Hold Me (6 page)

"No, not really. I mean, sometimes they shift in and out of different phases, but I've never seen anyone almost seem to be getting better."

I heard the words as I said them and my head went into a spin.

He was getting better.

I sat up on the bed and looked him over. Sure, his cheeks were red and he was still pretty pale, but his fever was broke, and when I pushed on him, he didn't show any signs of pain. His breathing was better and he was lucid.

"Any hallucinations?"

He tilted his head and glanced around the room. "No. I don't think so."

I pressed my hand down on his ribs. "That hurt?"

"Not really... a little."

I pulled back the bandage on his arm and examined the scratch. What was putrid and oozing with green pus before, had calmed into something that only looked mildly infected. There was a dark redness around the scratch and a pale yellow pus sat in the middle. The swelling was down and the smell was hardly noticeable.

My heart picked up and slammed itself into my chest. All at once I couldn't breathe and every thought in my head overlapped each other in a mixed up, incoherent mess. "You... you're... it's..."

Will looked down at his arm, alarmed. "What is it? Is it worse?"

"No. It's.... better."

He blinked his eyes a few times and squinted. "No, it can't be." He poked his finger into the wound a little and pressed down.

"Will, stop that. Leave it alone." I slapped his hand away and covered the wound back up.

"That's not normal. Is it?" His eyes were wide and he had a hint of a smile.

"No. It's not like anything I've ever seen, but that doesn't mean much. Maybe all those antibiotics are helping the actual wound. That doesn't mean..."

It couldn't.

No, the virus was still in his blood. Antibiotics don't help viruses and everyone said it was a virus. The meds had to be working on the infection on his arm. That's all.

"But Andi, the cure..."

The cure that Derek said wasn't going to work.

"It… can't… be. Derek said..."

"I said what?" Derek cracked open the door and took a few steps into the room.

"That the shot you gave him was probably not going to help. You said—"

"I said, it was a long shot. I know. Tommy said it rarely works, but look at him. He does look like he's getting better, don't you think?"

I looked over Will once more. Even the redness in his cheeks was lightening. He actually did look like he was getting better.

"Yes, but..."

Will laughed. "Don't you want me to get better?"

"Of course I do!"

I couldn't let myself believe it if it wasn't true. I couldn't think he was going to be okay and then lose him all over again. The room spun around me and I had to lean back against the wall to keep from falling over.

Derek checked Will's pulse and smiled. "Sixty."

"Is that good?" Mom taught me all about that stuff but the information wasn't coming back to me.

"Yes. It's good. Much better than the thirty or one fifty he was alternating between earlier. It's a good sign."

Derek was a medic so he had some knowledge about such things, but I wasn't quite ready to believe him.

"But that doesn't mean he's getting better. Maybe it's just all those antibiotics I gave him. Maybe they are masking the symptoms. Or the morphine. Something."

Derek put his arm around my shoulder and took a long breath. "Andi, he really is getting better. It's okay to believe it.

I tilted my head up and met his eyes. His smile was sad, but reassuring. I knew he was happy for Will, but I had to think it must be bittersweet for him not being able to save Janet.

"He's not going to die?"

Derek shook his head. "Doesn't look like it."

I looked back at Will with my heart pounding, wanting some sort of confirmation that it could really be true. He flashed me one of his signature crooked smiles and I knew he was back. All at once, the crushing pressure lifted from my chest and I could breathe again. I wasn't going to lose him after all.

CHAPTER SIX

I didn't move from Will's side for the next six or eight hours. I couldn't feel my left arm and I was pretty sure if I didn't get up to pee, my bladder was going to explode, but I couldn't bring myself to leave him.

"Andi, you need to move." Will tried to nudge me over so he could climb off the bed.

"Am I hurting you?" I jumped up and landed right on my sprained ankle. A sharp pain shot through my foot and up my leg.

Damn
that hurts
.

"Hey, hold on." Will grabbed my arm and steadied me on my good foot. "You're not hurting me. I just need to get up."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and was sitting upright for the first time on his own since just after we realized he was scratched.

"Wait, let me get Dan or Derek to help you." I grabbed the crutches and went to go, but Will tugged on my hoodie to stop me.

"Andi, no."

"What? Why not? You shouldn't be getting up alone."

I wished I was able to be the one to help him, but I could barely keep myself standing, much less Will.

"I'm okay to get up, I think. Just give me a minute to try." He let his feet touch the cold cement floor and gave them a minute to adapt.

"But if you're not okay, shouldn't one of the guys be here to help?"

He wanted to do it himself and I understood, but at the same time, I didn't want him to get hurt.

Will scooted to the edge of the bed and shifted some of his weight to his feet, while still sitting. "No, I think I got this."

He was still pale and looked weak. I didn't care if he got angry, I wasn't going to take a chance of him falling, so I called into the hall for help.

Dan came running in and looked around. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." Will glared up at me and pulled himself up with the help of the chair.

"Oh hey, what the hell are you doing?" Dan grabbed Will's arm to make sure he didn't fall.

Will tried to shrug him off, but almost knocked himself over in the process.

"See? Don't be an idiot, Will. You nearly died. Let Dan help you."

"Seriously, one of us on crutches is enough." Dan looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be staying off that thing?"

