allthewhumpygoodness:

Details in old timey sickfic

• Whumpee has a candle near their bed, but it’s flickering so much it makes them dizzy
• Bitter herbs and tonics
• Wind rattling the shutters, sometimes throwing them open and startling the sick and tired whumpee
• Scratchy sheets and lumpy mattresses, beds not up to the comfort standards of today (but still much more comfortable than whatever situation they were in before)
• Firelight flickering off wooden ceiling beams, the only thing the sick character has the energy to look at
• If their soup goes cold, there’s no quick and easy way to reheat it
• Painkillers don’t work as efficiently
• Or they leave the sickie so groggy and sluggish that they almost feel worse
• Drafts
• Just how cold the wooden/stone floors are on their bare feet if they need to leave bed
• Real doctors being rare/expensive/ too far away so home care will have to do in any capacity
• No electric lighting. If the window is open, it’s too bright for the whumpee’s eyes, but with it closed and only a single candle it’s too dark for the caretaker to see what they’re doing
• Caretaker telling whumpee stories while they sit at their bedside (because modern distractions?? who is she????)
• That looming, persistent knowledge that people die from illnesses all the time, and they could very well be next. Every sickness, even something we see as mild, being a threat.