Steve spent the rest of the night and the entire next day watching Kayla wrestle with whatever was inside of her. She’d spend a few hours sleeping peacefully, followed by the next ones crying in her sleep as she thrashed. She whimpered, she cried out, and she burned with fever. How someone could be hot to the touch with sweat beading on her body while simultaneously shivering he didn’t know, but that’s what she was doing. He had pieced together some of what she was dreaming; it killed him to watch. She’d cry out for their children, call out in gibberish, then weep tears out of the corners of her closed eyes. Once she begged him to bring her children back; it killed him. He missed them, too, and every time she said Joe’s name a little piece of Steve’s heart broke.
Something was terribly wrong, here. This was not how it went the first time. He remembered every bit of it like it was yesterday, and this agony Kayla was suffering? The palpable sorrow that was wracking her even as she slept? That was new territory. It didn’t happen. So why now? He needed his wife so badly, he ached for her to wake up. But he knew this was going to be a long haul if they were still even here that long, which he doubted. She’d slept off the poison for nearly two weeks last time. She really needed to be in a hospital.
Steve did what he could to assuage her pain and try to comfort her. He laid in bed with her just as he had the first time, adjusting her so she could lie against him. “Take what you need from me, Sweetness. Just take what you need,” he whispered to her. He’d stroke her cheeks and hair, and he couldn’t seem to go more than a few minutes without placing healing kisses on her temple and top of her head. She did seem to know when he was there, as her breathing would steady more when she felt his touch. But the dreams did not cease as her anguish roiled beneath the surface.
By the evening of their second day Steve was exhausted. Still he popped two more pills into Kayla’s mouth and somehow got her to swallow them down on the first try with the water he held to her lips. Though it was one of her rare moments of lucidity, she’d initially refused any more water after she’d downed the medicine.
“I don’t want it,” she whimpered.
“Sweetness, you’ve got to drink or you’re not going to get better.” He sat her up with one strong arm holding her up while his hand supported her head. “Come on now, Kayla, I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Kayla’s throat still hurt from the dryness, but she obediently tried to drink it.
“That’s my girl,” Steve said like a father proud of his baby eating her strained peas. “How’s that feel?” Kayla grimaced as the glass shards she was sure the water was laced with scraped down her throat. “Not so good, I guess, huh, baby?”
She shook her head no and got an annoyed look on her face. Steve thought that was a good sign, annoyance was better than grief.
That’s when Kayla felt nausea well up deep from the pit of her stomach. Suddenly a very coherent Kayla looked at Steve with big eyes and reached up to grab his upper arms. “We’re jumping!”
“What?!” Steve gasped. “I don’t feel it yet, wait for me!”
“I’m gonna be sick,” she said as her gorge rose. “I wanna jump … ungh …,” she moaned.
“Hold on, baby, we’re getting out of this mess!” Steve clutched her to him, “I’ve got you, baby!” He waited for the room to fade around him and smiled with utter relief that this nightmare jump was ending. Please get us home! Kayla tucked her head into Steve’s shoulder waiting for the jump effect to get worse. She felt his hand lay protectively on the back of her head and said a prayer that she’d see Joe and Stephanie.
Nothing happened.
When Steve opened his eyes, he saw the same gold sconce holding a royal blue candle that he’d just seen moments before. Kayla was still in his arms, still moaning, still in Gabrielle’s bedroom, still in 1987. He pulled Kayla from him, and she turned her big eyes on him, so dilated that they obscured most of her normally bright cornflower blue irises.
“We’re still here … aren’t we?” she asked with loathing, the nausea not having passed.
“Afraid so,” he said looking around.
Afraid so, Kayla remembered from the night before. Sorry, they have to go back now.
With what little emotional strength she had left about shattered, she began crying again. From the memory of her fever dreams, to the situation they were in, to how ill she felt, to watching Steve have to manage it all by himself – all of it. Only she had no moisture in her eyes to do anything more than wash over her lashes as she placed a latent hand over her belly.
Steve didn’t grasp any meaning in her actions at all, simply looked down at her in bitter disappointment that they were still there, as well as, frankly, exhaustion.
“I don’t think that was the jump, Sweetness, I think you’re just still,” he sighed deeply, “real sick.”
She stared at him and saw how drained her husband was. How hard he was working to keep her alive. And she felt a stab of hatred for whomever or whatever was doing this to them. Steve was on the very edge, she could see that, and all she wanted to do was hold him. Comfort him. As he’d been doing for her. Steve saw it in her expression even amidst her tears and just smiled sadly back at her.
“It’s ok, baby. I know,” he said
“I’m so sorry, Steve.” She’d stopped crying, leaving her eyes swollen on top of everything else.
“Shh.” He placed his fingers to her lips. “Get well.”
