Chapter 4 Fever Dream
The screeching of my alarm jolted me awake, but it wasn’t the sound that made me open my eyes. It was Luz, standing over me like a sleep-deprived archangel, holding my phone and glaring.
“Girl,” she hissed, “if I have to sit through your banshee alarm one more time, I’m throwing your phone into the sun.”
I groaned, rubbing the grit from my eyes. Luz stood beside my bed, hand on her hip, already flawless in gold hoops and a bright yellow outfit.
“You slept through three alarms,” she emphasized, waggling my phone at me.
“I’m up, I’m up,” I muttered, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. A wave of dizziness hit me like a tide.
Luz’s tone softened. “You good?”
“Yeah.” I blinked. My pulse hammered too fast. The back of my throat felt scratchy. My chest pulled with each breath.
Symptoms: dizziness, elevated heart rate, and possible fever.
I ran through the differential like Reenie had taught me. Dehydration? Viral infection?
But something deeper whispered this wasn’t any of those things.
“Just tired,” I sighed. “I stayed up too late working on Ward’s assignment.”
The exhaustion was bone-deep, a dull ache behind my eyes. Luz’s words echoed—three alarms—and I glanced at the clock on the wall.
8:04 a.m. “Shit!”
I scrambled for my jeans, nearly falling. Luz smirked, watching the chaos with practiced patience.
“Girl, maybe it’s time for a shock collar,” she teased.
“Hilarious,” I mumbled, jamming my arms through my jacket.
As I grabbed my bag and bolted for the door, Luz called, “Don’t forget tonight! You promised you’d record my episode! I shaved for this!”
“I didn’t forget. You and your smooth legs are on the schedule.”
“And bring me back my usual!” she added sweetly.
The walk to the café was a blur of half-jogging and internal diagnostics. The tightness in my chest was subtle but present. Not an asthma attack. Not yet, but close. I touched my inhaler through my bag and pushed through the café doors.
The morning crowd was already spilling out in a caffeine-fueled mob.
The espresso machine shrieked in the background, a constant metallic wail beneath the roar of voices.
The air was thick with the smell of dark roast and butter-soft pastries.
Bodies pressed against the counter. Orders shouted.
Cups clinking. The visual chaos of it all made my head spin worse.
I ducked behind the counter, heading for my apron.
“You know your shift starts at eight, right?” Cory called from the espresso machine. He glanced up as I tied my apron, his sandy blonde hair catching the café lights, blue eyes bright with amusement. “Not eight-oh-whenever-Melanie-blesses-us-with-her-presence.”
“I know, I know,” I groaned. “My alarms betrayed me.”
“Again?” He stopped mid-motion, eyes narrowing. “Hey… you good? You look kinda pale. Like ‘Victorian consumption’ pale.”
“Thanks, Cory. Always a confidence boost.”
“Seriously. You sick?”
I brushed him off with a half-smile. “Just tired. Need caffeine.”
“Well, we’re fully stocked.” He handed me a damp rag, concern still on his face. “You’re on register. I’ll do drinks. But if you pass out, I’ll call 911 and your mom, in that order.”
“Please don’t call my mom.”
“Then don’t pass out.”
I nodded and moved to the counter. The dizziness hit in waves—the world tilting, the lights too bright, sounds muffled and distant. Everything felt submerged, each movement slow and delayed. I focused on ringing up orders, keeping my hands steady, breathing through the tightness.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
But it wasn’t enough. The café blurred into static. Flashes of orders, cups sliding, Cory’s voice underwater. The lights flickered. The counter shimmered like heatwaves above asphalt. My body swayed. My hands slipped.
The edges of my vision bled black.
“Mel?” Cory’s voice was edged with panic. “Melanie, hey—”
My knees gave way. The floor surged up to meet me. I just barely caught myself on the counter, my stomach lurching.
“You’re done for the day,” Cory said firmly, helping me to my feet. “Go home. Rest.”
I nodded, too dizzy to argue. He handed me a bottle of water and practically pushed me out the door. I stumbled out into the courtyard. The autumn air bit at my skin but didn’t cool me. If anything, I felt hotter.
My feet carried me toward the dorms on autopilot, the world fracturing around me—frames missing, shadows stretching too far, every sound muffled and distant.
The sky cracked like glass hit with a hammer. A jagged tear split the clouds, and through it I saw—
Impossible.
A black river under moonlight. A shoreline strewn with broken crowns and withered petals. A woman stood there, hair drifting around her, bare feet in the mud. She was taller, crowned in bone and flowers. She looked up, and our eyes met across the break in reality.
