Chapter Text
If there was one thing that Sharon Goodwin normally prided herself on, it was that she genuinely cared about her staff. She always tried to do right by them, but sometimes the situations they put her in meant she had to occasionally play the 'bad guy'.
And Will Halstead was one she'd had plenty of practice on lately.
She knew the young doctor's heart had been in the right place with the whole Jennifer Baker incident, but sometimes being a medical professional meant going against best medical practice and respecting the patient's wishes - it was one of the hardest things she'd ever had to come to terms with when she'd been a nurse, and she could see how much it was affecting her team. But she'd had to stand her ground, and consequently had had no choice but to step in and come down hard on the driven, passionate redhead. He'd hated her for it - she could see it in his eyes when she'd spoken to him since then; he thought she was doing nothing but letting Mrs Baker die when he was so sure there was a chance she could be saved. He was right, but it had broken her heart to do so, and Will - so driven by his anger and desire to save every patient he treated - had just seen her standing in his way of saving the young mother.
So, when he'd come to her after the legal battle had been called off by the Bakers themselves, asking her for more shifts, she hadn't hesitated - perhaps having something else to focus his mind would be good for him, even help him continue to grow and learn as a young doctor. She certainly didn't think that there was anything to it beyond that.
She had no idea just how wrong she was.....
*****
Will cast his eyes over the chart in front of him once again, its words failing to register in his aching brain. He scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes in an attempt to clear the fuzziness from around the edges, but had no success. He knew why his vision was glittering, he knew why his head was pounding, but knowing the why just made him all the more irritable - it was his own fault, after all.
He was forcing himself to do these extra shifts for the money and to prove to his colleagues - and particularly Ms Goodwin - that he was still a good doctor, despite his history of screw ups from the last year. He had a ton of student debt to pay off, as well as the legal costs from the Baker case, and now his malpractice insurance had sky-rocketed because of that. He had barely been making ends meet before the whole thing, and now after it - let's just say that he'd taken to sleeping in the on-call room for two reasons: one, because he had a four-hour break between his shifts and didn't see the point in going home.
And two? Well, he didn't exactly have a home right then.
Sure, he could've easily bunked with Jay or asked one of his colleagues if they minded him staying with them; but Jay only had a lousy, uncomfortable couch and lived too far from the hospital to make travelling back there worthwhile (so that option was out), and Will knew of the whispers that had followed him around over the last few months, and he knew that his fellow doctors didn't think very highly of him at the moment.
If they ever had, he mused miserably.
He had also taken to snagging a sandwich from the cafeteria during his four-hour breaks between shifts, and kept fresh scrubs and the necessary toiletries in his locker. During a shift, the used scrubs would go into the wash, then he would swap out at the end of the shift for the clean pair. He knew he'd dropped weight - his scrubs weren't quite as fitting as they used to be - but he just couldn't afford the extra food. Leslie - one of the cafeteria workers - had taken pity on him and had said to come down at the end of his shifts and she would give him any spare food there was. But she wasn't always on, and some days he didn't eat at all.
So he knew (with some amount of trepidation and resignation) what was happening when he woke from his latest four-hour sleep to a pounding headache and feeling chilled and achy all over. He'd gone to the restroom to wash his face and brush his teeth, and had then dry-swallowed two Tylenol in an effort to stave off the worst of the symptoms until his next sleep.
Problem now was, it was four hours later; the symptoms were returning (and, he suspected, worsening) and he couldn't escape from the ED to get another dose of relief. Not that the Tylenol had done much good in the first place.....
"Doctor Halstead? Unless there's something incredibly interesting on that patient's chart that I don't know about, you'd better get your butt over to Treatment 3" Maggie's voice cut through his reverie and caused the pounding in his head to spike unexpectedly. Barely resisting the urge to groan and rub at his eyes, Will settled instead for swallowing hard and pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to settle the throb.
"Yeah" he mumbled, voice barely audible as it was nearly slurring with tiredness. Shrugging deeper into his white coat to try and ward off the next wave of chills, Will walked as steadily as he could over to the aforementioned room; taking a few deep breaths in a vain attempt to make the worsening dizziness in his head subside. Plastering on a hopefully convincing smile, he pulled back the curtain and entered the room.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Halstead" he greeted, hands automatically going to the sanitiser dispenser. "What brings you in today, uh-" he glanced down at his tablet to get the patient's name "-Freddie?"
