"What are you doing, Mickey Mouse?" Mikaeel jerked in his seat as he felt cold lips on his cheeks.

"Hi Ilhaam." He greeted his older sister without bothering to turn around.

"HI. What are you doing?" she asked once more.

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Studying for next week?" Ilhaam took the seat across from him.

He hummed in acknowledgement. "Where's your kids?" He asked, capping his highlighter as he began writing notes along the margins of his textbook.

"They're coming up with Mum." She relaxed back into the seat as if she were in her own lounge. "Their reports came out today."

"Nice."

"How's Hoori?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "The doctors want to do more tests tomorrow."

"And you're out here studying." She glanced sceptically at his books. "Is the test that big of a deal?"

Mikaeel glowered at her, knowing she knew the answer well enough.

"Sorry." She held up her hands in surrender. "But seriously, why aren't you there?"

"Because her uncle is with her."

"The one who own the Chrysler garage?" She bit the tip of her car key thoughtfully.

"Sies man, don't do that." He grimaced at her foul habit. "And ya, the same one."

"I've been looking for a new car..." She hinted.

"Don't ask me to talk to him. Do your own dirty work." He brushed her bullshit hints away as he started sketching along the bottom corner of his textbook.

"Jurre, can't even do me a favour."

"No." he sighed, exhausted of her presence. "I'm busy, Ilhaam. Either go and talk to Hoori or go home."

"Don't be rude, Mikaeel!" She snapped at him.

"Sorry." Not really.

"Uncle Mickey!" A delighted little voice boomed through the room.

"Yes, Imaad?" Mikaeel shifted back in his seat in order to make space for the 4 year old that had settled onto his lap.

"Mummy says you're going to work in the zoo one day." Imaad asked, trailing his fingers over Mikaeel's notes. "Is it true?"

Bitch.

At least Ilhaam had the decency to look embarrassed.

"I get so much of practice at your house that it just seemed like the best idea." He replied dryly.

"You're funny!" Imaad didn't know how to reply to the snippy come-back but he didn't really care. The possibility of having an uncle that worked at the zoo just seemed to boggle his mind.

"Isn't it? Now tell me, what did you buy?"

"Nothing." Imaad looked down sadly. "Ma only bought a chocolate for Burhaan."

"Why?" Mikaeel asked.

"Because Burhaan earned it. He got the highest average between him and his sister." Another voice answered from behind him.

"Oh."

"I'm sure you remember that." His mother bent down to kiss the side of Mikaeel's forehead.

"Sure," he replied disdainfully before he started packing his books away. "Imaad, want to find your brother and sister and go for a walk?" He needed to be away from his mother and his bitch sister. He couldn't be around them for any longer.

"Okay!" Imaad's stubby legs hit the floor in an immediate scamper as he rushed of to find his siblings.

"Mum! Oh my God! It's actually snowing!" Ilhaam's voice boomed throughout the entire house.

"What!" Saadiya ran to the window. The last time it had snowed in Joburg had been decades ago. She had been a little girl when it had happened.

"Ya, it's pretty thick too."

"What are you going on about?" Mikaeel asked as he walked down the stairs. His sister's screech was loud enough to draw him out of his room to investigate.

"It's snowing!"

"Ya? Let me see." He hunched over the window sill to marvel at the little white specks that seemed to blanket over their grass.

"Maybe it's a sign, Mickey Mouse." Ilhaam knocked his shoulder with her own. "Maybe you'll actually beat us this year."

She grinned smugly as his ears reddened, walking away to her room.

...

Another term that describes a state of maximum stability is equilibrium. There is an important relationship between free energy and equilibrium including chemical equilibrium. Most chemical reactions are reversible and proceed to a point which-

Mikaeel hated his sister. She was such a nasty shit. Was she really okay with their mother doing to her children what was done to them? If he hated his siblings, it was only because their mother caused it to happen with all that competitive bullshit.

