Complicated Healing
Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling and I own none of her characters. However the OCs are mine.
A/N: this story was inspired by fhestia and her story Suffering Silently.
To fhestia, thank you for your inspiration and your wonderful stories. This is my tribute to you, for you will always be one of the best.
This story is part two in a series of four known as Scabior's Rose - In Sickness and In Health.
The others are, in order, Love's Healing Touch, Fevers & Fears, and Night of Silence.
Scabior had never been one to complain about things when he wasn't feeling well. He had a strong, resilient nature, and he wasn't the type of man who turned into a baby every time he caught a case of the sniffles. Therefore when the head Snatcher woke up one morning feeling an uncomfortable tickle in the back of his throat, he decided that the best thing to do was ignore it.
He continued to ignore it as he went about his day, tracking muggleborns through the forest, capturing a few of them and bringing them in to the ministry.
He ignored the somewhat painful sting he felt whenever he swallowed a mouthful of food that evening at dinner. And as he was going to bed that night, snuggling up close to his wife Draconius as she slept peacefully beside him, he tried not to think about how sore his throat felt.
'It's probably nothing', he told himself. After all he'd been through this enough times to know that illnesses like this, however frequent they occurred, often went away on their own in a few days.
The next morning when he awoke, Scabior noticed that his throat hurt worse than it did the day before. He was also beginning to feel slightly feverish, but decided to keep quiet about it. After all it was only a minor throat irritation. Nothing the leader of the Snatchers couldn't handle.
Scabior made his way to the bathroom to wash and dress himself before heading out. After brushing his teeth and tying his hair back in a loosely braided ponytail, Scabior paused in front of the mirror over the bathroom sink. He decided to take a look at his throat to see if this minor irritation was worse than he'd first thought.
Opening his mouth and gazing into the mirror, he saw that his throat was somewhat red and inflamed. He knew this wasn't good, as he had a habit of suffering from recurring throat infections.
A brief chill passed over him and he shivered, pulling his jacket around him for warmth.
'I'm not getting sick,' he thought, trying his best to convince himself that everything would be fine. 'I refuse to get sick. Not again. Not now.'
As the days passed Scabior's pain continued to intensify. His throat burned worse than ever, with the most severe pain concentrated on the right side. The left side of his throat didn't hurt half as bad as the right. And to make matters worse he had also developed an earache on the right side as well.
Scabior sat by the campfire one morning, muttering obscenities under his breath, his head tilted to the side as he rubbed his right ear. He couldn't understand why everything seemed to be gravitating towards the right side of his body.
"Something wrong, sir?"
Scabior looked up as he heard the sound of one of his Snatchers addressing him from across the campfire.
"Of course not," Scabior spat irritably, his normally heavy accent sounding thicker than usual. "Everything is perfectly fine. My ear itches is all," he lied.
Scabior's wife, Draconius Rose, had noticed the unusual thickness of her husband's speech. He had been drinking quite a bit lately, so perhaps the change in his voice simply meant that he was a little drunk.
Alcohol was Scabior's go to whenever he was feeling under the weather, and Draconius knew that. He'd been known to self medicate himself with a glass or two (or four) of brandy in the morning, using alcohol as a means of taking his mind off whatever pain or illness he was experiencing at the time.
But as his health continued to decline, Scabior soon found himself feeling too sick to have much of an interest in any sort of food or drink. A general sense of malaise settled over him, and the increasingly worsening right sided throat pain was making it difficult for him to swallow any substance at all, including his own saliva.
Eventually he reached a point where he could no longer eat. His throat had nearly closed up on him due to the painful enlargement of his tonsils. Any food he ate would stick in his throat, getting caught on his tonsils when he tried to swallow. If Scabior ate too fast he would start to choke. Even liquids went down rough, causing him such intense pain he could barely drink a glass of water.
This caused a rather unpleasant incident in front of his men one evening when Scabior tried forcing himself to drink some water. He was beginning to feel feverish, and thirst was becoming a problem as his ability to swallow was reduced due to the amount of pain he was in.
Scabior took a tentative sip, feeling the water pool against the back of his throat. He tried swallowing, forcing a trickle of liquid down his throat. He managed to get nearly half a glass of water down before the pain and swelling caused him to choke.