Her hands dripped red.
Someone was calling my name. Two names.
Melanie. Kore. Melanie. Kore.
I stumbled, pressing my palms to my eyes. “You’re not real. You’re not—”
When I looked again, it was just clouds and a gray autumn sky.
But I could still smell river water and taste copper on my tongue. My palms, when I turned them over, were stained faintly red.
Okay. Hallucinations. Visual and olfactory. Fever-induced? Has to be. Except—
Except that hallucinations didn’t leave evidence.
I stared at my hands, at the red that shouldn’t be there, and my clinical detachment finally shattered.
What is happening to me?
I needed to get home, to lie down, drink water, and take some medicine. A shadow detached itself from the crowd. At first, I thought it was another vision. Shadows didn’t peel away from buildings with purpose.
But this one did.
Too far to see clearly, but I knew the shape of him. The way he stood, the set of those shoulders.
You’re hallucinating.
I blinked, and he was closer, like the space between us had folded. My head pounded so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
Another blink. Close enough now that the heat rolling off him met mine. The scent of cedar, tobacco, and warm earth after rain cut through the fever haze. The lamplight caught his sharp cheekbones and storm-gray eyes. My breath stopped.
Was he real? Or was this another crack in the sky, another vision bleeding through?
“Miss Blumenthal?”
His voice sliced through the fever like a blade. My knees buckled.
Strong hands caught me before I hit the ground. His grip was unyielding, and for one disorienting moment, I let myself lean into him as my legs gave up entirely.
My cheek pressed against the rough weave of his coat. Heat met heat, his warmth solid against my fever-bright skin. I should have pushed away, but my treacherous body only registered that he had me, that his hands were certain, that I could stop fighting and let him hold me upright.
I couldn’t deny the relief.
“You’re burning up,” he murmured in that low, quiet way that made even the fever’s chaos pause to listen.
I wanted to answer, but my words tangled somewhere between my lungs and my lips.
His presence crowded out everything else. All I could register was the circle of his hands and the quiet inevitability of him.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he murmured.
The part of me that still had sense knew he was right. The part drowning in the fever couldn’t bring itself to care.
“I’ll help you to your dorm,” he stated.
Before I could protest, his arm swept under my knees, lifting me against his chest like I weighed nothing at all. My head lolled against his shoulder, his scent filling my lungs.
This isn’t real.
But his heartbeat was real, his warmth genuine. For the first time since the fever started, the spinning slowed.
I barely remembered giving him directions. The walk back to my dorm existed only in fragments: the rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek, his strong frame pressed to mine, the faint smoky spice of his cologne that made something animal in me want to breathe him in deeper.
Part of me whispered: He’s your professor. This is inappropriate. You’re making a scene. What will people think?
I was too feverish to care.
When he set me down in front of my door, the world slowed. My vision cleared just enough to take in the lines of his jaw, and the intensity in his eyes that had nothing to do with concern and everything to do with restraint.
I almost forgot how to breathe.
“Th-thank you, Professor Ward,” I stammered, heat rushing to my cheeks.
“No need for that,” the professor said. He reached out as if to steady me, then caught himself, hand hovering in the space between us. I could feel the pull of him even without contact, the weight of the distance he was forcing between us. His hand fell back to his side.
“Do you have medicine?”
“I—yeah. In my room.”
He looked like he wanted to say more. His eyes searched mine, then whatever it was seemed to retreat behind that careful professor mask.
“If it gets worse, call Campus Health.” A pause. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He didn’t move until the door cracked open. Then, with a final glance, he turned and disappeared down the hallway. I watched him go, even as my rational mind screamed that wanting him to stay was dangerous and inappropriate.
“That… did not just happen,” I whispered, shutting the door too quickly.
My room felt suffocatingly small, stripped of the strange gravity he carried with him. I made it three steps before my legs gave out. I collapsed onto my bed, his warmth still ghosting across my skin.
I woke to my phone buzzing insistently.
For a moment, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to piece together what was real. I could tell by the damp sheets, the way my skin felt clammy but cooler, that my fever must have broken.
I glanced at the clock on the wall.
I’d been out for ten hours. I had three missed calls and texts from Luz and Amy.
Luz: Babe, where are you
Luz: You better not be dead
Luz: If you’re dead, im stealing your good bras
Luz: OK, Cory texted me. You’re alive but sick. coming home with supplies. DO NOT DIE
Amy: Luz said you fainted. You good?
I typed back: Alive. Fever broke. I’m okay.