I rolled my eyes and hobbled out of the room toward the bathroom.

It was still hard to believe that Will was going to be all right. There were never happy endings. Things never worked out without misery and death. And if they did, they never happened in my life.

Until now
.

I smiled at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My hair was a knotted mess of blonde curls, there was dirt smeared across my left cheek, and I had dried blood on my neck. I looked terrible and none of it mattered.

It was a long shot that I'd not only find Will, but that he would still be alive when I found him. But I did and then he got infected before we could even make it home. I mean, what the hell are the chances of that?

Probably better than the chances of him surviving the infection
.

I spent nearly two weeks thinking he was dead or worrying he was going to die and the stress made me a little nuts. It had to be that. Why else would I be standing in the tiny bathroom laughing out loud at the mess that was my life? It was either laugh or cry at that point and I'd shed enough tears.

A small knock on the door was followed by Derek's voice. "You okay in there?"

Nothing in our whole messed up world was okay, but Will was going to live, so nothing else mattered.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

He paused for a moment outside the door, then walked back down the hall. I splashed some water on my face and scrubbed at the dirt and dried blood. If I'd had a brush in there, I might have tried to do something about my hair, but at that point, I didn't really care.

I slipped the crutches back under my arms and hobbled out of the bathroom. Will and Dan were standing in the hall waiting for me. Will pulled free of Dan and slammed the bathroom door closed behind him.

"I see he's getting back to his old self." I motioned toward the bathroom and my crutch slid on the floor, almost knocking me over. Dan caught me and managed to keep me from hitting the floor, but not before my foot hit the cement and the pain came flooding back.

Frigging ankle
.

"You're no less stubborn than he is. Now let's go, off that foot."

"I am not stubborn." I thought about trying to swat him with my crutch, the way my seventy-five year old, one-legged friend, Jack, from the military base would do, but I knew I'd end up knocking myself over.

Even Will laughed from inside the bathroom at that.

"You come willingly, or I'll just carry you." Dan shrugged. "I'm good with either."

I took a quick breath and pouted, but I knew it wasn't going to make a difference. "Oh whatever." I hobbled past him as gracefully as I could on crutches and went into the living room to sit.

Derek was on the couch, lacing up his boots.

"You going somewhere?"

"Yeah, we need some decent food in here, so I'm gonna go hunt a bit." He unzipped his backpack and pulled out the black leather case with the syringes. "Andi, I want you to keep this with you."

He handed me one of the yellow liquid-filled shots and returned the case to his pack.

"Why? Does he need a second dose? Is he going to get worse again?"

"No, one is enough. He should be fine now. A little weak, but that should be it. It will take him some time to get back to normal. Having that virus in your system is like having a nuke go off inside you. It leaves a lot of damage to the cells, but he should recover fully."

"Then why are you giving me this?" I looked at the syringe in my hand.

"I don't need two. If something happens to me out there, you should have the other one. Janet would have wanted you to have it. Andi, you save that for yourself. No giving it to anyone else. There's no guarantee it will work. Will was very lucky, but if anyone gets that chance, it needs to be you."

I couldn't imagine watching someone die and not giving them an opportunity for a cure, no matter how low the chances of it working were.

"Andi, promise me. I risked my life to come out here and make sure you were all right. I need you to keep that with you at all times and use it only on yourself."

I glanced down at the syringe in my hand. The yellow serum stared up at me like a golden ticket into the Wonka factory. It saved Will, even with only a fifteen percent chance. It worked. As rare as it might be, it could possibly do the same for me one day.

"Derek, if someone else--"

"No, Andi. It's for you only. I know we don't know each other that well. But I promised Janet I'd keep you safe, and this is the best way I know how. Look, I know it's a lot to ask, but could you just humor me, and say yes?"

I thought about Dan. The one other person in our crap world that I loved. If he was infected, there was no way in hell I'd sit by and watch him die if there was even the tiniest chance I could save him.

I nodded and closed my hands around the syringe. I didn't like to lie, but I had to do the right thing if I ever found myself in the situation. I'd lost enough people already without having any chance of helping them. I wouldn't do it again. Not if I had any choice at all.

***

Dan slumped onto the couch next to me and took a deep breath. "He's asleep again. How's your ankle?"

"Throbbing. You get him all cleaned up?"

"Yeah. He wasn't happy about it either. When he's better I'm going to punch him in the mouth."

I elbowed him in the ribs. "You are not."

"Derek and I were talking... you know it's going to take him weeks to fully recover from this, right?"

"He said it might take some time. I'm sure he won't be this grumpy the whole time. If he is, there's duct tape in the back."

"As tempting as that is, that wasn't what I meant."

"Okay, what then?"

Dan took a breath and turned to look at me. "You can't travel back to that military base with him not one hundred percent."

"I'm not going anywhere. I thought we talked about this."

Dan shook his head. "No, that was before... when he was... I mean, now that he's going to... I just thought—"

"I am not leaving you. We aren't going back, at least not now, and we aren't going anywhere without you. Did Will say otherwise?"

"No, but…"

I ran my hand over the side of his face. His eyes were sad and I knew I was at the root of that pain. He was my best friend and I loved him. There was no way I was letting him go.