The Doctor

Alec's attending had finally signed off on him being released and whilst he knew he should call home and ask for a lift he didn't think it was necessary so he just called a cab.

Outwardly it didn't look like anything had changed - he was still the same old Alec - but inwardly? Everything had changed. He'd coughed up a massive amount of cancerous tissue for God's sake; there was no ignoring or denying that.

It didn't make sense.

He wasn't special - not in that way - it wasn't possible, and yet the test results were saying the complete opposite. He knew he needed to speak to his parents, but it wasn't exactly something he was looking forward to given their reaction the last time something strange had happened.

( Not Crazy )

To wake or not to wake, that really was the question.

Alec Lee Reed chose the latter and wished that he hadn't. Everything hurt - from his jaw to chest and from his chest to his knees. He licked his lips, hissing in a slight breath as they stung from not having been moved in a while and the skin had dried up quite considerably.

He blinked his eyes, tilted his head and furrowed his brow at the drip attached to the back of his hand. Where was he? He looked up and felt his head spin ever so slightly as the white ceiling blurred in front of him but that just confirmed it.

He was in hospital.

Alec closed his eyes briefly and inhaled a slow breath, backtracking over the events that had happened before. A hand moved to his chest where fingers curled and tips pressed inwards as Alec sought out the pain that had been there before, but it was absent. He didn't have the same ache everytime he breathed in and breathed out, it made no sense.

What happened?

After being dropped off Alec had gone straight to bed where he had stayed for several hours before he'd finally woken up to a chest ripping and body shaking cough. This time it felt different, more intense, and he couldn't ignore the way in which his chest along with his stomach had started to burn.

It was with a blind fumbling and staggered run that Alec barely made it to the bathroom, immediately doubling over the nearby sink to grip at the porcelain until his knuckles were the same shade of white.

Alec tasted salt, felt his stomach give, and then grimaced as his entire body shook in the lead up what happened next.

( Not Pretty )

( Taking A Sample )

As if it wasn't bad enough being told to take a couple days off work, Alec had been told to wait until a Nurse Daniels could give him a lift home. Pfft, lift home, what did he need that for? Never-mind the fact he'd keeled over right in front of everybody, split open his eyebrow, and proceeded to babble nonsensical stuff at the perturbed intern that had picked him up.

He was never living this down.

Currently he was sat in one of uncomfortable plastic chairs in the general waiting area, keeping his eyes focused on something other than the people staring at him. What? Didn't they have something better to do than stare at the doctor with a bruise on his face?

Hopefully Nurse Daniels would be finishing shortly and Alec could do his best to sweet talk her out of taking him home like some kind of sick child. He'd never been taken home sick in his life, he wasn't about to start now. Stubborn? Oh hell yes.

( Muffled )

( Regular Court Jester )

( Gonna Be Okay? )

Alec's chest felt like it was on fire - like a million and one fire ants were trying to eat him alive from the inside out. He couldn't breathe, couldn't stop the painful shudders racking his already fragile frame, and he was damn sure he wasn't supposed to be coughing blood.

Jesus Christ.

It was a mistake to go into work - to try and do his shift, he should have listened to Toby when he'd told Alec to go back to bed. Alec muffled another cough and hissed in a slow painful breath, wondering if it was normal to feel like your ribs were broken when they weren't.

It was weird: the worst his health got, the better his cancer patient seemed to get.

Not that Alec was able to put two and two together to make four let alone stay upright for very long. He missed the door he was reaching for by an inch and hissed in another breath as he hit the ground, blinking his eyes as the hall blurred and the worried voices of his co-workers were drowned out by the rushing of blood in his ears.

It felt like dying.

Alec warred against the overwhelming suffocating sensation of being smothered by an unseen force until it got too much and the doctor's eyes fluttered as he fought the battle for consciousness. It wasn't enough and eventually he lost the war, slipping into blackness, pain ebbing away as he did so.

The only fortunate thing about this whole thing was where Alec had fallen, he was in good hands.

The thing about Alec was he never got sick, ever. He'd always been a healthy kid with a strong constitution, it was rare for anything to knock him for six and take the wind out of his sails.

The problem was that something had.

It had crept up on him when he least expected it to and he'd spent the last four hours of his shift muffling a cough. He'd brushed aside a few concerned looks from the nurses and just reassured them that it was nothing to worry about, he was clearly working too many hours. Nothing to do with the fact his right hand had tingled for a long time after touching his cancer patient this evening. It was just weird that was all.

Alec scrubbed at his hair and cleared his throat, trying to dislodge the apparent lump at the back of it. He couldn't be sick, he just couldn't because he had already signed himself up for some overtime on the weekend.

He turned on his heel and stopped by his cancer patient's room, picking up his chart to look over the nurse's comments. Huh, he wasn't doing too badly. Alec had been expecting something worse. He slid the chart back and looked up at his patient, muffling another cough into his hand as the man himself appeared to be sleeping peacefully for the first time in a long while.

Least somebody was doing well even if Alec hadn't expected the best from this particular patient.

Alec turned and left the room, coughing into his hand. If this kept up then he was going to have to leave the hospital, it wouldn't do anyone any good for him to be spreading germs around already sick people. He'd see how he felt in an hour, if no better he'd go home, but hopefully it would just pass.

If only his hand would stop tingling.