Freddie Richards was a ten year old kid, sitting on the bed looking very miserable - eyes red and shiny and face blotchy, occasionally sniffling. Possibly in pain, or just not feeling well - need to do more questioning, Will's pounding brain supplied as he cast his gaze towards the kid's parents. Both looked to be in their early thirties; Dad a hulking giant of a fellow, with a grizzly moustache and stern eyes - Ex forces, probably. Or just a mean old bastard. Mom looked almost bored, scrolling through something on her phone with occasional glances at her son with tight lips and something flickering in her eyes - Scared? Distracted? Guilty?
"I fell over at school on Friday" Freddie began, breath hitching with every other word as big gloppy tears rolled down his cheeks. "I told Mom and Dad it was sore, but they just told me to take some medicine and it'd get better."
Will smiled as best he could at the kid, some hazy part of his aching brain telling him it was Monday today. Kid's been complaining of pain for three days.
"He also has a geometry test today" the boy's mother piped up, not lifting her gaze from her phone. "And he hasn't studied for it."
"I did so!" Freddie cried back, lip wobbling traitorously. "I studied real hard, Ma: like I always do!"
Biting back harsh words (and resisting the urge to pick up the mother's phone and throw it in the hazardous waste bin), Will just nodded thoughtfully and - ignoring the worsening pain in his head and neck (Strange, that's new) - he sat down next to Freddie on the bed and forced his smile to stay on his face. "Well" he began, gesturing to the young boy's arm, "let's see if we can't work out what's going on nice and quick and get you back for that test, hey?"
Freddie nodded, lip trembling as he adjusted his hold on his right arm so that Will could have a look. Gently pushing the arm of the kid's sweater back, the redhead stopped when Freddie hissed as the end of the sleeve passed over the middle of his forearm.
"It's just a sprain, surely" the father muttered, looking at his watch as if impatient to leave. "He's seemed fine all weekend, so we didn't think it was anything else."
Ignoring the other man, Will apologised quietly to Freddie; soothing the boy with gentle nonsense as he kept pushing the sleeve up so that his whole arm was revealed. And when he saw the obvious deformity to the forearm, anger curdled his stomach.
"April" he called out, barely waiting until the nurse entered the room before he was ordering her to take the patient to X-ray and to page Ortho for an urgent review - and possible surgery.
"Surgery?!" The mother exclaimed, finally looking up from her phone and eyes following her son as April called over some orderlies to take Freddie to Radiology.
Will nodded, jaw clenching hard against both the pain in his head and the furious words threatening to spill out of his mouth. "It's quite obvious that your son's arm is broken, Mrs Richards" he answered as calmly as he could, but he knew that anger was seeping into his tone. "If this had been left any longer, Freddie might have lost the use of his hand or even his entire lower arm because of a lack of blood flow past the break."
For the first time, both parents appeared worried, but that just made Will even angrier. "It took you three DAYS; three days of your child saying his arm hurt for you to finally bring him to a doctor? Three days of your child being absolutely miserable? He was obviously trying to tell you that something was wrong all weekend, and you just assumed that it was to get out of some test?" He couldn't tell if he was shaking because of the chills or because of the fury currently coursing through his veins.
"We-we didn't notice-" the mother began nervously, but Will had heard enough, and his temper exploded.
"I'm sorry, what kind of parent doesn't notice that their kid's arm is broken?!" he exclaimed, trying to swallow as subtly as he could in an attempt to stop his meagre stomach contents making an unwelcome appearance. The child's father rose to his full height and glared at the physician, striding angrily over to him and prodding a finger into his chest, causing Will to stumble backwards and into the doorframe.
"Don't you dare speak to me and my wife like that, you arrogant little prick!"
But before he could say or do anything further - and before April (who had just returned) could step in - a deep voice from behind them cut off any further arguments, and forced a shiver up Will's spine that he was sure had nothing to do with the air conditioner that was suddenly working a little too well.
"Halstead, I need a word."
Spinning awkwardly on his heel and stalking out of the room, Will brushed past the owner of the voice - just a dark-haired blur in his worsening vision at this point - and headed straight for the doctor's lounge. The door was about to slam shut behind him when the voice entered the room and there were strong hands gripping his shoulders.
"What" Connor growled, looking as angry as Will had ever seen him "was that all about? Listen, I know you're so insistent on behaving like an arrogant arse every chance you get, but you know you can't talk to people like that. And especially not to patients!"
