Nuala, my best friend, opened the door with a thermometer in her mouth and one boot unlaced.
The rest of her working outfit was intact, although not at its best. The rose overskirt had been buttoned up crooked over cream shorts. One quilted sleeve was rolled to the elbow and the other was not. Her star brooch hung dark at her collar, and the gold piping she had sewn by hand made brave straight lines around a woman who looked ready to fold in half.
I set my care case inside, shut the door, and counted: two mugs on the coffee table, three open cupboards, a glass medicine bottle, a bowl of keys, loose cushions, tissues everywhere. I had packed for a fever. I had not packed for the apartment.
Nuala took the thermometer out. “Thirty-nine point one.”
“Since when?”
She looked at the digital display as if it had asked the question. “Six? Woke at—”
Coral pinlights appeared in the air beside her cheek. They were each the size of a grain of rice, twelve of them in a tightening ring, too crisp and even to be reflections. A three-note chime stepped downward through the room.
I knew that signal. I did not know what came after it. Neither did she.
“Brace,” Nuala got out.
The lights sharpened. She sneezed into the crook of her sleeve.
Every loose thing under five kilograms rose.
The mugs lifted cleanly from the table. Keys poured upward in a glittering school. The medicine bottle struck the underside of a shelf, and a cushion planted itself against the ceiling. My case stayed down because I still had one hand through its straps; its detachable shoulder pad did not. Tissues drifted around Nuala's head in slow white turns.
I caught the medicine bottle between both palms before it could spin away.
“Forty seconds?” I asked.
She nodded.
At thirty-eight seconds the keys were over the rug, the mugs over the sofa, and the bottle in my grip. At forty, gravity returned without ceremony. Two keys still found the floorboards. The cushion landed on Nuala's head.
She pushed it aside. “Good entrance.”
“Sit down,” I said. “Before anything else goes up. I've brought everything.”
She pointed past me at the case and cupped a hand at her mouth. “Drink.”
“I brought water.” I opened the case. Oral rehydration packets, water, medicine, two thermometers because one was a plan and two was a system, towels, tape, rubbish bags, cooling cloths, spare socks, a compact tool roll, and the flat packet of colored cards Nuala used for noisy jobs. “I left the broth in the car. Too hot to carry through this.”
Nuala pointed at the water. I poured. She sat on the floor rather than cross the field of newly landed objects, and I crouched close while she drank three measured swallows.
Her witch cold made every sneeze release one of six workings from her living magic. The selection was random. Nuala could not stop the release, delay it, aim it, choose an effect, or lean on the odds. No symptom, mood, or previous result changed what came next.
Selection reached no farther than three metres and only through Nuala’s direct sight; an opaque barrier stopped it. The coral lights and the same descending three notes meant only that in two to four seconds something would happen.
I had mistaken that small warning for something reassuring when she first described it. Now I understood it as a fire alarm that declined to mention the location of the fire.
I taped the cupboards shut. I moved the glassware behind the closed kitchen door. I shoved magazines into drawers, tied the keys to the radiator, and filled a shopping bag with every loose object I could see under five kilograms.
Nuala watched me from the floor. Her drink rested between both hands.
“Okay. The bathroom,” I said. “Nothing loose, all tile, and a door. You in the bath with blankets, the case by the sink, and I stay outside the three metres, I'll measure it. Okay?”
“No.”
“It's the smallest closed room.”
“Yes.” She frowned. “Small.”
I had already picked up the case.
Nuala held out her palm. I knew that sign from work nights and costume fittings: stop your hands as well as your mouth.
I stopped.
She took my phone, opened the drawing screen, and sketched a narrow rectangle. A blue line for the bath. A black block for the toilet. Crosses along all the hard edges. Then she drew one red arrow at the door and trapped it under three looping circles.
“One exit,” she said. “Water. Mirror. Pipe. Hard—soft, then stuck.”
“We could pad the edges. I've got towels, I've got—”
She looked at the towels in my open case. So did I. Cloth could bloom bigger than a person for eight minutes.
Coral pinlights pricked into view above the phone, and the chime descended.
“Case shut,” I said, moving before thought could catch up.
Nuala slapped the lid closed. I snapped one latch. The second stayed open as she sneezed.
The packet of tissues wedged in her overskirt pocket flowered outward. Paper pleats billowed across her lap, over my hands, and up into the gap between the sofa and the hall doorway, every folded layer opening into a sheet as wide as a bedspread. Nuala vanished behind a white wall. Only the toe of her unlaced boot showed at the bottom.
