Chosen by Christine Pope (free children's ebooks pdf txt) 📕

I did go in, and untie his shoes and pull them off. Then I waited as he wriggled under the covers.

“Get some rest, Devin,” I told him, and he gave me a bleary nod.

“’Kay.”

Maybe he slept after that, or just plain passed out. Part of me was thinking I should go downstairs and fetch the big bottle of ibuprofen, but what was the point? I’d given some to my mother, and it hadn’t made a whit of a difference. In fact, she’d only gotten worse.

I couldn’t linger here, anyway — I had to go check on her. Devin seemed more or less quiescent for the moment, so it seemed safe to go back downstairs.

She hadn’t moved much. The ice packs were more or less in place, except for the one on her forehead, which had slid to one side. I put it back in the proper position, feeling as I did so how quickly the ice had melted, how half the bag was now just cold water. Was that even possible?

Then again, I didn’t have much experience with how quickly a 107-degree fever could melt ice. If her temperature was even still 107. It might have gone up again.

Toward the front of the house, the door slammed, and I jumped. Then joy rushed through me as I realized who it must be. Thank God.

I ran out of the family room and into the hallway, saw my father coming toward me. The relief that spread over his face as he caught sight of me standing there, apparently safe and well, made me feel all warm and happy inside…for about a second. Then I thought of my mother, lying on the couch, silk shirt stained beyond recognition, eyes seeming to sink deeper and deeper into her head with every passing minute, of Devin passed out upstairs, the fever beginning to consume him as well, and not a damn thing I could do about it.

Something in my expression must have changed, because my father stopped dead and asked, “Your mother?”

“She’s in the family room. She — ” And that’s all I got out, because out of nowhere I began to sob noisily, the preternatural calm I’d been able to maintain all day deserting me now that my father was here and I didn’t have to be the strong one anymore.

He came to me and held me for a moment, letting me cry. No words of reassurance, though; I had a feeling he’d seen enough today to know there was nothing remotely reassuring about our situation. Then he said, “I need to see her,” and let go of me.

I didn’t protest. I was his daughter, but she was his wife.

When I paused in the doorway to the family room, I could see my father standing a few feet away from the couch, his head bowed. His hands hung at his sides, clenched into fists.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I gave her some ibuprofen, but that didn’t seem to work. Then I thought maybe the ice — ” I let the words break off there. Nothing was working, and now Devin was sick, too, and right then I didn’t have the ability to pile more bad news on my father. Not with that non-expression on his face, the one I’d seen a few times when he was desperately attempting to keep the world from knowing how badly he really was hurting.

He didn’t move. At first I wasn’t sure he was going to answer me, but then he said, “It’ll slow it down, but it won’t stop it.”

His tone was so final that I couldn’t help asking, “How do you know?”

Another one of those short, painful silences. “Because I’ve been out in it all day. Seeing people collapse in the street. Taking others to the hospital in my cruiser because the ambulances were either busy or already out of commission, their drivers just as incapacitated as everyone else. Even Josh — ” His voice didn’t exactly break, but from the way he stopped himself, I got the impression it was about to.

Josh was my father’s partner. They’d been partners since, well, ever since I could remember. For my father to have seen the man he regarded as a brother come down with this terrible thing…. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said, although I knew the words were completely inadequate.

“I tried to take him to the hospital. He wouldn’t go. Said he was going to die with dignity in his own house.” Again I heard the faintest waver at the edges of my father’s voice before he got control of himself again. “I had to carry him inside. He was already burning up. And after that, I couldn’t — I didn’t see the point in staying on assignment any longer. Half the force was already sick with this thing and the rest about to come down with it. I knew I had to come home. Home,” he repeated, staring down at my mother’s limp form.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. Just words, but they did something to fill up the silence. “She seemed okay when I got here. But then….” I bit my lip, knowing I had to tell him about Devin. God, I didn’t want to, though.

“Then?” he echoed.

“She collapsed. I brought her in here because I couldn’t get her upstairs. And Devin….”

“He’s sick, too.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. But he’s up in his room. He’s sleeping.”

“Then he’s lucky.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant. “So…what do we do now?”

“I’ll take your mother up to our bed.” For the first time, he shifted so he could look back at me. “How do you feel, Jess?”

“Fine,” I said, the automatic response. Then I shook my head, because I knew that was a lie, and I didn’t want to lie to my father. “No, I feel terrible. But I’m not sick.”

“I understand. I feel the same way.” He turned toward my mother again, gently lifted the ice packs — which were now mostly water — from her, then slid his arms under her so he could pick her up. Her arms and legs dangled, as limp as if they’d become somehow boneless, but she didn’t move, didn’t even make a whimper of protest. Was that a good sign, or a sign that she was slipping farther and farther away from us?

I crossed my arms and tried to suppress the shiver that went through me. From my father’s expression, I could tell he wanted to be alone to lay her down in the bed they shared, to be with her now even though it was probably too late. I understood that, and yet I still wanted to run up the stairs and be with him, to not feel so alone.

As I stood there, letting my father trudge up the stairs and forcing myself to stay where I was, to give him his privacy, I heard something. The word was only a whisper at the edges of my mind, and yet it seemed to resonate along every nerve ending.

Beloved….

Going rigid, I held myself stock still, wondering where on earth that had come from. At first I thought it might have been my father, speaking to my mother, but I’d never heard him call her “beloved.” “Sweetheart,” yes, and “darling” — but never “baby,” since she always said using that epithet only infantilized women. Such a firebrand, my mother.

Although maybe that was the wrong word to be using right now.

Anyway, their bedroom was at the end of the upstairs hall,