make you better - susie wolff x personal assistant!reader
Summary: There's nothing worse than getting sick when you live alone, far away from family. But someone unexpected steps in to take care of you.
Tags/warnings: Reader/ Y/N perspective, contains descriptions of an (unspecified) illness and references to a gun violence incident, not romantic/ship content.
Author’s note: I wrote this a while ago, right after I had COVID in early February. It was the first time I'd had a symptomatic case of it. I don't get ill often, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I had never felt more ill in my life. I was also living alone at the time, which made the entire experience especially terrifying. After that, I decided to find a roommate.
I wrote this as a way to cope with the whole thing because it was strangely more traumatic than I expected. I've shared it with a few close friends and wanted to keep it mostly to myself, but with all of the requests I've been getting for more Susie-centric fic, it felt like the right time to share it. The illness isn't explicitly named so as to not place it in a specific period of time. The sex/gender of the reader isn't specified, and it is also not romantic or shippy, and that was intentional.
Writing this brought me a lot of comfort when I needed it, so I hope you find it comforting, too.
“Okay, here you go. I have to leave,” a man says, as you swing your leg over the jump seat and slide off of the motorcycle he was giving you a ride on.
“Be good,” he says, as you take one last look at him. He reminds you of your grandfather, for some reason. Your grandfather died years ago.
As you turn around and listen to the roar of the four-stroke engine take off, you look around at the street you are standing in the middle of. It was dark outside, like it was the middle of the night. The only lights are coming from nearby houses, and the sickly orange cast of sodium-vapor street lamps. There was something familiar about where you were standing, like you’d been there before, but it had been a while.
You turn around and notice a large building that looks eerily similar to your primary school. Without thinking, you walk up to the entrance and sit on one of the concrete benches outside the front door, and wait. You’re not sure what you’re waiting for, but you have the distinct, creeping feeling that you are either way too late, or way too early to something.
You hear the sound of a church bell, but it’s oddly distorted and distant, even though it is likely coming from the Catholic church that should only be a block away. It rings four times. That can’t be right. It can’t be that early in the day, and you think you remember those bells being a lot louder, once.
You get up from the bench and walk to the front door, giving a cursory tug at the old brass-toned handle. The door is locked.
“Why am I here?” you think. “What am I waiting for?”
These questions loop over and over in your mind, causing eventual panic to build in your chest. You’re not sure why someone - your grandfather, you suppose - would have just left you here. You think about walking back home, you’re fairly certain you know the way, maybe, but there’s just fog in the distance in every direction that makes you unsure of where you really are.
Not knowing what else to do, you lay down on the concrete bench and rest your head against the red brick wall of the building. Someone should come by eventually and tell you what to do, right?
As more time passes, you don’t see another soul. You just hear the distant, occasional peal of the church bells that sound increasingly distant. You’re still not sure what to do, so you do the one thing you know that you can do, even if it won’t help.
You bring your knees to your chest and start to cry.
But then, the scenery around you shifts. You feel someone shaking your shoulder. Their touch is gentle as it coaxes you into the elsewhere. You open your eyes to see a dimly-lit room. It looks like a bedroom, but it’s not your bedroom.
There’s a petite woman with a light blonde bob haircut standing over you. She has a concerned look in her eyes, and her voice is so soft and quiet that it takes a moment to understand what she’s saying to you through the stubborn fog of heat, sweat, and pain that are gripping your senses.
“There we are,” she says, looking relieved once you manage to narrow your focus to her face. “I brought you some water and some more medicine. I know it might hurt to swallow, but do your best.”
She holds out a glass of water for you as she waits for you to sit up, only handing it over once she’s confident your coordination has returned enough for you to not pour it all over your lap.
“Now, hold out your hand”.
You obey, happy to have some instruction as she deposits two red-and-white capsules onto your palm.
You pop the pills in your mouth and go to take a drink from the glass she’s handed you, remembering why she said something about it hurting to swallow. The water hitting the back of your throat feels like a hot knife, and swallowing requires conscious action. It’s difficult. You can only manage to drink just enough to get the pills down before you can't take anymore and start to cough.
