Wow, the response to this story was overwhelming! Thanks, guys. As promised, here is most of what I hadn't posted last time. Now we get to see Rusty's perspective on things, in addition to Sharon's - and needless to say, they do not exactly line up ;)

Out of Order (2)

Sharon was the worst patient ever.

That morning she'd looked so awful, it had really freaked Rusty out. He'd never seen her like that, she could barely move and she wasn't eating and she sounded so terrible! And of course instead of staying home like a normal person, she'd wanted to go to work. Him, he could've woken up with a runny nose and jumped at the chance to skip school and just laze about the house for a day – but not Sharon, no, she looked like patient zero in an outbreak movie and she'd still been out of the house by seven-thirty.

Sometimes he just didn't get her.

She'd planned to stop by the pharmacy on her way to work, but Rusty had been completely sure that she'd get distracted and forget. So when the squad car had picked him up after class, he'd insisted to stop by Walgreens and he'd bought – well, everything. Because seriously, there were like five aisles of flu medicine, and how was he supposed to know what Sharon tolerated and what would give her an allergic reaction that included rash, itching/swelling, severe dizziness, trouble breathing and/or serious (rarely fatal) bleeding from the stomach? (Who made those drugs, anyway? They sounded worse than the disease.)

Then when they'd arrived at the station and he'd gone to her office to give her the medicine, he'd thought that maybe the zombie apocalypse had come.

Sharon looked just – awful, again. Her eyes were all red and her lips were dry and her color was all…off and… oh, she must've been in some sort of pain too, because she kept grimacing and wincing and it was all just terrible. Were the rest of them blind, that they didn't call a doctor or send her home or… something! It had been hours, and no one had done anything? What was like, wrong with all of them?

And how did she not realize just how sick she was? Well… okay she was Sharon, so she probably could've had the plague and stuck to business as usual. But then what if she got worse? Rusty had never had the flu, but honestly this looked too bad to be 'just the flu'. Plus she'd been fine yesterday, what kind of flu happened so suddenly? Sharon wasn't a doctor, what did she know? (Well – okay she knew stuff, obviously...sometimes... but like, not this stuff! She was good identifying suspects, not symptoms.)

So he'd brought her tea and tried to make sure that she took the medicine she needed, but nothing was helping. He'd seen her take at least two Advils, and she'd had one cup of tea, but she still sounded painfully hoarse and she still looked really pale and she wasn't getting better! Why wasn't she getting better?! The pharmacy guy had said the meds would help, and it had been like, half an hour and they weren't helping yet!

Maybe she was taking them wrong.

(Or maybe it was because she was at work and she didn't have any time to take care of herself because people kept wanting things, and did they really not see that she wasn't up for it at the moment? Really, did Buzz absolutely need her signature on that stupid form right at that moment? No, Rusty hadn't thought so.)

Alright, since Sharon didn't have the time or ability to look after herself, Rusty would have to do it for her; he took up position right outside her door and pulled out his laptop and decided to figure out what was wrong with her and how to fix it.

But first he should probably get her some more tea.

One thing he learned really quickly was that Sharon was very grumpy when she was sick.

Like, seriously grumpy. He had no idea why, but she'd been giving him these exasperated looks all day, and they were only growing more impatient. Not that he'd been helping out in order to earn her gratitude or anything, but like… she was being really unappreciative! When she got better, she'd probably feel really bad about it and apologize.

Until then though, he'd just have to deal with it. It didn't bother him. Sure, it'd be nice if he could figure out a way to make her less grumpy…

(Did Lt. Tao really need to bring her that fax right at that moment? Really? Could he wait until she was like, properly functioning again? Thank you.)

Maybe more tea would help.

Poor Sharon. She looked so terrible. He didn't think she realized just how bad it was, because he'd told her and she'd just rolled her eyes and groaned and told him to go away.

Maybe her attitude was a symptom of her illness, too… Rusty thought for a moment on what to call it, then added 'irritability' to his search key, and pressed enter.

