Doctor Leonard Hofstadter was woken very early on a Sunday morning to the sound of his roommate and altogether pain in the butt, scraping furniture across the floor in the living room. He grabbed his glasses from the bedside cabinet and peered blearily at the illuminate numbers on his Star Wars alarm clock, before falling back to the pillows and groaning.
"Sheldon! It's five am on a Sunday morning! For the love of God, what are you doing out there?" He yelled out through the thin walls of the apartment and the scraping noises stopped only to be followed by a very familiar rapping on his bedroom door.
"Leonard. Leonard. Leonard."
"What, Sheldon?" Leonard replied irritably, shifting in the bed and plumping up his pillows.
"I can't sleep."
"You don't say…" Leonard muttered, throwing back his duvet and pulling on his robe. He opened the door and leant against the frame with his arms folded across his chest.
"Sarcasm?" Sheldon queried from the hallway and Leonard nodded. "Oh good, I think I'm getting better at detecting it these days." Leonard sighed and then looked over at his roommate, Sheldon's pyjamas were wrinkled and his undershirt was untucked from the waistband; his usually neatly combed hair was standing up on end as if he had spent hours running his fingers through it. There were dark shadows under Sheldon's eyes, which only made the natural paleness of his skin tone even more apparent.
"You okay, buddy?"
"Sarcasm again, Leonard?"
"Not this time, you look terrible Sheldon; what's on your mind?" Leonard was genuinely concerned about his friend and stepped out of his room to lead Sheldon into the living room. He paused on the landing and looked over to where Sheldon had put up two large whiteboards one headed 'symptoms' and the other 'possible cause'.
"Oh…I think I'm sick, Leonard." Sheldon slumped into his seat on the couch and sighed heavily.
"Oh, boy…is this a milky green situation?" Leonard started to back away slowly, the last time Sheldon was sick things turned ugly very quickly. Leonard, Raj and Howard had tried hiding out in the local movie house for a Planet of the Apes marathon but an unfortunate accident involving Howard's foot on Leonard's glasses had meant they had to cut their plans short in order to try and sneak back into the apartment to retrieve his spare pair. Penny had unluckily been picked by Sheldon to be his care giver and she was not amused to find out that the rest of the guys had been lying about being called into work on short notice.
"I don't have a fever and I don't feel congested at all, so I don't think this qualifies as 'milky green'." Sheldon stated slowly and Leonard relaxed a little, walking over to the kitchen to pop the kettle on.
"Okay, we're going to have a nice cup of tea and then we can talk about what you might be feeling and come up with a plan."
"Mmm, although offering me a soothing beverage isn't going to solve why I haven't slept in nearly three days, Leonard."
"Three days? Sheldon, why didn't you say something sooner?" Leonard whirled around to face his friend, astonished at the fact that Sheldon had obviously been suffering for all of that time and kept quiet about it. Sheldon was not normally one to suffer in silence, he was a bit of a drama queen when it came to any disruption of his normal routine and Leonard was amazed that it had slipped him by. "Is that why you insisted on finishing Season Four of Next Generation last night, even though it was way past your bedtime?"
"Yes, I've been attempting to stay up a little later each night thinking that it would make me fall asleep; but to no avail. Leonard, I always go to bed a precisely ten-fifteen, it takes me approximately fifteen minutes to fall asleep and then I wake up at oh-six-hundred hours every day; it's been the same routine every day for the last twenty years…I have never not been able to sleep before!"
"Never?"
"Never." Sheldon confirmed with a nod, reaching over to accept the warm cup of chamomile tea offered by Leonard. "My routine hasn't changed since I entered college, my body needs eight and a half hours in order to function correctly; without it I'm just a quivering wreck." Leonard took a sip of his own tea and then set the mug down on the coffee table. He walked over to the first of the whiteboards and picked up a marker.
"Okay, what are your symptoms?"
"Umm…" Sheldon thought about it for a second. "Inability to achieve REM sleep, obviously."
"Okay," Leonard noted that on the board and rolled his hand in a continuing motion. "Go on, what else?"
