Seventeen
“This isn’t so bad, is it? Just a little fever.
A little back pain.” Esther pulls a cloth off her face that she soaked with cold water hours ago before she collapsed into bed, while I watched helplessly.
The comforter has since been flung and kicked to the corner of the mattress.
The pink cotton sheets around her are dark with sweat.
Esther tosses the cloth across her studio, missing the sink by several feet.
“Shit. Oh well, it needs washing anyway.”
A dreadful ache in my chest, as if my sternum contains a black hole sucking in all hope, accompanies the despondency of my—our?
her? situation. This hurts far worse than getting pulled around.
I haven’t felt this low since before I died, and I hate that I can’t do anything to fix her—my? No, it is our situation.
Esther’s situation is intertwined with mine; both are hopeless beyond hope. But Esther is Esther, and therefore she’s trying to be optimistic, even in the midst of her feverish delirium. I’m the specter, melancholy in my uselessness.
Despite my every failed attempt at this so far, I bend over and try to pick up the cloth off the floor. Even if I could pick it up, the idea that I could then rinse it out and bring it back to her is laughable.
I’d probably make Esther snap.
“How are you feeling, East?” I ask, pretending she can hear me. She should get up to refill her water, to eat something, to use the bathroom. To check her herald patch.
It feels like it’s been hours, but I have no way of knowing.
Time has been weird since she got sick; the days go slower and the nights go— Well, they still last an eternity, but they’re not an eternity and a half, so they’re faster.
I hypothesize the fever is affecting Esther’s sleep cycle.
She’s napping constantly and doesn’t sleep as deeply at night, which affects my perception of time.
If I wasn’t worried sick about her, I’d find it interesting.
As it is, I’m relying on Esther to keep to the medication schedule for any sense of when we are.
“East, when’s the last time you did some self-care?
” I ask. That’s what Esther has been calling the rare moments when she gets out of bed.
“You should check for pockmarks. I think?” I look at the brochure on the little dining table.
Sure enough, the calendar is mostly marked off, other than the empty checkboxes in the last row.
Five days. That’s how long the average wait is from when the herald patch first appears, until the pockmarks start to erupt.
And in those five days, Esther has gone through the stages of acceptance as her health slowly declined, each day checked off on the too-cheerful paperwork the quarantine workers left with her.
There’s a little cartoon herald patch in the header, and pockmark doodles decorate the brochure.
If they’re going to hand out calendars listing out suggested activities leading up to folk’s potential impending doom, they should make them more clinical, less cutesy.
On day one, Esther was itchy and anxious, pacing around the apartment, on hold with various agencies and organizations.
After hours and hours, she eventually was able to set up quarantine services for several weeks of isolation, all the while trying to convince herself that it wasn’t really the Pox, she was just being dramatic.
The nurse on the video call audibly gasped when she saw the patch.
Day two created a stiffness of her muscles and an ache in Esther’s spine, accompanied by debates with herself about the unfairness of it all, anger at herself for letting her guard down. I hope some part of her heard me when I said it wasn’t her fault.
She barely spoke at all on day three, staring at the ceiling with the occasional fit of tears, followed by her limping to the bathroom to wash her face.
The bargaining stage—where she tried to check her work email (her access was disabled because of her leave status) and convinced herself that she should be productive some other way, to keep busy and maybe her case wouldn’t be that bad—was beset by chills and what Esther described as buzzing in her skin.
Overnight, the fever set in. And with it, tiny blisters would be erupting around the herald patch, searching for a way through into the vulnerable organs.
“Fuck, where did my thingy go?” Esther wipes her face as she shivers. “It’s so hot in here.”
“You threw it across the room,” I say, as kindly as I can. “I would offer to get it for you, but…well, you know.” I hold up my useless ghost hands, reminiscent of thick smoke and just as helpful.
“I hate this.” Esther curls around herself.
“I know, East.” I do my best to ground myself as I try to grab the blanket, but all I do is wave my arms through Esther’s leg as she kicks out to find the blanket again.