“Nuala?”
Her hand came out, fingers spread: wait.
The mass walled off her corner of the room. I could have torn into it. Instead I watched the narrow gap at floor level until her phone slid through. On its screen she had drawn a green circle, then the number eight.
Eight minutes. Stable. No rescue requested.
I sat down outside the bloom. “I'm timing it.”
Her thumb appeared from the folds.
When the working released, the packet contracted with a long papery sigh. Half the tissues had torn along their folds, and the swelling packet had split the pocket seam beneath it. Neither mended.
I abandoned the bathroom.
The disused washroom in the basement had bare concrete walls and floor, a deep utility basin, and two doors on opposite sides. Nuala had taken me down there once to wash dye out of thirty metres of ribbon. I could picture the clear floor and the second exit. I could also picture two flights of stairs, a fire door, and the narrow turn at the landing.
“What about the basement?” I said. “The old washroom, where we did the ribbon. It's got two doors. It's two flights, I know, but if we go slowly—”
She took the phone, drew a box with a door on either side, and circled it in green. Then she drew a red line through a stick figure lifting another.
“I wasn't going to carry you.”
Nuala stared.
“I am no longer going to carry you.”
She nodded and handed the phone back.
We prepared the route together. I could inventory hazards, but Nuala knew which barrier actually counted. A shut cupboard door was protection. A clear shower screen was not. A towel over a shelf was a barrier until the towel itself became a target.
I closed doors. Nuala chose what came within three metres of her. She made me take the loose cape from her shoulders, then sat on the hall floor and laced the loose boot, slowly, and kept the rest of the outfit on; it was made for her work, and changing would cost time and privacy she had not offered. She clipped the dark brooch more securely. It did nothing for the cold. It was hers, and she wanted it there.
At the front door I hoisted the care case onto my shoulder and hugged it upright.
Nuala pointed at its wheels.
“If I'm holding it, nothing can take it,” I said. “The shoulder pad went up and the case didn't. You saw.”
She pointed at the wheels again, then at the stairs, and tipped one flat hand slowly off the edge of the other.
I lowered the case, pulled out the handle, and the plan came out all at once. “Okay. Okay, so I go first, one stair down from you, and you keep the rail, and we stop at every landing, every one, even if you feel fine, and if the lights come we both plant our feet and hold the rail, and if you start to go I'll get an arm round your waist and—”
“No.” Nuala tapped her elbow. “Here. If I ask.”
I shut my mouth.
Her own mouth moved in a soundless rehearsal, then managed: “And wait.”
I nodded.
The apartment fire door had swollen in its frame years before. I pulled. The care case struck the jamb, and because I was still convinced momentum was a kind of reasoning, I forced it.
The coral lights kindled along Nuala's sleeve. Three notes fell.
“Hands off,” she said.
I let go. She sneezed.
The wooden repair block covering the jamb’s damaged lower half softened like warm wax. My shove was still in the case; it rolled on through, dragging a deep curve into the soft wood. I caught the case on the other side while the block sagged against its screws.
“Thirty seconds,” Nuala said. “Prop. Not push.”
I jammed the metal doorstop under the sagging block without trying to straighten it. When the wood hardened, the door could still close, although the gap was shaped like a tired mouth.
Nuala tapped her elbow.
I offered my hand under it. She set the amount of weight.
We descended seven stairs before the pinlights returned, identical in every way, and the chime ran down the same three notes it had used for mugs, paper, and wood. We braced.
Nuala sneezed. My care case vanished from beside my ankle, where I had let it ride on its wheels.
In its place sat an empty plastic bucket from the alcove on the landing below. The case appeared in the alcove, rocked, and toppled out of it, sliding across the landing and out of sight around the turn.
I lunged one step.
Nuala's hand closed on the back of my jacket. Her grip was weak and entirely deliberate.
“Imogen. Wait.”
The case was no longer within reach. Nothing was falling. I looked at her instead. She showed me two fingers and pointed down: two of us, then the route.
We took the landing together. The case lay against the lower wall with both latches closed.
I retrieved it. She watched my feet.
The next warning came at the second landing, three minutes later. We planted our boots and waited. Nuala's sneeze brought twenty litres of rain down inside the stairwell.
It arrived all at once, straight and cold. Water slapped my shoulders, sheeted over Nuala's rose overskirt, and ran down the steps. The case seals held. The landing did not become less tiled because I disliked it.
