but who's gonna push my wheelchair around when i get sick?

[retroviridae]

[ Two officers shot in local standoff following raid on drug compound. That had been the headline, nonspecific. And yet—"someone just walked over my grave" was how superstitious idiots would probably phrase the feeling of cold dread that had washed over William as he watched the words scroll across the bottom of the screen, as the footage cut to a reporter standing in front of police tape and a mess of red and blue light. Ambulances, police cars. He knew. He didn't know how, but he knew.

His hands ached with the tension of his grip on the Volvo's hard steering wheel as he made the drive to the place—taken to Robert Fleitcher Memorial Hospital, the news had said, God only knew how long ago. There was a short argument with the bitch at the front desk before the protected information he already knew was finally disclosed.

Albert had been shot. In the side and the thigh, and the uneducated receptionist wasn't able to give him the crucial specifics that might give him an idea as to whether or not he would be attending a funeral or a hospital visit. Still in surgery. Another two hours, added to the four he'd already been on the table long before William knew.

His name was listed as next of kin, as he expected. Not like there was anyone else. It took him another hour after the conclusion of the operation to come into consciousness, an hour in which all William could do was stare at the IV line and the bloody drain tubing and the readings on the screen behind him while trying to assemble his mind into something coherent.

At last Albert opened his eyes, lifted his head. All at once the fear gave way to fury—how dare he? William had told him this was a horrid idea. ]

You fucking idiot.

Comments

[viralgod]

[ As soon as the bullets had pierced his flesh, he had known it was bad. The pain was so white hot and blinding that he'd only managed a few more steps to some mild cover before he went down. Gunshots rang out around him, and he recalled Chris Redfield yelling his name as blood began to pool around him. He'd tried—futilely—to stem the bleeding, but it was too much. He had blacked out with cold images of death creeping into his mind.

When he began to regain consciousness he wasn't sure how long it had been or what had happened. The sterile smell of the hospital room and the soft beeping of monitors were almost comforting. He was still in pain, but it wasn't anything like what he'd felt when he was first wounded.

He was still groggy when he first opened his eyes, but not too groggy to recognize William sitting at his bedside, wearing an expression that would make a Cerberus turn tail and run.

You fucking idiot.

Wonderful.

Wesker felt around at his side and found the call button, pressing it to summon a nurse. The response was surprisingly prompt. She was in the doorway within moments. ]

Morphine for me and a Xanax for him, please.

[ He nodded his head in the direction of the angry William Birkin for emphasis. ]

[retroviridae]

I don't need Xanax. I'm perfectly calm given the situation at hand. [ His voice came out as a vitriol-filled snarl in the nurse's direction. ] Just bring the morphine. Quickly.

[ Wesker was in pain, enough to request a substance that could, for some, alter consciousness in the presence of others. That bad. William had never been shot—had never even broken a bone, for that matter—but he could imagine enough to know that whatever his closest friend was feeling was probably beyond his imagining. And being felt by Albert, who had already come very close to death, judging by the location of the twin gunshot wounds and the bag of blood hanging from the IV hook. The thought made him vaguely nauseous.

He shoved his faintly trembling hands into the pockets of his lab coat, clenching ethidium bromide stained fingertips into tight fists at his sides to attempt to still them as he returned his gaze to her patient. The door closed behind him. Of course he'd seen Wesker sick before, as long as they'd known each other, but he'd never looked like this. Like shit, quite simply: his hair had come free of the usual gel or whatever it was he used, there was dust on one cheek (where his head had hit the ground, maybe), his skin was ghostly pale and his thin lips weren't much better. He'd lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood, enough to probably have been in hypovolemic shock by the time the ambulance arrived. ]

I told you. I told you to stay in the lab. I said this would happen.

[ There was none of the usual smug vindication he was used to feeling when right—he didn't want to have been right about a nightmare scenario. ]

[viralgod]

[ The nurse gave William an irritated look, but left to retrieve morphine for Albert without commenting.

Even though the pain wasn't as bad as when he'd first been injured, it was still bad enough for Albert to care nothing about the state morphine would leave his mind in if it meant taking the edge off. The effects were only temporary, and the relief would be well worth it. He tolerated pain well, but this? This was more than he could handle.

He felt like shit and probably looked the part. For now, he couldn't bring himself to care. The fact that he had survived was enough for him. ]

I remember.

[ William had made his stance very clear. Being inexperienced with—and unsuited for—combat himself, Albert didn't expect him to understand. It was dangerous work, but things like this weren't a frequent occurrence. At least, not for people who were as good at the job as he was. ]

Can we do this some other time, William?

