Firestorm

Chapter 2- A Deadly Reality

Dianne Stone had been the nurse at St. Walstan’s for just over four years, and she planned to stay there for longer. She loved the job; it was just a case of cleaning up the odd nosebleed from a schoolyard fight or tending some sort of sporting injury. It was much more relaxed than a job in a state hospital, and it paid better too, so she had no wish to leave the comfort of her ground floor office for a busy ward in central London.
But even so, the job had its downsides. Working in a school meant that she always worked with teenagers, many of which were hormonal at the best of the times, let alone when they were being treated for a sprained ankle. In front of her now was a perfect example of this.

------------------------------------------

Scott Stirling sat on the low sofa in front of the nurse’s desk, his eyes pointed to the floor or through the glass panel in the single door. Outside, students were rushing to breakfast, and suddenly Scott found the sick feeling in his stomach being replaced with an aching hunger.
“I’ve just got a phone call from Mr. Steiner to check you got here,” Nurse Stone said in her over-cheerful voice. “Have you got yourself into trouble or something?”
Scott ignored her. As he saw it, he was here for a medical examination, not a lecture from a patronising nurse who saw him as nothing more than part of the day job. He had no time for bedside manner.
The nurse carried on, craning her neck to try and look at Scott’s face. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. What’s your name?”
Scott told her, ignoring the fact that he had noticed his file open on her desk as soon as he had walked into the room.
“Okay then Scott. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? People don’t normally come to me when nothing’s wrong.”
The nurse got up from behind her desk and sat next to Scott on the sofa. She lifted up his chin and shone a light into his eyes.
“You look tired.”
“Wow”, replied Scott, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Where did you study? I got up early for training this morning, of course I’m going to be tired.”
Nurse Stone ignored him. “Are you eating well? You look in good shape physically, so you’re definitely getting enough exercise.”
“Well I’m sure I could be eating better if you let me go to breakfast.”
“I’ll take that as a yes then.”
The nurse then continued to run a series of tests on Scott. She took his blood pressure, listened to and measured his heart rate and tested his reflexes, as well as cleaning and bandaging the wound on his hand. She grabbed a clipboard from the desk and ticked a few boxes, took a few notes and signed the bottom of the page. Finally, she sat back down behind the pinewood desk.
“Well,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you. It just looks like you’ve been burning the candle at both ends. You know, going to sleep late, getting up early and working hard, but that’s nothing a good rest can’t see to. I’ve signed this note to say you won’t be in school all day, and to say that you’ll be fine for Mr. Steiner’s practises for the rest of the week. That means you need to rest today, because I don’t want to see you here in the same state on Wednesday.”
Scott nodded in agreement and stood up, heading for the door. He felt better now; at least, the horrible feeling he got whenever he thought about his dream was starting to fade, and he was glad to know that there was nothing seriously wrong with him. Then again, that gave him no excuse for his behaviour in training earlier that morning, other than the fact that he had let stupid dreams get in the way and affect his concentration.
Nurse Stone handed him a piece of paper as he moved closer to the desk and the door.
“Show this to the people at the canteen. Breakfast’s already finished, but this should get you in. Make sure you eat something.”
Scott looked up at the nurse and took the paper from her carefully manicured fingers. The palm of his hand still stung from the wound, but just the thought of breakfast of some kind made him feel better already.
“Thanks.”
“It’s what I’m here for”, she replied.
Scott smiled and opened the door. The smell of boiled eggs and burnt toast wafted down the corridor and into the office, and the staircase that had previously been so busy was now almost empty, except for a single cleaner with a mop and bucket in her hand. He was just about to step through the doorway when Nurse Stone spoke again.
“Are you feeling okay? I mean, you’re fine physically, but is there anything else you want to speak about? Any trouble sleeping?”
Scott looked round and faced the nurse, seeing real compassion and concern in her pale green eyes. For a moment, he considered telling her everything; how he had had a bad dream and threw up just from thinking about it. It would be easy to tell it all to someone he didn’t know, getting it off his chest might make it easier to forget or think about. But the dream was somehow personal. He didn’t know if he could, even if he wanted to, explain how real the images seemed and how sick and terrible he had felt when the unknown woman collapsed dead on the floor. And even if he could, it would just be a dream to the nurse, a bad dream and another case of “burning the candle at both ends”.
“I’m fine”, he said, before heading out into the corridor and closing the door behind him.

