Work Text:
The text came at 4:47 p.m.
Can't make it over tonight. I'm sick. Just a cold, don't worry.
Eloise typed back immediately: What kind of cold? Flu? Covid?
Just a cold.
Are you nauseated?
A little.
Congested?
Yes.
Do you have a fever?
I am not sure.
Eloise looked at that for a moment. You’re not sure?
The dots appeared. Stopped. Started again. Stopped. A longer pause than any of that warranted, long enough that Eloise put her phone down, got a glass of water, came back. The dots started again and then finally:
I don’t think so. More dots. Don't worry. I’m fine.
She stood in her kitchen holding her phone.
How could Cressida not know if she had a fever? Either you had chills, aches, and a burning forehead and then you took your temperature and found out, or you had none of those things and didn’t think you needed to take your temperature. A person who did not have a fever knew they did not have a fever. A person who did not know whether they had a fever did not have a thermometer, or had not checked, or had checked with their hand against their own forehead and found the results inconchlusive. These were different situations with different implications and Cressida had answered the direct question by not answering it, and then told her not to worry, which meant Eloise was now worrying with considerable focus.
Her father’s last words had included “I’m fine.” Just before he said, “Something’s wrong.” He'd said it with that particular calm of a man who didn't like to make a fuss, who said I'll be right in, in a minute and then wasn’t in, and wasn't fine, and wasn't anything, and the minute stretched into something that never really ended. She knew that a cold was not a bee sting. She was a reasonable person with a reasonable understanding of medical distinction. The logic had never been the problem. She had learned, absorbed, the idea that if you cared about someone you checked. You checked and checked again until you were sure.
She looked at the key on her ring. The key had been Cressida's idea, back in April. She'd handed it over with the particular briskness she used when she was doing something that mattered to her and didn't want to discuss how much. "In case of emergency," she'd said, which could have meant anything and clearly meant something specific that Cressida wasn't prepared to name yet. Eloise had understood and put the key on her ring quietly without comment..
She had not, until now, seriously considered using it.
She picked up her bag.
She buzzed first. Nothing. Buzzed again, waited. Buzzed a third time before she entered the code, went upstairs, and then used the key.
The apartment was dim. Lights off. Curtain’s closed against the summer light. The particular quiet of a space that had held one person in it for too long. There was a container from Golden Dragon on the coffee table, barely touched, a pair of soup dumplings sitting in congealed broth like an accusation.
Cressida was on the sofa under what Eloise recognized as the cashmere throw she'd bought herself for Christmas and treated with the reverence normally reserved for museum artifacts. She was partially dressed, which was somehow worse than if she'd been in pajamas. Soft cashmere pants with a sweater … in June. Hair down, no makeup. Like she had tried to get up and be fine, but couldn’t. She held her phone against her chest like a lifeline. One she wouldn't use, but couldn't let go of.
She looked up when Eloise came in. Her face moved through surprise and then something unguarded that she was not quite fast enough to cover.
"You used the key," she said. Her voice was wrong, low, raspy, and very tired.
“You gave me the key.”
"I know I gave it to you." Cressida shifted against the cushions, and there was something in the movement, a careful quality, like she was taking inventory of what she looked like and not loving the results. "I didn't think you'd use it because I had a cold."
"And yet, I’m here." Eloise set her bag down and came closer. Up close, it was worse. Not dramatically worse, not frightening, but Cressida had the dull translucence of the properly unwell, the kind of pale that meant a few days and not much eating and probably not enough water either. "How long?"
A pause.
"Since Sunday."
"It's Tuesday."
"Oh." She looked momentarily confused, like she hadn’t expected that answer.
"You texted me Saturday that the shoot went great."
"It did go great." Something defensive moved through her face. "I felt fine during. Later that night, on the plane, I started feeling a little bit off."
Eloise sat on the edge of the coffee table. Close. Cressida's eyes tracked the movement and stayed on her with an attention that was not quite wariness and not quite relief and seemed to be negotiating between them. "Do you have a thermometer?"
Cressida looked at her. "No."
Just that. Flat and oddly final, like the question itself had landed somewhere specific.
"You don't have one."
"I've never needed one."
"Okay." Eloise crouched down to her level. She pressed the back of her hand to Cressida's forehead the way her mother used to do, that specific gesture that meant you're real and you're here and I'm paying attention.
Cressida looked confused.
Eloise said. "I'm going to get one."
"You don't have to…"
"I'm also going to heat that soup, because you haven't touched it." She looked at the container. "Have you eaten anything today?"
Cressida's jaw tightened slightly. "I wasn't hungry."
