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It had a slow start.
At first it was the hiccups, like Bob had, except a lot raspier and drier and overall weirder.
"Jack, you have-a the hiccups. Do you, want the cigarette? It help me, when I have-a the hiccups. But there is no fire. You must ask somebody with it."
"No, it's fine, Bob. I'm fine. Keep your cigarettes."
Then the sore throat, which made Zack start hesitating to share smokes with him.
"I don't want to catch the same thing you caught—but fat chance, I probably already have either way, living in this enclosed space with you."
"Great. Since it's such a futile effort...from now on I'll be sure to angle myself in your general direction, Zack."
Somehow neither Zack or Bob ended up catching what he had, small miracle, and it became clear after the heavy coughing started. It triggered at random in short, abrupt fits, and left him gasping for breath after.
"You? Alright? You sure don't look alright."
"Zack is right, Jack. Your look is as pale as the ghost!"
"Somehow I really doubt that's hyperbole."
He doesn't know if it is the cigarettes (How young is he? Eligible for respiratory problems yet?) or his environment (There's probably dust palaces in this prison no one's touched in 40 years).
He's sick. With a tremendous cold.
There was concern. He'd went and begged one of the guards on patrol, got lozenges from the infirmary, medicine too.
The lozenges, tangy and lemon flavoured as they were, didn't help; but the pills did. A lot.
And maybe that was the end of it because he's completely fine for a few days, but then a week later he's sitting there playing cards with Bob when he doubles over and, uncontrollably, hacks out at least half a lung and a gallon worth of spittle.
And keeps going until he blacks out. He thinks he's the first person in the world to manage that from a cold.
He comes to his senses like he just got beamed back to earth, after what feels like an hour later, groggy and irritated. His eyes are wet, his face is burning, and everything is blurry.
He faintly registers two bodies kneeling over him. Fingers prodding at his face. His neck. Only then does he realize he's laying flat on the floor.
"I don't know how to do the heart recitation, Zack! We must call the hospital!"
"It's resuscitation. And uh, he's still breathing. I'll go get the guard."
"Jack! Jack! You must wake up! "
"Bob, if you scream in his ear like that he's going to come up deaf!"
He suffocates through half a minute more of hearing frantic maneuvering around him, eventually opening his eyes. He grabs at the bunk bed behind him for purchase. But accidentally headbutts Zack in the process of sitting up. Zack reflexively curses at him, but it's with a relieved tone that somehow makes him feel better instead of worse.
They help him up to a bed, so he's at least rigidly supine somewhere softer. Bob fusses over stuffing a pillow under his head, something about elevating(alleviating?) the pressure. Sounded like nonsense, but admittedly, it helped. He's still faint, but he feels less like engaging the technicolor yawn.
When they're done, Zack's sitting on the edge of the bed, Bob as well. Zack leans over him. Almost claustrophobic.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Ugh. Enough bullshit, Zack."
"Come on."
"Three? Five. Nine...two. Fuck this. You guys call the guard yet?" His voice is scratchy. He wheezes his sentences. In hindsight, he really should've saved some of those useless lozenges.
"No, don't know where he is. Think he's on break. Yelled as loud as I could. No response." Zack shrugs, but it's more helpless, frustrated, than nonchalant.
"We do not know where he is, Jack. The man, he is gone! Are you good, okay? How are you feeling?" Bob gestures more when he's nervous. The man might as well be a conductor with what he's doing now. He's never had so many fingers referring to him at once.
"I'm okay. Don't worry about it." He refrains from telling Bob his entire mouth feels like it went to hell and back. Wouldn't do him any good. "How long I was out?"
"Maybe five or six minutes. But you were coughing like hell before." Zack's eyes are pitifully wide.
He soaks up the expression—or as much of it as he can without hurting his eyes from the light. Not too often he gets to see Zack being anything but angry or languid.
"Five or six minutes? Felt like an hour."
"That doesn't sound good."
"You should rest, Jack. Until the guard is back." Bob seems to have an eureka moment, and he watches him curiously, Bob's fumbling for his notebook.
