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Sarah awoke, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and feeling the crease on her cheek from her pillow, smiling at how rested she felt despite how early it was, judging from the slant of the sun through the great windows. She squinted at the sunlight and frowned at the figure which was illuminated in a ray of dancing dust motes.
“I know I must be still dreaming,” he said, and her husband turned away from the window to face her. “I know that you’re not up out of bed considering the confession I got from you last night.”
Still in his bedclothes, Jonathan at least had the good grace to look a bit sheepish, no doubt remembering how he had curled into a ball beneath the heavy down comforter and admitted he wasn’t well. Still, he fixed his wife with a resolute gaze. “I wanted to see the sun.”
“Is that not the reason we had the bed positioned so?” Sarah tapped at the solid oak of the bedposts. “So that we can see it perfectly from here when the blinds are drawn back?”
“I had to draw them back,” Jonathan explained as though talking to a child, miming tucking the curtains behind their hooks.
Sarah took the same tone with him. “So come back to bed then, now that they are open.”
Jonathan’s breath hitched, and a sneeze followed, seeming to take him completely by surprise.
“Exactly,” Sarah said, allowing herself a bit of smugness.
“Exactly nothing,” Jonathan grumbled, only to produce a handkerchief from somewhere on his person, which only further proved Sarah correct; the man did not take a handkerchief to bed with him when he was at all well. “I didn’t want to wake you after I kept you so long awake last night.”
Sarah frowned; after he had come to bed, miserable and aching, he had begun to cough those irritated, ticklish coughs of a man coming down with a cold, until a good while after midnight. “Jonathan…”
“I’ve been feeling sneezy and shivery since I awoke and I thought the sun would– ” He sneezed thrice and sniffled, the sound half-drowned, before shaking his head and blowing his nose with a steady, firm pressure.
Her heart clenching, Sarah sat up and took her robe from its hook beside the bed. “You shouldn’t have worried about that. You’re not feeling well, and I’m certain you’d feel better in bed.” She walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing a bit in a manner she hoped was comforting. “Come, I’m the expert on this cold, given it was mine first.”
Jonathan lowered the handkerchief with a sniffle and a smile. “Since I’m up, I will sit outside on the balcony for a while.” When Sarah remained unconvinced, he continued. “Having had a front row seat to your cold, I can say that I might as well seize the opportunity to be somewhere else besides the bed in these next few days while I still have it in me.”
A spot of guilt pinged in Sarah’s stomach; it was precisely because Jonathan had sat beside her, read to her, kept her company while she had been ill that he was in this position at all. But she pushed it away, reminding herself as Jonathan had reminded her, that this is what friends do for each other.
“I suppose it is a nice morning,” she conceded. “I will take us some blankets.”
The two of them went out to the balcony, Sarah chasing Jonathan with a heap of all the blankets she could carry from the chest at the foot of their bed. Once he was seated comfortably, she bundled him up like a newborn babe.
“Warm enough?”
Jonathan’s eyes slid closed, but he smiled contently as the sun bathed his face and his shivers eased. “Quite. Thank you.”
Sarah darted back inside to fetch the book Jonathan had been reading to her while she’d been ill, and took residence in a chair just across from him to repay the favor. He looked so peaceful basking in the sunlight, and a bit hilarious besides, simply a mess of blankets with just a face and a bit of toe sticking out. Giggling a bit to herself, she withdrew the bookmark and began reading, quickly losing herself in the words just the same way as she had when it had been Jonathan reading to her.
“Sarah?”
She looked up instantly from her book, worry striking her heart when she saw Jonathan watching her, face pale, body trembling beneath the pile of blankets. His teeth chattered as he spoke. “I-I think I should go i-inside. I’m not feeling well.”
“Of course.” She was at his side in an instant, her palm at his forehead. “You’re running a fever now.”
*He ducked into the folds of the blanket to run through a fit of sneezing.
“Oh, Jonathan,” she said, the guilt she had felt before returning and twisting in her stomach like a knife. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He accepted her arm to lean on as they went back inside, into the bedroom. He quirked a smile. “Married life, is it not?”
She smiled back, but it felt hollow. “Still, I just…”
“Hate to see such a dear friend fall ill,” Jonathan concluded as he plopped back down upon the bed. He sighed and looked at her with honest, open eyes. “I know. I felt the same way when you had this. I feel it every month when you are in agony and I am powerless to stop it.”
Affection swirled in her breast, and Sarah leaned to press a kiss to his hot forehead as he sank back against the pillows. “I’ll send for some tea and lemon. Is there anything else that would make you feel better?”
“You’ll want to smother me with my pillow for this, but…” Jonathan trailed off with a self-effacing laugh. “Draw the blinds? My head is pounding.”
Sarah gave a laugh of her own before alighting from the bed and pulling the blinds shut, shaking her head all the while. “I’ll tell Mary to prepare some of her headache powder as well.”