The donuts between bouts made things delicious. Your girl didn’t do a second helping, no. But a third one? Some students bombed through the two trays of donuts so quick that I wondered if I should have gotten more.

They left a single powdered jelly donut, because of course they did. Damn students savaged the box.

It was just a reminder that sometimes the best thing you could do in life was to just buy the thing that gave someone else joy. Whether it was a skin in the game thing or just the taste of the last powdered jelly donut, they really appreciated it.

The ban round kicked off for the second game at six thirty, something that was basically unheard of. It was something that had happened probably once in my entire time and that was because we’d won a game early. There was no big shift during the ban round, meaning that everybody got what they wanted, and it was a very close thing to the previous setup.

Three people changed avatars, though The RVCC Lions looked more like a team.

“You know the lions aren’t even to ones that do all the work,” I said to the team. “The Lionesses do all the work.”

I was razzing up the team.

“You know what Bulldogs are? Winners. They’re not going to rest on their laurels. They’re not going to sit back. They’re going to protect what we have.”

“We got this!” Rachel hissed, her breath coming off a little fruity. I didn’t remember any fruit filled donuts, but maybe she’d had something else.

“Yeah, I don’t know how to get this rolling when you’re going to go straight into early game farming. That’s so anticlimactic,” I said.

“We’re going to win, regardless,” Racquel said.

“We are inevitable!” Murph said, hi fiving her.

I put the strategy to farming, checking that the opponent hadn’t pulled a fast one as my minions and their minions headed down the lane. My minions had minions, even if they were virtual. I felt like Ender at the end of his time, trying to win the battle against the Formics.

Well, maybe not that same feeling, but close.

With their new formation, the enemy was going to fight this war.

With our heavily enforced peace, things would turn around. It was happening.

Of course, I was hoping that the over sugared lions would take these opportunities to make my damn day.

Their match scores were, for the first time, within striking distance of ours.

Most of them had a match rating of six. Our guys all had a match rating of seven, save for Rachel, who had a rating of three.

She looked off. I couldn’t exactly tell it was an hour, but it looked like she had just gotten ill. It wasn’t like I could sub her out twelve minutes into a game. Her dropping to a low match rating held everyone else down. I didn’t expect to see that, but there it was.

I came up behind her.

“You alright?” I said.

“I got this,” she said, totally not getting it. “I got this...”

“Rachel you’re like... Yellow,” I said.

“I’m asian,” she said. “Clearly.”

I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Rachel, your family is from the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, and then from some Nordic country. Are you sure that you’re okay?”

“I might be uh....”

“I’m calling Leigh.”

She picked up on the first ring. Rachel, the beautiful, stubborn woman that she was, had already done the thing where she denied anything was going on.

“Hey! What’s up, girl? Did you win?” she said.

“No, I got a problem.”

I waved to the referee, trying to get his attention. I had two backups that were doing their homework so I could sub her out, but if was something out of the ordinary going on.

“Hey! Things are getting blurry,” Rachel said. “Oh, hey Leigh...”

“What’s going on?” The ref said.

“I think that my girl here is going to need to be swapped out. She’s going through something... Whatever it is...”

You would think that I asked him to get his mother to watch all of Naruto, the face he gave me. Then he saw her and he blanched as well.

“This looks serious,” he said, taking out his inhaler and taking a puff. “Send in your sub.”

Leigh was talking to Rachel. Rachel looked like she was nodding off. The referee picked up her head. I waved for the backup and then knelt next to Rachel.

“Rae!” I said. “It’s Professor Thomas. It’s going to be okay.”

Her breath really got me good. I had to steel myself to not wince in front of her. That wouldn’t be great.

“Things are blurry,” Rachel slurred.

I took my phone back.

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“She needs to go to a hospital now,” Leigh said. “Get her in an ambulance or get her in a car moving. Preferably an ambulance.”

"What? Shit." I clicked the button and it went on speaker mode.

"Put the phone down and call 911, or drive her to the hospital!" Leigh said.

I looked at the ref. He nodded. "Racquel, can you..."

"I got this," she said.

I put one of her arms over me and then got her up to sitting. I looked around for someone, anyone to help me out with this and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw them

Campus police stopped by, making my tension drop from unbearable to merely just double the normal amount.

I sat as they asked her a few questions and then they asked me some questions and then it was all kind of a blur after that. The match was over by the time the paramedics were there and I had never seen so many men in blue work pants at one time in the same place and I nearly passed out myself.

We'd won, but I didn't even care about the game at that moment.

Rachel handed me her phone. "Call my mom."

I copied down her mothers number and handed the phone back to her.

It rang several times, giving me the hope that perhaps I wouldn't have to inform her mother that something bad was happening to her lovely daughter and by the third ring, they had placed an IV line into her arm and gotten her onto a stretcher.

"Hello?" a woman's voice said.

"Where are you guys going?" I asked.

"Valley," a terse EMT said as they wheeled her away.

"Hello?"

"Good evening, this is Professor Thomas and... I'm sorry to tell you this but Rachel is on her way to Valley hospital. She's getting medical treatment and is a bit out of it. I'm sure that she'll call you..."

"Rachel is going to the hospital?" Her voice felt like it twisted upon itself.

"Yes." My stomach was in knots. I had called like it was just a thing I did but now this all felt like I should have asked someone else to do it. She had handed me her phone, with her mother's contact information on it.

