"I think you have a fever; you're burning up."
My eyes are glued shut, I try and try to open them, but my eyelids won't give up the hold they have on each other. My head weighs a ton, and it is pounding. My body is aching, my nose is blocked, and I have apparently swallowed some barbed wire.
When a moist cloth gently dabs at my burning eyes and sweeps over my brow, I finally get my eyes open to look up into David's worried face.
"Wh..." I try to speak, but my voice is covered in rust and refuses to work. I greedily sip from the glass of water David brings to my lips. He is holding my head in a position to make it easy for me to do so.
"You caught a cold," he tells me, stroking my cheek after replacing the glass on the bedside table. I'm in the big bed in my room, and I'm not naked again; I'm still dressed in the comfortable track pants and snuggly hoodie I put on after my bath. I'm not cold, I'm actually a bit too hot, and I lift my arms to throw the duvet off.
"Don't," David says, trying to cover me again. "You need to stay warm."
"Too hot," I whisper.
"Are you wearing anything under the hoodie?"
"Yes, a T-shirt."
David helps me take the hoodie off and tucks me in with the downy duvet again. When I settle back into the comfort of the pillows, and my eyes drift closed against the throbbing pain in my head, a terrifying memory sparks my drowsing brain back to life, and my eyes fly open, staring in horror at David.
"Why did you stab me?!" I croak in a broken voice, trying and failing to shrink away from him. I am so tired, my entire body is on fire, and every move I make is as heavy as if I'm trying to move through thick syrup.
"Stab you?" David exclaims. "Why would I ever stab you?"
With some effort, I slowly run my hands over my chest and stomach, remembering the searing, cold fire slicing into me over and over, slashing the life out of my body. There's no pain under the palms of my hands.
"I'm not stabbed..." I whisper, turning aching eyes to look at David's concerned face.
"Of course not," he says, laying a cool hand against my hot cheek. "What happened, Belle? You were charging the painting, and then you just stopped and stared at it and shouted something, and when I reached you, you were frozen, your eyes wide, your mouth open as if you were trying to scream. I spoke to you, but you didn't respond, not even when I grabbed your shoulders and tried to get you to look at me... and then you collapsed. It scared the shit out of me."
My mind is swimming with images of flat black eyes in a frighteningly angry face. Features twisted in rage, long hair floating around his head as if the man was underwater. He was both there and not there, but those knife wounds felt so real. Did my period start? It's not time yet, and the cramps are usually just one solid wall of pain rather than distinct gut-tearing stabs. Besides, I felt the first one in my heart, not my stomach.
"Did you see him too?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
"See who, Belle?" David is looking really scared now.
"A man stabbed me. He had long hair and a terrifying face."
"The man from the painting?"
"No, no, it wasn't him. The man from the painting is kind and gentle," I explain, my voice fading in and out hoarsely. I'm really not enjoying speaking. "This one looked like a zombie or a drug addict or someone suffering from a bad illness, and he was just seething with rage."
I remember David talking about tapping into old feelings in the house to explain the interesting way we woke up yesterday. Did I tap into someone's rage so completely that I saw him and felt him stab me? Maybe he wasn't stabbing me, just like it wasn't me kissing the Frenchman in my dream.
I run my eyes over David's stressed face, grateful that he didn't form part of that particular dream and played the role of the man who stabbed whomever I was supposed to be at the time. I don't think he would've survived killing me.
I don't remember why I was so angry. Sure, things happened that would've been special if we were both awake and married and ready to start a life together. Or if we'd made a conscious decision to be with each other because we've finally reached a point where we know that what is happening between us is love. Real love.
I don't do hookups. I doubt that David does either. I'm not interested in casual encounters. I find the idea of being with a man I do not love gross. My views might be seen as outdated - Hank sure thought so - but I don't care; this is my body, and that is how I feel. I am a romantic who dreams of true love with one man, and I wanted my first time to be with the man I want to share my life with. I wanted it to be special.
Well, mission accomplished, right? It was so friggin' special; it launched me into another dimension and nearly killed me and the man I'm falling in love with by causing us to suffer hypothermia.
This could've been so much worse. Once again, I could've been stuck here with Ron the Rude... I was, after all, hoping that he would come out and jumpstart my car. At least my first time was with a man I admire and really, really like and am feeling all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings towards, even while I'm probably dying of some kind of horrible disease because right now, I feel soooooooo crappy.
My eyes trace the strong yet gentle contours of David's face while he wipes my skin with the moist cloth again. I can see that he is thinking, trying to make sense of my words. He is clearly worried about me, his eyes filled with tenderness, when he finally stops his ministrations and gazes into my eyes.
"I need to get you out of here," he mutters, his face once again filled with sorrow, spurring my sluggish body into enough action to rise to a sitting position and wrap my arms around his neck. "I don't want bad things to happen to you."