“I wanted … to go,” she said softly through her queasiness. “Why aren’t we jumping?”
“Me, too,” Steve replied. “I wanna jump out of here. Home.” He cupped her face in his hand and just looked into her helpless eyes. “We’re bound to jump soon, we’re due, don’t you think?”
Suddenly Kayla felt a wave of nausea and knew this one wouldn’t end well. “Gonna throw up …,” she mumbled through clenched teeth just before Steve watched her turn an unmistakable shade of green.
In record time, Steve was up, stripped back the covers, and lifted her out of the bed into the bathroom. He got her there just in time for her to begin mostly dry heaving; there was nothing in her body to throw up. Nothing but the pills, unfortunately. Though this body hadn’t eaten solid food in days even before Kayla had jumped into it, the water and medicine had, indeed, come up, and now Steve wasn’t sure if he needed to re-dose her or not. Again, this was not part of the drill back then.
Steve kneeled down next to her, soothing whisps of hair that had come loose from her clip back from her face until she collapsed down next to the toilet against the tub.
“I’d ask if you’re ok, but you’re not.”
“Huh-uh,” she shook her head.
“Baby, you threw up the medicine. You’re the doctor, do you need to take more?” Steve was frustrated despite his best efforts.
Kayla’s throat was on fire, she didn’t want to have to swallow anything, but she knew she had to dose up again. “Yeah,” she sighed. “Need water or I’ll get sicker.”
“Just noticing that, are ya? Why do you think I’m trying to pour it down your throat?”
Kayla peered over to her husband with that annoyed look again. “I’ll try to do better,” she said without feeling.
Steve was immediately sorry for his tone. “Sweetness,” he said taking her in his arms as they sat on the floor. She was cold and clammy from the vomiting, and he was reminded of just how wrong this whole jump was going. “I’m sorry, I’m not mad at ya, here, I’m just … not taking this well,” he said as he dragged his hand over his face. “It’s not the same as last time. You don’t remember that, I know. But it’s not going the same. You had the fever, and you slept for days, but these nightmares, baby, you didn’t have those last time.”
Kayla squeezed Steve’s arm “It’s ok,” she said faintly “you’re taking such good care of me. I’m sorry we’re here.” She started feeling weak again and didn’t have the energy to really register what Steve had just said about it being different this time. She was dizzy and tried to fight the sleepy feeling that started to crawl up her spine. “I’ll drink. Better get the phys.”
Steve got Kayla back in bed and watched her down a whole glass of water with the medication. She was still hot to the touch. And her eyes were quickly getting unfocused again.
“Steve?” she called out as she slowly blinked her eyes.
“Right here, Sweetness. Not going anywhere.”
“Steve …,” she reached out for his hand, which he took into his own. “Thank you for taking care of me,” she said overwhelmed with emotion as tears again pooled her red-rimmed eyes.
“Baby,” he said with love in his voice, “that’s what I’m here for. Besides,” he said with a chuckle, “I don’t have a choice, I got nothin’ without you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Steve ran his thumb over Kayla’s dry lips and cringed inside.
He saw that she was about to check out, again, and before he could say another word she was back in la-la land. Steve joined her for four solid hours before the nightmares began again.
Later that night, Steve couldn’t ignore the hunger that had overcome him. This body hadn’t been fed in at least 48 hours, as there was next to nothing in Gabrielle’s kitchen. He’d been fighting with himself on this, knowing there was no way around it, but he was going to have to leave again. The downright fear of jumping without her or her getting into some kind of trouble when he wasn’t there gripped him and prevented his feet from leaving that room. But he had to eat. And, to be honest, so did she. Eventually, she was going to have to have something more than water, even if it was just soup. There were also no clothes for either of them there, and sitting around in the same shirt for however much longer they had here was not going to be great. So, at 10pm, he kissed Kayla and told her that he had to go get them food and clothes and that he’d be back. With worry gripping his heart, he walked out the door and drove to a dock quite a distance from his apartment, as he knew his place was being watched by the Deverauxs.
Steve was glad that he and the bartender, Joey, had become friendly over the years, because when he appeared in the kitchen of Shenanigans, the staff was confused. He’d convinced them to just get Joey in there, and when he appeared, he was nothing but happy to help his friend. He put together enough takeout to last for possibly a week – more than enough for both of them – along with the promise to keep his mouth shut.
“Hey man, you were never here,” Joey said. “I don’t even know your name.” Steve thanked him with a thump on the back and a $20 tip up front. He deserved it. It was two huge shopping bags full of soup, sandwiches, and what seemed to Steve to be half the menu, really.