"Cress."
"I ordered the soup, didn't I?"
"You ordered the soup and then did not eat the soup." Eloise looked at her steadily. "When did you last eat?"
The pause was long enough to be its own answer.
"Right." Eloise stood. "Thermometer, then soup. There is a CVS nearby. Do you need anything else, is there anything you're out of, do you have Tylenol, or Ibuprofen?"
"Eloise." Cressida's voice came out strange. Not sharp. Not composed. Something with the composure removed from it, which was different enough to make Eloise stop. "You really don't have to do all this."
"I know."
"I told you not to worry."
"You did."
"And you came anyway."
"I had the key and the Red Line was running." She looked at Cressida. "Also you didn't know if you had a fever, which you communicated by accident, and that particular detail was going to bother me all night."
Something happened in Cressida's face and she blinked. Small and fast and not entirely controlled, the kind of thing that meant a feeling was bubbling to the surface that she didn’t want there. She took a breath.
"I don't know how to be this. With someone here." Not an apology. More like a disclosure, careful and a little reluctant, given the way you gave someone information you'd decided they'd earned. "Being taken care of. I'm not good at it. I don't know what the rules are. Growing up, it wasn't…" She stopped. "You were expected to be fine. Whatever you were."
"I know."
"I don't want you to expect anything from me. Some gracious, grateful performance. I don't have one in me right now."
"I'm not looking for a performance. I'm looking for an empty soup container."
The humor didn’t land.
Eloise was quiet for a moment. The air conditioner hummed. Outside, traffic sounds came through the glass, muffled and distant.
"In my house," she said, "people who were sick got the sofa in the TV room and the good blanket and someone checked on them every twenty minutes with cold compresses, or hot water bottles, or a thermometer. You got whatever you asked for and also several things you hadn't asked for that your siblings thought you should have. Favorite stuffed animals. The Game Boy. Books. Hy always dropped off a doll, which I think was an act of spite. My mother made soup from scratch, which took three hours, but you were glad when you ate it. Benedict read aloud, doing all the voices, until you dropped off to sleep. Anthony was always tucking and retucking blankets." She paused. "It was… special. It meant being the center of something without having to earn it. You knew everyone cared."
Cressida was watching her with an expression she couldn't entirely decode.
"You don't have to do anything," Eloise said. "That's actually the whole point. You just have to be here. I'll handle the rest." She picked up her bag. “I’ll be twenty minutes.”
Eloise went to the door. She heard, behind her, the small sounds of Cressida lying back down. A cushion adjusted. A long exhale.
She had the door half open when Cressida said, quietly: "Eloise."
She turned.
Cressida was looking at the ceiling. Not at her. "Thank you. For coming."
It cost her something to say it. Eloise could hear that clearly, the slight roughness of it, the three days of solitude trying to be fine underneath.
"That's what the key was for," Eloise said, and left before Cressida had to figure out how to respond.
She was gone for twenty-three minutes. Cressida knew because she watched the door.
She had not meant to watch the door. She had meant to sleep, or at least to perform sleep convincingly enough that when Eloise came back, there would be nothing to discuss. Instead, she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling and listening to her own breathing, which was not as bad as it had been on Monday but was still not right, still had that damp, unhelpful quality that made everything take slightly more effort than it should.
The door opened. Eloise came in with a CVS bag and a brown paper bag from somewhere that smelled like ginger and broth, and she moved through the apartment with the particular efficiency of someone who had already mentally organized the task into steps. She didn't announce herself. She didn't explain. She just set the bags on the kitchen counter and started unpacking.
Cressida watched her from the sofa.
"There was a better soup place two blocks further," Eloise said, not looking up. "Congee and also a wonton option, I got both because I didn't know which you'd want." She set the containers on the counter, opened a cabinet, looked in the wrong one, tried the next. Found a bowl on the second attempt. "Also crackers, because they're easy on your stomach, and Gatorade because you probably haven't been drinking enough, and I got the blue kind because the orange tastes like a children's hospital."
"You didn't have to get all that."
"I was already there." Eloise poured the congee into the bowl and put it in the microwave. "The thermometer is in the bag. We will do that before soup."
Eloise came over with the CVS bag, sat on the coffee table, read the thermometer instructions with the focused expression she brought to everything written, then looked up.
"Open."
Cressida looked at her.
"I know," Eloise said. "Indulge me."
She put the thermometer under her tongue. Eloise looked at her phone, not timing it exactly but giving it the approximate right amount of time, which meant she had probably read the instructions quite carefully. The small domestic competence of this was unexpectedly difficult to look at directly.
