Page 47 of Fear
But all Jake’s hand did was rest on his hair. Then slowly, softly, he began stroking downward from his forehead to his neck, over and over again. Tobias’s eyes flickered open briefly and then closed. He was afraid to look, afraid to do anything that would make Jake stop.
“I’m here,” Jake said. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. Get some sleep. Just relax, Tobias, I won’t let them hurt you ever again.”
Tobias tried to keep awake, tried to savor the contact. Who knew when something this good would happen to him again or how long Jake would stay?
But he couldn’t fight sleep when his body was exhausted and shaking for rest and healing. He drifted in spite of himself, drawn by the steady, soft brush of Jake’s fingers over his feverish skin, into his first deep, dreamless sleep in days.
The next morning, Tobias managed to drink some of the broth Jake gave him, but that night when Jake brought him mushroom soup (“Sorry, this is all we got left. I’ll hit the store later, get you some chicken broth”), he couldn’t hold it down.
He made it as far as the bathroom—tile, he could scrub tile, he wasn’t sure he could get the stains out of carpet—before he was on his knees, vomiting into the wastebasket. He flinched when Jake touched him—Please don’t hit me now, I don’t want to throw up on you—but Jake just tugged him gently over to the toilet. Tobias felt a dull moment of dread when Jake opened the seat and pushed his head toward the bowl, but he stopped well before Tobias’s face was anywhere near the water. Then Jake let go of his head, crouched next to him, and rubbed Tobias’s back while he shook.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re gonna be okay, Toby.”
But Jake didn’t sound okay. He sounded like he had a nail in his hand and it hurt every time Tobias shook.
“You shouldn’t—” Tobias blurted out, then had to stop while another wave of nausea rose from his gut. The aftershocks made him close his eyes, left him close to sobbing. “You s-shouldn’t t-touch me,” he gasped.
Jake’s hand on his shoulder froze. “Tobias, I’m sorry. Did I . . . ?”
“I’m f-filthy, contagious. I’m disgusting. I’m sorry sorry sorry, so sorry. P-please don’t get sick. Don’t l-let me make you s-sick.”
“TOBIAS! DON’T—” Jake broke off because what the fuck could he even try to say? He tried to tug Tobias back toward him. For a second, Tobias clung to the toilet bowl as though he were drowning and the white porcelain was his only lifesaver. Jake could see the act of will it took for him to release his hold and let Jake pull him away.
Jake maneuvered Tobias until he was cradled against Jake’s chest, his fingers again moving through his sweaty hair. Tobias turned his head away, and in the part of Jake that wasn’t just trying to deal, that hurt. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He didn’t know if Tobias heard—or believed—a word he said.
When the shaking eased up and he thought Tobias could sit unsupported, Jake got him a glass of water and a damp washcloth to wipe the bile and sweat from his face. Tobias looked horrible—pale, shaky, devastated—but the expression of near-adoration on his face while Jake wiped the tearstains from his cheeks made Jake downright uncomfortable. It wasn’t like he was doing much. Cleaning Tobias and bringing him some water after he’d damn near poisoned him with that soup was the least he could do. It shouldn’t have been that special next to all of Jake’s other screw-ups.
Tobias was calmer after the water and the washcloth. After several more minutes, when he seemed less likely to lose the little liquid he had left in his stomach, Jake helped him up to splash his face one more time. They stumbled back to Tobias’s bedroom like a couple of drunks heading home at two a.m.
Jake put a wastebasket next to the bed for Tobias. Tobias’s sprint for the bathroom had been one of the most terrifying things Jake had seen recently, at least before Tobias’s scars, his panic attacks, and when he fell down a flight of stairs. He tried to make him more comfortable. The shaking had worsened again after just that short walk.
So Jake sat on the side of the bed, adjusted the blankets, rubbed away a speck of soup that had been flung onto the headboard, and generally tried to feel useful in the face of Tobias sick and feverish, teeth chattering. He couldn’t keep from touching Tobias’s forehead again and again, smoothing his warm and damp hair uselessly.
“Shit, Tobias. You’re . . . really sick.” He could say that with certainty, and that was when Tobias was still and too quiet. When he coughed, it sounded like he was going to lose a lung. “I think . . . fuck, I hate hospitals, but I should probably take you to a clinic or something, get a doctor to check—”
“No!” Tobias fought to sit up, back braced against the headboard, eyes as wide with horror as Jake had ever seen them. “No, Jake, no, please. It’s only been a d-day, please g-g-give me at least one more, please please, I’ll get b-better—”
“Tobias.” Jake grabbed his shoulders and tried to ease him down again without shoving. “Look, it’ll be okay—I’d never let them hurt you, I swear, I’ll be there the whole time. They’re just gonna see how sick you are and get you a prescription or something.”
Jake thought he was being reasonable. He thought that he wasn’t panicking or suggesting something crazy. He just really didn’t want Tobias to die. But Tobias seized Jake’s sleeve, and his eyes and cheeks were bright with fear as well as fever. “D-don’t, Jake. Please, please, I swear I’m n-not that sick, I d-don’t need to go, please don’t take me . . .” He couldn’t finish, curling over his knees with another fit of coughing that racked his body.
Jake could see the outline of Tobias’s bones through his rumpled nightshirt: vertebrae, rib, and clavicle with hardly anything in between, bound together by taut skin. Jake swallowed hard against the terrible conviction that Tobias couldn’t sustain this wrecking illness, that he had no reserves or resources. He survived eleven years of Freak Camp, I won’t lose him now to the flu. If it even was the flu. Shit, all his medical knowledge lay in stitches and blood loss and concussions. He couldn’t fucking gamble with Tobias’s life, not an inch.
“They’re not going to hurt you. You gotta trust me. I won’t let anyone hurt you, swear to God, Toby.” Jake would take him. He had to get help. This wasn’t some fucked-up thing between him and Tobias but fever, sweat, and vomit. He could ask for help for this, and maybe get it, without feeling like a failure.
He was just about to carry Tobias straight to the Eldorado and find the nearest emergency room, when Tobias looked up at him, lips trembling, eyes wide and desperately lost. “P-please,” he whispered. “Th-they’ll know.”
That hit Jake straight in the solar plexus. It was his turn to lean forward, trying to breathe through the anguish in Tobias’s voice and the lack of any kind of hope. Maybe it was past time that Tobias lost faith in him. Only years of fighting things that filled other people’s nightmares kept his voice steady as he looked Tobias in the eye again. “They can’t take you away from me, Toby. They can’t. I’ll never let them.”
Tobias stared at him wordlessly, then clenched his eyes shut. He turned over, or tried to, as his limbs seemed too heavy for his waning strength to move.
Jake should have taken him to the hospital, gotten a doctor to fix him, called someone who would know what kind of drugs would bring the fever down or if any restaurant in the area would deliver broth to their door. But somehow the hopelessness he had seen in Tobias’s eyes drained him of all that energy. He doubted his own conviction that any doctor could make this better.
Instead of carrying Tobias out to the Eldorado, Jake tucked the blankets tight around his shivering body and wished he could do more. He was ready to climb into bed with Tobias if that would stop the shivering, but that was off-limits for fucking sure. So he did the only thing he could think to do when hospitals, holding, and hope were off the table.
“You need broth and stuff.” Jake stood. Tobias turned to him, his gaze blurry. “I’m going to run to the store. Don’t . . . don’t die on me, Tobias.”
Tobias’s eyes widened. Jake could see the spike of panic. “You’re—” He had to break off for a coughing fit. Not one of the worst ones, but not good either. Jake waited. “You’re coming b-back?”
