war nurse
The lamp on the bedside table warms the darkness of Dani’s eyelids as she comes back into herself from that floating, detached place she’d been drifting in and out of. The second thing she becomes aware of is that her head is pounding heavily at her temples, and then that her skin is covered in a layer of cold sweat.
She can’t breathe out of her nose.
Sitting up in a panic, vertigo strikes her and she nearly has to slump back down. Her bedroom wavers in front of her vision, her eyes unable to focus on one thing for too long. There are tissues on the table beside the lamp and she fumbles for one, blowing her nose into it until she can breathe again and then she coughs, hoarse and pained, into the elbow of her sweater.
“Miss Clayton!” Flora’s voice comes ringing through the loud humming in her head. “You’re awake.”
There are scrambling footsteps and then the whole bed shakes as Flora jumps onto it, landing on her knees and inching nearer. Dani groans weakly and leans her head back against her head board.
“You should go, sweetie,” she croaks. Flora’s face swims in her vision. She reaches out and brushes some of the hair from the little girl’s face. “I don’t want you to get sick.”
“I won’t! I’ve been very careful. Mrs. Grose gave me these.” She holds her hands up to show that she’s wearing thick mittens. “That way I don’t catch any germs.”
Dani laughs at the silly sight and winds up in a coughing fit that lasts for several long moments instead. Flora watches sympathetically and the rolling fog in Dani’s head starts to weaken and the memory of something that came before the darkness starts to filter in.
The garden. She’d been in the garden with Flora and Miles, coming back from a walk. Flora’s hand in hers, the pressure that’s been in her head for the last day and a half building and building and—
She’s not sure how she got here.
“Flora, what happened?” she asks, blinking her watery eyes to try and see better. It sounds like she’s whispering for how rough her voice has become. “We were—”
“You fainted!” Flora says. “I tried to wake you up, but you wouldn’t and so Miles ran for help and then Jamie came and found us and brought you inside.”
“She did?” Dani asks, trying to picture what that might have looked like.
Flora winces. “Well...actually, it was Owen who carried you, but Jamie got you settled and called the doctor and—”
The creaking of Dani’s bedroom door interrupts them and then Jamie there, in the doorway. She’s frowning at first, and saying, “Flora, let her—”
But then she realizes that Dani is awake and she stops speaking immediately, her jaw dropping open a little in surprise.
“She’s awake!” Flora announces.
Jamie nods. “I can see that, yeah.” She approaches slowly, trailing her hand up the blankets as she crosses the room until she’s on Dani’s side of the bed. “How are you feeling?”
And Dani wants to say that she feels terrible, but she feels woozy and a little like she’s drunk and the only thing she can focus on is the shape of Jamie’s mouth and shade of her eyes in the lamplight.
“You’re just unfair,” she says, her mouth feeling dry all of a sudden.
Jamie frowns. “What?”
“Your face,” Dani explains. “You’re too pretty. I hate it.”
Jamie laughs, sounding a little uneasy. “You do, huh?” she asks.
“No. Not really.” She sniffles a little and then is reminded that she can’t really breathe and huffs instead. “Come here.”
If she were able to focus on anything beyond the burning fever and pounding in her head, she might have noticed Jamie giving Flora a look, jerking her head towards the door. She might have even heard the little chirp a goodbye and scramble off the bed and out of the door.
Once she’s gone, Jamie sits down on the edge of the bed. Dani reaches up for her and Jamie’s hand meets her own, her other hand coming out to rest against Dani’s forehead.
“You’re burning up still,” she says.
“Yeah,” Dani says. “’Cause you’re here.”
She tries to wink and must fail terribly because Jamie laughs. Part of her aches at the realization that Jamie is actually seeing her at her worst—and won’t that scare her away—because they’ve only been doing the them thing for a little over two months—two sneaking around the house to get a spare minute alone; meeting up at Jamie’s apartment so they can fall into one another in that easy rhythm that’s becoming second nature; two months of holding hands beneath the dinner table and cheek-kisses and Jamie’s arm around Dani’s shoulders as they sit beside each other.
That’s not enough time, though, for Jamie to be exposed to Dani’s sick self. At the realization, she groans and closes her eyes. Jamie’s too pretty for her. She wants to crawl beneath the covers and disappear.
“Are you okay?” Jamie asks, her voice pitched soft. That hand on Dani’s forehead moves to cup her cheek and Dani opens her eyes.
“I look like a monster,” she explains. “You should leave.”
Another laugh. Dani’s glad at least one of them can find humor in the situation.
“You are not a monster,” Jamie tells her. She leans out and presses a kiss to Dani’s sweaty forehead—doesn’t even bat an eyelash as she pulls away. “You’re beautiful and silly and very sick. You had me worried, Poppins.”
Her eyes are welled up with unshed tears. Guilt prickles Dani’s chest. She coughs, turning her head away to do so—not enough strength to lift her arm to aim into. “Sorry,” she says. “Didn’t mean to.”
“Doc said you’re probably dehydrated. So drink.”
When Dani turns her head back, Jamie is holding up a glass of water with a curly straw in it. When she catches Dani looking at it, she shrugs. “It’s the kids’. That’s all they had.”
Dani shakes her head and leans in. “No, I love it,” she says and then she takes a long, long pull on it, closing her eyes in relief as the cool water hits the back of her dry, cracked throat. “I had those as a kid, too.”
“’Course you did,” Jamie says fondly. She sets the glass down on the bedside table. “Do you need anything else? Owen’s making you soup right now.”
If she weren’t already hot from the fever, Dani might have warmed at this. Whenever she was sick as a child, she was usually left to fend for herself. She has memories of her dad taking care of her before he died, but her mother could never be bothered. Unless Dani was actively tossing her cookies, she had to go to school. She was in charge of feeding herself, taking her medicine, all of those things that might have been nicer and easier if provided by a caretaker.
The point is:
She’s not used to this.
“I’m okay,” she says. “You should get in the bed. I like it when you’re in bed with me.”
She tries to wink again. Jamie laughs.
“Is that so?” she asks and Dani pouts.
“You’re making fun of me,” she says.
“I’m not. You’re just adorable.”
She doesn’t necessarily believe that, but Jamie is crawling over her a moment later, settling down on the other side of the bed and guiding Dani to lie down again. They lay facing one another, Jamie on her side, Dani’s head turned.
“You’re really nice,” Dani says after a moment. She loves the curve of Jamie’s brow, the curl of her hair, the way her cheek dimples when she does that little half-smile. “Like a war nurse.”
Another laugh. It shakes the bed. Dani hums at the sound.
“A war nurse?” Jamie asks.
Dani nods, her eyes drifting closed as exhaustion starts to settle back into her bones. “If I woke up and they had to amputate my leg, you’d be the first thing I’d want to see.”
Jamie silent for a long time. Dani is drifting off when a hand touches her stomach, thumb rubbing patterns in the fabric of her sweater.
“Me, too, Dani,” she says and Dani hums again. “Rest, okay? My heart’ll give out if you do that to me again, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dani says and then giggles weakly at herself. “You’ll be here?”
Warm breath hits the side of her face. Lips press against her temple and the hold around her stomach tightens. In the moments before she falls asleep, she just barely hears Jamie say, “Always.”
...