Knocking sounded on my door late the next morning, pulling me out of a fitful sleep. The movement produced a cough I buried in the pillow.
"John," Meredith's voice said. "I thought you might want to meet the kitchen staff. Do you still like to cook?"
Probably, provided I could stand long enough, but I had not cooked for the pleasure of it since before Mary died. What was the point when I had no appetite?
"They would gladly let you use a station," she promised. "You could help with the day's cooking or make whatever you wanted." She fell silent. "John?"
Maybe later. The Pole had enough inhabitants that the food would not go waste, but the chill of yesterday had turned into a nasty cold. My head and chest were so congested that every breath was an effort. I wanted to go back to sleep.
Mary leaned over me, worried blue eyes mirroring her expression the last time I had fallen sick. I buried my face before she could try to check for a fever. The only thing more painful than seeing through her was watching her try to touch me.
Meredith knocked again. "Are you awake? We could do something else if you don't want to go to the kitchen."
I still made no answer, too busy smothering the painful cough sparked by wrapping my blankets tighter. I doubted I had a voice, anyway. My lungs had started filling well before midnight, and the congestion had only gotten worse in the hours since. My raw throat hurt too much to produce a clear reply.
A faint sigh carried into my room a moment later.
"I just want to help, John. At least unlock the door."
I would, if only to ease the sadness in her voice, but I could not stand any better than I could speak. I was so congested that even turning my head made me dizzy. The next spasmic cough refused to silence.
"Are you alright?"
No, I was suffocating, drowning in my own secretions. The congestion in my lungs shifted, leaving me gasping and coughing for long seconds. This did not feel like pneumonia, but I was not far from it. I would be stuck in bed for a few days.
"That's it," I heard when another round shook my bed and undoubtedly carried through the door. "I'm getting Kris."
Footsteps faded away, and the fit finally eased to let me curl around my pillow, sipping air through my mouth as I tried to go back to sleep. Coughing not only hurt, but it was also exhausting. The very thing that wore me out had kept me awake for the last several hours.
Mary crawled up the bed to sit next to me, still frowning in concern, and I did not close my eyes again before she laid a hand on my forehead. Whether I had a fever or not, I had no way of knowing, but I could not stop the grief when I felt nothing where my eyes said her hand rested. How I missed her!
Movement flickered at the foot of the bed, and Mary disappeared as I rolled toward the room. Holmes claimed a chair, staring through the floor as if on another case, but multiple glances revealed he studied me. As he always had, he would pretend to do something else while truly being available to help. Only my worst illnesses and injuries had ever broken that façade.
Mary walked up behind him to perch herself on the arm of his chair, her manner indicating the hallucination no longer noted my condition. One hand gestured toward the back room during her silent question, but I had never been good at lip-reading. I did not recall the event until she upended her sewing basket on Holmes' head.
A sudden huff of amusement became a painful, hacking cough. Holmes had run himself ragged on a month-long series of cases, and he had arrived at our house hungry, exhausted, and jubilant at the final case's conclusion. Eagerly sharing everything about this intricate burglary case, he had barely lasted through supper before his eyes grew heavy. Mary had dumped the basket over his head when he stubbornly fell asleep in the chair instead of taking the guest bedroom.
"John!"
I ignored him, probably grinning like a lunatic despite my spasming lungs. Holmes had woken with yarn stuck to his three-day beard, a knitting needle in one ear, and a half-finished pink scarf draped over his shoulders. As the memory had today, the glower he had bestowed on Mary had set me laughing so hard I could barely breathe, and only his fatigue had postponed the resulting bickering session for another time. He did not escape a reference the next Christmas, either. I had given him a fine scarf. The blue fabric had obviously been a feminine style, and I had treated the prank gift as if it was his true gift for a full twelve hours. He had growled at me until I presented the chemistry equipment I had purchased as well. Tricking him so thoroughly had been almost as fun as his pleasure at the new equipment.
"John, answer me!"
Nicolas appeared in my room, unlocking the door and hurrying to my bed as I finally gained control of my breathing. I waved him off.
"Jus' a cold," I whispered, my voice nearly gone.
The back of his hand landed on my forehead, warmer than Mary's had ever been. "A cold does not come with a fever, John. How long has this been coming on?"
I shrugged, hacking again when I adjusted my weight off my shoulder.
"Overnight?" I suggested hoarsely. "Didn't—feel sick yesterday."
Any symptoms before Nicolas appeared in my house would have been lost behind the haze of passing days, but the chill of yesterday did not qualify as "feeling poorly." He still scowled at me.
"You are far too stubborn." His hand landed on my forehead again. "I'm getting the doctor. Meredith, stay with him."
In too much of a hurry to use the door, he disappeared as she pulled the armchair from the office, and Torsten hurried into the room in the middle of yet another coughing fit.
"Oh, good," he said when he saw Meredith. "I've been lookin' all over for ye! I know nothin' 'bout medicine. How is 'e?"
