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You’d think, Evy fretted as she sat on an uncomfortable bench in the sweltering hospital waiting room, they would all have become accustomed to heat. Rangoon in September was a very different beast to the desert though, and they failed their fight against it, miserably.
Irony of ironies, It was Ardeth who was hit the worst. Evy had buried herself in the Rangoon University library, protected by thick stone walls and cool drinks; Rick somehow made it through with only a splitting headache and upset stomach. Ardeth though… it was terrifying, to see him confused and babbling nonsense, fighting to get out of Rick’s arms but unable to stand.
They rushed him to the hospital. Normally they didn’t bother, happier to be patched by less skilled but more trusted hands, but as Rick said, voice tight with panic: this was above their paygrade.
A door opened somewhere. Evy whipped her head up, but it was just a nurse, hurrying down the corridor on some errand.
It was all rubbish. They wouldn’t let her come with them. The doctor looked down on her over his very British nose and explained, as if to a simpleton, that they would give Ardeth a cold bath and of course a woman of no family relation could not be present for that.
She knew better than to argue. Rick wore the twin to the ring on her finger, not Ardeth; he proposed a day out of Hamunaptra, and at that point Ardeth was still a friend they regretted leaving behind, not the third part of their heart. If she could, she’d marry them both - she’d offered, in fact, a bit of bigamy never hurt anyone, but Ardeth just smiled, kissed her and said—
She couldn’t remember what he said. Something poetic, about not needing any empire’s law to prove his love.
Damn it all. Once this was over, she was forging that marriage certificate herself.
A door opened. She looked up and— “Rick! How is he?!”
Rick grabbed her by the arm and dragged her through the door. “Shhh.” They tiptoed through one odd-shaped room after another, the same warren-like layout that every hospital seemed to have, when finally, they found it: a white-tiled room with an odd box-like stretcher in the middle, and in it Ardeth, stripped bare and soaked through.
“Ardeth!” She fell to her knees beside him, mindless of the water that covered the entire floor and immediately seeped into her skirt.
He blinked at her, a little muddled still, and smiled. “My princess,” he sighed.
She kissed him, furious with relief. She was never this happy to hear that silly name. Ardeth and Rick came up with together and wouldn’t explain. “It came to me in a dream,” is the only answer they would give her, Rick with a cheeky smirk and Ardeth with perfect sincerity.
Ardeth tilted his head into the kiss, leaned into the hand she laid on his cheek. He felt cool to the touch, shivering - a good thing, probably, but she still wanted to wrap herself around him until he was well again.
“How do you feel?”
Ardeth grimaced. “Foolish.”
“Hey.” Rick walked over, raked his fingers through Ardeth’s soaked hair. “None of that. You pulled the short straw and had to play the damsel, that’s all.”
Ardeth’s eyes closed. “W’ld rather be… bested by a real foe, not weather,” he mumbled.
A sound from somewhere nearby had both Rick and Evy jump. “You better go,” he told her, “or we’ll get in trouble.”
“Rubbish,” Evy muttered to herself. She pushed a last quick kiss to Ardeth’s lips, stood up, and let Rick drag her back the way they came in.
“Here, take these.” Rick kissed her, her pressed a bundle of something into her hand, and shut the door in her face.
She sat back down onto the bench. After a moment, she unwrapped what turned out to be a square of gauze, to find… thermometers? She laughed aloud. They would have needed to take Ardeth’s temperature. And when they couldn’t find a single thermometer, they would have to leave… oh, Rick. You clever, clever man.
Her man. Both of them - both of them clever, and both of them hers.
She found a more comfortable position on the wooden bench and pulled out her notebook. Now that she knew Ardeth would live, she could use all the waiting time for something useful. After all, there was still a dangerous artifact to hunt down - and she really didn’t want to stay here longer than necessary.