"Elevated heart rate…my resting heart rate is usually a steady 45 beats per minute and I've noticed that it's now in the low sixties."
"Mmm…and?"
"Sweaty palms." Sheldon offered up with a slight grimace, wiping said hands with a cleansing wipe and disposing it in the waste bin. Leonard raised his eyebrows at the sight of the heaping mound of wipes already in the bin. "Urgh…dry mouth." Sheldon continued, taking another sip of his tea. Leonard noted all of Sheldon's symptoms on the board and stood back to look at the list, tapping the marker against his lips.
"What do you think? It's something bad isn't it?" Sheldon tapped his lean fingers nervously on his knee and looked at Leonard for help.
"I don't know, are you in any pain at all? Headaches, nausea?"
"A little headachy from where I haven't slept…oh, there was a little nausea the other day, like my tummy had flipped over but I wasn't sick at all." Sheldon thought about what he had been doing at the time and his tummy flipped again. "Oh, dear there it is again." He pressed a hand over his abdomen and rubbed in circles.
"Okay, that's good. We need to list all of the times that you first noticed your symptoms and then we can start narrowing down the possible causes." Leonard dragged a third whiteboard over and headed that one 'timeline'. Pen poised in mid-air, he waited for Sheldon to start.
"I don't really know, Leonard; it's hard to pinpoint when I first noticed it. The tummy flip thing has been happening for a while now…usually when I'm at The Cheesecake Factory with Amy…I put it down to the excitement over my burger; but what if it means that I am suddenly becoming allergic to the barbeque sauce? Oh, Leonard this is terrible!" Sheldon rose from the couch and started pacing around the living room. "There's nothing else even remotely palatable on the menu, I need to change my whole Tuesday routine…I'll need to go online and read the ratings for a suitable replacement…that will take time and in a few days it will be Tuesday again!" Sheldon's tummy flipped again, and he felt his pulse quicken making him feel a little light headed. He sat down quickly in the armchair and Leonard patted his shoulder.
"There, there, buddy. I'm sure you can't suddenly become allergic to barbeque sauce; it's probably something else entirely. Did your tummy flip again? Heart rate quicken up? Okay, so we'll look at the variables and put them up on the board for reference." Leonard scribbled 'Tuesday', 'date', 'Amy' and 'Cheesecake Factory' on the board and Sheldon clicked his tongue.
"It was not a 'date', Leonard. It was just two friends sharing a table…I think I've lost count the number of times that I have stated that Amy is merely a friend who is a girl and most definitely is not my girlfriend!"
"Okay, I'll scrub that out." Leonard changed the word 'date' to read simply 'meal' and Sheldon nodded in satisfaction. His heart threatened to pound through his chest as he re-read the words on the board and he groaned a little.
"This is truly a nightmare, Leonard. I'm starting to perspire now and I think I'm developing a fever."
"Let's take your temperature and check." Leonard ran down the hallway and came back with Sheldon's ear thermometer. He stuck it in Sheldon's ear and when it beeped, pulled it out to get the reading. "Nope, completely normal. You don't have a fever, Sheldon." Leonard wrote the temperature on the white board and underlined 'no obvious fever'.
"Impossible, I'm positively drenched here!" Sheldon grabbed a tissue and dabbed at the tiny beads of sweat forming on his forehead. They both looked over at a knock on the apartment door and it opened to reveal Raj and Howard, kitted out in their paintball gear. Both men frowned at the sight of Sheldon and Leonard in their pyjamas.
"You do know that it's gone eight and we have a game at nine?" Howard strolled into the living room and sat down on the couch, glancing over at the whiteboard.
"I can't go paintballing, Leonard! I can't even focus on determining what is wrong with me, let alone providing a winning strategy in our game of warfare." Sheldon jumped up from the armchair and started pacing again, tugging at his hair eyes wide with anxiety.
"Whoa! Why didn't you tell me we had a milky green situation, Leonard?" Howard lept up from the couch and started backing away slowly.