I jump back, hissing in pain as her foot passes through my wrists.
“Oh, that felt nice.” Esther’s foot searches the air. “Draft, come here and blow on my face!”
“East, I would love to blow on your face,” I tease, “if only you didn’t burn like Hellfire.”
“Nobody ever stays. Not even a draft.” Esther pouts while pulling the blanket back over her, all without getting up. Her face crumples. “Oh damn it, why is a fucking draft triggering my abandonment issues? Get it together, East.”
My brow furrows. She just called herself East. Did I subconsciously start using a nickname she already used? Must have been from earlier in life, because I’ve never heard her call herself any nickname before.
I shake my head. There’s no way. “You should get up. Check for pockmarks. Drink some water.”
I wish she could hear me. I wish I could tuck her in and bring her water. I wish I could make her check for pockmarks, or check them for her, to put us both out of the misery of not knowing. Instead, all I can do is pace the small apartment.
Her phone dings. Esther’s arm snakes out of the blanket to snatch it up off the nightstand. “Oh,” she huffs. “Just a reminder to update my case with the pockmark pattern.”
“Please check.” My voice trembles. “I need to know. I don’t understand why you won’t look.”
“I don’t want to know,” Esther pouts harder, her bottom lip trembling. “I like not knowing what’s going to happen. I like to pretend there’s a chance everything is going to be okay.” She whines. “I like being hopeful.”
“‘Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose,’” I quote, gently chiding her for her stubbornness. “‘It cannot have both.’”
Esther groans. “I’m too tired for a philosophical debate.”
“And here I thought Emerson would be up your alley—” I freeze, my heart jumping to my throat. “Wait, you can hear me?”
Esther sighs, shaking her head. “I wish.”
“East, please. If you can hear me, please, I need to know.” I kneel beside her in the bed, unable to resist the urge to stroke the sweaty curls that cling to her temple.
Flickers of pain burn my fingertips as they pass through her hair.
“Because I have to tell you…” I trail off, wondering where I would start.
What I could possibly say. What Esther would need to hear most.
Esther raises an eyebrow as if she’s waiting.
Heart sinking, I shake my head. “Check the mirror for your pockmarks.”
With a stubborn set of her chin, Esther unlocks her phone and snuggles further into the bed. “I think my fever is getting to me.”
With a disappointed sigh, I float over the bed, settling next to her.
She stubbornly avoids the email reminding her to update her case.
One by one, she searches the names of different women on various social media apps instead, who I presume must be her sisters.
The pictures all look so much like Esther, just with makeup and their hair styled.
“Ugh, seriously? You married the pastor’s son?
” Esther groans when she clicks on a photo of a bride and groom in front of a church.
“No, it’s her life. She’s an adult! If she wants to pop out babies for that creep, that’s her choice.
Just be happy for her, and hope one day you get to meet your niblings. ”
Esther scrolls and scrolls, searching different names and finding pictures of her family and news articles about her friends’ accomplishments.
My heart breaks for her as she looks up person after person, commenting to herself about the direction life has taken her loved ones since she last saw them.
The family and friends who have never reached out to her in all the months I’ve been Tied to Esther.
All of these people she misses, and not a single one does she inform that she has the Pox.
A voyeur of life, following the digital breadcrumbs to have some sort of connection to the many people she loves. Just like me, except there’s only one person I watch.
“East,” I murmur, my throat thick. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
The phone falls from her hand, smacking her in the face. Tears fill her blue eyes. “I just want someone to care.”
“I care. I care so much.” I stroke my knuckle where the tears fall, accomplishing nothing but causing them to slide down her cheek as pain sears through my digit.
“That feels nice,” Esther sighs. “Hello draft.”
I steel my nerves and press my hand to her forehead. “Hello East.”
It reminds me of riding the school bus in the dead of winter.
The other kids would have contests to see who could touch the windows the longest on cold days.
