iamhismummy | (no subject)

(no subject)

There isn't much standing of the building they emerge into, but it's still got walls to break the worst of the wind, and Nancy's rigged a torn tarpaulin over the hole that used to be a roof.

It's good enough.

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"It's not always easy", Nancy says tiredly, with a smile down at Tommy to make sure he knows she's not angry. "Used to be it was just me and Jamie, but then I found all the others, and I can't just turn my back on them."

"Of course you can't," Karolina agrees. "Jamie's your brother?"

"Yeah", she says with a nod. "He's the littlest out here. Not four and a half yet."

Karolina smiles.

"When did you lose your parents?"

"When Jamie was a baby", she says quietly. "I left. They'd've taken Jamie away if they'd found us, and he's all I've got."

It's the closest she can come to not lying to her new friend.

Karolina, luckily, is very trusting.

"I know," she agrees. "That's why I ran away from my foster home."

"To find your friends", Nancy says, glancing over Tommy's head at the other girl. "You said."

Karolina nods.

"I just meant, I know that you'd have to stay together. When the only thing you have in the world is each other."

"Yeah", Nancy says quietly. "You understand."

She looks up into the night sky.

"Look, Tommy, there's the hospital. Almost there."

Karolina squeezes Tommy's hand and glances over his head at Nancy. "There won't be police at the hospital?"

"Shouldn't be, unless we're really unlucky. The doctor won't call them on us, I know him."

"Good," Karolina says. "That's good."

"It's the others we've got to worry about", Nancy adds, a note of more strain coming into her voice. "But this time of night, before the raids start, they shouldn't be too busy, should be easy enough to get in."

"Nancy, you could always le - "

"No, Tommy." It's sharp, and brooks no argument.

Karolina looks from one to the other, and doesn't ask.

"Can I help anywhere else?"

Nancy smiles ruefully.

"Feel like being a distraction?"

Karolina smiles bravely.

"I can manage that."

"Thanks", Nancy says. "Just... I don't know, how good're you at acting? Fake a fit, or something? Then I can get past and I'll tell the doctor about you when I'm in so he can get you out."

That gets a bigger grin

"I always wanted to be an actress," she says, slipping her hand carefully out of Tommy's.

"I'll see you in a bit."

Nancy takes Tommy's full weight, without too much difficult - he's smaller than her.

"Good luck."

Karolina ducks away and into the hospital, where she stops the first person in a uniform and says, "Excuse me, I feel..."

Before collapsing on the floor and shaking uncontrollably.

"Good girl", Nancy says under her breath, then focuses on getting Tommy past the commotion and to the offices as fast as they can go.

Karolina doesn't think muchy of the medical attention they have in this time. It takes effort enough not to break character when someone tries to put a spoon in her mouth.

After a few seconds, she lies still, then begins to feign coming round, blinking around and looking for Nancy.

Nancy is in the background, halfway up a flight of stairs. It's awkward going, getting Tommy up them, but they're managing.

She grins her approval.

Karolina sighs, turning away, and blinking up at the doctors weakly, she manages,

"Where am I?"

They start to fuss around her, telling her she's in hospital, she's going to be fine, and so on.

By the time Nancy reappears some half an hour later, without Tommy but with a kindly-looking old man in tow, Karolina has been firmly tucked up on a cot against the wall to wait for someone.