Chapter 453: The Antidote Worked

"Like something’s..." She searched for the word. "Moving."

The doctor’s voice came from the phone. "That’s expected. Keep her warm. Keep her drinking."

Dante tucked the blanket higher around her shoulders. His thumb brushed her cheek. She turned her face into his hand, and the click behind her eyes came again, louder, and the room tilted.

***

The fever came first. It rose so quickly she barely had time to be afraid. One minute she was warm; the next she was burning, her skin slick, her hair soaking against the pillow. She kicked the blanket away and Dante pulled it back. She kicked it away again.

"Isabella."

"Too hot."

"I know."

"I can’t...." Her stomach turned over hard, and she rolled onto her side and gripped the edge of the mattress. "I’m going to be sick."

He had the basin ready. He had anticipated it, and she was grateful for that and ashamed of it in the same breath. He held her hair back and afterwards he wiped her mouth.

When it passed, she lay on her back, shaking, and stared at the ceiling.

"It’s not working," she whispered.

"It is."

"It feels like dying."

"I know." He took her hand. "It isn’t."

***

The hours went by in pieces.

At ten, the shaking began. Not the small, fine tremor she had learned to hide, but a deep, wracking tremble that rattled her teeth and jerked her limbs against the sheets. Dante lay down beside her and wrapped himself around her from behind, his arms locked across her chest, his face against her neck. She felt his heartbeat against her spine, steady and slow, and clung to it.

At midnight, the memories came.

She hadn’t expected that. They arrived without warning, one after another, bright and sudden and unwelcome. The first pill. A white room, a doctor smiling, a bottle set carefully in her hand. Her mother at the kitchen table, anxious and relieved. Her father in the doorway, watching. This will help you, tesoro. You’ll feel so much better.

She had believed him. She had believed all of them.

"Dante," she said.

"I’m here."

"I was sixteen."

"I know."

"I was so grateful." She was crying, she realized. Tears ran sideways across her nose and into the pillow. "I thanked them. I thanked him. I thanked the doctor every month."

"Isabella."

"I didn’t know. I didn’t know."

"I know you didn’t." He held her tighter. "It wasn’t your fault. None of it was."

"Someone did this to me."

"Yes."

"Someone did..."

"Yes."

"I want to know who."

"I know," Dante said. "You will."

She cried until she had nothing left. Then she slept, in fits and starts, for an hour at a time. Each time she woke, Dante was awake beside her, one hand on her forehead, one arm around her waist. Each time, she saw his face in the dim light, drawn and gray with exhaustion, and each time he said the same thing.

"I’m here."

***

At three in the morning, she begged him to stop.

She remembered that afterward with shame. She remembered saying please over and over, in a voice she didn’t recognize. She remembered clawing at his wrist, trying to get at the cabinet, the case, the needle, anything. She remembered his face, close to hers, stricken and utterly steady.

"I can’t," he said.

"Please."

"I can’t. You don’t want me to."

"I do. I do, I do...."

"You’ll thank me in the morning." His voice broke on the last word, and he pressed his forehead to hers. "I promise. I promise you’ll thank me."

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She lay against him, shaking and sobbing, and let the night close over her head.

...

Isabella woke to light.

It lay across the bed in a soft, pale band, gold at the edges. She watched it for a long time before she understood that she was watching it, that she had not reached for it or tried to hold it, that she was simply looking.

Her body was empty and limp and aching. Her mouth tasted of salt. But under the ache there was something she hadn’t felt in so long she had forgotten it was possible.

Quiet.

Not the false quiet of the pills, that thick, padded hush that had followed every dose. This was different. This was open. She could hear the sea. She could hear a bird on the cliff, a single bright note, then another. She could hear her own breath going in and out.

She lifted her hand. It didn’t shake.

She turned it over and looked at it in the light. Five fingers. A faint scar at the base of the thumb. She had forgotten the scar. She had forgotten that she had a scar.

"Dante," she said.

Her voice sounded strange. Clear. Like a window cleaned.

He was in the chair by the bed, slumped forward with his elbows on his knees. He had not slept. His shirt was creased, his jaw dark. He lifted his head, and his eyes were red-rimmed and anxious.

"Isabella."

"I can hear myself think."

His face changed.

"I can hear it," she said. A laugh escaped her, short and broken. "It’s like....there was always a fog. I never knew. I thought it was just how I was. I thought I was slow, or tired, or dull. And it’s gone."

"It’s gone?"

"I think so." She pushed herself up on one elbow. The room did not spin. "The colors are different. Everything is....sharper. Look at that." She pointed at the window. "I never noticed the sky was that blue."

Dante’s throat worked. He didn’t answer. He crossed the room in two strides and sat on the edge of the bed, and she put her arms around his neck, and he pulled her against him so tightly she felt his heart beating through his chest.

"I told you," he said, into her hair. His voice was unsteady. "I told you you’d thank me."

"Thank you."

"Don’t."

"Thank you." She was crying again, but this time it was different. This time the tears felt clean. "Thank you for staying. Thank you for not stopping."

"I’d never have stopped."