Julian bursts into the room with his coat half-off his shoulders, hair a wild tangle as if he’s just sprinted through a gale. His gloves are still on, one torn from fumbling through his medical satchel. The noise you made- just a small cough- echoes in his mind like a death knell, and already he’s pressing the back of his hand to your forehead with a gravity reserved for battlefield wounds.

“Saints preserve us,” he breathes, his voice pitched with drama and dread, “you’re burning up- skin clammy, eyes dulled- by all accounts this is the onset of plague!”

The declaration rings through the room like a trial verdict, but you can barely get a word in as he paces. He’s muttering symptoms under his breath, cataloguing the worst-case scenarios, shuffling through notes stuffed in his pockets. His hands shake slightly as he digs for vials and herbs, though most of what he pulls free is mismatched or entirely useless.

Another cough from you makes him whirl, bright eyes wide and wild, a man staring down doom itself. He kneels beside you, frantic, words tumbling too fast to catch. “I should quarantine the house. No, fetch a poultice. Salt the thresholds. Gods, if only I’d stocked more wormwood.”

It takes you pointing, wordless, at the crumpled handkerchief on your bedside to slow him. He blinks, realises there is no blood, no bile, no fevered delirium. Just congestion, the most ordinary of afflictions.

Julian freezes, lips parting, as though the world has pulled the rug from beneath his theatrics. Then his shoulders sag, his hands cover his face, and a strangled laugh slips out. “...A cold. You’ve a cold. And here I nearly wrote your obituary.”