A/N: Hello readers! As promised, here is out next story, Love Sick. It'll be shorter than most of our other stories and pretty innocent in terms of rating (as you can see). Creative liberties abound through this one so keep that in mind when reading and something doesn't seem terribly factual or realistic. Please enjoy this for what it is - we hope you do! Let us know what you think! Review pleeeeease. =3

Love Sick
Chapter One

At twenty-years-old, Kayley Ryans was a student nurse in-training at Westwood Hospital, responsible for supervising only a couple of resident patients at a time, though they were usually patients only a few years younger than herself. On Mondays and Wednesdays she would be at a local university and every other day aside from Sunday she spent at least eight hours at the suburban medical center. It was in a less-populated area than most, situated between a mountain and an ocean shoreline, and aside from the fairly-large residential area immediately surrounding the hospital, any major cities were a decent train ride away. The city was quiet and calm and consisted mostly of families who had lived there all their lives and never decided to leave.

Just like Kayley's family.

Her mother had been a nurse at Westwood Hospital years earlier and her father had been a pediatrician there as well. It was only natural for her to follow in their footsteps and so, she (not-so-eagerly) attended numerous physician's classes at the university and took up training to become a licensed nurse. Long hours at the hospital-which could have been considered excessively calm and uneventful-weren't exactly the way she preferred to spend her free time, especially not with summer fast approaching, but she did her best to keep a smile on her face. Especially since she was about to check up on one of her favorite patients. Arriving at Taylor Lawrence's private hospital room, she leaned inside and knocked on the door frame to announce herself. "Hey. How're you feeling today?"

Glancing up from the magazine he had propped against his bent knees, Taylor brushed his dark brown hair back from his forehead with a look in interest. Having been recently deemed 'out of the woods and on his way to recovery', Taylor hadn't been getting many nurses visiting him, but it was Friday and Kayley had a long shift at the hospital. A slow smile appeared on his face as he began to sit up a bit more, lowering his legs and easing himself back to sit up fully as the magazine sunk down to his lap. "Hey. They say I'm not that sick anymore," he announced.

The small crush he'd developed on Kayley wasn't unknown to him, but unlike most seventeen-year-olds, Taylor had little interest in treating her as anything more than a friend. "Did you steal me an extra jello?" he teased, though quietly hoped she might have since his appetite was returning as he was weaned off his medication. Though admitted for mono, Taylor's weakened immune system had resulted in acquiring pneumonia.

"Didn't think that far ahead... sorry," Kayley apologized with a short laugh as she stepped into his room and adjusted the clipboard chart she carried against her chest. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a usual ponytail, her bangs just barely retained by the elastic with parts that simply refused to be held back tucked behind her ear. "Yeah, your chart's looking better," she noted as she reached the side of his bed to replace the chart hanging on the wall with the fresh one she held. "-you don't even look sick," she added skeptically though knew that when he had first arrived nearly three weeks earlier, he looked far from healthy. By now, he looked perfectly normal, with a healthy complexion and regained energy. She placed a hand on her hip, tucking the old clipboard against her side this time. "So are you out of here soon or what?"

He offered a shrug as he slouched when it became clear he wouldn't be eating. "You know my mom," he rolled his eyes, having no doubt she'd been the main reason a discharge hadn't been discussed. Though paranoid like any mother would be were their child to have such illnesses, Mrs. Lawrence was most certainly going overboard with how she'd chosen to approach the health of her son. "I feel like the doctor won't talk to me without my mom here," he sighed. Then, suddenly, his features lit up slightly at an idea. "...Think you could tell me if my chart said anything..?"

A moment of thought passed before Kayley reached out to set the old chart down on the bedside table, taking the new one back down from the wall to flip over to the second page on the clipboard. Her blue eyes scanned the various observations, blood work, hormone levels... "According to this, you're still in treatment..." she answered sympathetically, knowing it was not what he wished to hear. "But hey, look. Now you're allowed to walk around outside your room," she consoled easily, hanging the chart back in place. "Maybe you'll be able to find some way to entertain yourself around here? You know nothing exciting ever happens here," she rolled her eyes.

Taylor felt a mix of both disappointment over not having a release date as well as slight relief; returning home meant beginning the last few weeks worth of homework and exams he'd missed while in the hospital. Though given extensions to complete it all, he wasn't looking forward to doing it at all.

"Eh, well..." he sighed, showing he had a lighthearted attitude about staying a bit longer. "I'd miss you too much anyway, right?"

