Anya closed her eyes in anticipation, thumping her foot on the ground. She felt her head clear and start to feel light, her headache disappearing. She thumped her leg a bit harder.

She waited.

And waited.

Nothing happened.

---

Sulking Anya decided to walk back to Lily and Sam, after having waited a bit more for something to happen. Anything at all. Her headache had cleared, which she was grateful for, but she had wanted something more… mystical. Walking out, Anya made sure to close the door to the room, just in case anyone decided to come to the shack and found an empty bottle very much not filled with glittery liquid. Glancing at the window in the small room attached to the strange shelf filled one, she saw the clear blue skies, the green forests and what surely must have been the ocean. Anya didn’t find this strange.

That was home after all.

Walking away the thought of home left her head as fast as it had entered, leaving her scrambling to get it back. Why was that home? Grandma’s apartment was home. The grey skies raining down on the citizens were home. The smell of exhaust fumes, the tall buildings, the malls, that was home.

Lost in thought Anya walked right into Sam, making her stop and him fall over onto the wooden floor.

“Oh fuck, dude, I’m sorry I was just… lost in thought.” Anya explained, reaching her hand to help him stand back up. Sam looked her up and down, looking puzzled before nodding. Anya reached up to her face, where his eyes had lingered, and felt nothing unusual. No blood, no giant pimple, nothing.

“What happened when you were gone friendo? You look… Well you look better.” Sam said.

“What do you mean I look better?” Anya crossed her arms, getting more confused by the second.

“For starters you don’t look like you haven’t slept in a month. Did you find concealer?” Sam moved closer, squishing Anya’s freckled cheeks, “Are you possessed by a shack ghost?”

Anya scrunched her face for a moment, hopefully giving the impression of thinking about it, before looking back up at Sam. “Nope,” she answered, popping the p as hard as she could with her cheeks still being squished.

Sam let go of her, moving to the stairs. Anya followed.

“So, what did you find?” he asked.

“I think I might have seen someone,” Anya replied, thinking back to the brown haired person she had seen by glimpse. “Otherwise there were just boxes. Oh, and some glittery liquid that I decided to drink.”

The pair had reached the bottom of the stairs, and Sam was staring at his friend in shock.

“You decided to what?”

“Who decided to what?” Lily asked, coming up to the pair right as Anya was about to answer. Feeling her cheeks heat up, Anya looked onto the floor and started twirling a piece of her hair. Lily looked at Sam for answers.

“Lily, you are never, ever, allowed to leave Anya’s side again, you’re like 200% of her impulse control.”

“What happened?” Lily sounded worried now. Oh no.

“I may have drunk a bottle of strange glittery liquid that I found in a random box?” Anya looked up at her friends, who were understandably worried. Lily especially. Anya decided to get her some chocolate later, the fancy kind Lily liked, as an apology for… that. Lily looked from Anya to Sam, before covering her face and making a noise of suffering.

“Sam, we’re taking Anya to the ER before I start screaming for real.”

---

Anya had been in a hospital waiting room many times in her life, starting from that time she broke her arm when she was 7 to having constant panic attacks because of dreams she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t been in for possible poisoning yet, so this was a first.

The metal chair squeaked as Anya rocked back and forth on it, waiting for the nurse to come back with results from the multiple tests that had been done to Anya. Lily was sitting on Anya’s left side, sideways and leaning on Anya while chatting with one of her online friends. Anya had no idea what they were saying except for the occasional emoji, as both Lily and her friend were writing in Korean. Sam was sitting to her right, playing some game on his phone, not focused on the world around him.

Anya sighed and went back to picking at the skin around her nails.

She kept looking up at every person coming through the hallway door, hoping it was the nurse. She wanted to leave already.

Anya really didn’t like hospitals.

The smell of iron and isopropyl alcohol. The squeaky chairs. The children’s toys no child would be interested in for more than a few minutes. All the constant feeling of dread. The loud sirens occasionally passing outside. The looks of concern from the people passing by.

Sharp pain in her finger took Anya away from her slightly panicked thoughts. Looking down at her hands, placed onto her lap, she saw a small drop of blood slowly emerge from her thumb. Anya viewed it for a second, empty look in her eyes, before she put it in her mouth in order to not dirty her clothes. She lifted her feet up onto the chair, continuing her rocking.

It took another 15 minutes before the nurse came back. Her heels clacked over to the group, and Anya was sure the nurse smelled more like a hospital than she had previously. Lily pocketed her phone. Sam continued playing but with less attention to the game itself.

The nurse looked down at the group from behind her round glasses. Anya noted that she looked younger than the other nurses in the building. Her hair was light brown and extremely long, braided into a thick plait that swung behind her. Her skin was a nice colour, tan from the sun but not fake looking. Anya covered her bleeding thumb with the rest of her fingers.

“Well, you really did give us a scare with your story Ms. Heatherson, but your blood tests came back alright. You’re a bit low on iron though, but taking some iron pills for a while should help.” The nurse flipped to the next page, as Anya’s phone pinged in her pocket. She decided to read the text later, focusing on the nurse for now. “Your eyes are a bit slow, but we can write that off as being tired. The other tests also came out okay.”

“So we can go?” Lily asked and rubbed Anya’s forearm in an attempt to comfort.

“You can go. Come back if anything gets worse, we can’t be too careful.” Lily nodded and started putting on her jacket. Sam did the same. Anya, still holding her thumb hidden, slowly moved her legs down from the chair, reading the text she had gotten from her grandmother. The nurse suddenly stopped in her tracks and turned around.

“Ms. Heatherson?”

“Huh?” Anya looked up at the nurse, who was holding out a bandaid.

“For your thumb.” She smiled. Anya looked down catching a glimpse of the nurse’s nametag, staring at the spot in confusion even as the nurse walked away. “See you later!”.

Anya slowly waved as the nurse disappeared. She was cut away from her thoughts as Sam threw her jacket at her. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah I… Have me met that nurse before?” Anya asked.

“No not that I know?” Lily answered, and the trio started walking outside to meet Anya’s grandma, who had come to get them.

Anya looked back at the waiting room that had housed them for the past hour. The door closed in front of her, giving a glass barrier to the other people in the room. The nurse was long gone. Anya turned around and walked outside to her friends.

“I gotta ask grandma if we know anyone whose second name is Wring.”