They arrived at the base a little after 4:30. They pulled up to a guard hut, where a tired-looking man in a military uniform checked Jack's ID. Mac had left his at the hotel, he realized, but after a brief inspection of their vehicle and filling out a parking pass, the guard waved them through without issue, giving vague directions to get them to the medical center. Matty must have called ahead, he thought, realizing the level of shit he was in if he could bypass security without issue.

They pulled past a series of squat, long buildings, a few buildings that looked like offices, and finally to a larger brick building with a cross painted in red on one of the flatter sides.

A few vehicles were parked in a small lot outside, and Jack pulled the truck up next to them and cut the engine. Mac pulled Jack's jacket around him tightly and then stepped down to the asphalt. It was quiet outside in the early morning cold. Snow fell silently and melted as it hit the salted lot, the air starkly still in a way only freezing midwinter could make it.

They walked quickly to the front door, where a woman in uniform stood and waved to them. The flip flops provided relatively little protection from the briny slush. Mac was glad that Jack had parked so close as the slush squished, painfully cold, between his toes.

"Lt. Cortney" She said, extending her hand as they approached.

Jack took her hand. "Jack Dalton, and this is MacGyver." He introduced.

"Thank you for being willing to help." Mac said, also shaking her offered hand.

"We've always done what we could for the Phoenix Foundation. I'm sorry we have to meet like this, please- come in." She held the door open. Mac was grateful there wasn't a waiting wheelchair, though he was sure that if he asked one could be quickly procured. With the exception of his feet, which ached from the cold, and the slight nausea from the antibiotic, he felt completely fine.

Lt. Courtney sent a text and then led them through the medical center's small lobby to a pair of elevators. The lobby was well lit and furnished sparingly with durable chairs broken up by similarly durable end tables and the occasional durable potted plant. Except for a man buffing the white terrazzo floor in the corner and the sound of their own footsteps, the place was still eerily quiet.

The same could almost be said for the second floor. Courtney explained that the building was designed to meet the needs of the servicemembers and their families that lived on the base, including an outpatient clinic and 20-bed inpatient capability. While they lacked a full-service emergency department, an equivalent medical team could be called up at any time, and they would meet Mac upstairs.

The second-floor elevators opened onto a nurse's station where two nurses sat typing information into computers. Mac scanned the area. The floor consisted essentially of a long rectangular room, featuring a hospital bed, recliner, and overbed table every 15 feet or so down the length of one of the longer walls, with the nurse's station in the middle facing the elevators. Supply carts, chairs, and workstations with wheels and laptop computers on them were stationed along the opposite wall. Several of the beds had curtains drawn around them.

Courtney greeted the nurses at the station and then led them down the hall to a bed on the far end of the room.

It was very clear that someone had called ahead. The last bed didn't have a curtain around it, but it was set up with the blankets pulled back, the overbed table pulled to the side, and a couple of gowns and a small basin with toiletries sat towards the end of the bed.

As they approached, a man in rumpled light blue scrubs and a white coat emerged through the stairwell doors. He had short cropped grey-brown hair and looked like he had not slept particularly well in the last few days. His eyes scanned Mac as he approached.

"Dr. Arnie Fayson." He said, reaching out a hand. "I'm the doc on duty tonight." Despite his rumpled appearance, he looked pleased to be in the position of helping someone in Mac's situation.

"MacGyver." Mac took his hand. Fayson had pins on the lapel of his white coat that looked military, but that Mac didn't recognize from his own service. Definitely not Army, but also not Navy or anything else he felt he should have been able to recognize. Fayson seemed to notice him looking.

"Public Health Service." He explained, also shaking Jack's hand and nodding to Lt Courtney as though they already knew each other well. "Very interesting situation you've found yourself in, Mr. MacGyver."

"Mac's fine." Mac said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Of course. I'll cut to the chase- I've gotten some information from your occ health department- I'm going to let you get settled in, the lieutenant will ask you some questions, and then I'll come talk to you a little more and we'll come up with a plan, sound good?"

"That's great, thanks." Mac responded. Fayson shook hands again and then made his way over to the nurse's station.

"Okay, Mac." Courtney said. "I don't think you'll need to change now unless you want to, but there's a towel in the basin there and a pair of socks if you'd like to use them. There's also a clear plastic bag in the basin if you'd like to put your jacket or anything else in, we can store it for you." Mac shrugged the jacket off and handed it back to Jack, smiling to him appreciatively.

He did end up taking Courtney up on the offer of the towel and fresh socks, his feet red and still wet from the parking lot. He sat at the end of the bed and lined up the flip flops just underneath him. As he did so, Courtney escorted Jack to a waiting area off the floor and told him he could come back in after the initial evaluation.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions just to get you into our system." She said as she returned. "We have your old medical records available already, as well as what the Phoenix occ health team sent over, so most of it should be up to date, but we just need to confirm." Mac got the sense that most people pushed back on the kind of questions she was about to ask.

