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“Love to.” The words were barely out of his mouth before Holly took off sprinting across the tatami with an ear-splitting yell, and launched herself, tucking and rolling admirably and bounding back up onto her feet. She’d been well taught.
Reggie took off after her, slower, but game, as always. She pitched herself forward more awkwardly, and didn’t roll up onto her feet, but flopped sideways onto her butt. She stayed there, face buried in her hands, shoulders hunched. Motionless.
“Reggie?” I called out, sprinting toward her. “What is it? Are you okay?”
I dropped to my knees in front of her and tried to lift her head. She looked up, her nose streaming with blood. It ran down over her mouth and chin and all down her lap, dripping all over the tatami. Her eyes were terrified.
It took everything I had to keep my shit together and not make this scarier for Reggie. I had to project the idea that it was no big deal, nothing to worry about. My voice had to stay cheerful and reassuring. She’d just bumped her nose. Dry winter weather. No biggie, no emergency, nothing to see here. La-di-dah. Big whoop.
But my guts felt like an anvil. This was how it had started with Mom, and this had been how it had started with Reggie, too, the first time around. First, generic aches and pains and fatigue, clammy hands, pallor, that bruised look around the eyes. Then the nosebleeds. Then the fever, and the rashes. The gastro stuff. The mucus.
Of course, it could just be nothing. A stupid flu. A banal, run-of-the-mill normal nosebleed. Everyone got nosebleeds.
We waited for the bleeding to stop, which took a while, and I finally managed to get the softly sobbing Reggie into our bedroom, where we washed off all the blood. When we came out, we found a fresh set of comfortable athletic clothing on the bed.
I got Reggie dressed in the soft, fleecy outfit, and hugged her until she stopped shivering. She looked up at me. “It’s starting up again,” she said flatly.
“I’m reserving judgment for now,” I told her. “Let’s not psych ourselves out, okay? Sometimes a nosebleed is just a nosebleed.”
Reggie gave me an ironic look. “Come on, Cass. I told you. I’m not a baby.”
“Maybe not, but I sure am,” I told her. “Let’s spare my tender little feelings, okay? And this might be a setback, but I still think that our luck has changed.”
There was a knock on the door. Holly poked her head in. “You guys okay?”
“Fine,” I assured her.
“Angela sent me to say that you and I could watch a movie and eat on the coffee table in the TV room if we want. I almost never get to do that. It’s really fun.”
“I’m not hungry,” Reggie said.
“She has some chicken soup for you,” Holly said in a coaxing voice. “If you don’t feel up to lasagna. Her chicken soup is really good.”
“Maybe a little,” Reggie conceded.
I got her established in front of the TV, where a lively debate ensued about the relative merits of comfort movie franchises, the two in question being Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I left them to it, smiling in spite of myself, and followed the aroma of lasagna. But when I got to the dining room, I saw Rose, her coat and hat still on, the cold still clinging to it. Her eyes met mine, and her lips smiled, but her eyes did not.
Not good news, then. Neutral at best. I had been hoping for a quick solution to my worries. I might have known. So much for my appetite. It hid under its rock in a flash. It was belly clenching, chest-constricting anxiety time now.
Angela fussed, taking her coat and hat away and making polite noises about dinner, and why not stay and eat, yada, yada. But Rose’s eyes held mine, and once her coat was off, she grabbed my hand.
“About that medicine,” she said.
My fingers tightened around hers. “What about it? What’s in it?”
“Nothing,” Rose said.
Shane leaned forward, startled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, literally, there’s nothing to it,” Rose said. “I tested the hell out of it. It’s just sodium chloride and water. There’s nothing else, in either the vials or the IV bags.”
“But… but how did they treat her, then?” I asked, bewildered. “What did they give her that made the symptoms stop?”
“That son-of-a-bitch fake doctor at the fake clinic was lying,” Kat said, through her teeth. “Shithead. I should have liquefied his balls when I had the chance.”
“So what, then?” I said. “What now? I’m nowhere! No way to copy the cure, no way to pinpoint the pathogen or the poison. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?”
Rose looked miserable. “I’m so sorry I don’t have better news,” she said. “Do you want me to test the rest of the vials and IV bags as well? Just to be sure?”