“I know,” the woman says, her voice soft and sympathetic. You continue to cough, trying in vain to make it stop. “But we have to get that fever down.”
The coughing finally ceases and you settle back on the pillows you were laying on, and things start to become clear again, even though it feels like your mind is working on a delay.
The woman standing over you is named Susie, and the bedroom you are in is a guest bedroom in her condo.
Susie is your boss. A friend too, but your boss, first and foremost. You’re ill, and she’s taking care of you.
You came to meet Susie when you got a job working for a racing team in a division called Formula E. The team was called Venturi Racing and was based in Monaco. You moved to Nice, France to commute to work. It was a long way from home - a lengthy flight’s worth of a long way from home, but it was the kind of job you’d dreamed of having someday, so you jumped at the chance, packing all of your possessions and moving halfway across the world.
Monaco seemed like an alien world at first, but you settled into your new routine and your job quickly. The team principal, your boss, a formidable, confident woman named Susie Wolff, was the one that wanted to hire you, and you quickly hit it off, developing a sort of mutual trust that you’d never had with one of your bosses before. Before long, she invited you over to her condo for dinner once in a while. You met her husband and her son. Her husband was also team principal for a racing team, albeit one in Formula 1. He was in charge of Mercedes, and they made the chassis and power unit that Venturi used in their race cars.
You worked for Venturi for two years before getting a devastating announcement at a morning meeting in the early spring. The race team was being sold to Maserati, the Italian car manufacturer. They would take over the manufacture of the car itself and the power unit - the engine - severing the team’s tie with Mercedes.
Because of Susie’s own association with Mercedes, it meant that her time as CEO (which she had been promoted to from Team Principal) of the team would be coming to an end. She was an investor in the team as well, and would be selling her stake in the team to Maserati.
You were dumbstruck. New ownership meant a lot of changes would be made. You couldn’t imagine working for another racing team, or if you would even keep your job. Rumors of redundancies and the potential for reorganizing the entire structure of the team were abound, but you carried on with your job, going to London and Seoul for the last two race weekends, trying to act as if everything was normal.
Susie announced her departure to the public during the weekend of the London EPrix.
The team finished the season narrowly as vice-champions, with Edo, one of the team’s drivers, finishing third in the driver’s championship. It was a season worth celebrating, but it was bittersweet, because it would be the last one as Venturi.
But one day, shortly after getting back from the Seoul E-Prix, Susie called you into her office. It was filled with boxes, as she was packing up. She only had a few days left with the company.
“I have a proposal for you. It’s going to sound unusual, but I’d like you to come work for me, just for a while. I will need an assistant to help me coordinate things, since I won’t have one here any longer.”
She had an executive assistant at Venturi that organized much of her day-to-day work with the company. It made sense that she would want the continuity of that aspect of her life, and her current assistant was already slated to stay on with Maserati.
But, your job wasn’t even remotely related to that kind of role. As you opened your mouth to protest, she cut you off.
“I know it’s not the kind of work you do here, and I know it’s not what you moved halfway around the world to do, but it will just be for a while, maybe a few months. I have some… other activities in the pipeline, but things aren’t settled yet. I will pay you what you make here, and then some. I will take care of transferring your visa sponsorship, and take care of the rent on your flat. If you want, after your non-compete clause in your contract ends in a few months, we can see about getting you a role similar to the one you have now in Brackley, should you so desire.”
Brackley, the town in the United Kingdom where the Mercedes F1 team was based - naturally, Susie would have more than a little sway in getting you a job with the F1 team, if you wanted it. Some might see it as some sort of nepotism, given that her husband was CEO and part-owner of the team, but that was the reality of the world of Motorsport. It was all about who you knew, and Susie was a very good person to know.
You didn’t relish the idea of living in the UK after spending two years in the practically perfect climes of the French Riviera, but…
“I’d prefer someone I can trust, and I trust you. I know you’re organized. You do great work around here. My son likes you, and if I can save myself the process of interviewing and hiring someone brand-new, I’d like to. At least give it some consideration, won’t you?”