[ His voice was scratchy, entirely unlike his usual smooth tone. Wesker barely recognized it as his own. ]

[retroviridae]

[ God, he even sounded horrible. Had he been screaming? The footage of wounded soldiers in Vietnam William remembered his parents watching in his boyhood came to mind. Albert, in that state. Probably. Probably he had, even if it was an impossible concept to reconcile with the cool exterior of the man he knew. And being intubated for a surgery that long likely hadn't helped, either. It was all too much to think about.

And here was Albert, acting like he was hysterical for being rightfully upset about this. He didn't wish to press him too much in his current state, but there was still anger that had to be vented. Had to. ]

Do you know how I found out?

[ William raked a trembling hand through his bangs. ]

The local news. I didn't know if you were alive until I got here.

[ I'm worth more than that. You owe me more than that. ]

[viralgod]

[ That information bothered him a bit. As his emergency contact, William should have been notified immediately and given the details of his condition. When he was feeling up to it, Albert would have to find out why that wasn't done. ]

Someone should have called you. If not from the department, then the hospital.

[ William was entirely justified in being angry about that. ]

How long have I been out?

[ His sense of time was completely disrupted. Had it been hours? More than a day? Surely not longer, but he really didn't know. ]

[retroviridae]

[ Yeah, should have, William almost said, but he managed to keep the comment at bay. That much wasn't Albert's fault. Leaving the laboratory, joining S.T.A.R.S., not listening to him—those, on the other hand, were. It was as though after this many years Wesker still maintained the belief that his death was his business alone, and that was a difficult notion for him to stomach. ]

Close to eight hours. You lost enough blood to go into shock, and the surgery lasted six.

[ It was an estimate, another unbearable fact about this whole situation. William still had no way to know the exact details or when in the tactical operation this had taken place. All the information they'd been able to give him was when the ambulance arrived and when the surgery began. ]

You were shot in two places. One of the bullets hit your femoral artery.

[ To the letter what he had feared when the receptionist dryly informed him that 'Captain Wesker was shot in the leg', as though that did anything at all to narrow it down where the extent of the injury was concerned. ]

[viralgod]

[ Eight hours... a long time, but it could have been worse. He wondered how long he'd been down at the scene, but he'd have to ask his team about that.

The fact that his femoral artery was hit explained a lot; the rapid blood loss, why he wasn't able to stop the bleeding. Things were a little blurry in his mind, but he remembered the pool of his own blood quite clearly. It was something he would never forget. ]

I'm not surprised. I was losing blood fast.

[ The nurse soon returned with his morphine. As she pushed the medication into his IV, a sensation of warmth washed over his body, dulling the pain into something he could tolerate. It dulled his mind too, but that was fine. ]

Thank you.

wesker: gets shot | birkin: dont. do that

[retroviridae]

[ William fell silent, composing his features into something passably neutral for the duration of the woman's brief visit. This was a conversation that was meant to be had privately, an open wound he didn't want strangers gawking at like a car accident on the freeway. The door shut behind her; he his pale eyes narrowed, brows knit again. ]

You never should have been shot. You're lucky you're not dead— [ —and so was he— ] You should have been wearing Kevlar. Behind cover. You're not careless.

[ None of this would have happened if he had just stayed in the lab, if he hadn't abandoned their work for some left-field "opportunity" like he did. He wouldn't be receiving morphine and another blood transfusion in a hospital bed at some shitty county hospital and William wouldn't be fighting to keep himself from yelling or being sick in the emesis basin intended for the patient. ]

How did this happen? Albert?

He did it on purpose just to upset William.

[viralgod]

I was wearing a vest.

[ For all the good it had done him. Surely William didn't really think he would go into a situation like that without one. That wouldn't just be careless; it would be downright stupid. ]

That's a good question.

[ And one he wasn't sure he knew the answer to. His team was very competent in the field, and until that moment, everything had gone exactly according to plan. ]

The building was swept and secured...

[ He drifted off into thought. Had someone screwed up, or had the shooters really managed to hide themselves that well? ]

[retroviridae]

[ It was around 0600 that Wesker began to stir; it was the sound of a soft, half-conscious moan that first pulled William out of the familiar trance of hyperfocus on his work. He looked up for the first time in a good two hours and cold dread immediately surged over him: Albert looked worse, much worse. He was pale, almost as colorless as he'd been when he first arrived at the hospital, with sweat beading on his forehead. Birkin's eyes immediately flickered to the heart monitor above the headboard: 132 beats per minute. Blood pressure subnormal.

Sepsis. Everything that could possibly fucking go wrong in this situation was going wrong. How hadn't they cleaned his wounds properly? How had anything been contaminated when both wounds had been covered by fabric while he was in that filthy shack? William's heart, too, raced. He got up quickly, leaned over the bed and touched the back of his hand to his friend's clammy forehead despite already knowing what he would feel. He was running a fever, a high one.

Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

William gave his shoulder a shake. ]

Albert. Get up. I'm getting a nurse.

[viralgod]

[ He heard his name distantly and felt the hand on his shoulder. The room felt cold. Why was it so cold? Even with a blanket covering him up to his neck, the room still felt like it was freezing.

Wesker shivered. It felt like it took too long to open his eyes, and when he did, he had the vague sense that the room was moving. That wasn't possible, but no amount of telling himself that made the sensation go away. ]

William...

[ His voice was groggy—distant. Something was very wrong, but he couldn't sort through his thoughts to put a name to it. What had William said to him? A nurse...

Now that it had started, the shivering wouldn't stop. He needed another blanket or two or three. Warmed blankets that would keep away the chill and let him be still. ]

This is wrong.

[ He still couldn't find the word for what this was, but he knew it wasn't normal. ]

[retroviridae]

I know. I know. You're septic.

[ William raked a hand through his bangs, uttered a breathless 'fuck'. ]

Stay there.

[ A stupid thing to say, but the only thing he could think of to say. Where the fuck else was he going to go with two gunshot wounds and blood poisoning?

He wasted no more time—just made a dash down the hall, leaving the door open behind him. The nurses took him seriously, at least, as they damn well should have considering the vital signs he repeated back to them. He quickly found himself all but pushed to the far wall of the room as the figures in scrubs crowded the man in the bed: within the first few seconds he was started on oxygen, given an injection of what he assumed to probably be norepinephrine. Some kind of antibiotic went into his IV. It was every bit as serious as he'd read it as being.

William's gaze flitted back and forth from the multiple pairs of hands at work and the numbers on the LCD screens above them. His pulse was worse; his blood pressure began to tick upwards as his blood vessels constricted but remained low.

And there was nothing he could do. Nothing. He stood there, hands damp and shaking at his sides, nauseous with stress and fear. ]

[viralgod]

[ Septic. That was the word he had been looking for. Something must have gone wrong during the surgery, or something from the building had gotten into one of his wounds. He tried to think of anything he might have noticed, either at the site or when he'd woken up in the hospital, but trying to think coherently was like trying to run in deep mud.

Death. You're going to die. That was the only thought that stood out to him, and it only made things worse. His heart raced. It felt hard to breathe.

Then there were several people in scrubs standing around him—working to stabilize him. Wesker couldn't keep up with everything they were doing, but the oxygen mask... there was some relief in that. His breathing was still rapid, but at least it felt productive.

He caught the word "fever" and realized that was why he felt so cold. His temperature must have been dangerously high. Instead of the warmth of more blankets, he dreaded the thought that they might need to cool him down. ]

[retroviridae]

[ He wanted to reach out, to place a hand on his shoulder or... or something, anything that might ground his friend in an ocean of unfamiliar faces, in the panic of the situation, which was no doubt distorted by the fever he was running. How much of it was he accurately perceiving? Did he feel fear, or was he too far gone?

There were no answers. He wasn't able to get close enough without interfering to tell. They started him on some kind of antipyretic, from what William overheard. One of the orderlies brought an ice pack for his forehead, another one for his wrist. His blood pressure was rising as the norepinephrine worked, but it was still firmly within the realm of hypotension. His heart rate still hadn't moved.

I should have noticed earlier. I should have been watching him the whole time. They're going to have to bring him to the ICU. Probably, maybe. It was hard to think rationally, for once in William's life.

At least one of the nurses was talking to him now: announcing what they were doing, in a tone of voice just a hair more sophisticated than one might use with a child:

Albert, you have to stay with us, okay?

Not Captain, as it had been earlier, when he was lucid. That sent another wave of foreboding through him. ]

[viralgod]

[ Wesker tried to push the ice packs away. Somewhere, deep down, he knew he needed them, but he didn't want them. To him, the room felt ridiculously cold already—like he was lying outside on a winter night.

It didn't matter. Each time he pushed them away, someone put them back.

He heard one of the nurses say his name, and he was able to make eye contact—to focus on her. Though right now, he didn't feel much like Albert Wesker. It seemed like that person was far away—had left him to deal with this alone. ]

[retroviridae]

[ He was struggling with them now. Not good, but at least he had the strength to do so. His distress, however, twisted deep at William's core, horribly contagious. Against all logic, he almost wanted them to stop—even despite a more cerebral knowledge of the life-saving nature of the measures his friend was currently protesting.

He finally broke from his paralyzed state and dared to step forward into the throng of blue-clad bodies, careful to approach from the foot of the bed as to stay reasonably out of the way, lest they tell him to leave entirely. For lack of anything else to do William reached down and rested a trembling hand on his calf from atop the thin cotton hospital blanket. ]

You can't fight them, Albert. They have to bring down your fever.

