"You can't do this to me, Sam!" Max said hoarsely while standing on the couch with his blanket wrapped around him, looking at Sam, and counting on his four fingers with the TV going in the background. "I listened to the doctor when she made me let the Geek clean my room and listened to her when she forced me to bathe but this is going too far! She can't keep me from going to work. I'll die of boredom, Sam!"

"I'm sorry, little pal," Sam said standing behind the couch. "It's the doctor's orders and I can't say I blame her. You've done nothing but vomit on everything and cough up your lungs all weekend. You've barely even left the couch or eaten a thing since Friday. Face it, Max. You're sicker than a rat during the Black Plague."

"I'm not that sick," the lagomorph whined before he starting to cough loudly. "I don't need to stay here, Sam. Let me…cough…chase some delinquents…cough…cough…That'll make me feel real better."

Max then stood up with his purple blanket still wrapped around him, pulled out his luger, and started walking to the door, crookedly, because he was dizzy and his aching and burning head was spinning.

"You can't even walk in a straight line, little pal," Sam said grabbing the arm holding the luger to support him. "How do you expect to chase after the dwellers of this city's underbelly when you can't even shoot straight."

"I can't shoot straight anyway," Max said shaking out of his grip.

After a few dizzy steps and suppressed moans in response to the aches going through every inch of his body, Max made it to the front door.

"There, see, Sam?" Max said twisting open the handle. "You are…cough…just being paranoid. I'm fine. Now, let's go do some freelance police work."

When he opened the door, the Geek was standing right there getting ready to knock on the door with one hand while holding a suitcase with another.

"Oh," Max said between coughs. "Hi, Geek. You here to bring us something to help with our next mission?"

"I'm actually here to help Sam," the Geek said crossing her arms. "I'm going to be making sure you rest while he's away."

"What?!" Max's sore voice yelled as loudly as he could before turning around just in time to notice Sam reaching down to grab him.

Sam only managed to grab the blanket as Max managed to scamper out between the Geek's legs and ran into the front of their car. He fell backwards onto the hard concrete of their driveway and started shivering.

"Why did the Almighty make it so cold today?" Max complained as he rolled around on the ground.

"It's summer, Max," Sam said as he and the Geek turned around to look at him. "It is currently sunny with a high of 85 degrees."

"Well, it feels like the inside of the icebox," Max said as he used the front of the car as support to pull himself up and fought the nausea as he continued using it to support him while he found his way to the passenger's side of the car.

"Did you find anything toxic in the contents of Max's room that could possibly explain the severity of his flu?" Sam asked while his partner was wretching against the side of the passenger door.

"Yes, in everything," the Geek said. "There were too many strains of bacteria and viruses to count! The Center for Disease Control doesn't have as many strains as there were in there. Max's room was a disease's paradise! It's a wonder that he hasn't dropped dead already."

"All my precious hazardous waste," Max whined between wretches. "Gone!"

"That would explain why Max always had an immune system of iron," Sam said. "Whenever all the flus and bugs came through school, he never caught any of it. Nothing could ever make him sick."

They then both heard the sound of Max throwing up on the driveway.

"Until now," Sam said. "The doctor said it was a severe form of the flu. It wasn't severe enough for him to be hospitalized but it is severe enough for him to be quarantined so to speak. She said that he would make a full recovery as long as he took his medicine and rested."

"Has he been doing either of those things?" the Geek asked skeptically.

Max finally pulled open the door and climbed into the passenger's seat on his side of the car.

"What do you think?" Sam asked. "I haven't been able to get him to take the medicine so his frequent and annoying vomiting spasms have made it hard for him to sleep. I keep telling him that it'll make him feel better but he's harder to persuade than a cat on wash day and about twice as violent."

"Sam…coughs…we have to go," Max said as he opened the car door, sneezed immediately afterwards, and then slammed the door again.

"Well, don't worry," the Geek said. "Today's my day off, so I can make sure that he sleeps or at least make sure he doesn't leave the house."

"This will be the most dangerous task of your young life," Sam said as seriously as he could. "Are you prepared?"

"Don't worry," the Geek said pulling her suitcase of supplies up. "I came prepared."

"Good, because I have to do this job to pay for Max's medical bills," Sam said as he walked over to Max's side of the car. "I hate to leave him, especially like this, but what choice do I have?"

Sam opened the door while carefully avoiding the vomit on the ground and found Max sitting inside.

"Are we ready to go?" Max asked impatiently. "Or do you want to stand there and talk like someone who has no place to be?"

Sam quickly wrapped the blanket around Max so that it restrained his arms and then hoisted him under his arm.

