Clack-clack-clack-clack.
It was quiet in the halls, he observed tiredly, pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose with his thumb, fumbling awkwardly with file folders that were slowly slipping from out of his grasp. He walked unaccompanied through the darkened space. It was so very quiet, but that was to be expected at this late hour - it was almost three in the morning, after all.
While he knew he had no business whatsoever being in his office at the ungodly hour he was now, Matthew Williams was an insomniac like none other and going into his tiny little office in the farthest corner of the north wing of the sanatorium put him at ease. He did not know what it was, but there was something that forced him to relax the moment he stepped into the messy little cave he had been given when he had been assigned to the small, private care hospital twenty miles into Knox County. He kept the room richly painted, finely furnished up to par with his expensive and eccentric tastes and frigid. His co-workers complained, saying it made him a little too Canadian - "What, it wasn't cold 'nuff for ya up North?" - but he did not quite mind.
(He concentrated better in the cold, anyway. Maybe he was too Canadian after all.)
There were no lights on in the hallway he treaded silently through, but he knew he was not alone - maybe it was the fourth night in a row with no sleep getting to him, but he had that sort of feeling. That there was someone else in the hall - someone living, breathing, and alert to his presence. And he could smell cigarette smoke. It was not one of the on-duty nurses. It couldn't be because they would be smoking in the lounge, not out in the halls; they'd get in heaps of trouble with the head of the hospital, first off. Not that he would rat them out, but some of the more vindictive, bitter patients would probably consider doing so.
When the soft strumming of guitar strings reached his ears, Matthew slowed to a stop as his shoulders lost their tension and sort of sagged a bit. At this his papers almost escaped their folders and some loose leafs fluttered to the floor, sliding along the aged tiling and ghosting along the cold surface. A grumbled curse escaped him and he dropped to his knees, blindly searching in the dimly lit hall - there was light leaving a bedroom nearby, the door ajar by no more than a crack - for what he had dropped only to curse louder as the rest of the papers hit the floor with a sharp sound.
"You want some help there, Sir?"
Matthew let out another curse, jumping as his eye twitched. "N-No," he choked out, grabbing papers hastily and stuffing them helter-skelter back into the folders. "I'm just dandy."
"Oh, a'ight then."
There was a pause and he saw he was looking at the feet of the man that had spoken - he wore a sock on one foot and nothing on the other. Such an odd thing, but Matthew could not say anything against it for he was just as bad sometimes if not worse when he consumed a little more opium than intended.
Glancing up, the doctor swallowed thickly and gave the young man before him a tiny, crooked smile. He was tall, broad shouldered and thin, pale-skinned and tired-looking; sick. He was a patient. That should have been no surprise: none of the nurses on duty were men, for one. And just one good look at him was enough to tell that he was ailing under something. Worry rose in his chest but he did not shrink back from him - that would have been terribly rude and he had a reputation to uphold. Flaxen hair was messy and stuck off, and oddly enough there was a single chunk of blonde lock that curved upwards in some sort of cows lick. There was an illicit cigarette dangling from pale lips, wire glasses perched crookedly on his nose and he held a battered-looking acoustic guitar in one hand.
"You're not supposed to be smoking in the buildings, and you're most certainly not supposed to be smoking if you're a patient." The snapped words came out a little sooner than he intended, and the patient's face fell but he did not remove the smoke as his eyes hardened.
"… Sorry, Sir."
He did not seem to be sorry at all, but Doctor Williams did not quite mind.
The man's name was Alfred F. Jones - there was no name attached to the 'F', but everyone just ignored that fact - and he was only twenty-four (although he looked like he was only eighteen, but rampant illness either aged greatly or it made one childish from being coddled to death by over-loving nurses, and in the case it was the latter rather than the former). A tuberculosis patient that had also suffered from mild typhoid. A poor combination that had nearly killed him, but after spending over two weeks in a fever-driven delirium and a drug-addled state of mind, he had somehow pulled through the ordeal.
Somehow. The other physicians told him that it was nothing short of a miracle - an act of God, nonetheless.
Doctor Williams, twenty-eight and just out of his internship, felt something akin to pity for the man, but he never commented upon it. He also did not believe much in miracles nor did he believe in God at all because there was science to turn to for all the answers he would ever need.
