Chapter 28
Emmy’s eyes snapped open in the dark, her gut twisting with a violence that told her she needed to move.
She threw the covers off and lunged for the bathroom, her legs barely holding her weight as she stumbled across the short distance that felt like miles.
Her shoulder hit the doorframe and she ricocheted off it, collapsing onto the toilet just as her bowels exploded in a rush of liquid that burned on the way out.
A sob tore from her throat — part pain, part humiliation, part exhaustion. She braced her elbows on her knees, head hanging, as her body emptied itself again. And again.
She heard footsteps, and she didn’t have the energy to tell Spence to leave.
“I’ve got you,” he said quietly, and a washcloth appeared in her peripheral vision. She took it with shaking hands and pressed its cool dampness to her face.
Every time she thought maybe it was over, her insides twisted and started all over again.
When the worst passed, or at least paused, Spence offered her a package of baby wipes to clean up with, and then half-carried her back to bed. She was shaking so hard, her teeth chattered.
“How long was I asleep?” Her voice came out barely a whisper.
“About thirty minutes.” Spence pulled the covers up, tucked them around her like she was a child. “Your body’s still trying to purge the toxin. This is normal.”
“Normal feels like fucking shit.”
“I know.” He sat on the bed beside her again, his legs crossed, and offered her more ice chips. “Two ounces of liquid in you every hour is forty-eight ounces per day.”
She accepted the ice chips without arguing, when she’d been about to refuse them.
She’d just shit out way more than forty-eight ounces of liquid, and no telling what she’d lost in the upstairs bathroom.
She needed to hydrate, and she’d learned from nursing Felix and Toby that tiny amounts might actually stay down.
Later, Spence put an ice pack on her head, and it helped her splitting headache enough she could close her eyes and drift off.
She’d occasionally surface and then submerge again, consciousness flickering like a faulty light — but Spence was always right beside her.
Time stopped making sense, and more pains arrived. Her entire body hurt and ached. She’d be cold a while, bundled under a half-dozen blankets with Spence holding her to help keep her warm, and then burning up, no blanket, and she’d even strip her shirt off, trying not to burn up.
Her body became a series of enemies, each part staging its own rebellion.
At Spence’s encouragement, she tried to keep down a few sips of broth, but her stomach rejected it with such force she barely got the small bucket in front of her before it came up.
Bile and the pathetic amount of liquid she’d managed projected itself out of her stomach, burning her throat raw all over again.
Spence held her hair back, his other hand steady on her shoulder, and didn’t say anything when she started crying.
When it was all up and out, he cleaned her face with the cool cloth and offered more ice chips. Always ice chips. Her mouth was so dry it felt like her tongue had turned to leather, but anything more than tiny sips came right back up.
The next time she woke, the headache had returned like a hurricane, the pressure so bad she thought her brain might pop open her skull — a relentless pounding that made even the dim lights in the room feel like daggers.
“Lights,” she managed, and Spence immediately dimmed them further.
It barely helped, but another ice pack dulled it a tiny bit. Emmy pressed the heels of her palms against her eye sockets, trying to create counter-pressure, but it just made the throbbing worse. Every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of pain radiating through her skull.
“Can you…” she started, but even talking made her head pound harder.
“What do you need?” Spence leaned in close, his voice pitched low and soft.
“Make it stop.”
“I can’t, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He stroked her hair back from her forehead with gentle fingers. “But I’m right here.”
She curled into a ball, folded the washcloth over her eyes to block out what little light remained, and tried to breathe through the pain.
Time dissolved.
The next time she woke, the body aches were so much worse, and on top of the headache, she thought maybe dying wasn’t just a bad idea.
Her joints felt like someone had replaced the cartilage with ground glass. Her muscles cramped and seized, forcing her to move, but that hurt just as much as staying still. She hadn’t even known this deep, bone-weary agony was possible. Every cell in her body just fucking hurt.
“Hurts,” she whimpered, and hated how small her voice sounded.
Spence’s hands were there immediately, warm and steady, working the worst of the cramps in her calves. It helped, but only at the exact spot he touched. Everywhere else still screamed.
“I know. I’m sorry. I know it hurts.”
Emmy’s hand trembled when she reached to move the ice pack to another part of her head, her fingers shaking so badly she nearly dropped it. She stared at her own hand like it belonged to someone else.
She knew it was the neurotoxin, but understanding the biological reason and living through it weren’t the same thing at all.
The next time she woke, she needed the bathroom again, but her legs would barely support her. Spence lifted her, carried her, and settled her on the toilet.
