Chapter 11- Lunch Plans
Simmons really thought she'd be glad when Fitz woke up because she had so much to talk to him about, but so far things hadn't worked out the way she envisioned them. He had only been conscious for about an hour and a half, but she was seriously considering knocking him out again just to stop his incessant whining so she could work in peace. She tried to understand his point of view and really, she could see why he wouldn't like to be kept in the containment pod like a zoo animal to be observed and she might not like it either if she was told she couldn't leave to shower, brush her teeth, or change clothes, but as much as she tried to explain the need for these restrictions to him the more sullen he became.
It only got worse when he began pacing and realized the pod next to his was also occupied. "Jemma!" He yelled as he banged on the glass with his palm to pull her attention away from her microscope. "Jemma! What the hell is that?! Why is it here?" He asked jabbing his finger toward the body only feet away from him.
"I needed a known sample." She tried to smile although she could plainly see he was distressed. He never liked her bringing dead things into the lab, but he seemed to be taking it all a bit too hard.
"It tried to eat me!" He cried incredulously. Suddenly he felt dizzy and his heart rate went up as the monitors began shrieking to reflect the alarm he felt. "And it would have, but that's how I got this lovely souvenir of my travels!" He pointed to his bandaged shoulder as though Simmons had no knowledge of his injury.
"Fitz, get ahold of yourself." She commanded as she ran across the room to activate the divider between pods which blacked out the wall between them. "It's no danger to you now. I can promise you it's quite dead."
"I have a well-developed sense of object permanence!" He sarcastically yelled pointing to the now blackened wall. "I know it's still over there even though I can't see it. It didn't just magically go bye-bye. Even a small monkey would know that!"
"Fitz," she called softly as she placed her hand to the glass in an attempt to help him focus, "you seem a bit shaken. I can give you a small dose of benzodiazepine to…"
"No," he shook his head as he continued to pace and massage his forehead with an intense expression on his face, "I don't want any more drugs. I can handle this, I just need a minute to…um…I just need a minute, ok?" He asked quietly. He might have been able to hide his symptoms from Ward, but he knew he could never trick Simmons. She might be kind enough to give him a onetime pass, but if it happened again she would be all over it and the last thing he wanted was to be deemed mentally unfit for work. It took several minutes, but he was finally able to slow his heart rate and breathing by trying his best to simply block out the memory of what had happened and the fact the very being that tried to make a meal of him was his next door neighbor.
Although he was finally able to get it together, things didn't really get better. When his breakfast was delivered by Simmons through a slot in the door like he was a common criminal he watched the soupy mess spill from his spoon into the bowl with a splatter. He looked disgusted and distressed and asked "What the hell is this meant to be?"
"It's oatmeal, Fitz." Simmons sighed wearily. "Ward made it for you because as you can plainly see, I'm quite busy here." The truth was, she hadn't been able to fully concentrate or make any substantial progress and it irritated her. She wanted to blame Fitz's petulant behavior for the lack of advancement, but she knew it wasn't entirely accurate even if it was convenient.
"Ward? Oh, that's fantastic." He grumbled setting the bowl on a table near the door where he intended to leave it and plopped back down on the bed. "I don't know if I'm supposed to eat it or drink it."
"You need to eat, Fitz, and your body needs something that is nutrient dense and easily digestible. Haven't you taken on quite enough physical challenges lately?" She asked desperately. Why couldn't he just quietly cooperate like he usually did?
"Well, I'm not eating that slop." He started to gesture to the bowl, but stopped midway when a sharp pain tore through his shoulder and he winced while he reflexively grabbed the injured limb to soothe the pain.
Simmons looked away as just for a brief second his blue eyes went soft and wide and he looked absolutely pitiful sitting behind the glass clutching his arm. All of a sudden it made sense to her. He was hungry, miserable, and in pain but too proud or stubborn to say so. Up to that point she thought she had better things to do, but she realized she could at least solve this particular problem. "I'll be right back." She smiled at him. She went to the galley and whipped up a bowl of soup with grilled cheese for both of him and a cup of tea for herself.
