It's No Big Deal! *Armistad*

Armistad put the glass back on the tray harder than he normally would have. This attitude of hers was beginning to grate on his nerves. He was only trying to settle her stomach, and she was snapping at him! He considered himself a patient man, but this was going too far. He'd been dealing with her being a brat for the entire time she'd been with him, and it needed to stop. He didn't want to snap at her, especially when she was so sick, but he was tired, and his temper was on the verge of breaking.

He moved the tray to a table across the room and sat in a chair next to it, picking up his coffee and drinking some of it. He wanted to help her more than anything, but she needed to sleep, and in order to do that, she needed to have her stomach settled. But if she wasn't willing to drink the soda, he didn't know what else to give her. He only had a few potions available to him at the present moment, and he knew that only one of them was for nausea and upset stomach. The taste, like most potions, was vile. She would more than likely tell him to piss off about that as well.

The coffee started to make him more alert, but he knew that it wasn't going to last. He went to the bathroom and got the potion. There was going to be a fight about it, and she would not want it, he was sure of that. But he wasn't going to back down. It was the only thing in the house that was left, or he was going to have to take her to St. Mungo's. And that would probably mean that he would lose her forever. He took the bottle back to the bedroom and stood next to her.

"Last chance, you either take this potion, no matter how bad it tastes, or you go to St. Mungo's. I will not be giving another choice."

Crimson turned from it, she knew that he would never take her to St. Mungo's. They were all too scared that the people with child services would try and take her. So she knew that his thread was flaccid and unreliable. Pulling the, now clean, blanket up to her chin she closed her eyes and tried to ignore that he was even there. She wasn't going to take it! She would rather deal with the pain in her stomach than having to drink that sludge and let Armistad think that he won!

"No." she growled. "I don't want it...I can heal without some stupid fucking potion."

She knew that she was crossing the line when she swore like that. Armistad did not like foul language or backtalk. But she was sick! Wasn't she allowed to have ONE bad day...granted that she often acted like this when she WASN'T sick, but that was highly besides the point.

Armistad had had it! He slammed the potion on the nightstand next to him and yanked the covers off the bed.

"Get up. Now." His voice was eerily quiet. "I said that you had only one more choice. You don't want to take the potion, you are going to St. Mungo's. I am not going to wait long, so you have five minutes to get your coat, or I am taking you as you are." He didn't wait for an answer, but strode off to get dressed once more and find his shoes that he had left down in his office.

He yanked them on and tied them as fast as he could. He had never been so exhausted, or so furious in his life. He'd only been trying to help her, and she'd been starting to accept him! So much for that! He stomped to the foyer to get his coat, then looked at the clock next to the closet. Five minutes had passed and he was going to have to go get her.

He ran up the stairs and yelled for her.

"I am not joking! I said we are going to St. Mungo's, so I'd better not have to come after you!"

Crimson had jumped and started shaking when Armistad raised his voice like that, only she hadn't been able to properly reacting. However when he said that she was going to St. Mungo's she glared and felt her temper flare up instantly. She wasn't moving her ass from this bed.

Pulling the blankets back up as soon as he was gone she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. He wasn't going to make her leave, and he wouldn't let anyone take her...she wasn't scared of him...at least not yet.

He was waisting his breath and she was not going to indulge him by making him think that she was going to give into his will.

Armis stormed into his room and saw that she had not moved from the bed. In fact, she had pulled the covers back up to her chin. Well, that only served to irritate him more. He headed over to the bed and yanked the covers completely off the bed.

"I said that we were leaving in five minutes, and I wasn't joking. I wanted you up and ready to go, but since you decided not to move, you are going like you are." He picked her up out of the bed and carried her downstairs. He was not going to be stopped this time. He didn't want to lose her, but she wouldn't take anything to calm her stomach, and he didn't want to see her get any sicker.

He moved to the Apparition spot. He looked down at her in his arms and raised his eyebrows. Maybe he would give her one more chance to take the potion or something to help her stomach. But if he did that, she would think that he was weak, and that she could just keep behaving the way she did.

No, he wasn't going to back down this time. She needed help, and if she didn't want to go to the hospital, she would have been more willing to take the medicine and accept his help.

"I am under no circumstances going to let anyone other than the healers touch you. If anyone tries to come near you, I will break their legs."

With that, he Apparated them from the house to the hospital.

Crimson wanted to fight it but before she could they had already apparated away. God she fucking hated that with a burning passion! But she knew that Armistad would protect her from the Healers and they wouldn't take her away! What reason would they have to?! So she got sick, it wasn't his fault. And she had thrown up so much in the past couple of hours that there wasn't a trace of alcohol on her breath or in her entire body. So they basically had nothing on them. Children got sick and if they were that anal about health then they might as well put everyone in the world in a giant plastic bubble. She leaned her head against his shoulder, feeling her stomach lurch and quietly threw up against him as he made his way into the hospital.

