Chapter 12: The Fever
Gavin woke up cold.
That was the first wrong thing. The room ran hot, radiator ticking against the wall, blanket tangled somewhere around his knees, and his teeth were chattering hard enough to hurt. He tried to pull the blanket back up and his arm wouldn't do what he told it. The ceiling swam.
"Niles." His voice came out thin, wrong-sized.
Down the hall a door shut. Footsteps, unhurried, then the bedroom door swung open and Niles stood in it with a mug of coffee, hair flattened on one side, blinking sleep out of his blue eyes. He looked at Gavin for two seconds and the mug went down on the dresser with a hard clink.
"You're gray," Niles said.
"I'm fine." Gavin tried to sit up. The room tilted like a boat. He got one elbow under himself and it shook and he sank back into the pillow, and the pillow was soaked, he realized, soaked with his own sweat. "Just slept weird."
"Slept weird." Niles crossed the room and put the back of his hand against Gavin's forehead, and the touch burned cold the way snow burns. He didn't pull it away. He left it there, thumb resting on Gavin's temple, and his face did something complicated and settled on nothing. "How long have you been like this?"
"Like what."
"Don't." Niles's voice was quiet, which was worse than loud. Quiet meant he wasn't performing. He pulled the blanket up over Gavin's chest, tucked it with a care nobody in that house used for anything, and went for the thermometer in the bathroom drawer, the old one that lived next to the aspirin nobody took.
Gavin heard him coming back and tried again to make his body obey. It wouldn't. His ribs ached dully under everything else, and his stitched palm throbbed out of rhythm with his heart, and the shivering had climbed up out of his bones into his jaw.
"One-oh-three," Niles said, reading the little screen. He sat down on the edge of the bed. "One-oh-three point two."
"That's a number."
"That's an ambulance number."
"No." Gavin reached for his wrist and missed, and tried again, and caught it. His fingers were hot and dry. "No hospitals, Niles. I signed myself out of one four days ago. You want them to write 'idiotic' in my chart and keep me for a week? They'll ask how the hand got like this. They'll ask about everything."
Niles didn't answer right away. He sat there with the thermometer in his fist and looked at the window, at the drawn curtain, and Gavin watched him do the math and knew exactly which way it was coming out before he said it.
"Fine," Niles said. "Fine. But you do what I say. All of it. Every stupid thing."
"You're not my nurse."
"Then fire me and dial 911 yourself." He stood, pulled the damp pillow out from under Gavin's head, flipped it to the cool side, and eased his head back down. "You can't even lift your arm. Fire me."
Gavin shut his mouth. The radiator ticked. Somewhere below, a bottle rolled across the floor with the draft, and the sound seemed to come from a long way off.
The fever went to work on him after that.
Niles kept the door of the bedroom open and the window cracked an inch, against everything in him that wanted the heat sealed in, and he worked. He filled a basin with cold water in the bathroom, wrung a washcloth out with both hands, and laid it across Gavin's forehead. Gavin flinched at the cold like it was a slap.
"Easy," Niles said.
"God." Gavin's eyes cracked open. They were too bright, glassy, unfocused at the edges. "Cold."
"It's supposed to be cold. That's the whole gimmick." Niles wrung out a second cloth and ran it down the side of Gavin's neck, over the collarbone, avoiding the bruised ribs without checking where they were. He peeled the soaked shirt off him, slow, apologetic in his hands if not his face, and got a dry one over his head.
Gavin grabbed his arm. The grip had no strength in it but it held, and Gavin's eyes were on the ceiling, or on nothing.
"The bridge," he said.
"What about it?"
"They're counting it wrong." His mouth moved around the words like they were heavy. "The interest. On the bridge. Somebody's gotta tell Marcus, the whole count's wrong, it's off, I counted it twice, I counted it with my fingers, I counted it with the water, I told you I counted it."
Niles went still for a second. Only a second. Then he said, "The count's right. You brought it home. Six hundred gross. It's sitting on the kitchen table, I checked it this morning."
"You checked it?"
"Twice."
