Chapter 24: He Stayed

I woke on a Tuesday in April with my skin on fire and the ceiling tilting.

My first thought was the kitchen floor.

My second was that I could not do it again.

I reached for the nightstand and knocked the lamp over.

The noise brought Joel straight up out of sleep.

"Leah?"

"I'm hot."

He put his palm on my forehead and swore under his breath.

He got the thermometer from the bathroom.

I held it under my tongue while he watched the little screen.

"One hundred and three."

"It's the flu. Britt said there's a flu going around."

"You're not going to work."

"I have a nine o'clock patient."

"You're not going to work, Leah."

I tried to sit up, and the room slid sideways.

He caught me by the shoulders and laid me back down against the pillow.

"Stay there," he said. "I mean it."

I closed my eyes.

I listened to his feet on the stairs, and I went cold in a way that had nothing to do with the fever.

This was the hour.

This was the morning where the phone rang, and the man at the end of the bed said he'd handle it, and left.

Joel's phone buzzed on the dresser.

I heard the shape of the ring, the harbor foreman's, and I heard Joel come back up the stairs.

He answered it.

"Foreman," he said.

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