[flashback] sick day

[2goodarms]

A decade isn't enough time for illnesses to evolve from their pre-freeze state. So many of them start the same way they always have: with a chill. A lot of times, people don't even know they're sick. What's feeling a little colder than usual, needing to curl up a little tighter under your allotted blanket?

So Curtis doesn't know, for a good forty-eight hours, until the shivering doesn't quit even after Gilliam loans him two more blankets. As soon as Tanya feels his forehead, he's whisked away to the very back of the Tail, stumbling a little as the train heaves along the tracks. Everything's tilted just a little too far off-kilter, and weaves just a little too sharply whenever they go over a bump. He's grateful when he finally has a chance to sit down.

...Actually, maybe he'll lie down for a bit. Yeah. Just a couple minutes.

Comments

[hate_gettin_older]

A few rows behind them, someone makes a quiet spitting sound. Without turning to look he can't be sure, but Edgar's pretty sure it's Macgregor; he saw the man's bushy red hair around there when they were lining up, and besides it's the kind of thing he would do, brave in the face of the watching guards, utterly contemptuous of any talk of Wilford the Divine.

Edgar bites back a grin of satisfaction, and watches the woman keep talking.

[snowpiercer_npcs]

"And this is not the first time I've witnessed such an egregious insult!" she's saying -- nearly shouting, by now. "Every day, every head count, this cart does not leave empty. If it could merely be explained by a handful of deaths each day, that would be simpler, but no. No. Even knowing you will not be fed, you prefer to shirk your very few responsibilities. So."

She pulls herself straighter, taking a moment to adjust her outsize glasses.

"Effective immediately, should you not be present for three consecutive headcounts, your ration will be stricken from the records. Permanently."

Evie's jaw drops.

[hate_gettin_older]

A moment of blank surprise -- and then a slowly rising murmur of protest. "They can't do that --" "How do they --" "-- what about the --" "-- motherfuckers, what do they --"

"But he's sick," Edgar half-shouts in indignant complaint, not really expecting to be heard over the increasing noise.

[snowpiercer_npcs]

She doesn't catch all of what Edgar's shouted, but she hears just enough.

"Even the sick can manage to come up here once a day," she snaps. "Standing around, sitting when your number's called, that's not particularly taxing, now is it?"

[hate_gettin_older]

He swallows what he wants to yell at her, more from fear than prudence -- and because he's doing some rapid math. She said effective immediately, and that might mean counting from now but it might mean counting from as far back as they have, and this is the second headcount Curtis has missed, which means --

He looks up at Evie again, a touch desperate.

[snowpiercer_npcs]

Her own concern's clear, but Evie shakes her head, very slightly, and touches a finger to her lips.

"All we have ever asked in return," the woman says, "for sheltering you from this eternal winter, is kindness. Gratitude. It's right and proper you display it. So it is."

She tugs at one shoulder of her fur coat.

"Those of you who have bothered to show up? Come get your dinner."

The guards exchange glances, nod to one another, and move to the cart of protein blocks.

[hate_gettin_older]

And the line starts to move as always, a uniform slow trudge up to the cart and back down along the wall, each person reaching in for their allotted ration.

For a brief moment Edgar contemplates trying to take two, in case Curtis can't make it to the next headcount, but he discards the thought immediately. He's seen what can happen when people try to grab more than their share; once that he can remember clearly, which ended with the thief having his fingers broken and losing his ration for three days. And he's heard people talk about an earlier time, when it ended with a riot as people mobbed the cart, frantic with the urge to get their own fair share while they could -- or to imitate the thief and get as much as they could while they could, fairness be damned. The guards opened fire on the crowd; dozens died.

When he gets to the head of the line he very carefully takes one block, glowering at the guards behind his falling hair.

[snowpiercer_npcs]

One of the guards isn't much older than Curtis. He meets Edgar's glare with a dispassion that, like the other guard, nearly verges into boredom: this is just one more person in the long, stinking stream of Tail-sectioners, and as soon as this unpleasant chore's done, he can go back home to the Front.

Evie picks up her block in silence. Unlike the people in front of them, she doesn't bite into it right away. Instead, she tucks it into the breast pocket of her ratty coat, stepping out of the dispersing line to catch up with Edgar.

[hate_gettin_older]

He's still glowering, and hasn't bitten into his own block either.

When Evie moves up alongside him, he glances up at her. "We got till morning," he says. "Think he'll be better by then?"

[snowpiercer_npcs]

"No," she says honestly. "But he'll have to be better enough to come up here."

She sighs and scrubs at her forehead with the side of her hand.

"I don't want to risk misunderstanding Mason's cutoff. He's missed two head counts already, right?"

[hate_gettin_older]

"Yeah." The line ahead of them is moving too slow for his taste, but it's still too crowded to easily slip past everybody, at least if he wants to talk to Evie at the same time. He shifts from foot to foot impatiently. "So that means he's gotta come to the next one or else that's three."

[snowpiercer_npcs]

Evie sighs out a curse.

"Then we'll have to get him up there somehow. At least he'll get a full night's sleep first."

Assuming the fever doesn't keep him awake.

[hate_gettin_older]

"Maybe --" He looks around, lowers his voice. "Maybe someone could carry him. Someone strong?"

[snowpiercer_npcs]

"That's what I'm thinking." She frowns. "I can support him if he's able to walk a little bit on his own. If he can't walk at all..."

What would be easiest, of course, is if Gilliam loaned them the makeshift wheelchair they cobbled together a few years back. But then he would have a harder time making it to headcount, even if it was a good day where his remaining limbs didn't bother him too much.

You don't do that to Gilliam, they all know. You just don't.

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar chews on his lower lip, thinking. "Macgregor's strong. So's Feiffer and Diego."

[snowpiercer_npcs]

She nods. "I'll ask one of them."

A beat.

Quieter, "He's going to be okay, Edgar."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Course he is." His voice rises, vehement, close to truculent.

[snowpiercer_npcs]

"Exactly," she agrees, and makes a mental note: Edgar's the type to get a little angry when he's scared.

(Edgar's always been the type to get a little angry, though. She doesn't know him well, but she does know the gossip. People sometimes talk quite freely when a doctor's back is turned.)

[hate_gettin_older]

Edgar glowers at the back of the man ahead of them for a moment, then down at his unbitten protein block.

And turns, and holds it out to Evie. "Here. In case they won't help for free."

[snowpiercer_npcs]

Immediately: "No."

She fixes him with a firm look, much like the one she gave him when he first tried to barge into the sick room.

"That's yours. I won't take it."

[hate_gettin_older]

"Take half," he bargains. "Come on, you gotta."

[snowpiercer_npcs]

"I'll use half of my own, and if they aren't willing to help for that, I'll find another way."

[hate_gettin_older]

His chin thrusts out. "Fine. Then I'll go with you, and if they won't help for half of yours, I'll throw in half of mine. See? That's another way. You found it."

[snowpiercer_npcs]

Her nostrils flare.

"Fine," she says at last, in a way that sounds more like you have got to be fucking kidding me.

[hate_gettin_older]

(A tone Edgar is already well used to hearing from adults.)

"Okay," he says. "... Now? Or wait and see if, if he's better later?"