and Calypso were usually in bed by the time Mark got off of his late night shifts.

That's the way it always was. The girls were far too sleepy to ever stay up past 10:00, so it was a no go for when he got off at midnight.

Naomi was always in the living room either watching TV or studying for her classes by the time Mark got home. Tonight it was the latter, her textbooks sprawled out on the coffee table.

Naomi looked incredibly tired as she watched Mark enter through the apartment door. She wasted no time in packing up her textbooks. Mark figured she was just eager to get home and get to bed.

"Everything good today?"

"Mhm. Perfect." Naomi confirmed as she slung her bag over her shoulder. "Er...slightly not perfect. Daisy has a cough."

Mark nodded as he made his way over to the kitchen, not finding the news even slightly surprising. "She got her flu vaccine yesterday, she might just be having a reaction."

Naomi was silent for a moment as she watched Mark. "It's a bad cough. I didn't want to give her medicine or anything because I wasn't sure but, um...it's a bad cough. It's a really bad cough."

You said that already, Mark wanted to chide.

He decided it was better to keep his mouth shut though. He knew that Naomi was just being protective, and he appreciated that. He didn't need to give her a hard time.

"I'll give her medicine, thank you." Mark nodded as he flipped through the mail pile sitting on his counter. "Goodnight."

Naomi echoed a goodnight back as she left for the night, shutting the apartment door behind her.

Everything was going the way that it usually did. Naomi had left for the night, the girls were in bed, Mark was flipping through his mail. He had grown so comfortable with the routine that they had established.

Something that wasn't apart of their routine though was Daisy's bedroom door creaking open, and Mark frowned. He hoped he hadn't woken her up by talking too loud.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway. Rather than coming and entering the kitchen like Mark thought Daisy would do, the footsteps ended fairly quickly.

Daisy let out some sort of horrible sound, something that made Mark put down the envelopes in his hands.

Mark followed the sound of Daisy's groans all the way to the hall bathroom, the vanity lights brightly illuminating an image of Daisy keeled over the toilet.

Mark frowned, taking note that Daisy was definitely vomiting. "Uh...are you good?"

Daisy's vomiting ceased momentarily as she narrowed her eyes, slowly turning to Mark with the most contemptuous look on her face. "Do I look good to you, Mark?"

Daisy didn't look good in the slightest. Her face was pale and incredibly flushed, her forehead matted with sweat.

"I guess not." Mark grimaced, Daisy groaning as she lowered her head for round two.

Her stomach was tearing her apart, and the cough she'd had for the past couple hours had seriously convinced her that she was about to hack up one of her lungs.

"Do you want water? Or, uh...I don't know, medicine?" Mark was trying his best to be helpful, but Daisy only groaned again. She couldn't possibly listen to him talk a second longer as she sat there.

Daisy sat back on her knees, her eyes shut tightly as she reached up to wipe the perspiration from her forehead. "I'm...hot. It's hot. Can you turn the temperature down? I feel like I'm baking in here."

Mark frowned at that. It most definitely didn't feel hot. The air circulating the apartment felt warm enough, but definitely not hot. It felt comfortable. "I think your internal body temperature is just off."

Daisy shook her head. "No. It's hot in here, I swear. Can't you change the thermostat? I'm...I'm gonna pass out if it doesn't get any cooler.

Daisy's skin was clammy, and she tried to use her hand as a fan to propel any sort of cool air towards her.

Another wave of nausea slammed into Daisy out of nowhere, and she found herself bent over the toilet again.

Mark grimaced again as he watched the girl groan in agonizing pain. "Do you think you can stop long enough to hold a thermometer in your mouth?"

Daisy immediately shook her head, her eyes shut tightly. She didn't dare move away from her position over the toilet, scared that the nausea would hit again if she did so.

Mark failed to come up with a solution. He was a doctor, so he figured he should know what to do.

