Perrin makes a sound in the doorway that he tries to cover with a cough.
I ignore him.
"Better?" Elowen asks.
"Better," I admit, my voice muffled by the blanket.
She reaches for the next one and hands it over without comment, and I add it to the pile, arranging it with the focus of someone defusing something.
"Should we take him to the hospital?" Perrin asks from the doorway. It's the fourth time he's asked today. I've counted. “He looks really flushed and sweaty.”
Elowen doesn't look up from the blankets. "They'd give him Tylenol and tell him to wait until he can see his doctor," she says, with the patient tone of someone repeating something they've already said several times and are prepared to keep saying it. "We'd spend six hours in a waiting room for nothing."
"So we just wait until he can see his doctor?" Perrin's jaw is tight.
"We manage," she says. "There's a difference."
Managing, as it turns out, looks like this.
Every morning, Elowen appears in the doorway with a small lineup of medications in a little glass dish, like she's presenting me with an extremely disappointing charcuterie board. She explains what each one is, what it's supposed to do, and what she's hoping it will help with.
I take them all without argument because I feel too awful to have opinions about anything except the blankets.
And honestly, I am extremely thankful for the omega.
She’s tried everything she can get her hands on. Anti-inflammatories for joint pain. Magnesium for muscle cramping. A low dose antihistamine that she says sometimes helps with skin sensitivity in autoimmune cases. A hormone supplement she ordered online two days ago which arrived yesterday, and that she described as a long shot but worth trying.
None of it is working the way it should.
My headache is gone and my joints no longer feel like they’re packed with broken glass, but some of my other symptoms just won’t go away, and it’s starting to annoy Elle.
I can see it on her pretty face.
"Your fever went up again," she says, setting the thermometer down on the nightstand and writing something in the small notebook she's been keeping since day one.
"I know," I say. "I can feel it."
"How's the joint pain?"
"Not terrible." I shift slightly against the pillows, testing. "Maybe a little worse in my wrists."
She writes that down too.
"Elowen," I say.
"Mm."
"You have that face."
She looks up. "What face?"
"You know that one,” I say firmly, but her eyes widen, telling me she has no clue. “You clearly think something’s wrong with me, but you’re not saying it." I hold her gaze. "What is it?"
She's quiet for a moment, her pen hovering over thenotebook. Then she sets it down in her lap and looks at me properly.
"Your symptoms aren't tracking the way I'd expect them to," she says carefully. "Coming off Verenthicin should produce a predictable pattern. Inflammation, fatigue, joint pain. All of which you have." She pauses. "But there are a few things that don't fit that pattern, and I'm trying to figure out why."
"What things?" I ask.
