitant movements he assumed were out of innocence. A strong smell of her hairspray and his remnant cologne filtering through the heady scent of bodies colliding and sweat mixing.

She fucking kissed me back, didn’t she? Lips pressing to the underside of his jaw so delicately they may not have been there. Maybe he imagined all of it. Another wet dream about Diana Miller in the books. But it was real, and he knew it. He knew it because he was still missing his favorite band t-shirt, and because he learned the location of the police chief’s house, which was knowledge that may or may not be pertinent to Billy in future.

Kissing Diana Miller was perhaps the most real and grounded Billy had felt since moving to this shitty town. If he could harness that feeling, even just to have it again, he might not be such a raging piss pot all the time. And that had Billy most frustrated of all. Because if it weren’t for that girl just down the street, he might still be able to be angry at the world.

But he could still be angry with her. And he was, especially on Monday morning when she wasn’t in Chemistry. He stared pointedly at her seat the entirety of class, cursing her for not being there. Where the hell is she? He had to wonder if she was avoiding him. If somehow wires were crossed, no way was she into it, this was all just a grand fucking mistake. Most things with Billy were, after all.

Though on Tuesday, there was no sign of her either, and Billy actually found himself a little twisted with concern. Enough so that he hovered around her horrible, preppy, jock friends just to catch a hint of where she might be. She hadn’t mentioned anything about leaving. After three class changes of just lingering nearby, Tommy stupidly remarking on the girls’ figures by his side, he finally latched onto the words “flu” and “make-up work.”

Of course, the first time he goes out of his way to make out with a girl in this town, she ends up bedridden with a viral infection.

By Wednesday morning, Billy Hargrove was chomping at the bit to see Diana again. Absent from Chem yet another day, he shook off the feeling that he should just cut class to go see her. That is, until he noticed Steve fucking Harrington in the hallway with her friends. The tall one, Betty, he recalled, was handing over a workbook to Steve. “- and I’ve highlighted the page numbers of what she needs to do in here by the time she gets back-“

That asshole was taking her homework to her? Like hell is he seeing her before I am. Fifth period was encroaching, and Billy had had enough. Pulling a cigarette from the pack in his pocket and lighting it on his way out the door to his car.

Bright light trickled in from Diana’s curtains- something about the cold always made the Indiana sun seem brighter than usual. Her fever had broken not two hours ago after lots of medication, water, sleep, and a blanket lamination so high on her bed that she couldn’t see over the tops of her feet. Finally aware enough of her surroundings that she could begin on the mountain of homework piled up next to the blankets on her bed.

She was itching to get back to school. Long draughts of intense, trance-like sleeping with intermittent spurts of semi-awake coughing fits and forcing soup down into her stomach didn’t leave much time for thought about the world of the living. Now that she could focus on what waited on her, it was all she could do to not scramble out of the house. She wanted to run. She wanted to teach. She wanted to kiss Billy Hargrove again. It didn’t seem fair that she got those few moments with him just to be separated for nearly a full week. Why hasn’t he called or dropped by? Though, to be fair, she could have ponied up and called him just as well.

She missed the gym class too. Wondering how the new group of kids would take to her disappearing for three days at the beginning of the cycle. Especially after her outburst in the past week. But she really wanted to connect with them, and she was excited to get back to work. Though not in the form of the textbooks and notebooks that were currently taking up the majority of her bedspread.

Her mind was still thinking in French conjugations when she heard a knock. “Entrez!” she called without thinking, head shooting up to look at the very open door with the very empty frame. Knowing it definitely wasn’t the front door because it sounded so close, and who would be at her house in the middle of the school day? I can think of one person, her face lit up when the knock came again, and she scooted toward the window. Opening the curtains to see shaggy blonde curls and keen eyes.

As she lifted the window for him, Billy climbed through deftly, grumbling as his feet hit the ground, “Where the hell have you been?” Approaching her slowly, lower lip running between his teeth as his features softened from the sight of her. All red and puffy, hair a mess, sweatpants riding low on her waist and tank top inching up.

“You know, we have a front door,” she remarked, standing still as he got closer. The unmistakable smell of his cologne and smoke made her want to drown in him, her heart rate quickening.

He laughed and ran his tongue over the bottom of his teeth, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “But your mom-“

“Isn’t here. And apparently doesn’t care. She knows,” she smirked as his eyes widened. “It’s fine, Billy,” she lifted her hand to rest on his arm, pinching a fold of the denim between her thumb and forefinger as she stepped closer to him. Both their eyes set on the fabric rolling through her fingertips.

He finally raised his gaze to look at her, returning the soft smile barely painted on her face. “I, uh, I couldn’t wait,” he said, his voice dropping half an octave.

Inhaling in a sharp and uneven breath, her eyes dropped to his lips. “For what?”

Again, no introduction was necessary as his right hand grasped the back of her neck and his left slid around the band of exposed skin to her back, pulling her into him. They were kissing again, nearly a full week from the last time, yet it felt like no time had passed between them at all. He was more fervent, pressing his hips against hers as he kept his hand firm on the small of her back, fingers slipping under the fabric. As he did so, she became increasingly aware of the rough of denim against her skin, and even more what lay beneath.

Sighing against his lips, Diana skimmed her hand up his chest, all the way to rest it gently on his cheek. Breathing him in. Eyelashes fluttering, she became aware of herself, primarily the fact that she still couldn’t breathe steadily through her nose. She pushed him back an inch and broke away, brow furrowed. “I’m sick, you idiot.”

Blank eyes meeting hers, he lowered his face to kiss her again. “Billy!… Billy,” she pulled her lips from his, breathing out a laugh. “You don’t need to catch the flu.”

“What part of any of this makes you think I give a damn?” he responded, dubious to her protests. When she didn’t say anything, he resumed his work against her lips, pulling and nipping playfully. Turning her so that his back was to the bed, and falling flat against it. Groaning when his shoulder blade hit something rigid.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she laughed again, clambering to move the textbooks further down the mattress. Her lithe frame crawled over his, hips settling on his stomach as she sunk down to meet him once more. Chin lifting, Billy drew his hands up her thighs to her sides, fingers wrapping around her to guide her body against his. She kept her hands firmly planted on either side of his head until she felt steady enough to place them on his cheeks. Lowering her head to map out the skin of his neck with her lips. His hands shifted, gracelessly clutching at her ass as he breathed in through her hair.

He was alight in her, and though far too removed to make real, conscious decisions, he was also content to let even this last much longer than it would have with literally anyone else in Hawkins. So, something like an hour went by, and they were still in a similar position (though he was now propped up on a pillow, her torso resting against his comfortably), kissing and laughing and exploring, when the doorbell rang.

Through clouded thoughts and swollen lips, she pushed herself off of him, looking through the floor and muttering an inarticulate, “Who…?”

“Harrington,” he conceded, irritation lacing his voice. “Bringing your homework.”

Hopping off of him, she raised her eyebrows suggestively. “Oh, how I love when a man tries to woo me with nice gifts.”

Billy glared at her.

Scrunching up her face and speaking at a higher pitch than normal to mock him, “Not funny, yet? No? Okay.”

Disgruntled and more than a little annoyed that the doorbell was ringing yet again, I mean would you keep your shit together, Harrington?, he slid off the bed, making his way toward the door. “You’re not going down there,” he said pointedly, staring down at her.

“Oh, how I love when a man tries to woo me by picking up my nice gifts,” she altered her previous statement with a smirk.

Cheeky as he felt, he reached down to give her ass a squeeze. “Better,” he acknowledged, smiling when she softly pressed her lips to his cheek. Her eyes followed him, and she bit her lip happily, falling back on the bed and giggling that he came to see her. That he was as tantalized by that night as she was. That he was there with her, just letting her kiss him and joke with him and get to know him.

As he made his way down the stairs and Harrington rang the doorbell for what seemed like the twentieth time, he smiled to himself, for once not wanting to punch King Steve in the teeth. He didn’t seem like so much of a king now.

When he opened the door, Steve’s jaw fell slack. “Hargrove? The hell are you doing here?”

A twinkle in his eye, he kept his face stoic. “Could ask you the same thing.”

“I have homework,” Steve raised the workbook in the air reluctantly, and Billy reached for it, clasping the binding quickly before Steve moved to place it behind his back, resulting in a quick but not so fun game of tug-of-war.

Billy won out, pulling the book against his stomach and leaning in toward Harrington. “I’ve got her. Stay away,” he warned, and Steve just grinned at him in disbelief.

Turning away and taking strides toward the BMW. “If that’s your attitude, my man, you don’t have her at all,” he called over his shoulder. Billy took a sharp breath, trying to calm the fire brewing within. Thinking about the beautiful girl waiting for him upstairs. She for sure wasn’t waiting for Steve.

When he got back to the room, he surveyed her sprawled across the bed (if you could call it that, since it was mostly books and blankets), eyes lingering on the widened band of skin between her sweatpants and tank top. Throwing her workbook to the other side of the duvet, he began slipping off his jacket, letting it drop to the floor before tugging at the hem of his shirt.

Gaping at him curiously, Diana lifted her head, “What? What are you doing?”

“Your job,” he spoke plainly, pulling the white t-shirt slowly over his chest. “Since you aren’t doing this, I’m doing it for you.”

Diana started laughing, sitting up and gesturing for him to join her. Dropping the hem of his shirt, he sauntered over, ready for her to take the lead. Smirking when she ran her fingers over the hem, his hands skimmed from her shoulders to her elbows. She placed a small kiss right above his navel, and he nearly came unhinged. Sensing her pulling the front of his shirt up, he moved to help her.

But Diana was too quick, raising the front hem and tucking it over and behind his head. She laughed maniacally as he jerked it down, a glare on his face, settling on the floor by the bed with his back to the frame.

“Look,” he started, reaching into his pocket to pull out a cigarette, “if this is all some joke, I’m leaving.” Harrington’s words getting to him. Maybe she didn’t want him after all. That’s why she was making light of everything, and he was just wasting his fucking time.

“I don’t-“ Diana paled at the shift in tone, reaching down to cover his hand holding the cig. “What? No, of course it’s not a joke.” Her hand lifted of its own accord, thumb running along the underside of his jaw until she could tug his chin gently so that he was looking up at her. “Hey,” she said softly, sidling off the bed until she was crouched next to him, nuzzling her head in the crook of his neck.

In a show of affirmation, he tilted his face into her hair, letting his cheek rest against her scalp. “Will you be at school tomorrow?” he wondered aloud.

Her head shook against his shoulder. “Lots of work. And my fever only broke a few hours ago.”

He grunted disapprovingly. “Well, I’ll swing by with your homework.”

“You’re leaving?” she looked up at him with glazed-over big, blue eyes and wondered if he’d stay were she to ask. He was contemplating the same thing.

He nodded. “Have to pick up Max.” A brief nod met him in response, and without thought, he leaned into her a final time, lips soft and languid. She took in a sharp breath through her nose, catching his bottom lip between her teeth and letting the tip of her tongue run against it. Pulling away with foreheads still pressed against one another.

As he got up and grabbed his jacket to head downstairs, she added, “Tell Max I said hello!” And though he wasn’t facing her and kept walking, in spite of himself, he smiled.

“Feel better, Miller.”

Six days of being stuck at home, and Diana had cabin fever, big time. Three short visits of Betty and Missy in addition to two long dalliances with one Billy Hargrove helped ease some of her apprehension though. Sandra didn’t know about the latter, but she couldn’t stop thinking of them.

Actually, that was a lie. Because Diana also had thirty pages of makeup reading assignments, a translation due in French, forty problems assigned in Calculus, and a history paper to do during her two (only counting the days she was semi-conscious) days off. The make-up lab for Chemistry had to wait until she was back in school. So really, she spent only about an hour or so a day musing over Billy, and the rest of her time devoted to finishing her work by the time she returned.

Sandra had been working like a dog to make up for the two days she missed of work. They were so close to being able to afford the down payment on the Jeep, and the last thing she wanted to do was fall behind. And with Diana missing her own jobs, they were already pushing it. They needed the new car, badly- the old Bronco not holding out as well as it used to, especially in the cold.

All that plus the fact that Diana was itching to get back outside and run had her fidgeting as she finished the last paragraph of her history paper. Knees shaking and tongue clicking as she came up with the last two lines to conclude the final thought, writing steadily though her mind was a mess.

Throwing herself back onto her pillow, she huffed a sigh of relief that her homework was finally finished. The room seemed darker, and she groaned when she turned her head to the window to see a sliver of navy sky through the curtains. Spread-eagled over the bed, Diana thought about laying with Billy only hours before. His body positioned similarly, with her propped up against and slightly over his, her leg inserted between his knees. Feeling adventurous, they’d disposed of his shirt early on, so that as they talked and kissed and laughed and his fingers combed through her hair, hers traced over the lines of his muscles.

All she could think about were ultramarine eyes, sun-kissed skin, a hot mouth, and strong hands. She wasn’t sure what made her feel more feverish- the bout of influenza or the way he left her. Slowly burning her up from the inside, taking his time with her. He could kiss her and leave her in a hot and flushed frenzy, and really that’s all he had done so far. Not yet pushing any further, though Diana couldn’t say why. He was so quiet when they were together, and it was difficult to tell what swirled around in that pretty head of his. Maybe he knew it wouldn’t do any good. That she wasn’t that type of girl. Di didn’t even know what type of girl she was, but she did know there were times when she wanted to be totally consumed by the fire spread by his mouth and hands.

She knew Billy Hargrove wasn’t one to take it slow, so it was probably time to kick it up a notch. Jumping up out of her bed and skipping to her closet, she opened the door to reveal the Zeppelin shirt hung with care in the middle of the rack. Fabric ran soft beneath her fingers, and lifting it to her face, she inhaled the scent of him. She couldn’t quite place it because behind the smoke and the musk and smell of boy, there was almost something floral. Maybe detergent? She couldn’t care less when it left her reeling, reminded of her days in California.

