Friday

Annie finished highlighting the last topic heading on the last page of Thursday's Anthropology notes, snapped her marker shut, and slid the stapled pages across the study room table to Troy. "Here you go," she said with a smile.

He raised his head off of his folded arms. "Thanks, Annie," he wheezed painfully, before dropping his head back down with a muffled thud.

Abed watched him with a concerned expression.

"I'm still not sure if it was a good idea for you to come back to classes today," Annie said as she sorted her highlighters back into ROY G BIV order in their packet.

"It wasn't," Pierce growled from behind his protective mask. "The Greendale Ick can't be escaped that easy. He's still contagious."

Britta rolled her eyes. "The mask is stupid, Pierce. Hundreds of students are sick, but you only put it on now to protect yourself from Troy? You don't even see Leonard being so paranoid."

"Leonard has the immune system of a goat." Shirley sounded disgusted. "Something's not right about that."

"Are goats known for having superior immune systems?" Abed puzzled.

Pierce drew himself up and attempted dignity in spite of his white shield. "My mother's coming for the weekend, and it's my duty to remain well so that I don't compromise her health. She's older, you know. Fragile."

Troy moaned delicately from his semi-prone position, drawing attention back to himself. "My throat hurts so bad! Man, I wish I had some orange juice."

Abed jumped to his feet. "I got it, Troy. Hold on." He sprinted off toward the vending machine down the hall, and Troy slumped more comfortably into his seat, wearing a pleased expression.

Annie gave a pitying "Awww," but Shirley was squinting at Troy suspiciously.

"Why do all men do that when they're sick? Doesn't matter their age, they just know."

"Do what?" Annie asked.

"The 'poor me, I'm at death's door' act. Elijah and Jordan both do it. It's cute now, but when they're older?" Shirley shook her head and scowled. "Their father was worst of all. One head cold and he'd be rolling around in agony for days, moaning and whining and having me spoon ice cream down his throat."

"Hey!" Troy protested, livelier now that his honor was being impugned. "I'm really sick! It was brave of me to even come to class, Annie and Abed said so!"

Shirley ignored him. "Women don't do that. We're strong. We suffer in silence."

Annie pursed her lips dubiously at Shirley's last sentence, but said nothing. She did notice that Britta had edged her chair away from the table, and was stealthily shoving things into the bag at her feet.

"Britta, are you leaving?" she asked. "We haven't even started on this week's study guide."

Britta winced and dropped her notebook back on the table. "I guess not."

"Is something wrong?"

"It's just - " she closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. "Sick people creep me out. Everyone's sick on campus, and now Troy's sick, and I really, really do not want to catch this stuff. My cats need me! If I'm not around to feed them, they'll starve! I have to think of my responsibilities here."

Shirley looked as if she was ready to share some choice thoughts on the relative differences between taking care of stray cats and taking care of human children, but thought again and kept her mouth resolutely closed.

Pierce shrugged, and with a whisper, confided to the rest of the table, "She's probably afraid that if she gets sick and dies her cats will eat her because it'll take so long for someone to notice."

Britta goggled in speechless rage, but the moment was diffused by Abed re-entering the study room, arms laden with cans and bottles. "They didn't have orange juice, so I brought apple. And Mountain Dew, because I think it has orange juice in it. And Sprite, for the lemon-lime kick. I think if we mix all these together in the correct proportions, we might get an approximation of orange juice that would be suitable for the situation."

Troy brightened at the prospect of impromptu mixology, and Annie tamped down the urge to tell him that caffeine wasn't the best choice for someone who was sick. "I like taking care of sick people," she admitted. "When my father felt bad when I was little, I'd make him jello and bring him things to drink, then I'd sit by his bed and read the Wall Street Journal to him. For a while, I thought I might want to be a nurse or a doctor because I enjoyed it so much." She basked for a moment in the warm glow of nostalgia.

"That's so nice!" Shirley patted her hand. "I hope you never have to take care of someone who's messing from both ends and can't be cured by jello, though. I think it would ruin it for you."

Annie acknowledged Shirley's response with some confusion before glancing down at her watch, fretting. "Where's Jeff? He's twenty minutes late now."

Britta groaned. "Oh, who knows." She and Jeff might have reconciled after the disaster in May, but that didn't mean that she had to take his foibles with grace.

