“Drink again,” Brandon said. This time, he offered ice-cold water, and Lenore drank and drank, finally feeling the flamesin her mouth, throat, and stomach go out. She relaxed, sighing back into his body.
“It’s okay if she goes back to sleep,” Zona said. “But if she’s not up and better in the morning, you need to take her to the emergency room.”
An alarm sounded inside Lenore’s head.The emergency room?
She was sure she asked the question out loud, but neither Brandon nor Arizona answered her. In fact, they continued to talk, their voices fading into blurry blobs of sound until they faded into absolutely nothing.
The next time Lenore woke,it happened violently. She sat up straight in bed, trying to figure out where she was. Her eyes took in her surroundings, but it took her brain an extra moment to catch up and realize she was in her bedroom.
She struggled to recall the last thing she’d been doing before waking up here…where she hadn’t come herself.
“The pepperoni pizza quesadilla,” she said out loud.
Sunlight streamed through the open blinds over her windows, and that alone made her pause before getting out of bed. She never opened her blinds, because she didn’t like the idea of anything being able to see into her cabin at night.
Silly, she knew. She’d lived on this land alone for a long time, but she still didn’t open her blinds, especially not here in her bedroom.
Footsteps came down the hall, and Lenore recognized the gait. She managed to throw the blanket off and scoot to the edge of the bed before her wonderful, gorgeous boyfriend filledthe doorway. He wore a dark gray, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. He carried a bottle of water in one hand and a bottle of something else in the other. When he saw her, the pure concern on his face got replaced with surprise, and then happiness.
“You’re awake.” He rushed toward her, kneeling in front of her. “Thank God you’re awake.” He put the bottles on either side of her, where they rolled into her hips, and ran his hands up her arms, gently across her shoulders, and then to cradle her face. “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t think I’m going to die,” Lenore said, trying to assess all the parts of her body at one time. “What happened?”
“Do you remember when I came over after you’d passed out?”
“Yes.”
“I gave you a pepperoni pizza quesadilla and the water with your electrolytes. Then you fell asleep. I kept the fire going all night because it was cold, and the next morning, you were on fire. High fever and a rash over parts of your body.”
She picked up the bottle on her left side, because the chill of it was seeping into her skin and she didn’t like it.
“You need to drink that,” Brandon said.
She looked at the label. “Pedialyte?” She looked at him, confused as to why he’d brought her this.
“It has all of the essential nutrients you need,” he said. “I managed to give you some fever reducers, but they did nothing. So I called Zona. She brought Pedialyte and more meds. We monitored you all day yesterday afternoon.”
“Yesterday?” Lenore asked. “How long have I been asleep?”
“From about eight o’clock on Wednesday night,” he said. “Today’s Friday. It’s about ten-thirty in the morning.” He offered her a smile, and the relief in his expression sank through Lenore as well.
What if he hadn’t been here to take care of her?
“Come on, Lenny,” he said. “You gotta drink that. Please.”
She twisted the cap on the Pedialyte bottle, which had already had the seal broken, and took a careful sip of the orange cream liquid that she suddenly remembered. “You gave me this before.”
He nodded. “Last night,” he said. “Arizona gave you a bunch of herbs and meds as well. And she’ll be really happy to hear that you’ve woken up.”
“Is she still here?” Lenore asked.
Brandon nodded. “Yep. She’s been outside to feed the chickens and take care of the strawberries and the dogs. Your phone kept going off, and she finally checked it. She said a couple of people want to come look at the lumber you apparently listed for sale.” He raised his eyebrows, his head tilting slightly. “She scheduled appointments for them to come this morning.”
Lenore took another long drink simply to buy herself a little bit of time. “I was going to tell you about that,” she said. “Talkto you about it, actually.”
She recapped the bottle and set it on the nightstand, then picked up the second one from her other side—it was plain water. She set that aside too, her eyes flying around until they finally landed on Brandon.
“I know this homestead can support me now. I can grow my own food. I can heat my house. I have power. While my rain catchment system isn’t enough to sustain me permanently, I know I can get and keep more water eventually. But not if I don’t have money.”
