I had been running a high fever for seven straight days.

I had been running a high fever for seven straight days.

Every time I told my husband I needed a hospital, Luca gave me the same answer.
“Wait until tomorrow.”
On the seventh night, I stopped waiting for his permission to stay alive.
I called a cab and went to the emergency room alone.
Less than ten minutes after the doctor removed the bandage around my ankle, his entire expression changed.
Then he turned toward the nurse and said,
“Call the police. Now.”
That was the moment I realized my fever might not have been the most frightening thing happening to me.
## PART ONE: THE FEVER
The human body is not meant to burn at 104 degrees for days.
By the seventh night, I no longer felt sick.
I felt poisoned.
I lay twisted in damp sheets, sweating through my clothes while my teeth chattered hard enough to make my jaw ache.
Every joint hurt.
My skin felt painfully hot.
My thoughts came slowly, as if my brain were trying to move through deep water.
“Luca.”
My voice barely came out.
No answer.
I swallowed and tried again.
“Luca.”
From down the hallway, I heard the faint clicking of his keyboard.
His office door was open.
Blue light from two monitors spilled across the dark corridor.
I forced myself upright.
The room tilted.
For several seconds, I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for the floor to stop moving.
Then I called louder.
“I need the emergency room.”
Luca finally appeared in the doorway.
He wore sweatpants and a headset around his neck.
He didn’t look frightened.
He looked inconvenienced.
That should have scared me more than it did.
Instead, I was too exhausted to process it.
He sighed.
Not a worried sigh.
The long, irritated sigh of someone dealing with an unreasonable request.
“You’re not in immediate danger, Jessi.”
I stared at him.
“I have a fever of one hundred and four.”
“You’ve had a fever all week.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
“If we go to the ER now, you’ll sit in a waiting room for six hours.”
“I can barely stand.”
“Then rest.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Luca.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Can we not do this tonight?”
“Do what?”
“Panic.”
For seven days, he had used different versions of the same word.
Overreacting.
Anxious.
Dramatic.
Paranoid.
The first day, I believed him.
The second day, I tried to.
By the fourth, I started wondering whether I was being unreasonable.
That was Luca’s gift.
He could make you distrust your own pain.
“It’ll probably break overnight,” he said. “We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
Tomorrow.
Again.
I looked at him.
Then down at my left foot.
That was when I remembered the wound.
It had started as almost nothing.
A scrape near my ankle.
At least, that was what I thought it was.
I first noticed it six days earlier after waking with a burning sensation near my heel.
The skin had been irritated, slightly swollen, maybe the size of a coin.
Luca told me I had probably caught it on something.
He cleaned it himself.
He insisted on it.
Every night afterward, he changed the dressing.
Every night, he told me it looked better.
I had been too feverish to inspect it properly.
Until then.
With shaking fingers, I reached down and peeled away the edge of the medical tape.
Pain shot through my leg.
I gasped.
Luca’s expression changed for half a second.
“Don’t mess with it.”
I froze.
“What?”
“You’ll contaminate it.”
Something about the speed of his answer bothered me.
I looked at him.
Then slowly removed the rest of the bandage.
The moment the gauze lifted, my stomach turned.
The skin around my ankle was dark and badly swollen.
Not the bright red of an ordinary scrape.
Deep purple.
Gray in places.
Several thin, angry streaks traveled upward along my lower leg.
The tissue was so tight and inflamed it looked almost polished.
And near the center of the wound was a mark I had never noticed before.
A small puncture.
Perfectly round.
My breathing changed.
“Luca.”
He didn’t answer.
“What happened to my ankle?”
“You scraped it.”
“That doesn’t look like a scrape.”
“You’ve been picking at it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
He looked away.
Just briefly.
But I saw it.
And something sharp cut through the fog in my head.
I remembered three nights earlier.
I had awakened in the dark.
Luca had been sitting at the edge of the bed.
I thought he was changing my bandage.
There had been something silver in his hand.
At the time, I assumed it was tweezers.
Then another memory surfaced.
The first night I became sick.
A sharp sting near my ankle.
Luca saying,
“Hold still.”
I had asked what he was doing.
He told me there was a splinter.
Suddenly, I was very awake.
Not healthy.
Not strong.
But awake.
A single thought rose above everything else.
If I stayed in that bed and waited until tomorrow, I might never see tomorrow.
Luca checked the time.
“I have a stream in ten minutes.”
Of course he did.
He turned toward the hallway.
“We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
I watched him walk away.
Then I did something I should have done days earlier.
I stopped listening to him.
I waited.
Ten minutes later, I heard him laughing in his office.
His gaming headset was on.
The door was shut.
I moved.
Slowly.
Painfully.
One hand against the wall.
One foot dragging slightly behind the other.
I took my purse.
My phone.
My coat.
Then I ordered a car.
The driver arrived eight minutes later.
I remember staring at those eight minutes on the screen and thinking I had never seen time move so slowly.
When the car pulled up, I slipped outside without telling Luca.
The cold air hit my face.
I nearly collapsed on the front steps.
The driver jumped out.
“Ma’am?”
“I need a hospital.”
He looked at me properly then.
“You need an ambulance.”
“No.”