Rhodey's only consolation during those increasingly nightmarish hours was that the medical staff allowed him to remain at Tony's bedside. It was a relief to Tony, as well, while he was aware enough to know what was going on.
He hadn't been aware for over an hour.
Rhodey still talked to him, alternately scolding and cajoling, and held his limp hand, careful not to dislodge the IV. Tony's other hand had the little fingertip thing that contributed to the mess of numbers on the screens surrounding the bed.
Not that Tony could respond, even if he were awake enough to hear. They'd had to intubate him when the oxygen mask proved insufficient to force enough air into his struggling lungs.
That wasn't what worried Rhodey the most. That was old ground, traversed the last time this happened, not so long ago.
Failing to show improvement after a short time on the antibiotics, that was new.
Tony's blood pressure dropping and alarming the doctors, that was new.
Sitting vigil beside Tony's bedside was, unfortunately, not new, and would probably happen again if Tony pulled through this.
The fact that it was an 'if' and not a 'when' worried Rhodey the most.
.
Natasha's phone rang from its place of honor in the middle of the table and startled them all. They had just been finishing a very late dinner, ready to get up and clean up, but no one moved as Nat answered the call. "Hi, Rhodey, I'm putting you on speaker. How is he?"
"He's . . . stable, for now." Rhodey's voice sounded tired, and his hesitation in answering the question made Steve's stomach clench. "They're willing to allow up to two more visitors."
"Isn't it past visiting hours?" Steve had looked it up, once Nat told him which hospital to look for.
There was another long pause. "We have special permission," Rhodey admitted almost inaudibly.
Steve couldn't interpret the expression on Nat's face as she leaned closer to the phone. "Scale of one to ten, what are we looking at?" she asked cryptically.
"Look, is someone coming over or not? If you are, I need a few things."
"Text the list. Have you eaten since lunch?" Her tone was clipped.
"No."
"Then we'll send food as well. Now answer me, soldier: scale of one to ten," Natasha ordered.
"Ten."
Nat swore silently. "Someone will be there within a half hour," she said and hung up.
"What was the 'scale of one to ten' thing about?" Clint asked, voicing the question that was also on Steve's mind.
"Pepper and Rhodey came up with it. A one is a minor concern. The palladium poisoning was a nine." She paused. "So, who wants to go to the hospital?"
There was a moment of silence as the gravity of the situation sank in.
"I'll go," Steve said.
No one seemed surprised.
"So will I," Clint said abruptly.
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware Stark was on your list of favorite people," she said dryly.
"He's not," Clint said frankly, then shrugged. "Lila would be upset if she knew I could go and didn't. And I need to yell at him for freaking out my kids."
Natasha took Sam with her to retrieve what Rhodey wanted and a few other things she thought he'd need or appreciate. She also stopped by Tony's room, debating whether to take anything of his, just in case. The room felt shrunken, somehow, without its occupant in the building. She shook herself for even acknowledging such a superstitious idea and closed the door without touching anything.
Steve and Clint collected their bags while she was away, and Wanda and Vision put together some dinner and an assortment of snacks for Rhodey. Sam pushed the wheelchair, and they loaded the food and Rhodey's stuff onto the seat for easy transportation.
No one knew what to say, so Steve and Clint left in silence.
.
Clint was never going to forget his first glimpse of Tony in the hospital bed, surrounded by tubes, invaded by tubes, so pale and still he could have been dead but for the moving lines on the monitors. In that moment, the recent conflict between them melted into irrelevance and all he could do was share his daughter's fervent wish that Uncle Tony would be okay.
Rhodey looked like he'd aged a decade, but some of the deep lines in his face seemed to ease when they entered the room. "Thanks for coming," he said wearily. "I know he hasn't endeared himself to anyone lately."
"It doesn't matter. A team has each other's backs," Steve said. "That goes for him and for you. What do you need?"
Rhodey huffed a laugh and shook his head. "I need to take a leak and take these braces off."
Steve stepped forward and offered him a hand up. Clint cleared off the wheelchair seat and piled their stuff against the wall. He handed Steve the lunchbox holding Rhodey's dinner; Steve nodded and held the case for the braces while Rhodey sat in the wheelchair.
"He's been bugging me to let him design a nicer set of wheels to go with 'those sweet braces' if I'm going to insist on using the chair sometimes," Rhodey mused, then sighed. "I should have let him."
"It will be good to have projects to occupy him while he recovers," Steve said practically, handing him the case and carefully pushing him toward the door.
"Yeah," Rhodey agreed, sounding wistful.
