Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
It’s been six days since the hotel room. I know we have to do the treatment soon. Preferably yesterday. Andrew has tried to bring it up multiple times, but I’ve managed to steer the conversation away each time.
I really don’t want to do the treatment.
Which is inconvenient, considering the treatment is the only thing standing between me and a potentially fatal fever.
I know that. And I am, in general, in favor of staying alive.
Big supporter of not dying. But knowing it’s necessary doesn’t make it any easier to get through. It just makes the avoidance suck more.
Before the other night, I could still pretend the treatments existed in their own strange little bubble. Anything that happened behind a locked door could be blamed on RHV, physical proximity, and the fact that Andrew is disturbingly good with his hands.
Now that bubble is gone.
I’m still angry. I should be able to hold on to that anger without any complications. Instead, it keeps getting tangled up with the uncomfortable knowledge that part of me was glad he wanted to talk to me. Glad he thought about me. Glad I might not be the only one struggling.
But even if I’m right about that, it doesn’t change anything. He’s still my boss. Another treatment would only give us more to feel miserable about.
And what if I’m wrong? What if I’m lying there on his desk, reading meaning into every look and touch while he’s only trying to keep me alive?
I don’t think I could survive the humiliation.
Maybe the fever won’t come back this time?
Dr. Shaw has made it very clear that RHV does not just go away on its own.
However, Dr. Shaw also says they still don’t know enough about it because it’s only been around for a few months.
Which means, technically, there could be exceptions.
Maybe sometimes it burns itself out and nobody knows yet.
Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow completely fine, virus-free, cured through sheer stubbornness and avoidance.
Wouldn’t that be something?
At five-twenty, I shut down my computer and start putting things into my bag with the calm, efficient movements of a woman who is absolutely not running away from anything.
Phone. Notebook. The charger I always forget and then complain about forgetting.
I pull on my coat, keeping my eyes on my desk and not on the open door of Andrew’s office.
I can feel him in there.
Okay, no, I can’t. That would be insane. But I know he’s in there, and I’m hyperaware of it, which is sort of the same thing.
I lift my bag onto my shoulder and head for the elevators.
“Carly?”
His voice comes from behind me before I’ve made it halfway across the corridor.
I keep walking, pretending I didn’t hear him.
“Carly.”
I reach the elevator and press the button.
Behind me, I hear his office door close.
The elevator dings.
Thank God.
The doors slide open, and I step inside quickly, turning around just as Andrew reaches the corridor. He stops several feet away, frowning.
Our eyes meet, and for half a second, I almost want to apologize.
I know you’re trying to look out for me.
I know I’m being stupid.
I’m sorry.
The elevator doors begin to close.
He doesn’t call my name again. He doesn’t step forward. He doesn’t make a scene in the middle of the executive floor. He gives me the dignity of pretending this is a normal departure at the end of a normal workday.
The doors shut between us.
I breathe out.
The whole ride down, I stare at my reflection in the elevator doors, wondering how the fuck we got here.
By the time I get outside, the evening air is cool enough to make me pull my coat tighter around myself. I walk fast. My bag bumps against my hip, and my shoes hit the pavement harder than necessary.
The apartment is quiet when I let myself in. Annie must still be at work.
Good.
I drop my keys into the bowl, toe off my shoes, and lean back against the closed door. Then I take out my phone. I have one missed call and one new message, both from Andrew.
We need to do the treatment soon
I put my phone facedown on the table and walk toward my bedroom, because I’m tired and scared and too aware of my own skin.
Because the thought of another treatment makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with RHV.
Because if I let Andrew touch me again, I don’t know what it’ll do to me.
I tell myself I’ll deal with it tomorrow. One night off schedule won’t kill me.
I stop in the doorway to my room as a faint shiver moves through me. I freeze, then shake my head.
Probably just a ghost or something.
Turns out our apartment isn’t haunted at all. Weird, huh? And get this: when I wake up drenched in sweat at 3 a.m., it’s apparently not because Captain Howdy is trying to possess his little piglet. It’s actually just because I’m dying.
“Annie,” I try to yell, but it comes out as a hoarse whisper. I try again, banging on the wall. “Annie, wake up.”
I hear rustling from the bedroom next to mine. “Carly?” she says as she reaches my door. “Is everything al—”
She stops in the doorway.
For a moment, she just stares at me. Then her whole face changes.
