His lighthearted tone contradicted the darkness of the topic, and part of me wanted to tell him to zip it. Shecoulddie. It wasn’t unreasonable to think she might not recover.
“I’m alive,” she called back. The minor exertion had her hacking again, and I checked over my shoulder, hoping she wasn’t wiping blood from her mouth this time around. Still nothing. Every bout of coughing not followed by blood gave me another sliver of hope.
“I left you less than an hour ago,” I said to Tim. “What did you think was going to happen in that time?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’m just feeling guilty. If I’d gone with my gut and stopped her from helping after the crash, she’d be safe now—and you would be, too.”
“It’s not your fault,” Sadie said, her voice straining. Another round of coughing kicked in, the raspy edge painful and raw.
“Or a dozen other things could have gone wrong,” I reminded him. “We’ll all be exposed at some point. There’s no escaping it anymore.”
He sighed as if he’d heard the same thing from Varesh. “You’re probably right. Do you need anything? If I don’t have it, I’ll go out and try to get it. Pain relief. Cough syrup? A priest.”
I smiled behind my mask. “We’re good.”
A beat of silence passed between us, and Tim flicked another look into the lounge room. “We’ve sorted out our other problem, too,” he said, keeping the volume low.
“How did you handle it?”I asked.Please tell me Laura turned the maul on Dustin.
“Ransacked his apartment and made sure he hadn’t squirrelled away any other keys. For now, he’s been told to stay on the ground level. If he takes even one step up the stairs, we’re reevaluating.” He paused and laughed a bit, although there wasn't much humour to the sound. “Laura even smashed the TV in his bedroom. She wasn’t leaving any of his electronics untouched.”
“Good. I hope Owen got a few decent punches in, too. Did you search for cameras when you got home?”
“First thing,” Tim said. “Varesh and I could only find one in the smoke detector. You?”
“I haven’t looked.” Other than a perfunctory check when I walked in, doing a proper search didn’t feel like a priority.
“Owen used the maul to hack off Dustin’s door handle, too,” he said. “Now the rest of us can lock our apartments, but he can’t. Let him sweat and wonder if we’re going to come for him in the night.”
“I like it.” I breathed out a sigh when Sadie started coughing again. “I need to take care of things here, but I’ll keep you posted on her condition.”
“All right.” To Sadie, he called out, “Listen to Theo, my sweet. Be a good patient and do everything he tells you.”
“I’ll try.”
After I’d said goodbye to Tim, I returned to Sadie, keeping my distance even though it had to be pointless by now. “Want anything to eat? Drink?”
She rolled onto her side and slipped her hands under her cheek, closing her eyes as if keeping them open took more effortthan she had in her. “No. Thanks. Is your sister mad at you for helping me?”
“More worried than angry.” I wanted to sweep her hair back from her face. Touch her. Comfort her. “Are you hot or cold?”
She huffed out a sigh. “Is it weird if I’m both?”
“Everything’s weird about this fucking virus.” It shouldn't be progressing this fast. Her cheeks were flushed, her breaths coming in shallow bursts. I couldn’t look at her without feeling completely helpless. “See if you can sleep off the fever,” I said. “I’ll be moving around the apartment, but I’m here anytime you need me.”
“Okay.” She mustered the energy to generate a slight smile. “And Theo?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a good person,” she said with the sweetest expression. “The best, really.”
Only a couple of hours later, the chaos from the protest had branched off into pockets of violence across the city—small enough to be contained to specific areas, big enough that going outside had become a gamble, especially given how fast Ultimus would spread.
None of that mattered to me. Until I knew for sure if I’d caught the virus myself, I wouldn’t be leaving my apartment. No rooftop, no supermarket trips. Just four walls and a rapidly deteriorating woman who may or may not make it, no matter how much I wanted her to live.
When the rain stopped, I threw on a jacket and opened every window.
While Sadie slept, I dragged a dining chair over to the smoke alarm and found the tiny camera Kerger had snuck in there. It went straight into the bin, and I held off on slamming the lid, pissed he’d violated my privacy without me having a clue.