She cringed...how many times had she thrown up today? She had lost count...she was starting to think that this was more than just the flu. Maybe she had gotten food poisoning from the bar. She had eaten before she had left and maybe the fish and chips just weren't sitting well with her. She looked up to Armistad with bleary eyes and felt her lower lip quiver. She was cold now and the vomit was seaming into her night shirt. Sobbing softly into her hands she squeezed her eye sockets to the point that she was sure they would pop.

"I...I keep throwing up!" she sobbed. "Daddy help me!"

She had hoped he would take her to St. Mungo's...just because she was scared that there was nothing more he could do for her at home. Her stomach kept throwing everything up and she just wondered what would happen if it ran out of bile and acid and went to blood...what if she died!?

"Daddy...daddy!" she sobbed. "Help me!"

Armistad carried Crimson to the Welcome Witch and told them her problem, then took a seat to wait their turn.

"Calm down, Crimson. If you get upset, you will only make yourself worse. I brought you here to get help, and I am not leaving your side. I'm not going to let anyone take you away, and we will do what we have to to get your vomiting under control."

He looked around at the various patients that were gathered in the waiting room. It seemed that Crimson's mysterious sickness was the most normal thing present. And he didn't even know what she had. He looked down at her and saw that she'd been sick again. He cleaned her up the best he could, given that his wand hand wasn't exactly free to move very much. He was holding her in place on his lap, afraid that if he let go of her, she would fall straight to the floor.

He tucked his wand into the waistband of his pants and adjusted her to a more comfortable postition. Now there was nothing they could do but wait.

Crimson shivered against Armistad and hiccuped once in a while which was later accompanied by a dry heave or two, but nothing came up. She wasn't sure she really had more to give. She had thrown up so much that she felt dizzy. She just wanted to fall over and die, but she knew that she needed to stay awake with Armistad. It wasn't fair that he had to stay awake while she slept. Shivering once more she coughed a bit and cringed as bile rose in her throat once more. Swallowing hard she was able to make it go back down again before she ended up soiling anymore of hers and Armis's clothing.

Holding onto him tight she squeezed her eyes closed and buried her face in his chest. She just felt so sick, and she didn't know why? She didn't know what was wrong with her, or why she kept throwing up so much...just that she was ready for it go away. Her shivering caused her to almost fall off of Armis's lap and with a whimper she wiped the sweat from her brow once more.

"A-Armis?" she whimpered. "I...I need to go to the loo..."

Armis stood up with her still in his arms and searched the room for which direction the loo was. He finally spotted it, and moved over to the door as quickly as possible, without knocking others down. He looked at the door to the loo, and knew that he would have a problem here. He couldn't take her into the Men's room, and he couldn't go into the Ladies'. He didn't want to leave her alone for any amount of time, unless he was sure that she would be totally safe. And he didn't know that there wasn't someone in the women's room that was from the Ministry.

Stop this, Armistad Markus Xandex! he admonished himself. You have to be the most paranoid person in the universe.

That may have been, but it was because he'd attended Durmstrang that accounted for his paranoia. The fact that there were a lot of the Dark Arts taught there made the students always on their toes. So here he was, with the predicament of what to do with Crimson and her bathroom need. He sighed and set her on the floor, making sure that she would be able to stand on her own.

"I'm going to wait for you right here, all right? If you need me, just yell, and if you can't do that, slam a stall door if there are any. Make any kind of noise that you have to to get my attention if you need my help."

Crimson nodded weakly and stumbled into the loo. Setting herself on the toilet she rested her head against the cool porcelain of the sink and whimpered. She felt so weak and tired, she just wanted to lay there forever and never have to move. Whimpering a bit she finished her business and began cleaning herself up. Holding the sink as the world began to spin once more she closed her eyes. She just needed to get out there and back to Armistad. Walking out of the loo she reached for him, but just as she was about to her stomach flipped out and pitching forward she threw up once more. She had to think that Armistad was used to this by now. It seemed that he was the main target for her vomit to land on nowadays. Holding her stomach she felt her knees begin to shake as she leaned against the back wall.

"S-Sorry," she whimpered, when she saw several nurses walk by and give her disgusted looks. "I...I couldn't help it...I'm sorry."

They looked at her like she was some kind of disease and her throwing up had taken up some of their precious time. She didn't mean to vomit, it just kept coming up. She was certain that she had the stomach flu, it was the only explanation...well other than food poisoning. She looked to Armistad and reached for him, hoping that he might take pity on her and carry her because her strength was so diminished right then and there.

Armis looked down at himself. For what seemted to him to be the millionth time this night (or was it morning now?), he was covered in vomit. He knew that she couldn't control that, but it did tend to get a little old. He didn't comment, but merely flicked is wand at the mess and vanished it. She had to be getting severely dehydrated. Even more than she would have been with the alcohol in her system earlier, but that was long gone now. Any alcohol remaining in her body now would have to be hanging on for dear life.

