By the third morning, Heidi could finally sit upright without feeling like her body was trying to collapse in on itself.
That alone felt miraculous.
The clinic room glowed softly beneath the island sunlight filtering through the slatted blinds, warm ribbons of gold stretching across the white walls and tangled bouquets crowding every available surface. Flowers had begun taking over the room entirely—bright hibiscus blooms spilling from handmade arrangements, pale plumeria floating in shallow bowls of water, heliconia arching upward like tropical flames beside the window.
The entire place smelled faintly of antiseptic, ocean air, and flowers beginning to wilt in the heat.
Life and decay together.
Island perfume.
Heidi sat propped against several pillows with a breakfast tray balanced carefully across her lap. Eggs. Toast. Fresh mango sliced into bright cubes. Pineapple. Papaya. The first real meal she’d managed since waking from the fever.
Every bite exhausted her.
Every swallow still felt strangely fragile.
But she ate slowly anyway, savoring the sweetness of the fruit against her tongue with almost emotional gratitude. Just a few days ago she’d been unconscious, burning alive from the inside out, somewhere between death and hallucination.
Now she was eating mango in the sunlight.
Life was bizarre.
The clinic door creaked softly open.
Lila stepped inside carrying another absurd bouquet of island flowers cradled against her chest.
“Good grief,” Heidi rasped immediately, eyeing the arrangement. “Are you secretly robbing the entire island of vegetation?”
Lila laughed quietly, the sound warming the room instantly.
“You’re awake enough to be sarcastic. That’s encouraging.”
She crossed toward the bedside table and carefully arranged the flowers into a vase already crowded with others. Heidi watched her while chewing slowly on toast, unable to stop herself from noticing the little things.
The loose braid falling over Lila’s shoulder.
The freckles across her nose darkened by the sun.
The way exhaustion still lingered beneath her eyes despite the smile she wore for Heidi’s benefit.
She’d stayed.
The realization still hit Heidi hard every time she looked at her.
Lila pulled a chair close beside the bed and sat down with a relieved exhale.
“Woman,” she murmured softly, reaching for Heidi’s hand immediately. “You scared the absolute shit out of me.”
Heidi squeezed her fingers weakly.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for almost dying. That’s very rude hospital etiquette.”
A tired laugh escaped Heidi’s throat.
It hurt a little.
Everything still hurt a little.
“I honestly don’t remember most of it,” she admitted quietly after a moment. “The last thing I really remember clearly is being downstairs at the laundromat washing the curtains… and then everything gets blurry.”
Lila’s expression shifted slightly at that.
More serious now.
Careful.
“I talked to the doctors,” she said slowly.
Uh oh.
That tone never led anywhere comforting.
Heidi leaned back against the pillows, suddenly wary.
“And?”
Lila hesitated briefly, like she was trying to figure out how much truth to hand over at once.
“They’ve been testing you for basically everything they can think of,” she said. “Poisons. Toxins. Infections. They’ve ruled out most normal explanations already.”
“Comforting.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Lila sighed softly and leaned closer, lowering her voice instinctively despite the empty room.
“They tested for tetrodotoxin first.”
Heidi blinked.
“…what?”
“Pufferfish poison.”
“Lila, I haven’t eaten a fucking pufferfish.”
“I know that.”
“Unless one snuck into my tacos.”
Lila rolled her eyes despite herself.
“Heidi.”
“Sorry.”
But the humor faded quickly beneath the tension returning to the room.
Lila twisted the edge of the bedsheet nervously between her fingers before continuing.
“They thought maybe somehow you’d ingested contaminated seafood,” she explained. “Tetrodotoxin can cause paralysis, seizures, fever, respiratory failure… all kinds of horrible things.”
Heidi stared at her.
“So the official medical opinion right now is maybe I got assassinated by sushi?”
“I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you.”
“I know, but that sentence deserved mocking.”
Lila huffed a reluctant laugh.
Then her face darkened again.
“They also tested for ricin.”
That made Heidi pause.
“Ricin?” she repeated slowly.
Lila nodded.
“They said even tiny amounts entering the bloodstream can cause organ failure and neurological symptoms.”
Heidi blinked blankly at the ceiling for a second.
“What the fuck kind of life do they think I’m living?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because I barely have enough energy to answer emails. I’m definitely not important enough to be assasinated.”
The joke landed weakly.
Because beneath the sarcasm, fear had already begun creeping quietly back into the room.
Lila noticed immediately.
Her fingers tightened around Heidi’s hand.
“They tested for ciguatera poisoning too,” she continued more gently now. “From reef fish toxins.”
“Oh my God.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t eat any mysterious reef fish either.”
“I KNOW.”
“And curare.”
That one made Heidi stare.
“blow dart poison?”
“Yes.”
Heidi sat silently for a moment.
Then:
“Lila… if someone shot me in the ass with a jungle dart, I feel like I would have noticed.”
Lila burst into startled laughter despite herself, quickly covering her mouth.
“Oh my God, stop making me laugh during this terrifying conversation.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
Heidi leaned back heavily against the pillows again while the reality of the conversation settled over her like cold water.
Poisons.
Neurotoxins.
Paralytics.
Bloodwork sent to the mainland.
And none of it fit.
