A/N: another idea i've had floating about for a while. im sorry i cant update my other stuff - i left my notes at the other house :( Louisa May Alcott owns everything you know. The title and inspiration comes from 'Service Bell' performed by Feist and Grizzly Bear (composed by Edward Droste) off Dark Was the Night. I had this song on repeat when writing most of Pilgrimage but i think it deserves a story and tone all of its own.
...
Her hands were sweaty as she reached across the covers to pull the hair off his forehead. She had not expected this when she pleaded to be permitted by his side. He groaned in his sleep, turning his face into her palm and Jo bit her lip at the sight of his peaceful brow. The doctor had been sure he would pull through but Jo knew the stories, she understood that he was simply comforting her with what she needed to hear.
A strangle-hold had gripped Jo the second she received the news and she hadn't been able to shake the tightness in her chest, not even when she'd finally layed eyes on his shivering form lying twisted amongst the white sheets. She'd fallen to her knees and cried, truly her heart had shattered at the sight - the first she'd seen of him since he'd left for Europe. There was a rash creeping up his neck and she saw it ravaged down further across his chest 'neath the white of his nightshirt. He was frighteningly thin and she wondered that it wasn't starvation that had put him in this mess when she knew quite well just what had.
Jo pulled her hand back from his face to clutch them both tightly over the spread, her knuckles turning white from the pressure. She would thank Heaven all her days for sparing him, for giving Laurie back to her even when she had pushed him away. Jo watched her boy intently as he slept on, his fever passing with every deep breath. She didn't know what it was to care so much for anyone as she did when the Doctor had pronounced the fever over, even if that little needling voice in the back of her mind warned that he might be as delicate as Beth when he was finally well again. She didn't understand love until she was permitted to see him, even in his bedclothes, covered with blankets and sheets.
Jo swallowed, feeling a little ashamed by the ferocity of her feelings as she watched him. What would he say when he woke to find her there? Would he be mad; still smarting from her stupid refusal of him nearly two years ago? Jo worried, pulling her frame off the edge of the bed to sit back in her chair with crossed arms and a frown. How had he gotten the disease in the first place? Now that he was safe from danger Jo finally had the time to consider all these questions that had been pushed aside with the more immediate fear of his death. The obvious answer was more than troubling and Jo had to wonder just exactly how Laurie would react to her presence for he was almost a stranger to her now with his hair plastered to his pale face. Would she have recognised the man before he caught the bad blood in who knows where from who knows what person? Jo bit the nail of her thumb as her legs moved restlessly under her chair.
If she'd only said 'yes', begged him to stay, told him there was another way to forget her than finding the arms of some Parisian with a bobbing head and pained joints. Did he not think to check? Jo coloured in consideration at how one 'checked' their partner for the symptoms - really the whole situation was so far from anything comfortable or proper; how could she think of propriety when Laurie - Teddy man alive! - lay so deathly white save for the red marks across his skin.
Jo pulled her nail from between her teeth to wrap her arms around her middle for comfort. The doctor had said Laurie was progressing to the last stages of this term of the disease and while he spoke with a gentle smile and a lot of large medical words the general impression Jo received was that it was far from over. The young man looked tried and wrung out as he slept, groaning at every turn in his bed and she knew not of his future when he would be so weakened by his suffering.
She'd never thought, not even in flights of fancying over their possible futures in the darkened corners of the garret that she would be here, by his bed as he struggled to endure such a disease she might never have thought of save for the parts of Paris her Aunt would never let her see. The world could not turn itself further on its head if it tried, Jo thought hugging herself as she leaned forward closer to observe his changed form again.
"Please," she whispered through chapped lips - the first words she had been able to utter since entering the room three hours ago. "You must get better, Teddy. Or you will never know-" Jo choked on the rest of her sentence and he moved in his sleep. "Please be well again."