"Okay." Gavin's grip loosened. His eyes slid shut. "Okay. It's on the table. Don't let anyone take it off the table."
"Nobody's taking anything." Niles wet the cloth again, wrung it, laid it back. "Drink this."
He'd filled a glass at the tap and he held it to Gavin's mouth, tipped it slow, careful, one hand cupped under his chin to catch what spilled. Gavin drank like a child, small swallows, some of it running down his jaw into the pillow. Niles caught it with his thumb and didn't say a word about it.
"More."
"More in a minute. Little at a time or it comes back up."
"You've done this before," Gavin said, and it wasn't really a question, and it came out slurred at the edges. "You've done this. Who'd you do this for."
Niles was quiet. He set the glass on the nightstand and wrung the cloth out again, wrung it longer than it needed, water running down his wrists.
"Somebody," he said finally.
Gavin's hand found his and held it. The bandaged palm against Niles's knuckles, hot as a stove.
"Where'd you get the money," Gavin mumbled, eyes closed now, drifting. "For the bridge. For the toll. Somebody stole the toll, check the toll, it's gone, I had it in my sock, I had it in my mouth, I swallowed it, I'm sorry, I swallowed the money."
"The money's fine. You're rich. You're the richest guy on the east side."
"Liar." A ghost of a smile crossed his mouth. "You're such a liar, Niles. You show every card."
"Yeah," Niles said, and his voice cracked on it, just slightly, and he coughed and kept wringing the cloth. "Go to sleep, Gavin."
The afternoon went down into evening. Niles called Hank once, kept it to two minutes. Fever, no hospital, needs water and cold cloths, don't come over. Hank argued for a minute and then said something that made Niles's jaw tighten, and Niles said yeah, and hung up, and went back upstairs with the basin refilled.
By ten the fever had climbed. Gavin talked through most of it, a low mutter that ran like water over rocks, pieces of things: the hospital's fluorescent lights, his mother's kitchen which was not Niles's kitchen and which Niles had never heard him mention, a dog he'd apparently had at fifteen, the runner's nose, the bridge, the bridge, the cold coming up through the railing. At eleven he tried to get out of bed.
He got one leg over the edge, shaking, saying something about the pickup, and Niles caught him around the shoulders and lowered him back down and held him there, and Gavin fought him with everything his body had left, which wasn't much, fists like wet paper against Niles's chest.
"Friday," Gavin said, panting. "Gotta. The pickup's mine. You gave it to me. It's mine, I can't be late, he'll know, he'll know I'm weak."
"It's Saturday."
"It's Friday."
"It's Saturday night, Gavin. You did the pickup. You did it Friday morning, you conned him, you came home at one-fifteen with a brick and six hundred dollars. It's done. It's been done for days." Niles kept his voice level, kept his arms around him, and Gavin stopped fighting, slowly, like a machine running out of fuel, and collapsed back against the pillow with his eyes wide and wet.
"I did?"
"You did." Niles wiped his face with the cloth, wrung fresh. "You were a beautiful thing to see. Your words."
"Was I?"
"You were." He pulled the blanket up. "Sleep."
Gavin slept in fits after that, twenty minutes at a stretch, and Niles stayed. He sat on the floor against the bed frame with his back to the mattress, one arm up over the edge, and whenever the shivering started he'd press the cloth down again, and whenever the muttering started he'd answer it, level and patient, feeding it true things until it quieted. The clock in the kitchen ticked through the wall. The basin water went gray and he changed it four times.
Somewhere past two in the morning Gavin surfaced, almost clear, and found Niles's hand without looking.
"You're still here."
"I'm still here."
"You look like hell, Niles." His voice was cracked and small and nearly his own. "How long's it been like this?"
"Since morning. You've had worse nights."
"When."
"Bridge night. Hospital night." Niles's thumb moved once across his knuckles, careful of the stitches. "You've had worse. This isn't worse."
"Liar," Gavin whispered, and his eyes closed, and this time Niles let him keep the hand.
He got twenty minutes of quiet. Then Gavin's breathing changed, shallow and quick, and his whole body tensed under the blanket, and Niles knew the sound before his brain named it.