She gave you the kind, warm smile she always gave you, and you asked for a few days to consider it, which she agreed to.
In the meantime, your department met with the higher-ups at Maserati, asking them questions about their vision for the direction for the team. They assured you that they wanted to change as little as possible, not wanting to deviate from the patterns that made Venturi successful, but something about them rubbed you the wrong way, and you realized that you didn’t want to stay past the transition period.
You sent Susie a message to tell her that you accepted her offer. You left Venturi right after the changeover, telling your colleagues that you were going to take a bit of a break for a while.
Being a personal assistant wasn’t the kind of work you necessarily enjoyed, but your job with the race team made you very good with the kind of attention to detail that being Susie's assistant required. You coordinated her travel schedules and all of the associated arrangements (hotels, cars, meals, special requests), sometimes having to work with her husband Toto’s assistant on the logistics. You responded to requests for interviews and scheduled those, handled all of the other inquiries she received (of which there were a lot) and even helped make arrangements for two keynote speeches she gave at various conferences.
You also handled the smaller, daily minutiae - various errands, making appointments, doing the shopping for the household. You traveled with her sometimes as well when she was giving speeches at conferences or going to events. In just a few months, you went on trips to Ireland, Portugal, and even the United States.
For a woman that didn’t technically have a regular job after leaving Venturi, Susie was shockingly busy.
“You’re a lifesaver”, she told you, more than once. “I know you don’t want to do this forever, but I don’t know how I got on without you.”
Hearing things like that, in addition to the more-than-generous wage Susie paid, made the work bearable, even enjoyable at times. Plus, she was generous and kind in a way that made you feel like you were her friend and trusted confidant, and not just her employee.
By the time the new year had come and gone, you’d fallen into a comfortable routine, until you woke up one Sunday morning in January, feeling a bit odd.
It felt like the early stages of a head cold. It was minor, an occasional sniffle and watery sneeze. You convinced yourself that it wasn’t worth worrying about. The heat in your flat was running at full-tilt, after all. Maybe you needed to tell your landlord that it was time to change the dust filter.
You rarely got sick, and it was bearable when you did, so you didn’t give much thought to it. It was your day off, so you took some over-the-counter cold medicine and went about your usual Sunday. You went to the supermarket to do your own shopping, spoke to your mother on the phone (which was sometimes challenging, just because of time zone differences), tidied up your flat, watched something on Netflix, and caught up on some reading before going to bed early.
It was going to be another busy Monday morning. Susie was due to give a keynote speech over Zoom for some conference, and things had to be prepared for her to travel to London for some meetings for the next week, so things had to be arranged for that. You fell asleep that Sunday trying to make mental lists of all of the things that needed to be done over the next few days.
You woke up with your alarm, and immediately knew that this was more than a simple head cold. Your nose didn’t feel stuffy any more, but your throat felt like it was on fire. You had woken up in a puddle of your own sweat, and your mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Your arms and legs ached like you’d gone to the gym, which you hadn’t in… a while.
The thought of calling in sick crossed your mind, but remembering how much work you had to do that day dissuaded you.
Plus, you felt better after a hot shower and chewing on some cough drops while you were on the train to Monte Carlo from your flat in Nice. The brisk walk in the fresh air between the Monte Carlo train station and Susie’s condo on the eastern end of the principality helped, too.
You could have driven your own car in less time, but you preferred to take the train and walk most days. The weather was almost always pleasant, even in the winter months, and the scenery never got old. (Plus, the tiny, narrow streets in the principality were an annoyance to drive around, and finding parking in your own neighborhood in the early evening was often a nightmare. It was easier to just take the train).
By the time you got to Susie’s building, though, you started to feel bad again. You felt strangely winded, and your limbs felt heavy and achy again. You had gotten plenty of sleep the night before, so you weren’t sure why you were so exhausted. A seasonal cold or allergies had never made you feel this way before.
The building’s concierge greeted you on your way across the lobby, and asked you if you were okay. You waved him off, insisting that your windedness was just from the cold breeze. You stood by the elevator for a moment to catch your breath before getting on and pressing the number for the Wolff’s floor, concerned by how hot and sweaty you felt, especially given that it was chilly outside that morning.
