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Mac moaned when Jack opened his bedroom door, and a crack of light caused his migraine to flare into nauseating territory.
The door was quickly closed; his bedroom plunged back into darkness. After a moment, the bed dipped near his hip, and Jack's calloused hand brushed his hair back and pressed gently against his forehead. There was no fever because the migraine was caused by the post-concussion syndrome that he'd been battling for the last couple of weeks after being knocked out during an exfil chopper crash.
"How you feelin', bud?" Jack's voice was barely above a whisper, and Mac appreciated that more than he could say.
"Head hurts," Mac murmured. Jack already knew that, but it was the best he could come up with at the moment. His head felt like it was being squeezed hard from all sides, like a watermelon in the strong jaws of a hippopotamus, and nothing had helped so far. Not being in the dark room. Not the quiet. Not even a cold compress.
"Any better or worse?"
"Worse."
Jack stood and pulled Mac's blankets away. "Can you get up?"
That surprised him, and Mac forced his eyes open to slits, but the room was too dark to make out Jack's expression. "What?"
"You need to see a doctor. If I help, can you get up?"
"No, Jack, please." Mac's breathing and heart rate sped up at the thought of leaving his dark, quiet room for a crowded, chaotic ER or even Phoenix Med. There would be loud voices and penlights of death, and he just couldn't deal with any of that.
The mere thoughts amped his migraine up to the point that he had to roll onto his side and vomit the little bit of water Jack had given him earlier and then bile.
"Aww, bud." Jack rubbed a hand slowly over Mac's back, helpless to do anything else.
After a couple of minutes, Mac curled into a ball and started to cry. It wasn't the first time he'd felt overwhelmed by something in the last few days. It was a symptom of the PCS, and he hated it.
"What's wrong?" Jack's fingers went immediately to his pulse, but Mac tried to push him away.
"Hurts," Mac whispered.
"I know it does. I think you need some meds, better ones than we have here."
"Can't go. Too much."
"Too much what?"
"Light. Sound. People."
Jack patted Mac's back, and then the bed jostled as Jack stood. "I'll be right back."
Mac put his hand over his eyes to block out the light if Jack left the bedroom and was pleased with his forethought when he heard the door open and close. He left his hand there and focused on his breathing, hoping to calm his stomach and his head a little by focusing on something else.
He lay there in misery for a few minutes before the door opened and closed again, and Jack's familiar footsteps returned. This time, he placed an ice pack on the back of Mac's neck. He shivered at the sensation but welcomed it. Ice packs had helped before, just not so far today.
"I called Phoenix Med to see if we could get someone to come out here, and Doc Cottle wants you there for some tests. If you don't think you can move, she'll send the medics and the fancy van that's set up like an ambulance."
Mac immediately pushed himself up, letting the ice pack fall away and willing his stomach to stay settled. He sat on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor and his hands clutching the mattress to keep himself from falling forward or backward. "No need for that."
"You sure?"
"No."
Jack chuckled and set a hand on Mac's shoulder to keep him still. "Sit tight for a minute. There's no rush, and I want to clean up the floor real quick."
With closed eyes, Mac listened to Jack wipe up his mess and then move around the room, clearly on a mission. He wasn't sure how much time passed before he felt Jack's hand on his knee, warning him that he was there. Then, he slipped socks and shoes on Mac's feet.
Mac was already wearing a pair of threadbare sweatpants and his MIT t-shirt, and as much as he wanted to shower, he didn't have the energy for that.
"Ready to go?"
"As I'll ever be." Mac stood and wavered on shaky legs. His headache spiked, and he reached up to cradle his head with both hands. "This sucks," he hissed.
Jack gently pulled one of his hands down and gave him something silky. "Here. I found this in Bozer's room. It'll help with the sunlight."
"He'll kick your ass for stealing his sleep mask. He loves this thing."
"I think he'll understand."
Mac couldn't argue with that, so he put the sleep mask on and adjusted it as tight as he could stand. His headache had gone back to a barely tolerable level, so he felt like he could move. "Let's get this over with."
Jack put one arm around Mac's back, partly to lead him out to the car and partly to make sure he didn't fall on the way. "Don't sound too excited," he teased.
The trip to Phoenix Med was just as awful as Mac expected. The sleep mask helped but didn't block out all the light, and the car's motion brought his nausea back. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything in his stomach, and dry heaves were worse than actually vomiting.
By the time he was lying on a bed in Med, he was utterly done with everyone and everything. Annie had been kind enough to set him up in one of the exam rooms that didn't have windows, and she'd turned the lights down as low as she could, but it was still too much. Doc Cottle had performed her exam as quickly as possible, but it had left Mac in a worse state than before. He honestly didn't think he could take this much longer.
