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Flicking on the light, I reach for a towel and dry my face. Then I glance in the mirror, wondering if I look as hot as I feel. It turns out, I look even hotter.
My skin is flushed a bright pink, all the way down to the neckline of my pajama top, my lips are dry and red and my eyes are fever bright. The alarm bells ring louder and this time I can’t ignore them. They’re all but screaming in my head.
Shit, shit, shit. This can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.
I press a hand to my forehead and nearly whimper at how cold my fingers feel after splashing in the water—and how hot my head still feels. Damn it. I’m running a fever.
I’m running a fever.
A little freaked out now, despite my determination to keep calm, I cast around trying to see if I have any other symptoms of sickness. My nose is completely clear, my throat doesn’t hurt, my lungs feel fine, I don’t even have a headache. Nope, there are no signs at all that I’ve come down with a cold or the flu.
Damn it.
Fear creeps in despite my determination not to let it, and for a moment I can’t do anything but think about the last time this happened. The last time I ran an inexplicable fever and ended up in the ICU, a victim of bone marrow biopsies and a million other tests, all of which told my parents the same thing. The chemo had failed. The cancer was back, stronger than before.
But it isn’t like that this time, I tell myself frantically. Dr. Gardner promised me that the cancer was in full remission. He did all the tests, gave me a clean bill of health. He warned me that I would have to have tests done at six months and at a year, but there was nothing to make him believe that I wasn’t currently in full remission.
Nothing but this goddamned fever, that is.
For long seconds, I’m all but paralyzed with helplessness. With fear. With an absolute inability to do anything but stare at myself in the mirror in growing horror.
I clear my throat, search desperately for some sign of a throat ache. Some sign of a headache. There is none. There’s nothing, save the sick feeling inside of me that is growing with every passing second.
I beat it down, try to think, try to reason this thing out. But there is no reason here, there is nothing but the sick and terrible fear clawing its way along my every nerve ending. It can’t be back. Please, please, please, it just can’t be back.
But the statistics are there, those mocking numbers that tell me it doesn’t make sense for me to be alive. They are the same numbers that gave me only a five percent chance to live all those years ago when this disease first invaded my body.
Five percent.
I’ve beaten those odds for ten long years, but maybe this is it. Maybe the doctors are wrong. Maybe my luck really has run out.
And maybe I’m being a melodramatic crazy person, I tell myself harshly as I dry the last of the water from my face and step back into the bedroom. The logical thing to do is to take a couple Tylenol and crawl back into bed. See if the acetaminophen helps the fever go down. If it does, I’m probably overreacting. If it doesn’t … well, if it doesn’t, then I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I leave the bathroom light on and use it to guide me to my purse and the bottle of Tylenol I opened for Ash just a few hours ago. I dry-swallow them—a trick that comes with years and years of practice swallowing pills when even the slightest bit of water would turn my always nauseated stomach. Then I crawl into bed and cuddle as close to Ash as I can get.
He wraps his arm around me, pulls me flush against his body. And I lie there, staring straight ahead, watching the minutes slowly, slowly, slowly scroll past on the alarm clock balanced on the nightstand right in front of me.
Ninety-seven minutes have passed when the heat once again gets the best of me and I throw the covers off for a second time. Ninety-seven minutes is plenty of time for the Tylenol to work. More than plenty of time for the fever to come down. But I just feel hotter, if that’s possible, like I’m burning from the inside out.
Tears burn the back of my eyelids, but I blink them away. No use crying right now. Not when I don’t know anything. And not when tears won’t change anything anyway.
It’s six o’clock now, early still considering what time Ash and I went to bed last night. But late enough that I’m hoping Timmy’s nurse will be up. Ericka is really nice, and while she
’s a home health care nurse, she’s one who has specialized in cancer patients for most of her career. We’ve talked numerous times while we’ve been out on the half-pipe, watching Timmy and waiting for the boarding to shut down for the night.
I’ve never told her straight out that I had cancer, but Ericka’s pretty smart. I’m sure she’s looked at the hair, at my body, at me, and figured it out. Or, I’m sure at least, that she strongly suspects.
Sliding on a pair of flip-flops, I let myself out of my hotel room and creep down the hall to the elevator. Z made sure that Ericka had a room right next to the suite he’d reserved for Timmy two floors up.
It’s early morning, but already people are up and moving between the floors. Not that that’s exactly a surprise. This is only the second morning since we’ve been here that the crew has decided to sleep in instead of hitting the powder as soon as it got light. As I get off the elevator on Ericka’s floor, I send a quick prayer of thanksgiving out into the universe. Dealing with this is bad enough. Dealing with it while a worried Ash, an inquisitive Z and a solicitous Luc peered over my shoulder would be more than even I could take.
When I get to Ericka’s door, I knock quietly, then wait for her to answer.
She doesn’t.
I knock a second time, wait, and am just about to give up when the door to Timmy’s suite goes flying open. He’s standing there in just his pajama bottoms, looking a little more pale and gaunt than he did even six days ago. It breaks my heart, makes my knees weak, even as I return his smile.
“Tansy! What are you doing here?” he asks, looking delighted as he steps aside and tries to usher me into the suite.