It was rare that they happened upon each other. Mainly at night, when Matthew paced the halls of the sanatorium well after dark, well after lights out. He would roam through each wing, each floor - except for the basement because, even though he was all grown up, basements still terrified him witless - the patient's hallways, through the lounges. Sometimes, depending on how clear the night, he would amble across the grounds until daylight made itself known and he wandered back, wearing the same slacks and dress shirt he had been wearing the day before and he would spend his day in the same clothing, too exhausted to care about the looks he got from his fellow nurses and doctors.
But when Matthew chose to wander through the wards, which was not very often, he would always run into Alfred at three in the morning, the young man seated outside his room, smoking when he wasn't supposed to be and playing his guitar. He was not there all the time because, unlike Williams, the man slept on most nights.
They never spoke, he and Alfred Jones. There was just no interest there. The American seemed reproachful - as were most of the patients - and half the time the Canadian doctor was a little too high to notice.
Until one morning, when it was almost four am, Matthew stopped in the middle of the hall and stared at the ceiling for a long moment before sitting down and looking around him like a child that was lost. Because he was still a child at twenty-eight. Because he was feeling a little more lost than usual; long, sprawling hallways in the fort-like, brick establishment brought him this deep, humbling sense that was terribly foreboding and for some reason he could not find his way. His head was hazy. He felt sick. But it was a different sick - not sick from the pills, but sick from something that was forming in him. Perhaps he was coming down with a cold. This was what he had been thinking about. So he stood there and stared at the ceiling, sat down and looked about as he peered upwards again and he wanted to go home and sleep in his own bed.
And then he lay upon his back, blonde curls fanned out about his head as he once more looked to the yellowing tiles above him. Jones watched him from four doors away, guitar falling silent as his fingers stilled and a perplexed look formed upon his face - he could feel the blue eyes of the TB-infected young man upon him as he lay there. The poor guy was probably frightened to hell by the peculiar behaviour of the doctor and wondering just what in the name of God he was getting at.
"Don't you ever get sick of playing the same songs over and over again?" Matthew inquired suddenly, tongue feeling thick because of the new pills he had been trying - sometimes the older doctors asked him to try various painkillers so they could get an honest response from the young doctor. They paid him for it as well, and gave him a paid sick leave should the pills react in a way undesirable. Maybe that was the root of his insomnia. Maybe it was an ill-practice, what they were doing to him and how they were mistreating him, but he couldn't care because it was money on the side. "Don't you ever get sick of being sick?"
"Don't you ever get sick of walking the same halls all the time?" Alfred shot back, bowing his head of the neck of his guitar once more and running thin fingers along the decrepit wood. He began to play again, and as though he had been spurned by the drugged comment, he started playing something different. "Don't you get sick of never sleeping?"
Matthew was thoughtful, and then he yawned until tears found their way into his eyes.
"No, not quite," he murmured sleepily.
"And there you have it." There was a pregnant silence, and then: "Maybe you should be, though."
Contemplating this, he lay there a little longer. Just until he heard a door click softly shut and the sound of the guitar no longer filled the hallway. Instead he was surrounded by a silence he did not like and so he stood as the world abandoned its axis and he pitched forward because these pills rendered the muscles in his legs useless and he wondered if Alfred might have been onto something.
Matthew was curled under the blankets of his bed, buried beneath them and seeking sleep - and he was half-way there when someone knocked on his door. Bloodshot eyes slowly opened and he narrowed them into slits, staring at the offending door and wishing it would just combust already. The knocking resumed, this time a little harder than the first time around. It was a painful sound that went straight through him and set his teeth on edge which was a truly unpleasant sensation because even his teeth hurt.
This was not fair.
Five days since he had slept last. Five whole days and he was beginning to feel delirious and he had a slight fever. Perhaps it was Typhoid and he, too, could take a few weeks off on account of sudden, grave illness? Maybe Typhoid Mary had crawled out of her grave, left North Brother Island and had made her cadaverous way to Knox County. Maybe she had given him the kiss of death with her cold, slack, decaying lips and then had taken the same path to crawl back to her forgotten plot and wait another while before finding some other poor bastard to prey upon.
"Who is it?" he called groggily, head throbbing and eyes practically boiling out of his skull and every part of his body ached and he was melting and oh God he just needed some sleep.
The knocking persisted and Doctor Williams felt as though it were sounding in his head. Something snapped.
