Listed: Volume VI

This book is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013
by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce,
distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

Contents

Fourteen

Epilogue

Deleted Scenes

Paul jerked awake with
a painful throb in his lower back.

He’d
fallen asleep in the chair beside Emily’s bed, and his eyes cut immediately
over to where she lay. She was pale, damp, and tossing restlessly, and Amy was
bending over the bed and trying to wipe her face with a cool cloth.

Emily
had been too sick for the last three days to fly back to Philadelphia, so they
were still in the hotel suite in Hawaii. She’d had a fever now for over
seventy-two hours, and Paul couldn’t quell a heavy weight in his gut that
seemed to signal they were nearing the end.

Her
fever wasn’t getting better this time because it wasn’t going to get better.
Ever
.

He
had to force down the insistent toll of warning in his mind. If he thought
about it, he wouldn’t be able to function at all.

And
Emily needed him.

“She’s
not any better?” he asked, his voice cracking with fatigue and emotion.

Amy
shook her head. “She still seems to be getting worse.” The woman sounded
strained, which was disturbing in someone as no-nonsense as the nurse. “I’m
going to draw her another bath.”

Paul
forced himself to his feet, although his sore back and his neck both resisted
the motion. He took Amy’s place wiping Emily’s hot face as the nurse went into
the bathroom to turn on the water in the tub.

Emily
squirmed in evident agony, throwing off the sheet that had been covering her.
She was dead white, and perspiration streamed off her skin. “Paul,” she gasped,
arching up as her eyes flew open.

“I’m
here, baby,” Paul murmured. He tried to sound comforting, but his voice cracked
again. He felt groggy and heavy and like he couldn’t think clearly. He hadn’t
slept more than a half-hour at a time in three days, not willing to leave his
wife for so long.

She
didn’t appear to hear him. Her eyes stared blindly up at the ceiling. “Paul,
don’t! Please, no!”

Paul
couldn’t tell what she was seeing, what she was imagining in her delirium, but
it must have been a nightmare scenario. He only hoped he wasn’t the one hurting
her in her fevered dreams.

She
kept mumbling and occasionally crying for him to stop. To stop doing
something
.

“It’s
okay, baby,” he murmured, reaching toward her with the washcloth again. “It’s
okay.”

It
wasn’t okay, but there wasn’t anything else he could say.

She
jerked away from his touch, her blue eyes still wide and wild. Before he could
pull back his hand, her arm flung up toward him, her fingers tightened in a
fist.

It
connected hard with his cheekbone, just under his right eye. He grunted at the
sudden impact and pain.

“Are
you all right?” Amy asked, emerging from the bathroom and hurrying back over to
the bed.

Paul
blinked dazedly through a shock of pain. His eye watered reflexively. “I’m
fine. She’s delirious again.”

Emily
was writhing frantically now, her legs and arms flailing with aimless motion, and
she kept crying for Paul to stop.

Amy
had pulled out the thermometer and was trying to hold it against Emily’s
forehead, but her head was tossing too wildly against the pillow. “Can you try
to hold her still?”

Paul
reached back down to the bed, his face still throbbing from where Emily had
punched him, and he grabbed her shoulders tightly enough for Amy to take her
temperature.

When
Amy pulled back the thermometer, her face changed. “Oh God,” she muttered,
staring down at the digital numbers of the tiny display.

Paul
swallowed hard, a wave of cold panic overwhelming him. Amy had never been
anything except calm and professional, but she looked scared now at how high
Emily’s temperature had spiked. Paul couldn’t bring himself to ask how high it
was.

“We
need to get her into the bath,” Amy said, putting down the thermometer and
looking calm again.

Together,
they managed to take off Emily’s clothes, and then Paul fought through her
struggling until he was able to gather her up in his arms. She landed one more
punch—this time to the side of his jaw, but he barely felt the pain.

The
pain in his chest was much, much worse.

“Paul,
no! No, no!” Emily screamed hoarsely, her voice loud and piercing in his ear as
he carried her.

He
managed to lower her into the tub without hurting her, although she was writhing
and flailing so frantically that the bathroom floor was soon covered with
water. The cool water seemed to soothe her a little, and her screaming soon
subdued to mumbled pleas.

Paul
knelt down beside the tub, his trousers and t-shirt soaked through with water.
Every part of his body ached, but none as painfully as his chest. He took a
clean washcloth, dampened it with cold water and wiped at Emily’s face as she
squirmed and choked out incoherent words.

Emily
tossed her head a few times, and then her wide eyes landed on Paul. For just a
moment, she appeared to see him. “Paul, help!”

Paul
closed his eyes briefly, swallowing hard over the tightness in his throat that
just wouldn’t go away. “I’m trying. I promise I’m trying.”

Amy
took Emily’s temperature again. After checking it, she left the bathroom
without explanation.

Paul
was too distracted to even wonder what the nurse was doing.

“Please
help!” Emily gasped again, arching up in the tub. “Paul, please!”