The rest of the group was also unaware of the undefined limbo in which Annie and Jeff had taken residence. Nothing had come of their kiss, but the memory hadn't strayed far from the forefront of Annie's mind, either. The group's friendship continued uninjured, however, and for the time being that was the most important thing to her.

Jeff chose that moment to shamble through the glass doors of the study room. He looked wretched: shirt wrinkled and untucked, unshaven, eyes red-rimmed and bleary, and hair that had gone far past "bed-head" and strayed into "irredeemably disheveled" territory.

"Hard night, eh Winger?" Pierce asked, sounding impressed. "Which clubs did you hit? I'm going out this weekend and could use some tips."

"With your mother?" asked Troy, revived by Abed's vending machine offerings.

Jeff didn't respond to Pierce, and dropped into his chair, looking straight ahead with an unfocused, glassy stare.

"Is something wrong, Jeff?" Annie leaned forward. "I don't think he's hung over," she said to the rest of the group.

He didn't respond to her, but instead glared at Troy.

"What?" Troy said.

Jeff seemed to be mustering his strength. Finally, in a dark and accusing tone he rasped out, "Special Drink."

Troy hunched over and pulled a face. "Ah. Oops. My bad."

Shirley was bewildered. "Would someone like to explain what's going on here?"

"I think I can," Abed said. "Wednesday morning, before Troy knew he was really sick? We were in here," (he cast a wary glance at Shirley and spoke more quickly) "recreating the Last Supper with Special Drink."

"What?" Shirley demanded.

"Not in a disrespectful way!" Abed insisted. "In a tribute to Battlestar Galactica. And The Simpsons. And The Sopranos. They all did promos based on the Da Vinci painting, you know."

"Let me guess, you all shared one cup of Special Drink?" Britta asked.

"Yes."

"You drank first, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Crafty little Arab devil," Pierce said admiringly.

It was at that point that the group's conversation deteriorated into chaos, with Britta chiding Pierce, Abed trying to explain the difference between irreverence and artistic tribute to Shirley, and Troy coughing intermittently, attempting to elicit sympathy in spite of the fact that he had infected Jeff with the Greendale Ick.

Annie sighed and collated the rest of her Anthropology notes. She looked over at Jeff, who had closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of his chair. "Why did you come in today if you're sick?" she asked quietly. "You should've stayed at home."

He cracked an eye open and rolled his neck so that he could see her. "I knew you'd kill me if I missed a group meeting."

"I like to think I'd have let you off just once." She smiled down at her notebook.

"Nah, you're ferocious." Jeff tried to smirk, but ended up having a coughing spasm which only subsided when he noisily hocked into a kleenex Annie had produced from her backpack.

That got everyone's attention. Britta said, "Maybe you should go home, Jeff," her lip curling in disgust as he expressed more snot.

"I'm here to learn, Britta," Jeff said with a bravado that would have been more impressive if he hadn't had wisps of kleenex clinging to his stubble.

In spite of his declaration, before the end of the study session, Jeff had retired to the sofa, where he snored for the rest of the hour.

Abed and Troy drifted over to look down at him. "He sounds like he's drowning in his own mucus," said Troy, who was long past feeling guilty about infecting Jeff.

Abed withdrew a pocket watch on a chain from somewhere on his person, flipped it open, and took Jeff's pulse at the wrist.

"How's he doing?"

Abed shrugged. "Don't know. I've just always wanted to do that."

The rest of the group joined Troy and Abed, circling around the sofa. "I don't want to feel too bad for him, since he brought this on himself with his own childish, disrespectful shenanigans," Shirley said, "but he is pitiful."

"We shouldn't let him be alone," Troy nodded. "My uncle owns a ranch, and he always says that if a cow wanders off by itself, it's either sick or dying. Or having a baby. But anyway, can't let them be away from the herd."

Jeff opened his eyes. "I am neither dying nor calving, and I resent being compared to a straying cow. Even if I am dying, this isn't my ideal final view, with your morbid faces looming over me."

"Buenos dias, muchachos!" Ben Chang flung himself through the doors of the study room, strident tones muffled from behind a full Hazmat suit.

"Lay off the Spanish, we all know you're a fraud," Pierce grumbled while eying Chang's suit with jealousy.

"You've already tried the grand entrance thing, haven't you?" Britta added.