Then Clint was alone in a room that felt oppressive in its stillness. It wasn't quiet, not with machines beeping regularly and the steady hiss of the ventilator; the noise wasn't reassuring until he remembered what it would mean if those machines were silent.
He sank into the chair Rhodey had vacated and studied what he could see of Tony's face. "Shit, man," he breathed.
Clint continued talking because it felt better to have some sort of human noise in the blank space and he didn't stop until Steve and Rhodey returned.
.
The nurse assigned to Tony was only assigned to Tony, and she came by so regularly you could set a clock by her visits. The first time she checked on Tony when Clint, Steve, and Rhodey were all present, she offered to bring in another chair and told them to let her know if they needed anything at all. The third time she came in, Steve asked, "How is he?"
She demurred. "The doctor will be by to talk to you before he finishes his shift. I can't interpret the readings, I only collect them and make sure your friend is resting comfortably."
Rhodey spoke up as soon as she'd left. "The readings have been stable for the past two hours, so he's no worse, but usually there's some sort of noticeable improvement by now."
"You can remember the readings from several hours ago?" Clint asked in disbelief.
Rhodey held up his phone. "Tony likes having the data, so I take a picture of the readout every half hour or so."
"I didn't even notice you doing that," Clint admitted.
"I've gotten good at doing it on the sly. Some doctors get huffy about it, as if I'm going to accuse them of malpractice or something."
"How many times have you had to do this?" Steve asked. "Dr. Harris mentioned that this sort of thing has happened before."
Rhodey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "This is the second time since . . . the Accords," he said carefully. "There were three major incidents and four minor ones between Afghanistan and the Accords that I know about. He doesn't always end up in ICU, and he'd not been on a ventilator until last time."
"What happened last time?" Steve prodded when Rhodey didn't elaborate.
Rhodey just looked at him for a moment. "Siberia happened," he said bluntly. "He picked up some bug somewhere along the way, tried to hide it even while he was visiting me at Columbia. I should've noticed sooner but I didn't. When I finally did, I told him to go down to the ER. He didn't go until the next day, and by then it had gotten bad enough he spent two days on a ventilator. When they were ready to move him out of ICU, he-"
Rhodey chuckled and shook his head. "He convinced them we could share a room even though we needed completely different types of doctors. If you think he talks a lot normally, you should hear him after a nightmare when he's on all sorts of meds." He sobered and shot another glance at Steve. "He rambled about Siberia, or I'd never have found out. I can't prove that's where he got sick, but it seems the most likely explanation."
"Was he often sick before Afghanistan?" Steve asked next, realizing how little he knew about the Tony behind the publicity and the bravado despite working alongside him for some time.
"Hell no. He was always healthy as a horse, used to drive me nuts in college when the flu made the rounds and he'd stay up for days working on something and still not get sick while I went down if I was even in class with somebody sick." He paused and added thoughtfully, "Afghanistan changed just about everything for him."
The way he said it sparked Clint's curiosity. "What didn't change?"
"He's still a reckless idiot," Rhodey said fondly.
"The change in his health must have been difficult for him," Steve mused, remembering how it had felt to realize he would no longer be troubled by things like asthma. He couldn't imagine having it go the other way, to know what being healthy felt like and then have to deal with chronic lung dysfunction.
"Probably, but he's never talked about it. That's not the kind of talking he likes to do."
"We've noticed," Clint commented dryly.
A knock from the doorway halted the conversation. A disheveled doctor peered in. "Good evening, I was told you would like a word?"
"Come on in, doc," Rhodey said, evidently recognizing the man from an earlier encounter. "Our friends were hoping for an update."
"Yes, yes, of course," the doctor said almost nervously, shuffling around the folders he'd had tucked under his arm. He perched a couple on the end of the bed and they promptly slid off onto the floor. He sighed and crouched to pick up the papers that had scattered. Steve hurried to help.
When the doctor had regathered his paperwork, he muttered about the nurses hating messy charts as he piled everything in a heap. "I'll have to straighten that out later," he said absently.
"All right, your friend . . . Tony, yes. The pneumonia is severe, but fortunately we caught the sepsis early and it has not worsened. So he's stable for the moment, but we'd like to see improvement in his blood work and that hasn't happened despite being on some very potent antibiotics for six hours already. We're going to keep a close eye on him overnight and how he does will determine the course of treatment from there."
Clint sorted through all the words and recognized what wasn't being said. "How long until we know if he'll make it?" he asked, hoping for a straight answer.
"It's impossible to predict, but the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours will tell us a great deal."