A soft hand touched his forearm, and Mac jerked away with a moan. He didn't open his eyes, confident that Jack would have stopped whoever it was if they weren't part of the medical staff.
"Mac, I'm going to start an IV, okay?" Annie was usually his favorite nurse but not today.
"No."
"You need some fluids, and Doc Cottle prescribed some pain killers and a muscle relaxer."
Pain killers sounded nice but also mythical, like unicorns or Jack's love life. He wordlessly extended his arm to her.
"Why the muscle relaxer?" Jack asked from the other side of Mac's bed. He'd been sitting quietly, probably plotting the deaths of whoever had shot down their chopper two weeks ago.
"Doc has a theory about what's going on, but she wants to see if she can get Mac more comfortable before running tests."
The needle's sting barely registered on Mac's current pain chart, so he decided Annie probably wasn't that bad after all. She taped down the IV, pushed the drugs, and then let him be.
Relief came slowly and in stages until Mac was relaxed and nearly asleep. The pain wasn't gone, but it had diminished to a level he couldn't remember experiencing in the last couple of days.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed before Doc Cottle and Annie returned to his room and spoke to Jack about their theory and course of action. Mac tried to listen, but he could only grasp phrases here and there as he dozed. Something about his neck and an MRI. He thought he should be concerned but couldn't muster the necessary energy.
Mac did not have the best history with the MRI machine. The small space and the clanging usually combined to remind him of a time in the sandbox that he had no interest in reliving. On a typical day, he had to be given some anti-anxiety meds to get him in the thing, so it was no surprise now that they doped him up enough that he didn't even remember getting an MRI.
The next time that Mac woke, he tried to turn his head to see if Jack was still with him and panicked at the feeling of something around his neck, impeding his ability to move his head. He reached up to tear it off, but Jack grabbed his wrists.
"Hey, it's okay. Leave that be."
"Jack?" Mac was breathless, and he squirmed while trying to shake Jack's hands off. "What?"
"Easy," Jack said, leaning over Mac while he pinned Mac's hands to the bed. "Stop wiggling like a bait worm. You're okay."
It took Mac a moment to get his body to go still, but once he did, Jack let go of his arms. He stayed standing, though, so that Mac could see him, which helped keep his panic at bay.
"I'm going to get Annie or the Doc in here to tell you what's going on." Jack pointed a finger at him and added, "Don't touch that brace."
He gripped the blanket tightly with both hands to keep them in place. Now that his initial panic had subsided, Mac recognized the soft collar neck brace from previous experiences he had hoped to never repeat.
The door opened, letting in some of the light from the hallway, but Mac noticed that it didn't make his headache worse. In fact, his head felt about a thousand times better than when he'd arrived. It still ached on a deep and uncomfortable level, but not so much that he wanted to claw his face off and pull his brain out to stop it all.
"How are you feeling, Mac?" Annie asked, standing next to the bed where he could see her. "Pain level?"
"About a 4. What about the neck brace?"
She smiled as she went through a quick vitals check. "Your MRI showed a herniated cervical disc, and we think that's what's been causing your headaches to get worse. The brace is temporary until Doc Cottle can get a neuro consult here to decide the next steps."
Temporary was good. Herniated discs were not. "Is it from the helicopter crash?"
"Most likely, unless you were having neck pain or weakness in your arms before that?"
"No, nothing like that."
"Then, we suspect that it happened in the crash. The medical staff you saw immediately after the rescue didn't do an MRI, and we don't like to put you through that unless absolutely necessary. You weren't having neck pain, just headache, and other concussion symptoms, so we treated you for that." She hesitated and then squeezed Mac's hand. "I'm sorry we weren't more thorough, Mac. I know you've been miserable for a few days, and we could have done something sooner."
"It's okay. I probably wouldn't have consented to the MRI anyway." Mac liked to get out of Medical as quickly as possible, and it didn't sound like they'd had any reason to suspect a neck injury.
"I'm sorry too, bud," Jack said as he leaned over and brushed his fingers through Mac's hair. "I should have brought you to Med sooner."
"Not your fault that I have an aversion to medical staff." Mac's eyes flicked over to Annie. "No offense."
"None taken," she said with a chuckle. "Just try and relax, and Doc Cottle will be in as soon as she can. Hit the call button if you need anything."
In the end, they decided to treat Mac's herniated disc with medication and physical therapy instead of surgery. A spinal fusion would have limited his range of motion, and an artificial disc was a potential liability out in the field. It was a longer recovery but would allow him to continue being a field agent, which was Mac's priority.
Jack, Riley, and Bozer supported his decision and helped keep his spirits up during the months of recovery by planning movie marathons and board game nights and giving him all the reading material that he could handle.