When the alarm went off, Chance rolled over and smacked it hurriedly so the sound wouldn't disturb the kat sleeping across the hall. Then he buried his head face first into the pillow and mrrrr'd. It's not that he wasn't a morning person - at least he was okay with mornings if he hadn't been up all night watching a monster movie or Scaredy Kat marathon. But that didn't mean he rolled out of bed easily. Still, if he could keep from waking Jake - he lifted his head up off the pillow and glanced at the clock. Three minutes.
He swung his feet out of bed and stood, padding quietly out the door and slightly down the hall still in his boxers. Jake's door didn't squeak anymore. Chance kept the latch and hinges oiled well enough to prevent that. So when he entered his buddy Jake didn't stir. The cinnamon colored tom was flat on his back in his bed, with the covers dragging the floor and one foot hanging off.
He crept silently to the bedside stand and shut off the alarm, then stood looking at his friend. His partner and confidant. His brother, closer to him than any real brother. Jake slept on, peacefully it seemed, even as Chance gathered up the blankets and carefully smoothed them back over his body. Jake smiled slightly in his sleep before he started to snore once more. As Chance watched, something from Sunday School a million years ago seemed to step into his thoughts.
When you lie down, you shall not be afraid; yes, you shall lie down, and your sleep shall be sweet.
He wasn't sure why it popped into his head, but it was there. It seemed fitting.
Jake needed some sleep to be sweet. His frame was painfully thin and frail. His buddy had always been slight but he'd also been packed with muscle and lean sinew. Now his ribs and collar bones stuck out, and the hollow of his throat was like a cavern. The port implanted under the skin of his chest stuck out like a half globe, with tight skin around. It was like his skin was shrinking. Even his hands were wasted and his arms were barely thicker than the bones inside.
Chance glanced over the pill bottles stacked on the nightstand. He had to make sure nothing needed a refill - they'd been through that before. Jake'd take them if they were there. But if a bottle ran out he tended to 'forget' to go after refills,. Chance didn't want to go into how that worked. Jake was smarter than that. He knew the consequences. They'd argued about it. Chance didn't want to think about the obvious - the omission was purposeful. After all it was rapidly becoming more and more pointless to take them. He didn't want to go there.
It had been a bad five years since the diagnosis. It'd started out with Jake having a run of illnesses - a bad cold, a bronchitis, a sore throat that wouldn't die. But when four courses of antibiotics wouldn't kill a simple strep throat, the doctors had sent him in for more testing. The results had sent them both into shock.
When they diagnosed the FLV, Jake had been scornful of the results. Everybody got vaccinated when they were kits. Yeah sometimes the immunization didn't work. But even so a kat's immune system often knocked it out. And who would think Jake had a crud immune system anyway?
Then they found that he also had FIV. Neither one was a death sentence. Thousands of Kats in MegaKat City had FIV or FLV. Most kats went on to live long relatively healthy lives.
That was, separately, they went on to have long, relatively healthy lives. Together, it was his death sentence.
At first things had only changed slightly for the SWAT Kats. Jake had devised a face mask with grinning skull teeth that made them pretty fierce looking and did the double duty of protecting him and hiding his increasingly sunken cheeks. They played it off as a new part of their equipment, that it was for filtering out poisonous gasses and fumes - a sensible precaution, considering Dr. Viper was a frequent foe.
But he still got sick. So Chance proposed some changes around the garage. Jake bucked them at first. But after the first ten day stay in MKMH with pneumonia, he accepted them easier.
Jake wore a mask in the garage now, a N-95 anytime he left his room. He didn't deal face to face with customers anymore. He stayed away from Burke and Murray and didn't do near the amount of salvage work he'd done in the past. That's not to say Jake was taking it lying down. Neither was Chance, for that matter.
Chance stretched pennies to pay for Jake's chemo. Bills routinely went to second and third notices before he paid them. He chased down Kats who hadn't paid their mechanic bills and strong armed money out of them. He even raised prices a bit, which was starting to impact how much work came in. But less work meant more time, and he needed more time. He was able to stretch the budget enough to buy better food - real chicken and stuff, instead of a diet of pizza and tuna sandwiches. Everything had to be prepared in a certain way to protect Jake from the bugs that'd never bother any healthy kat.
Chance shakes his head, thinking of all the 'normal' things, that now they avoided like the plague. Like eating salads. And eating at buffets. Going to the grocery store at peak hours. A fair or crud, just about any large gathering of kats was a potential death trap. The doctor's waiting room was a potential death trap. They dreaded flu season and friends who had colds.
It'd changed how they related to each other too. If possible, Chance was even more protective. And Jake was pushing him away.
Though he was still going through with the chemo. Chance drove him there every Tuesday, so Jake could get chemicals pumped through the port in his chest that made him feel sick and shake with fever. He'd gone through course after course even when it was obvious it wasn't working. The only reason he was still fighting, Chance knew, was that it was buying him time for the wedding.
It had originally been planned for next year. They'd moved it up - only a week now. Soon enough that Jake could stand at his best friend's side, and hold the ring as Chance's bride walked down the aisle.
There was no denying the inevitable- Jake was dying. Chance was going to lose his best and truest friend, decades before it should happen. They'd had the difficult discussion, sitting at the kitchen table. After the wedding he would stop the chemo. Soon after he was going to enter hospice. He wanted to be cremated. Chance would sprinkle his ashes on Megakat Bay. They'd discussed new SWAT Kat candidates. They'd discussed mods for the Turbokat Jake had never got around to, and that it was too late for now.
Kats alive. But he knew by the way that the doctors talked at the last visit there wasn't a lot of time left. One more minor cold and they'd be saying goodbye.
A soft snore from Jake breaks Chance out of his ruminations. He glanced back at the alarm - two minutes past when it would have sounded. He reaches over and slips the switch back to 'on'; his features curl into a smile picturing Jake's inevitable indignation. When he does wake up he'll be stomping down the stairs pulling the mask on, one arm out of his coveralls, cussing the alarm clock "that didn't go off again." Chance will laugh and commiserate, pour Jake a tall milk and throw him a cereal bar and they'd go to work together. One more day of the dwindling store to savor.
On silent feet, Chance creeps back to the door, and slips out into the hall. But before he moves away he pauses to look in at his friend once more. His eyes fill with tears and for a moment he rubs at his eyes, wiping the moisture away. "It'll be alright, Jake. I'm here for you. Through to the end. Then… then you shall lie down, and your sleep shall be sweet. Sleep well, Sureshot," he says softly, and pulls the door shut.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Feline Immunodeficiency Virus and Feline Leukemia Virus are my inspirations for Jake's illness. The verse is Proverbs 3:24. A N-95 is a mask that'll keep flu virus and other contagions out. They're hot and annoying to wear.
I don't know why I torment Jake so much, but it's as much a story about how Chance feels as how Jake is ill.