Work Text:
Wilford’s been sick for a few days, a head cold coming on and congestion following it soon after. He’s sequestered himself in his apartment with Alex, not coming out lest anyone see how sick he is. The doctors gave him an inhaler to help with the coughing, but as far as Alex can tell he resents the need for it. He also hates not being able to smoke. At least he’s not foolhardy enough to attempt it, though she has seen him looking longingly at the cigars sometimes. Is he going through withdrawal? She doesn’t know. If he is, he’s hiding it very well. Wilford stays in bed, bossing Alex around and demanding she fetch him things. When she’s not doing that she’s at the helm, driving the train. Wilford naps often, which Alex is grateful for because it means she gets some peace and quiet from him every few hours. Until he wakes up yelling at her because she had the gall to walk across the apartment while he was sleeping, but that’s beside the point.
Right now it’s evening. Alex is at the helm, luckily not needing to pay too much attention to the track. Wilford’s sitting up in bed, alternately reading and snapping at her about some mistake she’s making while driving. He has a fever as well, and it’s making him even more temperamental. He’s forever whining about the chills and the myriad aches and pains all over his body. If Alex has to hear it one more time, she might actually snap and tell him to shut up. Even when he’s not speaking, Wilford makes his presence known. Alex isn’t looking at him, but she can hear his harsh coughing, the hissing of the inhaler as he tries to take the medication. He’s not very adept at it—it takes Wilford three tries before he’s able to breathe easily again. “Christ,” he says hoarsely, rubbing his chest. “Didn’t think it would get this bad.”
“You should quit smoking so much.”
“Shut up.” Wilford sighs, flopping back against the headboard. “Can barely keep my eyes open.”
“Go to sleep. I have the train.”
He scoffs. “You? A child?”
“Better than coughing your guts up over the control desk, right?” Alex expects him to snap at her for the insolence, but he must be too tired. This emboldens her, and she says, “What was the point of teaching me if you don’t trust me to take over?”
“Fine. But the minute things get rough, you wake me up.”
“Sure,” she responds, knowing she won’t. He won’t be able to help her with driving anyway. He can barely stay awake. Wilford puts his book aside, wriggling under the covers. He’s out like a light almost immediately, snoring through his congestion. Alex breathes a sigh of relief. The track is relatively easy up here, and she’ll be able to drive without interruption. She pulls out her own book—2021: A Space Odyssey—from the shelf nearby, cracks it open. Was my favourite book when I was your age, Alex. It’s even his old copy, with notes scribbled in the margins. It’s odd to see his boyish handwriting, the notes about this metaphor or that linguistic device. Alex can’t even imagine a teenage Wilford. In her mind he sprung into existence as he is now: old, ornery and forever indulging himself. Was he ever carefree? Childlike? Alex isn’t like that now, but at least she had her pre-Freeze life to actually act her age. Did Wilford ever get that? Alex turns back to look at him—he’s curled up on his side, asleep. Just a normal guy. Not wanting to think too hard about it, she returns to her book. Trying to lose herself in the faded words on the page.
It’s a few hours later when Wilford wakes up again. He’s coughing like before, but it sounds worse this time. The wet hacking, the hissing of the inhaler, his increasingly desperate gasping. He tries the inhaler three times, yet she can hear that it’s having no effect. Shit. Is he going to die here? Suffocate with nobody but her to witness it? Alex can’t ignore him anymore—she sets the train to autopilot and gets to his side. Wilford’s pale and sweaty; his eyes wide, his face frozen in abject terror. Alex has never seen him look like this, and even more discomfiting is that he’s not trying to hide it from her. His breathing is unnaturally loud—short and shallow, as if he can’t get enough air. “Dubs? What’s the matter?” Alex asks, not sure if she wants to know the answer.
“Can’t breathe,” he whispers, his voice raspy. “Can’t…can’t get air.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Call the Headwoods. Now.” Alex doesn’t even hesitate. Seeing him so horribly sick has thrown her off, and within two seconds she’s crossed the room to the phone and has dialled the medical car. The Headwoods both sound awake and chipper, like they always do. Alex wonders, not for the first time, if they ever sleep. Maybe they use their secret drugs to stay awake for hours on end. She tells them what’s going on—Wilford’s terror, his persistent breathlessness—but they seem to already know what she’s going to say. The doctors tell her they’ll be there as soon as they can, then they hang up. Alex listens to the dial tone for a few seconds; it’s easier than hearing Wilford struggle for air nearby. He’s lying on his side, clutching his chest. Clearly trying not to lose it completely. Alex sits on the bed, not wanting to get close in case that agitates him further. The doctors aren’t too far away, but she doesn’t know how long it’ll be for them to show up. Alex would not know what to do if Wilford stopped breathing. She doesn’t even think about it. It’s too frightening.