“Carly?” This time, her voice comes out thin and scared. She runs to the side of my bed and presses her hand to my forehead. I already know the verdict, but she says it anyway.
“You have a fever.”
“Yeah, no shit,” I say, trying to push myself up on my elbows. I fail.
That’s concerning.
“Don’t move.” Annie’s hand goes to my neck, then my cheek, then back to my forehead, like she can’t decide where the panic is supposed to go. “Jesus, you’re burning up.”
The tremor in her words scares me more than the fever does. Annie is an ER nurse. Annie has seen blood, broken bones, and people who put things in places where things do not belong. Annie does not scare easily.
But right now, she looks terrified.
She runs out of the room before I can say anything else. I hear her feet against the floor, then drawers opening, then her voice in the hallway, sharp and professional in a way I’ve never heard directed at me before.
“My roommate has RHV. High fever, fatigue, heavy sweating. She’s conscious, but she’s weak. We need an ambulance.”
I try to sit up again. “Annie.”
She appears in the doorway, her phone pressed to her ear, and points at me. “Do not get out of that bed.”
“I don’t need an ambulance.” My body chooses that moment to shiver so violently that my teeth click together.
Sweat slides down my neck, under my shirt, between my shoulder blades.
The room tilts a little, or maybe I do. It’s hard to tell.
My skin feels too hot and too tight, like I’ve been wrapped in plastic and left under a lamp.
Annie comes back to the bed and grabs my hand with her free one.
“They’re on their way,” she tells me, then says something into the phone. Her eyes flick over my face again. “Stay with me, okay?”
“I can’t even sit up,” I begin, each word a struggle, but I force them out. “Where the fuck would I go?”
She looks at me very angrily.
The ambulance arrives faster than I expect and somehow not fast enough.
The next few minutes come in pieces. Two paramedics in my bedroom.
Annie giving them information in a clipped, steady voice.
A blood pressure cuff tightening around my arm.
Someone asking me my name, the date, and whether I know where I am.
“Unfortunately,” I whisper.
One of the paramedics almost smiles. Annie does not.
At the hospital, everything is too bright. The ceiling lights smear above me as they wheel me through the corridor. I hear RHV, fever spike, partner contact, Dr. Shaw, and then Andrew’s name, spoken like a thing that belongs in my chart now. Like blood type or allergies.
“He has to come,” someone says.
My stomach turns. “No,” I whisper.
Annie, walking beside the bed, looks down at me. “Yes.”
“He’s going to be mad.”
“Good,” she says, her voice tight. “He can get in line behind me.”
I close my eyes. For a while, everything blurs into heat and voices. The sticky weight of my shirt against my skin. A thermometer under my tongue. A nurse saying numbers I don’t understand.
When I open my eyes again, Dr. Shaw is above me.
“Carly. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Look at me for a second.” She shines a light in one eye, then the other. “Your fever is too high. We’re cooling you down, but it isn’t enough.”
“Where’s Annie?”
“She’s right outside.” Dr. Shaw’s mouth tightens. “Scaring my nurses.”
A laugh tries to happen but dies somewhere in my chest.
“Andrew?” I whisper.
“We called him. He’s on his way.”
The door opens fifteen minutes later. Andrew steps inside.
His hair is mussed and his T-shirt is inside out.
His eyes find me, and for a second his face falls.
It’s so quick I might have missed it if I weren’t looking right at him.
Then it’s gone, replaced by something hard enough to cut glass. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Nice to see you too,” I say in a weak voice.
“This is exactly what I wanted to avoid,” he says. “You left without answering, didn’t respond to my messages, and now you’re in a hospital bed with a fever high enough for Dr. Shaw to call me at three in the morning.” His voice is barely controlled. “You could have died in your fucking sleep.”
My face burns even hotter, which is impressive, considering the fever is already doing a spectacular job.
Dr. Shaw studies us for a moment, then glances toward the monitor. “I’m going to give you a minute while we finish setting up.”
Then she leaves the room.
Andrew stays where he is, several feet from the bed, one hand flexing at his side. “You should have called me the second you felt something,” he says.
I thought it was a ghost.
“I know.”
His eyes flash. “Then why didn’t you?”
Because I’m scared I’m going to start wanting the treatment more than the cure.
And because I thought it was a ghost.
I look down at the thin hospital blanket.
“I couldn’t do it again like that.”