[viralgod]

[ That was a voice that he recognized—even felt comforted by. William. He turned his attention away from the people in scrubs, focusing on his old friend instead. William was still here. It seemed like a part of himself had abandoned him, but William hadn't.

He calmed a little and stopped trying to push away the ice packs. It was uncomfortable having them anywhere near him, but some part of him was aware that William was being reasonable.

His shivering was too severe for him to even notice the trembling in his friend's hand. He was grateful for the touch. ]

Dying... [ His voice was muffled by the oxygen mask. ] I'm dying.

[retroviridae]

How are you feeling?

[ A muted, but not mumbled question in Wesker's direction. The sun had begun to come through the cracks in the blinds, its warm bright light a cruel instrument against unrested, dark-circled eyes. It had been impossible to sleep, a laughable idea; his body was still flooded with the various neurotransmitters associated with intense, acute stress anyway. William's hands had long since stopped shaking, but tension remained in his shoulders as he worked beside the bedrail, even moreso than the usual degree.

Through what remained of the night he'd tried his best to focus on the papers in front of him and avoid dwelling on it–on what it had felt like to hear Albert tell him in earnest that he was dying. Nothing had ever haunted him like this. He'd only really seen Wesker afraid once besides this, when they were both teenagers watching the door close permanently behind them, and that hadn't stuck with him in the same way.

He still looked like shit, his hair damp with undried sweat and almost entirely free of the usual product's hold, but he didn't look so pallid, at least, and his breathing was deeper. The vitals weren't fantastic, but they were better. Feverish, but nowhere near the precipice of septic shock. ]

[viralgod]

[ Sleep had taken him quickly, and against all odds, it had been dreamless and peaceful. His body needed rest, but his mind needed it just as badly. He couldn't really say he felt refreshed when he woke, but not being plagued by nightmares while he was out had done him a world of good. ]

Terrible.

[ The room still felt colder than he cared for, and he could feel strands of his hair stuck to his face by sweat. He was tired—didn't even have the strength to sit up like he had the day before. But he also didn't felt the soul chilling dread that his death was a certainty anymore. ]

But better than last night.

[ Honestly, Wesker was a bit embarrassed by the way he'd acted. It was entirely unlike him. He was supposed to be calm and collected under any circumstances, but last night, he had crumbled. The only consolation was that, at the time, he hadn't even been sure of who he was anymore.

He turned his head to look at William. His eyes still held the look of exhaustion, but they were clearer now—more focused. ]

Have you been awake all night?

[retroviridae]

Yes.

[ William answered plainly, nonchalantly—holding out on sleep wasn't an atypical behavior for him even when he hadn't just watched his only friend come within a hair of death. ]

Do you remember much about last night?

[ It would be a good retrospective indicator of how severe things were. He also just... wanted to know. ]

[viralgod]

Unfortunately.

[ A part of him wished he'd been too far gone to remember it. Such behavior was unbecoming—pathetic, even. Albert Wesker wasn't supposed to lose himself like that.

The look he fixed William with was as severe as he could muster, given the circumstances. ]

None of that ever leaves this room.

[retroviridae]

Of course not. Don't be ridiculous.

[ He's not necessarily insulted, and he sees where the urge to say it comes from, but there's still a faint hint of admonishment in his tone. Albert knows him better than that, and ideally, it would go unsaid.

And who would he tell? Annette? S.T.A.R.S.? Many of their communications still happen on a level shared with nobody else. ]

[viralgod]

[ The two of them kept plenty of secrets. They were so close that sometimes it seemed like they were the married couple and Annette was the outsider. But just saying the words made him feel a bit better, and hearing—as opposed to just knowing—William's agreement was reassuring. His expression relaxed, like a weight had been lifted.

Changing the subject... ]

I am very glad to see you.

[ Because for a while, he had been sure that last night was going to be the final time he did. ]

[retroviridae]

[ It probably went without saying, but still, it was the sort of affirmation of his own value that William needed—Wesker knew that well enough by now. He smiled thinly. ]

I would think so. Glad to see you looking better than you were last night.

[ Not upright, but more lucid, at least. Able to have a conversation like this. William paused, staring at the crack under the door as opposed to his friend's eyes. ]

You came very close to losing consciousness. You had a fever of 104.

[viralgod]

[ Wesker couldn't even imagine how awful he must have looked during the worst of it. If how he'd felt was anything to go by, then he'd probably looked almost as bad as a test subject locked away in their lab. ]

How much has my temperature come down?

[ Presumably nurses had been in and out monitoring his condition while he slept. He could tell that he still had a bit of a fever, but that it was under control.

Another thought... ]

The S.T.A.R.S. haven't been back, have they?