When they do finally arrive, the Headwoods sound way too awake for it being one in the morning. Alex moves back to the control desk to give them space. They scoop Wilford up, getting him to a sitting position. When Alex takes a glance in the windshield reflection, she sees his scared face, even as the doctors try to keep him calm. His sudden inability to breathe must have really shaken him. He’s visibly trembling as they peel off his dressing gown. Whether that’s from his fever or actual fear Alex doesn’t know. “When did this come on?” Mr. Headwood asks as his wife listens to Wilford’s breathing.
Alex doesn’t realise that they’re addressing her until they say her name. “Sorry. Just tonight. He woke up coughing and his inhaler didn’t work.”
“It was a stopgap to begin with,” Mrs. Headwood says, not sounding too fussed about it. “If he got worse it wouldn’t do much for him.” As if to prove that point, Wilford drops into coughing again, painful and wracking. It’s the same as before: the gasping, the struggle to take a full breath. The Headwoods wrangle him into an oxygen mask, helping him lie down again. Wilford rubs his chest, clearly in pain. “We’re here now. We’ll be able to help him.”
How? Alex wonders. He can’t be moved in his state—Wilford truly looks like he’ll collapse if he takes one step. The Headwoods begin unpacking all their stuff, clearly intending to stay a while. The apartment suddenly feels very crowded with two extra people in it. “Alex,” Wilford wheezes, his eyes firmly aware and trained on her even as he struggles to speak, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll lock the door.”
Alex considers winding him up. Pretending to yell down the hallway: hey, Wilford’s sick, come look. It’d be fun to watch him squirm, but she ultimately decides against it. He’s already distressed. She might accidentally agitate him into a heart attack. Alex goes and locks the door to the apartment. It’s almost neurotic how terrified Wilford is of someone seeing him like this. Except for the doctors and Alex, of course. Once she’s done this, he seems to relax somewhat. Even from here Alex can hear his breathing—watery, thick, as if his lungs are filled with sludge. Maybe it really is like that. Wilford looks a lot smaller and weaker now, half-naked, lying in his bed. Like any other old guy Alex might have known pre-Freeze.
The rest of the night passes in the same way. The doctors take turns looking after Wilford. Helping him when he wakes up in distress, syringing liquid medication into his mouth, giving him water to soothe his sore throat. Confusingly, Wilford is very accepting of this treatment. Alex expected him to angrily shake off their help—stop coddling me, I’m not a child!—but he leans right into it. It’s almost discomfiting how he allows the doctors to rub his back, hold a towel to his mouth, wipe him down with a cold compress. Maybe they really are the only people he trusts. Alex spies on him in the windshield, feeling like she’s getting to see something she shouldn’t. Luckily Wilford seems too out of it to notice. At one point Mrs. Headwood breaks out a syringe, filling it halfway with some mysterious clear liquid. One of their experimental medicines, most likely. Wilford, who’s been languishing in a half-sleep for the past hour, immediately snaps to attention. “No,” he gasps, his hand shakily coming out to hold her back. “No needles. That’s an order.”
“You need this,” Mrs. Headwood says softly. “There’s no other way to give this to you.”
“Are you sure?” Wilford sounds pleading, desperate. Alex watches his chest heave erratically—he’s terrified. Almost as if he’s really saying, please don’t make me. I don’t want to hurt. “There’s no other way?”
The doctor shares a look with her husband, then says, “Yes, I’m sure. You need this medication. Injecting it will ensure it works quickly.”
Wilford grits his teeth. “Fine. If you must.”
“I’ll be quick. It’ll be over before you know it.” Alex can see why Wilford is so scared of it: the needle is long and sharp, deadly-looking. He squeezes his eyes shut, turning away from her. To her credit, Mrs. Headwood does work quickly. She softly counts down from three, inserting the needle in his arm and depressing the plunger. Wilford gives a tiny squeak of pain when the needle enters him, almost like a child would. When she sticks a cotton ball to his arm, he lets out a shaky breath, slowly opening his eyes. “Are you done?”
“Yes. It’s over now. You did well.”
Wilford slumps back in relief. Alex almost laughs. The Eternal Engineer being scared of something as inconsequential as needles? She couldn’t make this up if she tried. The doctors help him under the covers again, pulling the blankets up to his chest. Wilford’s obviously unsettled after his injection. Alex even wonders—as sacrilegious as it may be—whether he will cry. She’s never seen him shed a tear. Then again, she’s never seen him sick like this either. His fever spikes a couple of hours later; Wilford becomes delirious, weakly thrashing and mumbling to himself. The Headwoods try to keep him calm, but he’s not having a dime of it. He refuses their medication, squirms when they hold him still. Alex knows he’s suffering, but she’s honestly too morbidly interested, like watching a car crash. Wilford’s pale and sweaty, his eyes glassy from the fever. Occasionally his voice picks up enough to hear what he’s saying. Taken. Melanie. My train. My train... Stolen from me. Even when he’s sick and struggling all he can think about is Snowpiercer. The doctors do what they can—keeping him cool, giving him medicine when he’s not fighting. Alex watches the half-asleep Wilford weakly suck on the syringe Mr. Headwood is emptying into his mouth. The pure vulnerability of this is enough to make her ask, “Will he be okay?”