"Mis'r'ble," I muttered, drawing an extra blanket from the foot of my bed. A folded replacement appeared almost immediately, and I blinked, staring in surprise before the magical cause clicked in my exhausted mind.
"Ye're awake!" Small feet darted around her to stand in front of me, and his grizzled face creased in concern. "Why're yer cheeks so red?"
"Fever causes that, Torsten," Meredith answered when another spasm stole my ability to breathe. "Did you try to wake him earlier?"
He nodded. "With 'most ev'ry cough, but 'e wouldn't answer. I went lookin' when 'e started chokin'."
Shaking had woken me a few times in the night, but, already exhausted, I had done nothing besides go back to sleep when the coughing subsided.
"Sorry." A shiver made me pull the covers tighter, and I tried to make sense of my symptoms. "Bronchi'is maybe?" I stopped to cough as my failing voice stole a letter. "He's right a cold doesn't—have a fever."
"That sounds like pneumonia to me, coupled with a sinus infection." The gruff correction came from the hallway, then footsteps sounded just before a dwarf preceded Nicolas through the door.
"I am Doctor Baldrum," he informed me with an abruptness that reminded me of one of the surgeons at Kandahar. "Symptoms besides the obvious fever and cough?"
I swallowed, fighting to stay here instead of slipping back to that army hospital. "Congestion in my head—and chest," I whispered around nearly constant coughing. "Move—ment induced vertigo. Sore—throat from th' cough."
"You are shivering."
I glanced up at the accusation, finding the senior physician standing in the balcony doorway.
"Temperature dropped when the sun went down," I answered shortly. "I was just about to go back inside."
Meredith vacated her chair, where Doctor Baldrum dropped his bag to examine me, and the cold stethoscope traveled around my back and chest despite my coughing. I had to be deafening him, but I could do nothing about it. Each adjustment to let him reach somewhere else moved the fluid to a different part of my lungs. I coughed and wheezed for a full thirty seconds when he finally finished.
"You are barely moving air," he growled at me. "This has been going longer than a few hours. Can you still see color?"
My oxygen exchange was not that poor yet. "Yes."
His scowl never wavered as he crossed the balcony in three long strides. "This is the first balmy night we have had in nearly a week," he informed me, his hand on my wrist, "and your pulse is a touch slow. Tell me, what is standard procedure for a man showing the first two symptoms of enteric fever in the middle of a known outbreak?"
"Bed," I grumbled. I felt fine, but I would never out argue him. I gathered my papers and retreated to my cot.
"Why did you not say something, John?" Nicolas broke in. "The cold could not have been comfortable when we wandered the shops."
A bronchial spasm doubled me beneath the blankets. "Wasn't—congested," I told him when I could inhale somewhat normally, "and cold is never comfortable."
I had been coughing since that bout of pneumonia before Mary died. Between the normal cough and the abnormal lack of pain in my injuries, I had focused on my ability to walk. A human thermometer would put the temperature here well below zero, but it felt much warmer than that.
Doctor Baldrum handed me a medical thermometer on the heels of my sentence, and I placed it without protest. I would never be able to convince Nicolas that I truly had not ignored symptoms. The argument was not worth the effort.
"Hundred and one," Doctor Baldrum read when the time was up. "If that gets much higher, we will have to move you to the hospital wing."
"Hundred and one." The thermometer dropped back into my bag as Holmes stared at me. "What do I do?"
"Stop worrying so much," I shot back. "A fever is not dangerous until it reaches a hundred and five. If it climbs another degree, you will want to use cool cloths—not cold—to help lower my temperature, but for now just hand me that packet of fever reducer."
My shaking hands struggled to rip the corner, and he plucked it out of my grip.
"In the water?"
I leaned back with a sigh. "Yes. Stir it until the powder dissolves."
The spoon clinked against the side of the glass, and he handed me the medicated water, concern still creasing his forehead.
"I told you to stop worrying," I groused around sips. "I'll be fine in a day or two."
He ignored my protests to plant himself beside the settee—
"Look at me, John."
The memory ended, and Nicolas' gaze slowly replaced Holmes'. I burrowed deeper into the blankets with a sigh, fighting the urge to cough though I made no effort to hide my shallow irritation. The hallucinations had disappeared when Torsten entered, and Doctor Baldrum's presence meant they would not return any time soon. He should have let me stay in the memory.
"You will recover faster if you stay here," he disagreed.
I refrained from rolling my eyes. I had not cared about that in months. Why would I do so now? He knew how much I missed them.
Renewed sadness said he also knew my thoughts. Apparently, the beginnings of a barrier I had created did not survive illness. I rolled away, hacking and wheezing when the congestion shifted with the motion.
"John, please." The others' presence prevented him from saying more, but a hand landed on my shoulder, silently conveying what he could not voice. Please do not give up. Please find a reason to stay.
I simply buried another cough in my blankets. I would not give up, but I certainly did not care what resulted. If the theologians were right, I might even be able to apologize to Holmes before I entered eternity. I would take that over an empty existence any day.
Did you ever notice just how much Murphy's law likes to play with timing?
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