Anger and indignation - and even the smallest amount of hurt - heated the redhead's chest and he fixed a glare of his own towards Rhodes. "You didn't hear them" he spat through gritted teeth, "they'd let their kid walk around for three days with a broken arm! They said they thought it was 'just sprained', even though there was a lump the size of Niagara halfway up that kid's arm!"
Rhodes closed his eyes and sighed - annoyance and frustration clear on his face. "Look," the older doctor tried, obviously forcing his voice to be calm, "everyone knows you've been under a lot of stress lately-"
Will let out a snort and barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes at that - that was an understatement.
"-but that still doesn't give you the right to be so rude, disrespectful and downright unprofessional towards your patients or their families" Rhodes continued as if Will hadn't made any noise. "We're doctors, we're supposed to be above all that. And I know you're on thin ice with Goodwin already; so you need to leave the personal stuff at home or I'll have to pass on to Goodwin and Maggie that you need benching."
At that, furious brown eyes met his own. "Benching?!"
Connor nodded sternly, crossing his arms and glaring back. "Yes, Will: benching. So, either take five minutes to sort your shit out or go home, Halstead. Maybe some time off will do you good."
Huffing angrily, Will went to push the surgeon out of the way and head back out into the ED, but was stopped when the act of shoving Rhodes made his own vision swirl and his feet stumble gracelessly. He was sure he would fall until he felt hands steadying his arms.
"Whoa, hey" Connor's voice was echoing strangely - was the lounge always this echoing? It was like being deep in a cave - like a bat. Will had always hated bats; their beady eyes reminding him a bit too much of the googly eyes on Jay's ratty old teddy bear that used to freak the hell out of him. And as a doctor, knowing that they carried so many diseases made his stomach clench and squirm whenever he was near one - but did it used to be this bad? He-
"Will? Hey....Will! WILL!"
Snapping back to the present to the sound of someone clicking their fingers in front of his face, Will pulled his arm out of Rhodes' grip and mumbled a (slightly slurred) "'m fine."
"No, you're not fine: something's clearly up with you," Connor frowned, now sounding concerned as he reached forward with the back of his hand ready to take Will's temperature, but the redhead stumbled out of the way and bolted unsteadily out of the lounge without so much as a glance backwards.
***
Somehow, Will managed to make it to the nearest bathroom without being noticed or stopped by anyone. Panting hard and squeezing his eyes shut against the growing nausea and pain in his head, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the mirror. He could feel the sweat dripping down his neck and back, probably staining his scrubs, and the cold air of the restroom was making the chills worse. He could feel his hands shaking where they gripped the sink like a lifeline, and he opened his eyes and stared at his reflection for probably the first time in days.
He was pale - moreso than usual, freckles standing out starkly against his skin. Sweat was beading on his forehead and turning the roots of his ginger hair to a dark brown. The hair itself hung limp and lank over exhausted brown eyes, rimmed by dark shadows. His lips were unusually pink against the pallor of his cheeks, and a faint flushing of red had settled over his cheekbones. The neck of his scrubs top was drenched in sweat, and he could feel patches of sweat cooling on his back under his white coat.
Feeling suddenly stuffy, he clumsily shed the coat and tossed it to the side. Bending down, he turned on the cold tap and let some of the water wash over his hands before splashing some on his face. God, that feels good, he moaned to himself, closing his eyes and splashing his face again.
He was about to stand upright again when the pain in his head suddenly forced him to his knees. It came out of nowhere, sending jack-hammering spikes through his cranium and into his brain. The fluorescent lights of the bathroom winking distortedly as his eyesight blurred sickeningly, making his already painful head spin. Sinking to the floor, his hands fisted in his hair as he closed his eyes and let out a tiny whimper. Nausea churned in his gut, the worst it had been all day, and it took every ounce of remaining energy he had left not to vomit everywhere on the restroom floor.
Apparently his remaining energy wasn't enough, as next second he was vomiting spit and bile onto the floor....and into his lap.
"Hmm. Fine, huh?"
Will just groaned in response as another wave of nausea brought up more liquid that sploshed onto his scrub pants. "G'way" he mumbled thickly, panting as the nausea finally seemed to settle - even if the pain in his head didn't.
"Nope. Not gonna happen" came the reply, and Will could hear the sound of paper towel being pulled from the dispenser and run under the tap before he felt the wet paper being pushed into his hand. "Why didn't you tell anyone you were sick, you idiot?" Rhodes demanded, frowning in concern when the volume of his voice - made worse by the echoing of the bathroom - made the redhead wince and screw his eyes even tighter shut than before.
"Not sick" Halstead grunted, and Connor raised a sceptical eyebrow.
