The Homecoming (Thunder Point #6)(40)

Part of him felt very bad, putting her through that. Part of him was now convinced he’d done the right thing. She needed him.

She looked up at him from the sofa. “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“I’m going to get you well,” he said.

“Please,” she begged. “Go away.”

Seth put his bags down on the table and pulled out a box. He opened it and extracted a gizmo. A thermometer. It didn’t look like a regular thermometer with a silver end and mercury inside. “You don’t have a thermometer, do you?” he asked.

“Somewhere,” she said with a careless wave of her arm. “Maybe.”

He approached her cautiously. “Don’t hit. Just look up.” He ran the rubber tip over her forehead. She coughed and wheezed while he tended to her and tried not to breathe her air. “Ew,” he said. “You have a fever.”

“Big shocker,” she said.

“You’re sick.”

“Like I’ve been telling you for two days.”

He leaned closer, listening. “What is that noise? Hear it? Like a motor?”

“What?”

“Do you have a pet? Like a kitten or puppy under your shirt? Purring? Growling?”

“It’s my chest!” she said, coughing again.

“We might need reinforcements.”

“Jesus, Seth, will you just leave me alone? I’m sick!”

“You don’t have anything in the house to help you get better, do you?”

“Like what?” she asked, and coughed horribly again.

He shook his head. He went to the kitchen, found a puny bottle of Advil. He filled a clean glass with water. “When was the last time you took anything for the fever and stuff?”

“It’s been a few hours,” she admitted. “All I have is Advil.”

“Take this,” he said, giving her a cold-and-flu capsule that promised to cure at least seven of the prominent symptoms. “Then go take a very long hot shower—the steam is good. Find clean jammies. You might have to burn those. I’ll start your soup and straighten up.”

“If you touch my trash, you’re going to get the flu.”

“I have rubber gloves.”

“I so hate you right now.”

“By the time I leave you’re going to love me.”

“Don’t count on it.”

But she turned and walked away from him. He allowed himself to chuckle very quietly, very carefully. She looked like shit. No one he’d ever known in his life could be quite as appealing and look that bad. Jesus, she might be dying she looked so bad. And he felt so soft toward her right now.

When he heard the water running, he called Scott. “Hey, Doc, I’m at Iris’s house. She’s got a bad case of the flu with a fever and a nasty cough. I gave her some over-the-counter stuff and I brought Vicks and soup. I wonder if you should check her? Make sure she’s just got the flu?”

“Hmm. Maybe. I gave her a flu shot. How high is the fever?” Scott asked.

“One-oh-two and change.”

“That’s not too good. Let me run a couple more people through here and I’ll come over and have a look.”

“It’s ugly, Doc,” Seth said.

“It’s never pretty, Seth,” Scott replied. “Should I bring anything?”

“All your antibodies.”

Before the shower turned off, Seth had searched for clean sheets and got Iris’s bedroom in better shape. He wasn’t sure it had any effect on curing the flu, but his mother always did that for him when he was a kid and something about getting scrubbed and in clean sheets just worked. He even spread a fresh sheet over her sofa. He started heating the chicken soup and went through the kitchen, dining room and living room, scooping up dirty dishes and trash. He did wear the rubber gloves. Whatever she had, he wanted no part of it.

By the time she came back to the living room in clean pajamas, the place was tidy and a delicious aroma that Iris wouldn’t be able to appreciate wafted through the house. She sounded all stuffed up but obviously her nose was dripping, ergo the tissues all over. In fact, he was a little concerned that her red, chapped nose might actually fall off soon.

“Sit down here, Iris,” he said. He had poured her a glass of orange juice and put it on the coffee table. He gave her a large spoonful of cough syrup—an expectorant. She made a terrible face and shuddered. He had all his medications lined up on the coffee table. “Don’t you have any of this stuff on hand?” he asked.

“I hardly ever catch anything, even though I work in a petri dish and the kids all have something.”

“You need this stuff,” he said. “Thermometer, cough medicine, cold medicine, decongestant, Advil, et cetera.”

“Bag Balm?” she asked, picking up the old-fashioned green tin.

He touched her red nose. “For this. The best.”

“I used to have some of this,” she said. “I just cleaned the house. Some of the expiration dates on over-the-counter stuff went way back. To grade school.”

He chuckled and lifted her feet onto his thighs.

“Now what?” she asked.

“VapoRub,” he said, peeling off her sock. “You’re going to like this.”