Gone.

[Byron]

Sixteen o'clock, the sun on Manhattan had already been a the zenith a few hours ago and would now slowly climb down the heaven's tent, ready to inevitably succumb to the horizon. Had the streets already been busy in the morning, now would they be absolutely full of crowds, people only could proceed through scraping by anymore. It wouldn't happen to be the optimal place for a woman with a considerate baby belly to traverse, but Elena didn't possess a hover-car, and in the literal heat of the moment, she didn't think of just quickly calling a taxi which would have been the easiest solution. As it currently was midsummer on Manhattan, the side experiencing day light had been gradually heating up more and more over the course of the day, and only the fact that the sun wasn't at its peak anymore made it anything near tolerable outside of a climated room. Beads of perspiration were dropping off her forehead and she would feel her clothes becoming more and more sweat-logged. Hot-flashes kept pestering her all the way to her boyfriend's apartment, sometimes followed by sudden shivers. The aches were creeping through her stomach, every now and then accompanied by a stab of pain due to which Elena even had to hunch slightly. However with the prospect of the couch in the apartment, she would clench her teeth and move on. If she had had a gun right now, she would have probably shot every single person who jostled against her, and there were many.

It wasn't much of a surprise to her that John wasn't residing in it yet when she unlocked the door to the apartment, obviously he was still at work just as always. With an annoyed grunt would she walk over to the kitchen, throwing a cherry stone pouch in the microwave, waiting for it to be heated up. Tapping against the kitchen table exasperatedly as she felt like she could die a wretched death any second. A nerving headache had joined in by now, rendering her quite unable to concentrate sanely. As soon as the microwave spouted an almost obnoxious beep, Elena took the pouch out of it, walked over to the couch and let herself fall down onto it, letting loose of a deep sigh as she leaned back and rested her palpitating head on one of the soft, white pillows. All while laying the pouch onto her belly, letting its radiated warmth sink in her belly.

That was imaginably bad timing to be struck with flu, she thought, even though she began pondering whether this might was a psychosomatic reaction to the stress of the last days, even the last weeks. Besides the quite obvious drowning in organizing work, tailing her friend, being pestered with the possibility of lacking trust might had been a bit too much for her. And thus, inevitably, stress would entail a weak immune system, that's what she had learned in school after all, so it would only be a logical consequence that she felt like absolute garbage now. She was just hoping that it would be over fast so she could get back to finishing what she had begun. But that was the problem with flu, it might take a while.

A nice lie she had been cooking up there in the course for herself of the last minutes. Judging from her body language however, nervously playing around with her fingers, staring at the ceiling waiting for the pain to slack off, deep down she knew something was not right. Even though she now had the opportunity to relax, her heartbeat hadn't calmed down either, she was still in a somewhat strained physical state. Ironically, it was as if her human instincts wanted to tell her something. Go to the goddamn hospital already, something is wrong, they wanted to tell her. And it was as if her subconsciousness was responsible for her headaches, pounding against her head, trying to get through. Don't forget the appointment!, it would have loved to tell her. But Elena didn't listen, not because she wasn't willing to, but because she didn't hear it in the first place. Instead, she gladly felt how the pain slowly succumbed to the warmth from the pouch and made a retreat. It would paint a small smile on her face, a reliefed one, maybe this would indicate that it really had just been a psychosomatic way of telling her to stop overworking herself.

But the aches wouldn't stay away that easily she soon realized, and sooner than she had thought they came back, sharper than before and fare more sudden when she had just decided to stand up from the couch again. Convulsing in pain, she muttered some incoherent stuff while holding her stomach. For several seconds, she stood there, praying it would become better again, except that it wasn't - in fact, it was quite the opposite, it would get worse and worse. Clenching her teeth, she made a few steps forwards, merely in an attempt to get forward as she didn't actually know what to do. That was when a sickly queasy feeling came over her like a flood, and from one moment to the other, before she could realize what was going on, there was barf all over the place, flooding the floor.