This is definitely not how Trishna expected to spend her weekend. She planned to do the same as ever – sleep until noon, eat dinner, study and go on walks to take photos, go to her violin lesson. Maybe argue with her brother, accompany her parents to the supermarket or call Astrid or Hank and talk about nothing in particular, as they do so often. The weather was supposed to be pretty nice too – a little rain, but mostly just cloudy, with temperatures rising into a more comfortable range than under ten degrees and getting frostbite on toes from being forced to run laps on the school field.
She did not expect to be woken up at seven in the fucking morning on Saturday, drool stuck to the corner of her mouth and pillow, “with a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride,” ringing in her ears as she scrambled to get her phone and free herself of Britney Spears at such an ungodly hour.
“Hello?”
“Trishna? Thank fuck. I need help.” Hank’s voice is frantic and panicked in her ear, and even though Trishna is barely awake and coherent, she can hear that something is gravely wrong. Hank isn’t the type to panic over a telephone pole smashing into his kitchen, so it’s definitely bad. Horrible kind of bad.
“Hank?” She props herself up on one elbow, shuffling in her sheets.
“I might be in a bit of a crisis.” The last time Trishna heard these words from Hank his entire basement flooded, so she has to brace herself for a wide variety of things.
“I just chopped my arm off with a pickaxe crisis or I forgot a 20 page research paper crisis?”
“Mischa just turned up on my doorstep and I’m pretty sure he has a high ass fever crisis.”
Trishna blinks. One, two times. “What?”
“He’s– He’s laying on the couch in my living room, and my dad’s out of Uranium for a few days while he picks up parts and– fuck.” He breathes out heavily. She can imagine him running fingers through his hair frantically. “Trishna, I have no fucking idea what to do. What if he dies?”
“Nobody is dying, Hank.” She’s already on her feet, storming through her closet, one leg in jeans, jumping up and down rapidly to get them on. “I’m on my way. Keep calm, look after Mischa and if he gets really bad call the ambulance.”
On her way there, Trishna collects Astrid – already on their way, tearing through mud from the fields surrounding Rosenbergs’ residence with their military boots, and together they trot quickly to Hank’s house. It’s off the main road, on a dirt square, next to Hank’s dad’s car shop. It’s small, with slightly decayed white wood outside and built in the shape of a trailer, and there’s a line of beer bottles lined up under the porch to preserve the strawberry bushes until springtime.
Astrid almost takes the door out of the doorframe in order to get inside. Hank is almost buzzing with anxiety, biting on the thumb of his nail and pacing the small, cramped hallway.
“When did he come to your house?”
Hank licks his lips. “Four–ish? I think. I let him lay down on the couch because I thought he was just, y’know, drunk, but then I woke up and his clothes were just wet with sweat and he was so hot to the touch. And he was shivering so hard.” His voice and eyes lower, looking at his wringing hands. “I thought he was having a seizure or something.”
“Okay. Okay.” Trishna wipes her hands – why are they so sweaty all of a sudden? – on her jeans. You’ve got this, Trish. “Put a cold compress on him. We need to get his fever to break.”
“I have paracetamol in pills. But I don’t know if he can swallow it.” Hank says and she nods. Astrid is standing behind them awkwardly, with arms crossed on their chest, leaning their weight onto one leg.
Trishna nods her head. “Anything goes.”
“I also called my dad. He’s got a plane here tomorrow, at nine in the morning.”
“Did you say anything… more?” Now, this is the question she’s been dreading. Because it’s sort of an unspoken arrangement between all of them to not reveal Mischa’s problems with his guardians to anyone. Mischa doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t like being asked about it, and says that he will move into a trailer on Hank’s dad’s property the morning of his graduation. Nobody really knows if he's joking. So revealing this information, even off-handedly, is a big breach of an unspoken agreement.
“No. At least, not everything. Told him Mischa’s parents are out of town.” He looks to the side, at the yellow wallpapered wall with a bookshelf stacked with Hank’s airplane models and his dad’s football trophies. “I don’t know if he really believed me.”
“How is Mischa?” Astrid pops in.
Hank’s mouth turns into a thin line and he makes a so–so hand gesture.
“Do you have a thermometer?”
“It’s in the kitchen, in the medicine box.”
“I can go.” Astrid proposes. Trishna suspects it’s somewhat of an excuse to escape the tense atmosphere and quick conversation that’s been building between her and Hank, excluding Astrid subconsciously. There have been a few jokes here and there about her and Hank having their own conversations while talking to others, and everyone said it's more of sweet that they're able to focus on just each other, but Trishna knows it's not all funny and cute.
“A cold compress too!”
“Got it!”