He’d made a comment about the “lost” shirt when he came over, and she blushed, placing light kisses over his shoulder so that he’d drop the subject. But he still smiled like he knew a private joke, and so she’d kissed his lips too, just for good measure.

Eyeing the black fabric pensively, she grabbed her nicest pair of jeans and paired them together. Most of her closet was leisure wear, and she didn’t tend to wear a lot of cardigans or jackets, so when she spotted a slip of ivory tucked in the back of the closet, she pulled it out warily. Not having seen it in years, she felt the stiff material with barely any touch, treating it like it could bite her. Sometimes she felt like the memories still did, memories of a happy, whole family that no longer existed. Wrapping the blazer around the hanger holding Billy’s t-shirt and hoping that the good feelings Billy brought would somehow melt into the cold ivory of Kenneth’s old sport jacket. Diana Miller fell asleep accomplished and anticipating the morning.

When she got dressed after she woke, she eyed herself in the mirror, proud of her work. She’d even gone to the effort to do heavier makeup, eyes traced in a smudged black. Brushing out her curls and pulling all of her hair to one side. Eat your heart out, Billy Hargrove.

As per usual, Tommy and Jeff were standing around Billy while he leaned against the lockers, griping about something pointless and uninteresting. All Billy had to do was nod semi-apathetically to appease them, even with his eyes laser focused on the entrance to the school. He found it hard to not think about Diana, not just because he was inexplicably frustrated and completely unsatisfied, but because he didn’t feel like such an asshole when he was with her. She was fun and smart and interesting, and being around her didn’t make him lose IQ points. But she was also elusive enough to be cool, and being the newly-crowned King made it really important that he only dated cool. Being Billy Hargrove made it really important that he only dated cool. Not that he was dating Diana. Hell, he didn’t know what was going on.

Especially not when she walked through the door. The neckline of his t-shirt hung lower on her, the fabric draped loosely over her chest. She’d tucked it into her jeans (and Tommy wasn’t wrong about the way she filled out her Calvins) and thrown a blazer on over it, and Billy was ignited. Here she was, strutting down the hall in her little boots, wearing his fucking shirt. And no one knew it but them. He could have erupted right there in the middle of the fucking hallway.

She did that thing again, where she approached and made it look like she was going to stop when really having no intention to, but he was learning to read her. Watching her expectantly and reaching out to hook his forefinger around her belt loop as she passed. He yanked her hard into him, and the hand that wasn’t holding her books splayed out against the locker with a resonant thud.

Laughing as she fell into him, he watched her bite her lip and wished frantically that he could bite it too. Both Tommy and Jeff were observing them with wide eyes, but Billy didn’t give a damn. Let ‘em watch. His breath hot against her ear, he whispered slowly, “What the hell do you think you’re doing-” making a point to slide his eyes down to her chest and back up to meet her acute gaze, “-in that?”

“Making my grand entrance,” she giggled. “Ta-da, it’s been a week, but I’m back! You know?”

Shaking his head as a slight smile played on his lips, “You haven’t heard the end of this.” He released her belt loop, discreetly dragging his hand down her hip on the inside of her blazer before dropping it to his side.

A coy smirk on her face told him she knew exactly what she would hear later, and it made his fucking knees buckle to see her pull away from him looking like that. The amount of times Diana resembled a wet dream in real life caused Billy the impurest of thoughts in the most inappropriate places. Surrounded by his friends in the middle of a starkly lit hallway was up there in the category of places-Billy-should-not-think-of-Diana-Miller-taking-his-shirt-off. Yet there he was, eyes following her as she turned back with a quick wave of her fingers and a look that promised he’d be seeing her soon.

The exposed side of her neck was visible to him all through Chemistry, and he was having trouble focusing. Smooth and reactive, touching her skin felt like running his hand over still water. Like if he pressed too hard, it would shift out of his way, and no matter how many times he pulled away, she was still there. It was fucking addictive, and just as he wouldn’t give up smoking, there was no way in hell he was about to give up Diana Miller. Not without a good reason.

So he scratched at the surface, taking what he could and relishing in what he received. And maybe one day, he’d get a little more. Of course, he was absolutely planning on getting what he could after school that day. It had been too long since he’d seen her in action, and he had every intention of watching her in the gym, running around and sweating in his shirt. Gross pre-teen boys were a small price to pay to see her.

Ill suited to being stealthy, Di was shooting glances to Billy out of her periphery. Attempting to seem uninterested, she gazed out of the window to her left, sneaking peeks of Billy, who was unabashedly staring at her. Her stomach tightened when he shifted forward, tired of the game, and she finally turned her head fully to meet his eyes. Tommy scoffed between the two of them, and Billy chewed on his tongue as he waited for Kaminsky to turn around so that he could smack the back of Tommy’s head.

Diana turned front with a smile plastered over her face.

As she expected, the new class was a little alarmed by her absence. When Harry walked into the gym and saw Diana, he stopped short and called out, “We thought you died!”

“Don’t be dramatic, Williams,” Coach Hart responded blandly from her desk, barely sparing a glance to curly-haired boy.

Will Byers walked up to Diana, looking at her curiously with his immense chocolate eyes. “It has been a while,” he observed. “Glad you’re okay though.” She smiled at him, and as he walked away she thought about the kindness that ran through the Byers family. Joyce was a doll, a nervous wreck, but a doll nonetheless. And even Jonathan, though not the most social creature (of course, neither was Di), had always seemed good-hearted and gracious. Then there was Will, poor Will. A sickly looking boy who didn’t seem to know his place in the world. Diana always felt a little bit of a kindred spirit in people like that- she could tell she would take to Will like she did to Dustin.

Where Will was, Jane Hopper was never far, always looming protectively around the boy. Sure, it wasn’t a secret that Joyce and Jim had grown closer since Bob Newby’s death, but this seemed more important than siblings, more necessary. Jane was also always giving Diana a strange look, like she was something foreign. Or familiar? She couldn’t tell.

Hart got up to take attendance, and soon they were all playing basketball. Running around, Diana felt her body temperature rise quickly in the gym, opting to remove her blazer and roll up the sleeves of her t-shirt. Billy’s t-shirt, she grinned as she reminded herself.

While she was helping Jason and Heather with their free throws, she felt the weight of his presence in the room before she saw him. Turning her head to confirm her suspicion that Billy Hargrove had come to watch her again. This time, it wouldn’t annoy her- this time, she wanted to show off for him. Taking unnecessary turns at the free throw line just to make it so he’d see. Actually, she was on top form for the duration of class, saying all the right things to the kids, modeling correct technique, and feeling on top of the world. Maybe Billy Hargrove could be her cheerleader. Maybe he was her good luck charm.

In all honesty, he couldn’t have cared less if she was playing like shit or teaching the worst technique on the planet. His focus unwavering from her ass in those jeans. Diana looked sexy as hell either way, and he knew she would when he set out to watch her. Her hair pulled back so that the expanse of her neck was on show. Cheeks tinged with pink, bringing out the sharp blue of her eyes. His shirt wrapped around her and tucked into her just-tight-enough jeans. He felt unashamed in watching her so purposefully.

That is until a small frame walked directly into his line of sight and remained, blocking his view of Diana. Looking upward to see a familiar mop of curls and searching eyes. “Billy?” Jane asked plainly.

He relaxed back into the bleachers, arms spreading out over the seats. “Hey, weird girl,” a smile playing on his lips.

“Why are you here?” She wasn’t being rude, and Billy laughed at her blunt approach.

“Here to see a friend,” he bowed his head toward Diana, and Jane turned to look.

Nodding and facing him once more, she stated, “You guys are friends.” Thinking back to how she caught him outside of Diana’s house in the early hours of the morning.

“Something like that.”

The conversation was cut short by the shrill pitch of the whistle and kids running to put their basketballs in the canvas hamper next to the coach’s desk. Jane smiled at Billy before joining her classmates as they headed toward the locker rooms to change. Diana didn’t immediately veer to meet him. She was propped up against the desk, talking to the coach. He looked around the gym absentmindedly, confused when Diana and the coach were no longer in sight. The hamper was gone, so it wasn’t hard to deduce where she was.

Peering around the corner of the equipment closet to see Diana reaching for the air pressure gauge on the top shelf of the nearest rack, Billy ambled in, settling directly behind her back and spanning over her to get the gauge. Laying it on a more convenient shelf as he breathed into her ear, “Where’s Coach?”

Sucking in a sharp breath at the shockwaves his breath sent over her rattled nerves, she turned her head so that her lips brushed against his, not engaging him yet. “With your sister.” Eyelashes fluttering. “At the high school gym.” Nudging her nose gently against his. “For soccer practice.”

He couldn’t take it anymore knowing they were at no risk of interruption, his hands running over her sides until planting on her hips and spinning her around to face him. A gasp escaped her as he pinned her to the rack, causing the metal frame to give a violent shudder. His hands catching her arms and pushing them up over her head as he continued grazing her lips and cheeks with his mouth.

Annoyed at his stalling, Diana moved to catch his lips in hers, but he pulled away, the corner of his mouth quirking upward at her impatience. He dropped his head so that he could place light kisses around the neckline of his shirt, and her head fell back against the shelf with a sigh. Biting at the fabric, he stretched it away from her skin, waiting until her eyes captured his to let go. “This,” he released her arms to grip at the shirt, “was torture, and I hope you understand that.”

The weight of her arms fell on his shoulders, hooking around his neck as she pulled him into her. “Then my job here is done,” pressing her lips against his roughly. She didn’t hesitate to open her mouth to him, his tongue instinctively reacting. She could have melted into the way he was kissing her, warm and all-consuming.

Billy needed to be closer to her, grasping at her thighs until she jumped and hitched her legs around his waist. Clumsily and blindly walking toward any solid surface for more stability, causing Di to release a small “oof” against his lips as her back hit cinderblock. Without realizing what she was doing, she ground her hips against his, hard, and Billy groaned, sinking his teeth into her lower lip in payback. She laughed, her arms rewinding around his chest to pull his torso closer as she moved to kiss him again. They were obnoxious and raucous, slamming into equipment and always changing positions as they indulged in one another. Breathing and drinking each other in.

In his arms, Diana felt like she was fucking invincible. Her skin alight wherever he touched her (which to be fair, was anywhere he saw skin). He trailed his lips up her arms, all over her neck and face. He nipped at her ears playfully. He kissed her eyelids delicately. He was absolutely everywhere, and somehow Diana needed him even more. It was maddening and exhilarating and she didn’t know how to calm the fire within her. Especially when he bucked his hips into hers. The more he did that, the more rushing waves sounded in her ears, the more her vision flashed white. She thought she would know her limits- she was beginning to understand that she didn’t know if she had any at all.

Minutes on minutes passed, and they were still as rooted in one another as they had been. All until the alarm on Billy’s watch beeped and he tore away suddenly. “I have to go,” he whispered, kissing her nose in remorse. Silently wishing they could stoke the flames caused by their melding bodies for at least another moment longer.

She frowned, skimming her fingers through his curls and thinking about the little piece of paper she had stuffed away in her pocket as a safety measure. In case she couldn’t get out the words the way she wanted to. Retrieving it into the palm of her hand, she wrapped her arms around him once more. He breathed heavily against her, addicted to the way their bodies felt pressed together. Almost not feeling when she slipped her hand flat into his back pocket. “Read it later,” she breathed, placing one more kiss to his red, aggravated lips.

He nodded, extricating himself reluctantly. Unable to rip his eyes from the sight of her disheveled and swollen and unequivocally sexy, he walked backwards until he was back in the gym and she was out of sight. Grumbling his way out of the building and to his car, he unfolded the scrap of paper she had tucked into his jeans.

In clean, loopy handwriting, she had written something familiar:

I’m tired of waiting to die. Let’s go out.

Grinning at the reference, he kept reading.

Pick me up at noon on Monday. Plan something nice.

He didn’t know what she thought they’d be able to do at noon on the first day of their Spring Break, and he didn’t know why she thought she could get away with that sort of audacity. But most of all, he didn’t know why he was trying to convince himself he’d do anything but exactly what she asked him to.

[dipulb3]

Reopening the US economy doesn't mean Covid-19 is getting better. It just shifts more responsibility to you | Appradab

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Reopening the US economy doesn't mean Covid-19 is getting better. It just shifts more responsibility to you | Appradab

So what occurred? When states reopened to attempt to save the economic system, the destiny of this pandemic shifted from authorities mandates to non-public accountability.

However many are usually not heeding that accountability, as an alternative letting their guard down too early resulting from fashionable misconceptions:

No. “This isn’t even near being over,” the head of the World Health Organization mentioned this week.

Solely about 5% to eight% of the US inhabitants has been contaminated with this new coronavirus, that means we now have a protracted solution to go earlier than reaching herd immunity.

Herd immunity typically occurs when 70% to 90% of a inhabitants turns into proof against an infectious illness — both as a result of individuals have been contaminated and recovered, or as a result of they have been vaccinated.

However will probably be many months earlier than a Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be publicly obtainable — if one becomes effective and available at all.

There’s additionally no remedy for the novel coronavirus. So the one solution to management this lethal pandemic is thru private habits — like staying 6 ft away from others, together with in social conditions, and carrying a face masks.

“It’s vital that all of us take the non-public accountability to gradual the transmission of Covid-19 and embrace the common use of face coverings,” Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, mentioned Tuesday.

Greater than 127,000 People have died from Covid-19 in lower than six months, with hundreds more deaths every day.

I am younger and wholesome, so I am not apprehensive

New Covid-19 infections have skyrocketed in the Gen Z and millennial age groups. And whereas the dying charge is decrease amongst younger adults, many are fighting long-term results from the illness.