I swept the worst of the water off the landing with the side of my boot. Nuala stayed against the wall where she could see my hands and both ways out. She raised a closed fist when I moved too fast, opened it when the next tread was clear, then counted each step with her fingers.
At the basement door I asked, “How's your breathing?”
She rocked her hand: not good, not worse.
“Dizzy?”
One finger: a little.
“Can you keep going, or do you want the step?”
Green card.
She held it in front of her chest until I nodded. Then she put it in my palm, because the tissues had split her only pocket.
The washroom was as empty as I remembered, which was not empty enough. I moved a mop, a wire basket, a stool, and a cracked plastic bin through the far door, took a rigid plastic splash guard off the shelf of cleaning supplies, and taped an opaque rubbish bag over the rest. Nuala looked the room over and nodded. While she was lowering herself to the floor by the wall she had chosen, I clipped the splash guard to the lip of the utility basin anyway, because I could not leave a bare basin alone. She saw me do it.
Then I placed my care case beside her wall and unlatched it.
Her expression changed.
“Everything here,” I said. “One supply point, everything in one place, and I can reach you and the case from either door, so whatever happens I only have to get to one spot.”
She pointed to the three-metre tape measure in my tool roll, then to the case, then to herself.
“It's sealed,” I said. “It came down the stairs through twenty litres of rain and it's dry inside.”
Nuala looked at the open latches.
She took the blue, yellow, red, and green cards from me. She laid blue beside the water, yellow beside the medicine, and green near the far door, and kept red in her lap. Then she drew the room on my phone: Nuala in the center, a ring around her, supplies separated outside it. Two arrows entered from opposite doors. Inside the ring she drew only a mat, one covered cup, a small towel, a cooling cloth, and her repair roll.
“All right. But medicine outside means a handoff.”
She held up two fingers and pointed at the doors.
Two handoff routes.
I heard myself say, “Splitting the kit doubles the retrieval points.”
Nuala shut her eyes, either from fever or because I had used a sentence like that while she was sitting wet on a basement floor.
I gave her the phone. She typed with both thumbs and turned the bright screen toward me.
ONE CASE = ONE WET CASE.
Then, beneath it:
YOU CAN WALK.
I picked up the water and carried it out through one door, and the medicine out through the other. Towels went on a high shelf behind an opaque cupboard door. The tool roll stayed with Nuala because she chose it. We taped a three-metre ring on the floor, leaving both exits open. On both our phones I set up four full-screen colors either of us could call with a tap: blue for water, yellow for medicine check, red for stop, green for ready. On hers, she drew six plain icons to name a working after it arrived: arrows up, a widening square, crossed places, a bent line, rain, and eight small circles.
The nurse answered while I wrung stair water out of my sleeves. Nuala nodded before I put the call on speaker. I reported the temperature, the last dose, how much she had drunk, and that she was alert but congested. I did not ask the nurse to solve magic. The nurse asked ordinary questions about breathing, chest pain, confusion, and keeping fluids down. She told us what changes meant urgent help, to follow the labeled dose, offer small frequent drinks, and keep Nuala comfortably cool rather than chilled.
Nuala answered what concerned her body. “No chest pain. Breathing... nose. Water stays.”
When the call ended, I held up yellow. Nuala checked the time herself and nodded. I brought the medicine to the edge of the taped ring, set it down, and backed away. She took it, swallowed it with water, and returned the cup to the same mark. Then she spread the flowered cooling cloth across her knees.
For eleven minutes, nothing happened.
The fever did not break. Sweat darkened Nuala's hair at the temples. I crouched beyond the ring and talked, because the quiet was worse. I told her about the ribbon we had rinsed down here, all thirty metres of it, and how the dye had come out on the floor and my shoes and not one drop on her. I told her the piping still looked good wet, which was true.
Her thumb went to the dark brooch and stayed there. “Hate it... dark.”
“I know. It'll come back.”
She did not ask how I knew. “Keep... talking. Ribbon.”
So I told it again, slower.
Coral lights appeared over her knees, and the three-note chime descended. We moved through the routine we had built. Feet planted. Hands clear. Eyes on Nuala until the working declared itself. She sneezed.
The roll of floor tape I had left on the ring's edge made seven copies. Eight identical black rolls bounced across the concrete; two wobbled into the ring and one fetched up against Nuala's boot. She pointed to the icon of eight circles, then to the timer on her phone, and held up five fingers.