"Up. Come on, up." He got an arm under Gavin's shoulders and hauled him forward over the edge of the bed, and Gavin came awake all at once, gagging, and brought up almost nothing, thin and sour, the water he'd been sipping and bile after it. Niles held him steady with one arm across his chest and gathered his hair back off his face with the other hand.
"There. I've got you."
Gavin heaved again. His ribs had to be screaming. He made a sound against it, half groan, half apology, and Niles felt him trying to say something through it and said, "Don't. Don't talk. Just breathe."
There was a trash can by the dresser and it was too far. Niles stretched, caught the leg of it with his foot, dragged it close, and held Gavin over it while his stomach finished the job. The spasms went on long past anything the water could account for, dry retches that bent him double, that shook the whole bed frame with Niles on it. The fever had a hold of him from the inside and was wringing him out.
"Done?" Niles said, when the heaving slowed.
Gavin nodded, or tried to. His head hung. Sweat ran off his jaw and dripped into the can, plink, plink. "Sorry," he managed. His voice was sand.
"Don't you dare."
Niles eased him back against the pillows and went for the basin, dumped the gray water in the tub, rinsed it, brought it back with a fresh cloth and the glass refilled. Gavin was shivering again before he got the door, curled on his side with his bandaged hand tucked against his chest. Niles wiped his mouth, his chin, the sweat off the back of his neck, and put the glass on the nightstand where he could reach it.
"Small sips. In a minute."
"Water came back up."
"Part of it. The rest is in you. We go again."
So they went again. Niles lost track of the clock after that. The night broke into pieces, cloth, glass, can, and each time Gavin's stomach emptied itself Niles was there before the first heave, arm across his chest, hand in his hair, holding him over the edge of the bed like a man holding something over a railing that he refused to drop. The second time Gavin cried, without sound, just water running out of the corners of his eyes while his body clenched around nothing. Niles wiped his face with the heel of his hand and kept his voice level and said, "You're all right. This is the fever doing this. Not you. You're all right."
"You don't have to," Gavin got out between spasms. "Niles. You don't have to."
"Shut up."
"Nobody's ever." A heave cut him off. When it passed he finished, small and slurred, "Nobody does this."
"Well." Niles spit into the can, an offering, anything to fill the space. "Now somebody does."
He got him rinsed with a damp cloth, got a clean shirt over his head, got the wet towel off the bed and the dry one under his hip. Somewhere in there Hank called the house phone and Niles let it ring four times before he picked up in the hall, door open, eyes on the bed.
"He threw up," he said, before Hank could ask.
"How much?"
"Everything. Three times now. It won't stay down."
Hank was quiet a second. Niles could hear him breathing through the receiver, could hear a bottle set down on wood, heavily, like a decision. "Ginger ale," Hank said. "Flat, no ice. And crackers if he can manage half of one. It's the only thing that ever stays."
"You've done this too," Niles said, and it came out before he could weigh it.
"More than once. Little glass of water, it stays down better warm. Microwave it ten seconds. Sounds insane, works." A pause. "How's his hand?"
"Hot. Same as the rest of him. No red in the stitches, I checked at midnight."
"Check again at four. Fever like that, a sewn hand is a door." Hank's voice went gruffer, which meant it had gone somewhere else first. "You call me if he can't hold the ginger ale. I mean it, Niles. Anything worse, I drive."
"Yeah," Niles said. "Thanks."
He hung up and stood in the doorway a moment, watching Gavin shiver under the blanket in the amber dark, and the sight of it did something in his chest he didn't have a name for, some animal thing, old and simple. He went downstairs and found the ginger ale behind two cases of empty beer bottles, warm, and shook it flat in the bathroom sink, and microwaved a mug of water for ten seconds because Hank said so.
Gavin drank it in swallows the size of a coin. Niles counted them. Four, and a rest, and four more. Halfway through the mug Gavin's stomach lurched and Niles's whole body went rigid, ready, but it settled, and Gavin let out a breath that sounded surprised.
"Stays down," he whispered.