She went over asking current and past medical problems, medications, allergies, if he was experiencing any current symptoms, emergency contact information, whether he had any wounds currently on his body, whether he drank, smoked, or used any street drugs, what his most recent medical encounters had been for, and advance directives, and input the information into one of the laptop workstations. When she finished the questions, she printed out a wrist band with his basic information on it and a barcode and scanned it into the computer with a handheld scanner, assigning him a bed number to the encounter. Finally, she started an IV in his forearm, pulled a few tubes of blood from it, flushed it, capped it, and input that into the computer as well.

"I'll let Dr. Fayson know you're ready." She said.

Fayson came trundling over a moment later, dragging a rolling desk chair behind him, and sat in front of Mac.

"Alright, Mac. So here's the thing. I had a chat with Gayle, and she told me about your exposure. Based on what she sent me, I agree with her assessment that the most likely pathogen they were cooking up in the lab was anthrax. I also agree that you were almost certainly exposed to it when you reached into that crate." Fayson explained matter-of-factly.

"I'm sure Gayle already went over this with you, but anthrax is not something we want to mess with or wait until you have symptoms. It was nearly 24 hours between your exposure and your first dose of antibiotic. Right now, even though it's too early to tell if you have anthrax disease, I believe the best course of action is to treat you like you have an active infection."

"Great- what does that mean besides the antibiotic?" Mac asked. Right now, assuming he was already on an antibiotic that would kill the spores, it felt like actually admitting him to a hospital was overkill.

"Well, the good news is that anthrax isn't transmitted person to person, meaning we don't have to isolate you. The rest of the news- and I won't call it bad news, because it's really not- is that in addition to the antibiotics, I'd like to give you a vaccine against anthrax, as well as a drug called raxibacumab made from anthrax antibodies. The hope is that the vaccine will cause you to create your own antibodies, while the raxi will give you antibodies to help initially fight infection. Between all of these, the hope is that we can head off the worst of the infection and get you through this in one piece."

Vaccine. That sparked some hope in Mac. Maybe this nightmare could actually be over before it began. "Wait, I'm about 90% sure I've already had the anthrax vaccine." Mac said. "Right before I went over to Afghanistan, it would have been back in 2012 or so." Fayson raised an eyebrow and clicked a few times on the laptop.

"You did have the vaccine." He confirmed, nodding. "BioThrax. It looked like you also got a booster in 2013 and 2014. Has the Phoenix been keeping up with the boosters by any chance?" Fayson asked neutrally. Mac thought back. He'd had to get a lot of vaccines when he started travelling for Phoenix, and he presented to occ health for more whenever summoned, but he wasn't sure he'd ever gotten an anthrax vaccine from them.

"I don't think so." Mac answered.

"I'll do a little more digging on it in case there's something Gayle didn't send me." Fayson said. "But unfortunately, BioThrax needs yearly boosters to stay effective. We're not sure how active your current immunity is. The good news is that you would have gotten it in 5 doses last time, which, to be perfectly honest, is a pain in the ass. This time you'll only need 3. One every two weeks while we give you the antibiotics. And you'll probably only need the raxi once."

Fayson did a brief exam, listening to Mac's heart, abdomen, and lung sounds, a skin exam, and quizzing him on the symptoms of anthrax and whether he was experiencing any of them.

A few minutes later, Courtney came back out, took Mac's vitals and did an EKG, then injected the first dose of vaccine into Mac's upper arm. By the time it was all said and done, the sun was just beginning to rise out the window behind Mac's bed.

Mac still felt completely normal. He got up and looked out of the window at the rising sun as he picked the EKG stickers off his skin. Outside, he could see the silhouettes of other grey- and brick- looking military buildings. Most of them were one or two stories and he could see past them to a thin stand of leafless trees, an open field, the outline of an assault course, and a faded horizon beyond that.

By the time the sun was setting however, twelve hours later, Mac did not feel completely normal.

The day had mostly been uneventful. Jack had come back and they'd shot the breeze, updated Matty and Gayle on his situation and the plan. Then Jack had left to go do something, and Mac had paced back and forth through the ward trying to stave off the boredom of being in a hospital while feeling completely fine.

The raxibacumab wasn't available on the base and had to be ordered special from the nearest national stockpile site. It had arrived around noon and Mac had had to sit still for 2 hours while the small bag of fluid infused into his IV. Phoneless, he'd found himself reading and re-reading a booklet excitingly titled "Ergonomics and the Prevention of Repetitive Stress Injuries at the Military Worksite" Which he'd found in the drawer of his bedside table. He'd been completely and utterly fine. And also completely and utterly bored.

But now, 13 hours since he'd been woken up, the light starting again to drain from the sky outside, he was finally admitting to himself that he didn't feel great.

He was freezing, his head hurt, he was somewhat nauseated, he itched all over, and the chance that maybe he'd gotten ahead of the exposure was starting to seem less and less likely.

A nurse came by and took his vitals. "Your temp is a little high- 101.3, are you still feeling okay?" She asked. Mac begrudgingly explained what he was feeling. Nothing felt weirder than admitting to symptoms he'd spent the whole day vehemently denying, but he knew he had to say something. She looked concerned.

"I'm gonna see if we can't get you something for the fever and headache. I also have the antibiotic, and I'll let Dr. Fayson know what's going on- he'll want to see you."

