Page 58 of Inside the Maelstrom: Part One
The employee nodded. “One is en route now, sir. He should be here any moment.”
I wanted to yell at her that ‘en route’ wasn’t good enough, that I wanted him here now. Instead, I calmly said, “I need bottled water and some kind of electrolyte replacement liquid sent up to my room. Soup. Anything you can think of that might make her better.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied, but I was already striding toward the elevator. I mashed the button, and Evan slid between the doors before they closed fully. We stood there in silence, my heart pounding at how sick she was, and how fast it had happened.
“I shouldn’t have taken her to that market. We shouldn’t have come to this country. I should have sent her home after Paris.”
Evan shook his head. “I don’t think you have as much control over her as you’d like to think. But I agree, you should have sent her home. You never should have brought her in the first place.”
I pushed open the door to the suite, and was greeted to the sound of dry retching and moaning.
Otto appeared in front of me. “She’s still throwing up in there. She’s pale and sweaty, but freezing cold. She has a fever.”
“Virus?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know, I'm not pre-med. How far away is the doctor?”
I shook my head. “They said he’s en route.”
Hendrick stumbled out of the bathroom. “She kicked me out. It’s, uh, coming out from the other direction now.” He screwed his nose up. “I, uh… I think I might love her.”
I gaped, and Otto took a significant step back. “What? Why?”
Hendrick stumbled forward and puked into the fruit bowl. Otto reached for him, rubbing his back, and he lifted his head out of the bowl. “Same reason you’re trying to make me feel better right now. I just saw a person I’ve had sex with vomit and shit at the same time, and yet I’d still fuck her once she feels better.”
I let out a strangled laugh, but he continued vomiting.
“Come on, Drix. Thank god this suite has two bathrooms.” Otto managed to get a shoulder under Hendrick, and led him toward the bathroom. “You go and check on Viva. I got Drix.”
I nodded, making my way to the other bathroom. “Good Girl, are you okay?”
“Go away. I’m embarrassed enough.” There was more moaning, and I opened the door. Aviva was curled in a ball on the ground, her eyes wet with tears.
“It hurts, Sam. I swear, I’m not usually this, ah…” She panted a little. “Not this wimpy, but it hurts.”
I squatted down beside her. “I know, sweetheart. The doctor is coming and he’ll have meds to make you feel better. Hendrick is sick too, so I’m going to say it was probably the food. Now I’m kind of glad I didn’t eat the dumplings.”
“Oh god, don't mention the dumplings...” She lurched toward the toilet bowl, and if there was anything left inside her, I couldn’t imagine how.
I held back her hair, worried but oddly not as disgusted as I would normally be.
Maybe there was some justification to Hendrick’s hypothesis after all.
Chapter31
Aviva
Iwas dying. If I wasn’t dying, I wanted to. My whole body ached. I’d only just stopped shaking and I’d expelled every ounce of liquid inside me. However, if whatever the fuck this was didn’t kill me, the embarrassment just might.
I buried my face further in the pillow, groaning. Sampson had scooped me off the bathroom floor and held me in the shower as I washed off all the filth coating my body. Otto had held my hair as I prayed to the porcelain gods.
I’d vomited in Hendrick’s hat, and he’d actually watched me shit myself. I wanted to cry in self-pity. I’d have to go home, because there was no way I could look any of them in the eye ever again.
Yeah, I knew it wasn’t my fault. The doctor who’d come to visit had told me that it was either a gastrointestinal bacteria or food poisoning, but the outcome was basically the same.
I was miserable.
At least he’d given me a couple of shots, so I no longer had to throw up or shit every three minutes. Turns out that Hendrick had gotten it too, lending credence to the possibility it was food poisoning. Though if it was some kind of bug, he’d had his tongue in my mouth—and other places—only hours earlier, so who knew which one it was.
