Page 23 of The Voice We Find
And yet, he’s still working hard to pull on a jacket before he opens the door to a ninety-five degree summer day.
“August, I don’t think you’re okay.”Understatement.
“Can’t say this is my preferred way to wear a sweatshirt,” he deadpans while the left sleeve swings behind his back. Okay, so his sarcasm is still intact. That has to count for something, right?
I set my tumbler on his desk and retrieve the dangling sleeve for him. “Do you often wear sweatshirts in the middle of summer?”
He eyes me as if searching for a hidden meaning in my question, which concerns me almost as much as his choice in attire.
I try a different approach. “Do you feel chilled?”
“It’s the air conditioning,” he says automatically. “It’s colder than usual in here today.”
His gaze tracks mine as I confirm that the thermostat on the wall reflects a perfectly comfortable seventy-two degrees.
“August,” I say with caution, “I think you might have a fever.”
He scrunches his forehead, which causes a bead of sweat to stray from the corner of his right eyebrow down his cheek. “Doubtful. I haven’t had a fever since before my tonsils came out when I was eleven.”
“May I?” I lift the back of my hand to touch the forehead of a man I’ve known for less than two business days.
“Sophie, I don’t have a fever, I—”
I flinch at the searing heat radiating from him and then immediately drop my gaze to his bare arm. Up close, the trailing rash looks even more menacing, and in an instant I recall where I’ve seen something similar. A couple years back, while on the set ofMatilda, our prop director stepped through an old windowpane during the intermission set change. A few of our bigger guys carried her to a restroom, where we removed the glass and cleaned and bandaged her wound. But within forty-eight hours, she was admitted to the hospital with a critical staph infection. My stomach sours at the memory of the show’s director sharing the news about her grueling recovery.
“You need to get to a hospital,” I say without preamble.
“I’ll be fine after I take some Tylenol. My last dose wore off a couple hours ago.”
“You see all this redness here?” I point to the rash crawling up his wrist. “There’s a serious infection that can cause this. It could be why you have a fever, too, and why your fingers look like Ball Park hotdogs.”
He angles his head. “That’s a little dramatic.”
I try not to recoil at his word choice, one of my father’s favorites for me. That andattention-seeker. “Not as dramatic as losing your fingers will be if we don’t get you to a hospital soon.” I assess his half-dressed state and sweaty forehead for a second time and realize he is in no shape to drive himself anywhere. “I can drive you to the ER unless you have someone else who can get here quickly.”
He slow blinks. Twice. “Tell you what, how ’bout we reevaluate all this after we finish up your session in the booth. That should give the Tylenol some time to kick in.”
Something hot and irrational begins to build in the base of my belly. “No.”
“No?” He wipes a hand on his clammy forehead.
“No. There’s no way I’m going back in that booth with you out here looking like ... like that.” I point to his hand and then to his face. “I can drive you, or I can call 9-1-1 and get a paramedic out here to drive you. Your choice.”
This seems to shake him out of whatever fever stupor he’s living in. “Fine.” He huffs. “I’ll drive—”
“No, you won’t.” I cut him off. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you look like you’ve been hungover for three days.” I glance around his desk. “Now, do you have your wallet on you? Your phone? Anything else you might need?”
He studies me with an incredulity that leaves me ninety-nine percent certain he’s about to tell me to go home and never come back.
“Top drawer, left-hand side for the wallet,” he all but sighs. “Phone’s in my back pocket.”
“Perfect.” I collect his wallet for him and then assist with his sweatshirt dilemma, tucking it over his left shoulder before I race back to the sound booth for my backpack. It’s only after I lock the studio door behind us and we’re walking down his driveway that I remember my mode of transportation parked on the curb.
He stops short, slowly dragging his gaze from the street back to me. “Either my fever has reached the hallucination level, or that Escalade is being swallowed by a giant bottle of wine.”
It’s my turn to wince as I walk him down the remainder of the driveway to the passenger side. “Unfortunately, it’s not your fever.”
If I were to rate August’s pain-free acting abilities from the time he climbed into the Escalade—or theWine-Calade, as he deemed it—to when he asked me to dig through his wallet for his license at the check-in station, I’d give his performance a solid 8.5 out of 10. It’s not until I had to help him fill out his paperwork because he couldn’t even grip the clipboard that I saw the first real cracks in his armor.