This felt so different though. There were a million things that needed to be done, and he wasn't sure which to do first. She needed fluids pushed, but she also needed her temperature checked, but she also clearly needed medication to ease the nausea. He didn't know where to begin.

Another door creaking open interrupted Mark's train of thought.

Mark peeked down the hallway to see Calypso padding towards the bathroom, swaddled completely in a blanket.

The girl looked visibly uncomfortable, her teeth clenched together tightly. It looked like Calypso was experiencing chills while Daisy was experiencing aches, and Mark couldn't help but groan.

"Not you too."

"I'm...it's..." Calypso struggled for words, looking over at the thermostat as she let out a whine. "Make it better. It's too chilly."

"No." Daisy protested, looking back at her sister in bewilderment. Daisy couldn't process the fact that her sister was completely wrapped up in a big blanket while she herself couldn't stop sweating. It was too hot, Calypso was wrong. "You're out of your mind."

"Dais." Calypso let out another whine. "I don't feel good. It's too cold, and...and I can't sleep. We need to make it warmer."

"We need to make it colder." Daisy corrected, looking over at Mark. "Make it colder."

Mark was caught in the middle, and he wasn't sure how to fairly balance the girls' pleads. The apartment felt fine to him, not too cold nor hot. He wasn't sure how to approach this situation.

"Why don't we compromise and keep it the way it is?"

"No." Calypso's lip trembled as she let out another whine. "It's...it's too cold. I can't even feel anything, and I just want to go to bed, I just...I...I..."

Calypso stopped her speech as she held her arms out to Mark, making it clear that the six-year-old really just wanted to be held.

Mark really did not want to hold her though.

It was clear that the girls had some sort of bug, one that Mark was not eager to catch. He had no problem caring for them while they were sick, but...he preferred to care for them from a distance.

"You're sick, Caly." Mark frowned down at the child, trying his best not to look revolted.

Calypso sniffled, her arms not lowering as she only blinked.

"I'm not holding you."

"Daisy?" Calypso turned towards her older sister, a shiver passing through her body. "Can you hold me?"

Daisy's response, naturally, took shape through the girl leaning over the toilet to vomit again. Daisy was too weak to even hold herself up, no way could she support the weight of her baby sister.

Calypso turned to Mark again, her arms still outstretched. She was tired, and she felt weak. She just wanted somebody to hold her, and her voice wavered as she spoke. "Please?"

"No, Calypso."

Calypso's bottom lip jutted out as she stood there, something that made Mark want to groan. "You don't want to hold me?"

Maybe an appropriate response would've been something like, "Of course I want to hold you! But with you being sick, I think maybe it would be best if I didn't."

Mark was notorious for not thinking sometimes though, and his response came out cold. "No. I don't."

Mark realized his mistake as soon as Calypso's eyes pooled up, and he scrambled to make things better. "Oh, please don't cry. I didn't mean it like that, I just...all I meant was that I don't want-"

Calypso was caught in a fury of tears as she broke down. She had experienced the worst night ever. She felt so cold, like no amount of blankets would ever warm her up. Her nose was stuffed up, and she could hardly breathe. Her tummy felt achy, and she was exhausted. Calypso just wanted to go to bed, and she just wanted to feel better. She was frustrated that her body was in so much pain.

Mark let out a sigh as he scooped Calypso up, the six-year-old going nearly limp in his arms as she cried. Her tummy hurt her so bad, worse than anything she had ever experienced before.

Mark wasn't really sure what to do other than rub her back and hope that she would stop wailing next to his ear before she caused permanent hearing loss.

Usually with sick kids at the hospital, Mark could kind of let the nurses or parents deal with the crying. He wasn't particularly bad with children, but there was definitely a reason he had gone into plastics instead of pediatrics.

Now it was just him. There weren't any another medical specialists in sight, nor any other parents to hand the crying kid off to and walk away. He was the medical specialist and the parent, and he hated the stress of pure responsibility put on him.

