“Fine,” I muttered. “Charles, stay with your mom. I’ll be right back.” He shook his head slightly but didn’t respond. He’d only seen me in this kind of mood a few times, mostly because I was never really in it all that much. I knew he was worried, and worse than that, I knew Alice was worried, and that was the thing that finally made me give in. I followed the nurse out the sliding door sullenly and stood there not knowing what to do.

The exam was fairly perfunctory. The nurse checked my blood pressure, heart rate, and a bunch of other little things before telling me she needed to draw some blood. I sighed in resignation and sat in the chair next to the counter as she got things set up, already dreading it. Over the course of the years I’d had blood drawn more times than I could count, and my rolling veins made it a big production every time. Luckily, this nurse seemed pretty experienced and found the vein with a minimum of digging around in my arm, for which I was grateful.

“Okay, I’ll send this up to the lab and we should have results soon,” she said quietly.

“Can I go back into Alice’s room?” I asked.

“I would prefer it if you rested in here until the results come back. I don’t need the lab to tell me that you’re so exhausted you’re going to drop soon, and from your temperature I’d wager you’ve picked up an infection.” She must have seen the terrified look on my face, because she put her hand on my arm.

It had been a long time, but any thought of infection still scared the shit out of me. My immune system was still not up to snuff after the rounds of chemo decades ago. It was decent, but nowhere near what it had once been, and I’d been told for years now to be extra mindful of infections. I really hoped the nurse was wrong, although I knew she probably wasn’t. My physical symptoms alone were enough to know that.

“Now, don’t worry. I have your history here and I don’t want you to be concerned, it’s probably nothing more than a cold. You’ve been depleted since you’ve been in here, on both sleep and nutrients, so it probably just took off from that. After a couple days of rest and recuperation you should be just fine.”