Week 146 – She has a fever still

So they hadn’t put her in handcuffs, but they had put her in the back of their police car, driven her down to the station, put her in an interview room and left her in here to stew.

Tayla was sitting at the table, trying to look calm and nonchalant but knowing she was failing.

They were watching her.

She couldn’t see them through the one way glass but she knew that Dean and his partner were out there. They wanted to see if she was going to give anything away, and from the nervous way she was twitching and fidgeting she knew they must think she was guilty.

How long were they going to make her wait?

Just how bad was this?

How much trouble was she in?

If they really thought that she had done this was she going to be able to convince them that she was innocent?

The door open and her gaze snapped up to meet Dean’s ice blue eyes. They were so cold. What had become of the funny, sexy, borderline arrogant teenager she remembered?

He didn’t say a word, just walked over to the table and threw some photos down on it.

Although she didn’t want to know what they were her hands moved of their own accord and picked one up.

It was a photo of Mara Mason. A beautiful and vibrant woman in her mid-twenties who had been horribly scarred in a vicious assault. In this picture the woman had been stabbed what looked like dozens of times.

“I’m going to be sick,” she stammered as an icy wave of nausea washed over her. Tayla staggered to her feet and over into a corner of the room where she violently vomited.

The nausea didn’t stop.

Someone had killed one of her patients and Dean and his partner thought it was her.

Mara had been horrible murdered, just when she’d been starting to make progress.

“Tayla?” Dean knelt beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Someone killed Mara,” she said, knowing it was obvious, but she couldn’t quite accept this was happening.

“Are you alright?” His blue eyes were no longer ice cold now they were filled with concern.

“C-cold,” she said, teeth chattering. She was feeling worse, her stomach churned, and her head was pounding with a headache.

Dean touched the back of his hand to her forehead. “She has a fever,” he called over his shoulder to his partner.

“She has a fever still,” she corrected as her whole body began to tremble.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been sick all day,” she murmured, drowsy now. She wanted to close her eyes, go to sleep, and then wake up to find all of this had just been a bad dream. Tayla felt something wet on her face and when she touched a hand under her nose and it came away bright red with her blood. she turned terrified eyes to Dean. What was happening to her?

Dean picked up her wrist to take her pulse, then shrugged out of his jacket, draping it around her and then gathering her into his arms. “We have to get her to the hospital,” he said, a hint of panic in his voice.

“What’s going on?” she asked, as her tremors increased, and the pain in her head became crippling.

“I think you’ve been poisoned.”

Poisoned?

A murdered patient and now someone had tried to kill her?

Tayla wanted to ask more questions but the world around her grayed and then faded to nothing as she passed out.