“Maybe there’s still time. Maybe we can do something.” He wasn’t looking at me anymore. His mind was working overtime, trying to think of some way out of this. “You’ve got to get up. We have to go now.”
“But I am so tired!” I whined and fell backwards on the bed. I didn’t have the strength to argue anymore. He was saying things that were potentially very serious, but my eyes were already closing.
“Alice!” Jack shouted, and it startled me enough where my eyes opened up again. “You have to get up!”
“No!” I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. “You have to come back to bed! That’s what we’ll do. Compromise.”
“That’s not a compromise at all,” he sighed. The bed shifted as he sat down next to me, and hesitantly, he touched my back. “Alice. Come on. You have to do this. We have to talk to him. Maybe there’s something he can do. Your neck hasn’t completely healed yet.”
“I don’t care! I am so tired, Jack! I’ve never been this tired in my entire life!” I was shouting, or at least trying to, but if Jack hadn’t had better hearing, he wouldn’t have been able to hear me.
“You just lost about two pints of blood, and you only had seven to begin with, so your body’s weak right now. Which is also why we need to get up, so I can make sure that you’re okay.” He shook me, and I tried to pull away from him, not that I got very far. “Alice. Get up.”
After that, he was done arguing. Part of his insistence came from how nervous my current state made him, and he wanted Mae and Ezra to check me out to make sure I wasn’t about to keel over. He stood up, and gently but firmly, he pulled me out of bed.
“I’m not wearing any clothes,” I said in my tired whine. I was still in the robe, but that didn’t constitute as clothes. Standing up made me dizzy, but he held me in place until I stopped swaying.
Fate
“I’ll get you clothes. But you have to stay standing up. You need to try waking up a little bit.” He was holding me steady, and cautiously he let me go. When I didn’t collapse backwards, he hurried to get me something to wear.
“I don’t understand why this can’t wait until I’ve had more sleep. What time is it?” I yawned.
“Um, it’s a little after nine in the morning,” Jack answered as he rummaged through his closet. He came out a second later, carrying a tee shirt and drawstring sweats. “Here.”
“How are you so alert? Milo was like… out after he bit Jane.” I shivered at the thought of it and took the clothes from him.
“He’s still young. It affects him a lot harder than it does me,” he said absently. “Put on the clothes.”
“I don’t want to.”
I tried sitting down, but he grabbed my arm to stop me. I just stood there then, fighting to keep my eyes open. Obviously, since standing and opening my eyes were a chore, I wasn’t really up to getting dressed, so Jack took it upon himself. Later on, I’d be incredibly embarrassed, but at the time, I was just grateful that I didn’t have to do it myself.
He pushed off the robe and pulled the shirt over my head. I tried to help get my arms through the sleeves of the tee shirt, but I got tangled up. He let me sit down to put on my pants, but I ended up lying down. In the ten seconds it took him to get my pants on and pull me into standing up, I had fallen asleep.
“Alice,” Jack said, trying to get me to stand again, but I wasn’t having any of it.
He just gave up on it. At least I was dressed. He scooped me into his arms, and my head lolled into his shoulder. The rest of me just hung limply.
There was the sense of motion, and the next thing I knew, we were downstairs, and he was trying to get me to stand up again. The hardwood floors felt too cold and slippery, and I couldn’t do it.
“Alice, you’re not even trying,” he sighed. His arm was around me, but my legs weren’t doing anything productive, so my weight was entirely on him. “Alice! Come on.”
“Just let me sit down.” I decided that would fix everything somehow, if I could just sit down that instant. I was trying to push away from him, so I could just drop to wherever I was at and sit down.
“We’re in the dining room. Why don’t you wait until I take you to the living room?” Jack said but I just kept pushing on him.
He was much stronger than me, especially considering my extreme state of weakness, but he must’ve decided that fighting me on this was a moot point. He helped lower me down. Once on the floor, I sat up for about a second and fell backwards. He caught me before I cracked the back of my head, and carefully set me down until I was lying.
“You’re just gonna sleep in the middle of the dining room floor?” He crouched over me, and I looked up at him blearily for a minute.
“I guess so. Since you wouldn’t let me sleep upstairs like a normal person. Why can’t I ever just be a normal person? Like… for once. I just wanna sleep when I’m tired. Why is that such a crime?” My eyelids were too heavy, and as soon as they fell shut, so did my mouth.