He looked over at the girl knelt over the toilet, wanting to show her some attention too. "You okay, Daisy?"

"Please sedate me." Daisy groaned loudly, wrapping her arms around her stomach. She felt sick on another level, and she wished that Mark could just legally give her a couple of pills to knock her out for an hour or two...or three. Four? Maybe even the foreseeable next twenty-four hours.

"Caly?" Mark asked the girl crying on his shoulder. "You okay?"

Calypso lifted her head slightly, her teary eyes meeting Mark's as she coughed right in the man's face.

Maybe it was on accident, maybe it was on purpose. Mark wouldn't doubt that it was on purpose.

"Thank you for that." Mark sighed, closing his eyes.

Calypso continued to cry loudly. "I just want to go to bed."

"Me too." Mark grumbled, looking over as Daisy groaned loudly again, her head hung low. "Daisy-"

"If you can't sedate me, please don't talk to me." Daisy sniffled, something that made Mark look closely at the thirteen-year-old.

"Are you crying?" Mark spoke in bewilderment, Daisy lowering her head even more. "Why is everybody crying?!"

"I want sedation." Daisy let out a pained groan as she worked to keep her tears at bay.

Daisy was feeling the same way that Calypso was feeling. She was exhausted, and she was in so much pain. She was uncomfortable with the temperature, and Mark wasn't doing anything to help with that situation.

She was frustrated too with the pain coursing through her body. She hated being sick.

It was so bizarre because there used to be a time that Daisy loved getting sick. Daisy would stay home from school, and Mom used to take the day off of work and watch movies with her. She would make soup and layer Daisy in blankets and...and she would hug Daisy, she didn't even care if she got sick. Everything was so cozy, Daisy loved sick days.

It wasn't the stomach pain that was making Daisy cry as much as it was just nostalgia slapping her in the face. Mom being gone wasn't a foreign concept at all, and Daisy had grown used to her mom's absence.

But all Daisy could do as she sat against the cold bathroom floor was cry. She wanted her mom so badly.

"I'll go get you water, Dais. And some medicine, and then you'll feel better. Okay?" Mark tried his best to be reassuring.

Daisy, in response, let out a sob as she hugged herself. Her stomach was destroying her, but it didn't compare to the tormenting her brain was doing.

Mark wasted no time in heading towards the kitchen to get the remedies he needed.

He decided on checking Calypso out with the thermometer first. The girl in his arms felt incredibly hot despite her saying that she was freezing, something that Mark found to be alarming.

Calypso was still crying slightly when Mark got the thermometer, and the six-year-old was incredibly resistant.

It took an ice cream bribery for the girl to cooperate, something that Mark rolled his eyes at.

Mark stood as Calypso held the thermometer in her mouth, and he took that time to let all of his thoughts catch up to him.

What exactly was the next course of treatment? Did he even have a plan?

If Callie and Arizona were home, Mark would knock obnoxiously on their door and get them to help. He had no idea what he was doing, and he didn't know how to possibly help both girls at once.

But Callie and Arizona were at the airport, waiting to board their flight for vacation—Arizona was far braver than he was in regards to the whole airplane thing. Mark desperately wished he could just hop on the plane with them and go MIA for a week or two.

Er...maybe not a plane. Maybe he could drive there and meet up with them.

Nevertheless, they were gone. It was just Mark, and he had never felt so helpless.

The small thermometer in Calypso's mouth beeped after a moment, signaling to Mark that he could take a look.

"102." Mark frowned as he looked down at the device.

"That's very good." Calypso sniffled, rubbing at her eyes. She obviously had no idea about the concept of what a fever was.

"That's very bad." Mark corrected. "You have a fever. Very bad."

"Very bad." Calypso echoed quietly as she frowned.

Mark nodded in confirmation, retrieving a glass of water before going to the medicine cabinet. "Here. The ibuprofen is for the fever, and-"

"The what?"