The nurse returned with acetaminophen, diphenhydramine, a bag of IV fluids, and a dose of a different antibiotic. She explained it was in the same class as the one he'd taken this morning, but something more suited to the anthrax. He took everything quickly, trying to avoid eye contact as she hooked the fluids up to his IV line, and settled back down into the bed.

He'd almost fallen asleep when the smell of greasy food made him gag. Jack was sitting on a chair next to him, a bag from a fast food restaurant on the overbed table next to him. He forced himself into a sitting position, taking a deep breath through his mouth. He felt sweat break out on his forehead. He let the breath out slowly. He was shaking.

"Mac!" Jack said, his face quickly changing from one of friendliness to one of concern. "You okay, man?"

"Yeah, um. Can you move the food?" Mac said, already looking away from the bag.

"Oh, yeah, sure thing, Mac." Jack said, taking the bag off the table and jogging it over to the sink across the room. The feeling of nausea quickly passed and Mac felt embarrassed again. Either the brief nap or the meds had made him feel a little better, but he was still sweating and shaking slightly, and felt weaker than he had all day.

"Mac, how are you feeling?" Mac looked up to see Dr. Fayson.

"Crappy." Mac said, trying to make light of the situation. Fayson frowned.

"Are you okay with Jack hearing things about your healthcare?" Mac nodded.

"Okay. Your nurse Hanna told me about the fever and itching. Are you having any trouble breathing, any new skin lesions, anything else new and exciting we should know about?" He asked.

"Nausea. Also having some sweating but that could be from the fever. And I'm really tired, even before the meds." Fayson nodded, getting a green vomit bag out from a drawer behind Mac's bed and handing it to him, then began to listen to Mac's lungs again.

"The itching is probably from the raxi. The fever is really what worries me. Your bloodwork came back and it looks like you do have anthrax in your body. Your EKG is normal, so we can give you medicine for the nausea too. Your lungs are clear, which is a good thing. We'll keep an eye on you, and even though you're clear I'm going to recommend that you wear a sticker on your finger that will help us monitor how much oxygen is in your blood. Make sure to tell someone if you start having any trouble breathing."

"Will do." Mac answered, shivering.

An hour later, Mac felt somehow even worse. Hanna had injected anti-nausea medication into his IV, and it had helped for a while, but he was so dizzy he couldn't get out of bed safely, and was now actually puking. They switched his antibiotic again. They switched the anti-nausea med. They took more blood.

Mac slept, but not well. He'd maxed out the acetaminophen for the fever, and it was keeping it in the low 100's as well as keeping Mac in a state of what felt like perpetual sweating. He alternated freezing and wanting to throw his blankets off. But his head still pounded and the nausea never completely went away, even when he was in a half-sleep from the IV anti-nausea medicine. His arm burned. The itching had largely dissipated at least.

At some point, some other doctors gathered around to talk about him. He remembered coughing and feeling his chest burn. They asked him about his symptoms. A tech came by and took a chest x-ray. They took more blood.

Jack stayed with him the whole night. At least, he thought he did. A couple of times, he woke to see Jack sleeping on the chair Dr. Fayson had dragged over. And he'd immediately fallen back to sleep himself.

The next time he woke up, it was to someone taking his blood pressure. Light was coming in again from the window behind him. He groaned. A machine beeped. He looked up and saw a new nurse. Shift change must have happened and he'd completely missed the changeover.

His IV was now in his other wrist. The first IV site was riddled with bruises and slightly swollen. His mouth felt dry and sticky. His throat hurt from puking. The headache was almost completely gone, though, and he didn't feel like he was going to throw up anymore. Looking up, the IV pole was hanging with empty bags and another bag of fluid was half finished.

He squinted. Jack and Dr. Fayson were talking seriously. Shit.

Fayson seemed to notice Mac was looking at them and stopped talking to Jack. He came over.

"Good morning, Mac." Fayson greeted him. "I've got some results to go over with you."

"First, Mac, you definitely have some infection with anthrax." He paused. "Luckily, it's a small pocket of infection and is responding exceptionally well to the raxibacumab and antibiotics. We took some x-rays, and are fairly certain that unfortunately most of the symptoms you had last night were from side effects from the cipro and raxi."

Mac took a second to think things over. "So, I'm not going to die is what you're saying." Mac said, hope surging.

"Nope." Jack said, smiling.

"Assuming things continue to improve, I don't think you're in danger of dying any time soon." Fayson confirmed. "We'll take some more x-rays, keep giving you antibiotics and fluids, and in a few days we can send you home on doxycycline, which doesn't seem to be affecting you as much as the cipro was. We'll also have you come back in two weeks for the second dose of the vaccine."

Mac spent the next few days getting his strength back. He had daily chest x-rays and doxycycline via IV, and then orally. By the time he was pacing the floor again, Fayson was about ready to kick him out of the hospital himself. Which was fine by Mac. If he had to read the ergonomics pamphlet (or the diabetes pamphlet, or the hypertension pamphlet, or the PTSD pamphlet) one more time he was going to strangle someone.