Pepper is only mildly inexperienced with taking care of anyone and must feel like an old pro at this point, so she doesn't reflect too long on how she moves around frantically, still somewhat green to playing nurse. She doesn't know who to call—she doubts that anybody actually still at the Manhattan Stark Industries campus will know what to do for dangerously high fevers and a raging case of pneumonia because no one will be trolling the building unless they are burning the midnight oil and she knows personally that no one logs more time in the offices than her and Tony.

She'd call Rhodes because of his friendship and personal knowledge of her boss or maybe dial up Happy for his opinion on what to do, but a second glance at the illuminated clock on the lock screen of her phone changes her mind on that. Why drag either men out of bed when Tony does that enough anyway? Besides, she's pretty sure the lieutenant is across the globe at the moment, and poor faithful Happy needs his sleep.

After pacing for a few minutes in the spacious front room of Tony's New York flat, she returns to the bedroom where the man is shivering noticeably and squeezing his eyes shut. He looks so miserable she begins to feel the rising of a lump in her throat at the pure solitary dread of encountering a real issue with something as uncertain as a fever, without the proper knowledge of what to do. She can handle Tony's mild battle wounds, near-miss alcohol-poisoning induced hangovers, his three-day creative genius marathon sessions, and the around the clock demands of her job, but she is clueless when it comes to true medical emergencies. She wants somebody's advice, but the first person she'd ask is on the verge of fever-induced delirium.

She's tempted to call upon S.H.I.E.L.D. for assistance, but over a fever and a cough? She's afraid that she's making this whole ordeal into something more than it needs to be.

"Tony?" she asks softly, inching up to the side of the bed, palming his shoulder to get his attention. Touching his body is like pushing on a stone wall, the difference being the evident trembling underneath her hand. "Are you cold? Do you need another blanket?"

A burst of the chills runs through him, and his teeth chatter as he attempts to answer her. "N-no."

"Tony, you're shaking. You need to go to the hospital."

He groans and covers his face with his arms. "Ah, Potts, you know I how much I hate dealing with doctors!"

She feels relieved to hear some clarity shine through. "You'll need to bring something with when we go to the hospital."

Tony coughs worryingly, eyebrows creased in pain. He groans and presses on his right shoulder. "Ah, god dammit," he says softly.

Pepper's heart bleeds for him, but she nudges him gently to get his attention. "Come on, Tony. We need to get you to the ER."

She helps him to a sitting position, dismayed by the weakness of his limbs. He swings his feet from the bed to the ground and stands, but tilts to the side. He'd have tipped over if she hadn't have been there to catch him. "Whoa!" she cries out, gathering him into a bear hug, nearly toppling over under the solid weight of his body. "Oh, God! Tony? Can you stand? Maybe I should call an ambulance." Her slight form struggles to keep him upright, but something in him fights through the raging internal fire inside of him, and he forces himself to a standing position.

He touches her bicep. "No medics. I'll—I'll be okay, Pep. I'm just a little dizzy, 's'all." He rubs his arms and she snatches his sweatshirt from the end of his bed, helping him into the sleeves, then zips him up, and flanks him as he staggers down the hallway. On her way out, she grabs a fleece throw, tucking it underneath her arm, then has him sit onto the Italian leather couch inhabiting his lush living room while she fumbles around in the kitchen. She pulls open several drawers, cursing fitfully until she finds a washrag and wets it in his sink, and returns to him in the dark front room. He has sunk into the cushions behind him, eyes closed and she moves to his form, pressing the cloth to his burning forehead.

"Tony? Come on. We've got to go, boss."

He glances at her with a heavy-lidded expression, an exhausted flash of brown peering through a narrowed gaze. "Tired."

"I know, Tony, but we have got to take care of this. I don't know what else to do," she says, feeling tears sweep up from her throat unexpectedly.

Something must clear up the fog in his mind, because he suddenly appears completely lucid. "You okay, Pepper?" he asks before succumbing to the lung-crushing cough.

She nods, then tugs on his arm until he relents and pulls himself up with painful slowness.


