Who wants a WIP teaser?!

I know you do!  So here you go. 
From the Volume 4 story, "Better Living Through Chemistry, Part II"

“Rachel, I made my choice,” Alex said, apparently choosing to ignore her quip. “You guys did fine the other night. No one was killed. You don't need me. I just want to be normal for a little while.” He started coughing, and Rachel waited for him to finish.

“Please,” Rachel said. “You’re anything but normal. You are exceptional and--”

He started coughing again, even harder. He was clearly unable to stop it. Alex was gasping for breath and wound up sagging against the wall desperate for air at the end of two minutes he was hacking and generally breathing.

“What was that?” Rachel asked, standing up straight, her mental alarms going haywire.

“Coughing fit,” he said.

“You’ve never had those,” she said, stepping closer.

He whipped his head up to look at her. “Don’t you go getting all Florence Nightingale on me, Rachel Rae Hingis. Who the hell knows why I’m coughing. My body is adjusting to not having the red shit to deal with. It could have been dust. Just back off, and don’t you and the rest of the Musketeers worry about me.”

Rachel stared at him, shocked. “Well. Ok. I get it. Have a nice life, Pansy.” She turned on her heel and marched down the hall toward her next class.

“Rachel, wait,” Alex called.

She turned and looked at him. “Nope. You’ve made your position clear. Bye, Alexander.” She slammed through the door of the hallway into the next area of the school. She made it about twenty feet before her resolve completely gave out and she had to lean against the lockers before she fell over. She felt tired; Alex was changing, and not in the way she liked. She glanced back and sighed. If that’s what being normal does to you, I’ll stay a freak.

She heard him cough, and stifled the urge to walk back and see if he was OK. He’d made it clear he didn’t want her help. Or any of their help. She stared straight ahead and forced one foot in front of the other. She just kept forcing them in front of each other on her way to Neiman’s class. She couldn’t quite get the coughing from behind her out of her head. It wasn’t stopping.

There was a tremendous bang behind her, and she spun, the masked avenger leaping to the front of her brain. She saw Alex as he crashed through the door in what seemed like slow motion. He was coughing, but it was slowly turning into a choke. She could see the whites of his eyes from where she was and as she watched, they rolled back into his head. He crashed to the floor before she could react fast enough to do anything for him.

“Holy hell, Alex!” she screamed, running back to him. She skidded along the floor and yanked his head off the floor and into her lap. He was desperately trying to breath, but she could hear the crackle and panting that went with the horrible shallow breaths he was taking. She yanked her phone out and dialed 911 and didn’t miss the irony in that.