InsaneJournal

Who: Anna and Kristoff
What: Awkward meeting of the Dream!Love Interest in the hospital like you do
When: January 7th
Where: Hospital
Warnings: References to surgery, fear of mortality
Status: Log | Complete

When the symptoms had first shown up, Anna had pushed it aside. Mostly because she didn’t want to think about what it meant and also she didn’t want Elsa to worry. She was already having worries about her sister not needing her thanks to the Dreams and worrying about old habits. She didn’t need to add guilt about Anna’s health to the list for her sister to suddenly retreat when things had been going so well. Besides. She was busy and it was probably just that.

But it wasn’t just that. There had been blood and that fear in the back of her mind that this was it. She knew the statistics. After a childhood of being in and out of hospitals because of cystic fibrosis, she’d been on the lung transplant wait list and five and a half years ago, there had been a match. Of course just as she’d been recovering from that, her parents had died, so she’d had to maneuver recovery and a funeral alone. But it was fine. She was fine. She’d made it five years where the survival rate was 50/50. She’d survived. She took her medicine as she was supposed to (well, besides the days she’d been dead and then when she’d been stuck with the Addams family) and did everything she was supposed to. Yet she still had ended up in the hospital.

Honestly it was all a haze. And it had been so natural to fall back into old habits. Anna was cheerful by nature, always optimistic and looking for the best in any situation. She also didn’t want people to be upset or worried and so she smiled and joked and laughed when she wasn’t coughing. She was going to be fine. The main doctor had said it was pneumonia - a bad case of it but it wasn’t her body rejecting the lungs and that was the important thing.

But that didn’t mean that when the twenty three year old was left alone that she wasn’t scared. Far from it. She had faced her mortality when she went into surgery. She had died and okay she hadn’t properly processed it and she was much better about acknowledging and dealing with her feelings than Elsa but that was...it was complicated. And now she was stuck in a hospital room all over again.

Being hooked up to machines really didn’t make it easier and it didn’t keep the dreams away and it was like they were all jumbled and she couldn’t tell if it was from the medicine or what. But always the wolf. She was always running from the wolf. This time there was a ball, but Elsa didn’t need her. And….Hans was there? But no. It wasn’t Hans and she was on the ground and the wolf with the yellow eyes was biting and scratching at her and there was screaming.

Her screaming. Thrashing in the hospital bed, Anna managed to rip out her IV as she got tangled in oxygen tubs and IVs and the sheets which just made her all the more panicked and feeling trapped, which led to hyperventilating and violent coughing and wheezing.

Ironically, Kristoff hadn’t even been assigned to Anna. He’d actually been on his way to clock out after quite a long and exhausting shift. This particular one had been a solid ten hours. He was ready to go get a pint and whatever kind of food he could find. When he passed by Anna’s room and saw her flailing about, he raised an eyebrow. At first he looked around, wondering where exactly her team had gone but there was no one. He’d seen her, he couldn’t ignore her in spite of his protesting stomach.

He stepped into the room and recounted his basic training with a patient in some kind of crisis. Slow down. As much as he wanted to run over, all that would add to the chaos. He was a steady hand and moved over to her bedside to untangle any tangled cords and machines. “Hey, hey it’s okay. You’re okay.” He repeated as he made sure she wasn’t going to strangle herself with the various things on top of already being in a bad state.

Kristoff raised an eyebrow at her apparent sleep flailing. He reached out to offer a calm hand in an attempt to stop her from doing any more damage to herself than she’d done to end up in the hospital bed in the first place. He tried his luck and gave her a little shake. He needed to replace that IV and fix her arm, but he didn’t feel like being punched in the face on top of it by excessive flailing.

She couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t she breathe… besides the fact she had a very acute case of pneumonia and was panicking. And it wasn’t like she wanted to be there or had done anything to be there. She just got really sick and had ended up here. She would much prefer somewhere else and away from childhood memories of spending most of her time in a hospital room.

The voice was familiar and the wolf that had been trying to attack her was fading away as Anna started to wake up.

But that was impossible. It couldn’t be Kristoff. Okay, so she’d noticed him walking by her room sometime but she had always brushed it off as her tired mind playing tricks on her. Clearly she was hallucinating. She was panicking and scared and her mind conjured up someone who made her feel safe even if it was just in the Dreams because she didn’t want to burden Elsa.

The half aware of being in the waking world and Dream world was disorienting and she half expected Sven to be there and Kristoff to pretend to talk for him.

“Sorry if you were taking care of Sven.”

The comment was broken up by coughing and her voice was still weak from that and the hyperventilating and lack of oxygen. Not like it would make sense but she wasn’t really thinking about that at the moment as she wasn’t completely awake even if she wasn’t flailing anymore.

