Page 84 of Delirium

Closed, and I could sense Scarlett next to me, calling for help.

I opened my eyes again, and she was there, repeating something to me I couldn’t hear. I did the best I could. She knew that, right? I had done the best I could. One foot in front of the other.

She turned and called over her shoulder. I could just make out the shape of people running toward her, which was weird. There shouldn’t have been other people. It was just us and the jaguar.

My eyes closed, and I was floating, up, up and away. My heart still beat. Maybe I really was immortal.

Tell me what you truly dream of, for I can see right through you.

I don’t thinkI came back to life as much as I throttled back to it, all at once. I sat up, my eyes flying open while I slapped a hand over my heart. It was beating. Surely that meant I wasn’t dead yet, right?

“Hey,rainforestboy. How you feeling?”

I whipped my head to the side to see a smiling Scarlett setting a book down and getting to her feet.

“What the fuck happened?” I stammered. “Where are we?”

She sat on the edge of a neatly made bed, squeezing my hand. “A small hospital, about twenty-five miles from where we were found. The village you collapsed in didn’t have the supplies needed, but they were able to get us somewhere that did. A miracle, really.”

I looked around the room for the first time, noticing the sterile environment. The paper gown I was dressed in crinkled as I spun around on them mattress. My body felt weird and shaky, but no worse for the wear. “Are you sure I’m not dead?”

Scarlett laughed, pressing a hand to my face. “Pretty sure. Be a pretty shitty heaven if you were.”

I shook my head. “But I didn’t make it. The jaguar was talking to me, and I got distracted, and I fell, and I failed all of you.”

“Jaguar?” Scarlett frowned. “Never mind. I’m not sure I even want to know. Regardless of your hallucinations, you didn’t fail, Nash. You saved us. You kept going right until we hit the edges of a small village, and then collapsed. It was wild to see, honestly. I kept trying to talk to you, but you were in some kind of trance, almost. And then you fell. I screamed for help.”

A trance.The entire time I had thought the jaguar was goading me, rooting for me to fail, but what if the whole time it was trying to keep me going? I licked my parched lips, the question I was avoiding needing to be asked. “Camp and James? Are they okay? Shouldn’t you be with them?”

“James is fine. He’s busy renting a small apartment down the road for us. Once you get discharged, you’ll come there, too. The two of us weren’t bad off, an oral dose of meds, some fluids and rest and we were good to go. You were pretty rough. I’m sorry I didn’t realize how sick you were. I’ll never forgive myself for that.” She looked away, chewing on her cheek.

I squeezed her hand. “Don’t. How could you know if I was a stubborn ass and said nothing about it? We’re here now, that’s the important part. What about Camp? Is he okay?” My heart tightened at the thought of not being quick enough to save him.

“He’s going to be okay. We got him in just in time.” She looked up at me, tears filling her blue eyes. “Yougot him help just in time. He’s in the next room over, sleeping. But everyone is going to be okay. You were right all along.”

I smiled up at her, wishing there were words to describe how I felt right now. Lucky didn’t feel like enough.

Maybe there would never be enough words. And maybe one day I’d be okay with that. Maybe it never really mattered. Because today, my heart was beating.

I hadto laugh stepping into the apartment, Scarlett clinging to my arm. “Of course James found the fanciest fucking apartment in the entire rainforest.”

The front door opened up to a large living space, with two massive beds, and an enormous kitchen off to one side. At the far end, a balcony door stood open, the thin curtains rippling in the breeze, letting in just a peek of the river below.

James shrugged from the kitchen, where he stood with a glass of something amber. “I can rent you an apartment more to your standards, if you’d like. I think I passed a shack on the way here.”

“You good?” Scarlett asked, letting go of my arm.

I nodded. “Good.”

Camp appeared from the balcony, looking pale and thin, but with light in his eyes. He hugged me without hesitation. “Fuck, it’s good to see you, man. I don’t know what to say. You saved my life.”

“You would’ve done it for me.”

Camp ended up being released from the hospital before me. Apparently, a decade in the rainforest meant I had more than a few well-hidden infections that needed dealing with. I tried to tell her it was all just a scam, but Scarlett insisted. A few extra days, and I had a clean bill of health.

I crossed the tiled room to the balcony, staring down at the river that had been the source of so much heartache in my life of late. Scarlett told me in the hospital the city we found ourselves in had enough resources to send off people to find theCarpe Diemand drag her back. She was down there somewhere at the docks, waiting for me.

I’d go visit her eventually. Make sure she knew she hadn’t been abandoned. She’d done a good job.

---