Luca’s POV
“Would you like to go to the hospital, sir? It seems like your condition has worsened.” Sarah started to say and I slowly and carefully pushed myself to a sitting posture, a small groan leaving my lips as my tired muscles protested loudly and painfully.
I haven’t even had the damn drugs yet, of course I was only going to be getting worse. I rolled my eyes a little as those words echoed around in my ear before gesturing towards the part where the switch of the air conditioner was located.
“Turn off the air conditioners.” I say to her, feeling another ghost of cold air lick against my naked skin, another wave of cold making its way into my bones through my skin, once again.
She turned around without questions, walking towards the switches to do as I asked before walking back to me and standing before me once again.
“I had Matilda make these, because it’s almost tasteless and some soup for you to swallow after the meal, since it helps with any kind of nauseous feelings and is a bit spicy as well.” Sarah started to say as she turned around and lifted the tray and brought it forward to place it on the spot before me, so it was almost touching the side of my pants covered thigh.
I glanced down at the tray and noticed the amounts of drugs which were placed in a small plate on the right side of the tray, the plates of food and bowl of soup occupying the remaining space of the tray.
I reached for the drugs at first but Sarah reached out and moved it out of my reach before I could get it and threw me a knowing look. “The food first, before the drugs. You’d only hurt yourself if you took any kind of medication into your stomach without having at least a little bit of food in your stomach.
I tried scowling at her at first but gave off on a slow, quiet and resigned sigh when it occurred to me that she was after all doing this for my own good, and not hers.
I reached for the spoon and lifted it up a little before dropping the spoon into the plate and flexing my fingers which were starting to feel numb.
I picked it up once again and scooped up a little bit of the rice before shoving the spoon into my mouth and chewing on the rice a little to swallow it. My mouth tasted really bitter and was almost at the point of it being tasteless since I couldn’t taste the rice the way I was thinking I’d be able to.
It also wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be, thankfully. I thought as I scooped up another spoonful of rice– this time, and shoving it into my mouth. The fact that I haven’t started to feel like I was about to puke was something, the way I had thought it was going to be if I dare to try eating tonight.
I managed to eat half of the rice on the plate before dropping my spoon back in tray, beside the plate before pushing it backwards. I reached forward and picked up the glass of water on the tray, tipping it backwards against my mouth and almost downing the whole content in one go. I dropped the now empty cup on the tray and let out a loud yawn and a burp, before remembering that I wasn’t alone in the room, and that Sarah was still here, on the bed, a few feet away from where the tray was currently in.
I glanced upwards to find her chuckling quietly as she watched me with a familiar look in her eyes, before glancing away almost immediately and staring back down at the scattered tray before me.
I wasn’t feeling as weak as I was feeling before, but then I wasn’t suddenly feeling like hulk, I still felt weak as fuck and stil felt like I couldn’t make it to the walk in closet without grabbing at the walls for support – but I guess it was better than the place I was at before I had gotten food into my stomach, whereby it felt like I’d end up on my ass if I had attempted standing up from the bed.
“Can you try to get some of the soup into your stomach?” Sarah asked from her position on the bed and I shrugged a little without replying to her question.
I was going to try some of it though, even though it smelled not so appealing to my nose – unlike the rice which had zero smell.
I picked up the second spoon on the tray which was a brown wooden spoon for scooping up soup and dug it a little into the hand filler bowl of soup before lifting it up and placing it lightly over my tongue. The soup tasted really awful like I had feared, making me retch a little as the smell wafted into my nose for that position and I dropped the spoon back into the tray almost immediately with a squeeze of my face
“Is it that bad?” Sarah asked with a laugh and I nodded my head once before reaching for the bottle of water on the tray and uncapping it to take a huge swig directly from the bottle.
“You’ve tried, with the amount of rice you were able to get into your stomach, I honestly thought you weren’t going to be able to eat more than a few bites, and was thinking you were going to finish the soup since you’ve always loved the chicken soup on a normal day.” Sarah started to say and I pursed my lips a little before starting to say.
“So I didn’t need to eat that much? And there I was forcing myself to get mouth bites in until I couldn’t get another spoonful in.” I said to her with narrowed eyes, feeling a little bit cheated. But Sarah only let out a small laugh as she sat on the bed beside the tray and reached for the plate of drugs which she had tugged out of my reach before.