Once the flailing stopped, Kristoff could begin to hook up all the other machines back to her that might have come loose. "I don't know what a Sven is, but it's fine? I'm here now." He'd call for one of her doctors when he finished reattaching her to things so she could do said breathing again. Must have been some medication induced hallucination.

He read all the numbers he needed to do she wasn't over dosed by accident and looked down at her in confusion. "Just relax." he wasn't quite sure what to do with a sleeping person, but he did push the button in her room to call her actual doctor. There was only so much he could do as an RN, and he really didn't want to step on anyone's toes.

He wasn't Anna's doctor, that was someone else. He was however perfectly capable of fixing machines that had come loose. He'd even wait with her while her doctor showed up.

Kristoff saying he didn't know what a Sven was? That was what shook off the last vestiges of lingering sleep. Because a Kristoff who didn't know who Sven was…..

A real person in the waking world who was currently fixing the IV and oxygen tubes and hello awkward and the only thing keeping her from flailing yet again was being conscious and feeling weak between the illness and then nightmares and subsequent panic. Not being able to breathe easily was suddenly a blessing in disguise so she didn't make more of a fool of herself.

And she would definitely take the fever induced hallucination excuse.

"Thank you…"

Flushed from either fever or embarrassment, Anna tugged on her hair absentmindedly. Well this was just awkward. Which...okay. That tracked with her life in general.

He gave her a sort of lopsided smile. “Must have been some dream.” Was his only response to her thanks for the time being. She didn’t need to thank him, it was literally his job to do this. He couldn’t just ignore a person that needed help, be it in the doctor's oath or not. It was just in his blood as a person.

Pushing a bit of blond hair out of his face he watched her for a minute and shrugged. “These kinds of drugs can do that.” He was used to patients saying weird stuff if it was any consolation. Kristoff wasn’t phased at all.

“Your doctor should be here in a minute.” He stated as he was finally done resetting the machines and sat down for a second beside her, giving her a curious look. “So, what is a Sven? Your boyfriend or something?” He didn’t know. Sven sounded like it could be anything.

“That would be an understatement.” More like nightmare and fear all realized and thanks to that fact, and the fact she was in a hospital, she still wasn’t sure if it was a Dream or just her subconscious pulling from her Dreams and messing with her. The wolf trying to kill her could mean anything. Between feeling not needed, Hans and his cruel words, her anxieties that it was more than pneumonia or that her body would start to reject the lungs and she would die… well, nightmares made sense.

Still, at least it seemed Kristoff was just going to brush her comment about Sven off to drug induced dreams. At least she wouldn’t have to try and explain that oh yes, she knows him from the Dreams and that they were together, that they were in love in them. Way too complicated. Especially if he wasn’t on the network. Which….she’d been so busy between friendship dinners and work and the outreach center and volunteering that she hadn’t really been on it much and so easily could have missed him if he had shown up recently.

So she nodded at the comment about her doctor being there soon and then scratched the back of her neck at the question.

“I mean, my jerk of an ex,” easiest way to explain Hans, “was in the nightmare but no. Sven’s actually a reindeer…” Yeah. Definitely easier to just go with the whole drug induced nightmare thing to explain why she was asking about a reindeer.

“Well you’re safe here. If he’s some kind of violent psychopath or something nobody here is going to let him get to you.” Kristoff said with a shrug as he stood when her doctor finally arrived. “A reindeer...well that’s new.” He shook his head with a bit of a laugh. She was probably as high as a kite on that IV cocktail, so Kristoff really didn’t give it too much more thought as he gave her shoulder a little gentle touch of encouragement. “You’re in good hands now. I’ll come back and check on you when I get back in the morning if you’re still here.”

Her actual doctor gave Kristoff a nod of appreciation for doing the right thing and calling him in, the blonde man shrugged and waved in return. “I’m headed home then, you’ll be fine.” He turned back at the door as if to ask her something while her doctor was busy at work about the reindeer and just laughed to himself. Whatever. It wasn’t the craziest thing he’d heard all night.

Hans was only a figment of her nightmares now. True, he could always show up, just as Kristoff had, but she knew better. So instead she just forced a smile and nodded some. And really, letting him think she was just high on medication was a good thing.

“Thank you again.”

Her voice was still weak and when she saw the doctor’s look? A comment about the specialist she had to see coming in the morning? The fears heightened again about her body rejecting the lungs but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to deal with that alone. So instead she just focused on what the doctor was saying as Kristoff left. She’d gotten through worse before, she’d get through this as well.