Im Cringe, But I’m Free

Grace has been hit this week with two afflictions. The first, a horrible cold that went around the Vat, which he'd thought himself too isolated in the clean lab to fall victim to. It shouldn't surprise him. After so many years teaching middle school, he's grown to expect to get sick a few times every winter, but that was because children are bioweapons so powerful that flu season at Grover Cleveland Middle quite possibly violated the Geneva Convention. He thought for sure that a group of well educated adults would know how to keep their germs to themselves.

He was wrong. 

What started as a dry, tickly throat turned into sinus pressure and drainage, a pounding headache, and general fatigue over the course of 24 hours, most of which were spent in front of his microscope. It took Carl intervening when he set his head down on his desk and shut his eyes, only to fall fully asleep, to actually make him go back to his room and rest. Grace apologized and promised he'd be better in the morning.

The second is a terrible case of "I'll do it later" disease, a terminal case. Eva had asked him the morning he got sick to add 10 or so slides to a collaborative PowerPoint, and he agreed. Of course he did. Just one more thing to add to his plate, he thought. He already rarely sleeps or eats, and barely leaves the lab for anything. What's another commitment? Besides, it will make Eva happy, and he's been hoping to get a new chair for his lab bench--his makes his back hurt--so this might soften her up. 

That night, Carl walked him to his room and made him leave his laptop on his desk until he'd slept at least 8 hours. He slept 10, and woke up feeling worse than when he'd gone to bed. What had felt like a little extra weight in his body became weak, achy muscles and joints that felt like they were grinding on each other without any pillowing in between. Even just getting from bed to the bathroom to brush his teeth exhausts him, and by the time he's finished getting dressed, he has to sit on the toilet seat to catch his breath. 

Maybe he'll take it easy for the day and just work on that PowerPoint Eva had assigned him, he decides. Grace trudges down to the lab to retrieve his laptop, where he runs into Carl. He'd been waiting in his office for Grace to arrive, and was beginning to get concerned when 8 a.m. came and went. 

"Didn't think I was gonna see you today," he greets. Grace really isn't in the mood to talk, but forces a smile. He just wanted to get his computer and lie back down. Even just the trek here took it out of him. 

"Just getting my laptop," he replies, his voice raspy and congested. "Not feeling so hot." 

"Man, you don't look good, either. You got hit hard." Grace chuckles, and it turns into a cough that has already wormed its way into his chest. Carl grimaces. 

"Yeah, seems like it. I'm gonna grab my stuff." He hates to be rude, but he only has so long on his feet, and every minute he spends in this conversation means he's cutting it closer to not making it back to bed. 

"Have you been to medical yet?"

"It's a cold. They're not gonna do anything but give me meds I can't take because they make me too sleepy."

"So what?"

"I have work to do." 

Carl waits for him to say he's joking, then frowns when he doesn't. "You're serious." 

He nods. "Eva is expecting a 10 slide PowerPoint from me by tonight." Most people would recommend he call in sick, but Carl knows Eva. "Don't worry about it. I was a teacher."

"so what, you're gonna show a video at the conference tomorrow?"

He laughs again, choking on the fluid that rumbles around in his chest. "I've taught through pretty much every disease you can think of. I'm used to it. But I do have to get started." He's really starting to get dizzy from the time on his feet. He thinks he's hiding that fact better than he is. Carl lets him push past to grab his stuff, and he slows but doesn't stop on the return trip, shutting down the possibility for another conversation that might end up in him collapsing before the finish line outside his door. 

He does make it back to his room, where he throws his things on his bed and climbs under the blankets. He's freezing. Shivering, even. Might be running a low grade fever, which he takes personally. Low blow, cold. That's not supposed to be allowed. Feeling as though he's going to fall asleep, he fluffs up his pillows and puts them against his headboard, laptop in his lap, and forces himself to sit up to keep himself awake. He ends up falling asleep, anyway.

When he wakes, his phone tells him that he's been sleeping for four hours, and his stomach drops. Okay. Maybe a 30 minute nap would have been acceptable, but four hours? He doesn't have that to spare. It's 1:00 p.m. If he doesn't have this document sent to her by midnight, she'll be outside his door at 12:01, ready to chew him a new one. 

Okay. That's fine. He can do this! Again, he was a teacher. He can do anything. 

The problem is that he can't focus. When he sits, he can't keep awake. When he stands, he gets dizzy. He's trying so hard to take care of himself, but it's hard, and that's not helping, either. He should eat, but he has no appetite. He knows he's not drinking enough water, but he can only drink so much at a time before he feels nauseous. All he can do is wrap himself up in his sweater and blankets on his bed and shiver as he stares at the laptop in front of him, desperately hoping that words will appear on the screen. 

Somehow, he finds a way. At 11:52 p.m., he presses "send" on the email, then sends a follow up with the file he apologizes for forgetting to attach. His head is absolutely swimming. It's all he can do to keep his eyes open. With a vindicating snap, he clumsily shuts his laptop and sets it on his bedside table, then sinks down in his bed to lie down. He's been alternating between shivering and sweating all day, but he's back to freezing now, and doesn't have the energy to pull on the sweater he'd shed during his last hot flash. Even when he shuts his eyes and is no longer looking at the screen, his head is throbbing. 

