As she left the restroom, she looked again for the three guys that were there to pick her up. Her vision was starting to blur as she was beginning to run a fever, but it was still easy enough to spot them in their brightly colored clothes. She walked up behind one of them and with what little energy she had left said, “I’m ready to go.”

            “Oh, holy-shit you scared me,” the guy in the yellow polo, jumped.

            “Sorry, uh, we can go now,” Valerie urged, trying to get out of the public eye.

            “I’ll take your bag,” the guy in the salmon polo said.

            Valerie handed him her bag and followed behind them to a large black SUV standing near the sliding doors. The three guy’s jumped in first, letting Valerie take one of the middle seats which offered more personal space for someone who didn’t know any of the occupants in the vehicle. When they were all settled, the driver pulled out of the space they were in and began driving away from the airport.

            “So, I’m Greg, this is Tristan, Allen, Roy, and as you already know John,” the salmon shirt wearing guy said.

            “Ah, nice to meet you,” Valerie nodded. At this point she was hardly able to keep her eyes open and knew she wasn’t going to remember any of these people’s names.

            “So John, told us you’re going to be teaching the medical students this year, what years will you be teaching?” Greg asked.

            “Uh –.” Valerie couldn’t hold a thought anymore, and passed out. The medicine was working, but the damage from not having taken it for almost a full day had already been done. Greg who was sitting beside Valerie watched her passed out as he was waiting for an answer to his question. He jumped into action immediately checking Valerie for a pulse.

            “John, Valerie passed out!”

            “Are you sure she’s not sleeping?”

            “No, I’m pretty sure I just watched her faint. I’m checking for a pulse. There’s one but its faint,” Greg replied keeping his hand on her wrist.

            “Should we take her to a hospital?” Tristan asked.

            “We’ll monitor her and if she gets worse, then we can take her. Check her for a medical ID bracelet, though,” John replied being the one of the five who actually knew Valerie.

            Greg took Valerie’s wrists and put them together, raising her sleeves looking for a bracelet. There was nothing there. Then he checked her neck for a necklace and didn’t find anything but behind her V-neck shirt on her left side about three to four inches below her collar bone he could see the beginning of a small red tattoo. He tugged on her shirt revealing a red tattoo with the letters DNR.

            “John, she has a DNR on her,” Greg exclaimed.

            “Continue to monitor her. We’re half way to her house,” John replied.

            Valerie’s fever was finally under control and going down. She could feel someone tugging at her left arm and it caused her to wake up. She looked at Greg and around the car and let out a large sigh.

            “You can stop checking my pulse,” she told Greg, while pulling her arm from his hand.

            “Are you okay?” Greg asked, with a look of pure concern.

            “I’m fine. I’ll get better. Don’t worry,” Valerie said lying through her teeth.

            “Are you sick?” Roy in the passenger seat asked.

            “Sure, let’s go with that,” Valerie said curtly trying to cutoff the conversation these boys were trying to have with her.

            The boys did get the message and chose not to continue asking about what could have been wrong with Valerie.

            “So, I -uh, was asking you if you know what year medical students you’ll be teaching?” Greg continued from before to prevent a super awkward car ride.

            “Third and fourth years, but mostly I’ll be offering a lab rotation,” she replied out of breath, but feeling that she was recovering.

            “We’re third years, do you think we’ll see each other?”

            “Yes, I’m sure,” Valerie sighed. She was beginning to think taking this job was going to be way more work than she anticipated.

            “What made you decide to come back here, from Japan?” Allen asked trying to keep the conversation going.

            “I had a change of heart,” Valerie replied thinking about her list of things she felt she needed to complete before she would succumb to her illness.

            “Is it about the arranged marriage?” Greg asked, bringing up a topic that was sensitive more for John than it was for Valerie.

            “Uh, no. I’m not honoring the arranged marriage, that our fathers’ set up when we were toddlers,” she replied defiantly while making eye contact with John in the rearview mirror, so he knew that she was serious.

             “What was it you’re Dad said John, if one of you win you can have the others hand in marriage or something like that,” Greg recalled.

            “Yes, and I won. So, I can choose not to marry your precious John,” Valerie teased finally feeling better.

            “How did you win, exactly?” Allen asked.

            “It was whoever became famous first. But I had to become famous as a researcher like my Dad, while John had to do it as a doctor. Since doctors don’t do much while in school you were at a disadvantage.”

            “I heard you were the youngest person to publish a first author paper during your Ph.D. in Japan.”

            “I worked really hard,” Valerie shrugged. It was true, as a young girl she felt that she had a lot to prove with this bet between her father and John’s.