"Come in already, for fucksakes!" he barked out angrily as his temper spiked, then plummeting as he whimpered and curled in on himself at the loudness of his own voice. When he actually needed the painkillers, there were absolutely none around for the taking. That was always how it worked for him. He slammed a pillow down over his head and continued to listen to the thump-thump-thumping of his irate temples.
Door opening with a creak, he heard the soft padding of footsteps and he felt the foot of his mattress dip from the weight of another. Hesitantly, he peered out from beneath the pillow, grimacing. The curtains had been tugged open and sunlight had been allowed in, and he hissed at the brightness of the light. It was one of the nurses, a horse-faced, sallow-skinned woman that gave him the shivers.
"Doctor Williams," she said in that toneless voice of hers that reminded him of Siberian winters, solitary funerals for stillborns to be placed in unmarked graves and sitting at the bedside of a dying loved one. She was a rather unpleasant individual if not rather lovely to look at. "Your patient Irene has been sat in your office for the past twenty minutes waiting patiently for you. I suggest you get out of bed, go down there and take care of her."
Irene? Who the hell was- Oh, bloody hell. Doctor Williams wanted to smack himself but that would cause more pain than what he needed. She was a recovering tuberculosis patient with mild depression and an eating disorder. He had completely forgotten about her coming to see him.
An unusually vile curse left him, the nurse flushed with shock and he did not care if his tongue was so easily loosened, drink or not, around a good Christian woman. And then she stood with a cold air surrounding her and departed, hands linked firmly together beneath the white apron she wore.
Perhaps Irene would not mind waiting another half more of an hour?
(In fact, Irene minded very much and was very vehement in describing just how much she minded.)
He slept soundly for three nights in a row.
It was the first time in five years and, as nice as it was, it worried him.
"Since when do you sleep more than one night a week?"
Doctor Williams was seated upon the floor across from Alfred Jones. The patient had put on weight in these past weeks as Matthew found he had been losing it. He attributed it to the fact his sleeping patterns had grown a little more erratic, and he had at one point gone the whole week without shutting his eyes. Not being able to sleep made eating difficult. That made the most sense.
He gave a shrug of indifference. "Not very often," he said quietly. "But it is rather nice when it happens."
"I would say it is," Alfred murmured in a conversational tone of voice. He had lost his slightly reproving edge each time he saw the doctor, and instead he now smiled a little and greeted him with a lazy wave. Sometimes the Canadian joined him on the floor, sometimes he just nodded and walked on past him - it all depended on how tired he was, how much he had been put on, how much he had smoked, how long it had been since he had last slept (the longer he went, the more restless he got and the more inclined he was to just keep on walking). "Why don't you sleep?"
Yes. This was a good night, so he sat with the guitarist.
"I don't quite know," he said tiredly, resting his head against the wall and watching him from under the rims of his glasses, studying the younger man who was idly strumming strings. He played the instrument as though he had been born with it in his hands. "Sometimes it's the painkillers they get me to try; sometimes I smoke too much Opium when I can get my hands on it. It depends."
"You smoke that shit?" he demanded, eyes wide and a bark of laughter being startled out of him. The way he said it, with that incredulous sort of note bringing his Chicago-drawl a pitch higher, made him sound as though he didn't believe a word of what he said, or that he did not think it possible that one of the sweetest, soft-spoken doctors that would not harm a fly was, in reality, a pilled-up, Opium-smoking insomniac basket case. Matthew couldn't help but smile but it faded when Alfred began to cough - painful, choking sounds that caused his thinned-out cheeks to flush. It wasn't just coughing, but the coughing he heard from patients both old and new alike. Apprehension filled him at first, then panic as he looked to his bare hands but as the man sat - or knelt, for he had risen to his knees with one hand over his mouth while the other held his guitar - before him turning red in the face as he gagged, unable to get up what was clogging his lungs. He had doubled over and was pressing his forehead against the floor. Again he glanced to his unprotected hands. Then he gave in. Not bothering with standing, he just slid across the space and wrenched the guitar from his grasp, managing to move behind him in order to thump at his lower ribs and then up along his back.
"Come on," he muttered, stomach turning from the thick sounds of the pained hacks, "get it up the best you can."