"Calm down, Howard. It's not milky green, Sheldon's just having a few issues that we're trying to get to the bottom of." Leonard reassured his friend and Howard stepped closer to the board.
"Hmm…if this were a sci-fi movie, I'd get you to put alien parasite up on the board. Ripley displayed all of these symptoms in the Alien movies…inability to sleep, accompanied by nightmares, sweating but no fever, elevated heart rate…yeah, alien parasite works for me."
"Not helping, Howard." Leonard muttered and Sheldon stopped pacing to look over at the diminutive engineer.
"Where would I have picked up an alien parasite? It explains so much…Leonard, write it down!"
"Sheldon, you do not have an alien parasite growing in your gut!" Leonard sighed, and Sheldon just waved a hand over at the board.
"Write it down! It's the closest thing to an explanation we've had all morning."
"If you were a female, I'd suggest that you were going through early onset menopause." Raj offered up from the couch. "It sounds exactly what my Mother went through a few years ago…I wonder if there is a male equivalent?"
"Raj, Sheldon would have to have a working endocrine system in order for that to happen…and we all know he's been stuck in pre-adolescence for years now." Howard remarked, only half in jest.
"I'll have you know that my endocrine system works perfectly well, thank you much." Sheldon retorted hotly, "Otherwise why would Leonard and I have even contemplated offering up our valuable DNA to the high IQ sperm bank a few years ago?"
"Perhaps it's Pon Farr then…" Raj noticed the Star Trek DVD case abandoned by the TV cabinet and offered up an out of the box suggestion. "Sheldon's been repressing his urges for years and now they have become too much for him to handle and he needs to act on them or die."
"One extreme to another…guys you do realise that the only two explanations we have up on the board are completely made up, don't you?" Leonard crossed his arms over his chest and looked around the room. "Oh, alright then!" He wrote 'Pon Farr' on the cause board and pointed the marker at Sheldon. "Okay, say we're going to go down the Pon Farr route, have you been experiencing any strange…um…how do I put this…unusual throbbing or activity in your groin area?"
"Urgh!" Raj and Howard wrinkled their noses up at Leonard's delicate phrasing. "Are you seriously asking Sheldon whether he's had a boner lately? Come on, Leonard let's not stray too far from reality…" Howard stopped talking as he noticed the way that Sheldon's cheeks were slightly flushed and he was avoiding making eye contact. "Oh dear God!" He murmured and sank back against the cushions. "The world is seriously freakin' out now, Sheldon Cooper is a real man!"
"Okay, Sheldon…in the interest of science and in order to make a correct diagnosis…how often would you say that you've…" Leonard's voice trailed off as he couldn't bring himself to actually ask the question.
"Experienced local vascular throbbing?" Sheldon offered up a dry explanation for the raging fire in his loins, and Leonard nodded. "Twice a day for the last five months…each episode lasting approximately thirty to forty minutes."
"Wow…that's some throbbing!" Howard remarked from the couch, "I was lucky if mine were five minutes before I had an exploding volcano in my pants."
"I do not 'explode' as you so crudely put it, Wolowitz. I simply enter into a meditative state and it goes away of its own accord." Sheldon glanced over at Howard and Raj who were both looking at him in complete astonishment. "I really don't see what all the fuss is about, yes it is a nuisance but I don't see what it has to do with my other symptoms at all."
"You don't huh?" Howard walked over to grab the pen from Leonard and on the timeline board, wrote 'five months', on the symptom board 'morning wood' and on the cause board wrote a large question mark. "Gentlemen, I draw your attention to the boards in front of you…Tell me, what do you see as the only variable that could link all of Sheldon's 'symptom' together?"
"A predilection to science fiction and gullibility maybe?" Leonard squinted at the board, his head tilted to one side as he scanned his scrawl.
"A sudden inability to digest my Tuesday burger at the Cheesecake Factory." Sheldon offered and Howard grinned over at him.
"Close but no cigar. Wait here a moment, I think I can get this cleared up in no time." Howard set the pen down on the ledge under the whiteboard and jogged across the hall to wake up the only other person he could think of that be able to see what he saw clearly defined on the boards.