The Risk of Falling

Chapter Twenty: Cards Down, Walls Up

A/N: Hello everyone! Happy Holidays! Hope you're all having a good time.

I had a couple of days off to write so even with the mad Christmas rush, I was able to get this one out. This is a bit shorter than the past several chapters but I didn't want to plug in a few extra paragraphs in here if they weren't necessasry. It's a simple scene, really, but there's a lot going on in it. It's a turning point in their relationship and possibly the start of the end—LOL! Just kidding. We'll see, right?

And oh, has anyone noticed the little banner on the side with pics of Luke and Max? Let me know what you think!

Anyway, enjoy reading! 

***

As far as spending the night together goes, that Friday night wasn’t the most romantic. It wasn’t even peaceful. Or restful.

Just a couple of hours after we fell asleep, Luke’s temperature spiked and he was a scorching, sweaty, shivering ball under the covers. He was also tossing and turning, gripped with some kind of feverish dream. 

He was muttering words and sounds I couldn’t make out except for one—the name Elise. 

He yelled the name out loud that I nearly fell off the bed at the force of his speech. 

Who the hell Elise was, that I didn’t know. 

But I would have no time or energy to speculate because it became a very long night.

I’ve never tended a sick person before other than my grandfather who had no more than a really bad indigestion in his life so I wasn’t highly skilled as a nurse.

I tried to cool Luke off with some wet towels on his neck and forehead. I sat by his side with a basin of water and ice and went through a dozen towels. The basin became even handier when he rolled to his side, groaning miserably, and puked his guts out. I went back to the kitchen, dumped the mostly liquid waste out and down the garburator and scrubbed the whole thing down before going back to him with some fresh ice water.

Part of the bed was soaked from the water that spilled when I had angled the basin toward him just as he was about to wretch so I had to soak it up with a towel until it was only mostly damp. Then I got out a large bath towel and laid it on the area so that Luke didn’t roll over to a cold, wet spot. 

His shirt was practically dripping with sweat so I had to gently pull him up to a sitting position and tug the shirt off his head. He was too feverish to pay attention to my instructions to sit still for a few seconds so I could wipe him down with a cold towel so I had to come up behind him on the bed, letting him lean back against me as I ran the towel down his chest and shoulders and back. It was tricky putting a shirt on him but I managed it. At that point, I stopped worrying about whether I was touching him too intimately. With him that sick, I had to do what was necessary. But it didn’t mean that I noticed nothing throughout the whole exercise. Many aspects of Luke called out to all my womanly parts but it was not a time for that kind of appreciation. 

With his temperature finally coming down about a few hours into the whole episode, he fell back asleep and I sat there next to him, struggling to keep my drooping eyes open and alert in case he needed me for something. 

I woke up sometime at dawn, just as the skies were being touched with hints of light, my lower back and neck protesting painfully after hours of sleeping in a sitting position with my head crooked to the side. 

Luke was half-awake next to me. It was his nudging on my leg that woke me up. His forehead felt much cooler than before, almost normal. His eyes were bleary and still red-rimmed but fever wasn’t the issue anymore.