Beside him on the bed, his phone vibrates. He doesn't have the energy to pick it up, instead opting to ignore it and allow sleep to pull him under. 

-----

Eva isn't surprised when she receives the email from Grace containing his presentation just eight minutes before her imposed deadline. He probably finished it hours ago, maybe even last night, and has been obsessing over it since, polishing and polishing until he's happy with it. She's also not surprised when the first email does not contain the attachment he instructs her to see. That is also a very Grace move. 

What does startle her, however, is when she opens up the attachment and begins to scroll through it only to find that it is eight slides of incoherent, barely related thoughts, full of misspellings and typos, complete with poorly formatted figures and ending in the middle of a sentence. He's never sent her work like this before. Is he drunk?

First order of business: she sends him a text. "Call me now." 

Second order of business when he doesn't respond within three minutes: she calls him. 

Third order of business when he doesn't pick up: she shrugs into her robe, shoves her feet into her slippers, and marches off toward his room. She knocks on the door, ensuring that her ring makes a nice, sharp rap. He doesn't answer. 

"Doctor Grace," she calls without any regard for the fact that there are several other rooms in this hallway and it's midnight. "Doctor Grace, open the door immediately. I need to talk to you." She knocks harder. 

Eventually, she hears him stir on the other side. Well, not stir, exactly, but he's coughing, so at least she knows he's in there and awake. He coughs for a long time, struggling to get his breath under control, and the thought strikes her that he's finally come down with the cold that had been passed around recently. She managed to avoid it--of course she did--but it seems as though Grace has finally been hit. Well, that shouldn't matter. Everyone else on the boat worked through it, so she expects no less from him. 

Her hand is poised to knock again when the door cracks open, revealing Grace standing there, wearing the same clothes she saw him in when she gave him the assignment yesterday morning and looking... peaky. 

"Eva?" he asks confusedly, his voice rough and nasal. "What're you doing here?"

"I'm coming in." 

It's not a question, and he moves aside, though not without objection. "It's late, and I'm sick. I was sleeping." 

"You were supposed to send me your completed PowerPoint." 

"I did." 

She glares at him. He's still standing near the now closed door, and she flips on the lights. Grace flinches. In the better light of his room, she can see that he looks worse than she'd initially assessed in the hallway. He's pale and flushed, face shiny with sweat. 

"It was incoherent," she snaps. "None of it is usable." 

He frowns. "I... what?" 

One hand flits to his temple as he sways, back gently colliding with the wall. He slides down it until he's sitting on the floor. She sighs. She might be cold, but she's not a monster. 

"How long have you been this ill?" 

He has to think about it for longer than she'd like. "Think I woke up feeling pretty bad, but I dunno. The day's been a blur. My work was no good?"

"Not in the slightest," she replies. "Stand up. You should lie down in your bed. I'll call a medical team member to come look you over."

"No," he argues. "S'just a cold." 

Eva actually laughs at how stupid that sounds as she helps him to his feet, where he relies on her an alarming amount to get to the bed. Even keeping some distance, she can feel heat pouring off him. 

"Take off that sweater. You're sweltering in it." 

"I'm cold," he argues, and he hears it just as pathetically as she does. He does it, anyway. "Please, just leave me alone. I want to sleep." 

"If you'd gone to medical when you woke up sick like a rational scientist, maybe you could, but you didn't." He's not with the program enough to be scolded, and he looks genuinely wounded. She softens her tone. "You need something for the fever. Maybe fluids, too. Medical will be up in a few minutes. I promise, they'll be quick, and I'll leave you alone." 

"What about the presentation?"

"You think I don't have a backup plan? You insult me." He chuckles, then coughs. "Why didn't you inform me that you were ill?"

"Thought it was just a cold." In other words, didn't think she'd care. Would she have? 

"You should have told me, anyway." 

"Oh." 

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Grace struggling not to doze off and Eva not worrying about hiding her concern because his eyes are closed. When medical knocks on the door, she steps aside to let the nurse work, but doesn't leave the room. His vitals are abnormal, but nothing emergent. She does try to urge him to come get a bag of fluids, but he doesn't want to move, and she says that his heart rate doesn't suggest that he's dangerously dehydrated, so she's happy to leave him with a Gatorade and a promise to return to check on him in a few hours. Grace thanks her, and Eva stands in the door after she leaves. If medical has deemed him well enough to stay on his own, then she's happy to leave him that way. 

Happy isn't the word for it, but not bothered, certainly. 

"You have the number for medical, don't you?" 

He nods, rolling his eyes slightly. "Yeah, I get it. I should have called." 

"Yes. If something changes, call them. Do not use your judgment. If anything changes, call." 

"Okay. Sorry to drag you up here in the middle of the night."