While Joey was getting that together, Steve snuck into his apartment and shoved a bunch of clothes for himself and what he could manage for her into a duffle. He grabbed a harmonica, too. Then he picked up the food, paid Joey with the cash he luckily had in his wallet, spotted and avoided a Deveraux goon, and ran back to Kayla as fast as he could. She was exactly as he’d left her.
Steve snuck in a sandwich then ate a second; he didn’t realize just how starving he was. Shortly after that he tried to cool her down with another sponge bath as she slept fitfully, and then spent the rest of the night in and out of his own sleep with the cycle of her nightmares.
Now on the morning of their third day, Steve woke up to Kayla sleeping soundly for a change. He said “thank you” out loud, kissed her forehead, and headed in to take a quick shower. He saw her wedding ring sitting previously unnoticed around his neck when he took off his shirt. “Sweetness …” He brought the solitaire to his lips and kissed it.
Steve went back to her bed and sat down. “Kayla,” he said wrapping her fingers around the ring on its chain, “you need to get better so I can get this back where it belongs. You hold onto that while I’m cleaning up, ok? Till then, how ‘bout we get rid of this one.”
He easily slipped off the marquis and wedding band from Kayla’s left hand and was surprised that he’d not noticed it there yet. “Guess I’ve been preoccupied,” he said. He wanted to hurl the rings out the window like he’d done twice before, but this time he just set them down on the table and went in to shower.
Several hours later Steve tried to get Kayla to eat some soup with her meds, but she barely woke enough to take the pills with water, let alone actually eat soup, so Steve ended up eating it instead while Kayla continued to sleep off the atropine. She actually seemed worse this day, rather than better, because she wouldn’t take any liquids, and the dehydration started taking its toll.
On the morning of the fourth day, Kayla woke up long enough to appease Steve and eat some soup, which she threw right up. Other than a few sips of water with her medication Kayla took in nothing and simply slept. The nightmares, meanwhile, got worse.
“What am I doin’ wrong this time, Kayla? Why is this happening?”
What he didn’t know was that it wasn’t him, it was Kayla. She knew deep down that she needed to just sleep, but her brain was so active with anxiety that her body was unable to shut it down with the rest of her. She was subconsciously thinking all the time about what was going on, why they were jumping, why they jumped there, and, above all else, who was taking care of their children. Was Stephanie alright? Was Joey getting what he needed? Concern for their kids was always just under the surface whether she was consciously thinking about them or not. Their children weren’t a glimmer in her eye the first time Steve had rescued her from the Deveraux house, but now that they were, and now that they were jumping, Kayla couldn’t turn her mind off. That’s why her nightmares were so chaotic and so gut-wrenching.
By the afternoon Steve knew she was in trouble. He’d tried to rouse her several times to get her to drink or go to the bathroom, but the fact was that all the fluids she had her body was sweating out in an effort to deal with the fever. He was able to get the meds in her, and there were brief moments of success in getting her to drink water, but not without a serious effort to get her cooperation. She hadn’t gone to the bathroom at all, she continued to sweat, her lips were dry and cracked, and she was completely pale. She might be the doctor in the family, but Steve knew that these were all signs of serious dehydration.
Finally, as the sun had sunk into mellow blueness of the night, Steve was at the end of his rope. He needed her to take her meds, but she was pushing him away in her sleep, jerking her head back and forth as he tried to coax the water past her cracked lips. He remembered that this was about when he’d started to panic last time and that Marcus had said that she was doing great and that sleep was what she needed. But she wasn’t going through these nightmares last time, she wasn’t so dehydrated last time, and the thought of manipulating a “random” meeting with Marcus this time seemed almost impossible. He just inherently knew that this was his last chance before he was going to start losing her.
If there was a rock bottom in this situation, Steve had just hit it.
“Goddammit, Kayla! You wake up, and you drink this water! You think it hurts now, just wait till you’re dead, baby! If you don’t get some water in you you’re going to dehydrate. You’re a doctor, you know that! And then where will we be, huh? Back in the hospital, that’s where! And out of ways to avoid the Deverauxs! I’m not losing you, baby,” he said as he cried, lifting her to his chest and stroking her hair even as he uttered the harsh words. “Now wake the hell up!”
Kayla laid on her back in the dark of the desert. She placed a protective hand over her belly and began singing.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy when skies are grey.
You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.”
Steve sat at her side holding the green-eyed baby girl with the soft light curls. Kayla looked up at him and finished the song.
“Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Steve kissed their daughter in his arms, then placed a possessive hand on his wife’s abdomen and bent down to place a soft kiss there. She shut her eyes tightly, opened them again, and he was gone. Kayla didn’t bother crying, she had no tears to shed.
Steve then appeared on her other side, and he was suddenly angry. “Goddammit, Kayla!” he yelled at her while holding no green-eyed baby. His eyes were blazing, and she was so alarmed by his anger that she blinked hard. When she looked back at him, he was crying. “I’m not losing you baby, now wake the hell up!”
