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"John. John."
Carter's head bobs over his takeout container for the third time, then jerks up, and he rubs his eyes. "Mm. Sorry."
Anna leans forward to catch his bleary gaze from across her kitchen island. "You're exhausted. I told you not to come over. We can do this another night."
He shakes his head. "If we didn't have dinner tonight, it'll be another two weeks before we can."
"I'm not going anywhere." She playfully nudges his hand, then pops a few lo mein noodles into her mouth.
He shrugs, then smiles shyly. "And I wanted to see you."
She can't very well argue with that. But he's been fading for the last 20 minutes, and it's getting harder to watch him fight sleep when she knows how badly he needs it.
She crosses around the island to come up behind him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and leaning into him. "Go lay down for a while. You're hardly eating anyways."
He shrugs. "'Not that hungry, I guess." His shoulders are hunched, and he coughs into his elbow like he's been coughing all evening—rough and deep, from the bottom of his lungs. Everyone gets paler as the Chicago sunlight contracts, but tonight he's so washed out she can count the smattering of freckles across his nose.
It pricks warning bells in Anna's brain. She was well acquainted with his strange eating habits, but she can always count on him being ravenous after a 20-hour shift. Someone less perceptive might chalk uhis haggard appearance to too many double shifts in a row and terrible lighting. But when she looks at him—really looks at him—she sees a heaviness that comes from being more than just worn out.
Carter yawns, then brings his hand up to rest on her arms. "Maybe I'll sleep a little bit. But wake me up in 20 minutes. I still need to do journal review, and I want to head home before the storm."
Anna frowns. "You're not staying over?"
He sniffles, then wipes his nose with his sleeve. "I told Dr. Weaver I'd go in early with her around 7 tomorrow and help compile some of the trial data with a couple of the other residents. Plus, her place is closer."
At this admission, Anna wants to grab his face between her hands and beg him to learn to say no. That he's going to run himself into the ground if he doesn't rest on his precious few days off. That no one's got a running tally of how many times he burns himself out at both ends to calculate if he's still worth having around.
But as she hugs him tighter and feels how shaky he is in her arms, how heavily he leans into her embrace, she bites her tongue and decides to let nature fight her battle for her. He didn't refuse her demand that he sleep, at least, so there must be some pliable part of him, deep down, that would also like some rest.
Carter pushes himself up from his seat, then twists towards her and takes her by the hands. "Join me, Ms. Del Amico?"
His hands are ice cold, and Anna wants to tuck them against her body to warm them. "If it gets you in bed? Absolutely."
Anna leads him over to her mattress and he plops down on the rumpled covers, pulling her down with him. His fingers fumble as he tries to unbutton his dress shirt, so she sneaks her hands under his and does them herself before slipping the shirt off his shoulders.
She pulls the covers over them both and they lay facing each other, and her fingers gently trace the curve of his face, the hollows of his cheekbones, the soft skin beneath his eyebrows, and the pale bruises beneath his lower lashes. He lets his eyes flutter shut at the touch, and within minutes he's unconscious and snoring softly.
20 minutes pass, then 30. Still he sleeps, and Anna just watches.
After 45 minutes, Anna unthreads herself from his sleep-slackened grasp to put away the takeout and tidy up her apartment. Still no movement.
After an hour, Anna plants herself back at the end of her mattress, medical journal in her lap, back against the wall, her legs resting over Carter's. She feels a small pinprick of guilt for not waking him, but it's overruled by visions of dark circles and tired eyes and trembling hands—which, in her professional medical opinion, are much better served by sleep.
It's past 9:30 pm when Anna hears the first small taps of ice against the window, and she's momentarily relieved that the heavens have also conspired to keep Carter with her.
Still, she's a firm believer in consent, and decides to loop him in on this development and gently shakes his shoulder. "John. Storm's here early and it's getting icy out."
Carter mumbles something unintelligible and scrubs a hand over his eyes, then blearily blinks awake. Despite the extra sleep, he somehow looks worse than he did during dinner. His hair's sticking up on one side, and she can't keep her hand from running through it to smooth it down. "Stay here tonight. You can head out and meet Dr. Weaver tomorrow morning." Not technically a lie. But If this goes the way I think, you won't be leaving in the morning at all.
He yawns and nods. "Mmkay." His exhausted eyes meet hers, and he looks about ready to cry. "An'a. 'm so tired."