More diarrhea. More weakness. More humiliation.
When had she stopped caring that Spence saw her like this? Somewhere between the third and fourth trip, probably. He’d already seen every disgusting thing her body could produce. What was dignity compared to survival?
The next time she woke, she was burning up, sweat soaking her hairline, running down her spine. Emmy kicked at the covers, trying to escape, but they tangled around her legs.
“Too hot,” she gasped. “Spence, I’m burning—”
“I know, I know.” He helped her fight free of the covers, and the air felt glorious for about thirty seconds, but she was still hot.
Spence placed cool towels over her torso and legs.
Someone came to the door, and he put more ice around her head and under her arms. He lifted the towels, let them cool, and put them back.
After a while, the chills hit, and her entire body convulsed with cold so intense it felt like she’d been plunged into the Arctic ocean. Her teeth chattered so hard she bit her tongue. She couldn’t stop shaking, violent tremors that made the bed frame rattle.
Spence removed the towels and ice, piled blankets on her, then stripped and got under them with her, and his body heat was heavenly, wrapped in his arms while she shook apart. His voice murmured something soothing in her ear, but she couldn’t make out the words over the sound of her teeth.
Just as suddenly as it started, the cold vanished and she was burning up again, only this time, she had to race to the bathroom for more explosive diarrhea.
The cycle repeated. And repeated.
Emmy lost track of how many times.
The next time she woke, it was to a cool presence entering the room, and she scented Zander.
She wanted to open her eyes, to see if he was looking at her with concern or that careful blank expression he usually wore, but her eyelids felt welded shut.
A cool hand touched her forehead, and Emmy leaned into it with a desperate sound, but the touch withdrew too soon.
“…getting worse…” Spence’s voice, worried.
“…expected progression…” Zander’s reply. “…another eighteen hours…”
Eighteen more hours of this.
Emmy wanted to cry, but sleep pulled her under again.
Time blurred into darkness, light, pain, nausea.
Ice chips, Spence’s hands.
The bathroom floor, cool tile against her cheek when she didn’t make it all the way to the toilet.
Strong, cool arms lifting her, carrying her to the bathroom, and then back to bed.
Zander’s voice, closer than it had been in months: “Breathe for me, Emerald. Deep, cleansing breaths. The poison is working its way out. You’ll get better, we just have to keep you hydrated.
Can you hold some more ice chips in your mouth? ”
She wanted to agree to it, but she was already sinking back under.
The next time she needed to go to the bathroom, her vision blurred at the edges, the room tilted, and the world spun so violently she had to grab Spence’s arm to keep from falling again.
“Dizzy,” she managed.
“Stay with me and don’t run ahead. I have you.”
She did, letting him guide her, trusting him not to let her fall.
When she made it back to bed, he convinced her to try some broth. “Just a few sips. Maybe it’ll be soothing.”
She managed three tiny sips, and her stomach rolled ominously. She accepted a fourth though, because Spence looked so hopeful.
But minutes later, it all came back up.
The headache never left, but it changed texture — sometimes a sharp ice pick behind her eyes, other times a dull crushing pressure like her skull was too small for her brain. Moving made it worse. Light made it worse. Sound made it worse. Existing made it worse.
Emmy let Spence pack more ice around her head, and wished she could just stop existing until this was over.
She heard Spence and Zander again, filtering through her headache and exhaustion.
“…eight hours now…”
“…isn’t worse … heartbeat is steady … not prepared to call Aaron unless she asks me to…”
Part of Emmy wanted her parents, but mostly, she didn’t want them to see her like this.
“She’s awake again,” Zander said.
Warm hands brushed her hair away from her face, and she leaned into the touch without thinking, desperate for any comfort, any kindness, any reminder that her body wasn’t actively betraying her.
“There you are,” Spence murmured. “You’re doing so good.”
Emmy wasn’t doing anything except barely surviving, but she’d take the praise anyway.
Some time later, Emmy woke enough to wonder what time it was, and asked Spence.
He told her, and she groaned when she realized it’d only been around ten hours since that first desperate sprint to the bathroom.
Time had stopped being linear somewhere around hour three, and now she was just this broken, aching thing.
Spence’s hand found hers in the dark, his fingers threading through her shaking ones.
“Still here,” he said quietly.
“Still dying,” she whispered back.
“Not on my watch.”
Another cramp seized her gut, and Emmy curled around it with a whimper, already knowing what came next.
Spence was already moving, already helping her up, guiding her back to the bathroom for the hundredth time.
Or maybe it was the thousandth.