"Here, yes, see?" Bob shuffles through a few pages, his eyes lighting up when he finds the one, and clears his throat. "There is no rest for the wicked."
Unwittingly, he cracks a lopsided smile. Zack snickers. Bob's nodding at him like there's a deep lesson to be learned, his face serious and determined.
It's so absurd, so horrible that for some reason, his addled brain ties up his loose ends by making him laugh.
"Bob, what the fuck?" He's shaking. He sounds hysterical.
He laughs so hard he forgets what he was laughing about in the first place, then laughs again after Bob repeats himself.
"You are not the wicked, Jack!" Bob sounds so earnest it just cracks him up all over again. In the corner of his eye he sees Zack grinning, and suddenly he's warm all over.
"I—I know." He's still snickering. None of that was even funny. His throat aches. But he's still snickering. "Jesus. Bob. Don't make me relapse. I don't need that."
"Yes, yes. Rest, Jack. Rest assured. No repeat what happened just now." Bob's waving his hands around again. Zack seems to take the cue as well, standing up and going to look back outside the bars.
"I would yell again, but I think it's better for you to just wait until the guy's back in our sight. Doubt he'd come running even if he heard me anyway."
"I want water." He really does.
"Yeah, thought so. Our tap's broken."
"Shit."
"Ah! There is water here, Jack." Bob's holding a senile grey tin cup, triumphant.
"Bob, he can't drink that. It's from this morning. I used that to soak my toothbrush." Zack replies.
"Oh."
He really doesn't care what Zack's done with the water. "You know what? Give me that." He extends his arm.
Bob takes the dented tin cup and places it in his palm, but Zack lifts it out of his hand, and puts it back where it was on the nightstand. "You can't be serious."
"You win some, you lose some, Zack. Stick your neck out. Take risks. I'm gonna die if my mouth isn't hydrated within five seconds." He's exaggerating, but he thinks he really isn't far from the truth.
Zack retorts. "Then stop talking. Conserve your moisture."
"Get water from the next ward."
"They're gonna piss in it."
"Tell them it's for me. They know me. They're friendly with me."
"In your delusional head."
They have a stubborn stare-down, the kind that shouldn't happen between a sick person and a healthy one. Zack is craning his head down to look at him, while he's angling himself up to look back.
He blinks. Zack doesn't. He blinks again. Zack blinks this time. He blinks twice. Zack does him one better, and blinks thrice. He's about to start fluttering his eyelashes violently when Bob interrupts them.
"Zack! The guard is back, there!" Bob's pointing outside the cell. Zack whips his head over, breaking the spell, and follows Bob to where he's standing, beside the bars.
Shame he can't see. He just stays where he is unmoving on the bed, pathetically. Missing the action isn't something he's used to.
Bob starts shouting. "Hello! My friend here, he is sick! He must go to doctor! Please, bring him!" Zack follows suit. "Our tap's broken! We're thirsty! You gotta get someone to fix it!"
He feels like shouting too to complete the set, but promptly lets his conscience advise him against it. All he tries for is something fragile between a grunt and a whimper. He doesn't think he'd be able to get any words in edgewise anyway.
"What's the matter in there? Could've heard you fellas from a mile away." He recognizes that guard's voice. Different one from earlier. So it was a break and a shift change.
He hears footsteps, heavy uniform boot-wearing ones, from outside the cell. Just in time, he feels like he's slipping into unconsciousness again. It's like wading into solid water.
At least I'll make for a convincing case, he thinks deliriously. Hope I don't get dragged on the floor all the way there.
Just before he closes his eyes, he realizes he thinks it's going to be alright. He realizes that was a thought he's never fully believed until now.
He barely registers Zack's arms lifting him. He can imagine Bob's frantic voice. So they were carrying him out the cell.
He realizes it's going to be alright, with them around.
(And if he feels an aborted kiss pressed to the side of his neck and a suspicious amount of facial hair, he doesn't say anything, doesn't even flinch—not until he's compos mentis an hour later in the infirmary, where he raises a hand and touches where it landed.)