Astrid comes back just as Hank and Trishna are dragging Mischa from where he’s bundled up in three blankets, half–hanging off the couch. Together, they prop his unconscious body against the sturdiest pillow Hank could find. Mischa looks like the picture of despair and misery – dark curls stuck against his forehead, feverish flush all over his skin, eyes squeezing periodically, breathing heavily through his mouth.
“Raise his arm.” Mischa fights against Astrid’s metal grip briefly before flopping like a dead fish onto the couch. Trishna shoves the thermometer down his armpit with a surgical precision and Astrid clamps it. The girl pats his arm comfortingly.
“Now we wait.” They sit in a row – Trishna at his head, Astrid in the middle, Hank the furthest. None of them say anything. Five minutes pass in total silence, except for Mischa’s raspy breathing and occasional sniffle. The TV is off, radio in the kitchen playing some news broadcast shyly, as if it can feel the tense atmosphere.
Eventually, Trishna reaches for the thermometer, Astrid raising Mischa’s arm once again.
“39.3.”
Hank runs a hand down his face. He seems so much like his dad in moments like these. “Shit.”
“Is this, like, hospital–bad?” Astrid perks up.
Trishna suddenly realizes both of them are staring at her like she's the second coming of Christ with all the medical knowledge they need.
“No. Not yet, but if it raises any more, we’ll go.” Astrid nods, and Mischa starts stirring again. Hank tries to pull the blanket over him, but Mischa resists even more, clicking his tongue with dissatisfaction and finally – finally – opening his eyes.
“Where are– Jean?” He blinks a few times, as if trying to remember what he was talking about. There’s a slight yellow pus in the corner of his eyes. If Trishna remembers correctly, Jean Collins is his adoptive “mother”, regular bingo player and kitchen help at her parents’ motel, and her stomach churns unpleasantly when she thinks about what Mischa did before he ended up here. Hank is almost in his face, Trishna leaning close behind him. Water keeps boiling. “Where?”
“They don’t care about you.” Hank lets out a theatrical gasp and slaps Astrid on the arm.
“Astrid!”
They puff up like a petulant peacock. “What! I’m just stating the facts.” Trishna can’t say they’re completely wrong, but damn, that’s a hit below the belt. Especially when the interested himself is on deathbed. Mischa is usually pretty fine with them being bluntly honest about his shitparents, but to talk about them while he can’t voice his opinion? That might be a little too much. However much Trishna hates Jean and that dude.
Hank rolls his eyes and presses. “You’re at my house. Hank’s house.”
Mischa squints. “Hank?”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“No. Jean.” Mischa shakes his head. Hank glances at Trishna and Astrid with a bewildered look in his eye.
“It’s me. Hank. Not Jean.”
Mischa still doesn’t seem too convinced that his adoptive mother isn’t here, and that Hank isn’t her. Are they really that similar? Trishna tries to picture Jean from these very few and limited interactions she had with her, and doesn’t really find any similarities. Dark eyes, maybe?
“Jean, stop.”
“Hank.” He points at himself with both hands. “And Astrid.” They give an awkward wave. He points even further “Trishna.”
“No. No.”
“Yes.” Mischa’s hands suddenly wrap around the fabric of Astrid’s hoodie, sneaking up from below the blankets. They turn to Hank and Trishna with a despaired look in their eye, but all attempts – including all three of them working together – to wrestle the material back are proven fruitless. Mischa won’t let go.
He ends up falling asleep, snoring and breathing through his mouth, against Astrid, who is awfully uncomfortable and stiff like a board. He’s almost entirely wrapped around them, arm circling their waist and head comfortably on their shoulder. One of Astrid’s arms is stuck under the mass of Mischa’s torso, and they will not stop complaining about how they cannot feel it anymore and how the blood flow has been surely stopped.
Hank leans over to Trishna, putting his head on her shoulder. “Do you mind watching the baby while me and Astrid go buy meds? Dad just texted me a list of things he usually uses on me.”
“Sure. Drive safe.”
“Always do.”
Astrid slides out from under Mischa, slowly at first, but he just makes a pitiful whining noise and presses even closer than he was before. Astrid has the expression of a wild animal about to run, fingers twitching for release so Hank and Trishna think up another way of freeing them from the sick teen.
Second plan is conceived quickly – Astrid basically rips out themself from Mischa’s fingers, and Trishna shoves a big pillow into Mischa’s arms, just as he’s starting to fuss sleepily. It seems to settle him, and after a good minute of waiting with bated breath around the couch, they get to work.
Astrid and Hank bundle up in coats and hats, put on heavy winter boots and get a kiss on the cheek from Trishna before they head out. Neither of them have a driver’s license, but it’s not like there are any cops in Uranium to stop and check them, and both Hank and Astrid learned how to drive before they even hit double digits.
