Dan plodded into the living room and flopped down next to Phil, pulling the fleece blanket off the back of the couch and wrapping it around him like a cocoon. "Fever's back," he said.
Phil scooted himself around so he was facing his roommate. Dan actually looked quite rough, his eyes sunken and his upper lip covered by a thin sheen of sweat. "Are you feeling ok?" Phil asked, even though it was obvious that he wasn't.
"I'm just so achy," Dan sighed. "My rib is killing me."
"Well why don't you take some ibuprofen?" Phil suggested. "That will help both the pain and the fever."
"Already took some."
Phil bit his lip, wondering what else he could suggest to his friend, but coming up with nothing. A heating pad might help with the pain, but he was already hot enough from the fever. And if ibuprofen wasn't cutting it, he didn't know what else they had on hand that might. "I could make some soup," he suggested finally, knowing it wouldn't actually help but hoping it might let Dan know he cared enough to try. Anyway, it was nearly noon and neither of them had eaten breakfast.
A smile pulled at the corner of Dan's mouth. "Ok," he agreed.
Phil set his laptop aside and heaved himself up out of the cushiony grip of the couch, meandering into the kitchen to see what sort of soup-ish ingredients he could find. Dan followed, situating himself and his blanket at the table to watch Phil work.
Phil's first thought was chicken-noodle, because what else do you make when someone is sick? But upon realizing that they had neither chicken nor noodles on hand, he decided to just make a pot of ramen from a package he found in the back of the cupboard. "Sorry, Dan," he said sheepishly.
"It's not your fault we have no food in the house," Dan said with a shrug. "It was supposed to be my turn to do the shopping anyway."
"Well you've been poorly," Phil argued. "I'll go out later and get some stuff, but for now this will have to do." He dished out a bowl and set it in front of Dan, and poured what was left—mostly broth—into a mug for himself.
When the two had finished their lunch, Dan had retired to his bed, and Phil had straightened up the kitchen, he decided to venture out to buy a few things—soup ingredients, for starters, and some more ibuprofen as Dan had gone through nearly all of the medicine they kept in the flat.
The late-autumn air felt unusually cold on Phil's face as he headed back home, bags in hand, and so did the air inside the flat as he let himself in and kicked off his shoes. He turned up the heating on his way up the stairs, and noted that he could hear Dan coughing even in his bedroom with the door shut.
It had been more than a month that Dan had been unwell, and Phil was starting to wonder if it was time to worry yet.