Greyback thumped him on the back as he coughed and gasped, fighting to draw air into his lungs.
Scabior noticed his wife was looking at him with concern as he bent over double, his long hair falling forward across his face.
"I'm alright," he gasped, still trying to catch his breath. But Draconius didn't seem convinced.
Scabior held his throat, tugging on his scarf until he pulled the plaid material away from his neck. He inhaled several deep breaths, his throat hurting worse than ever. He didn't want to ask his wife for help, and he turned away, avoiding her gaze as she began to question him.
"Scabior, are you sure you're okay?"
"Fine," he said, the words grating out harshly against his sore throat. "I'm fine, love."
"You don't sound like it."
Scabior coughed again, his grey-blue eyes watering from pain. He couldn't speak even if he wanted to, and he motioned to her with a wave of his hand to back off and leave him alone. Though by now everyone in camp was staring at him.
Another incident occurred one morning when he tried to stand and suddenly became dizzy. He slipped off the log he was sitting on by the campfire. His men turned their heads to look at him as he lay sprawled on his back on the ground, which only served to further increase his annoyance.
He opened his mouth to tell them off for staring at him, but all that came out was something halfway between a hoarse croak and a strangled whisper. Scabior's only saving grace was the half empty bottle of booze that was on the ground by his left foot. He'd been drinking that morning, taking tiny sips to prevent himself from having another choking fit. It was enough to make most of his men think he was in the early stages of getting drunk.
The dizziness continued, making it difficult for him to walk or stand. When he went out to track down their latest target muggleborn and found her by a stream in the woods, he couldn't keep up with the rest of his men. He tried running with them through the woods. But he was short of breath and too dizzy to walk let alone run.
It felt as though he couldn't breathe. Scabior bent over with one hand on the trunk of a nearby redwood, holding himself upright as waves of dizziness continued to wash over him. He gasped and struggled to catch his breath. But his throat was so swollen he could hardly draw enough air into his lungs.
The ground beneath him seemed to undulate and sway, and he clung to the tree with both hands, his sight swimming as he felt the world spin around him. He was getting lightheaded. Though whether it was from hunger, dehydration or lack of oxygen he couldn't tell.
This wasn't good. Something was very wrong and he knew it. It felt like he was slowly being suffocated. If this kept up he'd have no choice but to seek medical attention before his throat closed up and he couldn't breathe.
A low moan escaped his lips, his eyes rolled back in his head, and moments later he was plunged into darkness as he collapsed to the forest floor.
His men found him a short while later, unconscious beneath a tall redwood tree. He was so groggy and disoriented when he came to that it wasn't hard for them to believe that he was drunk. The thickness of Scabior's speech and his slurred words added to the effect, convincing them that their leader was intoxicated.
While it wasn't a good situation to be in, nor did it paint a pretty picture with Scabior passed out in the dirt, the head Snatcher was glad that so far none of them seemed to suspect anything. Only his wife knew the truth. And he would hold out as long as he could before admitting to her that he was sick.
By the end of the week Scabior was absolutely miserable. He was now burning up with a fever. His head hurt, his ear ached, and he was beginning to drool into his own scarf. He couldn't swallow anything at all. A fact he tried to hide by frequently dabbing at the corner of his mouth with his scarf to soak up the excess of dribbling saliva.
Everything from drool soaked patches in his scarf, to Scabior's refusal to eat during mealtimes, indicated that something was wrong with him. There was no hiding it now. And Scabior, having had enough of pretending to be well, eventually retreated to his tent so he could lie down in bed and rest.
Scabior groaned, leaning back against his pillow in bed, one hand holding his aching head. He looked over and caught sight of himself in the mirror on the wall and frowned.
"I look like shit," he muttered.
He curled up on his side under the blankets, shivering and miserable. He wondered when all of this would go away and he would start feeling better again.
His wife was a healer, and he knew he could always ask her for help whenever he was ill. But he hated the thought of having to lower himself to asking someone for help. He preferred to suffer alone in silence, dealing with his problems on his own rather than going to someone for help. Because the one thing that was hardest for him to swallow was his pride.