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“Oh.” The melting in her body now wasn’t due to her fever, but from Levi’s thoughtfulness. Despite still feeling like crap, she rallied herself to sit up on her bed with her back against the headboard and accepted the tissues first. Luckily, the movement caused only a little coughing. Once she’d wiped her eyes and blown her nose, she held out her hand for the glass of water. Levi gave her a pill from his hand and then grabbed the container of pills labeled “morning” from her nightstand.
It took her entire glass of water to get everything down her throat. “Sometimes I think about the fact that I’m twenty-seven and take more pills than my dad, and I wonder what happened.”
“I think that I was lucky you were born in a time when pills exist that will keep you alive,” he said, with far more cheer than anyone should be allowed in the morning. In fact, that was even more cheer than she’d heard out of him when she’d been lying in his bed in scarlet underpants.
“I must have been really sick.”
“You scared us last night. I don’t know how quickly those retroviral pills they gave you are supposed to work, but you look a million times better this morning than you did last night.”
“But I still look like shit,” she finished for him.
“You look like you’ve been sick and will be sick for another week at least.”
“Do I need to call the university?”
“No, I took care of that.”
“You’re really good at this ‘taking care’ thing.”
He shrugged, and she could tell she’d embarrassed him. “I did it for years for Kimmie.”
With those words, the pleasure she’d taken in his gestures dimmed a little. Suddenly she was just another sick person he took care of. As those thoughts raced through her head, she knew she was being ungrateful and incredibly stupid. The other chronically ill people he’d taken care of in his life were his wife, whom he still clearly loved, and his best friend. The company she kept in his caring circle should humble her, not make her feel like just one of the crowd.
Between wanting to be in a hot tub and an ice bath simultaneously, yearning to cut off her nose in the hopes of being able to breathe and wishing she could pump Icy Hot directly to her joints, those little thoughts were minor. If they were still dancing around in her head in a week, when she no longer felt the need to be separated from her body, then she’d worry about them. Right now, she accepted his help as she stood and held his hand as they walked down the stairs to her living room.
Levi guided her to her couch, set her up with a blanket, pillows, a glass of orange juice, a bottle of water and all the medicine she might ever need or want. Sinking into the cushions, she pulled the blanket up to her neck and pressed the cool bottle of water to her forehead, watching him walk to her kitchen.
When he came back, he kissed the top of her forehead and smoothed her hair. “The soup is in a bowl in the fridge. All you need to do is microwave it. There’s tea on the counter, and the electric kettle is full. I’ll call you at lunch to check on you.”
Then he slipped out the door while she was gathering her breath through her snot to say thank you, leaving her alone with Netflix and her own sickness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AFTER LUNCH, LEVI sat in the cool afternoon for a few moments. “To collect his thoughts,” his sister had always said when he’d walk away from the group to stare at a tree. Or a flower. Or a piece of grass. He hadn’t ever really cared, so long as it was a plant.
The worst part of being stuck in the mine for forty-eight hours had been that there was no place to walk away to. And the darkness meant there had been no distance to stare into while his mind cleared. And once they had established the basics of their situation, assigned duties and rationed out supplies, there had been nothing to do. Tahoma had led the group in sing-alongs—the man must have memorized every stupid camp song ever—and that had been their entertainment until the ground shifted again, and they were either going to be rescued or they were going to die.
Not that he had thoughts of death to collect himself with right now, but at some point this morning taking care of Mina had felt awfully close to taking care of Kimmie. The words he used. The tone of voice. The gentle touch.
