I am totally late in posting this but there's also been some tech glitches too haha. This will be my 5th attempt in posting this but here it is! My story for day 1 of Sicktember, "Do you even know how to take care of a sick person?" It's Solangelo of course and I don't think there needs to be any warnings for this one. I hope you enjoy! @sicktember
Will was a child of Apollo and he had many of his traits. He was good with a bow, he was even better at combat medicine, general first aid, and nobody in camp could rival him as a doctor nor could they in sing-alongs. He, like his father and siblings, always rose with the sun, getting their energy from it, as well as a gorgeous tan.
Which was exactly why all heads turned at breakfast when they saw Will looking as white as a sheet and almost an hour late. Everyone was practically done eating by the time he arrived. Being late to breakfast wasn't entirely unusual for him, sometimes coming off the night shift in the infirmary, however, his paler and disheveled, sleepy affect certainly were.
Kayla hadn't stopped looking at her brother since he walked into the pavilion, but she looked even more shocked when he sat down and began attempting to eat his breakfast which had appeared magically as they always did.
"Jeez... did you work all night like this?" She asked, knowing he probably had as she hadn't been woken up to take his shift.
"Like what?" He asked, not looking up as he poured a whole hive's worth of honey into his goblet. It was steaming now, undoubtedly filled up with tea.
Kayla scoffed. "You know what!" Gods, why was her brother always so infuriatingly stubborn? She went into doctor mode, feeling his forehead, huffing out a frustrated sigh. "You're sick!"
Will just sniffled in response. "I'b fide...ids juss'a cold." His voice sounded awful, like he'd spent all night scream-singing every camp sing-along he knew. After speaking he had to turn away from the table to hack harsh coughs into his arm. It was so horrible sounding that the entire dining hall went silent, which made Will's cheeks even more red than they were from coughing so hard.
"Yeah right, you probably caught the flu from those dang Ares kids we've been treating all week." There was a camp-wide outbreak of the flu, despite everyone's attempts to keep it under control, but once it had hit the Ares cabin...all hope was lost. Let's just say that not only were they a bit loosey-goosey about washing their hands, but they also tend to be of the mindset that laying in bed and resting is a sign of weakness, thus they spread it around to everyone whilst simultaneously trying to fight everyone they saw to prove they weren't sick. It hadn't ended well for any of them and most of them had been laid up in the infirmary because of exhaustion and or with high fevers.
Will had already come to the same conclusion, he had all the tell-tale symptoms, fever, chills, full body aches, cough, sore throat, stuffy nose, even a queasy tummy. Which is why his breakfast seemed far more bland than usual, just toast and some sliced fruits, apple, banana, and orange.
He felt absolutely disgusting and was quickly running out of steam to argue with his sister, so he just shrugged and began ignoring her in earnest. He simply sipped his tea and picked at his breakfast.
“I’m serious, Will, you’re off this morning anyway, but I am having you quarantined, you’re not to be anywhere but our cabin, in bed! Do you hear me? After breakfast, straight to bed. I’ll check on you at lunch.” She left absolutely no room for objection, but that didn’t usually stop her brother, it was concerning to her when she watched him simply nod in response.
She didn’t think much about it until Nico approached her in the infirmary just before lunch.
“Hey, have you seen Will?” He asked, seeming casual, but Kayla knew he was worried underneath. “He didn’t come by and make sure I got up for the day.” He said this as if it were the most annoying thing in the world.
She bit back a smile, knowing that her brother didn’t do that just for Nico’s benefit and that Nico didn’t find it nearly as annoying as he pretended he did. “He’s back at our cabin, he came down with the flu that’s been going around so I quarantined him there with some supplies.”
Nico tried not to look worried, but he felt his heart sink, hearing that Will was sick, not just sick either, he had the flu! Will had told him it wasn’t nearly as deadly now, mainly only killing the very young, very old, and those with weak immune systems, but that didn’t really make him feel much better. He had it a couple times as a young boy and he almost died. He remembered how worried his mother had been each time. He was such a sickly kid, surely Will was stronger? But still…he had to be miserable!
