A/N: I'm basing Wilson's bout of shingles on my own experience. It wasn't pretty.


"Don't you have any work to do, Greg?"

"Nothing that can't wait. Besides, I thought you might be lonely," he said as he sank into the chair.

"No clinic duty?" I eyed him and the door, half-expecting Cuddy to come barging in at any moment.

"Not today," Greg beamed as if that was greatest thing he'd heard all year, and maybe it was. "What about you, Jimmy? How are you doing today?"

"Fine, thanks," I answered, wondering what the hell he was up to now. "I think I may have pulled a muscle in my back."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "You're a good man, Jimmy, has anyone ever told you that?"

"Not lately."

"That's too bad. A nice guy like you, I'd think you would hear that all the time."

I couldn't help but remember what happened the last time he was in my office and in a weird mood. I was a little leery at being set up for a sequel.

"In any case," he continued, tilting his head, "I just wanted to tell you that. No band-aids today. Did the hospital run out?"

Absently, my hand went up to my neck. Greg saw it and smiled.

"I just forgot about it," I lied.

"Sure you did. Or could it be that you're ready, willing and able to tell the world who's putting that spring in your step."

"Sooner or later," I said. "Nobody's asked me yet."

"Hopefully I'll be in the same room when someone does," Greg said, the smile replace by a thin smirk. "I hope it's Cuddy, don't you?"


If Greg's dreams about outing ourselves to at least one person in the hospital were halfway serious, they were dashed for the time being. My pulled muscle wasn't a pulled muscle. Two days after that conversation I came down with a full-blown case of the shingles. It came complete with a glorious blistering rash that covered the left side of my stomach and back, and pain so bad I couldn't stand up straight. Needless to say, Greg quarantined me in the spare bedroom.

"How are you feeling?" Greg asked, stopping by during his lunch hour. He set a glass of water on the night table and settled at the edge of the bed.

"Like hell," I muttered truthfully. I haven't felt this awful since I had a bad bout of the flu when I was sixteen. This beat the flu by a country mile

"You're running a fever. Have you taken your pills today?"

"I've been asleep most of the day."

"Here." He reached for the prescription bottle beside my bed and shook out one of the absurdly huge blue anti-viral pills I had to choke down twice a day. Just looking at the damn thing made my stomach twist into a knot. "Take it."

Somehow I managed to swallow it and not gag. Exhausted, I fell back on the pillow. At least when I was laying down the pain wasn't too bad.

"Have you eaten anything?" he asked, taking the glass back.

"A little bit of cereal after you left."

Brushing some hair from my forehead, he said, "You need to eat something when you take those pills. I'll bring you some crackers."

"I'm not hungry."

"I didn't ask if you were hungry," Greg said as he left the room and came back with a box of saltines.

"I can barely walk let alone think about eating," I moaned, looking at the box.

"It's not like you have the plague for crying out loud." He handed me a cracker. "Eat it and I'll shut up."

I snatched it and nibbled on it for a while. It tasted like sawdust and settled in my stomach like a rock. "Happy now?"

"Ecstatic. You going to be okay?"

"I don't need a babysitter. Go back to work. I'll be fine." All I wanted to do was sleep.

"You're eating something when I get back tonight," he told me. He may have said something else but I was too tired to listen. I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them it was dark outside.