Chapter 8: Next Door

The door between our rooms stayed unlocked, and I did not sleep.

At two in the morning I heard it through the wall.

A cough, then a low breath that caught halfway in.

I was through the door before I had thought about it.

Luca lay on top of the sheets in the dark with one arm thrown over his eyes, and his chest rose and fell too fast.

"It's nothing," he said.

"Don't talk."

I turned on the lamp and sat on the edge of the bed and took his wrist.

His pulse was skipping again.

Not as badly as Sunday, but it came in pairs, and then a pause, and then the pair again.

"Residual," I said. "It's still in you. The antidote cleared most of it but not all."

"Is it dangerous?"

"If you lie there fighting it, yes. If I'm watching, no."

"Then watch."

I looked at the chair across the room, and I looked at the man on the bed, and I knew the chair was too far away.

I would not hear it start.

"I need to be close enough to feel it," I said. "If it goes wrong, I can't be across the room."

"Then be close enough."

"Sit up, and take off your shirt."

He gave me a long look.

Then he sat up, unbuttoned it with his left hand, and shrugged it off his shoulders.

He was broad through the chest, with an old white scar low on his ribs and a newer one on his shoulder.

He had a body that had been used for fighting, and the heart under it was failing.

I put the stethoscope Teo had found for me against his sternum and listened.

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