"Stays down." Niles took the mug and set it aside and Gavin's hand came up and caught his sleeve, weak as it was.
"Where'd you learn all this."
"Learned it the hard way. Somebody had to hold my hair back once." He didn't say who. He didn't say the name. He sat down on the floor against the bed frame, within reach, and pulled the blanket straight over Gavin's shoulders where it had come untucked. "I was about your age. Somebody was about mine. That's the whole history."
"That's not a history, that's a fortune cookie."
"Drink your warm water."
Gavin laughed, a single dry syllable, and the laugh turned into a shiver, and the shiver into another cramp, and Niles was up on the bed before it peaked, pulling him back against his chest, one arm banded around him, and he retched twice into the towel Niles had folded ready and brought up almost nothing, a cup of bile at most, and then it was over and he sagged back against Niles like the strings had been cut.
Niles held him there. He didn't move him back to the pillow. He sat against the headboard with Gavin slumped between his knees and his back against his chest, and he started to rub, slow, the heel of his hand working in circles between his shoulder blades, around the ribs on the good side, up the knobs of his spine. Firm at first, then lighter, just pressure and warmth, and he could feel the fever baking off him through the thin shirt, and he kept it up anyway.
"What are you doing," Gavin mumbled.
"Rubbing your back."
"Why."
"Because it helps. Just does. Don't ask me the science."
Gavin was quiet. The circles went on, around and around, and Niles felt him begin to unclench one muscle at a time, the shoulders dropping, the jaw loosening, the fists uncurling against his own chest. It was like holding a wild thing that had decided, provisionally, not to bite.
"This is the weirdest thing you've ever done to me," Gavin said at last, half gone, voice fogged.
"There's competition?"
"Mm." His head tipped back against Niles's collarbone. "Don't stop, though."
"I'm not stopping."
"Don't tell anyone."
"There's a reputation," Niles said, and Gavin made a sound that might have been a laugh, and Niles kept rubbing, slow circles in the dark, until the shivering went shallow and even, and the breathing lengthened, and the fever-sweat came up on Gavin's forehead the way it does when a body finally spends what it's been burning. He peeled the shirt off him then, wiped him down with the cool cloth, chest, neck, arms, thorough and unhurried, and got the dry one on, and laid him down, and Gavin slept through all of it like a stone.
Niles sat on the floor with his back to the frame and his arm up over the edge and did the math again, the one he'd done that morning at the door. Fever down a degree. Ginger ale staying. Three hours until Hank's four o'clock. He held the stitched hand in his, careful, feeling the heat in it, and decided that if it was worse at four he'd drive, and if it wasn't he'd stay right where he was.
The heat woke him before the clock did. He'd dozed against the bed frame, arm dead asleep under its own weight, and his palm was still on Gavin's hand, and the hand had gotten hotter. Not the same hot. A climbing hot, the kind that moved while you weren't looking.
Niles sat up. His neck cracked. The kitchen clock said twenty past three, and Gavin's face in the amber dark was flushed now instead of gray, two bright spots of color high on the cheekbones, and his breathing had gone shallow and quick again.
"No," Niles said, to nobody, to the number forming in the air. He felt along the nightstand without looking, found the thermometer, and shook it like the old-fashioned ones needed shaking, which they didn't, which was how scared he was.
Gavin's mouth opened for him without being asked. He'd learned that much in one night, the body going obedient in the wrong ways. Niles held it under his tongue and counted the seconds himself, out loud, because the beeping was too far away and Gavin's eyes were fluttering.
"One-oh-four point one," the screen said.
Niles sat very still. One-oh-three had been an ambulance number. One-oh-four was a sentence with an ending in it.
"Hey." He put his hand flat on Gavin's sternum, feeling the heart going like a bird in a box. "Hey, wake up a second. Talk to me."
"Counting," Gavin mumbled. His eyes didn't open. "The toll. I'm counting the toll."
"The toll's counted. You counted it Friday. Count my fingers now." He held up three in front of Gavin's face. "How many."
"Four," Gavin said.
