Not One Single Pneumonia
Plush-soft, plotless Cal/Rafie. Sickfic but not snzfic (my apologies). Occurs pretty early in their relationship, Cal’s Spanish is still elementary. A chest infection that spirals out of a cold he technically caught from Rafie. (Quick reminder of what they look like bc I almost forgot how much I love this image.)
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There’s always seemed to him something vaguely... presumptuous, almost, about sitting on these examination tables at doctor’s offices. A bit like assuming a position on a bed when you didn’t strictly need to be laying down.
The RN introduced himself but Cal was too preoccupied trying not to cough too much to have caught his name when he’d said it. He scribbles against a clipboard as Cal speaks.
“It was a cold last week but now I’m feeling worse. Um, obviously the coughing. It’s been keeping me from falling asleep, or it wakes me up. I feel as if I’m perpetually a little out of breath, because it’s kind of preventing me from being able to breathe in very deeply? I’ve also been feverish for the past few days.”
When his blood pressure is taken he mentally notes that it’s high for him, and as his vitals are relayed he realizes how pervasively whatever this is has affected him. He is unspeakably tired. When he’d looked in the mirror this morning and saw the intensity of the shadows around his eyes, he was reminded of a semester-long bout of very bad insomnia and Malik once saying, “Cal you look like a sad little raccoon.” He said it to himself this morning.
He shivers again as the nurse takes his temperature, announces it as “One oh two point nine. You said you’ve been feverish for multiple days now?”
“Yes, since maybe… Thursday or Friday, I think. I’m not sure how high it was then, it tends to climb at night, I wasn’t really keeping track of my temperature. The fever in and of itself actually escaped my concern, because I tend to spike a high fever whenever I’m sick at all. I get them routinely with colds and such.”
“I see, okay.”
“Um…” Cal says, having trouble remembering the question, or whether there ever was one. “I’m rambling, but anyway, I passed the point where I felt like—” he has to stop speaking to start coughing again, desperately into his elbow, wearing a sweater he’d normally not wear in public because there’s a rather large saffron-colored stain on the sleeve, which he’s reminded of as he huddles into it until he can stop, finally recovering with a markedly softer voice, hardly above a whisper. “Excuse me. Um… I meant to say that I feel like I got to the point where I should have been beginning to feel better and instead I started feeling worse.”
The RN notices Cal’s hand continues to return to his chest and asks, “Are you experiencing chest pain?”
“Uh, yes, when I cough. Or… inhale—Yeah, I should have mentioned that, it slipped my mind.”
“The person who came in with you, can he speak for you? I can see you’re having trouble speaking and I don’t want you to have to repeat all that for the doctor. Would you want me to invite him back here?”
“Oh, that’s really kind of you… yes, he’s my partner and I would really appreciate that,” Cal says, quietly and with some difficulty, and he might go on further but the nurse cuts him off.
“Alright, I’ll go get him. Save your breath, Mr. Chowdhury, you’ll need it.”
“Thank you so much.”
Rafie appears in the doorway a couple minutes later and Cal could swear the man is glowing as he stands there, a knight in shining armor come to save him from the task of repeating his symptoms.
“It was so nice of him to—”
“Shhh, papi chulo,” Rafael says, trailing a hand over Cal’s mouth. “The nurse said tell you to stop talking.”
* * *
Their trip to the CVS by their place must be endured immediately afterwards, and a simple chore has perhaps never felt quite as unendurable to Cal, who is so woozy as he stands there in the pharmacy line with Rafael that he’s swaying precariously on his feet, and says, “Oh shit,” just as Rafael’s arm tightens around him.
“Whoa, papi… let me pick up your medicines. I’m going to bring you back to the car and you can wait there.”
He does not have the energy or the desire to protest, just squints at Rafie with a dopey smile as he leads him back to the parking lot.
In the car Cal pulls out his phone and zones out for a couple minutes as he scrolls up and down on the Mayoclinic page for viral pneumonia.
He’s read this already, what he should do is call Deepa, that would be a smart thing to do right now, because he’s running out of energy to make arrangements, and potentially running out of voice to give explanations. It rings thrice before she picks up, during which time Cal has settled his cheek against the window, an action he doesn’t feel fully in control of, and maybe he wasn’t expecting her to answer because when she does he startles like he’s jerking awake from almost-sleep, sitting fully up, vaguely dizzy from the sudden movement.
