Redamancy | Elena Gilbert

Chapter 64

Kai was sick the following morning.

"Are you being for real?" asked Rosalind, standing over him with her wrist against his forehead. "You're not running a fever."

"I feel like shit," Kai moaned, holding his stomach. "Tell your girlfriend to examine me."

Elena, who was in the corner of the room, shrugged. "I think Rosalind's doing a pretty good job. You are forty, technically, so maybe we need someone to do a rectal exam."

Rosalind snickered as Kai covered his face, groaning in agony. They perceived it to be agony, at least.

Suddenly, Kai coughed, spitting a clot of blood onto Rosalind's lap. She frowned, helping him turn on his side as he spat it to the floor. "Okay, well, that's definitely not a good sign."

"I think I'm dying," said Kai weakly. "I need to see Jo."

"She's not going to want to see you. Let's take you to an actual hospital. Or better yet—" she bit into her wrist. "Here, you'll heal from whatever you have."

He started to drink, but that seemed to trigger another coughing fit, where he spat out the blood. "Something tells me this isn't a normal illness."

"You think this is magical?" asked Elena, furrowing her brows.

Kai nodded, his forehead beaded with sweat. "What if it's because of the Merge? I need to see Jo. I need her to see me."

"She's not going to want—"

He flicked his hand, coughing into his elbow after sending Rosalind and Elena crashing into the wall, where he kept them magically pinned. "I'm going, whether you accompany me or not."

Elena decided they should just go with him. She messaged Alaric beforehand, and though Alaric and Jo both seemed to think it was a bad idea, they felt more comfortable knowing Rosalind and Elena would be there.

"One thing you need to learn," said Rosalind as she and Elena dragged him up the stairs to Jo's apartment, "is that you need to respect people's boundaries. Alaric says Jo's got food poisoning, so you better be damn thankful that she's taking time out of her sick day to see what's wrong with you."

Kai frowned. "Food poisoning? That... that might mean..." he didn't get to finish as he started to cough again. Rosalind grabbed the nearest decorative vase and put it in front of his mouth.

Elena rang the doorbell, waiting for Alaric to answer. When he did, he cringed at the sight of Kai. "You said he's coughing up blood?"

"Yep," said Rosalind, tilting the vase as proof. "Is Jo—?"

"I'm here," said Jo, appearing behind Alaric. She looked very pale. "What do you want, Kai?"

"Look," he panted, "I'm thinking it's the Merge, because we really didn't do it right. You know, the whole, 'You're not my twin,' 'Hey, that's okay, close enough,' plan? It worked, which is, you know, cool. Hey, I'm even a little bit nice now, in case you were wondering. But I think the other shoe dropped—" he stopped abruptly as he vomited into the vase again. When he was done, he continued, "I don't think you have food poisoning. I was supposed to Merge my magic with you. But I got Luke's instead. Oh... now I'm defective, and I think that's why you're sick. I kind of feel like I'm dying, actually. And if I die, so do you, Dad, Liv, and the rest of our dumb coven. So could you please fix me, like, now?"

They drove to the hospital so that Jo could access her office. Kai was placed on the exam table, and she asked the others to stay by the door, watching the process.

She first used her stethoscope to check his breathing and heartbeat, as well as bowel sounds. Then, she brought out a thermometer, marking his temperature. She took his blood pressure, and it seemed that that must have come back normal, because she moved on to using a penlight to check his pupillary response.