"I should hope so," she laughed with a playful glare, reaching out to shove his shoulder gently. "You'll be out of here soon enough. Your mom can't keep you cooped up here forever," she assured, reaching out to pick up the old charts from the bedside table. "I have to go check on a new patient down the hall. Try to find something to do, hm? I've seen you reading that same magazine for almost a week now."

"Can't I just... follow you around?" he asked hopefully, groaning quietly at the idea of having to re-reread the magazine she'd called him on having owned for so long. Being bedridden had limited his sources of entertainment and since she'd just informed him that he was able to wander around freely, he liked the idea of spending some time with her.

"What if I came by your room to eat my lunch?" she offered, "I just have another patient to check on and then paperwork to file away. But I'll have time during my lunch." She had to return to the nurse's station to take care of her paperwork and having patients wandering about that area wasn't allowed by hospital rules.

"Sure," he sighed, with just enough emphasis to show he was not only frustrated with being cooped up, but tired of it as well. He was teasing her, however, since she had no real control over his being there and so he nodded and smiled as she gave him one last measuring glance.

"You might want to call first," he offered as she began to walk away, his smile widening in the process. "I was thinking of going out for a bit."

"Good!" she called back, glancing over her shoulder with an expectant smile. She knew enough of his positive progress in health to emphasize the importance of getting out for a while. He was free to even go up to the roof if he wished since its perimeter was gated off. He needed some fresh air and a change of scenery.

Once she left, Taylor barely counted to ten before beginning to get up from his bed in a secret attempt to follow her. He had to collect himself once his feet were on the ground, only used to slowly rising a few times a day to walk to his private bathroom. Though his room had two beds, he'd been rid of a roommate after his second week in the hospital; the town was a relatively quiet one in all aspects.

He wore a pair of scrub pants and a t-shirt of his own; the nurses had stopped pestering him to wear the hospital gown. He'd been hospitalized before a few years ago for appendicitis and the then over-sized-scrubs were perfect for his longer-term stay.

He ruffled his hair and rubbed his eyes to appear more awake and began to creep out towards the hallway, spotting Kayley not too far away at the nurse's station retrieving a new clipboard.

"Okay... let's see..." Kayley mumbled to herself, oblivious to Taylor's attempt at following her as she fingered through the few clipboard charts that littered the nurse's station counter top. She finally found the sealed charts marked: "Madison Snow" and began to walk along the hall at a slower pace, trying to understand why the new patient she'd just received that day had her charts sealed. A sealed chart merely meant that only her assigned doctor could look into the details of her reasons for being hospitalized; Kayley had just never dealt with an actual sealed chart before.

Within the next fifty feet of the long span of hall was Madison's private room and knocking against the frame of the open door, she peeked inside to see a girl only a few years younger than herself, seated in the chair by the large window that overlooked the town and in the distance, the beach. "Hi, Madison..? I'm Kayley," she called to her and was promptly given the younger girl's attention.

For a short while, Madison eyed Kayley where she stood, nodding a bit distantly before speaking, her voice barely raising above a quiet mumble. "Hi," she noted the uniform Kayley wore, "Are you the nurse my doctor said was getting assigned to me?"

"Yeah, that's me. But... your chart's sealed. I'm not sure what I can do for you since I don't know what's bothering you and your doctor's not yet in to give me instructions," Kayley explained, holding up the chart as she circled around the untouched bed to hang the chart on the wall.

"I just have a cough," Madison answered and got to her feet rather easily. She appeared healthy enough, perhaps slightly pale, but other than that, she seemed like an average high school student.

Taylor slowed a few feet from the room Kayley had disappeared into, finding himself unsure of actually following her into the room since Kayley was working and he knew nothing of the new patient she was visiting. The last thing he wanted to do was wander in and try to be friendly while an old man or woman began to scream at him because they were so heavily medicated.

He approached slowly and turned to rest his back against the wall with his hands behind him, attempting to wait for Kayley to finish and surprise her with having gone for a walk. When he overheard the two talking, however, curiosity got the better of him. It sounded as if a young girl was the new patient and Taylor began to shift his weight on his feet so that he was leaning more toward the door to hear better.

A cough didn't seem reason enough to be placed in the hospital, but Kayley wasn't about to pry into confidential information. "Okay," she answered, watching the dark-haired girl where she stood by the window. It was strangely difficult to read the new patient and Kayley was almost... uneasy. That is, until she saw the start of a small smile on Madison's lips. "Well, can I get you anything? Have you eaten?"

"No, I'm fine. Thanks," Madison answered, stepping closer to her bed to take a seat on the edge and reach for the closed, cover less book on the nightstand.

