Chapter Text
The ward changed at night.
In the day, it was motion and voices and the squeak of carts and the bright insistence of people doing things to you. At night it thinned out—lights dimmed, footsteps softened, curtains drawn like punctuation marks between beds. Charlie lay on his back, not because it was comfortable, but because every other position wasn’t. Oxygen hissed in a steady, quiet stream under his nose. The cannula tugged at his cheeks whenever he shifted. Every breath felt like it had to negotiate with the tight, swollen ache behind his bandages—like his body was an argument he couldn’t win.And the itching. It wasn’t just skin-deep anymore. It felt like it had crawled into his bones, into the place behind his eyes where concentration lived. On his right side, beneath the sheet, a drain tugged faintly every time he moved—an uncomfortable reminder of what his body was trying to purge. He could feel it as a pressure and a pull, like a too-tight stitch. The bag collected what his abdomen didn’t need anymore, and the idea of it made Charlie’s brain attempt to categorize it clinically—fluid, inflammatory, contaminated—anything to keep it from being him. There were still toxins in there, still infection trying to make itself at home, and now—after the penicillin mistake—his system was already exhausted from one battle.
They’d switched antibiotics. They’d double-checked the allergy list like it was suddenly sacred. Every staff member who entered his room looked at the wristband like they were afraid of a typo causing issues again.
Charlie tried to take comfort in that. He really did. But it was hard to feel safe when your own body kept proving it could turn on you.
He shifted a fraction of an inch, trying to ease the pull in his abdomen. Pain flared hot and bright. He sucked in air, and the oxygen hissed louder for a second.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself, voice dry. “Okay. Don’t be stupid.”
His fingers hovered over the blanket, looking for something to do—scratch, pick, grip—anything.The itch surged again, across his neck and the edges of his jaw where the allergic reaction had puffed him up earlier. His skin felt too small for him.
His thoughts, usually crisp, were fog-soft and disobedient. A wave of nausea rolled up from his gut, slow and mean. He swallowed hard, the back of his throat thick.
He reached for the call button. His finger hovered. He hated that it meant admitting he couldn’t fix this by himself.
The nausea rose again and he pressed it.
A small chime answered. Somewhere, a light went on.
Charlie stared at the ceiling and tried not to count the seconds.
When footsteps finally approached, relief hit so fast it almost made him cry.
A nurse slipped through the curtain, moving like she’d done this a thousand times without waking the whole world. She was younger than the day nurse, hair tied up, eyes alert in the dim.
“Hey, Charlie,” she said softly, as if saying it too loud might jinx him. “What’s going on?”
Charlie tried to speak and found his voice didn’t want to cooperate. He cleared his throat, winced at the pull in his abdomen, and tried again.
“It… itches,” he managed, then felt ridiculous because of course it itched. “And I feel—” He swallowed. “Wrong.”
The nurse’s gaze sharpened without turning alarmed. “Any new rash? Hives?” She leaned in, scanning his neck and face, her fingers hovering rather than touching. “Nausea?”
“Yes,” Charlie admitted, and the word came out strained.
She glanced down at the drain tubing under the sheet. “Pain worse?”
Charlie let out a bitter little exhale. “Everything is… worse.”
That earned him a quiet smile. “Fair.”
She checked his abdomen without pressing too hard—just careful assessment, watching his face more than anything.
“Okay,” she said finally, voice calm. “Your vitals look stable, but you look miserable. I’m going to get you something for the itching, and something for the nausea. We’ll also re-check your oxygen saturation and make sure you’re staying comfortable.”
Charlie swallowed again. “Antibiotics,” he rasped, fear prickling through the itch. “The new ones… they’re not—”
“Not penicillin,” she said immediately, firm. “I see your allergy. It’s flagged in the system now. Bright red like your wrist band. Nobody’s missing it.”
The part of Charlie that could still be a scientist wanted to ask what “flagged” meant in terms of real-world probability. The rest of him just sagged a fraction, like he’d been holding a muscle tight for hours.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
The nurse’s eyebrows rose. “For what?”
“For… being here,” he said, absurdly, and his voice cracked on the last word.
She paused, just long enough to make it clear she’d heard what he meant, not what he’d said.
“No,” she said, quietly fierce. “Nope. Not doing that tonight. You don’t apologize for being sick.”
Charlie blinked hard.
The nurse reached up and adjusted the oxygen tubing so it wasn’t pulling. “I’m going to step out for a minute. Don’t move. I know you’re going to try. Don’t.”
Charlie gave a faint, humorless breath that might’ve been a laugh.
When she left, the curtain swayed and settled again, the dim ward sounds seeping back in—distant footsteps, a soft murmur from another bed, the beep-beep of someone else’s monitor down the line.
Charlie stared at the ceiling and tried to anchor himself with the thought of his father’s hand around his. Now the darkness made every sensation bigger—the itch, the ache, the drain’s tug, the strange internal heaviness of infection and inflammation, the knowledge that his abdomen had broken and they’d had to fix it.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the hours they couldn’t find him. How close the antibiotic mistake had come to being worse. How easily he could vanish into paperwork. The thought skated too close to panic.His breathing quickened. The monitor beeped a little faster, tattling.
“Stop,” he whispered to himself. “Stop.”
But his body didn’t listen.
The nurse returned with a small syringe and a cup. “Okay. I’m giving you something for the itching through your IV, and something for nausea.” Her voice was low, steady—meant to be a handhold. “And I want you to focus on breathing slow with me. In for four… out for four.”
Charlie tried. The first inhale hurt. The second hurt less. The third was less jagged.
The medication slid cool into his vein, and for a moment his heart stuttered with fear—another drug, another chance for his body to react but nothing happened except a gradual easing at the edges.
The itch didn’t vanish. It just stopped screaming.
He let out a shaky breath.
“Better?” she asked.
“Less… loud,” Charlie said, eyes fluttering.
“Good.” She tucked the blanket more securely around him, careful around the drain. “You’re dealing with a lot right now—surgery, infection risk, and your immune system got spun up from that reaction. It’s normal to feel awful.”
Charlie stared at her, eyelids heavy. “Normal,” he repeated, as if trying the word on.
“Yep,” she said. “Normal awful.”
Charlie’s mouth twitched.
The nurse checked the IV pump settings,
When she stepped out again, Charlie let his head sink into the pillow and tried to hold onto the small, stubborn fact that he was still here. That his name was right now. That his father and brother were only a phone call away, even if he couldn’t see them. The oxygen hissed. The monitor beeped.
Charlie closed his eyes and waited for the nurse to come back—less alone than he’d been a minute ago, but still scared in a way he didn’t know how to calculate.