A new Big Bang Theory story

I do not own The Big Bang Theory

Reviews make me :)

Leonard was sick.

Not soup sick, not flu sick. Hospital sick.

Sheldon stood, making notes, in the waiting room. He would sometimes stop, pace up and down the tight room and then lean against the opposite wall, noting another thought.

He was smarter than all the doctors in this hospital put together.

They were doing everything wrong.

They should have come out with news hours ago.

"Sheldon". Penny's voice was choked but gentle. "Sweetie, come and sit down."

"Why? That won't make a difference."

"You're stressing everybody out, Sheldon. Including yourself. Just... just come and sit down. Please?"

Sheldon sighed and then flopped himself down next to her. The chair wasn't comfortable and it faced away from the door- but he didn't have the energy or the care to move it.

Penny reached out rubbed his back.

"It's okay, sweetie. We're all worried."

"I'm not worried. I'm just ashamed to be in this place. So many minds being used in the wrong way... and not one of them is helping Leonard"

Howard sighed. "Not what Penny needs to hear right now, Sheldon."

"I'm just telling the truth."

"Then try to be kind instead for once, for crying out loud."

"Leave him alone, Howard." Penny placed a hand on Sheldon's. "It's okay, Sheldon."

"No, it's not."

Nobody corrected him.

Sheldon had warned him. He had told him. There was something wrong.

The signs had all been there.

"It's a cold, Sheldon. At the most it's man-flu. I'm fine."

"Well, as alarming as that would indeed be for everyone...I don't think so, Leonard."

"Sheldon, it's the flu."

Now Sheldon looked back, perhaps Leonard had worried it was something more. Leonard never complained about himself, not really. Sure, Sheldon moaned that he did... but the moaning was more of a direct result of Leonard responding to HIS moaning.

It had ben so easy, for both of them, to dismiss it as a bad cold.

Sheldon remembered the night that a worried Penny had been persuaded to go on a night-out with the girls. Sheldon had been happy. A night in with Gotham Season One [with commentary], Pizza night and pulp free orange and beer for Leonard.

Sheldon had been adding his own voice to the commentary. His excitement that a Doctor's son was playing Alfred, the obvious fault in the Penguin's character, where he thought Gotham really was...

"Sheldon...I...I don't feel well."

"Well, a slight over-exaggeration Leonard, but I'm certain in later episodes..."

"No, no, Sheldon, I don't.."

"I mean, I see this as a goer, Lenard. It's been renewed..."

It was then that Leonard had vomited, all down the side of his chair.

Sheldon managed to hide his disgust. This had happened before, after a particularly messy version of a Star Wars drinking game night.

This was different. Leonard had flopped off the couch, his knees hitting the floor with a thud.

"Leonard?"

Leonard was swaying on his knees, one hand at his mouth, the other at his head.

"Leonard!"

Sheldon was bent down in a moment, his hand flying to Leonard's face, wincing at the temperature. Leonard had tried to look him in the face but instead collapsed wordlessly onto Sheldon's chest.

Viral meningitis.

Such a simple illness.

Why hadn't he seen it?

He had three degrees. A doctorate... and he missed such a well known illness.

"Its symptoms are incredibly similar to the flu..." a doctor had tried to offer to him symptomatically "They are frequently easily missed"

I shouldn't have missed them.

So here they were. The girls still in their dresses. Waiting.

So Sheldon wrote- and watched- anything but think about what-ifs.

Anything but to think... and to cry.