“Of course,” Mr. Headwood says, withdrawing the syringe and passing it to his wife, who wipes it off. “It’s just a bad night.”
“We’ve brought people back from much worse before,” Mrs. Headwood says with a wink. “We’re not in the habit of letting our patients die.”
“He’s like this because he’s older and has that smoking habit. That’s all there is to it.” Mr. Headwood replaces Wilford’s oxygen mask. “We keep telling him to quit. We said there’d be a day he’d get sicker than normal and he’d only have the cigars to blame…that day has come. Were we wrong?” he adds, addressing his wife.
Mrs. Headwood looks up from where she’s cleaning the syringes. “Don’t be mad, honey. He doesn’t listen to anyone. We’ve known that for years.”
“Very true. He’ll be fine, Alex.” He pats Wilford’s chest gently. “It’ll just take him longer to recover.”
Judging by his breathing, that day is far off. Alex swivels back around, watches the track while the Headwoods whisper soothing things to Wilford. Alex doesn’t know how to feel about that. Wilford always seemed like the person who wouldn’t need or even appreciate that kind of reassurance. If anything, it seems to be calming him down. It feels alien seeing him getting looked after like a child. Wilford will be mortified by it, once he’s lucid enough to remember.
Slowly but surely the infection goes away. Wilford begins to sleep through the night, regaining his strength. It’s only when Alex gets close to him that she hears the slightly strained quality of his breathing—the only clue that he was ever sick at all. Now that he’s recovered, he seems to be even more irritable, if that was possible. Stomping around the apartment, drinking more, complaining about his shortness of breath. As far as Alex can tell, he’s not smoking anymore—that can’t be fun for him. He’s also paranoid, almost irrationally so. He hasn’t asked, but Alex knows he’s thinking about how vulnerable he must have been, and how she was around to witness all of it. One afternoon he brings it up, after a whole morning of antsy stalking around the apartment. “Alex,” he says, his voice soft but with the slightest edge, “do you feel the need to tell anyone…about the past few weeks?”
Alex knows exactly what he’s getting at, and resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Calm down, Dubs. I’m not going to blab.”
She must not have sounded serious enough. Wilford comes closer, gripping the collar of her jumpsuit in his fist. “I mean it. If you breathe a word of what happened to anyone outside this room,” he says in a deadly voice, “I’ll beat you into next week.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Wilford looks as if he might actually slap her, just to prove his point, but he sighs and lets her go. “You’re obedient, I’ll give you that. When you want to be.”
“I don’t like being hurt.”
“That is a good deterrent. But don’t test me, Alex. You’re not to speak of that to anyone.”
“I get it. I won’t.”
“Alright.” Wilford gives a sigh. “Make me a scotch, will you? Soothe these...jangled nerves.” Alex does so, knowing exactly how much he wants in his glass. She’ll never drink the stuff herself, but she’s already intimately familiar with it. When she passes it to him, he wastes no time in taking a big slug of it. Alex goes back to the kitchen, putting away the alcohol and the ice trays. “I heard you,” he says after a while, his voice almost sad. “Asking if I was going to be alright.”
Good thing Alex is turned away from him, because she doesn’t want to look at his face right now. “I didn’t think you noticed.”
“I was rather delirious, wasn’t I?” There’s the clink of ice in a glass, a sigh. “Didn’t think you cared. To ask them that.”
“I was worried about you.”
“Can’t imagine why. Haven’t treated you very well. You still called the doctors. Even after I ordered you around.” Alex looks back at him then, sees him sitting sprawled on the armchair with the scotch glass in his hand. “I know it’s probably not what you expected of your life…living with this grumpy old codger.”
“I was a kid,” Alex says neutrally. “I didn’t think of it.”
“I know. Silly me, eh? Sometimes I forget you’re still young.” Wilford takes a slug of his drink. “I was scared that night, Alex. Wondering if you’d even listen to me after all that. Feeling my airways close up and knowing I couldn’t make you call them. But you did.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll try to be kinder to you, Alex. You’re a good girl. You don’t deserve to be snapped at all the time.” Wilford downs the rest of his scotch, then stands. “Did I hurt you earlier? When I grabbed you?” Alex shakes her head no. “Alright. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what came over me then. I won’t do that again.” He ruffles her hair gently, an unreadable look on his face. “I’m going out. Something’s up with—“
“—the drivetrain, I know.”
“You don’t miss anything, do you?” Wilford gives her a wink, almost conspiratorially. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. You alright to have the train?”
“Yeah. I have the train.”
“Of course you do, darling.” Wilford leaves, gently closing the door behind him. Alex is left standing alone in the kitchen, the apartment suddenly quiet and empty without him around. She sighs, returning to the control desk. He’ll be back later, probably in a less than stellar mood—but he might try to be nicer. He might not admonish her for some stupid mistake she’s sure to make. Regardless of how he’ll return, Alex knows she should just appreciate the alone time. She brings out her book again, cracks it open. Putting her feet up on the dash, she feels herself relaxing in a way she hasn’t done for quite a while.