There it is. The honesty that comes when you're half-asleep and worn to the bone.
She gently squeezes his leg. "C'mon. Let's get you into pajamas and you can get back to sleep."
He complies easily, and his limbs are pliable as a rag doll as she helps him sit up, slips his pants past his hips, and swaps them for a pair of sweatpants he forgot at her place a few weeks ago. He usually sleeps in just his undershirt, but his arms are covered in goosebumps, so she pulls a sweatshirt from her pile of clean laundry and helps thread his arms through.
He slowly eases himself back down, wincing.
"Hurt something?"
He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "Just achy. My joints hurt all day."
Uh oh.
Somewhere around 2 am, all of Carter's little warning signs finally coalesce into the illness Anna feared. His coughs, once sporadic, become constant. She can tell he's trying to stifle them so he doesn't wake her, but they're strong enough that she feels it shake the mattress anyways. He's curled on the other side of the mattress facing away from her, but she stretches out a hand to rub his back when the worst waves come.
An hour later, Anna's woken as he inches closer to her in bed, his fever making him crave another's body warmth. She pulls him close and feels the shivers ripple through his shoulders, despite the heat radiating off him, and hears his labored inhales as he breathes through slightly parted lips.
The ice still taps away at the window, and he buries his head into her chest.
"Think 'm getting sick," he whispers wearily.
"I think you are too."
Anna wakes to a world of ice, the early dawn streets as smooth as glass without a single car in sight.
Turning back from the window, she pulls a worn Penn State sweatshirt from her laundry pile and rubs her arms to combat the early morning chill. The building's super insisted on waiting until the first big freeze before turning the heat on, and it takes a few full days for the heat to fully permate the building. Her radiator still hadn't caught before the storm, so Anna flicks on her corner space heater—technically forbidden in her lease, but what her landlord didn't know couldn't hurt him.
Her nose is cold, and she covers it with the sleeve of her sweatshirt to warm it, then rubs the sleep from her eyes and starts the coffee pot.
As it brews, she gazes at the sleeping Carter still in her bed. He's tucked under her comforter with the blankets pulled up to his nose, eyelashes fluttering over his dark-shadowed eyes. He'd finally fallen asleep around 4 am, and it's just past 6, and there's no way he's going to County today if she has any say in it.
After a quick call to a very understanding Kerry—"Tell him we'll manage just fine," she says—she crosses to Carter and gently nudges his shoulder until his eyes flutter halfway open.
"I called Kerry. You're staying home today."
He nods, coughs, and groans. A shiver ripples through him and he curls up tighter, and she scoops up one of her grandma's old quilts to toss over him.
Anna briefly considers taking Carter back to Dr. Weaver's place to his own bed—it has to be nicer than her cracked ceiling and drafty windows and rickety space heater—but a look at his huddled form and she can't bear to wake him, bundle him up, and drag him across town in the freezing rain. Nor does she have much faith that he'll stay on his feet on the ice, either.
After some gentle coaxing from Anna, Carter begrudgingly consents to a physical exam, arms wrapped around himself as Anna hauls him up and pokes, prods, and probes around. Her findings don't reveal anything overly concerning—just a 101-degree fever and cough, sniffles, and aches. By the end of the exam he's drooping like a hothouse flower, and Anna eases him back into bed and tucks the blankets around his shivering body.
But once the doctoring part is over, she's not quite sure what to do next.
Sickness had always been a watershed moment in Anna's past relationships. Some partners needed constant attention, while others preferred to suffer in silence. As a caretaker, you had equal chances of being neglectful or smothering, and you often didn't know until it you'd already failed your patient in some way.
What did being sick even look like for rich kids? Cartoonish visions flash in her head of a small John Carter in a four-poster bed, a doctor summoned via house call sat at his bedside, with hovering parents just behind and a fleet of servants waiting at the door.
She shakes the image from her head. He probably just got name-brand medicine and soup made by a chef. In any case, he probably had no interest in the versions of sick days she knew best.
For her, sick days were midday game shows watched from a pile of blankets on the couch, her Nonna force-feeding her a wretched homemade herbal tea that was supposed to "chase out the wind" before rubbing some Vicks across her chest. If she was really sick (or really milked it), Nonna would swap the tea for one of her soups that was easy on the stomach and warmed her from the inside out.
