“Oh God. My father thought—”
“—thinks you are discussing strategy with myself and Lottie until late tonight. This afternoon, Peterson and Michaels returned his car and gave him my reassurances. As we’ve decided to broker with Nurse Bryony for your cure, you don’t have a real reason to worry him. Though I understand how one’s parents could be a comfort, in a time like this.” He said the last part academically, like it was a theory he’d never personally tested.
“Right,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “No, that’s fine, don’t contact them.”
“Get some sleep,” he advised. “We’ll handle this.”
If I wasn’t included in that we—and how could I be; I couldn’t handle even standing up—at least his sister was. I nodded at him, and he nodded back, and shut the door.
“You’re not going to jail,” I said again. My mouth felt dry. “There has to be another way.”
“I need to be arrested, and convicted. Or she’ll find another way to end you. She was very specific on those terms.”
“Holmes.”
“Watson,” she said roughly, “I remember a very recent conversation where you detailed all the horrible possibilities of my death. Do you remember that? Would you like to, for just a moment, imagine what it would be like to watch one come true? Think about what this is like for me.”
“The trade-off shouldn’t be spending the rest of your life in a cell for a crime you didn’t commit!”
“No.” She curled my shirt into her fist. “No, but perhaps I should serve time for the crime I did.”
“I can’t talk about your martyr complex right now,” I said, swallowing against the sand in my throat. “I can’t.” I reached blindly for the glass of water by the bed and drank it down.
She drew back to look at me. “You’re flushed,” she said, scrambling to her feet, “I think your fever’s returning—I’ll fetch Dr. Warner—”
“Wait,” I said.
She was rumpled, undone, her hair coming out of its elastic to curl in tendrils around her face. There was something I had to say to her, I thought, something necessary, something right at the tip of my tongue.
I guess she knew it before I did.
Leaning over, she smoothed my hair back from my forehead. I closed my eyes at her touch. And so it was a surprise when she kissed me on the lips.
She smelled, unexpectedly, like roses.
“That’s all I can do,” she whispered, resting her forehead to mine.
“That’s a lot,” I said, and she laughed.
“No. I mean, that’s all—it’s nearly too much for me to touch anyone, after Dobson, and I—for you, I’m trying.”
I could feel her breath on my lips. “I don’t know how long I’ll be like this,” she said, slowly, “or if I’ve maybe been this way all along. I don’t know if it’ll ever be enough.”
It was confusing, what she said, but I thought I understood it.
“You don’t have to try,” I said to her. “Whatever this is, already—it’s already enough.”
“I know,” she said, straightening. “It has to be.”
We looked at each other for a minute.
“If you get yourself thrown in jail over this,” I told her, “I will never, never forgive you. You need to find another way, or I swear to God I will die on you just out of spite.”
Her flickering smile. “Okay.”
“Okay? It’s that simple?”
“Okay,” she said again. I had no choice but to believe her. “Your pulse is racing, and you’re far too warm. I’m going for Dr. Warner.” She smirked. “Don’t want you to die before you can use it as a bargaining chip.”
“Thanks,” I said, pleased, at least, that she chalked my hammering heart up to my fever.
eleven
I WAS MUCH, MUCH WORSE IN THE MORNING.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Logic dictates that a deteriorating illness deteriorates. But then, logic is hard to come by when you’re dying.
Whatever brief reprieve Dr. Warner’s drugs had granted me ended around midnight, when I maxed out on the highest morphine dosage he’d allow me. The hours after that were . . . well, I’ve been assured it’s best that I can’t remember them.
As morning broke, I moved in and out of fitful dreams, dark, sodden landscapes that were at once cruelly hot and cut through by the bitterest winds. At the same time, I was conscious of something happening in the room around me. A hand on my forehead. A pair of voices, shouting. It all added to my unrest, since, for the life of me, I couldn’t make myself understand what was happening. Burma, I thought, I was in Burma. I was in Afghanistan. No, my mother was baking cinnamon rolls in the kitchen, and if I was very good, if I made my bed and put all my toys away, she’d bring them in to me. Holmes was there too, dressed in all black. Someone had died. We were headed to the funeral.