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“That’s it!” Wally announced, standing up and slamming his hands on the desk. The sudden outburst made Dick burn himself on the soldering iron, and he sucked on his thumb to soothe the burn with a glare. “I’ve had it up to here with you coughing.”
“You’re not supposed to hold in coughs,” he defended. “You need to get it up.”
“You don’t have anything left to get up! You’re lucky you haven’t coughed a lung up yet.”
“It’s just a cough.”
“Is it?” Wally asked incredulously as though it’d been intentional.
For just over a week, Dick had had a cough, and he could admit it didn’t sound the best. It started as the odd dry hacking and developed into wet, clustered coughs that made his whole body jump and his chest rattle. He’d had an almost permanent headache since his first year as Robin, but it’d gotten significantly worse in the recent days, and he’d been sporting all the signs of a low-grade fever. Aside from the cough, he’d been able to carefully hide the other symptoms.
“It’s sick season!” he shouted. He went into another coughing fit, his hands flying out to steady himself against the table so he didn’t get thrown back off his stool.
“I trust you as far as I can throw you,” Wally stated once he was done. He was wearing that face. The one Dick knew would quickly spread through the rest of the team until they locked him in the med bay or traffic him to the nearby hospital. They’d probably stand guard outside his door; those of them who could fly would stand guard by the window.
“You could probably throw me quite far.”
“As far as you can throw Cy, then.”
“That’s not fair!” He should’ve learned from the first time not to raise his voice, but at least this time he knew to lean forward.
“It’s more than you’ve earned.”
“But you trust me to lead the team?” he said, convinced this was his gotcha moment. He didn’t get a lot of those with his mentor, and he clamoured for any chance he got to have them.
“I trust you to work. I don’t trust you to have some self-preservation.”
“I have to have some.”
“I’m not saying you’re at 0, I’m saying you’re barely scraping normal, and you’re not in sight of the level I need you to be.”
“Wally, c’mon.”
“Be an ass all you want, I’m not taking any chances with you.”
“It’s barely been a week!” Seriously, stop shouting, he told himself. He grimaced at the phlegm clinging to the fabric bunched up at his elbow. He went to wipe it off on the side of his jumper, effectively just spreading the sickness everywhere, but Wally handed him a tissue with a glare. “It’s a cold. Nothing serious.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know my own body.”
“How many times have we had to bench you specifically because you don’t know your own limits?” He chose not to answer that question.
“I’m not going to hospital for a cold.”
“Then we’ll treat it in-house for now. Either way, you shouldn’t sound like that for a regular cough,” he argued.
“So, if I go run a workup on myself, you’ll leave it alone?”
“If I get to see it, yes.”
“You wouldn’t even know what you’re looking at,” Dick teased back.
Being the only human without some sort of power-up could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but there were a few benefits. One of which was that he could just lie to their faces about his health, and most of the time they’d believe it until they could verify otherwise. Unfortunately, that came with the downside of them treating every minor scrape like sepsis was eagerly waiting on the sidelines for the right opening. How Wally seemed to forget how normal it was to get sick every so often when he grew up a regular guy was beyond him.
“Then I’ll have Donna use the Lasso of Truth on you.”
“Diana isn’t going to just give her that.”
“How sure of that are you?” He clicked his tongue. Yeah, Wally had him there.
“Fine. I’ll go check myself out, and I guess you can come watch,” he mumbled in defeat.
“And you’ll be honest?”
“I’ll be honest. Happy?”
“Very. Finish up, and we’ll head over.” He rolled his eyes and cleaned up the solder. The chip was dead anyway from his earlier blunder, but he just wanted to test Wally’s patience, figuring out how married to the idea he was. Turns out happily married for the last forty years, because as soon as he put the soldering iron in the holder, he was being bullied off his stool and out the door.
Dick trudged over to the medbay and set out to find a pulse oximeter as he ran through his symptoms mentally. Cough, headache, fatigue (although that could be another thing he just constantly dealt with), sore chest and throat and a low-grade fever accompanied by chills. A normal plain old cold. He eventually found the small device forgotten in the bottom of a drawer and clipped it onto his finger.
“What’s that for?”
“It’s a pulse oximeter. I’m measuring the level of oxygen in my blood,” he explained. Wally nodded seriously as he watched the electronic display.
“What’s a good number?”
“95% and up. I never got above 97% on these things, though. Probably all the toxic gas I’ve inhaled over the years.”
“You ever think about the long term effects of that?”
“Nah.” Wally watched him for a moment, waiting for more that wasn’t coming, and when he realised that was a full sentence, he shifted uncomfortably.
“Not even a little bit? What if it’s why you’re coughing?”
“Then I’ll fix it, I guess.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not that smart.”
“Then I’ll find someone who is that smart,” he replied dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m not worried about it.”
“You’re not worried about a lot of stuff you should be.” Dick shrugged off the concern and drew his attention back to the pulse oximeter. “What’s that face mean?”
“I’m not making a face.”
“You did! You looked down and gritted your teeth.”
“It’s at 93%.”
“Ha! I told you there was something wrong!” Wally stated before the victory felt bittersweet. “What do we do now?”
“Stethoscope time.”
Dick dug around another drawer before finding a stethoscope and hopped up onto a counter.