I never joined them, but one day I did it on my own, after most of the kids had gotten off the bus, so no one would see if I failed right away.
So I could join in, without subjecting myself to ridicule.
My palm pressed to the numbing cold glass sent a shard of pain up to my elbow in seconds.
I made myself keep it there until I could no longer stand it.
The skin of my palm stung as I tore my hand away, an invisible layer of dermis frozen to the glass.
That’s what pressing my hand to Esther’s forehead feels like. Only when I pull away, I expect my hand to melt to her instead.
Esther sighs contentedly, her breath evening and slowing.
Is her fever that bad? Even with the medication? I clench my jaw, forcing myself to keep my hand there longer. So bad that a draft on the forehead is enough to cool her?
My heart breaks for her; Esther has no one to check in on her, no one to baby her and bring her medicine, to pick the damn rag up off the floor and to bring her a fresh one. She just has me, worrying about everything I can’t change.
But I can do this one small thing for her. With a grimace, I curl around her, clasping her head against my chest and my legs through her torso.
“Thank you, draft.” Easther murmurs. “This is perfect.”
I hiss through the pain before muttering, “No problem. Happy to help.”
As her breath slows into light snores, time slows to a halt. She’s…sleeping. Actually sleeping, for the first time in days.
Despite the pain, I smile. I can do this. I can help Esther sleep. I’ll happily melt to her completely, suffer in agony forever if it means she can get some rest.
After forever, and yet far too soon, her phone dings again. Time speeds up as she blinks awake to see another reminder that she should update her case.
Esther tosses it on the nightstand.
I grit my teeth. “Please, for my sake, for the little bit of sanity I have left, can you at least sit up so I can check your neck?”
“Fine.” With a grunt, she swings her legs to the floor and sits up, pressing a hand to her forehead as she does.
I gasp for breath, gagging as she passes out of me. The absence of pain is a shocking reminder of what I’ve been enduring for her sake. Though I’m left a shaking mess on the bed, fighting to regain control over my body for God knows how long, I would endure it forever for my East.
“I need another painkiller. This shit sucks.” She lifts her hair off her neck, pulling it to the side, fingers searching skin for any sign of texture.
Craning my neck to inspect it, I hold my breath, searching her neck and shoulder for any signs of irritation.
My hands tremble as the cold that was soothing her returns to numb my body.
There are lines denting her skin from the pillow, a smattering of freckles across her shoulder, the tattooed lips behind her ear.
But no blisters that I can see. Just the red edge of the herald patch.
I bite back the smile trembling across my lips. “East, go look in the mirror. I have too much hope right now.” They aren’t spreading toward her face, or around her throat. They must be going down her back. They have to be.
“I don’t feel anything in my hair.” Esther’s sigh is sharp with relief. “I should check.”
When she pulls herself to her feet and yanks her tank top off, tossing it on the floor as she lumbers to the bathroom, that’s when I can truly relax. The pockmarks are an ugly, angry red, and look painful beyond measure. But they’re trailing down her spine, fanning out around her ribs.
She’s in for weeks of pain and discomfort. Weeks of isolation, her only interaction being with the hazmat workers who collect trash from quarantined homes and bring her food and medicine. Weeks of itching and fever.
But after those few weeks are over, a lifetime.
Relief drips down my cheeks.
Esther checks out her back in the mirror, sobbing out a laugh.
“Oh, these look awful!” She shakes her head.
“Not that I’m complaining. I’m so relieved to see you’re there, pockmarks, instead of on my head!
” With another laugh, she admires the inflamed marks spreading down her spine.
“Oh, thank fuck! I’m going to be okay.” She pauses.
“I can say that now without jinxing myself, right? Can I hope now?”
“Yeah, East, you’re going to be okay.” My voice is raspy.
When I touch my cheeks, my fingertips come away wet.
Staring at the pearls of silvery moisture beading on the pads of my fingers, I clear my throat to speak more clearly.
On the off chance she actually can hear me, deep down, I want her to hear this. “You can hope now.”