Faint

Sean woke me up the next morning from the sound of him showering. We’d had a lovely dinner at the restaurant and then Sean finally got to see the lingerie I bought just for this occasion. We had slept in fairly late but we were up fairly late, too, and travelling sort of took a lot out of us. I got up and started making coffee with the coffee machine in our room. I ran a brush through my hair before slumping on the bed and turning on the television. After channel surfing for about five minutes I stopped at a news channel and froze. Sean came out of the bathroom about a minute later with a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Hey, what movie are you watching?” He asked pouring us the fresh brewed coffee and coming over to sit next to me.

“I-it’s not a movie.”

Sean gave me a perplexed look before focusing his attention on the newscaster. We probably sat there for an hour watching burning houses getting swept away in the water, cars running into buildings, and interviews with nuclear experts. Neither of us spoke or drank our coffee. It wasn’t until Sean stood up and tried to take my cup that I realized how hard I was clutching it.

“Come on.” He said puling me up and turning the television off, “We’re going to go help.”

“W-what?” I said snapping back to where we were.

“Get your clothes on, we’re going to go do something to help.”

He already had a pair of jeans on and tossed me a pair from my suitcase. When we were both dressed he grabbed the car keys from the dresser and we were gone.

“Sean where are we going?” I asked.

“On the way here I noticed a sign at some school. They’re having a Red Cross blood drive. We’re going to go donate blood.”

“But that won’t help the people in Japan…”

“It might, the Red Cross is has groups all over the world, they can share their blood from their storage if it gets bad. And even if that is true…people can always use blood Faith. I just need to feel like I did SOMETHING to help, even if it’s indirect.”

I looked at Sean and was suddenly reminded at just how much I loved him.

We got to the school’s gymnasium about 20 minutes after leaving the hotel and were met with a large line. It took about an hour for us to fill out the paperwork, give blood, and finally end up eating cookies and drinking orange juice in the recovery area.

“This was a great idea, Sean.” I said looking over at him while I ate a sugar cookie, “I really do feel like I helped in some way.”

“I’m glad.” He said. He sounded a little out of breath.

“Sean, are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fiiiiii-” Before he could finish his sentence Sean had fainted.

I ran to the front desk to get help and they got Sean to wake up with smelling salts. They tested his blood sugar and it was really low so they made him eat two more cookies and almost a gallon of juice. Once it was obvious that Sean would be fine I started giggling.

“It could happen to anyone!” He said.

“Of course it could, honey,” I said patting his knee, “Would you like another cookie?”

“…yes.” He fake-pouted.

Sean wasn’t really supposed to drive so I drove us back to hotel and we ended up taking the scenic route down a forest road. It was relaxing and it helped take our minds off of the horrible events happening across the Pacific Ocean. We talked about it while driving.

“Faith, I’m sorry. This weekend has taken a bad turn. We can leave if you want to. This isn’t exactly what I planned.”

“You mean you didn’t plan on fainting in a gymnasium?” I joked.

“Uh, no. I think it’s safe to say that wasn’t part of my plan at all.”

We laughed but then he turned serious again.

“I’m serious; we can leave if you don’t think it can be salvaged. I don’t want to spend the rest of our time here sitting in our room watching the news.”

I reached for Sean’s hand and smiled.

“I appreciate the offer, but let’s just agree not to turn on the television for the rest of the weekend, okay?”

And so we agreed. We had a picnic when we got back to our hotel. We stopped and got sandwiches from a little shop before getting back and then ate them on our private patio next to the hot spring. We relaxed in the hot spring for the rest of the day before taking a walk in the garden the hotel has surrounding it.