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Title: Madam Promfrey
 "Go refill coffee." Luke Danes shoved the pot of hot coffee into his nephews hands roughly as he hurried past him to deliver plates of food to waiting customers. Apparently as furious as everyone was at Jess right now for what he had done, they weren't boycotting Luke's Diner. It was crammed to the max, and Jess was being his usual apathetic self, leaving Luke to work at hyperspeed. "Coffee!" he repeated as Jess didn't move. "Yes sir," Jess mumbled, sliding off his barstool to refill coffee. All the citizens of Stars Hollow either averted their eyes or glared at him, but nobody quite met his eye. Jess shook his head in amazement. He would never be able to get past how they all thought and acted alike. He had gone straight from downtown New York to Stepford. And he had just maimed their faorite wife. Speaking of, Jess heard the bell to signal someone opening the door and turned to see who it was. It was Rory Gilmore in the flesh. And she didn't look too maimed. Sure, she had a cast on her wrist, but he had known that would happen when he helped her out of the car and she said "Ow, my wrist." "Hey there Rory, what can I get you?" Luke asked. "One order of pancakes, one order of waffles, and two coffees. All to go." "One of those wouldn't be for your mother, would it?" "Maybe." Luke stared at her expectantly. "Fine, it is. Look, I don't know what you two are fighting about, but I have a feeling it's me and I really don't want to be the reason you aren't friends anymore. Or the reason my mom doesn't get coffee. Because then she'll drink mine. Because then I'll be grumpy. And everyone is watching me constantly now. So if I'm grumpy, Taylor will organize some kind of horrible 'Cheer Rory up day.' So can I please just have both breakfasts?" As Rory took a deep breath to make up for the entire speech she'd just given without breathing, Cesear stuck his head out from the back to announce the orders were up. Luke put them in styrofoam containers and poured coffee in styrofoam cups and handed everything to Rory. "That'll be $9.50." She paid and left, shoving past Jess without looking at him.He stared after her sadly. She was so upset. Her wrist was fractured and she had to wear a cast for two weeks. The car her loving boyfriend had painstakingly made for her was totaled. Her mom had lost her best friend. And it was all his fault. Rory may not have known what Lorelai and Luke fought about, but Jess did. And it wasn't Rory. It was him. Lorelai was mad at Luke for letting him live there. No one wanted him to come to Stars Hollow, and once he was there everyone told Luke to send him home but Luke refused. And he was the one who asked Rory to tutor him in the first place. It was all his fault. Jess looked at the clock. "I've got to go to school," he told Luke, putting the coffee pot back on the heating pad. He grabbed his bag and walked to Stars Hollow High. That was the problem with living in such a small town. Everything was so close together it made no sense to not walk, no matter how cold and windy it was outside.
School was as boring as it was every other time he bothered to show up. Same boring teachers, same boring lessons, same boring books he had read in the sixth grade. It's just too bad Dean was off visiting his grandma like the good little boy he was, or Jess would have at lest had someone to torture. But no, the only one he could torture was himself. No one talked to him. No one ever talked to him, but this time it was different. Usually they didn't talk to him because they didn't want to. Today they wanted not to. So Jess sat alone all day, trying to focus on the book he had grabbed out of the school library to read while the teachers were lecturing. He was having a really hard time focusing though. His head was throbbing painfully and he could feel all the bruises from the accident as if it had just happened and he hadn't had a night to heal. He couldn't even remember the title, let alone any of the words. He felt like it was days until he was back in the diner, though in actuality it was only six hours. He stared blindly at the TV until dinner, when he served hungry customers their meals feeling as though he was muddling through jello. He shook his head to clear it, forcing him to act as if everything was normal. He couldn't let on that any of this was bothering him. "Hetchoo! Hee Atchoo!" Acting like he was fine was one thing, looking and sounding it was another. Apparently he'd managed to catch a cold on top of his misery and pain. Luke looked at his suspiciously after his ninth sneeze of the night. "You sick?" "What? No." Jess tried to chuckle, but it came off as a cough. Busted, he thought as Luke grabbed his arm and pulled him into the supply closet. "Do you realize we're in a supply closet?" he asked as Luke felt his forehead. "And why are you doing that? Do you have any idea what my forehead is supposed to feel like?" "No," Luke admitted, "But you look sick and you're sneezing." "It could be a coincidence." Jess could see Luke was freaking out. Yeah, he was sick, but it was just a cold. Then again, Luke wasn't exactly the nurturing type. He wasn't used to kids and he wasn't used to sickness. The combination had to be killing him. "Actually, maybe I'm a little sick. So