The light hurt her eyes, as Kayla opened them slightly. They started to tear, and those tears joined the ones caused by Steve swearing at her.
“Why are you mad at me?” she cried, not quite awake and still halfway talking to the Steve in her nightmare.
“Kayla,” the Steve at her bedside softened slightly, “Oh, Sweetness … baby … It’s been four days. Please. Please help me, here, Kayla. I’m gonna lose you here in the middle of the wrong time if you don’t start drinking.” He was stroking the hair off her forehead and tucked bits behind her ear. He kissed her cheeks and then kissed them again. “I can’t do this without you. Please be awake long enough to take a good long drink with your antidote. Please, baby?” Now Steve started openly weeping. “Please …” Kayla stroked his arm with her thumb, “this isn’t like the first time. Just take these, ok? Drink something for me? For Joe and Stephanie? Please …”
Kayla was fully awake now, and through the haze of not knowing for sure what was real and what was only a terrible fever dream, she reached for her husband’s head, which was pressed against her breasts crying.
“How long?” Kayla asked. Had she really heard four days? They’d been here four days?
“We’ve been on this jump four days. That’s how long we’ve been here at Gabrielle’s house,” he said, afraid to hope that she’d stay awake for a bit. “It’s been two that you’ve barely had anything to drink, and I can see your body starting to shut down.”
Kayla was very alert now. And worried about the state Steve was in. “Did I sleep through it?”
Steve wiped his sleeve across one cheek, then the next. “Yeah, baby,” he chuckled, “you could say that.”
Kayla felt herself slipping back to sleep just like that and forced herself to focus on taking her meds. She saw the two pills in his hand and said, “Just one, now. I only need the one.”
“Baby, are you sure?”
“Yeah,” she said with a hoarse voice, “you’ve been giving me two a day for four days?”
“three, this is the fourth dose, not counting re-dosing you after you threw up the other day.”
“Just one now. It’s ok.”
She tried to take the pill from his hand, but her weakness did nothing for her dexterity, so Steve popped it in her mouth and put the other one back in the bottle. Then she held the glass to her lips and she drank the whole thing down with a grimace.
“How about another glass?”
“N—Ok,” she said when she saw the look of sheer fatigue and weariness in Steve’s eyes. “You getting any sleep?”
He wanted to assure her that he was fine and that he was getting plenty of rest, but the truth was written all over his face.
“God, Steve, I’m sorry,” she croaked.
“Baby, just drink this up and don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault.”
Kayla drank the water.
“Should I get Marucs?” Steve asked sullenly.
Kayla shook her head. “We’ll jump soon, right?” Then it hit her and her eyes grew to the size of saucers. Steve noticed that her eyes weren’t dilated anymore and felt a small measure of relief. “Four … days?!”
“Yeah, four.”
“We’ve never been anywhere for four days.”
Steve had already reached this epiphany on day three. He’d been waiting to jump for hours, all senses on alert for the signs. None of which had come.
“I don’t know why we’re still here, baby, but I can tell you that I’ve been out of my mind. You have no idea how bad you’ve been. I … I think we should call Marcus.”
“I just need to sleep the poison off.”
“Ok,” he relented, “but I need you to try to have some soup. Can you do that for me? I’ll make it real quick if you promise not to go anywhere.”
Food was not sounding good right now, but Steve was haggard, and she needed to do it for him. “Ok, maybe a sip or two. So tired, though.”
He kissed her and said he’d be right back. Five minutes later he was back with a mug of chicken noodle soup. He was amazed that she was actually awake when he got there and that he didn’t have a fight on his hands.
“I wanna sleep, Steve, please.”
Maybe a small skirmish, then.
“Just eat this up, baby, then you can sleep again.”
He settled for five bites and half a glass of water before she passed back out again. But Steve’s faith had rallied. He took her hand in his, kissed her fingertips, and placed her palm over his heart. Then he realized he’d forgotten to give her her ring while she was still awake. He cursed under his breath and lifted the chain over his head. “Kayla,” he said to her sleeping form. “I forgot to do this, but let’s get this ring back on your finger. I don’t want to wait anymore, baby.” He kissed the ring, slipped it on her finger, and then got in bed next to her and snuggled her up against him. “I do, Sweetness. Forever, I do.” He kissed the top of her head and sighed. He was so tired. “And ya know what, baby?” he asked closing his eye, “I know you do, too. In sickness and in health, right? I’ll never leave you, Kayla. Please don’t leave me.” In only moments Steve fell asleep holding his wife beside him, both of them resting peacefully as they turned the corner in to the fifth day of this horrible jump.