The thermometer beeped.
Eloise took it. Read it. Chewed her lip. "101.3."
"That's not serious."
"No." Eloise set the thermometer on the table. "It's real, though. You've had a fever since Sunday, and you were alone, and you didn't tell me."
"I didn't want to bother you."
"I know."
"It's just a cold."
"You've had a fever. For three days." A pause. "Alone."
She went to the kitchen then and poured the congee into a bowl and brought it back and held it out directly, waiting for Cressida to take it. Not placed on the table. The soup was warm, it warmed her through the ceramic. She had not realized, until she was holding it, how much she'd needed that.
Eloise produced a spoon with a flourish, and Cressida started to eat. It was good. The warmth of it going down made her feel the best she'd felt since Sunday morning and that was its own problem. Eloise, the soup, Eloise and the soup. Eloise coming over. It really made her feel better. She felt tears welling in her eyes. From the soup. Only from the soup.
"You should eat more of that," Eloise said, and her voice had shifted, just slightly, the efficiency gone from it.
"I am eating it." Cressida said quietly, trying not to sniff.
"I know. Keep going. Once you eat you can take some Ibuprofen. It’s better for a fever with aches. You ache, right?"
Cressida nodded still eating. Eloise stayed on the coffee table and did not fill the silence with anything, which was unusual for her and which Cressida was aware of as a choice. Outside, June was beautiful and sunny and probably hot, but the curtains kept both the heat and the light away. When she had finished she put the bowl down on the floor in front of her and sat up a little when Eloise brought the pain reliever and the Gatorade.
"I didn't think anyone would want to know," she said.
She had not planned to say it. It arrived fully formed and then it was out and she could not evaluate it properly, whether it was too much, whether it had the right shape, because she was running a fever and she had been alone for three days and Eloise was sitting three feet away from her having spent twenty-three minutes acquiring soup and a thermometer and blue Gatorade without being asked.
Eloise didn't say anything immediately. Cressida appreciated this.
"That's not how it works," Eloise said finally. "With me."
"I know that. Intellectually."
"But not the other way."
"Not always." Cressida set the bowl down. Her hands were still warm from it. "Where I grew up, you were either fine or you were performing fine. There wasn't much room in between. If you were sick you took something for it and you showed up anyway, and if you couldn't show up you kept it to yourself because saying so meant admitting you were less than you were supposed to be." She stopped. She was aware of her own voice, the fever-rough edges of it, the way it was not doing everything she usually asked it to do. "I'm not good at being less than I'm supposed to be."
"I know," Eloise said. "You're also not less than anything. You have a fever of 101 and you've been managing it alone for three days. That's not less than. That's just miserable."
Cressida's throat moved.
Eloise leaned forward and put her hand on Cressida's back. Just that. Flat and warm between her shoulder blades, not rubbing, just present, the weight of it steady and even. It was such a simple thing. Cressida had no framework for how completely it undid her.
She didn't cry. She came close in a way that was worse than crying, the pressure of it behind her eyes without release, and she breathed through it carefully.
"My mother," she said, "when I was sick, would come into my room and take my temperature and tell me whether or not I was sick enough to stay home. If I was, she would leave a glass of water on the nightstand." A pause. "I had a thermometer, growing up. I think she owned three."
Eloise's hand moved then. Small circles between her shoulder blades, slow and deliberate, the kind of thing that required no response and expected none. Cressida closed her eyes.
"I didn't know," she continued, because apparently she was still talking, because the fever and the soup and the hand on her back had collectively breached some infrastructure she hadn't known was under strain, "that you could just. Tell someone. And they would come."
"You can," Eloise said. "You can tell me."
"I'm not…" She stopped. Started again. "I'm not good at needing things."
"You don't have to be good at it."
"You keep saying that."
"I'll keep saying it until it takes." The circles continued, unhurried. "Lie down."
Cressida lay down. Eloise pulled the cashmere throw over her with the matter-of-fact efficiency of someone who had done this for other people before, many times, without thinking about it, and the fact that it cost her nothing was somehow the most devastating part.
"You can go," Cressida said, to the back of the sofa. "You don't have to stay."
"I have nowhere to be. And I brought my laptop."
"I'm not good company right now."
"Cressida." Eloise's voice was kind and unimpressed in equal measure. "Go to sleep."
Cressida was quiet. The hand had settled at the small of her back now, warm and still.
"The wonton soup," she said after a moment.
"What about it?"
"I want the wonton soup later."
"Then we'll have the wonton soup later." She could hear the smile in it. "Sleep first."
Cressida slept.