Megan Abbott - The Fever

“I can’t get away,” she had started saying the year before she left. “I’m sorry, Tom. I can’t get away.” That’s how she would put it, as if home were “away.” This was when she was spending an hour a day at the Seven Swallows Inn on Beam Road with her coworker lover (what else could you call him? Married himself, with three kids, cat, dog, hamster). She confessed to this and everything, far more than he’d ever wanted to know, including how ashamed she was of keeping spare underwear in her desk drawer. And how she was “very­—mostly—sure” that this coworker lover wasn’t responsible for the pregnancy, and thus not for the ugly miscarriage, nine days of bleeding and sorrow. That was something else she had Tom to thank for, he guessed.

Later, after she was gone, he found himself driving to the Seven Swallows, sitting in the parking lot for hours, going through the bank statements, the separation agreement, divorce papers, filling in squares with a ballpoint pen, gaze returning again and again to the sign out front: CLEAN COMFORT HERE. He wanted to keep everything in his head all at once.

“I can go to class,” Deenie was saying now, her hand on his arm. “Dad, I can.”

Tom looked at her, saw her eyes fixed on him, searching. Like she had seen something on his face. Something that worried her.

“It’s okay, Dad,” she said, firmly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Sheila,” he said. “Tom Nash. Just leaving another message to see if there’s anything I can do. Call me, okay? If I can be any help. Deenie sends her love to you and Lise both. We all do.”

He thought of Deenie inside the school, wondering, worrying.

An uneasy thought came to him: If she doesn’t find out something, what if she takes off for the hospital again?

So he had another idea.

“Billing, can I help you?”

“Hey, is this Diane? This is Tom. Tom Nash.”

The harried voice on the other end eased into something soft, breathy.

“Tom. Well, well. I was hoping you’d call. I’d given up a little.”

He cleared his throat. “I’d been meaning to. I had a great time. It’s been a crazy couple weeks.”

“Eight weeks.” She laughed.

He’d met her at the post office, on the longest line either had ever seen. She’d told him her son was trying out for junior hockey and Eli was his idol. She didn’t want her boy to play because she worked at the hospital and saw all the players come in with faces dented by flying pucks, teeth knocked out, cracked cheekbones, and, once, a blade to the neck. But what could you do, he loved it.

Tom said he understood.

She’d given him her number and they had dinner at someplace Tom couldn’t quite remember. Maybe it was Italian. He’d meant to call again. A second date always felt like an announcement at his age. And he never felt ready for the announcement.

“Eight weeks, really? I’m sorry. But I’ve been meaning to and now I have a reason, a good excuse.”

“You didn’t need an excuse.”

“Okay, but here it is.”

It turned out all he had to do was say Lise’s name.

“Oh, that girl.”

There was a pause on Diane’s end, and Tom wasn’t sure what to make of it. It wasn’t a large hospital, but still, he was surprised she knew who he meant as soon as he said Lise’s name.

“Yeah,” Tom said. “We were over there yesterday, but they didn’t know much then.”

He heard a momentary clicking sound. “Let’s see what I can find,” she said.

Her lack of hesitation in breaking HIPAA regulations and various laws was a relief. He felt a kick of revived interest in her, followed by wanting to kick himself.

“She’s still not conscious,” she said. “She’s stabilized, though. And they’re doing diagnostics. I can’t tell you exactly.”

“Oh,” Tom said. It seemed like a long time to be unconscious. Unless not conscious was code for “coma.”

“But the mother is a real problem,” she said, her voice quickening a little. “Everyone’s talking about it. First, she blamed the paramedics. Claimed they’d dropped her. They don’t do that, Tom. Then she blamed the ER doctor. Now she seems to have darker theories.”

“Darker theories?”

“I don’t know. Crazy stuff she probably got off the Internet.”

“Ah.”

“We’re hoping she doesn’t find out about the other one.”

“Gabby Bishop,” Tom said quietly.

“You know her too?”

“I do.” Part of him was expecting her to say Gabby was unconscious too. That maybe something had happened to her heart too.

“Jesus, sorry, Tom,” she said. “But they’re not the same. It’s not the same thing. That’s not a cardiac situation.”

He could tell she was the kind of woman who told men what they wanted to hear. That didn’t strike him as a bad thing, even though he knew it should.

“I saw it happen,” he said. “It looked like a seizure.”

“Well, they haven’t even admitted her. They’re doing tests.”

“Diagnostics?”

“Yes,” she said gently.

“Thanks a lot,” he said, “for all this.”

Then a lilt returned to her voice. “You know you left your doggie bag in my fridge. I gave you two days to call, then I ate all that peach cobbler myself.”

Standing in the corner of one of the bathroom stalls, Deenie was trying to slow her breath.

Stop , she told herself. You’re not one of those hysterical girls. You’re not Jaymie Hurwich, who began sobbing in gym class and had to be walked to the nurse’s office for hyper ventilation. Jaymie, who went to the nurse’s office for hyperventilation at least once a month, upset about a test grade, fighting with her boyfriend, grounded by her dad.

Kim Court said she’d seen Skye huddled by herself on the loading dock. “I didn’t think Skye got upset,” she’d said. “Did you?”

And Deenie’s phone kept flashing with texts, one after another.

What is HAPPENING?

Gabby has it too!

Did u see her face??

And pictures of Gabby. Even videos someone took with the phone. A gruesome one of Gabby’s head rearing back, her neck thick and purple under the lights.

And all Deenie could think of was Gabby and Lise in hospital beds, side by side, their arms connected to an elaborate blinking web of cords, tubes.

Both their heads somehow purple and split, their mouths open.

If it happens to both your best friends, the next one must be you. If it happens to both your best friends, it must be you.

But it wasn’t the same. Gabby hadn’t fainted, had never even fallen, exactly, never hit her head or bit anyone. Never had that look Lise had, like an animal trapped.

Gabby had only looked confused, lost, mortified. Which was how everyone looked some of the time, every day.

The door to the girls’ room swung open.

“It was just like with my cat, I’m telling you,” Brooke Campos was saying loudly. “Do they know if she was sleeping in a room with a bat? Or was around a sick bat? That’s how it happens. We found one in our garage, hanging right over the cat bed. We had to have Mr. Mittens destroyed.”

Deenie opened the stall door to see Brooke with a clump of senior girls, all waving their lip-gloss wands, passing them from one to another—watermelon crush, scarlet bloom.

“So you’re saying they both just happened to get bit by bats?” one of the seniors said.

“It was probably the same bat,” Brooke said, a little defensively.

The stall next to Deenie opened and Skye appeared. Deenie hadn’t even known she was in there, those long crocheted skirts of hers, one layered over the other, muffling her movements.

“Hey,” she said, nodding to Deenie.