P.s. Love You Madly

“It’s only transmitted by mosquitoes,” he said.

“Girls,” said Rose Alice combatively, “when he’s gone, spray. Darcy, I wouldn’t touch him.”

“Rose Alice!” Darcy said, offended. “He just said it wasn’t contagious.”

“What’s he know?” Rose Alice sniffed. “Him staggerin’ around like Typhoid Mary, flingin’ his germs this way and that.”

“It’s sirens, all right,” said Emerald, staring out the door with interest. “It sounds like a lot of them.”

Sloan English let go of Darcy’s wrist. He struggled to rise. “I don’t need an ambulance. I’ll leave. I’m just causing trouble here—”

He heaved himself up enough to prop his weight on his elbows. Even that exertion made him gasp, and his chest rose and fell alarmingly. Darcy saw a vein in his temple banging like a small blue hammer.

“Please,” she begged, grasping his shoulder to restrain him, “don’t…Please.”

His flesh was hard beneath her hand, the muscles lively. But his skin was still unnaturally hot and his shirt damp with perspiration. He struggled to a sitting position, and she could not stop him; for a sick man, he showed an astonishing amount of strength.

But then his strength failed him. He tried to pull himself to his feet, but instead toppled like a marionette whose strings have betrayed it. He would have struck the marble, but once again Darcy caught him.

He fell back, his head in her lap, his eyes clenched shut in frustration and pain. “Sorry,” he rasped, “sorry.”

The vein in his temple beat more violently. Darcy cradled his head helplessly. The sirens’ whine grew higher, louder. “Help’s coming,” she whispered. “Just stay still.”

His eyes opened tiredly. His head turned, and he stared into the grinning face of the bookworm. “My God,” he breathed hoarsely. “What’s that?”

“It’s only a bookworm,” she soothed, pushing it away.

“Shouldn’t I be protecting you from it?” he asked, and tried to smile. Instead he shuddered, as if racked by a chill.

“It’s harmless,” she said. He squeezed shut his eyes, frowning, and shuddered again. She used the hem of her T-shirt to wipe the mist of sweat from his forehead, his upper lip. “Shh. Easy.”

Sloan’s hand fumbled to find hers again, then closed over it.

“Room’s spinning again,” he said through his teeth. “Anchor me.”

She laced her fingers through his, held on tight.

The skirling of the sirens became unbearable, overwhelming. They filled the air, they beat on Darcy’s eardrums, they sounded like all the hounds of hell about to close in.

Then came a moment of miraculous silence, so absolute she thought she’d gone deaf.

“They’re here,” Emerald said with excitement.

A flurry of sounds—metallic doors slamming, people’s voices, hurried footsteps. Darcy thought she could hear a police radio in the background.

“Here!” yelled Rose Alice, opening the screen door. “He’s in here! He’s declared germ warfare on us! Hurry!”

Dammit, Rose Alice, lighten up. Anger flashed through Darcy, but vanished almost instantly, swallowed up by the chaos spilling into the house.

Paramedics swarmed inside. They pushed her away, they hovered over Sloan English, poking and prodding him. They barked terse, incomprehensible orders to one another. Darcy rose to her feet to watch them, but she felt limp and spent. Rose Alice and Emerald stood on the porch, talking animatedly to a tall policeman.

Attendants were strapping Sloan to a gurney and unfolding a blanket to cover him. “What’d he say he had?” asked a boyish paramedic with a shock of blond hair.

“Malay fever,” said a stocky Hispanic woman, stowing a blood pressure cuff in a black bag. “It’s an ugly bastard. It can come back on you.”

“Ugh,” said the youth, cringing. “Can we get it?”

“No way,” she answered. She turned to Darcy. Her brown eyes were coolly professional, yet not unkind. “He said he’d been in the tropics. That right?”

“I think so,” said Darcy. “He mentioned Kuala Lumpur.”

“How long ago did he get this fever? Doesn’t look like he really recovered from his first bout with it.”

“I—I have no idea,” Darcy stammered. She looked at Sloan, strapped to the gurney, covered now, his blanket like a shroud. His head rolled back and forth as if the fever were riding him into a land of nightmare.

“Will he be all right?” Darcy asked, touching the woman’s arm.

“Should be,” the woman said shortly. “Needs rest. Here—” she said. “He seemed to want you to have this.” She handed Darcy the card she’d refused before. Numbly she took it.

The two male attendants began wheeling the gurney toward the door. Darcy quickly moved to Sloan’s side. “Sloan—Mr. English—can you hear me?”

“Stay back, lady,” the blond boy said. “You can’t come.”

“Sloan?” she begged.

His dark lashes flicked. He turned his head toward the sound of her voice. The green eyes opened. “I’ll make this up to you,” he said in a thick voice.

“It’s all right,” she said.

“We still have to talk,” he said, then sucked in his breath sharply.

“Yes,” she assured him. “We do.”

“I—I never got your phone number,” he said. “I dropped your card.”

They were nearly to the ambulance now. She looked back at the porch. She saw her card lying at the policeman’s feet. “I’ll get it for you,” she promised.

She turned and sprinted back to the porch, then snatched up the card. But by the time she ran back to the ambulance, Sloan’s gurney had been loaded. They were shutting the doors.

“Please—please,” she begged, thrusting the card at the woman. “Give this to him. It’s important.”

The woman looked at her, her expression unreadable, but reached out and took the card.

“Step back,” said the ambulance driver. Darcy found herself pushed backward. The doors clanged shut. She watched as the driver climbed inside. He fired up the engine, turned on the hellish siren. He pulled away and left her standing there.

She watched it go, until it disappeared around the curve of the long drive. She looked down at the card in her hand.

It bore Sloan English’s name and corporate title. It told her his business address and phone number, gave her a company e-mail address, but nothing else. It told her nothing of the man himself.