Finn just sorta folded up, almost like he was sitting down. Sarah watched as he almost fell into his chair, but his center of gravity was far enough forward that he slumped forward onto the floor. Once down on the ground, he looked dead. Sarah couldn't see if he was breathing, but the nurse was already crouching down over him, calling for help.

Several more people in scrubs ran into the room, and they quickly had him laid out flat on his back. No one did CPR, so Sarah thought he must still be alive. After a few more shouts, someone else was in with more gear. A bandage of some sort got wrapped around Finn's neck, and a long board was slid underneath him. Then four of the nurses lifted him up off the ground and carefully took him out of Sarah's room.

And without any fanfare, her room was nearly silent again. The voices faded down the hallway as Finn was carried to people who presumably could help. Sarah found herself staring at the red light that covered most of the room. It wasn't like the fog that flowed evenly through the room. Instead, it was as though everything had been evenly painted a hotrod red with glowing light, even if Sarah could still see the beige colors just fine. The fog that filled the room didn't look the way it should. Finn had somehow taken all the red out of the pure white mist, and now the room shone with a teal hue. As Sarah watched, she could already see the teal beginning to brighten back to white, and the glowing red fading as things went back to normal.

There was something wrong with it. The red didn't fit, not really. It felt like that one time her mom had used food coloring on meatloaf. Sure, it tasted fine, but blue and savory just didn't work together. The way it sat on everything just felt wrong. Somehow. Sarah licked her lips, watching the red coating fade away. At the same time, there was something about the teal light that remained that kept pulling at her attention.

A nurse came back into her room, holding a clipboard and a little recorder. The older woman was breathless like she'd been running, but she wasn't sweaty either. Sarah figured the nurse was reacting to Finn's sudden collapse. She was wearing gloves and something covering all her hair, and her mask had a hose to a little box at her waist. The woman took a moment to glance at Sarah's monitors and visibly calmed down on reading the numbers there. With a thoughtless motion, she adjusted her mask as she sat down next to Sarah's bed.

"Sarah, are you ok?" asked the nurse.

"People keep asking me that," said Sarah. "What's happened?"

"I was kinda hoping you had some idea," said the older woman. "I've got to ask you some questions. It looks a lot like Finn's suffering from the same thing you are, but we want to make sure. What happened before he fell? An argument?"

"I don't know," said Sarah. "I mean, yeah, he was getting upset, but I don't know why."

"He wasn't worried about something you'd say? He didn't want you to keep a secret?"

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"What? No, he wanted me to tell him..." Sarah trailed off. "Something."

Thankfully, the woman didn't seem to respond to Sarah's evasion. "This is important, Sarah. Does he take any drugs? Any medicines, anything like that?"

Sarah blinked and then blinked again. "I don't, what?" she stammered. "How would I know that?"

"Sarah, do you take anything?"

"No!" exclaimed Sarah. She paused after her reflexive assertion. "They tried Ritalin on me a while back. And other stuff, but it all just made everything worse. It's been years since I took anything. Ah, I take Benadryl sometimes, especially if it's stormy and I can't sleep. Please don't tell my mom, I just get it from her medicine cabinet."

The woman smiled, "Thank you, Sarah. I'm Dr. Foster, by the way. Right now, we've got that boy down the hall getting stabilized. We don't really know why he collapsed, not yet. But I'm sure he'll be fine. I wanted to talk to you though, because I'm more worried now.

"It's rare, but not unknown for migraines or other minor neurological problems to cause seizures, pain, or vision problems..."

"I don't have vision problems," interrupted Sarah.

"It's ok, Sarah. I've talked to your mom and seen your history," said Dr. Foster. "I completely understand why you wouldn't want to talk about that to a doctor again. All I can do is apologize for all the pain you went through, but please understand that it matters to your diagnosis and treatment. Some neurological symptoms can be important, even if they went away years ago.

"Here's the real problem. It's a one-in-a-million thing for a healthy girl to collapse and have two seizures in a day. But ten billion people live on the planet, so it comes up frequently enough. Of course, it's also a one-in-a-million for a healthy boy to collapse too. For it to happen within twelve hours of each other, in the same school, while speaking to each other... it's practically impossible for those to be unrelated."

Sarah nodded at that. She already knew that what was happening to her and Finn was connected. The red had almost completely faded by now.

Dr. Foster continued, "Which means that whatever is making you sick is almost certainly making Finn sick. Which is why I'm asking about drugs. If he gave you something, or you took something together, then we can get you feeling better quickly."

"I feel fine," said Sarah. "Great, as a matter of fact. I think maybe I slept really well last night."

"Sarah, please," said the doctor. "If there is a toxin, I need to know. Otherwise, I have no idea what might happen to you two. I won't tell your school, I certainly won't tell the police, and I don't even need to tell your mom. But I need to make sure you two aren't going to get sicker, and I really need to make sure there isn't going to be a rush of people with the same symptoms crashing into hospitals around the county. Because if it's not something that you took together, then the connection is simply that you've *been* together. Which means something communicable."

"We didn't do anything together, really," emphasized Sarah. "Really, I barely know him. He's just a jock at school, he bugs me a lot, and that's it. He's always bothering me about the books I read and stuff. But we don't do anything together. Just art class and history. I don't even know why he signed up for art class, he's really not good at it and I don't think he likes it either."

"Ok, Sarah, fine," sighed the older woman. She stood up, putting the recorder into a pocket. Pausing at the door, she turned to Sarah, "We'll order a broad tox screen, I'm sure if there's something we'll find it. In the meantime, we'll have to keep both of you in quarantine. At least until we figure out what's going on."

And with that, the doctor went away, leaving Sarah to watch the slowly changing colors around her. Even faded, there was still something wrong about the red coating everything in the room. It just wasn’t supposed to be like that.