“Shirt up,” he muttered, preemptively wincing for the cold stethoscope to hit his skin. Why did it need to be so cold? Did it work worse when it was a normal human temperature? Even with preparation, he still jerked away when it landed on his chest. He moved the ice block he called medical equipment around his chest, and he tried to catch any unusual sounds.
It couldn’t be that serious, right? He’d feel worse. If it was bad, he should be holed up in bed with the sheets over his head waiting for it all to be over. It was just a cough. Well, a cough and a sore chest…maybe a headache…a bit of a chill…his throat was scratchy too. Those weren’t serious symptoms, though. That was just being sick. It just looked bad when half the team couldn’t get sick the same way he could. He stuck out like a sore thumb.
Instead of hearing something akin to a breeze, his ears were assaulted by crackling and wheezing. He didn’t expect perfection since Dick wasn’t denying that he was sick in the first place, just that he wasn’t seriously ill. In the corner of his eye, he watched Wally anxiously wait for something. He moved from foot to foot, and his fingers tapped against his thigh at superhuman speed.
Dick tilted his head as he considered his symptoms. It all presented as a normal virus, but he could admit it was taking a while to push on. With his health as it was, he should’ve gotten over it by now, but it’d only gotten worse as the week continued. They hadn’t come into contact with any unknown chemicals lately, and he hadn’t inhaled anything he shouldn’t have or injected with random concoctions the freak of the week came up with. What’s worse than a cold but not bad enough to kill him? What could he conceivably push off to the side for the sake of work and not have it immediately bite him in the ass?
Shit. Wally was going to be insufferable.
“Don’t freak out.”
“I already hate where this is going.”
“I wanna do an X-ray to confirm, but I think I may have atypical pneumonia.”
It took a second to sink in. He could hear the cogs turn in Wally’s mind as the words were processed. He moved so fast usually; it was strange to see his face move so slowly. Dick’s hands twitched as they clung to the edge of the counter. He desperately wanted to cough, but now seemed like a bad time.
“Pneumonia?” Wally shrieked.
“Atypical pneumonia. Walking pneumonia. It’s just a cold that’s overstayed its welcome,” he said calmly, talking his friend down from the ledge. He did his best to remember all the de-escalation tactics he’d been taught, but it was somehow harder when it wasn’t a matter of life and death. He’d almost prefer if this was a mind control situation and he had to pull a “this isn’t you!” line.
“Okay,” the speedster sighed. “If you need an X-ray, we should really go to a hospital.”
“We have a portable one. I’m only using it to see the congestion, so it’ll be fine that the image isn’t that clear.”
“That’s not- I feel like this is a doctor’s thing.”
“I don’t need a doctor to diagnose atypical pneumonia. I didn’t really need to do any of these tests either.”
“Need and want are two different things.”
“Right, and I didn’t want or need to do anything. Unless this is bacterial, it’s treated the exact same as a cold.”
“Did I miss your graduation from med school?”
“Why are you getting so worked up about it?”
“Because I care about you and I shouldn’t have to force you to get medical attention! You should want to go in the first place,” he snapped. “Dick, there’s gonna be a point where you outgrow Robin and the team, which is fine! I’m cool with that. I’m not cool with the idea that there isn’t gonna be another person to remind you that you’re human. A human who was just gonna walk around with pneumonia-”
“- Well, it is walking pneumonia-”
“-And I know for a fact if we got called out, you’d be first on scene when you should be resting.”
“I suggested the X-ray in the first place!”
“You wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t drag you here!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Go to a doctor! A real doctor with a real medical degree!”
“Fine, we’ll go to a doctor then!”
“Great!”
“Good!”
The room went quiet for a minute, broken by Dick's next coughing fit. He hunched forward, doing his best to cover his mouth without making it harder to draw his next breath. Wally was by his side, rubbing circles on his back to soothe the ache until it was over. He let himself lean into the ginger’s hold and caught his breath. His eyes squeezed closed whilst his chest crackled uncomfortably.
“Dick?”
“It’s fine. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” he huffed. “I don’t want to lose you to something stupid.” Dick was half tempted to say it was rare to die from walking pneumonia, but it was probably the wrong time, and he was rather enjoying putting his weight on someone else.
“Alright, but they’ll say the same thing I said.”
“I don’t care.”
“For the record, I’m doing this for you. I already know it’s a waste of time.”
“Happy early birthday to me then.”
Dick felt a little smug when the doctor performed the same tests he did and came to the same conclusion, also wanting an X-ray to confirm but confident in their diagnosis. The smugness wore off when he was forced to hold in his coughs as he stood with pin-straight posture for the pictures.
“As I suspected, it’s atypical pneumonia.”
“Told you,” Dick teased. “Watch this, they’re gonna recommend a PCR test,” he whispered.
“I can hear you, but you’re right. I’ll need to confirm if this is viral or bacterial before prescribing antibiotics.”
“If it’s bacterial, could I have azithromycin rather than tetracycline? I like dairy too much. Oh, and I'd like to steer clear of ciprofloxacin since I'd risk muscle weakness and obviously we can't have that.”
“Just how many times have you needed antibiotics?” Wally questioned.
“No comment.”