It seemed that Madison was about to take to reading and Kayley stepped back toward the doorway. "All right, well, if you need me, you can call the nurse's station whenever you want. I'm here until eight tonight. It's extension 45."

Madison nodded without another word, but the small appreciative smile remained.

"You're not supposed to be out of your room..." came the surprised and scolding remark from a well-known resident named Kyle. Only ten-years-old, though with a condition that didn't have much hope for improvement, Kyle Sanders had grown bitter over the seven months he'd been in the pediatric ward and though he was allowed to roam around the hospital, he disliked anyone who was improving; it meant they were going home and unfortunately, Kyle wasn't.

Taylor's lips parted as he turned forward to see Kyle standing with his arms crossed over, acting as a hall monitor less the authority. "I know you," he continued. "And you're not allowed out of your room yet."

Kayley easily overheard Kyle's voice out in the hallway, turning to the door since she'd already dismissed herself to Madison and stepping outside. While she was not the nurse assigned to Kyle, she had been working in the hospital for long enough to know him just as well as his own nurses. "Kyle..." she began as she caught sight of the younger boy. "Taylor's allowed to leave his room now. His chart said so," she stated gently but definitively, her tone and choice of words clearly conveying the audience to whom she was speaking.

Madison was eying the door and what she could see of Kayley's side, her brows rising faintly in silent interest.

Taylor let his brows rise, his expression almost apologetic as he watched the young boy. Having heard him arguing with someone in the hall in the past, Taylor had questioned just what the young boy was so upset over and Kayley had informed him of the boy's illness. Knowing the truth, Taylor refused to argue with him and remained silent as Kayley interjected. He could see the anger building in the young boy, but instead of voicing his frustration, Kyle turned and ran off, nearly knocking over another nurse in the process.

Taylor sighed as he watched him run off, looking to Kayley with a quiet mumble of, "Thanks".

Kayley nodded, her eyes following Kyle as he ran off with a helpless look. "I wish there was something that could be done for him... A ten-year-old shouldn't be expected to live the rest of his life in a hospital..." she sighed quietly, turning back to Taylor with a weak smile. "Glad to see you're walking around though," she congratulated, trying her best to regain her optimism. "Open your windows later, give yourself some fresh air. We might be getting some rain tonight," she told him before slipping past him with a gentle, supportive squeeze to his shoulder as she headed for the nurse's station.

Taylor stepped forward as Kayley left him, now in clear view of Madison as he came to the realization that she was going to be unable to entertain him that day until lunch time came for her. He pocketed his hands and turned idly, his attention suddenly meeting Madison's within her room from where he stood and he grew still instantly. She was his age for sure and for someone within a hospital she was exceptionally pretty.

Be it the fact that she'd been caught eavesdropping or the fact that she was suddenly met face-to-face with the boy outside her room, Madison blushed instantly and lowered her stare to the open book she held though the word-covered pages served as no distraction. Part of her wondered that if she stared down into her lap long enough, she might be able to pretend as if their stares had never met.

Taylor looked away on cue when it came to his attention that the girl was embarrassed and he smiled weakly upon looking down the hall quickly. His gaze slowly returned to her and after a moment he realized she wasn't going to look up again. He took a small half step as if to walk away, but he blushed harshly and changed his mind as he instead awkwardly took that step towards her door to lean into it. "...Hi."

Madison's shoulders tensed slightly at the sound of his voice and she looked up finally with a small, embarrassed smile. "Hi," she returned the greeting, eying him at length. "Are you... um, the one who's "not allowed out of your room yet"..?" she asked quietly but with a light-hearted tone. It was clear she'd overheard the conversation.

"Wrongfully accused," he replied in an equally joking manner as one hand came up to swear he wasn't 'guilty' as Kyle had been accusing him.

He smiled awkwardly, feeling the slightest bit weak in his legs from being in bed for three weeks. "So... what're you in for?"

Madison knew better than to offer such information and she watched him in the doorway as she answered. "I have a pretty bad cough and my parents were worried about it so they admitted me since they're not around at home enough to take care of me," she explained, shrugging her shoulders faintly before gesturing to the chair she'd been seated at the window in. The room was small, barely large enough to offer much room around the furniture but Madison found she liked it. "You?"

He found himself reluctant to admit the chair as she offered it to him. Though his legs were failing in supporting him comfortably, he was sure it would awkward to leave her when the conversation came to a standstill.