Alfred just groaned amongst the agonized sounds and then he made a retching sort of movement, an arching forward that rippled through his entire body, but he did not get sick. Not entirely. Instead he spat up black, grey-green and red bile that made him sit back with a sigh, breathing heavily. Tears rolled down his face but he was not crying and his glasses had fallen to the floor. They lay there, forgotten until Matthew picked them back up and set them down upon the patient's sweat-slicked face.
"Are you okay?" Stupid question; Alfred regarded him flatly and Matthew grimaced. But the American managed a small smile for him and then slumped back against the doctor.
"I will be, eventually," he murmured. "Even though I already had my surgery, there are still times when I cough stuff up; they think it's after spreading to my other lung. I don't think it has, though. Maybe s'just leftover gunk."
"Leftover gunk is probably all it is," Matthew said, "because you don't sound too terrible. Not as overly congested. I mean, I've heard worse than that. Trust me."
Jones stared at him for a moment and then nodded. "I like you more than my own doctor," he said simply, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hands. "My doctor's a Russian fellow, and an ignorant one that's damn near impossible to understand. It's all 'da' this and 'da' that. And nobody likes a crazy commie."
Matthew had been assigned a new patient, and when he walked into his office, smiling brightly after some fourteen hours of solid, coma-esque slumber, he stopped and stared when he saw Alfred sat in his chair, grinning a smile that had to be at least a million watts.
"Hey, doc!" he declared pleasantly, taking his feet down from his desk.
For the man he worked a small smile, shaking his head wryly as he flopped down on the other side of the desk, settling back with a sigh as he shut his eyes briefly.
And on the radio playing quietly in the corner of his office, he heard that Germany and England were openly at war.
Quickly, something happened that he did not anticipate. They became friends. Whether it was the inane conversations they had, their interests that they had in common, he did not know.
But Matthew Williams and Alfred F. Jones became the best of friends; the doctor abandoned his assigned table to sit in the far corner of the room where Alfred usually would. It had a wonderful view of the garden below the cafeteria and he needn't fear the risk of contracting consumption because only non-contagious patients were allowed to dine outside of their rooms. Alfred would occasionally visit him during the day when he knew the doctor did not have any patients to see and they would talk. About anything and everything. The war happening across the Atlantic; news from their own homes; about their lives.
About anything and everything.
They became the best of friends and suddenly Matthew found his existence to be a little less painful.
The winter passed by slowly, in a haze of sleepless night, nights spent sat in the hallway of the ward with Alfred, the two of them laughing and chatting as the younger man played his guitar. He learned Alfred had grown up in the suburbs of Chicago, had played football with his high school and had gotten to university on a scholarship. Everyone thought he was going to go in for sports, but he surprised everyone - family included - when he told them he was going to be studying English and history, because he wanted to be a teacher. No sports for him, just life long education.
But then he had gotten sick, dropped almost eighty pounds and had been welcomed to this particular sanatorium, in a completely different state, because his parents wanted the best treatment for their only son. This hospital was the best of the best, and when they had heard of it, he had been almost instantly admitted.
And the American learned that his new doctor came from Canada, and had managed to go through medical school first in Nova Scotia, and then he continued his studies in New York. His internship had happened in Pennsylvania, but once he finished that they sent him to Knox County, in Maine, when he had been hoping to return back to his home in Halifax, to live with his girlfriend - an immigrant from Belgium. "But then," he commented coldly, eyes taking on a dead, glazed sort of look as he stared past Alfred's head and at something else, something that was not there, "I found out she was pregnant. She had been fooling around on me with some bartender. I suppose though, that that's what happens when you try to keep a relationship despite the distance."
The patient gave him a sad smile. "When my girlfriend found out about my TB, she dumped me flat-out on the spot," he said quietly, rubbing at his temples and shaking his head slowly. "But hey, it just shows she wouldn't have been the kind of gal that would've stayed with you through hell or high water, y'know? Maybe it's better to find out in a situation like that rather than ten years down the road when you're happily married with kids, a dog and a white picket fence."
A white picket fence. He gave a wry smile, nodding slowly. "Bella was the picket fence-type though," Matthew commented. "She didn't even bother with exercising her right to vote despite having been so damn adamant about women being on equal terms with us. She just wanted to stay home and sew and cook. I don't think I'd want a girl like that, you know? Maybe someone I could talk with on the same level, someone that understands the same things as me and they don't consider themselves to be this sort of little house wife. Gosh, stuff like that is just a complete bother to me. So maybe it's a good thing she turned out to be a cheating floozy."