You fumbled with the key to their front door for a moment. The door wasn’t unlocking, and you started to panic, knowing that neither Toto or Susie would be in at the moment. Toto would have left for his work week in Brackley last night, and Susie would be out, dropping her son, Jack, off at school. After a moment of struggling with the lock, you realized that you were trying to use the wrong key.
Feeling momentarily sheepish and glad nobody was around to witness your blunder, you unlocked the door, hanging your coat, scarf, and bag on the coat rack in the entryway. You toed off your shoes and left them by the door, before heading to Susie’s home office and starting your usual Monday morning tasks. She had set up a desk for you as well. It was small, but neatly arranged with your laptop, a whiteboard, and baskets for incoming and outgoing correspondences that the housekeeper would leave when she collected the mail. Most mornings, Susie would leave you a still-warm breakfast pastry or the coffee she knew you liked, depending on how cooperative Jack was with getting out the door for school in the morning, and you almost always arrived when Susie was taking him to school. There was nothing waiting for you on your desk this morning, not even a cup of coffee. It was fine - you had no appetite anyway.
You were in the process of cross-checking Susie’s calendar for the day with inquiries in her email when you were seized with a painful coughing fit, wondering how the air in the condo was so dry when it was located so close to the edge of the Mediterranean. That had to be it, right? Or maybe there was just a tickle in your throat. There was no way you were actually getting sick. You got up to get yourself a glass of water and stood in the kitchen, waiting for the coughing fit to subside when you heard the condo’s door close.
“Good morning!” Susie called out from the entryway. She sounded cheerful as she talked, rounding the corner from the entrance to the kitchen. “My goodness,” she said, seeing you trying to contain your coughing . “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” you said between coughs, trying to get a sip of water down. “Just a tickle in my throat, I think.”
Susie looked at you skeptically. “I don’t know… you don’t look so good. You’re flushed, and you look awfully pale,” she said as she stepped closer to you. You could feel her eyes on you. When the coughing subsided, she surprised you by reaching out to put the back of her hand against your cheek, then your forehead. You knew it was cold out, but her hand felt like ice against your skin. It startled you for a second, but felt kind of good. You were starting to feel a little warm. “And you are definitely running a fever, my goodness. Are you ill?”
“No,” you said. “I mean, not really. It’s just a cold, I think.”
Judging by the expression on her face, she definitely did not believe you. You weren’t sure you believed yourself, anymore. You hadn’t wanted to admit it, but what you had was definitely not a seasonal cold.
“Well, I’m going to take you back to your flat. You need to get some rest. And I won’t hear any arguments,” she said, knowing you were about to argue. “I will be fine for the day, and I won’t have you working while you’re sick.”
You gathered your things, and Susie gave you a ride back to your flat in Nice. It wasn’t a long drive - a half an hour at most, but you still felt bad that Susie was not only taking an hour of her day to bring you straight back home, but also that you wouldn’t be able to do your job today. You had always been a bit of a workaholic, it couldn’t be helped.
As she dropped you off at your building, she implored you not to feel bad, assuring you that she would be fine.
“If you need anything, and I mean this - please, please call me, or send me a message. I’ll come right away.”
You promised her that you would let her know if anything changed, despite not planning on bothering your boss with such things, and trudged up the stairs to your flat. You changed out of your clothes, put on pajamas, and took some more medicine before crawling into bed and falling asleep almost immediately.
You slept peacefully for a few hours, but then, vivid nightmares started coalescing. In one instance, you dreamed of your mother dying. It seemed so real - she was hanging on to the edge of a bridge you recognized from your hometown, and you couldn’t summon the strength to lift her up by her outstretched hand. You watched as she fell into the canal below and was swept away by the current.
The dream was so vivid that you nearly started crying when you woke up.
It was dark outside. You scrambled for your phone to check the time, confirming that you’d slept until just past midnight, somehow.
