I jump with the jerk that jolts through my body and try to sit up in alarm, failing epically as heaviness pulls me back own. Confused, dazed and realising I’m topless, just in a bra and Alexi is yanking my wet trousers down my legs. I have no clue where the hell I am as I was just sitting in his car thirty seconds ago and I don’t know how I even got in here.
I’m so out of it, it’s like I am on something, wondering if he would drug me to be compliant and remember I never took anything from him to get this way. It must be the fever hitting me full blown as I am so out of whack I am practically walking on clouds.
I seem to be on the bed of the apartment I have been staying in. Mico is setting up a tray by my bed with an assortment of fluids and medicines before switching on the TV on the wall behind him. I have no idea which reality I just woke up in where Carrero men are bedside nurses and Alexi is willingly looking after me.
‘‘What the hell are you doing?’’ I blurt out groggily, my voice weird and speech slurred and incoherent and then lay very still as another wave of dizziness overtakes me, losing my fierce as vulnerable and weak takeover.
‘‘Taking your wet clothes off, you’re burning up and I need to cool you down, get you dry.’’
‘‘I don’t need your help.’’ I try verbally again, crazily disorientated to the point everything is swaying and I can barely focus. I toss on the bed as bright colours obscure my vision and jump when I realise Mico has duplicated and there’s two of him.
No.
Four wandering across the room throwing me a weird look and then his whole self blurs out of focus and everything blends into one weird coloured mass. I try to roll but my body feels weirdly unconnected to me and the weight surrounding me might possibly be my limbs which have ceased to function. I can’t open my eyes properly anymore.
Shit, I think I’m sicker than I thought.
‘’Yet here I am.’’ Alexi sounds different, normal, far away and I toss and turn again in a bid to clear my head and shift the overwhelming sensation of heat and cold waving through my body in intervals. I’m jerked again as he pulls the legs of my trousers free and all I’m left in is wet underwear, somehow aware that I’m lying on a bed mostly naked, and yet I feel detached from reality as though I’m stuck in a bubble in my mind and the normal world is getting to be so far away.
‘‘You can’t put her on a flight like this. Airports are starting to open in the morning according to Jake but no way in hell is she fit for a journey.’’ Mico’s voice waves through and I give up trying to look where it’s coming from. I close my eyes and relax into the sensation of being bodiless. Stop fighting and become weightless, so I can fly around the room like a dandelion seed.
Maybe I am that weed after all and I finally found my way to flying free on the breeze.
‘’I know, I can see her you know? She needs a doctor, call Wilson. We need to cool her down, she’s spiking a fever.’’ Alexi sounds almost human for a moment, I hardly recognise him and wonder if he is different when he’s alone with his family. He sounds more like his brother and for a moment I forget how much I despise him.
‘’Go to your dinner, I can take care of her. I’ll get Wilson up here and do whatever he says.’’ Mico sounds like his normal solid self and I think I like him, really. He’s not the hard arse bastard I thought he was, and he genuinely seems to give a shit. I have never really felt threatened around him, never got the vibes he was undressing me in his head, and he has never touched me sexually or inappropriately apart from that time he bodily carried me to the car.
‘’You were already supposed to be taking care of her, yet I find her walking the streets in this state. No one checked on her to see how she was in two days? Did you know she was sick? What the fuck do I pay you for? She looks like hell.’’ Alexi sounds pissed but I’m literally washing away on an uncomfortable hot breeze that feels more like I am being baked in a sauna. I swear I’m sweating and my face feels damp and clammy as sunlight burns my skin off, it’s suddenly very bright in here and I couldn’t open my eyes anymore if I tried.
‘’You told me to get rid of her, you didn’t tell me to babysit. I was running around doing shit you told me to do.’’ Mico is snapping back. I have never heard him disobey or argue with Alexi. Alexi seems to disregard his petulance, surprisingl. Seems he only punishes women for talking back.
‘’Go turn the shower on and turn the temp down to lukewarm I’ll take her in there. If she keeps getting hotter she might have a seizure.’’
‘’You’re just sending her mixed signals Lex, leave her to me and just go. She got the message loud and clear … she knows you don’t give a shit and want her gone, all this does is confuse things.’’