His heart started pounding in sheer panic about two minutes into reading the results. Of course Sharon wasn't feeling well! She was probably like, really sick! He felt tears welling up in his eyes, and glanced back over to her office. She was pressing both hands to her cheeks and she still looked so awful and she should have been in a doctor's office, not at work!

He wanted so badly to help, but it was so difficult because she was clearly feeling too sick to be rational, and Rusty had no idea what to do.

"I'll make you some tea," Rusty offered as soon as they walked through the apartment door.

Sharon waved him off; just the thought of having to drink more tea felt too exhausting. Instead she let her purse drop to the floor, slipped off the heels and made a beeline to the kitchen to get a glass of water. She tried to ignore the downright bleak gaze that Rusty followed her with.

"Do you need anything?"

A mercy killing. "I'm alright, thank you."

The lights in the apartment were way too bright. And there was way too much light outside, too, for five p.m.. And it was too cold for California.

"If you don't mind," she said tiredly, "I think I might call it an early night. You can use my credit card to order dinner…"

With the increased security and the amount of work at the station, they'd been eating take-out more and more frequently lately; she definitely wasn't winning any parenting awards anytime soon. But at the moment she couldn't handle eating dinner, let alone making it.

The water in her glass was room temperature, but it felt icy cold against her fingers and made her shiver. By the way her eyes burned and the slight wooziness, Sharon imagined that she was now running a fever, too. No surprises there – every cold and flu she'd ever had had always gotten far worse in the evenings. And the late-onset fever was usually why.

Luckily, she had about two pounds of medicine to at least deal with that symptom.

Rusty hurried to bring her the purse when she began to move toward it; it took a ridiculous amount of effort just to fish out her wallet and hand it to him, and then she pulled the pharmacy bag out and went to refill the water glass.

"Do you want me to call you when the food gets here…?"

"That's okay, honey." The only thing she planned to eat was the whole bottle of Advil. And she'd wash it down with a pint of cough syrup. Who the hell cared about recommended dosages? Liver failure kind of felt like a step up at the moment.

"Uh, Sharon?"

She looked up, saw Rusty's half-concerned, half-confused expression and realized that she'd become so wrapped up in her grumpy thoughts that she'd paused halfway through pouring water from the pitcher, and had been glaring belligerently at the glass.

Well, she had the flu and her entire body ached and she had a fever to boot. Medically, she was perfectly within her rights to act as a lunatic.

"Are you sure that you don't want to like, go to a hospital or somethi –"

"Yes," she cut him off firmly before he could launch into the whole sarcoidosis dissertation again. "Don't worry about me, Rusty," she reassured, "I'm sure the worst of this will be over by tomorrow. Enjoy your dinner… let me know if you need anything," she added as an afterthought. And tried to telepathically convey that if he did come to her with any issue in the next twelve hours, it had better involve fire or blood.

Rusty took the hint. Her body didn't.

Much as she'd planned to hole up for the evening (possibly forever) and hibernate through the worst of the symptoms, reality turned out to involve zero rest and lots of fevered tossing and turning and much mental cursing. In fact, Sharon surprised herself at the breadth of curse words that her mind could muster - being around so many angry suspects had clearly enriched her vocabulary.

Unfortunately, her anger had the same effects on the damn flu that her suspects' anger had on her, namely, none.

She was too cold to stay uncovered, but too achy and uncomfortable to stay under the blanket. Her throat hurt from all the coughing, and her head felt absurdly oversized. Everything felt distorted, actually - her own body and the objects in the room alike. And those drugs that were supposed to knock her out were not delivering. Was it really that much to ask for, to just pass out and wake up in the morning feeling slightly less like she'd just gone fifty rounds against a heavyweight-class boxer?

Apparently.

With a muffled moan, Sharon pulled the blanket tighter around herself in the hope of stopping the racking shivers. Thirty seconds later, she threw the blanket off entirely, because it was too heavy and it wasn't helping, anyway. But so cold.

Well – luckily the apartment had a thermostat. It had never ever been turned higher than seventy-five, and Rusty would probably be extremely unhappy when she turned it up to ninety, but to be fair, she'd told him to get the flu shot! He should know by now that ignoring her advice was done at his own peril.