Other sensations became obvious as you came out of sleep - the fact that you were burning hot and drenched in sweat. On the bright side, the sinus congestion had cleared up, but as a trade-off, your throat felt like it was an open wound, or like you’d swallowed a bucket of rusted thumbtacks. Your head was pounding. You couldn’t ever remember a time when you felt this ill.
You sat awake for a few hours, trying in vain to soothe your tortured throat and quell the vicious coughing and rasping. You tried gargling warm salt water, which helped temporarily. You ate some ice pops that you’d found in the back of your freezer, left there from an awful heat wave over the summer. You took some cough syrup, wincing as it burned like cheap alcohol as it went down. It just caused more coughing, making your whole body feel weak. You couldn’t do anything else other than sitting on the closed lid of your toilet with your head in your hands until it stopped.
After that episode, you ran a hot shower to try to get the steam to clear the congestion in your chest, and rinse off the sweat that was now drying grossly on your skin. It helped enough that you were able to go back to sleep for a few hours.
You woke up when you normally would have been getting up for work, but immediately knew you would not be going in today. The guilt was momentary, but you felt even worse than the night before, barely wanting to move. Just as you were about to message Susie to let her know you’d be out again, she called you, taking you a bit by surprise.
“I just called to see how you were feeling,” she said.
“Not good,” you responded, surprised at how hoarse and thin your voice was. You hadn’t talked since she dropped you off at home the day before.
“Oh, you sound awful. Well, I -” she paused for a moment. “I’ll be there in an hour. Pack whatever you need for a day or two, comfortable clothes and that.”
She said it without preamble or explanation. “What?” you asked. “Why?”
Surely she wasn’t expecting you to work… maybe she was going to bring you to the hospital? It wasn’t that bad, was it?
“I’d like you to stay with me until you feel better. You sound absolutely wretched. I was worried about you all afternoon, being all alone when you’re ill. I know you don’t have any family in the area, and I’d hate for you to need help and not have anyone nearby to ask. I can’t make you come stay with me, of course, but I would feel a lot better if I could keep an eye on you. Please.”
It was a tempting offer, and your flat seemed a lot scarier last night when you woke up from the nightmares without having anyone else around. On the other hand, Susie was your boss, and as an adult, you weren’t her responsibility.
“I… don’t want to impose, or to get you or Jack sick,” you said, hoping that would be a reasonable enough excuse. You would find a way to manage by yourself. “Plus, you have that Zoom keynote this week and London next week-“
“Nonsense,” she said. “We have two guest bedrooms. You wouldn’t be imposing at all, and I’m doing the conference presentation from my office, anyway. And you were ahead of the curve on the prep for London, so I’m not worried. Really. Please, let me pick you up.”
She knocked down your objections one by one, and not even two hours later, you were settled into bed in one of the guest rooms of the Wolff’s condo. Susie had supplied you with some cold water and hot tea, and set up a small humidifier on the nightstand. It was shaped like an owl, so you assumed that it had come from Jack’s room. You heard a soft knock on the door and looked up to see Susie coming in. She had a tray in her hands with a steaming bowl, and something else that you couldn’t make out the shape of.
“I made you some soup,” Susie said as she set the tray down on the nightstand. “Well, I heated up a tin of it, really, but I thought you could use something to eat. And, I brought a thermometer,” she said, holding up the device. “I’m sure you still have a fever.”
She turned the thermometer on, and after it beeps a few times, holds it to your forehead. The device beeped urgently, and Susie frowned at the display.
“39.5,” she muttered. “I’ll be right back.”
It was high, higher than you were expecting. No wonder you felt so awful.
She left the guest room and returned shortly after, with a medication bottle and what looked like an ice pack, wrapped in a small tea towel.
“Here,” she said, handing you two small capsules from the bottle. “It’s paracetamol, for the fever.”
She handed you the glass of water she’d given you earlier, and you took the pills with tentative sips. It didn’t make it hurt any less, and you groaned and winced. It was just water, but it still didn’t go down easily.
“Sorry, it hurts,” you whined, your voice barely there at that point. You settled yourself back down onto your pillow.
“It’s okay,” Susie said, quietly. She took the glass of water out of your hands and set it on the nightstand. “I know it hurts, but getting some rest will help.”
