A Walk Along the Beach(31)

She must have read my mind. “How about I bring you dinner tomorrow night? You can tell me about Bolivia and show me some of the photos, and we can talk.”

That was a perfect solution. I hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks. “Yes. Please.”

    “What time should I plan to arrive?”

“Any time you want.” I craved her company, regretted every moment we were apart, and was eager to settle matters between us.



* * *



—

By the time Bandit and I arrived home, I was bone weary and exhausted. I unloaded the car, unpacked my equipment, and tossed every piece of clothing from my backpack into the washing machine. When I finished, I was shaking with fatigue and nearly passed out in the shower.

“Okay, bed now.” I didn’t know who I was looking to convince. Nothing appealed to me more than a solid ten hours of sleep. Not food. Not work, which I was eager to start. Nothing.

In the morning I woke with a monster headache, barely able to lift my head from the pillow. Standing next to the bed, Bandit rested his chin on the mattress, looking to me to feed him and let him outside.

“I don’t feel so great,” I managed to say. Overtaken by chills, I shivered and pulled the blankets over my shoulders as I curled into a tight ball. I must have returned to sleep, because Bandit’s bark woke me.

With effort I managed to let him out to do his business. I poured food into his dish and literally fell back into bed. My head pounded like someone had taken a jackhammer to it. Aspirin didn’t put a dent in the constant, persistent ache. In all the travel I’d done over the years, I’d never returned from a trip feeling worse.

Lingering in bed, I forced myself to get up and get dressed around four, knowing Willa would arrive sometime soon. The chills wouldn’t leave me. I walked around the house with a blanket tucked around my shoulders, cold and sweating buckets at the same time.

Willa arrived at four-forty-five. She took one look at me and her face instantly clouded with concern. “You’re sick,” she said.

    “Looks that way.” By all that was right, I should have warned her. It was selfish of me. My need to see her, to settle any differences between us, had overridden my common sense. “I should have called.”

Taking the casserole dish into the kitchen, she looked at me and frowned. “I’m glad you didn’t. Let me help you; you need to be in bed.”

“Will you join me?”

“Very funny,” she said, taking charge. “Where do you keep your thermometer?”

Dizzy now, I stumbled into the bedroom. “Don’t have one.”

“Sean!”

She made it sound like I didn’t keep toilet paper on hand. For all the traveling I’d done over the years, I had never needed one. I was young and healthy, and I wasn’t foolish. I never drank water that wasn’t bottled or hadn’t been purified. I’d taken care of my shots and was careful of the food I ate.

Willa helped me into bed and pulled the covers over me. She started to leave.

“Don’t go.” I sounded like a big baby, but I couldn’t help it.

“I’ll be back, and if you aren’t better by morning, I’m taking you in to see the doctor.”

“I’ll be better.” I hoped this wasn’t a case of wishful thinking.

I heard the front door close, and although I’d slept a good majority of the day, I felt myself drifting off again. It seemed like only minutes before Willa returned. I was in a fetal position. Chills wracked my body and my sheets were soaked.

Willa stayed with me. She wiped my face with a damp cloth, got me to drink some fluid, and freaked out when the thermometer showed my fever registered at one hundred and three.

“I need to get you to the clinic,” she said, pulling back the covers, attempting to get me out of bed.

    My head ached and my body felt like I’d been run over by a snowplow. “Tomorrow.” The local clinic was closed and the closest one outside of Oceanside was Aberdeen. No way was I interested in leaving my bed and traveling to another town. Not with what I could only assume was a migraine and a high fever. What I needed most was rest and Willa watching over me.

“I don’t understand it,” Willa said, pacing my bedroom. “You seemed fine when I first saw you.”

I didn’t understand it, either. I would have talked more if I’d had the energy. It took everything I had in me to function when my entire body screamed with pain. The headache was the worst.

“If this is your way of getting out of us talking, then you’re going to extremes,” she said, wiping down my face. The rag felt cool and my eyes drifted closed. Willa stayed at my side, forcing liquids down my throat. She was on the phone and I didn’t know who she was talking to until I heard her mention Harper’s name.

When she finished, she placed her hand on my forehead. “I’m staying the night.”

“This isn’t exactly the way I planned to lure you to my bed,” I mused, and must have said the words out loud, because Willa laughed.



* * *



—

During the night, Willa woke me every few hours. She took my temperature and forced me to drink some ugly-tasting fluid. My head continued to pound, and I doubted I slept more than a few hours. I was cold and sweating and unable to understand how that could happen at the same time.