“I was going to go check on him after lunch, but maybe you want to? You could bring him some soup too.” Kayla suggested, hoping she didn’t sound like she was simply pawning the chore off to him. She would have gone to check on him absolutely, but she knew Nico would want to go and check on him anyway, so she was just cutting down on the interruptions to her brother's rest. Yeah…that was it.
“Oh!” Nico tried not to sound too eager. “I mean, yeah, sure, I can do that.”
He turned and left after that, grabbing his own lunch and Will’s from the Dining Hall. He did offerings for them both too before heading straight for cabin seven.
Cabin Seven looked like any other cabin on the outside, though, admittedly it had some very large windows as well. You wouldn’t know it by looking, but like many of the other cabins here at Camp Half-Blood, it was bigger on the inside than one might expect. When you entered it seemed nearly two stories tall if the second floor did not exist. Along the back wall was every instrument ever created, and even a fireplace. THere was a stage too where a huge couch and bean bags sat around the fire. There were stereos and a record player too, records and cd’s lining the book shelf along the right wall. There were bunk beds along the left side of the cabin, stacked three high, there were more along the front wall too directly to your right when you came in, but the part that really amazed Nico was the Loft area on the left that had a small library and classroom underneath. It only had 3 student desks and one teacher’s but on the shelves were every medical text ever written it seemed. How they got new ones, Nico was never sure but the books seemed to change every so often as certain theories and practices became obsolete or proven to be wrong or ineffective and new thoughts came about.
Nico went up the stairs of the loft, of which sat a small hut type structure that actually served as a small private bedroom for the head counselor of the cabin. At the moment, that was Will. He loved that idea because he could not imagine living in the same room as my twenty or so other siblings and not having his own space. He was once again reminded of just how lucky he was that he was the only who stayed in Cabin 13.
Will was in bed, sleeping, but even so, he looked dreadful. He was pale aside from his bright red cheeks and his bedding was absolutely covered in used tissues, a few were even sprinkled around on the ground beside his bed and around the small trash can that sat there. He also happened to be cuddling a box of tissues.
Nico set the plates down on the wooden floor, still only halfway up the steep ladder-like steps. He knocked on the floor, trying to announce himself.
“Will. Hey! Will!” He called out when the knocks elicited no response.
Will jolted in his bed, immediately coughing harshly as he gasped in surprise. He wasn’t aware of Nico’s presence until a few seconds after the fit subsided and he spoke.
“Jeez, you really are sick, huh?” He asked.
Will groaned, “whatd clued you id?” He plucked a fresh tissue from the box and blew his nose. It was so loud and wet sounding it made Nico cringe. “Whatd’do you wadt?”
“Hey, is that anyway to greet the guy who’s here to nurse you back to health?”
Will raised his eyebrows at that. “You? You’re going to…durse be back to health?” He scoffed with a skeptical smile. “Do you eved kndow how to dake care of a sick persod?”
“Of course I do!” Nico replied with a huff. “Do you want this soup or not!” He grabbed the plates and finished coming up the stairs, setting Will’s lunch on his bedside table. It was vegetable, chicken noodle soup, with toast and fruit on the side. He grabbed Will’s desk chair and pulled it over to the area by Will’s bed and started in on his own lunch.
Will didn’t want to admit it, but he was really, really glad Nico was there. He hated to be sick just like everyone else, but he hated being alone even more. That’s one thing that was so very different about him and Nico. He hadn’t minded sleeping in the bunks with his other siblings, sure he’d only had a little bedside cubby-like closet and the shelf along the back side of his bed for his personal belongings, but he was fine with sharing and living with the communal space.
Still, though he was so glad to have the company, he couldn’t help but worry for Nico. He was contagious after all, and Nico really hadn’t been exposed to much in the way of modern germs, so his immune system wasn’t as strong as his own.
“You should’dt be here…I could get you sick.” He said, voice thick with congestion despite having blown his nose a second time. The warning was half-hearted, anyone who truly knew him would know that he didn’t really want Nico to go.
“Shut up and eat your soup, Solace. If you’re not tired after lunch we’ll play cards.”