“Particularly, I am addressing the youthful members of our society, the millennials and the Technology Z’s,” Redfield mentioned in calling for face coverings. “I ask these which can be listening to unfold the phrase.”

In Florida, the median age group for these contaminated again in March was individuals of their 60s. However up to now few weeks, that median age has plummeted to younger adults of their early 30s, Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned in late June.

The rapid surge of infections in Florida is “being pushed by that 18 to 35-year-old group,” DeSantis mentioned.

After Florida began reopening in early Could, Erika Crisp and 15 associates went to rejoice a birthday at a bar the place nobody was carrying a masks. All 16 friends came down with Covid-19.

Throughout their night time out, the virus appeared “out of sight, out of thoughts” as a result of they did not know anybody who had contracted it, Crisp mentioned. The group additionally had a false sense of safety, she mentioned, as a result of their governor mentioned it was secure to reopen.

“I really feel silly. It is too quickly,” Crisp mentioned.

New Jersey doctor Dr. Jen Caudle mentioned she’s seen younger sufferers endure critical or long-term problems from Covid-19 — including strokes, shortness of breath, fatigue, or the inability to smell and taste long after recovering from the virus.

Utah Jazz middle Rudy Gobert, 28, was the primary NBA participant to report testing constructive for Covid-19 again in March. Three months later, he still hasn’t fully recovered, Gobert instructed the French sports activities publication L’Equipe.

Days earlier than his prognosis, Gobert had made mild of the pandemic when he jokingly touched each microphone throughout a information convention.

He later publicly apologized and urged the general public to not fall right into a false sense of safety like he did.

“I wish I would have taken this thing more seriously, and I hope everybody else will accomplish that,” Gobert mentioned.

We’re checking the temperatures of all workers / prospects / celebration company

Temperature screenings will not catch asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic carriers of coronavirus, who do not feel sick however are nonetheless contagious.

An estimated 40% of coronavirus transmissions happen with none signs, in accordance with the CDC.

Even those that do have signs may not have a fever. In reality, many older adults — the age group most definitely to endure extreme problems from Covid-19 — don’t get a fever at all.

I need not put on a masks

“As economies open up extra, masks turn out to be extra necessary, not much less necessary,” mentioned Jeremy Howard, a analysis scientist on the College of San Francisco.

Howard has spent a lot of the previous 4 months in Texas, the place he seen the usage of face masks dropped because the state began reopening.

Now, Texas is grappling with a harmful resurgence of Covid-19, forcing the governor to shut down some businesses once again.

No less than 17 states and the District of Columbia now require people to wear masks in public when social distancing may not be doable.

Arizona, Texas and Florida don’t require face masks. All three states now have among the many highest an infection charges within the nation, with Arizona closing bars, gyms and other businesses to cope with the disaster.

If 95% of People wore face masks in public, it could prevent 33,000 deaths by October 1, in accordance with the College of Washington’s Institute for Well being Metrics and Analysis.

Why top health officials reversed their guidance on face masks

US Surgeon Normal Dr. Jerome Adams mentioned if you’d like extra companies to reopen and keep open, put on a masks.

“Some really feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice- but when extra put on them, we’ll have MORE freedom to exit,” tweeted Adams, who was nominated by President Donald Trump.

“Face coverings → much less asymptomatic viral unfold → extra locations open, and sooner! Train and promote your freedom by selecting to put on a face masking!”

The speed of deaths is reducing, so issues are getting higher, proper?

The US just lately reported its highest number of new Covid-19 cases in a single day, and medical doctors say the rate of infection is outpacing the increase in testing.

“Our each day case/new an infection charge has actually skyrocketed to over 40,000,” mentioned Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at George Washington College College of Drugs.

Well being specialists say the present spikes in new instances coincide with what occurred a number of weeks in the past — when states began reopening and many individuals deserted security measures equivalent to wearing masks or social distancing.

Why it takes so long after infections to learn about diagnoses and deaths

But whereas new instances soar, the each day numbers of Covid-19 deaths have generally decreased. Do not be fooled by that, medical doctors say.

First, deaths from Covid-19 typically lag weeks behind new infections. It may take as much as two weeks for signs to look. After that, individuals may not get examined instantly. Then, it may possibly take even longer for extreme instances to require hospitalization.

“It takes a few week after somebody turns into contaminated till they get sick sufficient to be hospitalized, after which typically a few week after that till you begin seeing deaths,” Reiner mentioned.

“We have type of plateaued with the dying charge type of fluctuating between 600 and 800 deaths per day. … Clearly, everybody is anxious concerning the dying charge beginning to take off once more.”

Second, lots of these newly contaminated are younger people who find themselves much less prone to die from the virus. However they will nonetheless easily infect others by just talking or breathing.

With the present charges of transmission, “we’ll attain 100,000 instances per day” within the US, mentioned inner drugs specialist Dr. Jorge Rodriguez.

With this virus, “one particular person — on the typical — infects three individuals, and we’re already at 40,000” new instances reported each day, Rodriguez mentioned Tuesday.

I’ve already examined damaging

That is not an excuse to cease taking precautions.

“Typically there are false negatives, which suggests you’ve gotten the illness however the take a look at would not detect it,” in accordance with Penn Medicine.

“As a result of it’s doable to get a damaging end result even when you’ve gotten coronavirus, it is very important watch out even once you obtain a damaging end result.”

Even when a damaging take a look at result’s right, you will have been contaminated since that take a look at was taken.

Perhaps we should always simply let nature take its course and get herd immunity

That is not a good suggestion as a result of some intensive care models are already at or close to capability, Rodriguez mentioned.

Even in case you get coronavirus however do not get very sick, this virus is highly contagious — and you can infect others who will want hospitalization.

And that would scale back take care of anybody else who wants it — equivalent to automobile wreck victims or individuals affected by coronary heart assaults.

“Individuals are being admitted to hospital beds and being admitted to ICU (intensive care unit) beds sooner than they’re being discharged” because of the coronavirus, mentioned Will Humble, government director of the Arizona Public Well being Affiliation.

Humble mentioned he is apprehensive hospitals will go into “disaster requirements of care,” which mainly means “decrease care for everyone, not simply individuals with Covid-19.”

There’s one other downside with ready for herd immunity: This virus is so new, nobody is aware of whether antibodies developed after recovering from the virus will provide any long-term immunity.

However the CDC director mentioned everybody can assist cease this lethal pandemic. It simply takes private accountability.

“Now we have highly effective instruments at our disposal — social distancing, put on a face cowl in public, and be disciplined concerning the frequent hand washing,” Redfield mentioned.

“We aren’t defenseless in opposition to this illness.”

[wsmith215]

From Headaches to ‘COVID Toes,’ Coronavirus Symptoms Are a Bizarre Mix

The new coronavirus that has infected millions of people around the globe can wreak havoc far beyond the lungs. Some of the symptoms of the disease it causes, COVID-19, are predictable enough: cough, fever, chills, headache. But the pathogen’s effects by no means stop there. The virus can cause problems in almost every organ, including the brain, heart, kidneys, gastrointestinal tract and skin.

Physicians have been taken aback at what they now call silent hypoxia, or happy hypoxia, a phenomenon in which people with dangerously low levels of blood oxygen are astonishingly not struggling to breathe. And there is “COVID toe,” painful swellings on the skin called chilblains. In rare cases, children—who were previously thought to be relatively spared from severe illness—come down with symptoms akin to Kawasaki disease, which leads to inflamed blood vessels throughout the body. Complications associated with blood clots, such as strokes and pulmonary embolisms (blockages of blood vessels in the lungs) also turn up. “It’s interesting that a respiratory virus will cause such a diverse array of clinical sequelae,” says Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

One of the reasons for the unusual manifestations of COVID-19 may simply be the more than four million confirmed cases worldwide of a wholly new illness. Some of these symptoms have appeared during other viral infections—for example, researchers have seen blood clots in some patients infected with the original SARS coronavirus and the H1N1 influenza virus. “There are so many cases in the world now that we may be picking up on minor variants,” says Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa. “It makes you wonder, if in other infections, you look at two [million] to three million [cases], how many of these kinds of events would occur. Or is [the situation] really special for COVID-19?”

Scientists are still trying to pin down the exact mechanism underlying the wide range of complications. There seem to be two key leading suspects, however. The first is the immune system’s defensive inflammatory response to foreign invaders such as viruses and bacteria. That reaction, in turn, may lead to the second culprit: blood clotting. The disease’s impact on blood vasculature appears to underlie some of the more bewildering effects COVID-19 patients encounter.

Reports of clotting-related complications such as pulmonary embolism and stroke among COVID-19 patients in intensive care units have come from several countries, including China, France, Italy and the U.S. The overall frequency of such issues remains unclear, but some assessments suggest that they appear in as many as 30 percent of critically ill patients. In rare cases, strokes have turned up in people in their 30s and 40s, alarming doctors.

“We’re seeing lots of different coagulation abnormalities” in the patients admitted to the ICU, says Margaret Pisani, an associate professor specializing in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. “We’ve seen strokes, myocardial infarctions, pulmonary embolisms—clots in places that we don’t normally see in otherwise healthy people who come in with a viral infection.”

Clotting-related issues are not specific to COVID-19, says Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Stanford University. A condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, in which abnormal clotting occurs throughout the blood vessels, has previously been reported in patients with infectious diseases who experience sepsis (a life-threatening immune response to a contagion). “What’s unusual here is that it is seems to happen with this disease more often than with other diseases,” she says.

In addition to clots in large blood vessels, researchers have reported clotting within smaller blood vessels known as capillaries. COVID-19 “is a vascular problem” says Frank Ruschitzka, a cardiologist at University Hospital Zurich. “The lung is the main battlefield, but it’s a disease of the blood vessels.”

Scientists have yet to pin down the cause of the clotting. Inflammation appears to be a likely culprit, however. Researchers have found, for example, the presence of complement proteins—molecules involved in activating the immune response—within clotted blood vessels. Across many of COVID-19’s myriad symptoms, the common mechanism appears to be the inflammation of the endothelium, the layer of cells that make up the inner lining of blood vessels, says Luciano Gattinoni, a visiting professor in the departments of anesthesiology and intensive care at the University Medical Center Göttingen in Germany. “As the endothelium is present everywhere, you can explain why the symptoms are so different.”

Some of the mysterious symptoms linked to COVID-19 start to make sense when they are viewed as manifestations of a vascular disorder. Take silent hypoxia, a condition Gattinoni has drawn attention to in recent weeks be unrelated to lung oxygen capacity but rather to impaired blood flow through the organ.

Many other odd manifestations of COVID-19, including the kidney problems that require dialysis (in some cases, clotted blood has reportedly clogged filters in dialysis machines), chilblains in toes and Kawasaki-like symptoms in children, have been associated with vascular complications as well. “This is an extremely rapidly evolving field, but the vascular component of the disease is obvious,” Ruschitzka says —although he cautions that “there is never one mechanism alone.”

Whether the vascular problems associated with COVID-19 arise from direct effects of the virus or the body’s immune response remains an open question. Some evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind COVID-19, can directly attack the endothelial cells. In April Ruschitzka and his colleagues published a paper chronicled three autopsies in the Lancet that found the presence of viral particles in the endothelia of kidneys and an accumulation of inflammatory immune cells within the endothelia of various organs, including the kidney, heart and lungs. Ruschitzka, however, says that that the body’s immune response, not the virus itself, is the more likely explanation for the excessive clotting. “What we see everywhere is pronounced inflammation,” he adds.

Still, it is too early to rule out direct effects of the virus. “There are a lot of conditions that cause inflammation where you don’t see these kinds of clotting disorders,” Hotez says, raising the prospect that the virus may be directly involved in spurring blood abnormalities. The diversity of symptoms, he suggests, may have to do with the ACE2 receptors that SARS-CoV-2 binds to. These receptors are present on the surfaces of cells of multiple organs affected by COVID-19.

Alex Richter, an immunologist at the University of Birmingham in England, notes that the timing of a symptom may hint at whether it is caused by the virus itself or the body’s immune response to it. A frequent early symptom—the loss of taste and smell—may more likely be a direct effect of the virus than the clotting complications or Kawasaki-like symptoms that appear later. “There’s almost a time line of how we’re getting these symptoms and how likely they are to be a direct effect of the virus or because of a hyperimmune response,” she says.

Richter notes that what is particularly strange about the Kawasaki-like symptoms seen in children is that they seem to appear several weeks after initial exposure to the virus. She and her team are currently investigating samples from affected children to pinpoint how the immune system might be generating these effects. So far, they have found evidence that these individuals possess antibodies suggestive of a well-developed immune response, indicating that the infection likely occurred weeks prior to the onset of symptoms. Richter says this observation is distinct from what has been seen in adult cases, in which the immune system seems to be reacting much more immediately to the contagion.

Despite the wide range of COVID-19 symptoms, the emerging understanding of the infection hints at a set of common underlying factors that may be at work. “It could be that it’s actually just a few things that are going on, and depending on where they manifest, you see all these different symptoms,” Perlman says. “Then the question is: why does it manifest differently in different people?” Most people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 will not need to be admitted to the ICU, but those who are hospitalized confront an illness that continues to hold surprises for the medical community. Clear risk factors presage severe disease, including age, obesity and heart conditions. But scientists are still looking at inflammatory biomarkers and other biochemical signposts to help physicians predict who will get better on their own and who will become severely ill, Maldonado says, adding: “Everybody’s trying to figure that out.”

Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here. And read coverage from our international network of magazines here.