"Really? Cause your pulse is thready and racing," the surgeon gently took the younger man's wrist and felt for the tell-tale beat of life under his fingertips before moving his hand up and gripping Will's upper arm supportively - and sighing at the hot clamminess under his hand. "On top of that; you're super clammy, you've just vomited everywhere, and I'm pretty sure you're running one hell of a fever."
"Show off" Will growled, but was too exhausted to put any real heat behind the words as he finally let his head rest against the wall with a shaky sigh. "Been feeling awful all shift" he finally admitted once he'd steadied his breathing.
"In what way?"
A single brown eye opened for a brief second to glare at him before its owner winced and squeezed it shut once more. "I'm guessing the light's not your best friend right now?" Connor deduced, starting a mental catalogue of signs and symptoms in his head.
"Not really" Will replied, sounding groggy and voice slurring just a little. "Nausea, you've no doubt already guessed" he waved a hand in a general gesture towards the mess on the floor.
"What else?" Rhodes prompted, feeling increasingly concerned by how out of it his friend was becoming.
Will was silent for a moment, and Rhodes worried briefly that he might have passed out, but then a quiet voice spoke up. "Headache, really dizzy, hot and cold chills, my vision's super fuzzy around the edges, my joints ache and so does my neck - but that's only just started."
With the list in his head growing, Connor sighed - that could still be anything.
"Well, we need to get you back out there and get some tests going" he ordered, pushing himself to his feet and turning back to his friend. "You want to walk, or shall I call a gurney?"
"No gurney" Will protested, shaking his head slightly and looking up at Rhodes with something slightly pleading in his expression. "Just help me up?"
Bending down, Connor pulled Will to his feet with only a quiet groan of protest from the latter at the sudden change in position. Putting a steadying hand on his shoulders, Connor watched the younger man carefully for any signs of obvious deterioration. He didn't like how grey the redhead's skin had become, nor how he was obviously swaying on his feet. Without wasting another second, Rhodes bent over once again and hooked an arm under the lanky legs and scooped the ill man into his arms.
"D'dn't say.....c'ldn't walk...." came the weak protest from around his neck area, and he couldn't help but huff a humourless laugh.
“Just don’t puke on me, Halstead” Connor grunted as he adjusted his hold on his feverish friend.
Despite how wretched he felt, a smile curled at the ill man's lips as his eyes opened the tiniest crack. “N' pr'm'ses” he mumbled back before his eyes closed and his head lolled floppily against Connor's shoulder, going completely unresponsive.
"Will? WILL! Damn it! Just hang on, you ass!"
***
It was dark in the room when Will next returned to full awareness, the only sound being his own breathing and the steady beeping of the EKG beside him. His eyes felt gritty, his throat dry and sore, and his whole body felt laden with lead. As more awareness returned, he could feel the steady hiss of oxygen tickling his nostrils via the nasal cannula, and he immediately scrunched his nose a little at the discomfort.
"Easy, buddy" came a strangely familiar voice to his right. "I know you don't like the cannula, but they gotta stay in, okay?"
Finally letting his eyelids flutter open, Will was forced to blink a few times to clear his vision - it took a few seconds longer than it probably should have, but the first shape that cleared belonged to a person. A very familiar, dark-haired person.
"Rh-" cough "Rhodes?" he squeaked, voice barely audible thanks to the dryness of his throat; he was glad when the other doctor held up a cup with some ice chips in and handed one over.
"Yeah, it's me" the surgeon replied, smiling tiredly at him as he sucked on the ice chip. Once it was down, Connor reached over and put a palm against Will's forehead. "Fever's broken, for good I think" he mumbled, eyes flickering up towards the monitors beside them.
It was then that Will realised just how quiet the room was - and how nearly silent outside the room seemed to be, surely things couldn't be that slow in the ED? Then again, he mused as he took in the big glass sliding doors at the end of the bed, along with how big the room was, he doubted this was the ED at all.
As if sensing his confusion, Connor's smile returned but his eyes remained heavy with worry. "You're up in the ICU - you crashed on the way back to the ED; your fever spiked, you weren't responding to us at all. We barely got you on the monitors before you started seizing, that's how high your fever was."
Will's eyes turned downcast at that, guilt flooding his exhausted expression. "Long?" he asked tiredly, without meeting the older man's gaze.
"Almost a week" Connor replied softly, shuddering internally at the memory of watching his younger colleague (and, dare he say it, friend) in such distress. "We had to intubate you downstairs, everyone was practically frantic with worry. But - thankfully - we took you off the vent earlier this afternoon, everyone's just been waiting for you to wake up."