"Hey!" Max yelled while flinging about his legs wildly as Sam walked back to the front door. "Put me down! Put me down! Put me down! I can fight you stupid, flea-bitten mutt! Just put me down! Cough!"

"I'm sorry, little pal," Sam said. "This is for your own good."

"That's what all the bad people say to justify the bad things they do. Cough! Cough!"

"Thanks again for doing this, Geek," Sam said while walking through the front door.

"Yeah, yeah," the Geek said while opening her suitcase on the coffee table to reveal all the robotics inside. "Just remember you owe me later."

"Be careful around the couch," Sam said. "Max has only left it to use the bathroom."

"I'm way ahead of you," the Geek said as she put on a gas mask and sprayed disinfectant all over it.

Max continued straining his sore throat and yelling while Sam quickly made it to Max's room.

"No, Sam!" Max yelled as Sam opened the door to the room. "Don't make me go in there. It smells like disinfectant and roses. It's going to make me sick!"

Sam turned on the lights revealing the still shiny clean inside of Max's room. The walls were dazzling white and bare from being stripped of posters and too horribly boring to look at. His floor whose rug had to be torn up and replaced with hardwood was offensively clean since all his precious hazardous waste had to be removed. The furniture had to be replaced, too. He had a new bureau of clothes he never wore, a clean closet with more of the same, a bed with clean sheets and a clean pillow, a nightstand with a lamp and clean comic books, and a TV on a TV stand full of videogames with a cleaner game console. His equally clean bathroom somehow managed to outshine it all. The only thing cleaner was the window that let in the sunlight.

"Oh, the horror! The horror! The horror!" Max yelled.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sam said. "The Geek's robots did a great job in here."

Max grimaced as Sam laid him down gently on his bed.

"You're a traitor, Sam," Max said as he freed himself from his blanket, laid back on his pillow, and writhed about in pain. "I can't believe it. Betrayed by my own best pal!"

"Max, you are being more annoyingly childish than usual," Sam said. "Instead of sulking, what you need to do is get better so that you can be fighting fit."

"I'm gonna die of boredom, Sam," Max said waving his hands around in expression. "What am I supposed to do all day?"

"You can sleep or watch anything you want on our unidentified streaming service," Sam said as he turned on the TV.

"I can't bear it, Sam," Max said as he latched himself onto Sam's arm. "I need action or I will go mad! Mad, I tell you! Absolutely bonkers!"

"You need your rest, Max," Sam said pulling the rabbit off his arm by the scruff of his neck and placing him back on the bed.

"I can't do it," Max said wretching in nausea again before Sam managed to pull out a garbage can for him to vomit in. "You'll die without me. I need to be there to help you."

"Now, now, Max," Sam said as Max threw up for the thirtieth time that day. "This mission I'm going on will not be that exciting. It is going to be very boring and routine I assure you. I will finish it up, collect the money, and come back here to nurse you back to health. I promise."

Max pulled his head out of the garbage can and said, "It's not fair. I don't want to be alone."

"You will not be alone," Sam said pulling out the container of Max's dreaded medicine, unscrewing the lid, and pulling out a pill. "The Geek will be here to give you anything you need and keep you from escaping until I get back, but until then, you need to get better. Now, before I leave, take your medicine."

"I am not taking the pill, Sam," Max said crossing his arms and turning away.

Sam pulled on his ears, making Max scream so that he could toss the pill into his mouth and forced him to swallow it.

"That was ethically questionable," Max said as Sam pulled out a glass and went to the bathroom to fill it up with water.

Once he did, he placed it on Max's bedside and said, "It was for your own good, little pal."

Max's head started spinning again and he said, "Oh, God, I've been roofied."

"Don't be ridiculous," Sam said as he walked over to the window and pulled down the blinds to block out the sunlight. "I don't think the doctor would try something like that. On you, anyway."

"Do I really have to stay here?" Max whined. "The doctor doesn't have to know I left the house. Couldn't we just both agree not to tell her?"

"No can do, Max," Sam said tucking his little rabbit friend under the covers. "You're too sick to fight, and in our line of work, that's dangerous. But it's okay, you'll feel better soon and be back to fighting baddies in no time."

"In the meantime, I just have to stay here and try not to chew my arm off out of boredom," Max said as he stared at his friend.

"That's the spirit, little pal," Sam said as he got up and walked to the door. "Now, be a good boy for the babysitter while I'm gone."

"No promises," Max said as Sam turned off the lights.

"Pleasant dreams, Max," Sam said as he walked out the door shutting it behind him.

There Max was, sitting there alone facing at least several hours of absolute boredom. The horror!