Mark sighed, trying his best to patient—which proved to be difficult at midnight while running on only a few hours of sleep. He hadn't taken into account that he had to explain everything in Calypso terms. "This orange pill? It's for your tummy, and it'll make your body temperature better. It makes the bad germs go away."

"Oh." Calypso nodded as if she understood. She evaluated the pill that Mark had placed beside the glass of water, immediately frowning. "That's a big girl pill, I can't swallow that."

"You...don't know how to swallow pills?"

Calypso shook her head, blinking as she looked over to the medicine cabinet. "Do you have any bubblegum medicine? I like bubblegum medicine the best."

Mark wanted to laugh at the question, actually, but he knew that Calypso was being dead serious.

Calypso was his number one critic. She was the reason he had to keep princess band-aids on hand, and the reason he had an overabundance of pink sheets in his linen closet.

Which...actually turned out to be a not so cheap investment; the threaded pink sheets were ridiculously expensive.

"I'll...I'll go get bubblegum medicine, I guess." Mark mumbled.

He picked up the glass of water with his free hand to give to Daisy, heading towards the bathroom as he tried to balance a glass of water, a few pills, and a Calypso in both arms.

Instead of sobbing on the bathroom floor like Mark had last seen her, Daisy was passed out against the hardwood floor. She looked sound asleep, and Mark feared that if he woke her up, the tears would begin again and so would the never-ending turmoil.

"Is it bad if I leave her in here for the night?" Mark spoke quietly, turning to the six-year-old for advice. "I mean...that's not child abuse, right? If I give her a blanket, that's not child abuse."

"Abuse is very bad." Calypso recalled helpfully.

"Mhm." Mark nodded in agreement. "But sleeping on the floor isn't...right? People sleep on the floor all the time when they're too tired."

"She looks comfy." Calypso commented as her eyes raked over her older sister.

As comfy as one could possibly get while sleeping on the floor, at least.

Mark would let her sleep, he decided. He didn't want to wake her up and upset her, and he most definitely didn't want to try to move her himself—she would have a fit.

Besides, Calypso was right. Daisy did look comfy, despite the amount of pain she seemed to be in.

Mark took one of the many blankets that Calypso was swaddled in, trying his best to gracefully lay it over Daisy.

He didn't do a very good job, though. The blanket sort of just fell and only ended up covering half of her body.

Mark left the water on the bathroom counter for Daisy in case the girl woke up, focusing his attention more directly on a still shivering Calypso.

"Maybe you could just turn the heat up, and we won't tell her. She's asleep already, she won't find out." Calypso spoke through clenched teeth as Mark led her to her bedroom, her eyes set on that thermostat in the hallway.

"Maybe we'll rely on that bubblegum medicine to make you feel better instead." Mark suggested. He did want Calypso to feel better, but he didn't want to do it at Daisy's expense. He wanted everyone to feel okay, and he really wanted this bug to go away before he caught it.

Mark had gotten Calypso into bed, and the girl seemed to be somewhat better. She wasn't crying anymore, and Mark saw that as drastic improvement.

He tried to layer her in as many blankets as possible purely for her warmth, making sure she was all good before finally leaving her bedroom, taking a spare blanket and pillow for Daisy.

The thirteen-year-old was still fast asleep on the floor, her cheeks still tear-stained. Mark seriously debated waking her up and just dealing with the meltdown. He didn't want her to be uncomfortable at all.

But she seemed to be in significantly less pain than when she was awake. Mark knew how difficult it was to get to sleep while being sick, he didn't want to wake her up and ruin any chance of her getting good rest. He tried to make her as comfortable as possible with the blankets and pillow, not wanting to wake her.

The girls were asleep, and Mark felt as though he had succeeded after such a stressful night.

He had succeeded to a degree, at least. Daisy was asleep on the bathroom floor. Mark figured that docked him a few points in regards to a successful night.