"It doesn't matter, David," I sob. "None of it matters as long as I am with you. When I woke up in that room, the only thing that really scared me was the thought of never seeing you again."
His arms wrap around me, hugging me in an embrace tight enough to crush my ribs.
"I'm so sorry," he whispers into my hair.
"Shhhh," I have no idea what to say to him, but I don't want him to apologise for something he clearly had no control over. "I'm so glad you're here."
We sit like that for a long, long time, and when I start to shiver slightly, the fever finally winning the battle, David lowers me to the pillows and feeds me some of the pain and fever tablets he'd taken from the open first aid kit he must have retrieved while I was out.
"I want to go make you some soup, but I don't want to leave you," he says, refilling the glass I've drained of water.
"I don't want you to leave either," I tell him with a smile. "But I'll be okay... probably. If I'm not in here when you get back, please check the closet in the hallway."
He blinks at me for a few startled seconds, and then we're both laughing in that somewhat twisted way desperate people can laugh about their own misery.
"I like you, Belle," he tells me, stroking the hair off my forehead. "I like you so much. When this is over, I want you to stay in my life. I want to know you."
"Tell me that again when this is over because I have a feeling that you might change your mind," I grin, happy to hear those words reflecting my own sentiments. "I mean, I could start acting weird and do some strange things, you know?"
He flashes that brilliant smile of his, the one that could set the house on fire, and my heart leaps with joy. I've missed that smile; I haven't seen it for a while, and then his warm laughter bubbles around me, weaving a cosy nest.
"Nah," he chuckles. "I don't think there's much chance of that happening." He leans over and kisses my hot forehead and cheek, and then he gets to his feet and leaves the room.
Suddenly I'm all alone, and I know I probably should be scared, but my brain is floating in a sea of fever and pain, drowning out all thoughts and feelings, dragging me into sleep. I think the pills David gave me were pretty strong.
I awake to the jarring sound of crashes and bangs not far from me. At first, I have no idea where I am or when I am, but then I recognise the vanity table and chair, and I realise that I'm curled up, tangled in my duvet. It is still day; some lacklustre sunlight is sneaking in through a gap in the curtains to let me know.
Startled by another series of loud crashing sounds, I get to my feet, staggering when a wave of dizziness hits me, causing me to sit down on the edge of the bed. When the light-headedness passes, I try again, taking wobbly steps to the bedroom door.
How long have I been out?
My headache is gone, but my brain is sluggish, filled with fluff. The walk to the bedroom door takes a hundred years, but then I'm finally pulling it open and stumbling into the hallway, stopping on the landing to stare in open-mouthed confusion at the scene, greeting me there.
The huge nautical clock is lying on its face on the floor, filling the space from wall to bannister, and David is kneeling beside it, aggressively whaling on it with a hammer.
"David?" I ask, causing his body to jerk with fright and the hammer to leave his hand, crashing into the bannister. He turns to see me, and I experience a gut-wrenching moment of stark fear that he will no longer be David but will be a man with a gaunt face and eyes boiling with uncontainable rage.
"Shoot, I'm sorry, Belle!" he gasps, rising to his feet, and he is definitely still David... My David. "The clocks were going crazy, and I didn't want them to wake you, so..." he glances at the hammer propped up against the bannister, and then he looks at me, grinning sheepishly. "Uhm... Sorry, I lost it for a second...."
"The clocks already woke me before you started doing whatever...." I lie; I slept through the bongs and dongs this time. "Why are you trying to destroy it?"
"I'm not trying to des-." He stops, looking down at the smashed back of the clock. My appearance on the landing has clearly saved the clock from total annihilation. The pretty side might still be mostly intact, but I doubt that it will ever tick again or tell the time. Its internal mechanisms and gears are completely shattered.
"I was trying to destroy it," he admits to himself now. "I wanted to unset the chiming mechanisms, but... well... it doesn't have any. There are no rods or gongs, or hammers to strike them. Nothing to trigger or regulate any form of chimes. Nothing at all. This is not a chiming clock."
Fantastic! Just the kind of thing I was longing to hear.
He steps over some clock debris to join me and wraps his arms around me. I melt into the hug, holding onto him, enjoying his strength and his presence. I have no response to that announcement, and no question I could ask could possibly be answered by David.
"How are you feeling?" he wants to know, pulling back so that he can see my face. Now that is a question we can definitely deal with.
"A little better, thank you; I think the fever broke."
"Awesome," he grins. "I've made soup. Let me take you back to your bed, and I'll bring you some."
"How?" I ask, looking at the clock, its stray parts and David's tools blocking the way to the stairs.
"Uhm... carefully?" he chuckles. "I'll clear a path."
Standing next to David, snuggling into the arm he has protectively wrapped around my shoulders, we share a horrified look listening to the loud ticking sounds coming from the obnoxious clock at our feet.
"David, may I have a hammer too?"
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