Laughter left both of them - especially Alfred - but he did not cough. Instead, Matthew was the one that coughed to the point of light-headedness, and when he managed to reopen his streaming eyes, he saw his friend was watching him with a look of blooming concern.
"That's never good."
Doctor Williams did not know what to think. Instead, he said in an airy, dismissive voice, "Perhaps I should start cutting back on how much I smoke."
Sent in his direction was a skeptical, nervous look.
"Perhaps you should."
He cut back on his smoking, and he even stopped taking the pills that were being given to him in hopes that it would quell the sickness rising in him, but Matthew found that his cough was not getting better. In fact, it was getting worse. That was not all for he was losing weight, and rapidly. And his insomnia abandoned him, or so it would seem, and it was getting harder to get out of bed. But they still hung out at three in the morning, and Alfred still played his guitar and they still sat around the radio in his office when he had no other patients and they listened to the news from overseas about the war against Nazi Germany. But the fact stood unchanged and he was still sick. No one other than Alfred knew about this.
What Alfred did not know about was the mornings spent crouched over the toilet, hacking until he was vomiting something he preached to himself that was not blood. That it was not lung tissue. That it was not infectious. Because if Alfred was aware of the extent of his predicament, he knew his patient would tell one of the other doctors and then-
Matthew Williams did not like what would happen next.
So no one else had to know, and no one else would know. And he was going to make certain that he kept it that way.
Once it was spring the spring of 1940, he found his cough had lessened. It was not as bad as it had been, and he hadn't puked in a while because of it, either. Perhaps he simply had a bad bout with pneumonia or bronchitis and he hadn't been aware of it. 'Yes, yes,' he told himself as he sorted papers and wiped down the surfaces in his office as one of his patients left, 'that was all it was. Nothing to get all worked up over.'
But he still felt stomach sick over the whole scare, and although he knew he should not force it to the back of his mind, he did so all the same. Dwelling was stupid and it would drive him crazy. Best to let sleeping dogs lie lest they chew off your ankles. There was nothing wrong with him; a particularly dry winter and too much smoking had done it to him and that was it. He would not argue with it, and he would not argue with anyone over it.
And when he saw Alfred later that day to discuss with him his newly earned town privileges - he was getting progressively better and Matthew could not be any prouder of him - he nearly spat up a lung for the coughing he did.
Upon pulling his hand away from his mouth, Alfred crouched before him with that same uneasy expression he wore each time his doctor went through a remarkably painful bout of hacking. Matthew breathed heavily through his nose, arms dangling limply to his side, over the arm of his office chair. Limbs heavy, he lifted the hand he had coughed into, observed with a churning gut and he paled, sinking back uselessly in his chair.
His hand was speckled crimson and black, with little pink tissue lining the clots.
No. Tears found their way into his eyes and he stared at the ceiling while Alfred knelt beside him, trying to get a look at the hand that was being shielded from view. But the doctor could not let him see the mess of tuberculosis on his skin; couldn't let him near it.
"Are you alright?" the university student asked him, voice low.
"J-Just dandy," Matthew croaked out, wiping the gunk into the material of his black pants so that Alfred could not see what was there. He felt a little bit better by doing just that much. "Just absolutely dandy. Now, you go into town and enjoy yourself, Mr. Jones. Go to the cinema and see some news reels and a film. Go to a diner and eat something greasy. Go buy some new clothes and flirt with some beautiful women; you've earned it."
But Alfred did not move. Instead he watched as his doctor slid almost bonelessly from his chair to standing weakly upon his feet, leaning forward and bracing himself on his desk.
"Mattie," he said quietly, still sitting there as he addressed him with the name he usually reserved from him when they were sat out in the hall. "You're not well."
"Shut up, Al," snapped Matthew, legs giving out and he gave up, sitting on the floor and resting his head against the thick oak. A shrill laugh left him and he groaned his frustration and grief and grappled at his hair as though he could steady himself there. But he could not because strands came out in little clumps and he shook with disgust. Nearly forty pounds had been shed from his frame over the course of the winter and he was beginning to show it. "I know I'm not well. But this is going to stay between us, do you understand?"
That same reproachful look wormed its way into Alfred's sky blue eyes and the man pulled away, running a hand through his hair and glaring angrily at the office before him. Not the doctor, but just his office as though it were the spectre that was making him ill, not some of the people he had come into contact with. Doctor Williams knew the man understood him, and he knew he would listen, but he also knew that he did not want to.
