“You look terrible.”
I want to muster up the energy for a dirty look. Throwing out a “mind your own business” seems appropriate. But the most I can do is totter past him without losing my balance. Wesley shuffles around behind me and follows me in. I don’t bother turning on the lights, that would just be self-flagellation. Melting into my desk chair, I prop my head up in my hands, wave him closer, and nod for him to tell me about my day.
“Well, you have a meeting in...” He checks his watch. “Thirteen minutes.”
Shaking my head, I say, “I cancelled that. This morning.” Even my voice sounds deeper and rough. It hurts my own ears.
“Oh.” He frowns. “I didn’t get that email.”
My mouth flattens. “I’m sure I cc’d you.”
I search for my phone to find the email I sent as I lay in bed this morning. He puts his palm over my hand, stopping my feeble patting at my desk. The warmth of his hand travels up my arm, slow and molten. It’s maybe the first pleasurable feeling I’ve had so far today. Still, I pull my hand out from underneath his. The fact that he’s touching me at all feels less inappropriate than the way it makes me feel.
“It’s okay. I’m sure I must have missed it.”
From the look on his face, though, I am sure he did not just miss it and I forgot to cc him. His kindness feels like his hand on mine—both today and yesterday when he comforted me about Mom—thoroughly unprofessional.
And definitely undeserved.
“Do you have a headache? Do you think you’re coming down with something?”
He pauses, waiting for an answer.
“Can I get you anything? I bet Emily has a small hospital in her desk.”
I lean to the side and pull open a desk drawer. “I have my prescription here...”
But I trail off as I rummage through the drawer, picking up an empty orange prescription bottle, shaking it, before throwing it back down and continuing my search.
My panic only serves to make everything feel worse. The tension in my shoulders, the throbbing behind my eyes, increase as I slowly realize that I never picked up my prescription. I sit back in my chair, sliding the drawer closed with a quiet click. My eyelids are so heavy. The pain crushes me. I might implode on myself like a dying star. I kind of want to. At least then I wouldn’t hurt like this.
“Ms. Blunt,” he whispers. At some point he made his way around my desk. His presence beside my chair feels like a huge tree. One I can lean up against, that would take my weight for me for a few hours. “Why don’t you go home?”
I take a deep breath and shake my head. “I can do this.”
“You can barely sit up,” he counters. “And you haven’t given me any shit for saying you look terrible or taking your coffee from you.”
He sets the cup on the desk in front of me.
“It’s just a headache,” I croak. The lie tastes like bile in my mouth. Or maybe that’s actual bile.
“It’s clearly a migraine.”
“I’ll be fine,” I whisper. “I never miss work.”
My throat closes, saliva fills my mouth.
“Are you going to barf?”
The word is a trigger.
My stomach sinks all the way down to my feet, then slingshots back up my throat. I stand and pinball off the wall, my chair, and push open the door to my small office bathroom. I don’t even get the door closed before I wretch into the sink, then stumble to my knees in front of the toilet. The only advantage to feeling too nauseated to eat is there’s nothing to throw up.
I grip the sides of the toilet—something I would normally never touch without rubber gloves—to keep myself upright as I dry heave, again and again. The coolness of the porcelain travels up my arms, a balm to the hot sweat that’s broken out over my body.
When the last wave passes, I stand, facing myself in the mirror, just to confirm that Wesley was right: I do look terrible. My skin is pasty and colorless. My eyes are bloodshot. My sunglasses must have fallen off somewhere between my desk and the toilet. I peer down into the bowl but they’re not in there. That’s all the energy for searching I can muster at this moment. Sweat prickles my skin so I splash some water on my face, my neck, and take a sip in my cupped hands.
Wesley holds my prescription bottle as I leave the bathroom. I stumble around like a newborn foal in these heels. My thighs could collapse at any moment.
