In Sickness and in Health
Iam fine. I am absolutely fine, and there is nothing wrong with me and I am perfectly capable of working a full shift, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
This is what I tell myself at six in the morning when I wake up with a throat that feels like I’ve been gargling gravel and a head that has apparently been stuffed with wet cotton wool overnight.
I tell myself this again while I’m making tea and my eyes are watering for no particular reason.
I tell myself it a third time when I catch my reflection in the kitchen window and the person looking back at me is grey-faced and glassy-eyed and looks, if anything, slightly haunted.
I’m fine. It’s fine. I’m going to work.
I mumble something at Dis, but he’s already engrossed in BBC Breakfast, watching the smiling presenters on their red sofa, chat to a guest who appears to have a duck on their lap.
He mumbles something in return, and I flee down the stairs before he can comment on the state of me.
The morning starts badly and declines from there.
The coffee machine seems louder than usual.
The overhead lights seem brighter than usual.
My head feels like it’s stuffed with damp insulation, and every time I move too quickly something behind my eyes makes a pointed complaint about it.
Bunny arrives for his shift, takes one look at me, and opens his mouth.
“Don’t,” I say.
He closes his mouth. Opens it again. “Felix…”
“I said don’t.”
“You’ve caught the cold I had. I smeared tea-tree oil all over my entire body and ate a ghost pepper, and that blasted everything out of my system.”
Silence falls as I battle the mental images that are threatening to form.
Bunny’s eyes narrow. “You look terrible. I think it’s too late for tea-tree and ghost pepper.”
“I look fine.”
“You look like something the cat dragged in and then had second thoughts about.”
I give him my best withering look, which lands somewhat less effectively than usual because my eyes are watering again. “Make the coffee,” I say. “We open in ten minutes.”
We open. Customers come in. I serve them with the focused determination of someone who refuses to acknowledge that they are clearly, demonstrably, not well.
My voice has gone slightly rough around the edges, which I attribute to the early hour.
My hands are a bit unsteady, which I attribute to needing more coffee. I am fine. Everything is fine.
By ten o’clock I have sneezed four times into my elbow and my throat feels like it’s full of something dense and unhelpful.
By eleven I have sneezed six times and Bunny has started watching me with the particular expression of someone biding their time.
By half-past eleven a customer comes up to order, and I feel a sneeze building with the inevitability of a natural disaster, and I spin away from the counter just in time, but only just, and the customer takes a startled step backwards.
“Bless you,” she says, looking alarmed.
“Thank you,” I say. “Sorry.”
She collects her coffee and leaves faster than strictly necessary.
Bunny appears at my elbow. He’s wearing his bunny ears, which he does most shifts now, because nobody has told him not to, and customers find them delightful, which I find baffling but have stopped fighting.
He puts both hands on my shoulders, gently but with unexpected firmness, and turns me toward the stairs.
“Right,” he says. “Up you go.”
“I’m working.”
“I’ve got it.”
“Bunny, there are customers…”
“Three people, one of whom is Mrs Edwards, and she always just wants a tea and a chat.” He gives me a gentle push toward the door to the stairs. “Go. I’ll bring you something up later.”
I want to argue. I genuinely want to argue.
But my head hurts and my throat hurts and the sneeze that just happened was frankly undignified, and as kind as Adam is, even he couldn’t forgive me if I sneezed in a customer’s face.
And Bunny is giving me the look, the one that says he’s cheerful and kind and absolutely immovable.
“Fine,” I say, with what I feel is considerable dignity. “One hour.”
“Sure,” says Bunny, in the tone of someone who has no intention of allowing that.
I make it to the stairs. In hindsight, the stairs are more of a challenge than they should be. I’m concentrating on them, on putting one foot in front of the other, when Bunny appears behind me again and takes my arm with cheerful efficiency.
“I can walk up stairs,” I say.
“I know you can,” he says, walking up them alongside me anyway.
He gets me to the flat door. Turns the handle.
Steers me through it. I’m concentrating on not tripping over, so I don’t immediately register what I’m walking into, which is a mistake, because I walk into the living room looking considerably more pathetic than I would like, and Dis sees me and the temperature in the room drops about six degrees instantly.
“Who,” says Dis, and his voice has gone very quiet in a way that means the opposite of calm, “has done this to you.”
It’s not a question. It’s a demand.
I look at him. He’s standing at the edge of the circle, those blue eyes blazing, the shadows around him moving with sudden violent purpose, and he’s looking at Bunny with an expression that suggests he’s working out how to disembowel someone without technically leaving the circle.
“Nobody did anything to me,” I say. “I have a cold.”
Dis looks at me. His gaze travels over me with the focused assessment of someone cataloguing damage. “You look wounded.”
“It’s a cold. It’s a virus. It’s completely normal and not dangerous, and I’m fine.”
“You are not fine. You are grey. Your eyes are wrong. You are leaking.”
“I’m not…” I touch my nose. “That’s just from the sneezing.”
Bunny, who has been standing beside me, taking all of this in with wide, interested eyes and his bunny ears slightly askew, raises his hand like he’s in a classroom. “He nearly sneezed on a customer,” he offers helpfully.
“Bunny,” I say.
“Sorry,” says Bunny, not looking sorry at all.
Dis’s gaze snaps back to me. “Sit down,” he says. It comes out with the full weight of several centuries of command behind it.
I stagger over to the sofa and sit down. This is partly because he’s using the voice and partly because my legs are honestly grateful for the suggestion.