I probably shouldn't be serving food. I'm leaving." "Jess-" "I'll be back before eleven." Jess grabbed his coat and left the diner with the intention of checking out the book store. Of course, being that it was Stars Hollow at 9:15 at night, the book store was closed. Hell, even the 24-hour shopping center had closed fifteen minutes ago. So he ended up wandering around aimslessly and eventually settled in the park for some people watching. "Hetchoo! Hektschoo! HeEtchoo!" It was pretty hard to watch people though, when no one wanted to go near him. He was sneezing every couple minutes, bruised all over, and grumpy looking. So instead of people watching, he shoe watched. "You look cranky." Was he delirious, or was that actually Rory's voice? He looked up from the ground to see her and Lorelai holding movies and ice cream, obviously preparing for a movie night. "I'm not cranky." "You look sick too." "I'm not sick." But even as the words were leaving his mouth, he felt an annoying itch flare up in his nose. "Hetchoo!" "Sneezy?" Rory suggested as they crossed the street to join him in the park. Jess nodded. "Sneezy I will accept." Not that he could deny it anyway. "I think you're sick though," Rory argued, putting her uncasted wrist to his forehead. "Do I have a fever?" "I have no idea," Rory replied sheepishly. "Oh for goodness sake." Lorelai shoved her movies in Jess' arms, felt his forehead quickly, and scooped her stuff back up before Jess realized she was even acknowledging his existence. "Bad enough to make you feel like crap, not bad enough to kill you." "How do you do that?" Rory asked. "One of the perks of being a mom hon." "Hethcoo!" "Hey mom, I'll meet you at the house," Rory promised, and her mom begrudgenly left the two teens alone. Rory sat down on the bench beside Jess and for a minute no one broke the ackward silence. "How's your arm?" "Fine. How are you?" "Fine." Rory rolled her eyes. "You don't look fine." "Neither does your arm." Rory cuddled it protectively. "It doesn't hurt anymore." "Neither do I." "Yeah right. You look miserable." Jess shrugged. "It's a cold and a couple of bruises. I'd hardly call that misery." "A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer." "Do you always quote Joseph Addison to make people feel better?" "No. Usually I quote Harry Potter, but this seemed more up your alley." "You've read Harry Potter?" "Everyone's read Harry Potter." "I haven't." Jess smiled at her shocked expression, and muffled three sneezes against the sleeve of his jacket. "Bless you. Look, I'm going home to watch The Godfather with my mom, but I'm going to stop by and see how you're feeling tomorrow." "You don't have to." "I know. It's just..." Rory trailed off, trying to gather her thoughts. She pushed a lock of brown hair behind her ear and blushed. "Everyone's been freaking out about the accident and my mom went all overprotective and my dad came to see me and everything, but there were two people in that car." "I'm fine." "No, you're not. But you will be. Good bye Jess." "Good bye Rory."
It was five minutes to eleven when Jess made it home. He had planned on staying out until eleven exactly or even a minute past because it was funny how freaked out Luke got, but he was way too bored and way too sore and way too sick to care. All he wanted to do now was go to bed and sleep for way too long. Luke was asleep when he let himself in, so he just walked quietly into their room and crashed in his bed without bothering to brush his teeth or take off his shoes or jeans. And that was exactly how Luke found him at 4:30 the next morning when the alarm went off. He looked worse then he had the night before, so Luke decided to let him sleep. "Hey Luke, is Jess here?" It was six in the morning, way too early for Rory to be up and at the diner, but here she was in her silly school uniform and giant yellow backpack. "He's upstairs." "Can I go up?" "Sure." Rory walked up the narrow staircase into the tiny apartment. She had never been up there before, but Lorelai had. And she always said it was too small for a grown man to live in. And now a grown man and a seventeen year old boy lived there. And she had to agree with her mom on this one. Way too small. Jess was burrowed under a large blue blanekt on a mattress on the floor. Or at least she hoped it was Jess. Something was under that blanket and she intended to poke it, so she really wanted it to be Jess. "Jess, wake up." "Hmm?" Jess shrugged the blanket off and sat up. "What are you doing in here?" "I came to see how you were feeling." "I feel heh..heEtchoo better. Thanks." "Liar." He sniffed and scanned the room for a box of tissues. "If you knew the answer you really didn't have to ask." Rory tossed him the box from the dresser. "That's not really why I'm here. I came to bring you this." She pulled a book out of her backpack and held it out to him. "Harry Potter?" "Well you obviously won't be going to school, or the book store or anywhere else because you don't want to get anyone else sick, so you need something good to read. It'll make you feel better." "Says you. You aren't going to go all Nurse Hatchet on me, are you?" Rory smiled and shook her head. "Nah. I'm going to go all Madam Promfrey on you." "What?" "You'll see." | |||||
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