After being wheeled to a room, an orderly helps her boss onto a stretcher and the nurse that had assisted them in the triage area snatches a small white cloth from a rolling cart and soaks it with water before placing it on Tony's forehead. Pepper takes a seat off to the side, opting to watch anxiously from afar. The water dribbles past his temples, through the short, dark curls, and to the back of his neck and he shudders, curling to a fetal position. The coloring in his face is a troublesome shade of white, with a purple-blue tint under his eyes and at his mouth. She's never seen him this pale in her life.

The nurse does not appear pleased with the way he is breathing and hooks up a tube to the wall, cranking a dial, attaches an oxygen mask to the end of it, then winds it around her boss's face, fitting it snugly over his airway. She cracks open one eyelid and peers into it with her penlight. "Mr. Stark? You doing okay there, sir?"

He moans in response.

"All right, sir. I know you're feeling pretty crummy, but you're going to have to talk to me."

Tony shakes visibly and grimaces as coughs erupt from his feeble chest. The nurse snaps on a pulse oximeter clip to his left index finger, watching the machine next to the bed flicker with his rapid heartbeat. Pepper strains to see the numbers and feels worry wash over her.

89. It's worse than she thought.

The nurse notices her expression, turning halfway to acknowledge her. "Sometimes breathing can become a little shallower when you lie down. It'll be all right. Even though his numbers are low, technically he's only mildly cyanotic. I know it seems a little scary, but we won't let it get out of control, I promise."

"What will happen if it does get 'out of control'?" Pepper asks, wrenching her hands together nervously.

The nurse presses a button on the wall and pages for a Dr. Cordova, then dials and quietly speaks to an individual obviously at their desk. She turns after the brief conversation ends. "If it gets worse then we'll have to sedate and intubate him, but I don't think that will be necessary."

"Then why are you calling for help?" Pepper asks sharply, hysterics building inside her chest.

"Just a precaution," the nurse says calmly, then steps out momentarily, leaving Pepper alone in the room with the genius billionaire whose body continues to be racked with intermittent chills. She's terrified to move, but he is tossing his head as his hacking persists and he grimaces in agony after the bout.

A few people in scrubs enter the room, including the nurse, and suddenly the place is full of noise, chatter, clinking of metal against metal, and the bodies act as a barrier as they surround her boss who continues to cough uncontrollably. Pepper notices that the nurse has Tony's left arm in her grip and she is tying a length of stretchy rubber around the upper bicep. She has a prepared intravenous solution hanging above her head on an IV pole and she effortlessly flicks the top of his hand for a vein, finds it, inserts a needle, then tapes the tube to his arm and connects it to the bag.

She thinks reproachfully that she should have been more careful about his fluid consumption, because she can't remember the last time he'd even bothered to drink or eat anything, but then he's fasted during a particularly manic stretch of inventive flair before, so she'd had no reason to worry beyond what is typical for his behavior.

In the same hand with the IV port, a stoic male nurse flips Tony's hand over and inserts a larger needle after determining where his artery is located. Pepper closes her eyes when he grumbles audibly, then sees his knees moving in agitation.

"All right, Mr. Stark, almost done. We just need to get an arterial blood gas reading to see how your oxygen levels are doing," the man says calmly, drawing out a vial of dark red liquid from his wrist.

"What's his temp?" the nurse from before asks another.

A moment goes by, then another female voice is heard. "104.4."

"All right, let's get him a cooling blanket and 1000 mg of ibuprofen to knock out that fever," the man in the lab coat says who is busy moving a stethoscope across the expanse of Tony's upper torso, maneuvering around the now intricate technology imbedded in the sick man's chest. The medical personnel glance at one another but say nothing about the elephant in the room. "I really don't like the way his lungs sound right now. I'd like to get a portable chest series. Ma'am?"

Pepper perks up when he directs his attention to her. "Yes?"

Dr. Cordova peers over his glasses at her. "Is it safe to perform an x-ray with this...device in his chest cavity?"

She opens and closes her mouth uncertainly, curling a copper colored strand of hair behind an ear. "I-I don't know. I think so."

"What is it, anyway?" Cordova touches the skin around it with a hard but genuinely interested expression and she suddenly decides that she understands Tony's trepidation regarding hospital emergency rooms.

She sighs. "It's miniaturized arc reactor. It's keeping fragments of shrapnel from entering his heart."

"Okay," he says uncertainly, mulling over the best action to take.

"Considering what you've seen, I expect you to practice absolute confidentiality regarding Mr. Stark's care. Nothing about his condition leaves this room, unless you want the press filling up your hospital and making your lives hell."