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[xtruss]

— By Occupy Democrats | May 5, 2020

"I am a Covid ICU nurse in New York City, and yesterday, like many other days lately, I couldn’t fix my patient. Sure, that happens all the time in the ICU. It definitely wasn’t the first time. It certainly won’t be the last. What makes this patient noteworthy? A few things, actually. He was infected with Covid 19, and he lost his battle with Covid 19. He was only 23 years old.

I was destroyed by his clinical course in a way that has only happened a few times in my nursing career. It wasn’t his presentation. I’ve seen that before. It wasn’t his complications. I’ve seen that too.

It was the grief. It was his parents. The grief I witnessed yesterday, was grief that I haven’t allowed myself to recognize since this runaway train got rolling here in early March. I could sense it. It was lingering in the periphery of my mind, but yesterday something in me gave way, and that grief rushed in.

I think I was struck by a lot of emotions and realities yesterday. Emotions that have been brewing for weeks, and realities that I have been stifling because I had to in order to do my job effectively. My therapist tells me weekly via facetime that it’s impossible to process trauma when the trauma is still occurring. It just keeps building.

I get home from work, take my trusty companion Apollo immediately out to pee, he’s been home for 14 hours at a time. I have to keep my dog walker safe. No one can come into my apartment.

I’ve already been very sick from my work exposure, and I’m heavily exposed every day that I work since I returned after being 72 hours afebrile, the new standard for healthcare workers. That was after a week of running a fever of 104 even with Tylenol around the clock, but thankfully without respiratory symptoms. I was lucky.

Like every other healthcare worker on the planet right now, I strip inside the door, throw all the scrubs in the wash, bleach wipe all of my every day carry supplies, shoes and work bag stay at the bottom of the stairs.

You see, there’s a descending level of Covid contamination as you ascend the stairs just inside my apartment door. Work bag and shoes stay at the bottom. Dog walking shoes next step up, then dog leash, then running shoes.

I dodge my excited and doofy German shepherd, who is bringing me every toy he has to play with, and I go and scald myself for 20 minutes in a hot shower. Washing off the germs, metaphorically washing off the weight of the day.

We play fetch after the shower. Once he’s tired, I lay on the floor with him, holding him tight, until I’m ready to get up and eat, but sometimes I just go straight to bed.

Quite honestly, I’m so tired of the death. With three days off from what has been two months of literal hell on earth as a Covid ICU nurse in NYC, I’m having an evening glass of wine, and munching on the twizzlers my dear aunt sent me from Upstate NY, while my dog is bouncing off the walls because I still don’t have the energy to run every day with him.

Is it the residual effects of the virus? Is it just general exhaustion from working three days in a row? Regardless, the thoughts are finally bleeding out of my mind and into a medium that I’m not sure could possibly convey the reality of this experience.

There’s been a significant change in how we approach the critically ill covid-infected patients on a number of different levels over the last two months. We’re learning about the virus. We’re following trends and patterns. We are researching as we are treating.

The reality is, the people who get sick later in this pandemic will have a better chance for survival. Yet, every day working feels like Groundhog Day. All of the patients have developed the same issues. This 23-year-old kid walked around for a week silently hypoxic and silently dying. By the time he got to us, it was already far too late.

First pneumonia, then Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), essentially lung failure. Then kidney failure from global hypoxia and the medications we were giving in the beginning, desperately trying to find something that works. Then learning that it doesn’t work, it’s doing more harm than good in the critical care Covid population.

Dialysis for the kidneys. They are so sick that your normal three-times weekly dialysis schedule is too harsh on their body. They’re too unstable. So, we, the ICU nurses, run the dialysis slowly and continuously.

They are all obstructing their bowels from the ever-changing array of medications, as we ran out of some medications completely during our surge. We had to substitute alternatives, narcotics, sedatives, and paralytics, medications we’re heavily sedating and treating their pain with, in an effort to help them tolerate barbaric ventilator settings.

Barbaric ventilator settings while lying them on their bellies because their lungs are so damaged that we have to flip them onto their bellies in an effort to perfuse the functioning lung tissue and ventilate the damaged lung tissue. Ventilator pressure settings that are so high that some of their lungs are being blown out completely in an effort to give them enough oxygen, because lung-protective ventilation measures aren’t working for these patients.

Lungs that are perfused with blood that doesn’t even have adequate oxygen carrying capacity because of how this virus attacks.

Blood that clots. And bleeds. And clots. And bleeds. Everything in their bodies is deranged. Treat the clots with continuous anticoagulation. Stop the anticoagulation when they bleed.

GI bleeds, brain bleeds, pulmonary emboli, strokes. The brain bleeds will likely die. The GI bleeds get blood transfusions and interventions.

Restart the anticoagulation when they clot their continuous or intermittent dialysis filters, rendering them unusable, because we’re trying not to let them die slowly from renal failure. We are constantly making impossible treatment decisions in the critical care pandemic population.

A lot of people have asked me what it’s like here. I truly don’t have adequate descriptors in my vocabulary, try as I might, so I’ll defer to the metaphor of fire.

We are attempting to put out one fire, while three more are cropping up. Then we find out a week or two later that we unknowingly threw gasoline on one fire, because there’s still so much we don’t know about this virus.

Then suddenly there’s no water to fight the fire with. We’re running around holding ice cubes in an effort to put out an inferno. Oh yeah, and the entire time you’ve been in this burning building, you barely have what you need to protect yourself.

The protection you’re using, the guidelines governing that protection, evolved with the surge. One-time use N95? That’s the prior standard, and after what we’ve been through, that’s honestly hysterical. As we were surging here, the CDC revised their guidelines, because the PPE shortage was so critical.

Use anything, they said. Use whatever you have for as long as you can, and improvise what you don’t have.

As we’re discussing medication and viral research, starting clinical trials, talking treatment options in morning rounds for your patient with the team of doctors and clinical pharmacists, suddenly, surprise! Your patient developed a mucous plug in his breathing tube.

Yes, that vital, precious tube that’s connected to the ventilator that’s breathing for them. It’s completely plugged. Blocked. No oxygen or carbon dioxide in or out. It’s a critical emergency.

Even with nebulizer treatments, once we finally had the closed-delivery systems we needed to administer these medications and keep ourselves safe, they’re still plugging. We cannot even routinely suction unless we absolutely have to because suctioning steals all of the positive pressure that’s keeping them alive from the ventilator circuit. One routine suction pass down the breathing tube could kill someone, or leave their body and vital organs hypoxic for hours after.

Well, now they’re plugged. We are then faced with a choice. Both choices place the respiratory therapists, nurses, and doctors at extremely high risk for aerosolized exposure.

We could exchange the breathing tube, but that could take too long, the patient may die in the 2-3 minutes we need to assemble the supplies and manpower needed, and it’s one of the highest-risk procedures for our providers that we could possibly carry out.

Or we could use the clamps that have been the best addition to my every day carry nursing arsenal. You yell for help, you’re alone in the room. Your friends and coworkers, respiratory therapists, doctors, are all rushing to get their PPE on and get into the room to help.

You move around the room cluttered with machines and life sustaining therapies to set up what you need to stave off death. You move deliberately, and you move FAST. The patient is decompensating in the now-familiar and coordinated effort to intervene.

Attach the ambu bag to wall oxygen. Turn it all the way up. Where’s the PEEP valve? God, someone go grab me the PEEP valve off the ambu bag in room 11 next door. We ran out of those a month ago, too. It’s all covid anyway, all of it is covid. Risk cross-contamination or risk imminent death for your patient, risk extreme viral load exposure for you and your coworkers, and most certain death for your patient if you intervene without a PEEP valve.

You clamp the breathing tube, tight. The respiratory therapist shuts off the ventilator, because that side of the circuit can aerosolize and spray virus too if you leave it blasting air after you disconnect. Open the circuit. Respiratory therapy attaches the ambu bag. You unclamp. Bag, bag, bag. Clear the plug. The patient’s oxygen saturation is 23% with a PERFECT waveform. Their heart rate is slowing. Their blood pressure is tanking. Max all your drips, then watch and wait while this patient takes 3 hours to recover to a measly oxygen saturation of 82%, the best you’ll get from them all shift. These patients have no pulmonary reserve.

All of our choices to intervene in this situation risk our own health and safety. In the beginning we were more cautious with ourselves. We don’t want to get sick. We don’t want to be a patient in our own ICU. We’ve cared for our own staff in our ICUs. We don’t want to die. Now? I’ve already been sick. I am so, so tired of the constant death that is the ICU, that personally, I will do anything as long as I have my weeks old N95 and face shield on, just to keep someone alive.

I’ve realized that for many of these patients in the ICU, it won’t matter what I do. It won’t matter how hard I work, though I’ll still work like a crazy person all day, aggressively advocate for my patients in the same way.

My coworkers will go without meals, even though they’re being donated and delivered by people who love and support you. Generous people are helping to keep local restaurants afloat. We can always take the meal home for dinner, or I can devour a slice of pizza as I walk out to my truck parked on the pier, a walk I look forward to every day, because it gives me about eight minutes of silence. To process. To reflect.

I’ll chug a Gatorade when I start feeling lightheaded and I’m seeing stars, immediately after I just pushed an amp of bicarb on a patient and I know I have at least five minutes of a stable blood pressure to step out of the unit, take off my mask and actually breathe.

Every dedicated staff member is working tirelessly to help. The now-closed dental clinic staff has been trained to work in the respiratory lab to run our arterial blood gases, so that the absolutely incredible respiratory therapists who we so desperately need can take care of the patients with us.

Nurses in procedural areas that were closed have been repurposed to work as runners. To run for supplies while the primary nurse is in an isolation room trying to stabilize a patient without the supplies they need, runners to run for blood transfusions.

Physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists being repurposed to be part of the proning teams that helps the nurses turn patients onto their backs and bellies amidst a tangled web of critical lines and tubes, where one small error could mean death for the patient, and exposure for all staff.

Anesthesiologists and residents are managing airways and lines when carrying out these massive patient position changes. Surgical residents are all over the hospital just to put in the critical invasive lines we need in all of our patients.

The travel nurses who rushed into this burning building to help us are easing a healthcare system. The first travel nurse I met came all the way from Texas. Others terminated their steady employment to enlist with a travel agency to help us. Every day there are more travelers arriving.

A nurse from LA came to me after she found out I was part of the home staff, in my home unit, where this all first started in my hospital what feels like a lifetime ago, and said, “I came here for you. For all of the nurses. Because I couldn’t imagine working the way you guys were working for how long you were working like that”. During our surge and peak in the ICU, we were 1:3 ratios with three patients who normally would be a 1:1 assignment. And they were all trying to die at the same time. We were having to choose which patients we were rushing to because we couldn’t help them all at the same time.

The overhead pages for emergencies throughout the hospital rang out and echoed endlessly. Every minute, another rapid response call. Another anesthesia page for an intubation. Another cardiopulmonary arrest. A hospital bursting at the seams with death. Refrigerated trailers being filled.

First it was our normal white body bags. Then orange disaster bags. Then blue tarp bags. We ran out of those too. Now, black bags.

The heartbreakingly unique part of this pandemic, is that these patients are so alone. We are here, but they are suffering alone, with no familiar face or voice. They are dying alone, surrounded by strangers crying into their own masks, trying not to let our precious N95 get wet, trying not to touch our faces with contaminated hands.

Their families are home, waiting for the phone call with their daily update. Some of their loved ones are also sick and quarantined at home.

Can you even IMAGINE? Your husband or wife, mother or father. Sibling. Your child. You drop your loved one off at the emergency department entrance, and you never, ever see them alive again.

Families are home, getting phone calls every day that they’re getting worse. Or maybe they’re getting better. Unfortunately, the ICU in what has quickly become the global epicenter for this pandemic is not a happy place. We are mostly purgatory where I work, so this snapshot may be more morbid than most.

These people are saying goodbye to their loved ones, while they’re still walking and talking, and then maybe a week or two later, they’re just gone. It’s like they disappeared into thin air.

That level of grief is absolutely astounding to me, and that’s coming from a person who knows grief. It changes you immeasurably.

But this grief? This pandemic grief? It’s inconceivable. These families will suffer horribly, every day for the rest of their lives. They might not even be able to bury their loved one. God, if they can’t afford a funeral with an economic shut-down, their loved one will be buried in a mass grave on Hart Island with thousands of others like them. What grave will they have to visit on birthdays and holidays?

Yesterday, I was preparing for a bedside endoscopy procedure to secure a catastrophic GI bleed in this 23-year-old patient.

It was a bleed that required a massive transfusion protocol where the blood bank releases coolers of uncrossmatched O negative blood in an emergency, an overhead page that, ironically, I heard as I was getting into the elevator to head to the fourth floor for my shift yesterday morning; a massive transfusion protocol that I found out I would own as a primary nurse, as I desperately squeezed liters of IV fluids into this patient until we got the cooler full of blood products, and then pumped this patient full of units of blood until we could intervene with endoscopy.

Before the procedure, I stopped everything I was doing that wasn’t life-sustaining. I stopped gathering supplies to start and assist with the procedure.

I told the doctors that I would not do a required “time-out” procedure until I got my phone out, and I facetimed this kid’s mom because I didn’t think he would survive the bedside procedure.

She cried. She wailed. She begged her son to open his eyes, to breathe. She begged me to help her. Ayudame. Ayudame. She begged me to help him. She sang to him. She told him he was strong. She told him how much she loved him. I listened to her heart breaking in real time while she talked to her son, while she saw his swollen face, her baby boy, dying before her eyes through a phone.

Later in the day, after the procedure, his mom and dad came to the hospital. He survived the securement of the bleed, but he was still getting worse no matter what we did. He’s going to die. And against policy, we fought to get them up to see their son.

We found them masks and gowns that we’re still rationing in the hospital, and we let his parents see him, hold him. We let them be with their son.