--------------------------------------------

As the nurse had told him, breakfast had already finished by the time Scott reached the canteen. The few remaining staff were cleaning the tables or dumping uneaten food in the many bins placed on the blue tiled floor. He felt a bit strange, a single student walking into the empty room, still dressed in sports clothes with a look of exhaustion and tiredness on his face. If they weren’t too worried about getting home as quickly as possible, the canteen employees would probably have noticed the odd looking boy and showed some sort of concerned interest. But as it was, Scott managed to walk almost the entire length of the canteen without so much as a raised eyebrow.
The food counter was almost empty, but he picked up a couple of apples gratefully and bit into one of them as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Apparently, his note from the nurse wasn’t needed; the staff were still only interested in their dishcloths and mops. He grabbed a bottle of fresh pineapple juice before making his way to the exit, but stopped before he reached the door.
The canteen staff stopped too, as a piercing scream filled the room from the corridor outside. Immediately, Scott ran out to see what was happening.
A young girl hung limp from the arms of one of the male tutors, her face looking pale and clammy in the bright lighting. Scott didn’t recognise the girl, but her uniform confirmed that she was a student at St. Walstan’s. The tutor was carrying her towards the nurse’s office with a look of complete terror on his face.
Another girl stood behind the other two, obviously the source of the scream. A bag lay on the floor next to her, books and other belongings spread on the tiles beside it. Her mouth still hung open as the scream left her lungs, a horrified look remained etched in her dark eyes.
Just as Scott leaned forward to try and take a closer look at the unconscious girl’s face, the other girl’s voice pierced the silence again.
“What’s wrong with her? What are you doing?”
She ran towards the tutor and attempted to speak to her friend, who still remained limp and unmoving. The tutor continued to walk towards the nurse’s office, going through the open door and dumping the girl on the low couch that Scott had been sitting on only minutes previously. The door closed behind him, and the other girl was left standing out in the corridor, her fists pounding uselessly against the door.
Scott decided not to interfere. Obviously the girl had had some sort of serious accident, and in that case, he had no right to get in the way out of pure curiosity. However, as he walked out of the administration block and out into the main school yard, he couldn’t help but wonder what had caused so much terror in the man’s eyes and in the girl’s screams.
He shrugged off these feelings as he felt the cool breeze against his skin and wolfed down the fruit. The hunger in his stomach slowly subsided, and the sick feeling he had had since the morning was all but gone. He guessed the nurse was right; all he needed was some food and a rest.

------------------------------------------------------

When Scott arrived, Dormitory Block J was empty and silent, its usual solitude emphasised by the sheer lack of activity. The building itself was often seen as the short straw when it came to living accommodation; situated around five minutes from the main administration blocks and classrooms. It was completely isolated from the rest of the school, and so for the majority of the time, Scott disliked being based there.
But when he needed rest, Block J was the ideal location. Completely cut off from the noise and the crowds of the main school, it gave him the ideal time and place to catch up on some well-needed sleep. Without even changing out of his rowing clothes, Scott locked the door to his room and lay down on the bed.
This time, his sleep was deep and dreamless. The calm loneliness of the building enveloped him and lulled him into the sort of slumber that made him never want to wake up, the sort of sleep that calmed and soothed him beyond any rest he had managed to sneak in during the past few weeks between lessons, homework and early training sessions.

--------------------------------------------

By the time he woke up, lunch had been and gone, and Scott felt the feeling of hunger returning yet again. On the other hand, the sick feeling he had had all morning was gone, and already the dream seemed less significant and more like what it had been; a dream; a product of his subconscious thought and nothing more.
He changed into a pair of jeans and a striped t-shirt, stopping in the bathroom to splash cold water against his face, before heading downstairs to the common room.
Three tattered sofas were spread across the room, none of them matching and all of them falling apart in one place or another. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling and the remains of a lampshade lay in a pile in the corner of the room. A round table filled another, with only three chairs tucked underneath and a bowl of almost rotting fruit on the polished surface. Scott ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. At least this place still seemed like home.
A boy of his age, with short blond hair and long, thin limbs, sat on one of the sofas, sheets of paper and plastic folders filling up the rest of the leather seat. An exercise book sat open on his lap, and he tapped a pen idly on the blank page.
“Oscar,” Scott said loudly, waking up the other boy from his distracted silence. “What are you doing here?”
Oscar Davis was Scott’s best friend at St. Walstan’s. Similar to Scott in more ways than either of them liked to admit, Oscar often found himself in odd daydreams, particularly when there was important schoolwork to be done.
He woke up from his thoughts and looked across the room at Scott. “Oh,” he said, attempting to tidy up the mess of equipment strewn across the sofa. “I skipped lunch to try and catch up on some of this work. Can’t say it’s working though, all I’ve done is made myself feel really hungry. Anyway, how are you? I heard Steiner sent you to the nurse.”
“I’m fine,” he said, not wanting to count how many people he had already said that to today. He walked across the room to where a small fridge was plugged into a socket on the wall. He opened the door and looked inside, which was empty as usual. He sat down on another of the sofas opposite Oscar, rubbing the remaining tiredness from his eyes.
“No food I’m afraid,” he told Oscar, before remembering what happened outside the nurse’s office. “Hey, have you heard anything about an accident today?”
Oscar looked up from his book and stopped tapping the pen. “An accident? What do you mean?”
“I don’t really know. Just, this morning, I saw this girl get carried to the nurse. She was all…limp, and pale.”
“You mean you haven’t heard?”
Scott started worrying. The look on Oscar’s face held a seriousness that rarely graced his pale, angular features. An awkward and heavy silence filled the room as the pen remained still and even the air itself seemed to hold its breath in some sort of frightened apprehension.
“Heard what?”
“It’s probably a coincidence, and it might not even be true, because I only heard it from Je-“
“Heard what Oscar?”
“She died. A girl died today.”
Scott stayed silent, unblinking, a wave of exhaustion and confusion washing over him. A second death. Except, this time, it was real. A girl was dead, and this time it was real.

About / Info

Forums & RPG

Literary

Resources