Chapter Eight
The pain awoke me a few short hours later from a dead sleep.
It was a shooting, searing intestinal pain that shocked me with its urgency.
I pulled on my robe and slippers and darted into the hallway.
The facility was shared but mercifully empty at that hour.
Not that I had any time to check or care.
With great exigence and as much speed as possible, I made it to the toilet.
I will not tell you what happened after that with any specifics.
I will only say that my experience in those wee hours was so painful, so dark that I feared I would not make it out. Death I would have welcomed.
Just before dawn, empty and exhausted but still cramping, I peeled myself up off the cold bathroom tiles.
I cleaned up as best as I could and went back to my room.
Had I contracted dysentery? A killer virus on the verge of sweeping the continent?
Some exotic beach-dwelling parasite? I was so violently ill that it had to be medically significant.
I collapsed in my bed, a husk of my former vigorous self, and fell asleep despite the continuous rumble of my inner organs.
When I awoke later, it was to sunshine pouring through the window and hard knocking on my door.
“Don’t come in!” I groaned miserably. “Do not disturb!”
“Not a chance, darling.” A muffled, yet dastardly familiar voice came from the hallway. “You missed breakfast. It’s past ten.”
“I’m quite unwell.” I couldn’t let him see me like that. “I’m very sick. I need more time. I can meet you later.”
“We’re worried, dear. If you don’t open the door, I’ll go get the concierge,” called another voice. Apolline.
“Okay, okay. Just give me a second.” I struggled to stand on my weak legs. To preserve my last shred of dignity, I wrapped myself in the quilt from the bed before unlocking and opening the door.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Benoit said cheerily. He stopped short then and recoiled upon seeing me, undoubtedly crusted in vomit and god knew what else. My feet were bare, my hair uncombed, and certainly not presentable in any sort of professional sense.
“Oh, my. What happened to you?” Apolline barged in and surveyed the scene.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the quilt around me tighter. “I’ve come down with something terrible. Keep your distance. I don’t want you to get it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I've been up all night vomiting and… sick in worse ways. I feel like my insides are bound up in knots. It’s probably contagious.” The taste in my mouth was so foul, and it was as if all my blood and energy had been sucked out by a vampire.
“The oysters.”
“Oh,” Apolline shook her head. “You ate oysters?”
“No. I don’t think that’s it. This is much more sinister than a bad oyster.”
“I bet that was it,” Benoit said, ignoring my protest.
“That’s why I don’t eat them anymore.” Apolline shook her head with grave seriousness. “I ate a bad shellfish once and thought for sure I was turning inside out.”
“I ate a bad piece of fish in Marseilles during my service, and I still haven’t forgotten it.”
“Oysters can do this?” It didn’t seem possible. I shuddered.
“Absolutely. All it takes is one bad one.”
“You could have mentioned that last night when I was eating them!” I said to Benoit, who was examining the surfaces of my room.
“That’s the sort of thing you eat at your own risk, honey. Everyone knows that,” Apolline tutted.
Benoit nodded.
They were right. He shouldn’t have had to tell me.
I wouldn’t have listened anyway. I’d been such a spiteful cow, and this was my punishment: explosive sickness and complete humiliation.
I never imagined a fresh oyster could be this dangerous, even a bad one.
They’d all been so delicious. I let my head fall back.
My mouth was so dry. And my stomach was still roiling.
A sob emerged from me then, though it was tearless and parched.
I was such an idiot, and it had all been too much.
“How could I have been so foolish? When we have so much work to do!”
“It’s okay, darling.” Benoit sat down next to me and looked questioningly at Apolline.
“I was up all night, and I feel terrible!” Another ugly sob wracked me.
“It’s okay.”
“I'll go get her some hot coffee and toast,” Apolline said, heading for the door.
“And maybe some cold water.” Benoit, with an unprofessional level of tenderness, put his arm around me. Then he leaned in and cooed. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay!” A single, fat tear squeezed from my eye. “I feel like an idiot.”
“Oh, stop.” He laughed. He was laughing at me, squeezing me against him.
I had bruises the size of fists from my fall at the train station. Everything on my body hurt, and I was so pathetic. But there was his heartbeat again. The warmth of him. I stopped crying. I didn’t laugh, but listening to him laugh made me feel better.