“Hi Deepa, sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I’m still not feeling well enough to hold class and in fact I uh, just got out of urgent care with a diagnosis of pneumonia. I’m—”
“Oh no, Dr. Chowdhury! Are you okay??”
“Yeah to be—” he begins, with an inadvisably deep inhale that jettisons him into a rough fit, pressing the phone into his shoulder as his sweater weathers another series of productive coughs, taking a wheezy inhale as he catches his breath. There’s a voice he’s used to using, in professional contexts, and he realizes now for the first time it puts more strain on his vocal chords than his non-professional speaking voice does.
“Aww you sound awful.”
“Oh I know,” he says, with an approximation of a laugh that rattles in his chest and ends in an almost cough he manages to subdue. “To be clear I should be able to bounce back from this in maybe a week or so. But I’ll be totally honest with you, Deepa; right now I don’t even feel up to composing an email. I was going to ask if you could send one out on my behalf to cancel class and just explain what’s going on. Ask students to email you instead of me if they need anything.”
“Of course, absolutely. I’ll talk to the other TAs but I think let’s plan for this week at least? And you can just let me know how you’re feeling over the weekend in case you need more time and maybe we can regroup then,” she says.
“Yes, absolutely, that’s perfect. You have no idea how much of a weight off my shoulders—” he says, before he has to cough more, returning to her afterward with a winded, “Gosh I’m sorry, I hardly have the breath necessary to properly thank you.”
“It’s okay Dr. Chowdhury, it’s really no problem at all.”
“I’ll let you know in a few days how I’m feeling and hopefully by then I’ll have a better plan of what I’m gonna do about missing as much material as this will be,” Cal says, as Rafael returns, sliding back into the driver’s seat and handing Cal a brown paper bag.
“Okay sounds good. Feel better! Take as much time as you need, we’ll figure it out.”
“Thank you so much.”
He hangs up and looks into the bag in his lap, fishes out three prescription bottles with directions he stares at. He can’t remember exactly what his doctor had said about dosages and times.
“That was your TA?”
“Myeah,” Cal says, articulate, rubbing at his eyes.
“She's gonna take care of things for you?”
“She is, yes.”
“Bien,” Rafie says, gathering Cal’s face in his hands and guiding him away from his halfhearted attempt to parse prescription information. “It’s okay I wrote it down—the way the doctor said to take everything. You took care of work. We got your medicine. All you have to do now is rest, mi amor, okay? It’s the only thing left on the checklist.”
The gently authoritative touch is comforting and the sense of mortal dread he’s carried around since yesterday is loosening and the light is streaming through the window and backlighting his boyfriend beautifully and Cal feels like he might cry.
“What’s wrong?”
Cal shakes his head, feeling his eyes well. “You’re so sweet that was the prettiest thing to say,” he manages, the combination of emotion and throat pain making his voice more of a squeak than anything else.
“Ohoho papiii,” Rafie chuckles, thumbing a single quick tear from Cal’s cheek.
“I’m sorry, wow,” Cal laughs hoarsely, and then needs to pull away to cough into his shoulder. “God I’m a whole train wreck today.”
“Maybe a little train wreck, it’s okay,” Rafie says, smoothing back Cal’s hair as he sniffles and wipes at his face with a sleeve.
“Okay, I’m okay,” he decides.
“Let’s get you home.”
* * *
Later Cal huddles beneath both a kantha quilt and the comforter from the bed, head in Rafie’s lap on the couch as he sleeps through multiple episodes of a plot-heavy Spanish crime drama he’ll now have no hope of following moving forward, in an oseltamivir and high-strength pain-reliever sponsored daze that barely brings down his fever but does at least lessen the pain in his lungs and throat and back from the endless coughing, and allows him a couple hours of the deep sleep he desperately needs.
He coughs himself awake finally, half-conscious but still aware of the comforting feeling of Rafael’s hand on his shoulder, holding him with a firmness that makes him feel both secure and very weak in comparison. By accident he issues a rare moan.
