The Famished Ascetic

Wei couldn't help but feel like he was being tricked. The monkey boy liked to consider himself the penacle of trickery, the peak of Puckish mischief. He wasn't going to fall for something so obviously made as a ploy to keep him from walking out of the infirmary while still being very obviously injured. He would just have to speak to Hari clearly and firmly tell him that he would be going back to his dorm, and that he hoped he had a nice time talking to his doctor.

... and yet.

His stomach rumbled as he became incredibly aware of the fact that he hadn't eaten breakfast, and the way he seemed to tease bananas... it tantalized his taste buds and made his stomach rumble in anticipation. He supposed that Hari wasn't talking about actually getting him looked at by any medical person... and he could always just eat, nap, and run...

"Alright," he conceded, sitting up from the floor. "I'll stay in exchange for lunch and bananas."

He started to stand and very, very deliberately put no weight on his damaged left leg and looking very much off-center. "Lead me to the bananas."

Wei shuddered every time he put pressure on his leg. The pain in his arm was still there, but it had already started to melt away into a mild inconvenience and wasn't even a pain anymore. As he was helped into the room and into the bed (he pressed his nose to the mattress and pillows, hoping to get the scent of someone, of anyone, but all he got was a nose full of chemicals) he stretched out his arm, feeling the muscle protest, but not hurt.

He watched Hari instead, fighting the urge to cover his nose from the stench of overwhelming clean. "You come here a lot, I guess," he said, looking at the space that had become more or less personalized with Hari. If the whole "about to die" thing was a common occurrence, he wondered why Hari didn't just stay in the infirmary.

Then again, he wouldn't want to stay in the infirmary either.

When the food came, Wei opened his banana and bit into it. It was a little underripe, so it was a bit harder and more bitter than he liked. But a banana was a banana, regardless of its actual quality. He ate Hari's banana too, which, he noted, as also underripe.

Looking at his pills and frowning at them, he looked over at Hari's almost overflowing cup or medicine. "Is that what your pills are for too?"

Sitting on the bed, Wei decided to look around. The room with the beds were pretty small and there was only one other unoccupied one. What if two people came in and one had a hole in their stomach? Still, he couldn't see himself getting out of the bed. He could hardly get into it without Hari's help. Though, part of him was sure all he needed was the painkillers and to ice his leg. That tended to work most of the time.

Most of the time.

The monkey continued eating his lunch and made a face at the gelatin, preferring to poke at it than to attempt to eat it. He also wasn't particularly sure about how to take the pills. He'd never really taken anything other than vitamins.

But he guessed a pill was a pill. He popped them into his mouth and took a deep drink of of water, swallowing them and laying back on the bed.

Wei couldn't suppress a snicker when Hari said that since Wei was healthy he didn't want to see him in the infirmary again. "Don't worry. I make it my personal mission to take as few trips to the Infirmary as possible."

Wei waited dutifully for the doctor. When he came in, he asked him a bunch of questions (why he was here, what was wrong, if he was in pain, what his normal diet was like) before examining his aching leg and telling him what he'd basically already known: he had strained the muscle from extended dragging of someone larger and heavier than him.

The doctor said he wouldn't need surgery, but that he should avoid putting too much weight on it for a couple weeks and strictly forbade intense physical activity like running, jumping, or climbing. Which were basically his favorite things to do. He let out a small sigh, and the doctor presented him with some pills to help with pain, along with protein supplements to help regrow the damaged muscle.

He was cleared to leave the infirmary under the condition that he had to go straight to his dorm.

Before he left, he left a note for the still sleeping Hari. He honestly wasn't sure how the island handled translating written word, but he assumed that it would be fine.

Dear Hari, the note read. I was cleared to leave the infirmary. I waited till the doctor said so, promise. He gave me more pills and also protein for my leg. He said no climbing, which is sad. My dorm is H - 403 so you should come and visit me sometime while my leg is hurt so I don't go stir crazy.

Please don't almost die again!!
--Wei HuSun

Underneath his name, he carefully drew a small monkey holding a banana before using his staff as a crutch to leave the infirmary. He guess he would be missing the fun of April Fool's after all.