The Fever Read Online Free Page B

They're in and out of the hospital all the time and they don't complain."
    "Don't lecture me, Cynthia." Dufiy hated the way Cynthia looked: her hair so smooth and neat, her pale blue uniform so clean and crisp, her skin shiny and healthy-looking. The only consolation was those tiny lines of tension around Cjmthia's pale eyes and full mouth. They made her look older than seventeen years.
    Cynthia was the most ambitious person Duffy had ever known and the most energetic. She had probably walked home from the hospital immediately after she was bom, unwilling to wait for someone to carry her. Right now, Cynthia was taking her junior and senior years simultaneously because she was so anxious to finish high school and go on to college and medical school. . . which she would probably finish in six weeks or less, Duffy figured.
    Duffy glared resentfully at Cynthia. She had almost certainly had a long, beautiful shower and shampoo that very morning. Reason enough to hate her. If she wasn't so nice . . .
    **Why can't I have a shower?" Duffy begged. "Cynthia, you could fix it. . . you could sneak me out of here and into the showers down the hall, couldn't you? Please? Smith told me I look like beach garbage, and he's right. He's disgusting, but he's right."
    Cynthia shook her neat, narrow head. "Duffy, I know how you feel, but you have to be patient. When Dr. Morgan thinks it's okay for you to have

    a shower, you'll have one. Til take you down there myself. But not yet."
    'The newer hospitals have showers right in the rooms," Duffy muttered. "But I have to be stuck in this ancient, medieval torture palace where the plumbing screams all day and the elevators creak and — "
    "Duffy," Cynthia said gently but firmly as she fluffed Duffy's pillow, "hghten up."
    Duffy groaned. "You're right. I'm being a creep. I'm sorry, Cyn. I know I'm a crunmiy patient. It's just. . ."
    "I know. You're not the type to be stuck in a bed, Duffy. It must be making you crazy." Cynthia put on what Duffy called **that hospital face," with the fake smile that failed to reach the eyes, and the voice so falsely cheerful. "But you'll be out of here in no time, I promise." All of the nurses said things like that when a patient was giving them a hard time. It was probably something they learned in the first week of nursing school.
    Duffy glowered. "Right."
    "Hey, what happened to your other bed? It was here yesterday."
    "Smith took it to Pediatrics."
    Cynthia marched over to the faded flowered curtain hanging limply on a circular metal rod bolted to the ceiling above the second bed's now-empty space. 'Well, then, let's open the window bhnds and pull this curtain all the way back. It's blocking the light. No wonder you're depressed." She went first

    to the window to raise the blinds and then returned to the flowered curtain and yanked it backward on its metal rings.
    And Duffy's eyes widened as the curtain sliding along the metal rod made a jingle-jangle sound identical to the one she had heard during the night.
    She had heard it. She hadn't been dreaming.
    She groaned silently. She didn't want to be back on this again. Everyone would think she was crazy.
    But if someone had been in her room. . . .
    What were they doing there?
    "There was someone in here last night," she said aloud.
    "Hmm?" Satisfied with the early spring sunshine now flooding the room, Cynthia turned back to Duffy. 'What did you say?"
    Duffy leaned back against her pillow. "I thought I heard someone in here last night. Dylan told me I'd probably imagined it, because of the fever. I'd just about decided he was right, until you pulled that curtain. Now I know I heard something. That curtain was pulled back ... or forward . . . last night."
    Cynthia returned to Duffy's bedside and looked down at her. "I don't get it," she said. "Of course someone was in here. Taking care of you. Your temperature has to be watched carefully. It was your curtain you heard, not the other one." She smiled. **We don't have