Medical Mysteries (Forever Fic)--tarotgal birthday fic 2018

[Wig_Powder]

“Hip-kishh!”

“Bless you,” Abe said over his shoulder, “Should I go get the thermometer while we’re waiting for the water to boil?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Henry said, “I can already tell that this is a cold.” He blew his nose, wincing at both the sound and the wetness, then added “And if I wasn’t sure before, I am now.”

“At least you’re admitting it,” Abe said, “Given what you were like yesterday, I was half-convinced you’d be trying to pretend everything was fine until you either collapsed or Jo or I put our foot down and forced you to go to bed.”

“As a doctor, I’m willing to admit when I’m ill,” Henry protested, “I’ll admit that knowledge of my immortality means I’ll sometimes keep working through an illness when it would be better to rest, but I almost never deny that I’m sick.”

“That’s true,” Abe conceded, turning around to speak to Henry properly, “But yesterday was something of a special circumstance because of how you got sick.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “Didn’t we argue about this enough last night?”

“Yes, but since I was proven right, I feel like I’m allowed to gloat.”

“And what makes you think you were ‘proven right’?” Henry asked, torn between amusement and irritation.

“You’re kidding, right?” Abe said, “You come in from a rainstorm, right as we’re transitioning into fall, and the next day you’re sick? How much more proof do you need?”

“That’s not proof, that’s circumstantial evidence,” Henry answered, “And actual scientific and medical evidence has said that neither the change of seasons or being out in the rain can result in catching a cold. They can help things along if you’ve already been exposed to a virus, but on their own, they’re harmless.”

“It didn’t seem all that harmless yesterday,” Abe said, folding his arms, “You were shivering so hard your scarf managed to dislodge itself from your neck. And you didn’t turn the heat down even after you’d had a shower and had been in dry clothes for an hour. Those aren’t the normal actions of someone who briefly got cold from walking in the rain.”

“That doesn’t...” Henry began, then had to break off to sneeze into his handkerchief again. “T-chhkkk!” He sniffed, then continued “That doesn’t prove anything. Sometimes, cold weather can make even a perfectly healthy person feel chilled. And if they’d just come in out of the rain, they might continue to feel slightly cold even after warming up, their body generating a psychosomatic response to...”

“Psychosomatic, my foot,” Abe said, “I’m sure there are plenty of times when what you said is absolutely right, but in this specific circumstance, you were getting sick from the rain, and that’s why you kept trying to warm yourself up. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were hoping enough heat would drive the cold from your system, just so we could avoid having this conversation.”

Henry knew Abe would use any response to that statement as further evidence to bolster his case, so he decided not to address it at all. “The point is, the fact that I felt cold doesn’t mean that I caught cold because of the rain.”

“Ok then, so how did you catch cold?”

The kettle whistled at that moment, giving Henry a minute to try to come up with his answer while Abe prepared the tea. “Well, the most obvious answer is that I was exposed to someone who was already sick.”

“And who would that be?” Abe asked, folding his arms, “It certainly wasn’t from me, and based on what you’ve told me about your past week at work, you’ve spent almost all of it in the morgue, meaning you haven’t spent a lot of time around people. Unless you think you got it from that assistant of yours.”

Henry shook his head. “No, not Lucas. If he’d been sick, or getting sick, I’d have been able to tell immediately.”

“So who does that leave? I swear, if you try to tell me you caught it from one of the bodies you examined...”

Henry smiled faintly. “I’m impressed by your thoroughness. But to put you at ease, I won’t be making that claim. Most illnesses die shortly after the host body does, meaning that the cadavers were ‘clean’ by the time I started ex...aschhh!...examining them.”

“Bless you,” Abe said, “And thank you for that bit of honesty. But since we’ve now eliminated all the ‘usual suspects’, I feel like I’ve proven my point.”

“No, you haven’t,” Henry said, “I’ll admit that you’ve weakened my argument, but you haven’t actually proved yours. Observing that I felt chilled yesterday and noting that no one in my immediate vicinity was sick are circumstantial pieces of evidence and nothing more.”

“All right, then, let’s try a different line of logic. I already know that your next excuse is going to be that your immune system was lowered, and that the combination of the rain and a brief exposure to germs on a doorknob or table was enough to get you sick. But based on what you’ve been telling me over dinner, you’ve been bored, not stressed, at work, so what’s been going on in your life that I don’t know about that could lead to a low immune system?”