His eyes lit up at the sight of her idea of food and he smiled broadly. "Yes, now this is a proper meal." He took the tray from her eagerly and even though he was starving and in familiar company, he forced himself to maintain his manners while he ate. He simply couldn't remember when food tasted so good. "Thank you, Jemma." He muttered between bites. All he wanted was to be treated like her friend or at least a human rather than one of her science experiments.
"You're quite welcome." She smiled as she sipped her tea. She was just happy to get him to eat something. He always had been particular about his food and the funny thing was, if she told him she had made the oatmeal instead of Ward, he would have eaten it. He might have made a small comment on the oat to water ratio, but he would have eaten it just the same to avoid hurting her feelings. In the end his mood had markedly improved and all it took was a trivial act of compassion. So small in fact she felt a little guilty for not having seen it earlier because while he never really asked much of her, she often found it was more what he didn't say that mattered.
"You were lucky Ward found you when he did." She informed him as he polished off the remainder of his soup. "I'm not sure you would have survived much longer."
"Yeah?" He asked mildly curious. He didn't need her to tell him that, he felt it lying there melded to the floor of the barn.
"While you were unconscious I examined material from your wound and it seems you incurred a mild lymphatic infection due to lack of basic care, but I also noted agglutination which meant…"
He squeezed his eyes shut tight as he raced to find the terminology he'd buried deep in the biology section of his mind and blurted out, "…um…lysis…different blood types."
She smiled widely at her partner. "Very good, Fitz! I didn't think you liked biology all that much. As I remember, you distinctly hated it at the academy."
"I did alright." He defended, neatly stacking his silverware on the tray. "It was all the cutting up things I didn't like." He wasn't exactly squeamish, but he couldn't help but wonder as he stared down at a fish or a cat with scalpel in hand that the animal he was to eviscerate in the pursuit of knowledge could have very well been someone's pet.
She couldn't have disagreed with him more on that point because that was one of the things she enjoyed about it. Not that she was some type of sadist, but the complexity of organisms never ceased to amaze her and she very much liked seeing how all the bits fit together to make one magnificent being. "Anyway, your type A blood did not play well with the likes of the B blood from the body and it appears a good deal managed to seep in likely due to mechanical shearing of the wound edges, causing a localized hemolytic transfusion reaction. Did you quickly experience fever, chills, or general fatigue?"
"Yeah." Fitz's mind parsed out the conversation into two streams: the clean, sterile, scientific explanation of what happened and the real world, very vivid recollection of events. He found the scientific route much less upsetting and resolved to never associate it with the layman's description. Even though both referred to him, for some reason Simmons' approach was comfortably detached and impersonal. He swallowed before he got up the courage to finally ask, "So did I get anything from it?"
"It doesn't seem so," she assured him as best she could, "but just to be safe you should remain here for at least another 24 hours. You lost a fair amount of blood and although I've replaced the missing volume with fluids to stabilize your blood pressure, you'll continue to feel some level of exhaustion until you can replenish the red blood cells on your own. I'll continue to monitor your condition so we can catch anything that arises early." It all sounded good in theory, but what if he did? What could she possibly do for him?
He was nonplussed about being further condemned to the hamster cage as he had come to think of it, but he didn't want to endanger anyone unnecessarily either. "I met people while I was out there, people who have had to live with them," he gestured toward the blackened wall at the body beyond, "and I told them we were trying to help. I got just a little taste of what it's like for them every day and it's terrifying, Jemma. We have to fix this."
His eyes were pleading and it broke her heart. Whatever he witnessed had made a deep impact on him. "I'm trying, Fitz." She said sadly as she hung her head. "But I'm afraid the answer's a bit elusive. I've been hours at the microscope and I have nothing." She heaved a heavy sigh and smiled apologetically at him. "I have nothing."
He had never in all his years known Jemma Simmons to give up hope, yet she seemed so defeated. "Then let me help you." He stated in a steady voice in an attempt to lend her some courage. "I'll break out some of my old biology textbooks if I need to, but whatever it takes we'll do it together like we always do, right?"