Being sick was also one of the few precious moments where her family would leave her be, didn't ask anything of her, and somehow miraculously managed to function in ways they never could when she was well. Even her brothers sensed her need for solitude in this times, and mostly left her alone. It was glorious.
Now, with the Carter family heir tucked under her patchwork quilts and homemade afghans on her secondhand mattress, she feels….nervous.
This isn't even close to what he's used to, she thinks, an old familiar swirl of inadequacy bubbling up, which she immediately shoves down. You're worlds apart, and you don't know a thing. Don't overstep. Wait and see what he asks for.
So he gets him settled with tissues and a dose of probably-expired cold medicine, and settles herself in a corner chair across the room with some medical journals, waiting to discover what kind of sick person he'll be.
For a while, he just sleeps. The ice patters away on the window panes in a lulling rhythm, and even she has to fight to keep her eyes focused on the articles she's reading. Every once in a while he mumbles or stirs, and she'll cross to his bedside and soothe him back to sleep before returning to her chair.
When he finally wakes, Anna waits for him to ask for something. Anything. Another blanket. A glass of water. A single cough drop.
And to her surprise, he's mostly just…quiet.
Between methodologies and conclusions, she ventures glances at him. The blankets are pulled up to his chin, and he's got a thousand-yard stare pointed her general direction. Something about the sight squeezes her heart. But when she comes to his bedside and asks if she can get him anything, he politely declines.
"Jus' need to sleep," he says softly, eyes blinking shut again. She nods, and returns to her chair.
The more the minutes pass, the more wrong it all seems. Her Carter is easy chatter and kinetic motion all day long. This Carter doesn't move. He doesn't restlessly wander, blanket cape round his shoulders, poking around the piles of clutter in her apartment. He doesn't toss or turn, trying to get comfortable, or tease her and try to get her to come closer. He just…lays there. Small. Unintrusive. As if he's trying to take up as little space as possible.
She keeps checking on him every so often, sure that he'll have a request. He never does. And the less he asks for, the more she senses there's a reason why.
By 10, Anna can hardly stand how forlorn Carter looks. She doesn't want to overstep, but she's beginning to worry he'll simply die a death of despair right there on her mattress.
So she brings him a glass of water and kneels at his side again, venturing a few strokes of his hair. Though he still hasn't asked for anything, he seems to perk up a little at the physical touch.
"Sure I can't I get you anything?"
"I'm okay." His voice is raspy, and he swallows hard, then winces. Anna lets her hand rest on his forehead, and he leans into the touch and shudders.
"Are you warm enough?"
"I'm fine," he says, even as he curls up tighter and hugs himself, and Anna grabs another blanket, this one a crocheted afghan, and tucks it over him. She lets her hand rest on his back a few extra moments, sees the way his entire body seems to melt under her touch.
Oh.
In this instant, she's learned something about the sick version of John Carter—that what he says and what he wants, especially when sick, require a different kind of awareness beyond his words.
She pushes herself up and goes back to the chair to gather her reading materials, then returns to his bedside and tucks herself at the end of the bed, looping her legs with his.
He sees her taking her position at the end of the bed, eyes suddenly wary. "You'll get sick. "
"Hush. Go back to sleep." Her hand finds the shape of his foot beneath the blanket, and she gently massages it until he slips unconscious again.
"Got anything you like when you're sick? Soup, ginger ale…" Anna knows Carter hasn't eaten much of anything in at least 12 hours—maybe more, since he'd been on shift—and though the old adage feed a cold feels like more of a wives' tale, she'd still feel better if he could manage a few bites of something.
Carter deflects with a listless shrug. "Don't go to any trouble."
"Oh come on. There's got to be something that makes you feel better."
He lets his eyes fall shut. "Whatever's easiest. I don't want to be a bother."
In those words, a click of a key opening a door she didn't know was locked.
"John, you're sick." She tries to keep the indignance out of her voice—she's mad, but not at him, and in his current state she doesn't know if he can tell the difference. "Who told you that being sick made you a bother?"
He smiles ruefully, eyes still closed. "No one has to. It's just true. You're all sweaty and noisy and gross. Besides, don' wanna get you sick."
Anna shouldn't fight him on this, not when he's fragile. but she can't let this go. "John, I'm a doctor. I could always get sick. Our whole job is taking care of sick people. Why are you the exception?"