Proceed to a point at which forward and backward reactions occur at the same rate. The reaction is then said to be at chemical equilibrium, and there is no further net change in the relative concentration of products and reactants. As a product proceeds towards equilibrium, the free energy of the mixture of reactants and products decreases. Free energy increases when a reaction is somehow pushed away from equilibrium, perhaps by removing some of the products and thus changing their-

His niece must have been fucking devastated when his mother bought a chocolate for her brother and not for her. And knowing her, his niece must have gotten a 90 percent average.

As if that was a disappointment...

Of cause it was. Mikaeel would know.

-thus changing their concentration relative to that of the reactants. For a system at equilibrium, G is the lowest-

Fuck this.

"Ihsaan, howsit? You busy?"

...

"Hey mum, please can you phone me back. It's kind of urgent." Hoori looked around her empty room, feeling very lonely as she dropped her phone onto her lap.

I need you.

The hospital was quiet, save for the hums of the monitors and quiet chatters of the night nurses. Mikaeel had stayed till the last of the visiting hours, though she didn't even know considering he was holed up in the waiting room with his books. She almost jumped when he popped his head in the doorway to let her know that he was going.

She shivered as the late night settled upon the room with its chilly countenance.

"Hello nanna!" An elderly matron walked into her room at what seemed like the most perfect moment. "You still awake? Must I switch off the light?" She nodded to Hoori's overhead light.

"No, thank you." She declined politely. She wouldn't sleep for a very long time. "But when I came in, I was wearing a jersey. Is it still here?" She prayed Mikaeel hadn't taken it back already.

"Uhm..." The matron tucked her plump lip between her teeth as she considered the patient before her. "Ya, wait. I think the day nurse put it..." It was a bit of a squeeze fitting her voluptuous body between the bed and the window to scratch through the little night stand beside the bed. "Here! It's your husband's?" She asked, handing over the larger jersey to Hoori.

"Yes." Hoori replied, cringing at the memory of how it came to be in her possession.

"Mikaeel," Hoori sighed, aggravated at herself. She would have to belittle herself asking for his help once more. "I can't grip my buttons." She mumbled, hopelessly.

"Herre, wait." He took the shirt from her, unbuttoning it slowly. "Here." He held her shirt out in front of him, keeping his eyes well away from anything besides her face.

"I won't be able to close them." She was sure her cheeks were aflamed and highly unattractive at that point.

"I don't have time for this crap." He muttered before he threw open his cupboard door, rifling through it for something appropriate. "Here." He held the jersey before her. "Lift up your arms." His eyes dipped down to the swells of her breasts before he looked back up at the wall behind her.

"Thanks." She said, as he jammed the jersey over her head.

"Sure." He helped her pull her arms through the armholes before he dropped her hands as if it would dirty him. "I'm going to see if the ambulance is here yet."

Then he walked away.

"The handsome one who was sitting in the waiting room the whole day." The matron's eyes lit up at the romantic notions filtering through her mind.

"That's the one." Hoori tried gripping the bottom of the jersey but her hands just weren't able to clench themselves around the material.

"Let me help you." The matron gently pulled at the jersey before fitting it over Hoori's head, mussing up her hair in the process.

"Thank you." Hoori smiled gratefully up at her.

God, what's happening to me?

She couldn't even fit a jersey over her head.

"No problem. Anything else?" She asked kindly.

"Yes," Hoori gestured to her table. "Could you please plug in the charger for my tablet."

"Ey, you children and your toys." She mumbled as she stretched precariously over the bed as she fitted the charger into the plug.

"Thank you."

"Hmm. You better sleep soon. You have a busy day tomorrow."

"I will."

Not.

Hoori waited for the sister to leave the room before she switched on her tablet, hating how heavy her fingers felt as she tried to shake the tingles out of them.

Nevermind, she definitely had time to kill.

...