"Dude, what happens if you fart in that suit?" Troy asked with mingled disgust and interest.

Annie, who had never quite gotten over her guilt about getting Chang fired, attempted to inject some positivity into the conversation. "When's your next concert planned, Ben?"

"Not until the plague times are over." He rang an imaginary bell. "Bring out your dead! Did Winger succumb? Need me to haul off his carcass?"

Jeff, who had risen up to watch Chang's entrance, lapsed back onto the couch. "I can't deal with this right now," he muttered.

Chang got into Jeff's personal bubble, shoving the plastic shield over his face right against Jeff's. "Yep, he's got it bad. Swollen mucous membranes, congested lungs, the works. I'll take him off your hands before he infects the rest of you."

Jeff was wriggling around the couch, coughing violently as he attempted to escape the smaller man's onslaught. He looked so helpless that Annie stepped behind Chang and put a hand on his shoulder. "We've got him, but thanks."

"Fine." Chang backed off. "Have fun with your very own Typhoid Mary."

That triggered something in Annie's memory. "Didn't you have a date on Tuesday night with the new cheerleader, Troy? Margaret somebody?"

"Yeah."

"Nice work!" Chang high-fived him.

"Well, wasn't she the girl who got taken to the emergency room Wednesday morning because she was so sick and dehydrated?"

"Yeah." He was still oblivious.

"Troy! She had to have been sick already on Tuesday night! Please tell me she just breathed on you or something."

"Nope, we totally made out. She was kind of coughing and spitting, though. Slimy."

"Ew!"

A chorus of assent backed Annie up, and Chang headed for the nearest exit.

"Unsafe and disgusting!" he said as a farewell. "You'll all go down, mark my words!"

As the group began preparations to leave, Annie lingered beside Jeff, looking down at him uncertainly. He had dozed back off after Chang had left, and he was moving fitfully on the couch in his sleep. "Everyone?" Annie asked. "Do you think we should let him go home alone?"

"Eh, he'll be fine," Pierce waved, his mind obviously already on his mother's impending visit.

Britta looked guilty, but moved closer to the door. "He's probably fine, Annie. He's lived alone for years. I'm sure a weekend feeling like crap won't do him permanent damage. We'll check on him on Monday."

"Uh, hello? No classes on Monday!" Troy rejoiced. "In-service!"

"I am sorry, Annie. I just can't." Mumbling something about her cats, Britta fled.

Annie turned to Shirley with a pleading look.

"No, huh-uh." Shirley shook her head so emphatically that her earrings slapped against her cheeks. "I can't expose Elijah and Jordan to this stuff."

"Abed? Troy?" They were her last resort. "Don't you care about Jeff? Abed took care of you when you were sick, Troy. Imagine if you'd been alone!"

"He'd be welcome to stay in the dorm, but there's not much room now that Troy's with me, and I have an intensive documentary film making course all weekend. I'll help you check up on him, though."

"Did you ask if he wants us butting in?" asked Troy, peering over the back of the couch at Jeff. "He's kind of a private guy. Has anyone even been to his apartment?"

"I have," Abed replied.

"What? When was that?" Troy and Annie spoke almost in unison.

"This summer. I visited a few times and we watched movies. He seemed down, especially right after classes ended."

Annie took that in, then bent over Jeff. "Jeff. Do you want help getting home?"

He didn't answer, but pulled his car keys out of his pocket and held them out.

"Okay, he's really sick," Troy announced. Shirley and Pierce walked over.

"See!" Annie said. "Someone has to help him!"

"I don't know why this is an issue," Shirley said. "You're the one who was telling us all about how much you like taking care of sick people."

"Sounds good to me. You don't have any responsibilities or people who depend on you, either," Pierce added callously.

"I think it's the best option," Abed nodded.

"Jeff, if you die, can I have your car?" Troy asked, on his way out.

"No!" Jeff barked from the couch, opening his eyes and scowling.

"You don't want a car that old. It's a depreciating asset," Pierce confided as the two left the room.

Annie reached out for Jeff's keys, but he held them back. "It's stick," he said.

"I can drive it," she replied with her best 'don't underestimate my abilities' voice. A European sports car with a manual transmission had accompanied her father's mid-life crisis.

He relinquished the keys.

"Did you drive to school today, Annie?" Abed asked.

"No, I took the bus."