Like every other nurse would do in the ICU here, I bounced around the room, moving mom from one side of the bed to the other and back again, so I could do what I needed to do, setting up my continuous dialysis machine, with the ONE filter that supply sent up for my use to initiate dialysis therapy. This spaceship-like machine, finicky as all hell, and I had one shot to prime this machine successfully to start dialysis therapy to try to slowly correct the metabolic acidosis that was just ONE of the problems that was killing him as his systolic blood pressure lingered in the 70s, despite maxing all of my blood pressure mediations.

Continuous dialysis started. You press start and hold your breath. You’re not removing any fluid, just filtering the blood, but even the tiniest of fluid shifts in this patient could kill him. But you have no choice.

His vital signs started to look concerning. I could feel the dread in the pit of my stomach, this was going south very quickly. Another nurse and the patient’s father had to physically drag this mother out of the room so we could fill the room with the brains and eyes and hands that would keep this boy alive for another hour.

She wailed in the hallway. Nurses in the next unit down the hall heard her cries through two sets of closed fire doors. We worked furiously to stabilize him for the next four hours.

Twenty minutes before the end of my shift last night, I sat with the attending physician and the parents in a quiet and deserted family waiting room outside the unit. I told his mother that no matter what I do, I cannot fix this. I have maximized everything I have, every tool and medicine at my disposal to save her son. I can’t save her son.

The doctor explained that no matter what we do, his body is failing him. No matter what we do, her son will die. They realized that no matter how hard they pray, no matter how much they want to tear down walls, no matter how many times his mother begs and pleads, “take me instead, I would rather die myself than lose my son”, we cannot save him.

We stayed while she screamed. We stayed until she finally let go of her vice grip on my hands, her body trembling uncontrollably, as she dissolved into her grief, in the arms of her husband.

This is ONE patient. One patient, in one ICU, in one hospital, in one city, in one country, on a planet being ravaged by a virus.

This is the tiniest, devastating snapshot of one patient and one family and their unimaginable grief. Yet, the weight is enormous.

The world should feel that weight too. Because this grief, this heartbreak is everywhere in many forms. Every person on this planet is grieving the loss of something.

Whether that’s freedom or autonomy sacrificed for the greater good. Whether that’s a paycheck or a business, or their livelihood, or maybe they’re grieving the loss of a loved one while still fighting to earn a paycheck, or waiting for government financial relief that they don’t know for certain will come. Maybe they’re a high school senior who will never get to have the graduation they dreamed of. Maybe they’re a college senior, who won’t get to have their senior game they so looked forward to. Maybe they’re afraid that the government is encroaching on their constitutional rights. Maybe it’s their first pregnancy, and it’s nothing like they imagined because of the terrifying world surrounding them.

Or maybe they lost a loved one, maybe someone they love is sick, and they can’t go see them, because there are no visitors allowed and they’re an essential worker. Maybe all they can see of someone they love is a random facetime call in the middle of the day from an area code and a number they don’t know.

Everyone is grieving. We’ve heard plenty of the public’s grief.

I don’t blame anyone for how they’re coping with that grief, even if it frustrates the ever-living hell out of me as I drown in death every day at work. It’s all valid. Everyone’s grief is different, but it doesn’t change the discomfort, the despair on various levels. We are at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Basic survival, physiological and safety needs. I’ve been here before. I know this feeling. How we survive is how we survive.

Now that I’ve had the time to reflect and write, now that I’ve let the walls down in my mind to let the grief flood in, now that I’ve seen this grief for what feels like the thousandth time since the first week of March as a nurse in a Covid ICU in New York City, it’s time you heard our side. This is devastating. This is our reality. This is our grief."

— Jeannine Nicole

[didanawisgi]

Inflammation has become one of the hottest buzzwords in medical science, pointed to as a culprit in causing or aggravating conditions ranging from allergy to autism to Alzheimer’s disease.

But it’s far from clear that standard anti-inflammatory drugs, which have been around for decades, will help patients with those conditions, especially since they often come with dangerous side effects. So in labs across the country, scientists are trying to puzzle through the basic biology, understanding how inflammation leads to disease — and whether it’s possible to develop drugs that could interrupt that process.

The latest evidence of inflammation’s broad role in disease came this past week, when a global clinical trial of 10,000 patients who had previous heart attacks showed that an anti-inflammatory drug from Novartis reduced their risk of further heart attacks or strokes. A surprise side effect: The drug also sharply cut the risk of lung cancer.

That finding still needs to be confirmed with more research. But lead investigator Dr. Paul Ridker, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said he saw the trial as a clear indication of inflammation’s role in spurring cancer growth. The results, he said, turn “the way people look at oncology upside down.”

Although inflammation has been studied for decades, there’s still a lot left to learn about this complex physiological condition. It’s basically an unnecessary state of hyperactivity in the body,  in which the immune system’s reserve capacity is thrown into overdrive. This excess immune activation sends the wrong cellular signals to various parts of the body — and can wind up worsening conditions like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and potentially even cancer.

“Inflammation wastes your energies and wastes your [immune system] reserves, which are usually needed and required and restricted for acute situations like injury and infection,” said Dr. Irini Sereti, chief of the HIV pathogenesis division at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But preventing disease isn’t as simple as quelling inflammation.

Anti-inflammatory drugs have predictable and dangerous side effects, which showed up in the recent trial of the Novartis drug canakinumab in patients with cardiovascular disease. Some patients involved in the trial wound up becoming more susceptible to serious infections, such as the bacterial skin infection cellulitis, the deadly blood infection sepsis, and even tuberculosis. That’s because a the body relies on inflammation to trigger the immune system to fight such invaders. Tamp it down too much and the immune system may not leap to your defense.

“The problem is if you block inflammation, you’re blocking a primordial mechanism by which we are protected from the organisms that share the planet with us,” said Dr. Clay Semenkovich, chief of endocrinology, metabolism, and lipid research at Washington University in St. Louis.

Yet another hurdle: Every individual responds differently to anti-inflammatory drugs, based in part on their genetic makeup. And each drug targets a different aspect of the many inflammatory pathways in the body.

Some work like “sledgehammers,” ratcheting down inflammation across the board and thus leaving the patient more susceptible to infection, said Dr. Sanjay Jain, director of the Center for Infection and Inflammation Imaging Research at Johns Hopkins University.

Others, like canakinumab, work on a more targeted portion of the inflammatory pathway — focusing specifically on interleukin 1-beta, a cell-signaling protein that helps kick off the immune response. Those proteins are made by macrophages — white blood cells programmed to attack infections and other foreign bodies. The drug prevents these cells from going into overdrive, but presumably leaves the remaining immune system intact.

“What’s exciting is that we’re starting to see a diversification and specification of treatments that go after these inflammatory pathways,” said Dr. Alex Marson, an immunology researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

Here’s a look at a few of the conditions where inflammation plays a key role — and how researchers hope to tackle them.

HIV: BITS OF VIRUS TICKLE THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

People who have HIV and are being treated with standard antiretrovirals are often extremely successful at keeping their infection at bay. All the same, residual bits of virus continue to float in their bloodstream — and constantly “tickle the immune system, increasing chronic inflammation,” Sereti said.

Over time, this inflammation causes excess blood clotting — and ultimately doubles their risk for cardiovascular disease.

NIAID is conducting a pilot study in primates, using a drug derived from tick saliva meant to prevent the blood from clotting. (Ticks and other such insects have natural anti-coagulants in their saliva to make it easier for them to drink and digest the blood they rely on for nourishment.)

The research, just published in Science Translational Medicine, found that the drug managed to tone down abnormal blood clotting and immune activation. Researchers now hope to test this tick saliva drug further, to ultimately create a drug that might not only be useful for the clotting and inflammation seen in HIV, but in a number of other diseases — such as the hemorrhaging that takes place in Ebola.

DIABETES: TREATMENT IS A TRICKY BALANCING ACT

Diabetes is thought to be a consequence of chronic, low-grade inflammation, which appears to change the way glucose is absorbed by cells.

Anakinra, a biologic anti-inflammatory drug, has been found to improve some diabetes symptoms by blocking the cytokine protein Interleukin-1 — a key instigator of the immune and inflammatory response.

But there’s a tricky balancing act here. Commonly prescribed steroids, such as prednisone, are among the most potent anti-inflammatory drugs on the market — but they have been found to spike blood glucose levels, and chronic use can even meddle with a body’s ability to use insulin over the long term. So they’re not feasible to use as a treatment for diabetes.

So Semenkovich has been exploring how diabetics break down fats and other lipids. Most diabetics don’t metabolize lipids properly — leading to fluctuations in lipid levels that can spur inflammation.

One tantalizing clue: Macrophages seem to encourage inflammation. So when Semenkovich’s team interrupted the ability of mouse macrophages to make fat, “it actually strikingly suppressed its ability to carry out inflammatory signaling,” he said.

Such work contributes to the basic science understanding of diabetes, but drug development based on this work is still far off.

ALZHEIMER’S: TANTALIZING CLUES, BUT STILL NO ANSWERS

Labs across the country have been racing to unravel the role of inflammation in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

One possible hint comes from work done at Columbia University by neuropsychologist Yian Gu. She found last year that certain nutrients can work to protect the brain, while one — cholesterol — seemed to accelerate brain aging. Gu’s team found greater signs of inflammation in patients who ate fattier diets.

“We found that people with more pro-inflammatory nutrient patterns have smaller brain volumes and worse cognition,” she said. (Her subjects were healthy, with no signs of dementia.)

Other studies implicate a buildup of immune cells in the brain, saying the subsequent inflammation causes neurological dysfunction.British researchers last year found that a drug blocking the production of microglial cells — which are part of the immune system — had a positive effect on brain function, at least in mice. Scientists at the Salk Institute in San Diego also found this year that the genes linked to neurological diseases are turned on at higher levels in the microglial cells.

But while this may seem like a promising avenue for drug development, there are inherent risks in targeting the immune cells in the brain.

Exhibit A: The case of natalizumab — a biologic drug used to treat both Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis. It effectively prevented inflammation of the central nervous system by blocking certain immune cells — such as T cells and natural killer cells — from making their way into the brain.

But it had an unintended side effect: It made patients far more susceptible to a deadly virus that lies quiescent in the brain, kept in check by the immune system.

“If you block the ability of these immune cells to get inside the brain, you might medicate some of the problems of multiple sclerosis,” said Larry Pease, director of the research center for immunology and immune therapies at Mayo Clinic. “But those same cells regulate viral infection — and caused some serious unintended consequences.”

DEPRESSION: A SURPRISING LINK TO INFLAMMATION

Depression is a surprising focus of study for brain inflammation, but a battery of recent studies have shown that these patients often have high levels of inflammatory markers in their system. As an example: A pro-inflammatory drug once used for hepatitis C was found to cause depression in some 40 percent of people who took it.

Johnson & Johnson recently sponsored a large clinical trial, enrolling patients with major depressive disorder to test out an experimental biologic drug, called sirukumab, which blocks an inflammatory protein.  The drug, initially tested for rheumatoid arthritis, showed an interesting side effect in clinical trials: It seemed to improve patient’s moods.

A major caveat, though: Sirukumab was snubbed by a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel this summer; arthritis experts on the panel voted 12 to 1 against approving the drug because it led to several deaths from cardiovascular disease and serious infection.

That finding again underscored the risk of targeting inflammation: These are complex pathways and will take extraordinary fine-tuning to make sure medical treatments are as safe as they are effective.

HEART DISEASE: A DRUG SHOWS PROMISE IN A GLOBAL TRIAL

Still, there are other promising trials underway that more closely examine inflammation — particularly in the cardiovascular space.

Ridker, who conducted that 10,000-patient trial, has a second related trial underway — testing out a long-used immunosuppressive drug, methotrexate, in tamping down inflammation in heart disease. The rationale? Canakinumab, which has shown some impressive efficacy, is a costly medication, running about $16,000 for a course. Methotrexate, by contrast, costs about $120 when used to treat arthritis.

In this second trial, patients who previously had heart attacks are given low doses of methotrexate, and evaluated to see if its anti-inflammatory effect will lessen the recurrence of cardiovascular disease. These patients will also be tracked to see if lowering inflammation will decrease their likelihood of developing cancers.

“We have no way of knowing whether methotrexate or canakinumab will do better in trials,” Ridker said. “I just wanted two swings at the bat for my inflammation hypothesis.”

[lifeistooshorttowasteyourtime]

Chapter 4

Days later both started to do new searching in the west side of the forest, the part where they hadn’t inspected. Maia insisted in join him, along with Seth, and small potions’ virals in her coat just in case they needed them. While they walked between the trees, observing their surroundings, Newt told her his worry about not having found anything in his investigations that were delaying his trip to Africa. The woman hadn’t thought about the day in which her friend had to go, she had gotten used to his presence in the house and she liked to share long conversations with him. But specially, she felt comfortable and secure, like her years in Hogwarts. At the beginning she thought that she felt like that because he was a fellow Hufflepuff, but it didn’t get too long for her to understand that she had affection for him.

-I’m not an expert in this but if you need to go before discovering what is happening, I could keep investigating- Maia offered shyly.

Newt looked at her surprised. Though he appreciated what she was doing for him, he couldn’t imagine his new friend was going to involve herself that much.

-You would?

-Of course. I think that after seeing you working and meeting your creatures, I’ve found a new love for them.

The man laughed.

-I would be eternally thankful.

-But promise me that you will write me, I wouldn’t like to lost contact- she admitted looking up to see he was looking at her too.

-Count on it- he said firmly but looked away even before finish saying that sentence, which made her smile.

They kept walking in silence until, suddenly, Newt stopped and took Maia by her waist to stop her from walking too.

-What…?- she stated to ask, grabbing his arm that was around her waist.

-Look at the tree.

The woman looked towards the tree Newt had pointed and realized that there was an anomaly in the light of the tree trunk.