Henry sighed. “Nothing that I can think of, admittedly. But there’s always the possibility that the cold temperatures in the morgue have been slowly but steadily lowering my immune response.”

“Uh-uh,” Abe said, carrying the teacups over to the table before sitting down across from Henry, “I might have bought that excuse when you first took the M.E. job, but you’ve been working there for three years at this point. Surely your immune system has adapted to the temperature in there by now. And before you try to pull the ‘my immortality causes my system to reset after each rebirth’, I know very well that you still have antibodies to smallpox and the Spanish Flu in your system, both of which you got after becoming immortal, so your immune system is probably just fine. Not to mention that, if the lower temperatures really were a problem, you’d have gotten sick a lot more often during your first year in the morgue. But I only remember you getting sick twice that year...one of which was around the start of autumn.”

Henry smiled wryly and rolled his eyes again, this time more affectionately. “Why am I not surprised that you remembered that detail?” he asked, as he reached for the tea.

Abe grinned back. “Will it help if I claim that it’s because you taught me well?”

“I have a few doubts about that,” Henry said, pressing the cup to his chest for a moment to absorb its heat, “But I’ll accept both the claim, and the compliment, for now.” He sipped the tea, giving a small sigh as the warm liquid slid down his throat. “Thank you for this, Abe. It tastes delicious and feels fantastic.”

“So you haven’t lost your sense of taste just yet,” Abe said, “Good to know. So, are we going to try to keep it that way, or are you going into work today?”

Henry shook his head. “If Jo and I were in the middle of a case, or if there was a lot of bodies I needed to tend to, I’d go in and do my best to keep my germs to myself. But since things have been relatively quiet, I’ll take a day or two off work and stay in bed. Though I may call Lucas and have him bring over any paperwork that needs to be done, assuming, of course, that you don’t think that doing so will get me sicker.”

Abe chuckled. “Not as long as you stay in bed while you’re working on it.”

Henry gave a hoarse chuckle of his own. “In that case, I’ll finish off this tea, then make the necessary calls before going back to my bedroom.”

“I’ll check in on you during lunch,” Abe promised, “And if you behave yourself, I might even make you a corned beef sandwich for lunch.”

Despite the cold dulling his appetite, Henry had to admit that that sounded wonderful. “Is there...ah...Ap-tshhhh!!!...any chance that you could make one of your soups for dinner? I think both the...hershhhh!!...herbs and the steam would be very helpful to me.” He sneezed one last time, then nodded to the teacup to prove his point.

Abe’s eyes twinkled. “Only if you promise to accept that you caught cold because of the rain and the change of seasons.”

Henry gave him a look over his handkerchief. “I don’t think I’ll ever accept that unless some sort of scientific or medical paper comes out proving it’s possible. However...” he lowered the handkerchief to show Abe that he was smiling, “I promise to stop arguing with you about it for the duration of this illness.”

“I’ll take it,” Abe said, “But you’d better be prepared to come up with some better arguments for your side when this inevitably happens again.”

Henry lifted the cup in his son’s direction. “Very well. To a quick recovery for me, and to our future debate. May the best man win.”

Abe lifted his own mug. “You got it, Pop. Now try to finish that tea as quickly as you can. The sooner you’re back in bed, the sooner everyone can stop worrying about you. Well, more than usual, I mean.”

~~~

The original prompt: “You can’t catch cold from the seasons changing. You can’t catch cold from being caught in the rain. You can’t catch cold from a chill in the air. It’s impossible. Yet, somehow, he managed it.”

[solitaire-au]

That was great!

I thought I’d read all the Forever sneezefics you and tarotgal had written, but I don’t remember coming across this one.

[Wig_Powder]

On 4/12/2024 at 11:38 AM, solitaire-au said:

 

I thought I’d read all the Forever sneezefics you and tarotgal had written, but I don’t remember coming across this one.

That's because it's a new fic, just posted as a makeup fic for missing tarotgal's birthday in 2018. So you probably have read all our Forever fics on offer at this point.

Glad you enjoyed my latest offering!

[Shay]

Always great to see more Forever fics. This one was quite amusing. Though, I do wonder if Henry could have possibly gotten sick from someone that was a carrier for a virus but was not ill themselves...?

[Wig_Powder]

@Shay Henry would probably grab that explanation and use it the next time this argument with Abe rolls around. However, as per the original prompt, the odds are that Abe is correct in his belief of how Henry got sick this particular time.

Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed it!