Rafie takes note, coos a low, soft, “Pobrecito…”
Cal shifts so he’s on his back, shivers when his limbs make contact with places of the blanket that aren’t already heated through with his febrile warmth. He blinks slowly, hesitantly breaching the surface of being officially awake. Mumbles that he doesn’t remember falling asleep, realizes he’s said this in the only one out of three languages he could have used that Rafael doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t have the energy to even think about translating it, so when Rafie responds, “Hmm?” he just shakes his head.
Rafie brushes sleep-tousled hair out of the way to lay a large palm across Cal’s forehead and whistles as if impressed by his findings. “You must have been feeling even worse than I realized, mi amor.”
“Mm?” He blinks, trying to latch on properly to what’s being said rather than letting it wash over him like the sounds from the television.
“Pneumonia, papi. In both of your lungs.”
“Yeah it’s kinda crazy,” he agrees. “Never had double pneumonia before. Never had single pneumonia before. Not one single pneumonia. Momentous occasion for me.”
“You’re a little loopy right now aren’t you?”
Cal laughs, a phlegm-ridden, chesty sound that makes him start back up with the coughing again. ‘I would love something that just knocks me out completely,’ he’d chimed in, as the doctor was writing prescriptions, and the drug cocktail obliged. It’s definitely affecting him rather strongly and he’s unsure which phenomena are from what exactly because he’s unfamiliar with the treatment and the illness alike.
Rafael says, “Ohh no, you can’t even laugh. Does it hurt? Your lungs?”
“Not unless I breathe,” he smiles.
For a while he just lies there as Rafie cradles a hot cheek with a comparatively cool palm, or lightly strokes a hand over his aching chest, both of which Cal recognizes as comfort targeted at the very source of pain. If he had the breath to do so he’d tell Rafael how nice his hands are, how much he likes their calloused toughness, how strong and steadying they feel to him right now, and he’s fond and fortunate and when combined with his fever he somehow feels lovesick for the person kind enough to be holding him even as he does so.
“You’ve been so good to me,” he rasps, feeling a need to touch Rafie’s face in return but as he currently possesses the world’s heaviest arms he’s only able to reach as high as Rafie’s chest to cling limply to his shirt like a dying man.
“Papi chulo,” Rafael says fondly, running a hand through Cal’s hair, and Cal turns his head slightly like a cat trying to provide a better angle to be pet. “You were very good to me when I was sick, it’s only fair I should be good to you.”
“Yeah but you weren’t this sick, I didn’t have to take you to urgent care. Or carry you to the car.”
“I didn’t carry you.”
“You basically did,” he struggles to say, before bringing up a crooked arm and launching into a fit of harsh, wet coughing that he tries to cut short because it actively hurts, but he gets stuck in a loop of gasping inhales that prompt still more productive spasms and it feels bottomless enough to go on forever if he isn’t careful. It has him sitting up by the end of it, petering out slowly, Rafael’s hands on his shoulder blades as he pants as shallowly as he can to catch his breath and Rafael quietly mutters a reassuring, “Bien, bien, está bien.”
He is passed a glass of water and he nods his thanks, hand shaking so badly as he holds it that he has to bring up the other hand to help.
“Hey, you should try to not talk so much, okay?” Rafie says, as Cal dizzily sinks his weight back into him, settling his head in Rafie’s lap again, cheeks feeling weird and tingly from the effort of coughing and the fact that his face is throbbing with fever.
“I know, I just want you to know it means a lot to me,” Cal says carefully, searching Rafael’s eyes, weighing the words with importance and probably helped by how slowly he has to say them.
Rafie succumbs to a gradual smile that almost looks like it pains him and says, as if in marvel, “Que linda tu actitud.”
While Cal hasn’t heard this specific phrase before, he can ascertain its general meaning as being an appreciation of his attitude, and he entertains an unfocused thought he sometimes has when he watches subtitled cinema, or provides someone an approximated translation from Hindi to English or vice versa — about how reordering a sentence never seemed to keep its sentiment intact. The way Rafie said it was all the translation needed.
He offers a half smile, and a quiet, “Gracias,” which is the last thing he says before Rafael shushes him, and as if this brief bout of wakefulness was something strenuous and energy-depleting, he falls asleep again for another blissfully uninterrupted, unknowable amount of time.