At Will's now quizzical look, Rhodes hesitated briefly before handing him the tablet with his friend's chart brought up on the screen. Will didn't take his eyes off him though, and Connor sighed heavily before continuing. "You had meningitis, Will-"
"Meningitis?"
Connor nodded, biting his lip and hesitating for a moment. "Yeah, Jay told me you've had it before - when you were a kid?" At Will's weak nod, the dark-haired doctor hummed softly.
"But I beat it real quick last time" Will began, suspicion beginning to curl in his stomach even as the next words left his mouth "why'd it hit me so hard?"
Blue-grey eyes met his own, and the redhead's suspicions were confirmed.
"Your bloods showed that you were malnourished, mildly anaemic, and dehydrated" Connor answered carefully, as if worried of angering his patient. "On top of that, pretty much all of your electrolytes were out of whack, and when we got you in the gown....well, let's just say that we worked out the reason for all of that pretty quickly."
Shame prickled behind Will's eyes and he let his eyelids fall closed as he turned his head away - determined not to let Rhodes see his weakness; God knows the man already thought he was pathetic enough. But he was too exhausted to stop the tear that had already escaped his lashes and was dripping down his cheek. He sniffled as quietly as he could, but obviously not quietly enough as he felt warm fingers gently grip his jaw and turn his head back to the centre.
"Will."
He tried his best not to react to the voice - so kind, gentle; it made him want to take it and wrap himself up in the comfort of that voice. He wanted to just keep his eyes closed and block out the world, but the voice was insistent.
"Will, look at me."
Forcing tired, watery eyes to open, Will swallowed hard against the growing lump in his throat as his blurry vision fixed on Rhodes' concerned features. Another tear dripped onto his cheek, and then he was being pulled up and into a solid warm chest. It took perhaps a moment longer than it should to realise that Rhodes was hugging him.
"How long have you been struggling, huh?" The deep, gentle voice was vibrating the throat next to his ear, and suddenly it was too much and the tears finally fought free. Lifting his arms up to curl around and cling weakly to his friend's back, Will finally let himself break.
Everything started pouring out of him; the fear, the frustration, the loneliness, the guilt - it all came rushing out in hitching breaths and desperate sobs against Connor's warm and solid shoulder. He told of his desperate need to make up for his mistakes, needing to make Goodwin want to keep him on at Gaffney, the need to show everyone that he was still a good doctor.
Throughout it all, Connor just held him.
It took almost half an hour for his friend's cries to subside, and Connor was more than content to sit there until Will was ready. But when more than five minutes had passed without a single sound from his friend, he gazed down to his shoulder and realised that the redhead had ended up crying himself back into an exhausted sleep, and his heart crumbled a little.
"Oh, Will" he murmured softly, something almost mournful in his tone as he rubbed a hand up and down the younger doctor's back. "Why didn't you say anything?"
More importantly, why didn't we notice?
He stayed there for a few more minutes, gently cradling his sick friend, before he was reminded of the time and he started to slowly lower his charge back onto the pillows. Unfortunately, the change in position - along with the loss of warmth - caused Will to stir awake.
"Mnhgh" was the oh-so-eloquent protest, accompanied by a fluttering of the eyelids before hazy brown eyes half-opened and found Connor's own. "Connor?"
"Shush. Go back to sleep" Connor answered, smiling around a sudden yawn. "You need to get some rest, I'll be back in the morning."
Will rolled completely onto his back and opened his eyes properly. They were still a bit red from the tears, but they looked clearer than before. "Where're you going?" he croaked, reaching up to rub some of the grit out of his eyes.
Connor just chuckled at the sleepy question. "Home - it's nearly ten-thirty at night and I have a shift in the morning" he answered, getting to his feet with a quiet groan as his knees cracked. "I'll come and see you tomorrow, but you really need to rest, okay?"
And then he was walking away before Will could say another word. His tired body chose that moment to remind him that it really did need that sleep, and he let his eyes fall closed once again.
"Thanks Connor" he whispered as he drifted off back into dreamland.
He didn't notice Rhodes pause - having heard the quiet mumble - before he turned around and silently walk back over the bed with a fond smile on his face. "You're welcome, Will" the surgeon replied as he let one of his hands land on Will's shoulder and give it a warm squeeze. "Now get some sleep, you ass."
He had to chuckle when he only got a snore in reply.
*****
END
*****