I did some asking around about John and Sandy. Akul was pretty quiet on the matter. He would only say “John really liked her last year. It didn’t work out.” Carl on the other hand was full of information and he didn’t have the consciousness to keep it to himself.

“They slept together. For sure.”

I felt my heart tighten, draining the blood from my face.

“He was super into her. She wasn’t so much but she wasn’t above using him,” Carl said.

“How do you know that’s what happened?”

He ignored my question. “He has a problem. Every girl he falls for becomes the center of his universe. Can you handle that?”

I stopped breathing.

“That’s what I thought,” he said.

* * *

The next night was full of vomit. Every call was from someone who had the flu. And they called like clockwork, every forty minutes. We had just enough time to send one patient off to the hospital before heading to the next one. We ran from one dorm room to the other, following the smell and trying not to succumb to the trend. We advised water, we sent them in ambulances, and we put facemasks on everyone. Still, the flow did not abate. We ran to each call and I began to wonder why I was running. Why was I running towards something that would make me sick? Perhaps I was trying to punish myself, but everyone around me was running too. It must have been something we were born with. The need to run with a pack. My mother would have appreciated the need but not the way I went about it.

I felt like it was something I might die with. When I arrived home at 8 am, after all the calls had stopped coming in, I lay down in a blanket beneath my lofted bed and passed out in the comfort of the plastic fibers, allowing them to pull me towards oblivion where I hoped I stayed. I woke up twelve hours later. I grasped the edge of the desk and tried to hoist myself upwards, only succeeding when I used my other hand as well. Once up, I staggered like the town drunk to the door, only to fall back down as my equilibrium performed a jig.

I felt my dinner from the previous night attempt to claw its way out of my body. I leaned over the trashcan and stayed there for a long, long time.

I couldn’t call EMS. It was taboo. No one in EMS called EMS unless they thought they were going to die. You didn’t want your reputation to be, “such a bad EMT that you need another EMT to help you.” I texted Flint instead. It was something pathetic, attempting to be funny, like “I know you’re mad but if you stay mad much longer, I might not make it. Sick as a dog. Please help?”

I curled up beside the garbage can and tried to sleep, falling into nightmares. An hour later, I woke up and began a pattern of throwing up every hour. I began to tear up. My insides felt like they had been wrung out. I needed help. Ruby was out with her friends and wouldn’t have come near our room with a ten-foot pole at that moment. Flint was furious with me and my mom was light years away. I had spent almost three months in college and there was still no one I could call to get me some water or text me something comforting. I wanted my mother, regardless of the fact that she had always been unhelpful when I was sick. At least she had been there.

My eyes traveled to the fleece that was hanging off of my desk chair. I had never returned it to John. It was by accident, I told myself in the daylight. It was so worth it, I said as I passed by it each night.

I texted John. “Hi John, Sorry to bother you. I’m really sick. Can you bring me a bottle of water? I’m worried about getting dehydrated and I don’t want to call EMS.”

He was there in less than ten minutes and he brought all his equipment. I cried a little, thankful that there was someone who was willing to help me.

“I’m here,” he said. “It’s okay.” He stroked my hair.

I almost passed out in relief. John handed me a Gatorade. “Lemon-lime. It does no harm,” he said, sharing his catch phrase with me.

I drank it, trying to ignore the fact that my mother would have cried at the amount of chemicals I was ingesting. John constructed a nest of blankets and pillows beneath my bed. He helped me move there and followed me with a fresh trash bag.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“Get some sleep.” John settled himself in Ruby’s desk chair with a book.

I stayed like that for another 24 hours. Sleeping, waking up every hour to throw up and sleeping. John never left my side. He ordered food to my room and kept me stocked up on Gatorade, eve though I couldn’t keep anything down.

When I woke up on the second day, John set his book down like it had burned him.

“You’re green,” he said.

“I know I’m young, but I really did think I was learning the EMS stuff. I’ll keep trying,” I said, attempting to form sentences without moving my lips.

“No. You’ve turned green. I’ve never seen someone turn green before.”

I rolled over. I didn’t want to be green in front of John.

“Can I put an IV in your arm? You’re too dehydrated. You haven’t been absorbing any of the Gatorade.”

I nodded. “You won’t be able to get a vein. No one can.”

Looking back, someone might say that I should have gone to the hospital. But they don’t know what they do for the flu at hospitals. At hospitals, they give IVs and Zofran, an anti-nausea medication. Which John had a prescription for and gave with the IV. He was able to get the IV in, first try, no problem. His smile showed how proud he was to have accomplished what I said no one had been able to do. He hung the bag on the spring hooks underneath the mattress. I swallowed the Zofran and went back to sleep.

In my dreams, I heard voices swirling around me. My mother’s voice, commanding me to keep people from seeing me in my weakened state. My father’s voice telling me I couldn’t hack it. My brother called out, asking me to protect him to help him keep my father calm. And Flint’s voice, which was probably wishful thinking, asking how I was, offering to stay with me a while. There was a crash, the sound of glass shattering. My brother screamed, “Andi.” They began to swirl together in a nauseating nightmare that ended in me feeling like I was being consumed by a sentient couch.

When I woke up, I felt infinitely better. The Zofran was preventing me from throwing up and the IV was working.

“Thank you,” I said to John, startling him out of his book.

“Are you feeling better?” he said.

“I’m sorry I took up so much of your time and that you had to see me at my worst.” I almost covered my head with my blanket, once I realized what he had been doing.

“I’ve seen it all before,” he said. “Besides, if this is your worst, you must be pretty spectacular.” He winked.

I laughed, the first time I had even smiled in days.

“I’ve got to go shower, but let’s hang out sometime, okay?” He ruffled my crows nest hair.

A shower sounded like heaven. I bid him goodbye and emailed my teachers to tell them that I had been sick. I could only hope that they would understand. I had heard of stories of teachers who had outlined a no more than two absence per semester rule, and regardless of the circumstances, be it hospital-grade illness or family death, they would lower the grades because of it. There was no room for discretion in grades for classes of a hundred people. But I had heard it was worse in small classes, where the teachers took it personally.