Ill
"Who is it?"
Her voice still has the sharpness to it that he recognises, though her voice is slightly quieter and noticeably croakier than normal. Katherine even looks faintly surprised when she sees who it is hovering in the doorway. "Oh, it's you," is her only snide comment.
"Glad you're pleased to see me," Nick mutters under his breath, rolling his eyes at Katherine's customary bluntness.
"I thought you might be one of my elusive family members," Katherine murmurs as her only reply, showing no sign that she had heard his sarcasm. As Nick hesitantly makes his way a little further into the room, he's fairly sure he hears her mutter something which sounds suspiciously like: 'Fat chance of that,' under her breath, but he doesn't push the subject.
Katherine looks awful. To his slight amusement, she's still wearing the normal suit he always sees her in every day at work, though her usually immaculate hairstyle is slightly dishevelled and her face is deathly pale. As Nick approaches the sofa, she tries to swing her legs around so she's sitting up in her usual erect posture, but it's evidently a struggle. Katherine coughs, trying to stop herself with a hand angled over her mouth but not really succeeding. Nick has to smile as she throws a glare up at him as if to accuse him of pitying her.
"I'm not sick," Katherine insists, though her argument isn't helped by the fact she breaks down in yet another of those dratted coughing fits just a moment later.
Nick looks sceptical. "Right," he agrees, evidently not convinced in the slightest. "Are you feeling okay, other than apparently not being ill?"
"Fine," she lies. "Completely –" Her voice decides that now would be a good time to vanish into nothing more than a hoarse whisper, and it takes a moment or two to try and speak audibly again. "Fine," she completes eventually, not sounding like she particularly believes it herself any more.
"Hmm," is all Nick says in response. Katherine sighs, knowing she's just managed to prove
exactly the point she was trying to argue against. It couldn't be helped now, anyway.
"Did you try and get up to go to work?" Nick wonders aloud after a moment of looking around the small but comfortable apartment, gesturing with a wave to her outfit.
Katherine huffs, trying to straighten the creases in her blazer with a half-hearted hand. "Yes. Sitting at home achieves nothing."
"Apart from recovering," Nick points out in slight exasperation with his boss' customary stubbornness. "What made you change your mind?"
"Well, finding myself doubled over in the bathroom around two minutes after I attempted standing up kind of made my decision for me," Katherine says bitterly.
"Fun." Nick remembers times like that with his own son at a younger age only too well.
Katherine finds another coughing fit making its way to her throat. "I hate being ill," she comments somewhat randomly when she finally remembers how to breathe again.
"Doesn't everyone?"
"You should leave," his boss tells him adamantly, her voice once again barely above a whisper as she forces the words out of her now-burning throat. "You'll get ill as well."
"Eh, I've got a strong immune system," dismisses Nick instantly. "Anyway, you can barely sit up, let alone do anything around the house. I'm staying here."
Katherine finally gives up on her half-hearted attempt to sit straight as her arms threaten to give out underneath her, and settles back down under the blanket, propping herself up with cushions at one end of the sofa and curling her legs underneath her. She gestures with a vague wave for Nick to sit at the other end. "If you get ill," she warns, though there's no venom in her tone - she doesn't really want him to leave, though she'll never admit it - "You know you've only got yourself to blame."
"I think I can cope with that." Nick accepts the offer and perches on the opposite end of the sofa, dislodging some of the balled-up tissues that lie around the seat and settling down in companionable silence.
"Hmm," it's Katherine's turn to murmur in vague agreement, as she curls her legs further to her end of the sofa in an attempt to conserve some body heat. It's ridiculous. One minute she's wandering around the house, her skin burning to the touch, feeling like she's somehow stumbled into some kind of volcanic zone; now she can't stop from compulsively shivering, despite the hot water bottle that she has tucked inside her blazer and the thick blanket that she's huddled under. Stupid body.
"Do you feel like anything to eat?" Nick ventures after a minute or so.
"Honestly? No." Katherine frowns to herself, huddling further under the warm blanket that she seems to rely on to hide her compulsive shivering at the moment. "I haven't been able to keep anything except the occasional sip of water down since last night."
"Well." Nick gets to his feet with renewed determination. "I'll go make something for you. Can I use a couple of things in your kitchen?"
"Knock yourself out," yawns Katherine. "Though I told you, I'm not hungry."
"This isn't food," is the only clue Nick gives. "You'll like this, I promise." And he shuffles off into the kitchen, where Katherine hears some distant clattering as her employee searches for things in her cupboards. What a strange day this has turned out to be.
Nick returns around five minutes later with a couple of mugs, setting one triumphantly down in front of Katherine. Katherine peers into the anonymous yellow-tinged liquid critically. "What is it?" she inquires hoarsely, suspicion in her tone.
"Try it," Nick orders, not really answering her question.
Katherine figures he wouldn't really try to poison her, not if he's apparently looking after her in her state of sickness, and sips experimentally, raising her eyebrows after a few seconds in which she assesses the drink's taste. "It's lemony," she says eventually. "And hot."
"Honey and lemon," Nick finally informs her, sitting back down and taking a long sip from his own cup, full nearly to the brim with what both looks and smells distinctly like coffee. "It's amazing for sore throats and clearing the sinuses, that sort of thing."
Katherine feels it soothing her throat as she takes another sip, almost smiling as the sweet taste fills her taste buds. "It's good," she murmurs croakily. "Is there any more?"
"Well, you don't have any more lemons in your fridge, but I can easily pop out and get some more if you want," offers Nick immediately.
Katherine swings her gaze up from the mug to meet his eyes, this simple offer bringing with it a million confused queries. "Why are you here?" she asks directly. "Why would you do this for me?" She's never been one for beating around the bush, and she's openly curious. Why would Nick - who, after all, had never exactly seen eye-to-eye with her, and who is really only one of her co-workers – offer to go and get lemons for her, and visit her when she's ill in the first place?
Nick looks awkward. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay, really," he answers haltingly. "You're never sick. And I figured you might like some company, since you've mentioned before that you're not particularly close to any of your family."
Katherine chuckles bitterly, though her laugh ends in a cough, as everything seems to do at the moment. "Well, that's certainly true. Like they'd come round to help me."
Nick looks sympathetic, though he doesn't really understand, not really. He's always had his family around him, and they've always been close. He's even still close to his ex-wife, of all people.
"Well – thank you, Nick," Katherine finally says as she drains the last of the drink from the cup, setting it back on the low coffee table a metre or so in front of her. She doesn't just mean for the drink, either, and she thinks he understands that.
"Any time, Katherine." Nick replies quietly, that same small smile on his face. "I'll go out and get those lemons now. Back in five."
And as she hears the click of the apartment door from the hall just after Nick leaves the room, she realises that even despite her shivers, her raw throat and her wracking, painful coughs that constitute her irritating illness, she is suddenly feeling better than she has felt all day.