He doesn't seem to know what to say to that. "I just…usually stay by myself. It's easier that way." His eyes flick downward and his pallid cheeks flush a bit. "An old habit, probably. If my mom got sick, she couldn't be with Bobby."
Bobby. A name he'd casually brought up in a passing conversation—a brother with leukemia who'd died when he was a kid.
Carter hadn't gone into much detail, but her pedes experience at CHOP gave her enough insight to sketch the rough contours: neglected, forgotten siblings lingering on the edges to collect the leftover scraps of their parents' attention. Left alone in waiting rooms to color while scary alarms sounded all around them, picked up by distant relatives while parents stayed overnight. It wasn't intentional and it wasn't anyone's fault, but she'd read the unspoken desires in those kids' faces, seen the longing glances thrown behind them as they left the hospital without their parents, wondering if it would ever be their turn for someone to choose them first.
And if and when their sibling died, these kids were left with shattered parents who didn't know what to do with the pieces they still had left. Even if those pieces were also their own children.
A picture begins to coalesce in Anna's mind, and it's far from what she'd imagined.
If Bobby had died, where had his mother been the rest of his childhood?
"So who….took care of you?" She swallows the lump in her throat and keeps her voice steady.
He shrugs. "Staff, mostly. But they were nice. Mostly hated making them come around for me when they were busy."
The caricature from earlier sharpens into a stark, sad scene—a small boy, curled up in giant bed, left alone save by an assigned household staff member who'd poke their head in from time to time. Kind enough, and with enough compassion to spend a few minutes with a lonely kid, but never enough to replace the gaping hole left behind by a mother who should have been there.
She's suddenly struck with memories from her own childhood illnesses, ones that punctured her idyllic scenes of solitude she'd remembered. Some nights, when she was too restless or uncomfortable to sleep, her mom would crawl into bed with her after getting home from work and cradle her head on her chest, singing softly until Anna drifted off. Waking up in the middle of the night to see a brother or two curled up at the foot of her bed or on the floor in her room, keeping watch like little sentries over their only sister.
And then it all makes sense. It's not just enough to for Anna to be here, because he still doesn't know her presence is even something he can ask for. Something he's not stealing away from her, but something she wants to give him. Something he's been starved of for years yet deserves to have, because everyone deserves to have it.
Then, an idea.
A silly idea. Ridiculous, even. But an idea nonetheless.
"John, give me 20 minutes."
"Where you goin'?" Anna tries to ignore the longing look in his eyes. She's torn, and almost abandons her plans to stay with him.
But if this works, it'll be worth it.
"To get something that'll make you feel better."
Even though she barely visits more than once a month, Anna moves through the little Italian corner store by her apartment by heart. The storm's rendered it nearly empty of patrons, so she's able to dart up and down aisles in record time. Carrots, onions, a rotisserie chicken—sorry Nonna—broth, a few herbs, and little tiny pieces of pasta that resembled stars.
Once she's gathered her ingredients, she races to the front, then bounces on the balls of her feet as the elderly cashier rings up each item, willing him to check out even the tiniest bit faster.
"What's the rush, mi cara?" The elderly gentleman holds up a hand, as if gesturing for her to slow down. "The storm will be here for a long while. Take your time. Relax."
Anna forces herself still. "Sorry. My…friend's home sick. Don't want to leave him too long."
Despite her attempt at cover, the cashier's eyebrows raise, and he flashes her a knowing smile. "Of course. Don't want to keep him waiting."
She flashes a tight smile and nods.
Once it's all tucked away in a brown paper bag, Anna rushes back as fast as she can without slipping on the icy sidewalk, scoots up her icy stairs, and makes it back in 18 minutes to find Carter asleep again.
Anna considers letting him sleep, but a promise is a promise, and it matters to her that he knows she really wasn't gone long, so she gently shakes him awake. "Hey," she whispers softly, smiling as he blinks awake again. "I'm back." She squeezes his hand, and he limply squeezes back.
"You're back," he repeats, a small, sleepy smile on his face.
"Sleep. I'm going to make you something."
20 minutes later, Anna hopes what she's concocting on her hot plate won't make Carter sicker.
If only her mother could see her now.