The doctor nods grimly.

"I think a simple upright chest series should be safe enough, but an MRI or CT is definitely out of the question. Do you know the last time he took any medication?"

"Uh, he took some Advil in the evening and a cough decongestant during the day time."

"Like Sudafed?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Okay, let's set up an IV dose of an expectorant. Keep him on 3 liters of oxygen."

Tony swipes at his nose, moving the mask from his face, but the nurses around him force it back on and he struggles, pushing devices around. Pepper watches from her seat as he fights their attempts to calm him.

"Mr. Stark, sir, you're all right. You need to keep that oxygen mask over your face," Dr. Cordova says firmly.

"Pepper," Tony calls out, eyes bright with fever and confusion. "Where are you?"

The nurses prompt her to come over and stand by his bedside while they whisper to each other about a dose of Ativan to relax him from his state of agitated delirium. She grimaces, and then pulls the cloth from the skin of his forehead puts a palm to the overheated skin, smoothing the dark hair calmingly.

"Why don't you stay here with him until he calms down a bit?"

She nods sadly. The nurse injects his IV port with a solution that she is realizes is a mild sedative, normally reserved for patients who are combative and unwilling to remain calm for medical treatment. She watches as he reverts from a deep, pained frown and tense frame to a glazed stare and relaxed muscles, which sink into oblivion as sleep takes over.

Pepper sweeps her gaze over the multitude of wires protruding from his chest, past the mild glow of the reactor, noticing that the staff had managed to disrobe him in a matter of seconds, so that he is now sporting their lovely patient attire that he hates so much. His clothes lie in a heap on the floor, his running shoes resting on the top.

A nurse comes up beside her with a blanket that is designed to bring a person's body temperature down more slowly and carefully than an abrupt dunk into a cold bath; Pepper is instructed to move out of the room or gown herself with a lead apron while they take an x-ray of his chest. A large device rolls in and she opts to take the heavy blue smock and sit at his side while they conduct their tests.

Tony doesn't budge or give any indication that he is aware of the goings-on because he is motionless during the entire process, dead to the world now that he is covered in a sheet, drugged up, oxygenated, and head tipped to the left so that she can see his peaceful facial features. The nurses maneuver his limbs this way and that for several different x-ray shots, then place his hands above his head, moving him to each side, finally returning him to his back. He only makes a tiny noise, but always remains still.

A few minutes drag by until Dr. Cordova has sufficient enough time to review the results of the blood gas, the ECG, and the x-ray films.

He sits on a rolling stool next to Pepper regarding her sympathetically. She'd been nodding off when he'd strolled back into the room. She checks her watch and realizes that it is now 5:30.

"What's going on?" she asks, rubbing her eyes wearily.

"Well, the pneumonia is definitely there, no denying that. The coughing has caused quite a bit of inflammation in his throat and the lining of his lungs, so that is making it much more difficult to take in a good, decent breath. I can only imagine what the reactor is doing to play a part in his difficulty breathing. The fever just made matters that much worse. I'm glad you brought him in."

"He won't look at it that way."

"Don't second guess yourself, Miss Potts. You did the right thing."

She swipes her face tiredly. "So what are we going to do at this point? Is he staying?"

The doctor rubs his hand over his well-manicured beard. "I'd like for his body temperature to hit below 100 degrees before he goes home. I also want to administer a breathing treatment with a medicine called Albuterol which should reduce the inflammation and help him cough out all of that in his lungs."

"Do you think he'll be all right?"

The doctor nods, patting her shoulder. "Yeah, he's going to make it through. He's strong, in good physical condition even despite the, uh, reactor in the way. Pneumonia has the potential to be deadly, but I expect a full recovery."

Pepper sighs in relief, relaxing back into the chair, her hand lightly touching Tony's crowded left arm. She is careful to avoid the IV, bandage from the arterial blood draw and the oximeter wire. Poor guy's arm will be covered in purple bruises from the needle pricks and bandages.

The mask over his face is replaced with another that is hissing and creating a mist that he is unconsciously inhaling. He only briefly swats at the mask to itch his nose, but Pepper intercepts his hand each time he tries to move it. Once the procedure is finished, they are again left to the room alone, with only momentary intrusions from the occasional nurse.