November- Mike's

Mike’s great aunt’s house was very, very big and very, very empty and at the moment Zach reasoned that that was most definitely good because he didn’t think Mike’d have a way to explain their current state, much less the unconscious girl bleeding in Nick’s arms, to a very inquisitive and overly friendly relative.

There was a physical check up much like the first one with results similar to the first one. There was Zach calmly analyzing the contents of his stomach as he extracted a piece of wire from the girl’s shoulder. There was Mike’s sweater which was carefully discarded outside of the second story window that was Very High Up. There was Mike who diligently bandaged away and who, possibly out of concern for the girl’s health, kept Nick away from attempting to help with a combination of snide remarks, insults, and little orders such as “stop-hovering-over-my-shoulder-you-idiot-I’m-trying-to-work-here.”

There was Nick, offering to make everyone feel better by rummaging through the fridge and eventually pouring everyone generous amounts of soda and offering cookies. There was Zach, sitting on the bathroom floor feeling nauseated and Mike finally badgering out of him that the reason he was not a pre-med was because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. There was Mike, sitting through the first shift until well past mid-night and Zach sitting through the second shift until dawn, because they really would like some answers about an event that felt like a bad sci-fi episode.

Finally, there was the girl, who woke up and started crying because she was SOLID, causing the thermometer in Zach’s hand to explode and Nick significant amounts of panic until Zach managed to convince him that he was bleeding a lot less than it looked like he was bleeding by invoking a lot of words such as “capillaries” and “epidermal cells” until Nick got sick of the lecture.

After that the problems escalated somewhat when they found out that the girl refused to tell them anything at all and had, to all appearances and assumptions, no relatives or guardians or place to live.

Zach reminded Mike that neither blinding anger nor torture was the way to go, especially since the first was hardly ever constructive, being blinding, and the second was ruled out by the eighth amendment. Nick reminded them that it was very early and they should both get a break and that was the stage when the girl fell back asleep.

The trio retreated into a guest room to contemplate the infinite mysteries of the world. Mike suggested that they start with aleph-null and continue upward.

[I was going to make a joke about the classes of infinity except I remembered that I don't remember anything about it. This week involved too much writing. I swear, it can't be healthy.]