Three, Two, One, I'm Gone novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Nothing Owed

I sat up in the dark and tried to say something, and my teeth chattered instead.

Wade was awake before I finished moving.

He turned on the lamp, put his palm on my forehead, and said a word I had never heard him use.

"You're burning."

"It's nothing. It's the flu. It happens."

"How long?"

"Half a minute."

"Delia."

"Since I woke up."

He had his trousers on already and was finding his shoes.

"We're going to the ER."

I went cold in a way that had nothing to do with the fever.

The last time I had asked for the ER, I had waited in a hallway for a game to end.

"Wade, wait. I don't..."

"What?"

"I don't want to be waited on," I said. "I don't want you to stand there, and tell me to hold on."

He stopped.

He came back to the bed and knelt down on the floor in front of me so our eyes were level.

"Nobody is playing anything," he said. "Nobody is waiting for anything."

"I'm going to put my coat on you and carry you to the car."

"Then I'm going to drive there, and I'm going to be in the room."

"You don't have to."

"I know," he said. "I want to."

I was too hot and too tired to argue.

He wrapped me in his coat, picked me up, and carried me past the night guard, who looked away.

The ER was loud and bright.

He gave the nurse my name and said, "She has a hundred and four. She needs a bed now."

They gave me one in four minutes.

A doctor looked down my throat, drew blood and said flu.

She said fluids, and she said I should have been in bed three days ago.

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