-A magic force field?- she asked in a whisper.

-And I think I’m right in saying that it will only detect magic creatures- he answered letting her go.

-It’s advanced magic, REALLY advanced- she took a viral with an orange bubbly liquid -this is supposed to annular any protective force field but I don’t know if it will work with this type.

-Let’s try it.

-Then it’s better if we go behind a tree.

The two of them hid behind a huge tree, bug enough for both of them and Seth. Once they were sheltered, Maia throw the viral to the force field, making a big noise, but didn’t break it.

-I’ll have to make one stronger at home to destroy it.

Suddenly Seth turned his head really quick to his right, making the adults to look at that direction to see a big creature running straight to the force field.

-No!- Newt yelled scared, but the creature kept running until it stepped into it, the force field vibrating and some ropes appeared from the trees, coiling around the poor animal that neighed.

In that moment Maia realized it was a horse, but with huge brown wings that were moving fast until the ropes stopped them. Newt ran towards the winged horse and Maia followed him with Seth, though both stayed behind the man, observing how he tried, in vain, to calm the creature down. One of his hoofs hit him on the abdomen, throwing him aside. Without a thought, Maia took her wand and pointed it to the horse.

-¡Petrificus totalus!- the horse froze, allowing her to make another spell -¡relashio!

The ropes disappeared bit by bit from the animal and she put her hand on its flank.

-Shhh… Calm down…

Newt kneeled next to her, stroking the horse’s neck before looking at its wings. One of them were hurt and the magizoologist, to prevent it of getting infected, took one of his owns potions and poured it onto it. The horse turned its head and bit the biceps of the man.

-¡Newt!

-It’s okay- he said while he stroked between the eyes of the animal -it stings, it’s the way of complaining.

-We should come back home.

-Yes, but first…

Newt opened his suitcase that sucked the horse in, being received by Dougal. Maia took Newt’s hand and surrounded Seth with her other arm before dissaparating to land on the home.

-That horse, will it be alright?- the woman asked looking how Newt put the suitcase on the floor.

-It’s an aethonan. There are different races of winged horses, the aethonan are typicals of United Kingdom and Ireland.

-Ah.

-And yes, it will be okay. The force field must stun them and active those ropes. They are sophisticated traps…- said pensive.

-Yes, magic that is not at the reach of all, so those who make them must be in high positions, they can’t be common wizards or witches. They have advanced studies, more than ours.

-You are completely right- he made a pain grimace and put his hand over his abdomen.

-Let me heal you.

-First I have to accommodate my new creature.

-Wait.

Maia took his arm carefully, extending it to see the wound of the bite through the shirt. She raised her wand murmuring:

-It’s not too big, this will be enough. Episkey.

The wound started to close but Newt took her wand with his other hand, making the spell to stop and leaving a scar on his skin. She looked at him frowning and the man looked away with a small smile.

-I want the scar, it will remain me that we’ve saved the aethonan.

-Oh- Maia said in a small voice because of the surprise -will you want the scar of the kick on your abdomen too?

Newt laughed a bit but grimaced again. Maia pressed her lips worried but he, seeing her expression, shook his head.

-I’ve been worse. Let’s going to see our new friend.

-How are you going to call it?- she asked following inside the suitcase.

-Um… Epping, like this forest.

Maia nodded in approbation though he didn’t see it. Dougal found them just when they stepped out of the small room and led them to the hippogriffs’ habitat where he had left the aethonan resting. The magizoologist crouched next to him.

-Maia, come here- he said without turning to look at her.

The woman, shyly, kneeled next to him and observed how Newt treated the wound of its wing.

-This wound doesn’t seem because of the ropes- she commented frowning –I’m sure it’s because of a curse.

-Exactly, what that takes us?

-The curse was made into the force field…

-Yes. It’s incredible the mechanism that those persons has made to hunt the magic creatures… The magic force field that attracts them, the curse that hurts them and the ropes to trap them. They require a big level of magic for that amount of magic, and quality.

The woman pressed her lips together and stood up.

-Well, then we have the ministry people, aurors and professors.

-It means- he said swallowing -it’s magic creatures traffic.

She heard Newt sighing and she bit her lips.

-We’ll find them, one way or another. You can investigate inside the ministry, I can investigate the retired professors because none that are now teaching can do this, and I’ll try to find more force fields.

The man stood up too and smiled a bit thankful before looking at the new member of his family.

-You don’t know how much it means to me that you get so involve in this. In the ministry doesn’t take me seriously, in Hogwarts you know everyone thought I was weird…- Maia could see the melancholy and sadness in his eyes the moment he looked at her in the eyes -thank you.

It was Maia who looked away murmuring:

-Let’s see how you have that kick.

Maia walked back to the room and Newt followed her after stroking the aethonan’s head. She started to look for a paste she had done with murtlap essence while he sat on his chair, taking off his shirt carefully. Maia found the paste and extended it on a mint leaf.

-I doubt you’ll have any scar, but you’ll have a big bruise- she said before turning around to look at him, and corroborated her theory when she saw a huge bruise on his abdomen.

The woman felt the warmth rise up her neck and expand over her face and ears. Newt didn’t seem to realize because he just looked at his own abdomen while Maia’s eyes danced over all Newt’s torso, filled with freckles but also scars of all sizes and thicknesses. Also she noticed he was quite muscular, something she wouldn’t have imagined.

-Em… First, I’m going to reduce the swelling- she took her wand and without a word she made the spell, his bruise reduced its size -and, now, p-put this on the bruise.

She gave him the leaf with murtlap essence and he did as she said. Maia took some steps up, opening the suitcase to say:

-Accio tape!- she took the object and approached Newt shyly -I have that… Put it on, and you should change your leaf in two hours.

-Sure.

He let her put the tape on the leaf so it would be on his abdomen. Newt’s body radiated warmth, something that made her even more nervous, but she did what she had quickly and with effectiveness.

-Better?

-Murtlap essence is a blessing- he mumbled with a smile while he stood up.

Newt turned to put the shirt on and Maia could see that his back was filled with scars too. They didn’t disgust her, better say curiosity.

-Listen, Newt…

-Yes?

-All your scars are made by creatures?

She saw how he blushed, his neck taking the same color of his hair.

-Y-yes…

-Sorry, I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable- she mumbled turning -I’m going to… I’m going to make our lunch.

Maia was going to go upstairs when she heard Newt saying behind her:

-Like the aethonan bite, all my scars are from the creatures I’ve rescued. At the beginning, because of my inexperience, the scars were because I could heal them but time after I didn’t mind to have them, they are my story. The story of what I’m doing and I feel proud- Maia turned to him and smiled sweetly -I now most of the people are disgusted by them, but I don’t care what others think about me.

The woman observed him. She was surprised that Newt was a person so confident in his convictions, so confident about his profession and what he did, but he wasn’t so confident when it came about other persons. She understood in that moment that Newt felt more comfortable between magic creatures than between persons because animals never judged you, they didn’t have that malice, and he had gotten used to be part of that small pack of creatures that were in his suitcase. Maia went to him and took his hand with a small smile.

-Will you tell me the story behind your scars? I’ve seen one with a really strange form in your shoulder blade and I would like to know what creature did that.

Newt laughed looking at his feet while nodding.

-The truth is that is a funny story.

She smiled brightly and pulled him softly, indicating with her head the stairs.

While Maia made the lunch, with Newt’s help because he refused to let the woman do everything, the magizoologist began to tell those stories that literally marked him, always with a smile.

They had finished eating, sitting on the sofa but with their bodies turned to be face to face while Newt told how hard was receiving the wounds from dragons, which had left in his skin the worst scars.

-Why didn’t you ask to have the healed?

-There were people who needed help more than me. And I’ve told you I don’t mind to have them.

-I don’t say it because of having scars, but because those wound could have you injured in the future, not all wounds are deadly on the spot. And I'm not referring to just being infected. For example, the scar that runs through the right side of your chest seems to be deep, your muscles could have been paralyzed over time and that would prevent you from breathing properly. Have someone seen your scars?

-No…

-Then you should go to San Mungo to make sure everything is fine- Newt could not help but smile -I mean it, I'd be much calmer. Do it before you go to Africa, just a checkup.

-Okay.

Newt smiled at her and she sighed, getting up to pick up the dishes.

-I think I'm going to the ministry today to start investigating- he said, helping her with the glasses.

-It's a great idea. I'll go out and see if I can find more force fields.

-Alone?

-Seth will come with me.

Maia went to where her coat was and put it on under the watchful eye of Newt who pressed his lips unsure of letting her go alone despite the fact that she obviously knew the forest much better than he did, but after finding the magic fields, they had to be cautious. The woman looked at him as she buttoned the last button.

-See you at lunch- she turned to go to the main door, followed by Seth.

But the magizoologist went to her, licking his lips.

-Maia- she looked at him -be careful.

-Don’t worry, everything will be alright.

And everything was alright. More than anyone would have expected.

The woman couldn’t stop walking around the living room, waiting with anxiety for Newt. When finally he appeared, she approached him startling him.

-I’ve seen them.

-What?- he asked confused.

-I went back to the place where we found the aethonan and there were two men there. I could approach them but I couldn’t heard what they were saying, though they seemed angry.

Newt stared at her perplex. She had seen the men he had been trying to find for so long.

-You… You’ve seen their face?- he asked nervous.

-Yes, clearly, but I don’t know them…

-It’s okay, if you describe them to me, I can draw them.

-Or you could take out my memory- she suggested.

The man shook his head, his eyes opened wide.

-That’s too dangerous. Besides, I don’t know how to do it.

-I could guess so, that’s why I thought that, maybe your investigations about the Swooping Evil…

-But I haven’t actually tried it, Maia…

-I trust in you Newt- she said with determinate -I want you to do it, it will be better than any drawing.

He was not sure at all. On the one hand he admired her bravery but also thought she was blinded by a loyalty that still could not explain how he had earned it. Finally, Newt nodded, not knowing what to say, his gaze somewhere on the floor between them. He put the suitcase on the floor and let the woman get in before him. Maia sat down in the chair and watched as her friend fumbled with his things.

-You know it this goes wrong, it could erase some of your memories- Newt warned her still with his back to her.

-Everything will be fine.

-I don’t know you were so optimistic.

-I am not but I’ve seen you work, I know you are great so I trust you.

The man turned and smiled shyly before offering her a small viral with a bright blue liquid.

-You have to concentrate in those men, drink and I would catch your memory. I will keep it to see it with you- he explained.

-Okay- she sighed closing her eyes to concentrate.

He pulled out his wand, ready to take the memory, and a small jar in his other hand. Maia took a deep breath and took the viral to her lips, drinking in a swallow the liquid that tasted strong, piercing, like the fire whiskey but bitter. She wanted to give an arcade, but she stood and felt as if they were pulling a rope from her head. She did not dare to open her eyes, especially when the point of her forehead where the imaginary rope came out was stinging so much. Newt felt bad for letting her persuade him to do so. Maia gave a little groan and listened in the background as her friend said:

-A little bit more, a little bit more…

And suddenly everything ended. Newt had taken the memory of his friend and kept it in the jar. But he did not have time to leave it at his table since he had to catch Maia who leaned forward with eyes still closed.

-Maia, are you okay?- he asked worriedly as he slowly incorporated her.

-It tasted horrible…- Newt couldn’t help but laugh, which made her open her eyes with a small smile –it stings, but it’s okay. Nothing that is not bearable.

-Do you feel okay?

-Yes, yes…- she put her hands on Newt’s bíceps, he grabbed her by her elbows and helped her to stand up -do you have a pensieve?

-My brother gifted me one years ago- mumbled still worried - I think it's best that you sit while looking for the pensieve.

-Yes, I agree.

She sat back with Newt's help and leaned against the wall, sighing. It took the man a few moments to get the object they needed since he was still worried about his friend.

[fallen029]

Dr. Laxus

Usually the smell of vomit made Laxus, well, vomit, but at the moment it wasn't too bad. Not that it was appealing or anything (ew), but he was honestly too focused on Mira to care.

"I can't believe I came home to find that you have a virus."

She sniffled, resting on her knees in front of the toilet. "I took something for my fever, but it's done nothing for my nausea. Or my headache."

"Have you been checked out by anyone?"

"Yes, Laxus. I mean-"

"Why isn't your sister or brother here to care for you? Huh?" He stood in the doorway of the bathroom, glaring in at her. Not that he was upset with her. More worried. "You look…well, paler, I guess."

She only moaned, glancing up at him. "It's really not that bad. And Lisanna had to work the guild for me. Elfman's on a job and has been the whole week, so he didn't know."

"Well, you can't just stay alone when you're sick like this, Mirajane."

"I knew you'd be home soon."

"Still." Stepping forwards then, he went over to the sink to get a rag and run it under some cool water for her. "How long you been sick then?"

"Yesterday afternoon I didn't feel well and it's only gotten worse."

"One of those stupid ill-bred idiots at the guild probably got you sick."

"Laxus-"

"Here you go."

Perplexed, she watched as he slowly got down on his knees as well, reaching out with one hand to run that cool cloth over her face. Never before had he been so caring towards her. Sure, they lived together, but that had always seemed more of just an easier way to continue their relationship. Laxus was rarely around and it was just silly for him to pay for an apartment he wasn't using. And when Evergreen and Elfman got married and he moved out, that left Mira and Lisanna alone in their home. And even though Elfman had never rather liked him, Lisanna was fine with Laxus being around, so it was just easy to move him in without too much fuss.

But still, she had never deluded herself much. Fine, Laxus was fun for her. And yeah, so he was pretty faithful, but she knew that there was no way that he truly loved her or anything. He more or less just seemed to know that Mira was the last one in Fairy Tail that really gave a damn about him and it was best not to ruin that. And giving up other women for permanent access to the she-devil wasn't too horrible a fate. Not really.

