Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Six: In Which Jessie Arrives

Pain. And a pulling at my throat that I think was the feel of a scream that had gone on too long. Burning behind my eyes and wet at the side of them that had dried into an irritating salty itch. The world swayed under me again, but too violently to be the now-familiar bob of the Lyre, unless we were being tossed in a storm.

God, it was hot. I kicked the covers with my legs, pulling with the side of my body that wasn't in screaming agony, trying to get them off, off, but someone kept putting them back on, wrapped up to my ears, tight around my neck, scratchy and constricting.

"...make her sweat it out..." someone said, but all I wanted was a goddamn ice-pack and a few hours alone, asleep.

"Fever," someone said, and I seized on the voice, swallowing hard to wet my throat. I knew that voice. 'Tis the year 1805, my hand to God.

"People died of fevers in 1805," I said, and it didn't sound like a sob, it didn't. My voice was cracking. I wanted ice chips. Don't invalids get ice chips? "This isn't fair. I had a flu shot."

"Shot?"

"And Hep A and B, and vaccines. HPV! My arms looked like a cork board. I was going to go to Paris," I said, lips dry and numb. Chapstick. I wanted chapstick, but even that small convenience was gone, forever lying at the bottom of the Atlantic, the waxy chemical cylinder dissolved into oily blobs by the unforgiving salt water. "I was going to drink French wine. I was going to make love to a Frenchwoman. I can't die of a flu!"

"She's delirious," someone said softly, apologetically. Voice warm and familiar. I turned my face towards it, wanting the affection, wanting the comfort. "Do not take any heed of her words, she does not mean to say what she does. More tea, Surgeon."

Something hot and wet at my lips, soothing but too much for my abused stomach. It tasted astringent. Astringent; that was a strange word, like lemon glass cleaner or something. It tasted like drinking furniture polish.

Before I could be sick, I swirled back down into blackness.

* * *

I lost track of time in the grip of the fever. The world throbbed grey around the edges, boarded and measured in bouts of shivering frigidity and sweltering heat. I was lucid in spells, but enough to insist on the Surgeon cleaning my wounds with boiled water and rum, using nothing but the cleanest bandages torn from the fabric of my beautiful, lost dress, in having one of the sailors stitch the wound on both the palm and back of my hand with a needle that had been sterilized in a candle flame and thread that had been soaked in boiling water.

An eccentric I may have been to them, but an eccentric whose wishes were complied with. Sailors had died for hurting me; the rest of the crew wasn't about to take their chances with their annoyed captain over my peculiar requests.

I don't know how long I lived on the diet of willow bark tea and ship's biscuits. I couldn't keep anything else down and refused simple fresh water. Probably to my own disadvantage – tea is a diuretic, I knew, and to recover I would need fluids: water, juice, milk. But there was no juice and milk too precious to drink in the quantities I required.

And I had already sworn never to drink water ever again. Even the thought of it made my already sensitive stomach roll.

Eventually I spent more time awake than asleep, and I silently blessed my father's foresight to insist on all the shots I'd had. I had no doubt that it was them and not the ship's Surgeon's skills that saved my life. Eventually the smell of my own unwashed hair and the sweat dried into the sheets of the bed were enough to drive me out of the cabin and me out into the fresh, crisp air of the deck, allowing young Mr. Fletcher in to clean. I was wrapped in the jacket and a blanket. The air made me light-headed, the sunlight hurt my eyes, but god, it was good to see the sky again.