Cosima, Felix had decided, made a fucking lousy patient. Okay, so maybe she'd handled the news of her imminent death gracefully, and he couldn't really hold the several weeks unconscious in his apartment against her, but lately? She was driving him bloody insane.
It had taken far too many attempts to get her out of Alison's minivan and into the doctor's office, just to start with. Sarah had eventually talked Cos into going to the doctor's surgery, apparently convincing her to give it a go through the copious application of cough medicine and ice cream. Alison had detailed all of that in excessive detail in the van on the way to the doctor's surgery, having picked him up (only slightly hungover) from a cafe on the way to the most remote clinic she could apparently find in Toronto. Convincing Cosima to leave the house, however, turned out to be not nearly so large a challenge as convincing her to leave the car.
Alright, fair enough, she'd fallen asleep in the car, and she was clearly drugged to the eyeballs with cough medication. That did not excuse how excessively difficult it was to wake her up and get her upright, or that she'd somehow managed to misplace her glasses between the front door and the clinic. Or that she'd managed to swat him in the face once he'd finally gotten her approximately conscious.
"So help me Jesus, if that bruises, you will be making up for weeks of income," he swore, pressing his fingers into his temple. At least it didn't seem to be bleeding. But Alison had heard him curse, and now he was getting her disapproving look.
"Please remember, Felix, that the way you behave in the next hour will reflect upon me," she snapped, and turned to Cosima, trying to tug her clothes into some semblance of order. Alison had made an effort to dress Cosima in some of her own clothes, so that she'd somewhat match the details associated with her ID (other than her face, anyway), but between Cosima's cropped hair, the way the clothes hung on her, and the contrast between Cosima's relaxed-at-the-best-of-times but-especially-now-she-was-high posture and Alison's apparent habit of walking on her tiptoes, it was essentially a lost cause.
Cosima swayed, and blinked at Felix. He groaned. "At least without your glasses they won't notice that quirk on 'your' medical history," and he took her arm, "Try not to walk into any door frames, alright?"
Cosima leaned on him heavily. At least she was no longer insisting she didn't in fact need the doctor. Behind them, he heard Alison climb back into her minivan and roll down the driver's window.
"I'll be right here if anything goes wrong." She called.
He didn't turn around. "For the love of God, Alison, stay there, or we'll be explaining to the unsuspecting medical professionals of Toronto why there's now bloody two of you!".
Sarah never even made her own bed, but since she'd now done the washing up and cleaned everything that appeared to be growing from the fridge, it seemed practical to also strip Cosima's bed and remake it with clean sheets. She hadn't stopped to do the math, but she was pretty sure she'd made Cosima's bed more times in the last month than she'd made her own in her entire life. S might even be proud.
That done, she found herself looking around for something else to keep her hands busy. In the past, when she was anxious, she'd have gone out and gotten drunk or picked a fight, but right now she wasn't convinced that it'd make her feel better about anything. She found herself staring at the kitchen floor and wondering if Felix owned a mop. If she managed to get the ingrown grime out of his tiles, surely Fe and Cos and Alison would be back by then.
On the other hand, maybe she'd die from inhaling mould spores, and then she'd never know if they got back and everything was okay. She grimaced at her own thought process; she clearly wasn't coping well with their absence. She had tried, without effect, not to worry. Felix would almost certainly have turned down the aggravated snark in his texts if everything weren't okay.
Alison won't want to come back here in a hurry. Cos got overly enthused about a jar of jellybeans at the front desk. There were no survivors.
That had made her smirk, but she was too tense to laugh even at the mental image. On Cosima's actual results, he'd said nothing, and that had been two hours ago.
She looked again at the tiles, then pursed her lips and blew her hair out of her face. Fuck it, she was not Alison and she wasn't going to wear those damn gloves. She was going to sit on the couch and watch tv like a normal human being.
Ten minutes later, she rearranged the coffee table and then took the garbage out.
When the door of the loft finally slid open, Sarah was asleep on the couch. The sound of footsteps quickly roused her, though, and she pushed her hair behind her left ear as most of the clone club came in. Cosima was leaning awkwardly on Felix, obviously sleepy, while Alison brought up the rear.
Felix made a beeline for the couch, dumping Cosima unceremoniously beside Sarah, who blinked into greater awareness. He stood up, immediately rotating his head to the left and right, "Jesus bloody Christ Cosima, my back is killing me. You couldn't've let me just carry you from the damn car?"
Cosima blew a lock of her hair out of her eyes, and wriggled up on the couch to put her head onto Sarah's thigh. "Pretty sure that would really have put your back out, Fe."
Her head was unexpectedly heavy, and Sarah put her hand on her hair without thinking. It was growing out now, almost to her ears, surprisingly dark and prone to curl. Cos pushed her head into Sarah's hand, and she petted her hair absently. "Not likely, he carries Kira all the time and you're scarcely bigger'n her."
Cos glowered, but didn't reply, her eyes already drifting shut. Felix was too busy trying to pop his neck to complain further. Sarah looked at Alison, the only person now meeting her gaze, and scowled. "Oi. Tweedle dee and tweedle dumbstruck. Does anyone want to tell me what in the name of hell took so damn long? And what exactly is going on with Cosima?"
Alison winced a little at the cursing, but didn't try to stop her. "Cosima was right. It isn't the clone disease," she paused, adjusting her wedding ring, and Felix cut in, now over trying to re-locate his spinal column. "He says she has bronchitis."
"Chronic bronchitis," Alison corrected, pulling her shoulders straighter. "She has chronic bronchitis as a sort of after effect of - the other problem." She waved her hands as if dispelling Cosima's prior ill health. "A secondary infection." She looked at Sarah, then moved to sit into the armchair. "It's not as dangerous as the, well, the tumours, but it's not likely to go away for a long time."
Sarah's hand stilled on Cosima's hair. "But - like, can't they give her antibiotics and shit? Isn't that what they're for?"
Felix dropped onto the far end of the couch, maneuvering around Cosima's feet, then turned at the hip to undo her shoe laces. Cosima didn't move. "The doctor said it's probably viral. So, antiobiotics won't do anything. He wrote us some scripts for things to help, but it's not going to fix her in a hurry."
"We stopped on the way to fill her prescriptions," Alison added, brushing back her bangs. "We have those, at least," and she patted her handbag, beside her on the floor.
Sarah stared at Alison and her bag, then closed her eyes, dropping her head onto the back of the couch. "I can't believe this. All that to get her to a doctor and the guy wouldn't even treat her?"
"Well, he did see her," Alison pointed out reasonably. "And he did treat her - well, treated me, I suppose. And he gave her a script for electrolytes and better antipyretics… fever reducers," she added, to Sarah's blank look. "Antiobiotics don't cure everything, you know."
Sarah put her hand over her eyes. She needed a minute. "At least it's not the clone thing comin' back," she said finally.
"It's not the clone whatsit," Felix confirmed, waving one hand as Alison had done, before he sighed and added, "We really do need another name for that," and dropped Cosima's shoes onto the floor. "It's some all bloody new bitch thing for her to deal with. And this one is probably infectious."
Sarah lifted her hand and stared at him. Beside her, Alison nodded. "Fuckin' fantastic," Sarah said faintly. She remembered her other grudge. "And what in the name of all things holy took you guys so bloody long?"