Lyriia was rather surprised that Ahmal was home, instead expecting him to be in Silvermist for the festival and ball, and had to force herself to not grin like a little child when he opened the door, instead trying to be dignified. She returned the cute little smile he gave her, and tried to resist blushing as he mentioned the flower in her hair.

Rather than try to answer the compliment, she pulled one of the flowers from the bundle, and stretched up on tiptoe, and threaded the stem through Ahmal’s ponytail, then stepped back and considered it, tilting her head as she compared the colors. The blue flower was a shade lighter than his hair but didn’t make an unpleasant combination. [color=7bcdc8]“It suits you, too. The rest of these are for you, by the way.”[/color] With that, she grinned and offered him the bouquet.

Mentally she began cursing at herself. She’d noticed Ahmal becoming more at ease with her around; after all, she’d come around every week after his injury to check on him. But she’d just entirely overstepped the boundary that should have been there; that maneuver had been something that would have worked for best friends, or a couple, but not a pair of acquaintances, and CERTAINLY not a physician and a patient. So she tried to backtrack. 

Blinking, she attempted to settle her usual composed physician mask over her face, buying time as she reached into her satchel to pull out her notebook. As luck would have it, this was actually the right notebook, and not the one that had all the sketches in it. Sure, some of the sketches were useful, random plants that she’d found that she needed help identifying, but others may have come across in a terribly unprofessional way, especially as a lot of them involved the fairy standing a few inches away from her.

She flipped the chart notebook open to the page that had Ahmal’s chart, and rattled off the normal spiel that she used on follow-ups. [color=7bcdc8]“Today is the twenty-first of Saffra of the year 301 DM. This marks our tenth and final follow-up visit after your injury on the eighth of Jadeyan. Since the last time we spoke, on the fourteenth of Saffra, have you experienced any pain, weakness, numbness, or loss of sensation in your leg? Have you noticed a lack or loss in mobility, strength, flexibility, or motor control? Have you experienced any shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, feelings of dizziness when standing, trembling fingers or feet, unusual heart rhythms, pain in your chest, loss of appetite, insomnia, aches, fever, chills, or seizures? Have you experienced hallucinations, rapid changes of mood, anger, irritability, depression, or manic episodes?”[/color]

It probably would have been faster to just hand the notebook to him and let him fill out the chart himself, but she didn’t mind it. Besides, this gave her more time to convince herself to quit blushing. Ahmal was a patient, right now. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a patient whom she was, hopefully, anyway, going to be able to declare entirely healed and then not see again until some other injury or sickness came up.

…

Professional physician or not, that thought was a very, very sad one. She almost hoped something was wrong, so that she’d have an excuse to come visiting again.