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An exhausted sigh escaped him as soon as he closed the door to Meeting Room 4B. They had just gone over some updates in the first aid all agents were expected to know. Shadow had taken the course before he’d been able to really begin work as an agent, but they were all supposed to retake it every couple of months as a requisite.
The work included was simple enough. All you really had to do was pay attention to the instructor and practice different techniques a few times under supervision. He’d done perfectly fine during that portion.
Although he was disappointed that Rouge wasn’t scheduled to partner with him that day. It would’ve made the whole ordeal much more entertaining.
But he hadn’t expected the test. Halfway through the class, everyone was forced to take a short test on blood flow through the average Mobian heart. Shadow thought it was kind of pointless to be tested on it, since none of the prehospital care they learned really necessitated such knowledge, but it was required from the instructor for whatever reason anyway. He had already been familiar with the anatomy and physiology of mammalian hearts before the instructor went over it for years. He knew the path blood took through the heart.
Apparently that didn’t stop his anxiety from spiking once the test began. Honestly, he had barely even registered the anxiety until he was already nearly choking on it. He ignored how his chest managed to flutter while also tightening painfully, and the way his throat attempted to close up. Shadow had forced himself to breathe as evenly as possible.
Looking over the paper in his hands, he’d easily been able to remember the answers. He quickly wrote each of them into their respective blanks. Deoxygenated blood came from the body into the right atrium, and then passed through the tricuspid valve into the right ventricle. After that, it went through the pulmonary valve and pulmonary arteries into the lungs for oxygenation. He knew this.
So why in the hell was half his attention on keeping his hands from shaking? It wasn’t even an overly important test. He had finished it all in under ten minutes. Someone else had finished before him, but that was fine. As long as Shadow got everything right he was fine. It didn’t matter if a red panda from across the room set down her pen before he did. He was confident in his answers. That was all that mattered. He was right, so he was fine.
Shadow glanced over his test sheet. Everything he’d filled in made sense when he thought about the test material. It was fine. He most likely got everything right. Never mind that he’d somehow managed to mix up the left atrium with the left ventricle at one point and had had to cross them out and switch his answers. The paper looked messy because of it. Pens were annoying like that. The instructor wouldn’t care, even though it made it obvious that he’d fucked it up. He looked away from it.
He quietly waited for everyone else to finish filling out their sheets. The ceiling lights were strangely dim. He didn’t know where he was supposed to look while waiting. The instructor happened to be facing him from across the room in his seat. Shadow made eye contact with him. The grey-haired human simply stared back before turning away to scratch his nose. Shadow was struck suddenly with the urge to shake out his fur as though he’d been drenched in water. He wasn’t supposed to stare at people head-on like that, so he instead turned to count the Expo markers sitting on the whiteboard.
His chest was still uncomfortably tight, and his heart felt like it was jumping. Was his heart skipping beats? He discreetly felt for his carotid pulse while no one was looking. It seemed normal, if a little too quick for being at rest like he was. He wanted to shake out his fur so badly, still. He settled for rolling his wrist and shaking out one arm as subtly as possible. It didn’t help.
Almost everyone had finished by then. Shadow scanned the room to see only three others were still actively reading from their sheets. That must be embarrassing. He didn’t want to think about how mortifying it would be if he were one of the last to complete the test. He took a deep breath before letting it out slowly through his nose.
He was fine. He’d been among the first to finish.
Suddenly the instructor called for everyone to swap sheets for grading. A blue hyena next to Shadow handed him her test in exchange for his. Everyone went over all the answers together with the instructor, a black fox and blonde human gratingly reading them out loud in unison.
The hyena had gotten two wrong. She made a ninety on her test, then. He wordlessly passed the sheet back to her, unclenching the jaw he never even realized was clenched in the first place. She gave him his test paper.
He refused to look at it before their instructor came by to pick up the test sheets. Shadow forgot his hands had been shaking up until he nearly crumpled and dropped the paper while handing it to the man. That was far too clumsy. He felt ill.
Rolling his wrist, he resisted the desire to shake his fur out. Again.
All tests gathered, his instructor finally sat at his desk and dismissed everyone for their lunch break. The red panda stood to join a black fox and a large human on their way out the door, smiling as the fox yawned obnoxiously and complained over something or other. The hyena next to him calmly stepped out. She was clearly pleased with herself over her grade.
He wanted to join the red panda for lunch since she seemed pleasant enough, but the sickening way his chest alternated between clenching painfully and fluttering awkwardly stopped him. He pulled out his phone to pretend to check something before finally standing once everybody, including the instructor, left. He made his way out the door.
He sighed in exhaustion. His knee ached. His wrist ached. For some odd reason, even his hip was sore. Almost everything on his right side wallowed in useless pain.
Shadow unclenched his jaw again.
Taking another deep breath, he walked down the empty hall, away from Meeting Room 4B. Away from that stupidly pointless test and the oddly dim lights and the four Expo markers on the whiteboard. He walked away from that boring room and toward the main exit on the first floor. He was free from that frustrating hell.
He growled quietly to himself and shook his fur out. The cameras were the only ones watching in the empty hall. He was free to flatten his ears so as not to have to bear the brunt of the buzzing sound of electricity in the walls. The wind from the air vents could still be heard, though.
Shadow took the lift at the end of the hallway to the bottom floor. He shook his fur out one last time while in the elevator before flicking his ears back up to a more normal position and exiting the contraption. Moving out towards the parking lot, he wondered if he should go anywhere to eat. He wasn’t hungry at all, but he didn’t want to stay in the building any more than he had to. Maybe he could just sit on a park bench for a while and people watch?
…Being in public didn’t sound at all pleasant at the moment. He would rather go home for a bit before returning to the G.U.N. building. That was much better than having to hear the voices of strangers all around him. The humming of idling vehicles in the parking lot was enough already.
Reaching for his bike’s handlebars, he readily hopped onto it. He was eager to get to the apartment he shared with his teammates. Though, hopefully, Rouge wouldn’t be too talkative when he got there…his throat was still horribly tight, even if the breathing difficulties themselves had almost fully left him. A sort of moody grey cloud of exhaustion hung around him still. If he had to talk to anyone within the next hour it would be far too much for him to handle. He felt he might cry if that happened.
…GOD, all this drama over one short test. What in the actual hell was wrong with him.
Shadow angrily flipped up the kickstand on his motorcycle, and began the short drive back home.