Now that the snow was gone, and summer was within their reach, the two liked to wander the grounds during the day, and sometimes Matthew would join him as the recovering patient went into town. Quite often they were mistaken for brothers.
Shyly, Alfred told him once that he sort of wished he had an older brother like Matthew. He had grown up as an only child, and with only one cousin - someone he had never met that was seven years older than he and lived in England. But to have an older brother like him? Jones told him it would be the greatest thing ever and, even though they were not related, there were times when it felt like they were.
"Maybe we were separated at birth," Alfred joked as they wandered through the nearby town, the Canadian leaning against him as he yawned tiredly and the soon-to-be a student again man smoked a cigarette lazily. The smoke curled up in wreathing tendrils.
For the first time in weeks, Matthew felt good about himself and not like he was on the verge of death.
The other doctors had begun to watch him like hawks circling their prey.
Each time he coughed, there was one at his side to give him a glass of water. Each time he sneezed, one passing by would discreetly hand him a handkerchief. He was constantly being brought into an office, every week, and he was being weighed - as it would turn out, he was losing a steady nine pounds every week. His meals were monitored and, now, he was being forced to take them alone in his office. Even his interactions with Alfred were limited and restricted to just in his office. But they didn't know about their three-in-the-morn chats in the hall, and he didn't want them to take away the one good thing he had at the hospital.
They said they were 'concerned'.
They said they just 'wanted to monitor his well-being'.
That they wanted to 'make sure it was nothing', even though they all knew what it was.
(Matthew thought it was more like a vulture circling an animal on the verge of death.)
It was like someone had tried to kill him. Matthew had been bedridden for three days, slipping in and out of fitful slumber accompanied by a body-scorching fever and violent bouts of vomiting the interior of his lungs. The sallow-faced nurse was seated beside him, an unusually unhappy look upon her face as she dabbed at his skin with a cold, cold cloth. She spoke to him softly; in gentle and soothing tones he had never heard come from her before.
She told him the fever would pass again and he would eat his meals to the best of his ability and he would take medications that were actually meant for him because she knew, she knew the way he was being taken advantage of by the older doctors, and he would see his patients and explain to them why they were being transferred to another doctor. She told him in a whispery voice that sent welcomed shivers of coldness through his reed-thin body that she would take care of him until his sickness went out of her hands and into those of the on-site surgeons. And on the subject of her hands, although thin and brittle and usually harsh, they were tender, loving even, as she soaked his forehead and listened with a sympathetic ear to his feverish ravings. She listened and paid testimonial to his pathetic pleas to be taken home to where his mother could take the best care of him because even though he truly appreciated the attention given to him that the nurse needn't do, he just wanted his mother and no one else. A mother always knew what was best for her child.
He knew what was wrong with him. Even in his delirious state of mind was acutely aware of the problem and when it sank in he sobbed. Sobbed like the world was ending for him because really, it was. Everything he had worked to achieve had been thrown to the side and he was going to be bedridden for the next few months because of a few careless interactions with still-contagious patients. Not Alfred, though, but Irene. Alfred had been fine when they had met; two days out of surgery and past the point of contagions. Irene, on the other hand, had been his patient since day one of entering the facility.
The sickness had finally gotten to him, too.
That did not mean he had to accept it.
"You'll be fine, Matthew," she said softly, sitting on a chair at the head of his bed, dabbing tenderly at his flushed skin as shivers wracked his pathetic body. No longer was he the doctor, but the patient. He laughed at the absurdity of his situation. Oh, how he truly hated himself. "I promise you, you'll be fine."
Distraught, Matthew pretended to believe her, pretended to believe this sallow-faced nurse who reminded him of a particularly beautiful Death's Head. And so he smiled through angry, self-loathing tears, nodded and let her continue on with her tender reassurances and ministrations as he dropped off into another fitful mimesis of sleep.
He had been told to cancel the majority of his appointments with patients.
So he sat in his office, staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes and a nearly-drained bottle of whiskey before him, wondering what he was going to do with himself. His mouth was cottony and he had never felt this terrible before. In front of him, beneath the bottle he was nursing, were the results of the various tests he had been subjected to.
Positive. Each one had tested positive. Tuberculosis. He was to be quarantined within a week.