Hank’s dad’s car engine reeves as Astrid backs out of the driveway. He’s still waving to Trishna as they disappear.
First ten, Trishna is inclined to say even twenty minutes pass in blissful silence. She manages to find the remote, lost in the cracks of the old couch, and turns on some stupid soap opera channel. Hospital scenery, white scrubs and sobbing women flash somewhere on the screen as Trishna picks up a tabloid magazine from the coffee table. Neither Hank nor his dad are the type to read, much less have gossip magazines laying around, so she presumes that she has left it during one of her visits.
Then Mischa starts tossing and turning. The sheets are sweated through, Hank’s t–shirt is too, and Trishna cringes at the prospect of helping this six feet tall polar bear of a man change. He mumbles something, then calms down for a moment before starting to turn around again, twisting the blankets and sheets around him like a cocoon.
“Mama?” Trishna’s blood runs ice cold. Shit, shit, fuck, obviously he gets worse when she’s the only one in the house, and she’s not fucking qualified for this. Nope. Mischa, please tell her you’re just sleep talking and not full on hallucinating from fever. She can’t do this.
“Mischa?” She says, unsure, and shuffles ever so slightly towards him. One of his arms is thrown off the edge of the couch, and as she gets up his legs start kicking, as if he was trying to get himself up to a sitting position. Please, just go back to sleep, she’ll listen to your raps on full volume for a week, just don’t make her talk to a guy with a fever higher than the temperature of the sun. The room is becoming increasingly hot.
“Mama? Де ти?” Okay, that much she can piece together from Astrid and Mischa’s frequent banters in Ukrainian (and later resulting wrestling matches on the floor). She’s got this. (She most definitely doesn’t got this, and her hands are shaking so hard, and she almost drops to the floor because she’s definitely not meant to be a mother if she’s reacting like this to her friend in distress.)
Fuck it. Her sick friend’s comfort is more important than her own cringe.
“I’m here, Mischa.” She tries to make her voice sound as soothing as she can, with panic racking through her body and complete lack of knowledge about Tamara Bachinski. She actually knows three things – she was Mischa’s mom, they were very close and she’s very dead. Trishna sits down on the edge of the couch, and Mischa almost throws himself at her, clinging to her waist desperately and burying his head in her sweater. One of his hands catches hers. He’s shaking like a leaf, and words suddenly spill from his mouth like a dam opening.
“Mama,” he sobs, the word breaking in half and becoming whispered. His voice is hoarse, like a parched man’s, and Trishna knows she should get him something to drink, but fuck, she’s basically stuck holding onto his sweaty hand. She can’t deny him this simple comfort for a drink. “Я сумую за тобою. Я так сумую за тобою щодня.”
“It’s alright.” She can’t do much more but let him crush her hand and hope for the best. Rubs circles into his back, starts humming a low melody, one of the lullabies her mom would sing her. Probably Stevie Nicks. Melody fills the gaps between Mischa’s frantic, unrhythmic breaths and pitiful whimpers, muffled by the fabric of Trishna’s sweater. “It’s alright, Mischa. No worries.”
“I’m sorry.” Mischa switches to English but continues to sob, wail even, howling like a desperate animal when the tears stop coming and it’s just dry heaving, trying to take in as much air as his seizing lungs will allow. His tears and sweat wet her sweater, soaking through to her t–shirt, making the fabric cling to her skin as if she just walked into a swimming pool. Mischa shivering uncontrollably, random tremors rattling his frame.
Trishna cards the fingers of her other hand through Mischa’s hair. It’s wet from the feverish sweating, curls curling up around her fingers like a cat asking for pets. Kind of reminds Trishna of Mischa himself, actually – he’s ridiculously touch–starved, even while pretending he’s not, he loves every time of physical affection and will not hesitate to force it. He’s a great hugger too. Not like Trishna minds.
Playing with his hair seems to have a calming effect on Mischa, so Trishna doesn’t stop her ministrations. Even when she’s pretty sure that he’s fallen asleep from the way he sags against her, how he shifts even closer and puts his full body weight on her. There’s a dramatic shootout in the soap opera that’s still playing, but somehow, the pattern of Mischa’s heated breaths on her neck is way more interesting.
And suddenly, there's this bone–chilling cold coming from somewhere, and Trishna raises her head from where it rests in Mischa’s hair.
Hank is standing in the doorway, Astrid behind him with two plastic bags filled to the brim. “What the fuck?”
She should’ve expected this. Oh well. She’s been in worse situations before, and still came out on top.
“Okay, listen, it’s a long story.” Trishna tries to raise her hands in a reflective gesture, but one is immediately caught and brought back by Mischa, and the other feels weird raised all alone. “Actually, it’s not. I think he hallucinated I was his mom or something. Kept calling me mama and talking in Ukrainian.”