Still though, there were rare moments like what was taking place in that one when Laxus really seemed to care about her. And they always shocked her, what with their rarity and long absences in between them.

"I'd kiss you, babe, but I'm not one for puke." He did press one to her forehead though before nuzzling the top of her head. "You're just so-"

She turned away from him suddenly and back to the toilet. He was disgusted for a moment before moving to hold her hair back for her. It was just an instinct thing. Guys did that for their women, right? He was pretty sure.

Her breathing was heavy then as she hunched over the toilet, as if waiting to see if there was more. Then she glanced at him and made a face.

"S-Sorry, Laxus. I just-"

"Don't you apologize to me." He moved to flush the toilet before reaching for her again. "C'mere."

When she turned to face him again, he just moved to pull the little hair tie from her bangs, letting them fall forwards. Then he handed it to her.

"Put your hair up. It'll make you feel better." Standing then, he went to wash off the rag again as he had set it on the floor. As he avoided his own eyes in the mirror (once again he was making himself weak for Mirajane, which he hated), he glanced at her reflection. Down there on the floor he could just make out her face. "You almost look like you did when we were kids."

She only made a noise, watching him. "Laxus, you don't have to stay here with me. I'm sure you can find something else to do. I'm fine. Really."

"You're fine," he mocked with a shake of his head. Wringing the washcloth out, he turned to look at her once more. That time, he handed it off to her, though he just as quickly moved to bend down.

"L-Laxus-"

"You ain't that heavy, Mirajane." He cradled her in his arms with a slight grin. "Don't get used to this kind treatment or anything though."

"Believe me, I won't."

He took her straight to their now shared bedroom. Since moving in, he had purchased a bigger mattress for them because, honestly, sharing her tiny one was just not gonna fly.

"There you go." Gently setting her on the unmade bed, he quickly moved to cover her over. Then he turned to head out of the room. "I'll go get you a drink, huh? To get the taste out of your mouth?"

"That'd be nice," she mumbled, still watching him with interest.

"Need anything else?"

"No, I don't think so."

Grunt. She must really have been sick if she wasn't even going to make some sort of out there request of him.

After he was gone, she just settled into their bed, wiping her face down with the cloth one last time before setting it on the nightstand. What was wrong with him anyhow? She just had a viral infection or something. Flu, maybe. It'd be gone soon enough.

When he returned, he came bearing a glass of water, as well as his duffle bag that he had dropped off in the hall when he heard her retching in the bathroom.

"Alright, Mira." He handed off the water before going to set his bag in the corner. "You feel better yet?"

"Not really, but I'm sure I just need to rest."

"Hn." He bent down then, unzipping his bag. "I was bringing you this regardless, but now that you're sick-"

"Laxus." She sat up some more, smiling slightly. "How cute."

"Thought you'd think so." Coming closer, he held the necklace by the gold band. "In lieu of pay, this is what I got. Its fetching rate is a nice amount of jewels, but we're not down money or nothing. Thought it'd be nice if you could keep it."

"It's beautiful." She took the necklace from him then, grinning down at the design. "Thank you."

Grunt. Then he went back to his bag to start unpacking. "Like I said, I'm pretty set on jewels right now. I was thinking about, you know, doing a few extra jobs anyhow, to get some extra, but if you're this sick, maybe I'll stick around a while."

"Laxus, this will pass soon enough. I-"

"Nonsense." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "You're practically dying here, Mira."

She made a face, pressing a hand to her stomach. "I wouldn't go that far."

"I would. I mean, just look at you."

She wanted to be offended, but that would take energy that she didn't have. Not to mention, she was pretty sure that he wasn't trying to be nasty. He was serious. Laxus had never seen her sick before and was trying to cover his worry with a grim prognosis.

Mirajane figured that everyone should just be happy he wasn't a real doctor. Because his bedside manner could use some work.

"Now," he was beginning again. "As you know, I wasn't rather well as a child."

"I know." She was snuggling back into bed then, her eyes getting droopy. "What about it?"

"Well, I know all the ends and outs of these sorts of things, Mira. I got stuck with all sorts of doctors and things before my father put that lacrima in me. I-"

"Laxus," she sighed as she laid on her side, clutching her necklace in one hand. "I'm not terminal. I'm just sick. So come over here, huh? Or are you afraid of getting sick?"

He snorted. "Weren't you listening? Nothing can touch me with this lacrima in me."

"Then get over here." His self-absorbed bragging wasn't interesting to her. Shivering, she added, "I'm cold."

"Na-ah, Mirajane." He turned to face her again. "Not yet."

"Not yet?"

"You just vomited all that stuff up, huh? There's nothing in your system now. We gotta get you some soup."

"Laxus, I'm not-"

"Ten minutes. I'll be back."

"But I'm not hungry."

"I-"

"No. Come here."

"But-"

"No soup." She raised an eyebrow. "Now do I have to ask again, or you going to come over here?"

Slowly, he walked over to her. "I just don't want you to get dehydrated or nothing."

"I'm drinking water, aren't I? Besides, it'd just come back up and I don't want that."

With a grunt, he fell into bed with her. "It's still so early though. What am I supposed to do?"

"I told you that you could leave if you-"

'Well, I can't leave you alone," he said with a frown as he moved to lay on his back. "That's be a pretty low move. And I'd only worry about you."

"Really?"

He didn't seem bashful in that moment about admitting it, which was odd of him. Usually he was resistant to admit to anything about their relationship. It took them forever to both come to terms that they even had one, honestly. And even still, the word girlfriend rarely fell from his tongue when describing her. And she would say she had a boyfriend if someone asked, but it was never in an overly ecstatic kind of way.

Still, at the moment, her being sick must have really been messing with his mind. He only sat up slightly to pull his shirt over his head and set his Sound Pod on the nightstand. So he was staying.

"Your fever must be breaking," he mumbled when she started shivering. Sighing slightly he laid on his side. "C'mere then."

She smiled slightly as she snuggled up against him, curling so that her head was pressed against his stomach. He just pulled the covers up over her head, cocooning her in there.

"So, uh, since we're slowly getting naked anyhow-"

"You took your shirt off. I'm not anywhere close to being-"

"You want me to, like, go down on you or something?"

The blanket was over her head, so she knew her glare was useless and directed it at his tattoo.

"Laxus-"

"I like blows when I'm-"

"You're a guy. So just shut up."

"Fine by me." He slipped an arm under the blanket to stroke her cheek. "Mirajane."

"You'd have made a horrible doctor," she mumbled against his stomach as she curled into him again. Nuzzling his abs, she said, "Then again, I should have known. Your flawed morals and all."

Eventually he did get her to doze off, at which time he took to reaching over and grabbing his Sound Pod. If she could sleep, he could at least entertain himself a little.

At one point, she awoke dazed and complaining about being too hot. He just tossed the covers off her before slowly stripping her. It was his discarded shirt that he threw over her head then before allowing her to curl away from him and slowly fall back asleep. He only grinned at the sight before going back to his music.

He must have fallen asleep, because at some point, he heard their bedroom door opening and then the sound of someone entering. Not turning a light on, he heard the person call out softly. "Mira?"

It was Lisanna, of course it was. When Laxus sat up though, she jumped in surprise and almost dropped the bowl that she was clutching in her hands.

"O-Oh, it's just you," she said as Mira slowly rolled onto her back and opened her eyes slightly. "I didn't know you were home, Laxus."

"Just got here," he grumbled, annoyed that she was disturbing them. "And Mira's sick, so-"

"Oh, I know. Of course I know. Here, sis." Lisanna came over to the bed then, going over to Mira's side. "I made you some soup at work and brought it home. You hungry?"

"Mmmm." Slowly, Mirajane sat up. "Smells nice."

"No fair," Laxus complained as Lisanna grinned. "When I offered, you said-"

"I don't like you as much," Mira told him, her headache giving way to brutal honesty. Not that he should ever have thought otherwise. Lisanna was above everyone on Mira's chart of important people. Even above herself. And maybe Elfman.

"Here, sis." Lisanna had a spoon too. "Let me turn on the light and then I can feed-"

"No way." Laxus reached over Mira then and rather roughly took the bowl from the younger woman, almost spilling it all over Mira in the process. He was so happy that didn't happen because that just reeked of banishment to the couch (which didn't happen if anyone ever asked him. If you asked Lisanna though, Mira kicked him out at least once a month. Which was really something considering he was only home a few weeks or days at a time.)

"Laxus," Mira complained as Lisanna only looked shocked. "What are you-"

"This is totally my domain," he growl as he moved to sit cross legged. "Get out then, Lisanna. Mira's my woman, after all. I feed her, not you."

"I didn't ask for either of you to feed me, you know," Mira pointed out. "I'm not-"

"I-It's fine, sis," Lisanna said before laughing uneasily. "I'm sorry. I just thought-"

"No, you don't apologize." Even sick, Mira wasn't going to let Laxus get away with his behavior. "Laxus-"

"Sorry," he told Lisanna gruffly. "But Mira is my-"

"There are no buts in apolog-"

"Shut up and eat your soup," Laxus said before scooping some of it up in the spoon and giving his girlfriend a death stare. Lisanna finally smiled for real, no doubt planning on going to find someone to tell about this cuteness to, before running off.

"Nice, Laxus. I didn't even get to thank-"

With her mouth open, it was the perfect time to shove some of that soup down her throat. It won him no favors, but it did shut her up for a moment.

"Tomorrow I get to make the soup," he told her softly then, the darkness of their bedroom making it okay to sound maybe a teensy bit hurt. "Alright?"

"That's fine, Laxus." It was easier to just give in to him then. After all, she didn't really feel too well. "But you really don't need to feed-"

He only went back to it though, getting more soup on the spoon then. Not that he would ever admit it, but he was finding that he rather liked taking care of a sick Mira. A lot.

"Your sister should learn how to knock anyhow," he grumbled, still trying to be gruff when it was clear that he wasn't. He had to keep up appearances at all costs. "So you should say something to her."

Mira didn't feel well enough to roll her eyes then. Instead she just decided to be glad that Laxus was being nice enough to want to be there when she was ill.

"You know all of this will probably come back up in an hour, right?" Mira asked him. He only shrugged.

"Just don't puke on me or nothing and I'm fine."

"I make no promises."

He kissed her head that time instead of giving her anymore soup. Against it, he mumbled, "That's okay. Then we'd have to take a bath together."

That time her eye roll couldn't be controlled. Still though, she only giggled slightly because he was being so sweet and being so sick, it was probably just what any real doctor would have prescribed. So many his bedside manner needed work, but Dr. Laxus had his in bed manner down pat.

When Laxus went to the guildhall a few days later, it was rather late in the day. Mira had finally felt well enough to go back in to work, but he had stayed home, finally able to sleep in the bed alone and relax. Even Lisanna wasn't around, though he just figured she was up at the guild with her friends.

It was Mira that he was really there to see, per usual. Not to mention he thought he'd just glance at the board to see if there really was anything there that he cared to do. If not, then it was just as well. He really did want to be around Mira for a little while longer, to make sure that she stayed healthy. All the filth and vermin that the guild seemed to breed wasn't giving him much faith in her keeping her health up.

He saw her immediately, of course, going around giving drinks and taking orders. She saw him too and her face lit up, looking much better than it had days previous. He didn't smile back at her or anything crazy like that, but when she waved at him, he did nod at her.

Laxus was happy to see that his necklace that he had given her was on her neck, though he would expect no less of her. She always made sure to take the few relics he gave her and make sure everyone knew about them. He rarely gave her anything, but annoyance, after all.

"Mira." He was headed over to her then to kiss her or at least pat her on the shoulder. Something. But then someone fell on him.

No, literally. It was that annoying ice guy, Gray. He literally draped himself over him.

"Help me, Laxus," he pleaded. "I'm sick. I need you to carry me to bed."

"What is wrong with you? Loser." He shoved him off. "Don't-"

"Laxus, please." It was the Salamander's blonde girlfriend, over at a table with the pink haired mage himself. She was laying with her head down and looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. "I don't feel good. Come kiss my head."

"What are you-"

"I can hardly lift my hand, Laxus," Natsu said, glancing back at him. Unlike his two teammates, he wasn't as good at acting and started giggling half way through. Like a freaking chick or something. "Come feed me."

It was making sense then. It was also making him angry. Were they…teasing him? Instead of going and ripping into all of them (Mira constantly told him that Team Natsu were their friends), he began looking around. Mira was behind the bar then, but had overheard and was staring at him with wide eyes. She only shook her head though. No. It wasn't her. But who else would know about the past few days?

When he turned again, he saw the other Strauss sister running out the guild doors, laughing the entire way. "Lisanna!"

[sherlocklaura1992]

What Nutrients Increase Height Surprising Cool Ideas

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You can grow taller tip is to eat food with nutritive value during their years of age.So eat food rich in carbohydrates and proteins.Growing and developing your body into new grow.There are many personal, professional, financial and gender advantages from height increase includes the exercises needed for a repetition of 5-30 seconds.There is a reasonable amount of rest at night.

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What Helps A Child Grow Taller

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[gizedcom]

Matt Hancock admits he is ‘worried’ about Covid-19’s ‘debilitating’ effects

Health Secretary Matt Hancock today admitted he is ‘worried’ about the long term health impacts plaguing coronavirus survivors.

Thousands of Covid-19 ‘long-haulers’ have suffered chronic tiredness, breathlessness and heart problems for months after beating the disease. 

Doctors have identified more serious symptoms in a smaller proportion of people, including delusions, strokes, insomnia, kidney disease and mobility issues.

Mr Hancock told Sky News today that the growing number of patients who have yet to completely recover after shaking the viral disease worried him.