“The worst is surely over. But you’re probably exhausted and dehydrated. You won’t feel well for a while.” The weight of his arm on my shoulders was heavenly. “And you may never eat oysters again. At least not for a long time.”
“I thought you were so unadventurous and unrefined when you wouldn’t try one last night. I’m such a self-righteous bitch.”
“Ha. I might not use those words.” He squeezed me closer. “It will be all right. And you can take the day off.”
“I’m sorry.” Taking a day off was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d already cost us a day of work with my trip to the newsstand. “This is shaping up to be the worst work trip ever.”
“Oh, don’t worry. We’re here for three weeks. It’s only just begun. When was the last time you were sick?”
“It’s been a few hours. It was still dark when I came back to my room.”
Apolline returned then with a server carrying a tray of coffee and baguette and a glistening carafe of iced water. He set it down on the nightstand and left to bring a fresh pitcher of warm water and towels.
After pouring me a cup of coffee, Benoit said to Apolline, “Why don’t you go ahead down to the casino while the light is still in your favor. I’ll see that she gets settled and meet you there in time to get the tour?”
“I should do that,” Apolline said with a business-like nod. “As long as you’re okay here?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
I noticed that Apolline’s camera box and tripod were sitting on the floor right inside my door. They were all ready to go to work, and I was perhaps the furthest away from that that I’d ever been.
Benoit stood while she picked up her things. “Feel better, dear.”
Then it was just me and Benoit. I tucked deeper into the quilt. “I can settle myself, you know.”
He cut me a piece of bread and placed it on a plate. “I’m not so sure by the looks of you.”
I turned toward the mirror for the first time that morning and was shocked by how gray I looked, rather like the offending shellfish. My hair was like a pile of yellow straw. I exhaled a pitiful sigh. “I’m sorry again. You must think I’m a disaster.”
He set the bread on my bedside table. Then he sat in the armchair and rifled through the papers he must have brought up with him. “Drink some more coffee. I don’t want to leave you until I’m sure you’re on the mend.”
I nodded, mortified speechless, and sipped my coffee.
My stomach growled then at the decibel of the lions roaring in the city zoo.
Sometimes you could hear them from blocks away.
I instinctively put a hand over my stomach.
There was no way he didn’t hear that. But I didn’t think I was going to get sick, so I took a bite of bread.
Benoit watched me. “That grumbling might continue for a while. Just don’t venture too far from the facilities, and you should be fine.”
“You don’t have to sit with me.”
“If you’re still not able to hold anything down, then you might need a doctor.”
Oh, I hoped not. This could not get any worse. “I think I’ll be okay. I just want to lie here.”
“I’ll sit with you for a while and read the paper, if you don’t mind.”
“How long?”
“An hour or so; long enough to make sure you can hold down that coffee and bread.”
“You’ve been sick like this?”
“Yes. Probably worse. In some places, drinking the water can do this to you.” He sat back in the chair and stretched out his legs.
They were so long. His socks were navy blue, half a shade lighter than his pants.
His ankles were thick and manly. And his boots were broken in but polished black.
“We were awaiting transport in Marseille, and I spent the first night in a restaurant eating the most delicious seafood bisque and the rest of the weekend regretting it. It nearly killed me. Not literally, of course, but I had never been so sick in my life. I’ve learned to be more careful. ”
“I never imagined I’d have to worry about it.”
“One never does, perhaps. The folly of youth.”
“How old are you again?”
“I’m thirty-two. Much wiser than you’re… what? Twenty-three years?”
“I'm twenty-four.”
“Well, darling, you’re still young. And, not to sound like an old man, but there is a lot of learning that happens after twenty-four.”
I sat up and looked at him. “I’m not too young. For anything.”
“No, not at all,” he said with a defensive edge. “I didn’t mean to imply.”
“No.” I lay back down. “You didn’t. I’m just making sure.”
“Stating the obvious, darling.” He held up the paper. “I can read you the headlines, if you like.”
I nodded and nestled in while he read from the first page.
Maybe I was too sick to care, but I actually didn’t mind his presence.
I had slept in front of him, after all. Propriety was no longer with us.
So I listened to the smooth drone of his voice.
And I watched him until he noticed me staring.
My stomach kept growling, but I didn’t get sick.
It was nearly lunch time when he uncrossed his ankles and pulled his legs in to stand. “I should get to work.”
“Okay.” A pang of disappointment hit me. I had been enjoying his company.