She laughed lightly and nodded in agreement. Whatever he may have thought of her or however he may have felt at the moment, he was back to the old Fitz she knew. Of course he was right in that she shouldn't be discouraged and she should keep trying even if it was hard because other people's lives depended on it. "Right, then. What is it they say about failure?"
"A null result is never a failure because it at least tells you to look elsewhere." He grinned. "So what avenues have you mapped out so far?"
"I've done some basic cell cultures and electron microscopy, but I haven't found any unusual potential causative agents." She bit her lip as she prepared a plan. "Perhaps we can approach this on two fronts. I can continue working on identification while you run trials of known compounds to see if it reacts any differently to the donor body's samples. I can move a small table in here so you can work."
Of course it was a good idea because it doubled the chances one of them would make an observation that would move them in the right direction. If she could identify what made the walkers like they were they could start formulating an anti-serum, but if he found a reactive compound they could work backward to isolate known vectors. Still, he was at least a little apprehensive. "Brilliant, but does it mean I have to go over there and keep cutting cut bits off Shaun to test?"
"Shaun?" Simmons asked confused.
"That's what I'm calling him now. You know, Shaun of the Dead?" He raised his eyebrow. "Seems a bit rude to not give him a name. I'm sure he had one when he was alive." Somehow humanizing the thing that tried to mindlessly bite him made things seem more respectful. The guy had a life and he surely didn't choose to become a walker, so he shouldn't be treated like a nameless hunk of meat.
She looked to the next pod and gave a small smile at Fitz's sentimentality. "Yeah, I suppose he did." She always found it best when performing autopsies or handling human specimens not to think of them as individuals until she was finished because it just unnecessarily complicated things. "But no, you are not to leave containment so I will tackle that bit for you. Assuming you don't mind of course."
"I think it's best." He confirmed. Suddenly being stuck in the hamster cage didn't seem like such a bad thing.
"So when you were out there," she started cautiously so as not to induce another panic attack, "you said you encountered survivors. Did they tell you anything that could be of use to us in our project?"
He pursed his lips as he thought back over the course of their conversations. "Not really." He sighed. "Just that apparently once they turn into walkers they aren't human anymore, they eat the flesh of the living, and you have to destroy the brain to kill them."
"They eat flesh…." She murmured while she mulled it over in her mind, "do they eat lesser animals as well?"
He shrugged noncommittally. "They didn't say. Didn't say much of anything in fact. Most of the chatting was them peppering me with questions as though I was an informant like the bad cop shows on TV."
She shook her head in exasperation because none of that really helped. "I wish we could talk with them. Surely they must know more having been exposed to things for as long as they have."
"I don't know how much of it they understand. They spend all their time just trying to avoid walkers and survive. Not much time for deep reflection, really." He only lived their life for one day and found it exhausting. But then again, he supposed if a person was consistently exposed to danger the fight or flight response would become almost extinct and they probably felt fairly numb or just so deeply traumatized so as to be non-reactive. Either possibility seemed equally grim to him.
"You're probably right." She sighed in desperation. "I wish there were some records or data left from the CDC, but I'm pretty sure that all went up in flame in spectacular fashion."
"Yeah," he furrowed his brow in thought, "I wonder what that was about. Seems kind of pointless, doesn't it? In a disease outbreak you detonate the one building that may hold the information to stopping it? Unless they were trying to loot it for supplies or something…"
"People do all sorts of things in a panic, Fitz." Simmons reminded him. "It doesn't always make sense. It's useless to wonder why they did it, the only relevant fact here is that whatever data they managed to gather is gone and we have to start over."
"Right." He conceded with a determined nod before looking to the blackened wall. "Look sharp, Shaun. You, Simmons, and I are going to save the world. Bet you didn't think you'd be doing that." After a moment of contemplation from his own humble beginnings in Glasgow up to the current and almost incomprehensible walker apocalypse he shook his head lightly and muttered, "Neither did I, but here we are then."