"Cool. When you think Jeff's okay alone, text me and I'll pick you up and drive you home."

"Thank you, Abed."

"No problem."

In the parking lot, Jeff collapsed into the passenger seat of the Lexus, but watched Annie critically as she pulled out of the parking lot and merged into traffic. Satisfied that she wasn't going to skip a gear or stall in the middle of the road, he subsided into a sniffly silence, speaking only to give her directions.

When they arrived in front of his unprepossessing apartment building, he said, "You don't need to stay, you know. You can text Abed as soon as we get inside."

Annie set the parking break, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and smoothed her skirt. "As long as I think you're okay by yourself."

"I have a cold, not hantavirus."

"So did the cheerleader you and Troy got this from. Now she's in the hospital, and there's no telling how many classes she'll miss!"

"Yeah, gotta keep priorities in mind." He rolled his eyes.

She followed Jeff up a set of exterior steps into his second-floor apartment, then hung back as he disappeared into the bathroom. The apartment was tiny, with a combined living room, kitchen, and seating area, and doors leading into the bathroom and bedroom.

Annie trailed her fingers down a long sofa upholstered in thick, pebbled leather. It and a few other incongruous items were stranded in the austere, utilitarian apartment: a large flatscreen television; a gleaming espresso maker shoved in amongst a litter of cheap appliances; and glimpsed through the bedroom door, a California king-sized bed that left only a few feet of space around its periphery in the small room. All were, she supposed, remnants of Jeff's pre-Greendale life. Aside from a few framed prints of modernistic drips and blots, the walls were bare, and the room was devoid of photographs or other personal touches.

Knowing she shouldn't, but unable to contain her curiosity, she walked over to the refrigerator and peeked in. It contained a bottle of yellow mustard, an empty carton of orange juice, and a jumbo canister of whey protein. The freezer, equally lacking in food suitable for a convalescent, held only a bottle of vodka and an overflow of ice. Emboldened, she flipped open the kitchen cabinets to find a box of saltine crackers, a can of condensed milk, and a sealed jar of maraschino cherries.

The bathroom door opened.

Now Annie was on a mission. She marched into the bedroom, where Jeff had flung himself face-down on the bed (which, she noticed, hadn't been properly made up). "Do you have any decongestants or cold medications to take?" she demanded.

"Mmph." He turned his head so that it wasn't smushed into a pillow. "No. Just aspirin."

"There's no food in here, either. Honestly, Jeff, how do you expect to get better?" She folded her arms across her chest and brought one of her feet down forcefully for emphasis.

He winced. "Don't stomp. Or shout."

Annie frowned, but lowered her voice. "Well?"

"I don't know! Takeout? I haven't died yet."

"Were you this cavalier about your health when you were a lawyer? I thought you had to bill a certain number of hours and appear in court. I do know that next week you have an Anthropology quiz on Tuesday and a Calculus exam on Thursday, and you need to get better over the weekend, not worse."

"Okay, fine." Jeff rolled over onto his side, pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, and peeled out a fifty, which he handed to her. "Go buy what you think I need, Florence."

Annie took the bill from him, and stared at it for a moment stupidly. "Really?"

"Yes, really. I can tell I'm the latest project you've taken on for whatever misguided reason, so go do what you need to do. God knows I can't stop you." He turned his head back into the pillow, so his next words were muffled. "Or resist you."

"What?"

He pulled the other pillow over his head.

Annie collected Jeff's car keys from the dinette table where he'd tossed them, and as she accelerated out of the parking lot, she considered her next move. Fifty dollars wouldn't stretch far for decongestants and completely stocking a kitchen. Her mother had a medicine cabinet kept full with every conceivable cure for the common cold, but even a few tablets or bottles missing would mean a panic and accusations of a relapse. Not that her parents were home to notice immediately – they were off for a weekend golf retreat, leaving Annie the run of the house, the use of her mother's car, and the expectation that her days off would be spent cloistered with her textbooks.

Abandoning any Whole Foods visions of sustainable paper goods and organic produce, Annie found a Wal-Mart and bought basic ingredients for a few simple meals. As she threw more boxes of kleenex into her cart, she realized that the thrill she was getting out of planning and organizing was being overshadowed by a pang of regret: at this point in her life, she should have been shopping for her own apartment or dorm.