She gritted her teeth against the pounding headache as she got out of bed again, and slowly made her way to the door, feeling feverish, congested and grumpy, and about three hundred years old.

Some undetermined amount of time later, Sharon abruptly woke up on the couch, and at first had no idea how she'd come to be there.

Following a brief moment of disorientation, she remembered: after adjusting the thermostat in the hallway, she'd thought to retrieve her phone from her purse, but having accomplished that she'd been too tired to walk back over to the bedroom. Curling up in the nearest available spot had been meant as a short reprieve to catch her breath, except she'd dozed off instead.

The unplanned nap had been anything but restful, an anxious sort of barely-sleep, truncated by weird dreams and constant aches. Now that she'd finally been able to pull herself from it, she could see through the balcony window that night had fallen.

Sharon gingerly forced herself to full awareness and found a blanket draped across her body, up to her shoulders. Rusty really was making it hard to unreasonably blame him for her misery.

Massaging her neck in an attempt to make it less stiff (it didn't work), she pushed herself to one elbow. Her hair fell in disarray around her face – and even that hurt. Forget getting up, just getting halfway to a sitting position had left her exhausted, so she rested against the throw pillows, too tired to move more, too uncomfortable to fall asleep again. A small moan escaped her lips, and it didn't make her feel any better but damn it, this was the kind of situation where painful moaning was acceptable.

"How are you feeling?"

Sharon jumped slightly, and craned her neck to see Rusty sitting at the table, staring at her between his laptop and his chess board.

"Can I get you anything?"

"No… I'm fine – what are you still doing up?" She checked her wristwatch. "It's almost midnight…" Her voice was so hoarse it barely carried to him, but clearing it wasn't working because her throat was too dry.

"Tomorrow's Saturday, Sharon," sighed the boy, getting up to walk over to the kitchen. Sharon heard the sound of running water, and a moment later he presented her with a glass. "Are you hungry?" She couldn't contain a nauseated grimace. "Right. How about some… soup? We can order some…" He sounded doubtful, and for good reason – no good places would deliver at that hour, and there was no way she could handle bad, greasy take-out soup; the thought alone was turning her stomach. "Or I can try to make you some," Rusty hurried to add. "There's some chicken in the freezer and I think we have some vegetables…I'll google a recipe…"

She sighed, her heart warming all over again. (Which fit in just great with the increased and slightly irregular pulse.) "Rusty, I appreciate the offer, but you don't need to make me soup in the middle of the night. I'll be fine." She managed a smile, shifting a little uncomfortably against the throw pillows to ease the ache in her back. "Go to bed. And stop standing so close to me," she added as an afterthought as she tried to suppress a cough.

Rusty rolled his eyes. "I told you, I never get sick. And… did you actually eat anything, at all, today?"

Sharon gave him the bleariest wry look. "Stop tempting fate. And yes," she added in a slightly softer tone at his expectant look, "I did have some food, thank you."

He looked surprised at her answer for a moment, then tilted his head and gave her a suspicious look. "Anything other than that tangerine in the morning?"

They should really stop letting him hang around electronics while they conducted interviews. He was learning too much.

Getting Rusty to finally go to his room had felt like a true victory. And for good reason – Sharon was fairly sure that nations had clashed in historic battles that had involved less effort than it had taken to get her son to move twenty feet down the hall.

'Uh, shouldn't you go to bed?'

'You know most of those meds need to be taken on like, a full stomach. It said so on the instructions sheet.'

'...You did read the instructions, right?'

' –also a medical hotline, if you don't want to go to the hospital we can call them and ask what they think…'

'Sharon…?'

It was a tenacious strategy really, because a little more of that and she'd have been required to go to a hospital after all – for psychiatric care. Luckily, miraculously, she'd eventually managed to stumble onto the right words, though she couldn't even remember if it had been a firm instruction, or a desperate plea, or the threat of severe bodily harm that had gotten the boy to finally pack his things and Go To Bed.

