Please Don't Die, Alpha! I Can Heal You Every Night novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Fever

We put him in the old fermenting tank, on ice.

It was Ollie's idea.

The tank was a copper trough the length of a bathtub, and forty men carried sacks of ice from the bar down the street.

I stripped Jude to his shorts and eased him in, with the stitched side held high above the water.

"This is humiliating," he said through his teeth.

"This is medicine."

"I'm a grown man in a trough."

"You're a grown man with a hundred and four. Hold still."

I kept two fingers on his neck and counted.

Everyone else I sent upstairs.

Ollie went last, and shut the door.

The room held the copper still, round and huge and green with age.

Our only light was a work lamp hanging from a beam.

It was cold, and the ice crackled when he breathed.

At a hundred and three, his teeth began to chatter.

At a hundred and two, the sweat on his lip stopped.

"Talk to me," I said. "Say anything."

"I haven't told you something."

"Nothing you say is going to surprise me. I've seen the X-ray."

"Not that."

He looked up at the iron beams.

"The first night you slept in my house, you left the bathroom light on in the hall. For me."

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