He
wiped at her face with the cool cloth. “I don’t know what else to do, baby,” he
choked, his throat almost too tight to even speak.

For
a moment, he was swallowed up by the helplessness. His wife was dying. She was
dying in front of his eyes, and there was nothing in the world he could do to
stop it.

Amy
returned to the bathroom then with a bucket of ice in her hands. Paul watched
blankly as the woman dumped it into the tub.

Evidently
reading his look correctly, Amy explained, “We need to bring her fever down.”

“I
thought ice baths weren’t good for fevers.”

“In
general, they aren’t, but her fever can’t stay this high for long or it might…damage
her brain. We need to bring it down quickly.”

Paul
froze.

Amy’s
expression was still composed, but there was a brief flash of pity in her eyes.
“Keep cooling her down. I’ll get more ice.”

Paul
fought through the bleak despair until he could move again. He swished the ice
around in the bathwater and then cooled down the washcloth again with the
freezing water.

The
drop in temperature seemed to have an effect. Emily stopped writhing and let
out a long sigh. “Paul,” she breathed.

With
a painful gulp, Paul kept cooling her down. When Amy came in with more ice, he
said, “It seems to be helping.”

Amy
checked Emily's temperature again and looked relieved at the result. They kept
her in the bath until she started to shiver, and then Paul gathered her small,
wet body up into his arms again. She seemed to weigh nothing at all, which was
terrifying and heartbreaking. It felt like she was slipping out of his grip for
good.

When
they dried her off and got her into bed, she drifted off into an exhausted
sleep. Paul’s chest could finally unclench, at least for the moment.

“Why
don’t you get some sleep?” Amy suggested. “You’ve been awake for days.”

Paul
shook his head. “I’m not going to leave her, but you need to rest too. I can
sit with her while you get some sleep.”

Amy
started to object, but Paul insisted, “I mean it. I’m not expecting you to work
around the clock.” He should have hired another nurse to relieve Amy, but he
wasn’t willing to risk his precious wife with a stranger. Not at this point. A
doctor stopped by twice a day, and they kept in regular contact with Dr.
Franklin. He’d had another treatment he wanted to try, so the local doctor
administered that yesterday and then again this morning.

The
new treatment obviously wasn’t working any better than the other ones had.

“All
right,” Amy relented. “If you’ll take a shower, change clothes, and get
something to eat first, I’ll rest for a couple of hours.”

It
was a reasonable compromise, and Paul agreed. It was ridiculously hard for him
to even leave the room, though. He showered quickly, put on clean clothes, and
then swallowed down a sandwich and soup that room service had brought up. He
barely tasted it, but he finished it quickly so he could get back to Emily.

When
he returned to the bedroom, he saw that she was still sleeping peacefully. Her
fever hadn’t broken, but at least it had lowered enough for her to sleep. Amy
went to her room to rest, saying she wouldn’t be more than a couple of hours,
and he should wake her if anything changed.

Paul
sank into the chair where he’d spent most of the last three days.

“Paul,”
Emily gasped, her eyes opening without warning after several minutes of
silence.

“I’m
here,” he said, leaning over to cool down her face. Her hair was still wet from
the bath, and it clung to her hot skin.

Emily
turned to look at him, and it was clear she knew who he was now. She smiled at
him weakly. “Hi.”

He
smiled back, almost choking on a surge of emotion. “Hi.”

“You
should get some sleep.” She shifted beneath the covers and pulled her arms out
from beneath the sheets to rest them on top instead.

“I’m
fine,” Paul lied. “This chair is comfortable.”

Emily
snorted, but her expression changed when she looked at his face again. “What
happened to you?”

Paul
frowned, confused and worried by her flare of anxiety. “What do you mean?”

“You…you’re…beat
up.”

He
remembered that she’d punched him twice earlier. He’d barely noticed, but his
face must be starting to bruise from the blows. He gave a nonchalant shrug.
“It’s nothing.”

“I
did that,” she said, licking her dry lips.

Paul
reached for the bottle of water beside the bedside and helped her take a few
sips. When her eyes still studied him anxiously, he quirked his mouth. “I’m
sure I deserved it. Don’t worry about it, baby.”

She
fumbled for his hand until he offered it to her. She brought it up to her lips
and kissed the palm.

The
fond little gesture was almost too much for Paul. He looked away and breathed
shakily.

She
gave him a moment to recover, but, when he looked back at her again, she asked,
“Do you feel up to reading more
Hamlet
? We just have the last act to
go.”

“Of
course,” Paul agreed immediately, standing up to get the book from the top of
the desk in the room. He'd been reading to her from it in her lucid moments for
the last three days.

He
didn’t actually feel up to reading. His mind was so blurred with fatigue and
emotional strain that he could barely focus on the words, and his voice rasped
painfully as he spoke.

He
would deny Emily nothing that was in his power to give her, however, and this
was one of the few things he could.

So
he began to read Act Five out loud, and he continued to read, even when Emily
started to shift restlessly in the bed with discomfort. He paused a few times
to cool her down a little and give her more medication, but otherwise he read
straight through.