"How am I going to get to her?" The voice wavered.

"I'm sorry?" I asked.

"I can't get to her, she needs me."

I had to take a second to process what she was saying. Was she trying to save her daughter even though trained rescuers were there with her taking her into an ambulance? Or was she trying to protect her daughter from something else? My mind raced with the possibility that maybe this was more than I thought was going on. It probably wasn't but it was always a chance.

Rachel had never told me about her family. I had never asked. She must like her mother enough to have her as an emergency contact. Heck, I wouldn't call my mother in an emergency. Just because I was her emergency contact did not mean that she was mine. She might think that, and it might be the reality that she lived in, but it was fake news.

"I'm sorry. I don't have any more information than that. Do you have some family that can help you out?"

"I'll call around. It's just... I was just talking to her and now she's going to the hospital? This seems so sudden."

"I assure you that she is going to be in the best hands there."

I got a text and briefly checked it.

Leigh: I'll check in on her when she's here. I live right nearby anyway.

"The best hands," I said. "I will make sure that you get a call."

"Oh. Thank you dear," she said.

Kelly: You're a lifesaver.

"Call us back if you need a lift," I said.

"I...I will."

I paused..there was something... Something I've always told me that I should have stayed on the line. Maybe it was just me wanting to take a pregnant pause and think about what was actually going on with our mother but I couldn't see Rachel anymore. She had disappeared out and the ambulances were about to drive away.

"Thank you," she said.

She hung up and I just felt gutted. People didn't go to school to get her to go to the hospital. Sure things happened but this was so unexpected that I just sat in a days behind the team and didn't even pull up the stats. I kind of numbly looked at my phone for a minute. Waiting to see if somebody would call me.

It felt like too much of a event that nobody was calling me back but it wasn't about me. In that moment. It was about my student who had just gotten out of it.

I felt so powerless and like I couldn't do anything at that moment. I went through all my screens and looked for an option to restore her to full health or something but there was nothing. I couldn't even console myself with the knowledge that I could see her stats.

"Hey, are you okay?" The referee said, sitting down next to me.

"I'm fine. It's just that was really quick and I didn't expect..."

I hadn't met this man before tonight but he seemed genuine and kind and in that moment I wanted to tell him how I felt but I just didn't have the words for it. I was going to need some time to recover from what happened to her and that felt like I was putting the emphasis on me when clearly that was her thing. All I wanted was for things to go back to normal and for Esther to be here and for Rachel to be here and to be with my friends and maybe it was time for me to get somebody to help me out. Those two disappearing at the wrong time had sent me spiraling in such a way that I wasn't even paying attention to the game anymore.

I looked up and saw that the Bulldogs were working through a team fight in the enemy base. Normally, I would have got into the thick of it and seeing if I could call out things between them. But by now? There were a tunes machine and I was just the conductor that got them going.

Stacey was calling me and I couldn't stop myself.

"Girl where are you?"

"Student center. Pitkin, not the TEC."

"I'll be right there," she said.

"Okay."

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. I wasn't sick it just felt like I was going through the motions.

"Shit. We've got to tell Esther," I whispered.

Racquel tapped me on the shoulder. "I'll tell her."

"It might not be serious," I said, realizing why she was next to me. "Did we?"

"We won, yeah. Don't worry about that though."

She was giving me a look. She was also actively holding off the rest of the team.

"What happened to...?" Murphy said, but Racquel held up a hand.

The team circled up around me. I didn't know if I had a victory speech in me. Instead I thought about what Rachel and Esther would have wanted.

"Guys. Congratulations on the win," I said. "I'm sure that Rachel is going to blow up the group chat when she gets back to her senses. And I'm not even going to be mad."

There was some rum among the group but they all settle down for a minute.

" Guys, that was an amazing incredible season and I couldn't predict this at all and I'm so happy to have shared it with all of you. I cannot wait to see how we do in the finals and Rachel and I were trying to figure out a way to get a tuition paid so maybe she worked herself a little hard because of that. Her heart is in the right place and I know that both she and Essie will be really happy to be here with us today.. It's not like they're dead. So I want you both want you all to give them some attention and love and let them know that we appreciate them. Because we couldn't do it by ourselves."

I apologize to look everyone in the eye. They all understood what was going on and I wasn't going to let the two missing girls diminish the season.

"No matter what anyone says they can't take us away from you. I'm proud of each and every one of you. Now I believe you all have some studying to do before Thanksgiving?"

The group broke up and I waited around for any questions and for Stacy to come by and help me out.

She was there in less than 10 minutes and It was hard for me to deal with the amount of articulate in the air that was sticking in my nose and eyes.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I can't wait for her to call me back."

How was I feeling about this?I'm not really sure what's was going to happen to my girl.

I don't know how I feel about this myself. I know that I don't want to feel this feeling and i'm ready to be done with it. I'm ready for this strange part of my life to be over. Not the semester, just this bit here where things are going crazy.

I would like less crazy in my life.

More fun would be great, but that was going to be a tough one to get.

I settled on dropping into look at the memes in the group chat.

"Is it weird that they're sending memes about ther two girls being missing to the two girls that are missing? I mean they're both alive, just pre-occupied."

"That's a healthy response," Stacey said. "Run with it."

"There's just so many memes."