She placed the ice pack on your forehead, careful to keep it wrapped neatly in the towel, and it felt amazing on your overheated skin.
“Getting that fever down will, too.”
Susie took your hand and gently squeezed it before she turned around to leave. “I’ll come back in and check on you in a bit. Try and get some sleep. And don’t try to yell across the house if you need something, you can send me a message, okay?”
“Okay,” you said. Or tried to. Your voice was only vestigial at that point. “Thank you, Susie.”
“It’s my pleasure, darling. Feel better.” She patted the top of your hand as she stood up to leave. As soon as she closed and latched the bedroom door behind her, you closed your eyes and fell asleep almost immediately.
That is how it went for two days. You lost most of your time to sleeping. You had more fever-fuelled nightmares. Susie roused you every few hours to take your temperature, to give you medication, to try to get you to drink some water or eat some soup or some ice pops. She said she was worried about you getting dehydrated, and it didn’t help that you could still hardly stand to swallow anything.
She continued to bring you ice packs for your forehead to help with your fever, extra blankets when chills wracked your body, tea with honey, and cough drops that didn’t seem to do much. She brought you clear broth that you tried to drink but the salt stung your throat too much for you to manage getting much of it down.
For the rare moments you were awake during the day while Jack was at school, she sat in a chair next to your bed and talked to you. The conversation was mostly one-sided as you still couldn’t talk much, but she was very good company, and it made you feel better that she didn’t seem to mind spending time with you, even if you were too exhausted and raspy to be a decent conversation partner.
At one point, she brought you a plush toy that looked like some sort of alien cat with tiny wings instead of arms.
“Jack wanted me to give this to you to keep you company.” she said. It’s the first thing that made you smile in days.
On the third day, you had an especially realistic, especially frightening nightmare. It must have been inspired by the news you’d read from the United States about a shooting at a university campus, because you dreamed about the university you used to work for before moving to France. You watched in terror as one of your old coworkers was taken down in front of you. You get shot trying to run away, and the wound you sustain to your hip burned. You swore you could feel the blood running down your leg. It all felt so real.
You bolted upright from sleep for the second time that week, opening your eyes to the darkness of the bedroom, but that time, you can’t help but cry.
Your sobbing didn’t make much noise as you still didn’t have much of a voice, but it was enough to prompt Susie to come and check on you.
You were a little embarrassed as she sat on the edge of your mattress and gathered you into a hug, but the embarrassment was momentary. You let yourself be held as you cry into her shoulder. She rubbed your back with one hand, cradling the back of your head with the other, and told you that everything would be okay, and that you’ll be feeling better soon. She didn’t make you explain, she didn’t ask questions, she just let you lean into her and cry.
There was something in you that broke when you realized how badly you missed receiving this kind of maternal - or really, any, affection. You couldn’t really even remember the last time you’d hugged anyone. You moved halfway across the world, and while you don’t regret it, it feels awfully lonely at times. You don’t get home to see your family much, and your mother certainly couldn’t drop everything to fly halfway across the world to come and take care of you.
It meant a lot that Susie is there for you, even though she didn’t have to be. She’s your boss, but she cares enough for you to look after you when you need it. The realization made you cry even harder.
You’re so thankful she insisted on you staying with her, because you’re weren’t sure how you would have managed to weather your illness, whatever it was, by yourself.
She calmed you down enough for you to go back to sleep, and, by some miracle, your fever broke by the next morning.
Within a day, your throat started to hurt less. Your voice came back, though it was thin and airy. Your appetite came back, and you started feeling human again.
Satisfied with the progress of your convalescence, Susie brought you back to your flat after four days in her guest bedroom.
“Don’t even think about coming back to work until next week,” she said, as she parked her car in front of your flat. "I want you to be at one-hundred percent. We've got a lot of work to do, but I'll be fine until you're better."
You smiled, and thanked her for her kindness before you watched her pull her car away, keeping your eyes on it until it disappeared around a corner. Just telling her thank you didn’t feel like enough, but you’re not sure there is a way to thank her that would have felt like enough.
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