I chalked the roll still sitting on the tape line and used a broom from outside the room to nudge the others clear of the ring. Nuala watched the broom head, correcting me left and right with small motions. When five minutes ran out, the copies were gone and the chalked roll was still there. So were the scuffs from pushing them.
Four minutes later, the warning repeated.
“Ready?” I asked.
Green shone on Nuala's phone.
She sneezed, and the flowered cooling cloth across her knees opened into a soft, monstrous acreage. Its printed roses became broad as plates. It climbed the basin and curtained the near door, cutting off my sight of her.
I went to the other door. That was why it was open.
Nuala sat behind the cloth gripping the mat. She showed red until the fabric stopped shifting, then pointed to the widening-square icon. Eight fingers, shown in two groups of four. Her breathing had gone too rough for speech.
I stayed at the second door. The cloth was between us from one direction only, and it was soft. I held up blue. She shook her head. I held up green as a question. After a moment, she answered green.
At the fever's peak, the intervals shortened.
Loose things floated next: Nuala's shears, a spool, two clips, and the little steel awl from the mat, with the small towel, the cooling cloth, and the covered cup turning slowly behind them. We kept our hands down. The awl drifted point-first into the plastic light cover and cracked it with a sound like ice under a shoe. I flinched toward her. Nuala flung up red.
No grabbing.
For forty seconds the tools pressed and wandered near the ceiling. Then everything fell; the cup landed on its side with its lid holding. Nuala covered her head with her arms. I waited for the last clip to stop bouncing before I entered. The light cover held, split but not shedding pieces. I switched off that fixture at the wall and moved the tools out by their roll once Nuala showed green.
The next sneeze softened my splash guard. It sagged over the lip of the basin like a wet page. Nuala pointed to the bent-line icon and held both hands out: don't correct it while the working lasted. We let it hang. Thirty seconds later it hardened that way, useless but stable.
“My guard,” I said.
Nuala coughed into her sleeve. “Your... excellent guard.”
“I'm writing it down. Guard first. Don't say anything.” I started the repair list on my phone.
She tapped blue.
I brought water from the far station and had just set the cup down inside the ring when coral lights lit the drops on its lid and the chime fell through its three notes. I stepped back outside the ring to brace.
Nuala sneezed. The covered cup and a folded rubbish bag exchanged places. The bag appeared where the cup had stood. The cup appeared on the tape line, where the bag had been lying folded, and a splash of water jumped from under its lid onto the concrete.
I looked at the cup. Then at Nuala.
She pointed to the crossed-places icon. Her hand wavered, fell to her knee, and stayed there.
“Can I come in?”
She looked at my green screen for several seconds. Then she nodded and pointed to her elbow.
I entered without rescuing the cup. I offered my forearm under hers. Nuala decided the pressure, used it to shift onto her side, and let me place the small towel beneath her cheek. She was shivering now. I fetched a dry blanket from behind the opaque cupboard door, held it up for her to see, and waited. Green.
The blanket stayed folded below her shoulders so it could not pin her if it bloomed. I checked her temperature. Lower by two tenths, which was not a cure and was not nothing. She drank from the displaced cup after I brought it back. We darkened the uncracked light. I put the prescribed interval into my phone and showed her before setting the alarm.
The next quiet lasted eighteen minutes.
Her breaths became easier through her mouth. The fever still made her face too bright, but she tracked the blue card when I raised it and chose two swallows.
Coral pinlights gathered once more beside her shoulder, and three notes descended. Nuala opened her eyes and planted both palms. I stayed beyond the ring with the doors clear.
She sneezed.
Twenty litres of rain fell inside the washroom. It drummed on the concrete, darkened the rose and cream of her outfit, rinsed the chalk off the tape roll, and ran out beneath both doors. The medicine and the spare towels stayed dry in their cupboards. The covered cup stayed upright.
Nuala wiped her face and pushed the soaked blanket off her legs. She looked at the blue card, then at me, and raised one finger.
One drink.
I brought it to the tape with two dry towels from the cupboard. She drank, passed the cup back, and took both towels, one for her hair and one for her shoulders. She pointed to the mat. Then she held up green.
I dried the floor beyond the ring. I put the next measured drink outside the three-metre line and made its position a blue square on both our screens. I propped the fire door open with a second stop, set alarms for water and temperature, and added to the repair list: light cover, jamb, tissue packet, overskirt pocket, washroom floor, stair landing. Upstairs would wait until she could choose the route back.
Nuala slept in her wet outfit, gold piping and all, under the dry towels, and the coral lights stayed gone. I sat between the two open doors and watched her phone in case it changed color.