Mikaeel gripped onto her thighs, lifting her up on her tiptoes as she sidled closer towards him. Her shorts allowed him to feel every bit of her smooth skin as she wrapped her arms around his neck. He had nothing to hold on to. He liked girls with a bit of thighs on them but all fussiness flew out of his mind as he felt his lips on her neck and her hand brushing over his lower back.

This was the moment he was waiting for.

That moment where he could just forget everything...

He kissed her

And his mind went blank...

...

"You sleeping, Dahlia?" Ihsaan looked to the passenger seat to find his wife fast asleep. "So, why did you want to go out, anyway?" He asked Mikaeel.

"Just. The house was too quiet. I couldn't study."

"Where's your wife?" Ihsaan asked, slowing down at the red robot to see if the road was clear before he sped up past the intersection.

"She's gone to her uncle's house for the night." Mikaeel wasn't sure why, but he really didn't want to tell his friend that his wife was in the hospital.

Maybe it was the guilt.

Yeah, right.

Ihsaan laughed as he heard Mikaeel's phone chime constantly for over a minute. "And now? Who's that messaging you?"

"Just Hoori." He lied as he scrolled through his emails.

"At three in the morning? That can only mean one thing." He grinned, his mind taking him to all sorts of nasty places.

"Fuck off." Mikaeel punched the back of Ihsaan's headrest.

"Sorry." He grinned back at his friend but Mikaeel was too busy looking at his phone.

"You should be." Mikaeel muttered darkly, ignoring his friend's chuckles from the front.

...

"Mr Ebrahim, you doing okay?" Dr. Krenak looked over Mikaeel with mild concern.

"Yes. I was just studying."

Hoori looked at Mikaeel, knowing he was lying. He looked as if he had literally rolled out of bed in his clothes and walked over to the hospital like that.

"Anyway, all that aside. Mrs Ebrahim," Dr. Krenak turned back to Hoori once more. "I know Dr. Leona asked you all of these questions yesterday but since she passed your case over to me, I'm going to have to ask you again, okay?" He looked at her apologetically.

"It's fine." Hoori felt cold as she shrugged herself deeper into the jersey. If Mikaeel minded, it was his own fault for leaving it behind.

"You're 24 years old, right?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me how all of this started? Any weird things happen in the past few weeks?" Dr. Krenak looked up at her, his grey eyes peering intently at her.

"Uhm," She looked at Mikaeel uncomfortably. Did Dr. Krenak have to insist on him being there? "It started with this tingling in my feet and my hands. Kind of like pins and needles and then my thighs started to hurt a lot. They were really heavy." She clutched her sleeves weakly, still unable to grip onto its warm material properly. "I thought it was my period but once it ended, my thighs were still hurting."

"Okay..." Dr Krenak spoke without looking up from his notes. "Carry on."

"I seem to have trouble gripping onto things."

He scribbled hurriedly, sighing at his God-awful writing. The room was filled with an almost suffocating silence as its patrons waited for Dr. Krenak to finish. "I know you said you couldn't move your legs the day you fell but what about now?" He asked, after what seemed like forever.

"I can move them a little but they feel kind of like..." She looked down, moving her legs experimentally, "Like I feel as if I can't hold myself up."

"And for how long have you been feeling these things?" Dr. Krenak seemed agitated as he looked at the monitor besides Hoori's bed.

"Since about Sunday." She thought back to when she first noticed the recurring pins and needles. "I actually had an appointment with the doctor today."

"Ah." Dr. Krenak looked up, pleasantly surprised at the revelation. "In the last few weeks, have you had any infections or a flu or any type of illness?"

"I had a throat infection a few weeks ago but it's all gone now."

"Of course." He said knowingly before he jotted it down. "What about family history?"

Hoori looked back at Mikaeel again. She really wished he wasn't there to hear it. "My Dad's family has a history of diabetes."

"Anything else?"

"Uhm... my sister." Mikaeel looked up at her.

"What about her?"

"She died of breast cancer 4 years ago."