“You needed to eat as much as you ate, and even more.” She said and I shook my head before wincing a little in the next second when a sharp stab of pain vibrated in my head because of the small head movement I had made, a small second ago.
That was the first pain that had stabbed into my head since I had started eating and I lifted up the still opened bottle water and took in another huge mouthful, swallowing the tasteless content down immediately.
“The soup tasted really bad.” I said to her as she handed me a couple of white looking tablets which I threw into my mouth and washed down with water immediately.
“That’s because you’re currently feeling sick, your taste buds are wrecked. You’ve always loved this chicken soup.” Sarah said with a small laugh as she shook a couple of capsules into my opened palm directly from the packet and I threw it into my mouth, washing it down with another mouthful of water.
“Well, I hate it now.” I grumbled out as she shook out a ton of other tablets which I couldn’t identify.
Sarah and I had been together for a long while. I could trust her the same way I trusted James. I knew she saw me as a son to her which sometimes warmed my chest in a weird way and sometimes overwhelmed the fuck out of me. She calls me my name sometimes, and sometimes addresses me respectfully, which I didn’t have a problem with. I wouldn’t go out of my way and ask her to call me by my name, but then I also didn’t have a problem with her addressing me as ‘Luca’. It all depended on her.
I threw the drugs into my mouth and swallowed it down dryly before washing it down with a mouthful of water, a tiny part of my mind reminding me that I was going to be waking up more than twice this midnight to empty my bladder.
I placed the almost empty bottle of water back on the tray after I had screwed the cap back on, leaning back a little and resting against the headboard of the bed and one of the pillows on the bed.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Sarah said to me as she lifted the tray in her two hands and turned back around, heading towards the bedroom’s door.
I called out to her before she could get to the door and croaked out a ‘thank you’ to her, because I was really thankful to her. Sarah watched out for me a lot and would almost start to dot on me, if I didn’t have this wall around me, almost eighty percent of the time that kept people away from coming way too close to me.
She let out one of her familiar smiles – the one that made her face spread wide across her face and made the small wrinkles which were already starting to appear visible on her face as the years went by, disappear and the light in her eyes to become brighter in that moment.
“It’s alright, Luca. You’re welcome.” She replied to me in a warm voice, her smile filled voice making the spot in my chest ache a little before she finally turned around and left the bedroom, quietly pulling the door close behind her- which I was really thankful for because my head was so sensitive at the moment and would start to pound at any kind of noise or movement.
I glanced around the room and lifted my hand to move my fingers through the curls on my hair. I was still feeling really sweaty and still wanted that shower so bad, but I still wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle completely the shower without falling on my face.
The screen of my phone light up from its spot on the bed without vibrating nor ringing out because I had silenced it when James had called me earlier on – which I was glad I did then. I dismissed the thought and glanced away from the phone to stare up at the roof to glance at the tiny crafted images on the roof with golden and silver intricate designs on different parts on the roof, looking up absentmindedly as my mind started to slowly drift away.
Sarah returned later with a new bottle of water which she settled on my bedside table beside the guns and knife, completely unfazed by their appearances on the table, because she was already used to it after seeing that same kind of items around me a lot before and after she started working for me.
I asked her to get me a change of clothes and a hoodie since I was starting to feel cold, which she went do while I lifted off the bed and proceeded towards the bathroom, after deciding to take a shower tonight. I knew a shower – a warm one, was going to help with my sore muscles and would also make me fall asleep faster, despite the fact that I was still feeling a little weak, but not as weak as I had felt after making my way into the house and mistakenly shutting the door quietly.
Once I done, I dressed myself up with the clothes which Sarah had set on the counter in the bathroom, feeling extremely warm after putting on the hoodie. I toweled my hair dry before heading out of the bathroom into the empty bedroom.
Sarah had changed the bedsheets and blankets, replacing them with a black one and I gratefully got into bed and pulled the blankets over my body, starting to drift into sleep a minute after getting into bed.
The reason why Sofia still hadn’t made her way into the room to get some sleep, since it was obviously around the time when she goes to bed, floated around in my slightly pounding head- as the satisfying feeling of sleep pulled me under.