Still, it wasn't half bad, curled up later on Jeff's amazing sofa, doing homework and keeping an eye on the chicken noodle soup she was making. Even Jeff's somnolent presence in the next room was a comfort, and it was all too easy to drift into a daydream of having a place of her own, attending a real university, and living with a pleasant, attentive (not smart-mouthed, not sarcastic) boyfriend. Not Jeff, though. Definitely not Jeff. She had promised herself she would never start having the childish, borderline-creepy fantasies about him she'd harbored so long for Troy, and if the shadowy boyfriend in her imagination happened to be taller than average, well built, and with a carefully-tousled head of hair, that was just the result of being indoctrinated by too many of the kind of women's magazines that Britta liked to condemn.

Above all, Annie refused to consider why she was being so vehement about taking care of Jeff when she'd spent the previous four months avoiding being alone with him.

When the sky started to dim into an extended fall evening, she woke Jeff up with orange juice, soup, and cold medicine. He came out of his cocoon snorting and grumbling.

"You've got a fever!" Annie realized, looking at his flushed face and feeling the heat rolling off of him even from several feet away.

"Uh, yeah," Jeff groused, downing the pills. Congestion had caused his voice to descend half an octave. "Orange juice and chicken?" he raised an eyebrow in a pathetic facsimile of his usual disdain.

"Yes," Annie said, standing over him to make sure he didn't try to rebel. "The vitamin C in the juice will help you get over this faster."

"Humph," he replied, slurping soup. Then he set the bowl down on the nightstand and looked at her with a different expression. "Thank you, Annie. No one else would do this for me." He sounded sincere.

"Oh, someone would!" she said, giving an awkward handwave meant to wordlessly encompass the rest of the study group, his family, and whatever friends he might have outside the confines of Greendale.

"No. No one would."

Annie wasn't sure how to deal with a snark-free Jeff, so she pulled her phone out of her pocket. "I guess I should call Abed," she said, sliding it open.

"It's late. You could stay, camp out on the sofa. Make sure I don't die in my sleep." Jeff gave a cough for dramatic effect that turned into a painful, drawn-out spasm.

Annie hesitated. A bizarre sleepover at Jeff's hadn't been part of her plan, but going home to an empty house didn't sound at all appealing.

Jeff settled it when he emptied the glass and bowl and flopped back down. "Do what you want. Extra sheets are in the bathroom cabinet. You might as well see your project through, though."

She was sure that she was imagining the pleading note in his voice, but decided to stay.

The linen cabinet turned out to be as well-stocked as the pantry had been bare. Annie didn't care to contemplate why Jeff felt the need to possess so many sets of high-thread-count sheets, but that didn't stop her from luxuriating in their smoothness as she tucked a flat sheet around the sofa cushions.

After finding a large stash of cheap toothbrushes still pristine in their plastic wrappers (again, she didn't want to know) and embarrassedly pulling an oversized t-shirt out of Jeff's clean laundry pile (knowing it would be impossible to sleep in a blouse and pencil skirt), she was set for the night.

Not sleepy yet, Annie sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the glass cabinet that housed Jeff's DVD collection. She smiled when she saw a few in front that bore neat "Property of Abed Nadir" labels, then sorted through the ones at the back. None of them, perturbingly, were in any discernible order.

Annie thought she'd gone through them all when she spotted one more, which had been shoved into the far back corner of the cabinet. Leaning forward and extending her arm, she tweezed it out between thumb and forefinger, brought it into the light, and looked at it curiously. It wasn't a release from any major Hollywood studio. Bearing the title Curious Co-Eds, the photograph on the front luridly depicted two young women, one blonde, one brunette, locked in a passionate embrace. The blonde's hand had disappeared up the brunette's ludicrously tiny pleated skirt, Annie noticed, then she read the tagline: "These Sapphic sweeties (and here her inner grammarian winced at the tacky alliteration) learn sensual lessons that can't be taught in textbooks as they discover the joys of higher education!"

Annie frowned. She shouldn't be surprised, she supposed, that Jeff watched pornography, but -

Oh.

She dropped the DVD case in horror and scooted away until her back hit the front of the couch, before a noise from the bedroom sent her into a panic, and she scrambled forward again, jumbling the DVDs back into the cabinet haphazardly, the offending item returned to its dark corner.

Jeff coughed, the bedroom door closed, and the light went off.