He said: ‘I am concerned there’s increasing evidence a minority of people — but a significant minority — have long-term impacts and it can be quite debilitating.

‘It is something that I’m worried about, we’ve taken action on, both through the NHS and through the research activities.’

Most coronavirus patients will recover within a fortnight, suffering a fever, cough and losing their sense of smell or taste for several days.

However, evidence is beginning to show that the tell-tale symptoms of the virus can persist for weeks on end in ‘long haulers’ — the term for patients plagued by lasting complications.

British scientists have already launched an investigation into the long-term impacts of Covid-19, which the Government has pumped almost £10million into. 

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has admitted he is ‘worried’ about the long term health impacts plaguing coronavirus survivors

Talya Varga, 27, said the shortness of breath she has experienced since having Covid-19 in April feels like a ‘concrete slab on her chest’  

Mr Hancock added: ‘It’s one of the consequences of this being a novel virus. We’re constantly learning about the impact of it.

‘It does appear that for some people there’s a pretty debilitating long-term impact, quite similar to a post-viral fatigue syndrome that you do get with many viruses.

‘It’s really important we support people who are in that situation and, also, that we do the research to find out what we can do about it.’

ARE THERE LONG-TERM SYMPTOMS OF COVID-19? 

Covid-19 is described as a short-term illness caused by infection with the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Public health officials tend to say people will recover within two weeks or so. 

However it’s become increasingly clear that this is not the case for everyone, and that the two-week period is only the ‘acute illness’ phase.

Data from the COVID Symptom Study app, by King’s College London and health company Zoe, suggests one in ten people may still have symptoms after three weeks, and some may suffer for months.

For those with more severe disease, Italian researchers who tracked 143 people who had been hospitalised with the disease found almost 90 per cent still had symptoms including fatigue two months after first falling unwell.

The most common complaints were fatigue, a shortness of breath and joint pain – all of which were reported during their battle with the illness. 

Another study in Italy showed one in ten people who lose their sense of taste and smell with the coronavirus – now recognised as a key sign of the infection – may not get it back within a month.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, involved 187 Italians who had the virus but who were not ill enough to be admitted to hospital.

The UK’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has said the longer term impacts of Covid-19 on health ‘may be significant’.

Support groups such as Long Covid have popped up online for those who ‘have suspected Covid-19 and your experience doesn’t follow the textbook symptoms or recovery time’.

Data from a Covid Symptom Study app, by King’s College London and health company Zoe which has been used by more than 4million Brits, suggests one in ten people may still have symptoms after three weeks, and some may suffer for months. 

For those with more severe disease, almost 90 per cent still had symptoms including fatigue two months after first falling unwell, according to an Italian study.

The most common complaints were fatigue, a shortness of breath and joint pain — all of which were reported during their battle with the illness.

Another study in Italy showed one in ten people who lose their sense of taste and smell with the coronavirus — now recognised as a key sign of the infection — may not get it back within a month.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, involved 187 Italians who had the virus but who were not ill enough to be admitted to hospital.

England’s Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty has said the longer term impacts of Covid-19 on health ‘may be significant’.

Support groups such as Long Covid have popped up online for those who ‘have suspected Covid-19 and your experience doesn’t follow the textbook symptoms or recovery time’.

Mr Hancock said the hardest part about responding to the global pandemic had been knowing so little about the virus. 

He said: ‘The decisions have been extraordinary and very large, the issues that you balance are very, very significant on both sides.

‘The hardest part has been, without doubt, the fact that, as we’ve learnt more, so we’ve had to change policy and then you have to come on and explain why your policy is different today to yesterday. The truth is, because we’re constantly learning.’

He pointed to how scientists had previously thought asymptomatic patients could not spread the disease, which turned out to be false.

‘Before this coronavirus there were six previous coronaviruses and none of them had asymptomatic transmission,’ Mr Hancock said.

‘So, understandably, the advice at the start was this one won’t either.

‘But it does, and it’s one of the hardest things to deal with because it’s hard enough stopping a virus when people with symptoms have got it – but when people without symptoms are passing it on it makes it just so much harder.

‘The whole world is struggling with this problem.’

How Covid-19 causes lasting damage: Three survivors in their 20s reveal they STILL suffer fatigue, racing hearts and breathlessness MONTHS after they were first sick

By Vanessa Chalmers, Health Reporter 

Three coronavirus survivors in their twenties have revealed how they all still suffer from persistent fatigue, breathlessness and heart problems — even though it has been months since they were first diagnosed with the vicious disease.

In eye-opening accounts that prove Covid-19 is not just an illness that goes quietly and causes lasting damage, one 27-year-old woman who fought off the disease told how it constantly feels like there is a ‘slab of concrete on my chest’.

Another 21-year-old victim admitted she feels ‘like a fraud’ because her GP is baffled by her persistent shortness of breath, which occurs even when she sits still. 

And the third survivor — who believes he was struck down in January — is frustrated because there is not much he can do to tackle his heart rate, which has mysteriously sped up since his battle with suspected coronavirus. 

All of the victims now say the public must move away from the incorrect notion that ‘if you are not dead you are fine’, revealing their lives have been turned upside down by the virus, despite being fit and healthy.

Affected patients have told how they struggle to complete everyday tasks, such as emptying the dishwasher, without feeling extremely tired and being left with a racing heart.

Talya Varga, 27 – ‘It feels like there is a slab of concrete on my chest’

Talya Varga was a fit and healthy dancer who exercised regularly and cycled to work before she was struck with the coronavirus on April 1. 

‘In March I went on a trip to Australia and New Zealand, and 13 days after (Wednesday April 1), my symptoms started,’ she told MailOnline.

‘I had a sore throat and fever and quickly progressed into becoming short of breath. Even when resting it felt like I’d just done a 10km run. It was really hard to fill my lungs.’

The 27-year-old spent the next five weeks on bed rest and was sent an ambulance on two occasions because her breathing deteriorated so quickly.

The second time Ms Varga, from south west London, was rushed to hospital, doctors suspected she had pneumonia and a pulmonary embolism — a potentially life-threatening blood clot in her lungs. 

She said: ‘I was referred to a post-coronavirus clinic where a CT scan showed a lump in my right breast and a nodule near my heart. 

Ms Varga said: ‘I was in the low risk category and should have “bounced” back by now’

During her illness, Ms Varga spent the next five weeks on bed rest and was sent an ambulance on two occasions because her breathing deteriorated so quickly

‘Fortunately these don’t look to be anything sinister and could just be scar tissue from the virus.’

Three months on and Ms Varga is still suffering symptoms, such as difficulty breathing which feels like ‘there is a slab of concrete’ on her chest.

She said: ‘This morning I woke up with pain in my ribs, chest and back and I am still having issues with my breathing. It like there is a slab of concrete on my chest.

‘I was in the low risk category and should have “bounced” back by now. The unknown is terrifying. 

‘The current treatment is painkillers, rest and vitamins. If you’re really lucky you are given an inhaler.

‘Some days I am in so much pain that I can feel every bone, muscle and organ in my body.

‘Many patients who are suffering with longer term effects of Covid-19 have no validation that their experience is a recognised condition. We have to move away from the notion that if you are not dead you are fine.’ 

Ms Varga was never given a coronavirus swab test at the height of her illness, and an antibody test came back negative.

However, there is a uncertainty around how long antibodies remain in the blood for. And not all people who have had Covid-19 develop antibodies, scientists say, using another line of the immune system’s defense first. 

Jessica, 21 – ‘I feel like a fraud because my GP doesn’t recognise my symptoms’ 

Jessica first came down with the coronavirus symptoms after spending time with her friend, who also later developed the tell-tale signs.

MORE THAN HALF OF COVID-19 PATIENTS HAVE HEART ABNORMALITIES 

Coronavirus patients can suffer irreversible heart damage as a result of their battle with the disease, a study of hospital patients has found.

More than half of infected patients who had heart scans while in hospital with Covid-19 showed abnormal changes to their organ.

One in eight had signs of ‘severe dysfunction’ in their heart and doctors couldn’t find any other explanation except the coronavirus.

In the UK around one in four people admitted to hospital with Covid-19 die of it but even survivors may be left with long-term illness, this research suggests.

The study, done by the British Heart Foundation, adds to concerns that coronavirus can cause widespread damage to the vital organs and leaves some ‘long-haulers’ with health problems that will last for months and even years after the infection.

The 21-year-old, who didn’t want to reveal her full name, self-isolated at her parents’ home in Bath for two weeks with a temperature — which she says she still has.

Jessica, who is set to graduate from university this summer, told MailOnline: ‘My cough went away the same day it began, and didn’t return.  

‘After about a week of feeling unwell I started to develop chest pain and periods of severe shortness of breath, and after about three weeks I was sent to the hospital briefly because of an unusually high heart rate.

‘It was suggested at that point that I had had coronavirus, and that it had inflamed my heart and that I had pericarditis post-infection.’

Pericarditis – inflammation of the outer layers of the heart – causes chest pain and a high temperature. Pericarditis can be attributed to several factors, including viral infections.

Jessica, who studies in London, said: ‘After multiple check-ins with my doctor, I got some more blood tests last week which revealed that I am negative for antibodies, and that I have had glandular fever in the past.

‘It has been suggested I was already suffering with post viral fatigue from glandular fever, and that I then came down with coronavirus and that it has dragged on because of that, but that’s the frustrating thing – we have no idea.’

‘It does feel like “another day another symptom”. I have had a temperature throughout but also shortness of breath (even while sitting still, but always after any amount of exercise), chest pain, stomach pain, muscle aches, shivers, sweats, headaches, and slight trouble with taste and smell.

‘Generally at the moment though the featured symptom is extreme fatigue – all the time, with any amount of effort or energy.

‘If I do anything – empty the dishwasher, go on a dog walk, talk to a friend over Zoom, even watch a film – my temperature goes up and I need to sit down quietly without doing anything.’

Jessica admitted she feels ‘like a fraud’ because all of her symptoms are met with bewilderment by her GP. 

Jack Lawrence, 21 – ‘I can just about do my university work’ 

Jack Lawrence was first struck down by suspected coronavirus January 20 – weeks before the virus was first detected with testing in the UK.

Mr Lawrence said: ‘The best way I’d describe coronavirus is it’s like a normal virus but the symptoms and pain keeps doubling or tripling’

UK LAUNCHES STUDY OF COVID-19’S LONG-TERM EFFECTS 

Scientists in the UK will investigate the long-term effects of Covid-19 in a scientific study which launches this month.

The Department of Health has announced that up to 10,000 people will be involved in a study to look at how people who catch the coronavirus fare long-term.

Growing evidence suggests that even people who only get mildly sick may suffer long-lasting health effects including lung damage. 

The UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has warned that Covid-19 patients could be left with ‘extreme tiredness and shortness of breath for several months’. 

The study, led by researchers and doctors in Leicester, will look at how people’s mental health is affected by illness and whether factors like sex or ethnicity affect how well someone recovers from Covid-19.

Patients in the study, which will receive £8.4million in funding, will have medical scans, blood tests and lung samples so experts can look at how they are affected.

It comes as the NHS has announced it’s launched a long-term recovery service called ‘Your Covid Recovery’, which will offer online advice to the public and more specialised physio and mental health support to some patients from this summer. 

Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, said: ‘As well as the immediate health impacts of the virus it is also important to look at the longer-term impacts on health, which may be significant.

‘We have rightly focused on mortality, and what the UK can do straight away to protect lives, but we should also look at how Covid-19 impacts on the health of people after they have recovered from the immediate disease.’

The 21-year-old said: ‘I thought it was a normal virus at first but it soon became the worst. It started with the tiniest cough. But I developed aches, pains, was flat out, had a sore throat that was agony and temperatures as high as 39C (102.2F).

‘It peaked after four days and then I thought I had recovered within a week.’

But on February 9, while at his home of Watford, the film student at Northampton University was rushed to A&E by his mother after he became breathless. 

He hadn’t experienced shortness of breath in the first week of his symptoms, which doctors believe only develops later.

Mr Lawrence had previously suffered a collapsed lung in 2017 as a result of a sudden and rare separate condition.

He had surgery to fix it and hasn’t had problems since. But because of his medical history, he was quickly seen by doctors for tests on his lungs.

He said: ‘They were looking for signs it had returned but found nothing. They said I had the back end of the virus.

‘I think at the time it was a fair assumption considering to their knowledge they didn’t know anything. I was pleased with that and that the X-ray was clear.’

Mr Lawrence was told he would recover but has not, despite it being four months since he was first struck down by the life-threatening disease. 

He is still being seen regularly at the Harefield Hospital in Hillingdon, which specialises in respiratory and heart conditions.

And Mr Lawrence is set to have an echocardiogram — a scan to look at the heart and nearby blood vessels for any abnormalities.  

According to research by the British Heart Foundation, coronavirus patients can suffer irreversible heart damage as a result of their battle with the disease.

A a study of hospital patients found more than half of infected patients who had heart scans showed abnormal changes to their organ, and one in eight had signs of ‘severe dysfunction’. 

Doctors say they couldn’t find any other explanation except the coronavirus.

Similarly, Mr Lawrence says tests so far have come back inconclusive for any other cause of his high heart rate and other symptoms.  

He said: ‘Each day I’m consistently very breathless and my heart rate is very fast, however the level of symptoms changes daily.’

Mr Lawrence added: ‘The best way I’d describe coronavirus is it’s like a normal virus but the symptoms and pain keeps doubling or tripling.

‘I can just about do my university work. I remember an assessment day at uni on February 24. I was so ill, I can’t describe. It was beyond the point of tiredness.

‘I’ve been given a steroid inhaler. It doesn’t really do anything. I take multi vitamins and cut out processed food to counteract any inflammation. But there is not much I can do.’

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