He had nothing to do, however, and that realization won over easily. He stepped into the room and leaned back against the door frame, not yet crossing to take a seat as he watched her. "That's what it started out for me as. -I had mono and then got pneumonia, but I'm better."

"Oh. Well... that's good, right? You'll be able to go home soon?" she asked him, finally closing the book she held in her lap and setting her palm atop the cover.

"I'm going into my senior year," he half laughed, half sighed. "I'll be catching up on work all summer, but other than that..." He paused, waiting for a few moments as he glanced around her room. There were quite a few flowers for someone with 'just a cough', but he wasn't second guessing her reason for being there. "So... what grade are you in?"

"Still in tenth," Madison admitted, choosing to answer in such a way on purpose. "My birthday's in June. In three weeks I'll be turning sixteen."

"Oh, okay," he nodded, gesturing briefly out the door behind him as he shifted slightly where he stood. "Kayley'll bring you a cake if you tell her what your favorite is- she's really good like that." He cleared his throat a little and raked his hair back, his hazel eyes drifting aside briefly as he struggled to think of something to say and alleviate the slight tension he felt.

Madison thought for a moment. "Is she your nurse, too? She seems nice," she agreed easily, able to tell such a thing, even after only two minutes of being around her. She glanced to the window briefly, eying the clouds that rolled easily across the blue sky. "-another nurse mentioned that we can go up on the roof if we want to. Do you know how to get up there?"

"Oh, sure," he replied, nodding as he glanced into the hall behind him to see one of the nurses give him a small knowing smile. He blushed and turned back to Madison only to have his face warm even more. "...Yeah, I think I could get us up there. -There's not much to do here, but they've also got this closet down by my room full of games and stuff that you can just take if you write your room number on the list... just to say that you've borrowed something."

Taking notice of how suddenly talkative Taylor became, Madison's smiled widened significantly and she set her book aside on the bed and stood up easily, shifting her feet back into her slippers. "How do we get up there?" she asked, appreciating his ramble about ways to cure boredom and finding it proof that he would serve to be the first true form of entertainment for her within years. She'd been home-schooled all her life.

He watched as she slipped her shoes on and he came to realize she wished to go to the roof right then. Licking his lips, he glanced again out the door as if they'd be scolded for attempting it, but he was interested in a bit of fresh air as it stood. "There's an elevator at the end of the hall," he suggested.

"Which end?" Madison asked, slipping around him and out into the hallway to glance up and down along it as she sought out the elevator Taylor had mentioned. She knew that they had yet to even introduce themselves to one another but Madison knew they would eventually exchange names.

He watched her pass him, a slight smile on his lips at how adventurous she seemed. She was a good head shorter than him with long black hair that caught his eye. He followed, gently catching her wrist for a brief moment to turn her and gesture back behind him after his hand fell. "That way," he offered.

Madison turned, finding herself more and more excited over the prospect of having made a possible friend in Taylor. She found it almost ironic that despite the severity of her illness, she had never been able to make friends at home... but now that she was cooped up within a hospital, she was already holding a conversation with someone near her age. "How long have you been here?" she asked as they began to walk.

"This is my third week," he offered, though since it was Friday it was as if he'd been there nearly a month already. He wasn't sure how much longer he was going to be there, but he felt it wasn't something to bring up regardless. "You're not scared, are you?" he offered, though hadn't gotten that vibe from her at all. "It's not so bad... I mean I know you said your parents aren't around, but there're people here 'round the clock." He slowed upon reaching the elevator and pressed the button for them.

"Not scared," she lied partially. At the moment, she was too distracted to be fearful of the future... or of living in a hospital for an extended, unknown period of time. Of course, while she lay awake at night, alone in her hospital room, fear would inevitably well up within her. The quiet bell of the elevator as it arrived on their floor sounded and soon, the doors parted for them and Madison was the first to step inside. "My parents haven't ever been around much," she began to explain, "but the at-home doctor was getting too expensive for them. Here seemed a better bet."

An at-home doctor? Taylor was too polite to call her on such a thing and point out that coughs usually didn't warrant at-home doctors and so he nodded a little and merely accepted what she was saying.

He leaned back against the metal bar at the back of the elevator, his hands against it as he watched the floor numbers light up one at a time as the elevator climbed. "...Kayley's coming by my room for lunch," he announced. "Want to join us?"

Lunch? So far, the only name Madison had learned was Kayley's and turning a bit to face Taylor in the elevator, she offered an embarrassed laugh. "I'm Madison," she finally introduced herself despite the awkward delay and held out her hand, having to tug back her oversized pajama sleeve a bit with her other. "Lunch sounds good."