"They're three." Niles grabbed his wrist and checked his pulse with two fingers, thumb counting off against his own watch, and the number came back ugly and fast. The hand was hot through the gauze. He peeled the edge of the wrapping back and the stitches stared up at him, clean, still clean, no red in the seams, but the skin around them was swollen tight and shining.
Okay. Not the hand. Not yet. The rest of him was enough.
Niles stood up and the room swam with the twelve hours of not sleeping and he stood there anyway, and he made a list the way he made lists when there was nothing else to hold. Water. Cloth. Fan was in the hall closet from last summer. Aspirin Gavin would gag on. Tubs of cool water. He went down the stairs two at a time with the basin, filled it, dumped a tray of ice cubes he found at the back of the freezer into it, and the ice cracked loudly in the quiet house.
"Where'd the ice come from," he said to the freezer, and then remembered Hank, some visit months back, stuffing trays in like a man stocking a bunker. Thank Hank later.
Upstairs he wrung the cloth out in ice water and laid it across Gavin's forehead and down one side of his neck, then the other, then across the chest where the heart was hammering. Gavin flinched and hissed and tried to roll away and Niles put his forearm across his hips, gentle, immovable.
"You're cooking. I'm sorry. Stay."
"Stop, it's cold, it's so cold, Niles, I'm cold."
"You're not. I know it feels like it. You're a hundred and four, you're a furnace, and I'm the idiot with the ice." He kept talking, kept his voice level and dumb and steady, weather-report words, anything. "Cloth goes there. Cloth goes here. There's a guy at the sink in my head doing the math on this and he says you're going to be fine."
"You don't do math."
"This guy does."
Gavin laughed once, a hot breath, and the laugh scared Niles more than the muttering because it had nothing behind it, no conman, no teeth. Just a body. Niles wrung the cloth again and again and worked, and the room filled with the sound of water and the small wet clicks of Gavin's dry mouth, and outside a car went past with its radio going, ordinary as anything, a world still running.
Ten minutes. He took the temperature again because he couldn't not.
"One-oh-three point six."
"Still bad," Gavin said. His eyes had opened partway, unfocused, glazed, but aimed at Niles's face. "Still ambulance bad."
"You're awake enough to do numbers. Good. Stay doing numbers." Niles sat on the edge of the bed and put the glass to his mouth. "Small sips. You're going to sweat this out if it kills me, and it might, so drink."
Gavin drank. Three swallows this time, before his face changed and Niles pulled the glass and got the towel ready, and nothing came, just a dry heave that folded him forward into Niles's hand. Niles held him through it, arm across the chest, thumb on the breastbone, counting the heartbeat against his own thumb like a pulse he could argue with.
"Sorry," Gavin whispered, flat against him.
"You said that already. It's retired."
"I mean." He swallowed. His eyes were too bright, wet at the edges, and there was something underneath the fever in them now, something almost present. "I mean the whole thing. The hand. Friday. Being like this. You had a good week, Niles. First one in years, and I picked this."
"The good week was you picking it, not this." Niles eased him back onto the pillows and worked the cloth down his arms. "You walked into that shop stitched together and came out with a standing arrangement. This is just your body filing a complaint about the last month. It'll lose."
"You're doing the thing," Gavin mumbled.
"Which thing."
"The talking-steady thing. Like I'm a horse."
"You are a horse. A hundred-and-four-dollar horse." Niles dipped the cloth again, and his hands were steady, which surprised him, because inside his chest there was a wire pulled so tight he could feel it in his teeth. He checked the pulse again. Slower. Maybe slower.
Three fifty by the clock. He sat on the floor with his back to the frame and kept the hand, and the heat in it had come down a half a notch, or he wanted it to have. He'd know at four. He'd take it again at four, and every hour after, and the wire would stay exactly this tight until it broke or Gavin did, and both options were the same option because there was only one direction he was ever going to move on this.
"Stay," he said to the room, quietly, to the fever, to whatever ran things at three fifty in the morning. "You hear me? Stay."
From the bed, small and slurred, Gavin answered like he'd been asked. "Always the deal."