All the years the women in her family had tried to push Anna toward domestic pursuits, to no avail, when all it would've taken to bring out this side of her was the saddest sick boy in Chicago.
But the Del Amico women may end up with the last laugh, because Anna now wishes she had paid a little better attention in the kitchen growing up. Her chopping was slow and sloppy, and she somehow manages to get as many of the ingredients on the counter as she does in the pot. With some luck, she manages not to burn the vegetables before the blending stage.
Which brings up an important challenge—she doesn't have a blender (one that works, anyways) but she makes good use of a potato masher, upper arm strength, and a few bowls from her extensive collection to get the soup to a passably smooth consistency.
The pastina is another problem. At first, Anna didn't think she'd put in enough. Then there was somehow too much, and she had to add more broth, and then it disappeared again.
After three rounds of this, Anna gives up and moves to shred the chicken, a task that seems nearly impossible to screw up. Partway through, she sees Carter propping himself on one elbow on her mattress, peering at her in the the way a child might examine an exotic animal at the zoo.
"Go back to sleep, Carter," she calls, in the most no-nonsense voice she can muster. "I'll be out soon."
He complies, but she still sees him peeking from behind his blankets and has to bite back a smile.
Half an hour later, she's got something passably resembling something from her grandmother's kitchen: blended carrots, celery, onions, and garlic, flecked through with soft pastina and shredded chicken. At the very least, it smells delicious. She scoops a small portion of it into a bowl and brings it Carter's side, and he sits up to peer at it.
"Italian Penicillin." Anna's suddenly overcome with a wave of bashfulness—this is too much, this is stupid, this is way too much, I don’t even know if he likes this—and she's grateful Carter's looking at the bowl instead of her flushed cheeks. "My Nonna's recipe. Probably not as good as how she makes it, but it always made me feel better."
Carter turns his big brown eyes to her. "You….made me soup?"
She tells herself his eyes are shining with sickness instead of tears as he gazes at the bowl in front of him. Because the alternative means that this simple bowl of soup means far too much to a boy who grew up with everything and yet not enough of what mattered.
There's a tear pearling up in the corner of Carter's eye, and she swipes it away with her thumb. He turns to look at her and slowly, tenderly, slips his arms around her, pulling her into him and burying his face into her shoulder.
"Thank you." He whispers. "You didn't have to do that."
Yes, I did, she thinks, feeling his fever-frail body against her own."I wanted to," she says instead, wrapping her free hand around the back of his head.
Whatever's in the soup must have been magic, because he eats two bowls of it without a single comment from Anna. During the first bowl, there were several times she had to hold it for him. His coughing fits made cooling on each bite a Herculean task, so despite his desire to do it himself, he eventually acquiesced and let her do it for him before lifting the spoon to his lips.
By the end of the second bowl, he can hold it himself and he's got a little color back in his cheeks, and he's smiling more, even as his eyes grow heavy again.
Dusk comes earlier these days, and Anna lights a couple candles to brighten up the room. The flames dance in the darkness, casting soft shadows on the walls.
The wind's picked up and increased the drafts, and Anna's still worried Carter isn't warm enough, so she drags the space heater closer and takes it upon herself to share body heat with him.
Carter, none too opposed to this plan, snuggles up with his head in her lap. She rubs his circles on his back, plays with his hair, softly traces her fingers over the fever-warmed skin of his neck.
"Bein' sick with you….it's kinda nice,” he murmurs, eyes half-closed. “Didn' know it could be this nice."
"It can be nice." Anna loops her arms around his shoulders. "But don't get too used to it. I need you healthy."
"Oh, I'm sure you do." His voice still crackles, but there's a lightness to it that's finally back, and it warms Anna down to her toes. On the radio, the weather forecaster says to expect the ice to continue for several more days with El and road closures continuing into tomorrow.
"Guess you're stuck with me a couple more days, huh?" His tone is teasing, but knowing what she knows now, Anna can see the unsaid questions lingering in his eyes.
Thank you. I love you. You don't mind I'm here, right?
"I guess you are." She hugs him closer, and he rolls to bury his face in her sweatshirt. "I will need to do one thing, though?"
"What's that?" His voice is muffled into her shirt.
"Call my mom. If we're stuck here together, I'm gonna need more soup recipes."
She feels him smile against her, and she pulls his head closer.
I'll take care of you. You're safe with me. I love you.