“Right,” says Bunny, from the doorway, looking pleased with how this is going. “I’ll bring soup up later. Text me if you need anything.” He gives Dis a little wave. “Bye, Dis!”
“Farewell, cheerful human,” Dis says, without looking away from me.
Bunny beams. The door closes. His footsteps clatter back down the stairs with their usual enthusiasm.
Dis and I look at each other.
“It is not serious,” I say, preemptively. “Humans get colds all the time. It’s a minor upper respiratory virus. It goes away on its own in a week. Seven to ten days at most.”
The blue eyes narrow. “Ten days.”
“At most. Usually less.”
“And in this time?”
“I feel a bit rubbish and I sneeze a lot and I sleep more than usual and then it’s gone.” I rub my eyes, which are watering again. “That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”
Dis does not look reassured. He looks like a man being told that the bomb is only a small one and really shouldn’t cause too much damage.
“I saw a segment,” he says, “on This Morning. About viruses. The presenter was very concerned.”
“The presenters on This Morning are very concerned about everything. That’s their whole thing.”
“They said complications could arise.”
“In vulnerable people. Elderly people. People with compromised immune systems. I’m a twenty-six year old witch with a perfectly functional immune system and it’s just a cold, Disney.”
He doesn’t look convinced. He looks, if anything, more alarmed at the specific detail of me being a perfectly functional person who is currently clearly not functioning perfectly.
He yanks the futon down, pulling it from its sofa shape to its bed form.
“Lie down,” he says.
“I’m sitting.”
“Lie down on the futon.”
I look at the futon, which is inside the circle. I look at Dis. He looks back at me with an expression that suggests this is not a debate he intends to lose.
I think about arguing. I think about the energy that would require, and the way my head is currently feeling, and the fact that the futon does look extremely inviting from here.
Somehow, over the last few days I’ve accidentally given him both a pillow and a blanket. He doesn’t need either and I’m not a kind person, but here we are. With a very comfy looking futon.
I get up. I step across the line of the circle, into his space, which we’ve both gotten so used to that it barely registers anymore. I lie down on the futon and the futon accepts me with the warmth of something deeply inviting.
Above me, Dis looks down with those blazing blue eyes. He is holding the blanket I gave him.
“You should have it.”
“I’m not cold.”
“You are shivering.”
I look at my hands. I am, in fact, shivering. When did that start?
Dis makes a sound that is not quite a word and is very much an opinion, and then he does something I genuinely don’t see coming. He tucks the blanket around me.
Not just drops it on me. Actually tucks it, with the careful deliberate movements of someone following instructions they’ve seen demonstrated and are now executing for the first time.
Around my feet. Up my sides. His shadow-hands patting it into place with a focus that is genuinely, completely unhinged and also one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me.
I stare at the ceiling.
Something is happening in my chest that has nothing to do with the cold.
“On This Morning,” Dis says, sitting down and settling himself on the futon beside me with the careful arrangement of someone making sure they don’t disturb the blanket, “they recommended hot lemon and honey. Also steam inhalation. Also rest. They were very insistent about the rest.”
“You’ve been paying far too much attention to daytime TV.”
“I retain information that may be useful.”
“In case I got a cold.”
A pause. “In case it was relevant,” he says, with great dignity.
I close my eyes. The futon is warm. The blanket is warm. Beside me Dis is a cool, steady presence and the shadows around him are still, settled, none of that violent restless movement from when he thought I was wounded.
“I’m going to be fine,” I say quietly.
“Yes,” says Dis. “You are. I intend to ensure it.”
I don’t say anything to that. I don’t trust what my voice would do.
Nobody has ever looked after me when I’ve been ill, at least, not since I was small enough to have no recollection of it.
I’ve had colds and fevers and stomach bugs and once a fairly unpleasant bout of flu, all of which I dealt with alone in whatever space I was living in at the time, with supermarket paracetamol and whatever was on television and the particular grim competence of someone who has learned there is no other option.
Now I am lying in a summoning circle under a blanket that was tucked around me by an ancient shadow king who has been storing information about cold remedies from daytime television in case they were ever needed.
I don’t know what to do with that.
I don’t know what to do with any of this.
“Disney,” I say.
“Rest,” he says firmly. “We can talk later.”
I rest.
Outside, Bristol gets on with its afternoon. Inside the circle it’s quiet and warm and Dis is still there and presently, without entirely meaning to, I fall asleep.
When I wake up there is a cup of tea on the floor beside the futon, still warm, with the smell of honey wafting from it. Bunny must have brought it up and Dis must have directed him to leave it within reach.
I sit up slowly. My head still hurts, but the cotton wool feeling has eased slightly. Dis is sitting on the futon beside me, watching me with those blue eyes that I have completely failed, over all these weeks, to become indifferent to.
“You should drink that,” he says. “It has honey. This Morning was very specific about the honey.”
I pick up the tea. I drink it. It’s good, warm and sweet, and my throat is grateful.
“Thank you,” I say. “For... all of this.”
Dis looks at me steadily. “You would do the same,” he says. “You have done the same.”
I think about the hand through the circle.
“Yeah,” I say. “I suppose I have.”
We sit together in the quiet circle, me with my tea and my cold and my blanket, Dis with his shadows and his centuries and his carefully stored knowledge of daytime TV cold remedies. Outside it starts to rain, soft and steady against the window.
It is, all things considered, not a bad place to be.