He saw that she had slumped against the wall, and moved forward to scoop her into his arms. He carried her back to the waiting room and sat her on his lap again.

"Honey, don't worry about it. As tired as I would be of being sicked up on, you have to be even more tired of doing it. Really it doesn't bother me as much as you would think."

The last time he'd been in this situation had been with another girl, at another time, another place. And he'd been six years younger, as well. But he didn't want to think of her now. She was gone, and he would never see her again. All that mattered now was Crimson, and how to make her well again.

Crimson shivered against him but made no attempt to move. She was just so tired and all she wanted to do was disappear. She wanted to disappear and never be found again. Or she wanted a Healer to come and fix her, that would be nice too. She knew that Armistad was doing his best to comfort her, but he could only do so much at the present moment and she just felt really sick. Closing her eyes against him she snuggled farther into his chest. They couldn't take her away for this, they just couldn't. She wasn't sick on purpose, sure she had gotten drunk at first but now that was long gone. She was just sick because her body chose to be sick.

"Armis?" she whimpered. "I feel so sick...are...are the Healer's coming yet?"

She just wanted a Healer to come and help her, save her, make her feel better. She couldn't stand all of this vomiting and if Crimson's stomach expelled itself once more she was going to lose her mind. She missed Tristan, she wished she could have called him so that he would know where she was. They talked all the time during the weekends when she left the school or when she had to go for evaluation when the Ministry came to check in on them. He would worry about her if she did not answer the phone, and it just so happened that she was not home to do so.

"I...I want a Healer Armis..." she sobbed. "I...I need one..."

There were times that Armistad wished that he'd chosen a different profession. This was one of those times. Poor Crimson did indeed need a healer, and he wasn't one. He was just a counselor. He had only first aid knowledge, and that wasn't enough to make her better. Not by a longshot.

He shifted her on his lap and looked around the room. There were plenty of them running here and there, but they were all busy with other patients, all of whom were doing just as bad as Crimson was. He pulled her head onto his shoulder so that she would have a pillow, and continued to look around. He thought about how she was doing at that moment. She had been so ill that evening, it was unbelievable. If he'd been that sick, he would have been hooked up to machines and force fed liquids. he wondered if that was what they were going to do with Crimson.

He hoped that someone would be coming soon to take care of her. He just felt so helpless not being able to do anything. He was her guardian, dammit! He was supposed to be able to take care of anything that might happen to her. He had agreed to be her foster parent, and now she had called him 'Daddy'. That made him feel worse that he couldn't make her well again.

He looked up with anger as someone lifted her from his lap a moment later.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?!" He paled a second after he'd spoken. "I am so sorry, I'm just a bit overprotective of her."

Randall had seen the girl come in but he did not know how sick she was until he saw her throw up continuously. Pulling her from his lap he set her in a wheel chair and began wheeling her down her the hall. She was severely dehydrated and running a very high fever. Randall had heard that the flu was going around, but this girl seemed to be suffering from something different. He wasn't sure if she had the stomach floor or if maybe it was food poisoning, but he was sure that he could diagnose her easily and then treat her that same night. He could see that she did not want to stay at the hospital, and if it had been his daughter he knew that she would not want to stay either.

After setting the young girl in her own room he went back to Armistad and began talking to him about his child in the other room.

"You're daughter is severely sick," he said seriously. "I think she has gotten food poisoning...has she gone out to eat anywhere in particular in the past night? There is a rumor going around that the Three Broomsticks has been selling people bad fish and chips...maybe she got it there?"

Armistad honestly had no idea where Crimson had been that evening. He'd gone to check on her after he'd finished some paperwork and she'd been gone. He'd been frantic, but if he'd called the police, or Aurors, they would more than likely have taken her away from him, and he wouldn't have learned that she wanted to stay with him. He would forever treasure the fact that she'd called him Daddy. Granted it was only after she'd become sick, and he didn't know if it would last when she was healthy again, but he would take what he could get.

"I really don't know if she had the fish or not. If she did, it could very well be the reason for why she's so ill." He reached up and ran a hand through his hair. "I just want her to get better. She's been so sick tonight, and it's been terrifying. She's exhausted, and it cannot be good for her throwing up every five minutes or so. Please, tell me that you can stop it?"

He looked in the direction of the room that Crimson had been taken. He wanted to see her, to let her know that he wouldn't go anywhere. He looked up at the healer.

"Her name is Crimson Constantine, and I'm Armistad Xandex, her......." He stopped and thought for a second. He didn't want to say that he was her guardian now. It wasn't how fe felt anymore, so he said the closest thing he could come to describe what was in his heart.

"I'm her father."