Because no matter how many scientific explanations they reached for, none of them explained the actual truth.
The bells ringing by themselves.
The feeling of being watched.
The fever dreams.
The seagull.
The thing she saw in the wasteland behind her eyes while she burned alive in bed.
No blood test could explain him.
Heidi stared toward the window quietly.
“I didn’t eat anything strange,” she said softly. “I wasn’t drugged. Nobody poisoned me. I wasn’t shot in the ass by a blow dart.”
Lila remained silent.
Waiting.
The room seemed to hold its breath with her.
Finally Heidi swallowed hard.
“There was a man.”
The words immediately altered the atmosphere between them.
Lila’s gaze sharpened.
“The laundromat man?”
Heidi nodded slowly.
Even now, speaking about him aloud made her feel irrational. Like trying to describe a nightmare to someone after waking up.
“He came in, Thursday night,” she said carefully. “Right before closing.”
Fragments surfaced as she spoke.
Wet footprints across the tile.
Ocean water dripping from his dark curls.
Green eyes impossibly bright beneath fluorescent lights.
“He was soaking wet,” Heidi continued quietly. “Like he’d just climbed out of the ocean.”
Lila didn’t interrupt.
Didn’t joke.
Didn’t dismiss her.
So Heidi kept going.
“I should’ve told him to leave,” she admitted. “Any normal person would’ve told him to leave.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
Why didn’t I?
The question still terrified her.
Because she genuinely did not know.
Even now, the memory carried the same impossible pull beneath it. Something magnetic. Something dangerous.
“It was like…” Heidi struggled for words. “Like the second he walked inside, I stopped thinking correctly.”
Lila’s expression softened with concern.
“Heidi…”
“No, I know how it sounds.”
She laughed weakly to herself and looked away.
“A complete stranger walked into my laundromat, stripped naked in front of me, and somehow I just let it happen like my brain had gone on vacation.”
Lila remained very still now.
“He touched me,” Heidi whispered. “And it felt…”
The memory hit her hard enough to flush her skin.
God.
Even now.
“It felt unreal,” she admitted quietly. “Like he knew exactly how to make me forget everything else.”
Lila’s throat bobbed subtly.
Jealousy flickered briefly behind her eyes before concern swallowed it again.
“And then?” she asked softly.
Heidi closed her eyes.
“He bit me.”
Silence.
Only the distant hum of the clinic air conditioner filled the room.
Lila stared at her.
“You mean during sex?”
“We didn’t have sex, he just found his way between my legs”
Heidi nodded, embarrassed heat creeping into her face.
“I was… distracted.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
The corner of Heidi’s mouth twitched despite herself.
“I didn’t even realize how hard he’d bitten me at first.”
“But afterward?”
“Afterward everything changed.”
The room suddenly felt colder despite the sunlight.
Heidi’s gaze drifted downward toward the healing wound beneath the hospital blanket.
“When I got sick,” she whispered, “I kept seeing him.”
Lila stiffened slightly.
“In dreams?”
Heidi shook her head slowly.
“No.”
The word barely escaped her throat.
“In nightmares.”
She swallowed hard.
“And he wasn’t human anymore.”
A visible shiver moved through Lila.
Heidi continued before she could stop herself.
“In the fever he looked… wrong. Like something pretending to be a man instead of actually being one.”
The words sounded insane once spoken aloud.
But less insane than keeping them trapped inside herself.
Lila sat silently absorbing everything.
The flowers around them smelled overwhelmingly sweet suddenly.
Almost rotten.
Finally she whispered:
“Do you think he was human?”
Heidi stared toward the bright island sky outside the window.
The honest answer terrified her.
“I don’t know what I think anymore.”
And that was the worst part.
Because Heidi Bennett had always believed in practical things.
Money.
Business.
Grief.
Trauma.
Sex.
Loneliness.
Not monsters.
But practical things did not explain ringing bells in locked laundromats or birds tearing themselves bloody against apartment windows.
Practical things did not explain fever dreams that felt more real than waking life.
Practical things did not explain the feeling that something inside her had changed permanently.
“The bells keep ringing,” Heidi admitted quietly. “Even when nobody’s there.”
Lila’s eyes flicked toward her immediately.
“And the seagull…” Heidi continued. “Jesus Christ, Lila. The apartment looked like something had exploded inside it.”
She wrapped her arms tightly around herself despite the warmth of the clinic.
“And I still feel him sometimes.”
That confession came softer.
More ashamed.
“Like he’s nearby.”
Neither woman spoke for several long moments after that.
Outside, palm trees shifted lazily in the wind while island sunlight flooded the world with deceptive beauty.
Eventually Lila cleared her throat softly.
“How did you even get here?” she asked gently. “Nobody’s really sure.”
Heidi frowned faintly.
The memory remained fragmented and dreamlike.
“I remember being outside,” she said slowly. “I remember falling.”
And then—
Arms.
Strong arms lifting her from the sand.
Saltwater.
Safety.
“It felt like somebody carried me,” she whispered.
Lila’s brow furrowed.
“Who?”
Heidi shook her head slowly.
“I don’t know.”
But deep down—
A terrible thought had already begun forming.
Because despite everything…
Some part of her still thought it might have been him.
