The Last of the Pure

Twenty-nine

“Can I get you anything, Nora honey?”

I was sick.

Not just feeling under the weather or running a bit of a fever, sick. But sick in every sense of the word.

“No, Am, just leave me alone!”

I was angry, sad, overjoyed—I had no control over my emotions. Every hormone in my body was going haywire with confusion.

My stomach was in knots, heaving itself into the porcelain bowl of my en suite bathroom with Aminthia knocking on the door every fifteen minutes to make sure I hadn’t found a bottle of aspirin and ended it all.

My body temperature was bordering the degrees Jacob had brought me to only weeks before and the sweat dripping down my face was making small little ripples in the bowl of the toilet I’d been crouched over for hours.

“This is all part of it, sweetie,” she assured me from behind the bathroom door for maybe the tenth time that afternoon.

“I wish someone would have warned me!” I shouted back at her.

I wasn’t really mad at Aminthia, I knew that, but at that moment I had the barely controllable urge to rip the door open and pull out her beautiful brown locks.

I could hear her speaking quietly with someone on the other side of the door, another little obnoxious perk of the transition—all of my senses were on hyper drive.

Opening my eyes had me dizzy, I could hear footsteps moving through the kitchen yards and yards away down several flights of stairs, and in combination with the high fever; even the slightest brush against my skin had me cringing.

“Nora, we just want to help,” Sam said softly. His voice would have usually been inaudible through the door and I was so grateful for his hushed tones touching my sensitive ears.

We’d been in Sicily for just ten days when the symptoms started. I woke up in the middle of the early morning on the tenth day because the heartbeat in my chest was so erratic I was sure I was having a heart attack.

By noon, my fever had risen to the hundreds and my eyes were watering as they began over-sensitizing.

The eleventh day was when my emotions went completely out of whack.

And as it was now day twelve in Italy, I’d spent the majority of my day in the bathroom alternating between shouting at anyone who dared bother me through the door and retching up the contents of my stomach over and over.

“I don’t want your help,” I whispered, feeling myself start to cry for what had to be the twentieth time in the last two days. “Please, just leave me alone. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

I could hear the footsteps descending with that. I could hear Aminthia telling Sebastian that she didn’t know what to do once she’d reached one of the living rooms on the first floor.

I could hear Samuel telling Lonnie that it would get better in a couple of hours and I felt myself starting to cry even harder.

The tears tickled my cheeks and felt cold against my burning face.

A couple of hours I could handle on my own, I told myself.

What came after a couple of hours, I didn’t know, but at least it gave me something to look forward to.

“A couple of hours” turned out to be four and a half and “better” turned out to be my stomach calming down enough that I felt safe to leave the bathroom.

Aminthia had come back three times in that frame, her hand peeking in on the second visit to place a glass of Sprite on the bathroom counter.

Lonnie knocked a couple of times to ask if I wanted anything to eat or to ask if I needed anything and I resisted the urge to scream at her.