He'd still come back out into the living room twice, ostensibly to get water, once, then to check if the door was locked, and both times he'd given her these looks and dear god, she had the flu, she wasn't rattling out her last breath here!

When he'd asked her if she needed help getting to the bedroom, she'd really had to put her foot down because heartwarming concern, yes, but enough was enough.

Although, when he'd finally managed three minutes without stepping out into the hallway again, and Sharon let out an exhausted sigh and decided it was time to actually head back to her own bed and give the whole hibernation thing another go, she did have to admit that maybe she was being overambitious. The bedroom felt about six thousand miles away. Her body felt about six thousand years old.

And she was already lying down. There were pillows and things. And a glass of water nearby. And she did already have a blanket … The thermostat was turned up, and Rusty hadn't even protested… and was it really that terrible, to just sit there on the couch for a few more minutes?

She shifted against the back of the sofa and lowered her head to one of the pillows again.

It was really very nice of Rusty to have brought her the blanket. And offered soup. And…okay, the impossible child in the other room did have his good points… as long as he stopped trying to drag her to the ER and quit looking at her as though she were patient zero of an Ebola outbreak, Sharon thought she might even be inclined to remember what those good points were.

Sharon had looked about ten times worse by the time they got home, and Rusty didn't know what pills she'd taken or why they weren't working (the pharmacy guy had said they'd work!), but clearly she needed to be seen by a doctor.

But she'd just retreated to her bedroom and he'd spent an hour wondering what would happen if she got worse and he wouldn't know and she wouldn't be able to call out for help and should he tell her to leave the door open? But what if she was already asleep and he'd only wake her up and make everything worse?

(she was very grumpy when she was sick.)

He could hear her coughing through the closed bedroom door, and she sounded awful. Like, he'd known old homeless men who spent their days rolling tobacco, who'd sounded better. His stomach clenched anxiously the longer he listened, because poor Sharon – but at the same time, he'd gotten her cough syrup, and he couldn't understand why she wasn't just taking that. Maybe she'd forgotten. He should remind her.

And really, those seemed less like coughs and more like… convulsions! Rusty cringed at the sound; he could hardly bear to listen to her. And it just kept going and he felt so bad and why was Sharon coughing so much?

He breathed a sigh of relief when a minute finally passed in silence. It seemed like she had finally stopped…

…wait. Why had she stopped coughing? Rusty strained his ears, then jumped up from his bed. Why wasn't she coughing anymore?!

Should he call 911?

Then he heard the bedroom door open, and okay. Good. She was alive. He could tell she'd gone into the living room, and he briefly debated whether to follow her or not because really, very grumpy.

But, like, maybe she needed something. And he had to remind her about the cough syrup, anyway.

He found her asleep on the couch, in the most uncomfortable position possible, but honestly she looked so exhausted that he couldn't bring himself to wake her up.

There were two bright spots in her cheeks despite how pale she was otherwise, and she was shivering slightly, so Rusty got her a blanket from the closet and was really grateful that she didn't wake up when he pulled it all the way up to her shoulders. She let out a little moan and shifted her position slightly and he felt panic surging once again because what was happening and why did Sharon look so awful?

But there was nothing to do but wait for it to get better…or at least that's what she kept saying. So he just brought his things to the living room table and sat down in such a way as to have a clear view of her, and carefully checked that she was still breathing. She was – but it sounded painful, and she was still fidgeting a lot and there was the occasional whimper and Rusty must've circled the couch twenty times trying to figure out something more to do, only he couldn't think of anything.

So he sat at the table late into the night, glancing over at her every other minute and looking up ways to cure the flu (if it even was the flu), only the internet was failing him for the first time in his life, because no one had anything useful to say and it had been like, thousands of years, how had no one figured out how to make this better?

Well, some sites seemed pretty convinced to have the right cure. But like, where would he even get leeches or an acupuncturist this late at night?

Thanks for reading! There *might* be a third and final chapter (like I said there's a little drama left and it might involve some more overreacting on Rusty's part and some more unwise decisions on Sharon's part and maybe a very baffled 911 operator :D), but again, we can also consider this story more-or-less complete as it is.