Hank and Astrid look at each other in the blink of an eye. A well–worked out movement. They turn back to her.
“Bad thing you didn’t record it. Corey would have a field day.” Astrid snickers, walking through the living room and setting the bags on the kitchen counter before walking off to the bathroom.
“We bought snacks too.” Hank smiles and walks up to pet Mischa’s hair. Mischa leans into the touch like a kitten seeking warmth, still deep asleep, and Hank turns around to ransack the plastic bags.
“Instant soup in case his throat isn’t doing too good, and…” He shuffles around the bag some more, “some light corn waffles. And I bought you these cookies you like so much.”
Trishna tilts her head to the side, smiling softly. “Aw, you didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to. You’re better at this whole sick–caretaking thing than me and Astrid are together, you know.”
“Don’t say that. It’s you who Mischa went to.”
“And that was a stupid ass decision on his behalf.”
“In his defense, he was burning up with a fever–”
“Trishna?” Mischa’s muffled voice comes from below her, and she snaps her attention back to him. Hank stops unpacking the groceries too.
“Hello, Mischa! Finally awake.”
A groan comes in response. Hank snorts behind her.
“How are you feeling?” She says, trying to sound as soft and soothing as possible. She’s not really good at this mothering thing. The closest thing she’s done before was taking care of Corey when he threw up during PE in ninth grade until his mom came to pick him up.
“Shit.”
Hank very audibly swallows a laugh behind her. Trishna snaps her fingers at him.
“Do you want something?”
Mischa turns onto his side, squints his eyes, as if he was listening to his body. “Water?”
“Sure thing. Pass me the water, Hank?” A water bottle is thrown into her hands – more like at her, she’ll shove Hank about this later – and she passes it to Mischa, even uncapping it.
He struggles with even drinking it. First trying to choke himself by drinking while laying down, and then, when Trishna propped him up properly against the mountain of pillows and cushions, he attempted to drown himself. Hank almost pissed himself laughing in the kitchen, and Trishna made him get her another bottle, trying to calm Mischa down that nothing’s wrong, accidents happen, and planning to strangle Hank as soon as she untangles Mischa’s hand from her sweater.
Finally, Mischa’s thirst was quenched, and he started making himself comfortable once again in the cocoon of blankets.
Trishna grabbed his arm, “Nope. Medicine first, then you can go back to sleep.”
Mischa sighed deeply, but thankfully cooperated. Trishna managed to get a spoonful of the Antitussive, branded as “raspberry–tasting”, into his mouth before he shuddered with disgust.
“Gross. I hate sweet, sticky stuff.” He clicked his tongue with distaste, shaking his head at the leftover taste arising.
Trishna cocked her eyebrow, eyeing him with surprise. “Don’t you have a huge sweet tooth, Mischa?”
He shakes his head with a surprising amount of determination for a man with pneumonia. “Not for syrups. Or honey.”
“You don’t like honey?”
“No. Tastes like death from suffocation from clinging onto your throat.”
Hank bursts out laughing somewhere in the kitchen, and the bathroom door clicks open.
“Oh, bitch son is awake.” Astrid says, off–handedly as they head to the kitchen to steal a Knoppers straight out of Hank’s hands.
Mischa propels himself up on the bed higher, energy suddenly coming back to his fever–racked body like he got hooked up to an IV with pure adrenaline. “Calling me a bitch son?”
“Wow. Bitch son’s talking.”
“Why are you insulting a man on his deathbed? I will haunt you.”
“No one is haunting anyone.” Trishna declares, pushing Mischa gently onto his back and taking away one pillow. “If you want to get out of your deathbed, sleep. Sleep is the best medicine.”
Mischa grumbles, but doesn’t attempt to go against Trishna’s words, and when her hand cards through his sweaty, wet hair and he snuggles closer to a pillow, he’s out like a light.
“Jesus Christ.”
Hank is playing with his fingers, scrubbing at skin near his thumb. “Thank you guys. I don’t– I don’t fucking know what I would do without you.”
“Hey.” Trishna puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently. Hank turns to her, sending a grateful smile before Trishna presses her lips to his. “You can always count on us.”
“Yeah. We support each other.” Astrid nods, with a small, dreamy smile on their face. It looks a little like they’re somewhere far away. Suddenly, they turn back, eyes sharpening like a cat and face morphing back into a blank look. “Or something. Like the Musketeers thing.”
Hank snorts so hard that snot falls out of his nose, and both he and Astrid have to hold Trishna while she bows back to grab the tissues from the coffee table. Trishna laughs so hard the tissues almost fall from her grip and Astrid tugs her back onto the couch, ending up in Trishna slamming her head against the side of it.
Maybe something good can come out of this.