Maybe this was how Alfred had felt.
Seated in his office for the last time, Matthew was slumped at his desk, exhausted beyond all imaginings and barely able to keep his eyes open. Tears filled them and there was a burning pain in his throat. He wanted to cry, but he couldn't divest himself of that one last shard of dignity he had latched onto. The walls had been stripped of his university degrees, his papers, and his pictures. All his books had been removed from the shelves and stowed away in his room (he had been permitted to keep his current room, given it was far enough from the other doctors, nurses and patients that were close to recovering). The space was scheduled to be hosed down with some kind of disinfectant. Even the curtains had been burned. The office would probably not be used for months on end, and he hated everything.
Alfred sat quietly on the other side, looking just as miserable as how Matthew felt.
Straightening up and pasting a smile on lips that longed to just go limp, he picked up some papers - his hands were gloved and there was a mask over his mouth, given he remained contagious still - and he handed them to his former patient with a sort of pride filling him.
No, his friend.
"You're being discharged," he said, voice muffled by the material covering his mouth. He himself had taken all possible precautions to ensure his illness was not passed on while he was still in this particular stage. "Congratulations, Al. After your last scan, I consulted the other doctors, and they agreed. You're sound. There's no infection remaining, and you're completely TB-free now. 100%. You can go back to Chicago. You can go back to school, get your education and your degree, and you can become a teacher and inspire some kids to do some good in this world that's killing itself. So go on, get lost."
There were tears in Jones' eyes, and he sank back as the papers were taken from his trembling hand. It was a relief, in a way, because he felt as though he could not even support his own arm. He let it drop.
"Thank you," the American whispered, not even looking at what was there, but instead shutting his eyes and gnawing upon his lower lip. "Thanks so much, Mattie."
Matthew laughed, and then collapsed into coughing. His chest heaved and he gasped, vision blacking out briefly and when everything came into light, he found his friend standing behind him, thumping him on the back. The doctor - no, the patient - laughed at how pathetic this was, and started to cough yet again.
"Come on," he heard Alfred say as he was steadily thumped along the back, "get it up the best you can, Mattie."
He recalled saying those exact same words to Alfred and tears of frustration leaked from his eyes and down over his cheeks. He retched, spat up the waste clogging his lungs and then lay slack, doubled-over and his weight resting on the tops of his legs.
"I'm sorry," Matthew whispered, tears rolling freely down his cheeks. A sob escaped him. It was followed by another, and then another one after that. Then he gave in and broke. Dignity could go and jump off a cliff. "I'm sorry. I could have gotten you sick again, and then you wouldn't be able to leave yet. I should have gone to a fucking doctor the moment I started coughing up, well, this shit."
Alfred surprised him by pulling him into a firm hug, kissing the crown of his head as though Matthew were his little brother and not four years older than him. He tried to push away, but he could not - he was as weak as a lamb. "I'll come and visit you whenever it's possible," he said in a hushed voice, running a hand along his pale, sunken cheek. Tired eyes stared at him though off-kilter glasses and the American straightened them with a smile. "I wouldn't leave my best friend here to fend for himself now, would I? What kind of all-American guy, like me, would do that?"
While he felt like he was dying and that the world around him was dying along with him, it was nice to know that not everything for the next stretch of time would be black.
"Okay," he whispered, grimacing at the feeling of the blood that was seeping through his mask. "Okay, that sounds good. You can come and visit me and maybe we can go for walks at three in the morning again and you can play your guitar. And we can pretend I'm not sick, and everything will be the right way."
He was tugged closer and Matthew felt like a child, lost and unsure. Because he was feeling very displaced with this disease, with this consumption, riddling his lungs and making him feel like he was fit to do nothing more than die, and he was feeling very unsure of what was going to happen. Would he get better or would he die at the hands of blackened lungs? He could not be sure. Tears came harder now and he latched onto Alfred like a man drowning.
"As long as it makes you happy," Alfred F. Jones said in a thick voice, "I'll do it. Just for you. And then when you're better you can move to Chicago and stay with me, and you can get a job as a doctor there and get away from all this contagious mess. You can find a girlfriend you can actually talk with and who won't cheat on you, and I'll find one that won't abandon me at the drop of a hat. And everything will be the right way."
They both knew there was no such thing as 'the right way', but it was about as right as either of them could probably make it by this point.