Da-la-ling!

It took a significant amount of effort for the blonde woman not to wince and grimace in annoyance at the sound of the tinkling bell. She never understood their purpose and she always felt like they announced her presence like some sort of tiny metal herald. Nobody else seemed to look up as the opening door shook the two silvery bells hanging from the top, but Kelly felt like everyone was watching her. That was the last thing she wanted--all she really wanted to do was get in, get out, and come in contact with very few people in the process. Don't need a bloody bell to proclaim my arrival... she thought somewhat bitterly as she strolled down the frozen food section of the small grocery store. This country was strange.

Kelly tucked a stray wave of blonde hair that was hanging in her face back behind her ear. She hated that it never wanted to stay bound in a ponytail like the rest of it, but she learned long ago to ignore it. The red plastic basket weighed heavily on her arm as she began to fill it...Oh, what her mother would say if she knew how she'd been eating. With this thought in mind she decided to grab a package of eggs--something apparently found in abundance in her country. Kelly was about to head to the counter when she passed the liquor aisle. She stopped, hesitating. Maybe this would be the week she'd manage to sleep without even a single drink. Maybe....no. Kelly caved and moved through the aisle until she had the ingredients for a drink before finally heading to the counter.

"Hi, did you find everything you needed today?" asked a chipper teenage boy from behind the checkout counter as she already began bagging the items.

"Mm, yeah. I did," Kelly answered quietly, trying hard not to sound abrasive. She watched as his head suddenly snapped up to look at her with some interest, though it didn’t seem to surprise her. It was her accent that caught his attention, she knew. It was unusual and many times she was asked by strangers if she was British. Since that seemed a better answer than Reidanian, she would always nod. No one listened carefully enough to notice the differences between her and a British accent, though; of this she was somewhat thankful.

A soft tapping on the row of windows beside her made her turn. That sound...she hated it, loathed it, even more than the obnoxious little door bell. Rain. She quickly decided there was no way she'd walk home--it was too far to walk in this weather--but she wasn't sure if the buses came this way. Perhaps she could hail a cab? As soon as she'd finished her business with the teenage check-out-clerk she moved outside under the cover of the red awning to look for one.

"Taxi!"

At least her shift had ended on time for once, she couldn't stand the fact that because the other doctors were dragging their heels meant that people had to wait longer for care. And other doctors were stuck twiddling their thumbs waiting for test results. Hence. She was in a very good mood this evening. Enough so that she didn't mind the fact that she was stuck out in the rain with little more than a crappy umbrella someone had left behind at the hospital. Heels kept her feet from getting totally soaked, the well-worn leather long since used to the punishment of rain.

Long pitch black curls were pulled up in the remainder of what was once a nice neat ponytail, although the humidity had caused her hair just to curl all the more. She was all too busy looking through her diary at the appointments she had scheduled for the next day. It looked like it was mainly just a couple of check-ups and administering more chemo to one of her patients. If she couldn't get the kids tumour to start shrinking soon she'd have to result to more drastic measures. And removing cancer from a child’s brainstem was near impossible if it had decided to really dig in.

So engulfed in her own thoughts, she didn't bother to look at the sidewalk before her. So she had no clue that little plastic bottle was there until she stepped on it. Of course, with both hands full. There was no grabbing something to keep her balance. So a loud squeak of surprise, the scrape of the plastic on the sidewalk. Shortly followed by the sounds of both the umbrella and diary crashing to the ground. She just managed to regain her balance by clinging comically to a brick wall until she got her feet back underneath her, brown eyes as wide as saucers. Looking a bit like a deer caught in headlights. "No!! Oh please don't be wet...I don't have time to make another diary..." Ignoring the rain on her, crouching down to see if perhaps she could save the data. But...from the looks of things it was pretty much destined for the dustbin.