Kevin Wilson is the author of the story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009). His fiction has appeared in Lamination Colony, Wigleaf, DIAGRAM, and Juked.

A Derangment in the System

The boy’s fever started in his feet and had, two days later, moved to his ankles. Dr. Tellier held a thermometer in the webbing of the boy’s toes and watched the mercury rise steadily. The boy was Dr. Tellier’s nephew, his brother’s child, but he found he could not remember the boy’s name. The doctor moved his hand from the boy’s foot, past the ankle, to the coolness of his calf, the sudden change in temperature a source of confusion for his own sense of touch. “It will pass,” the doctor told the boy.

He led the boy back into the waiting room, where his mother, the doctor’s sister-in-law, was waiting. She had refused to accompany the boy for fear of prolonged exposure to Dr. Tellier. The doctor and his sister-in-law had, only a few weeks previous, begun an affair, and the boy’s mother believed this transgression had brought about the boy’s present condition. “It will pass,” he told the boy’s mother, and her eyes turned to slits. “Will it?” she asked. He considered the question, paused, then nodded. “Yes, it will,” he said.

The fever moved to the boy’s knees. He was kept home from school, his feet resting in bags of ice, replenished every hour. Dr. Tellier came to the house while his brother was at work. His sister-in-law waited in the kitchen while the doctor examined the boy. He wedged the thermometer in the pocket behind the boy’s knee. One hundred and four degrees. “Tell me, son,” the doctor said, grimacing at his familiarity with the child, “did you rub something on your feet?” The boy shook his head, not making eye contact with the doctor. “Perhaps you found a canister peeking out from the earth, or a strangely discolored mud at the edges of the lake?” the doctor continued. Again, the boy shook his head. Dr. Tellier smiled and gripped the boy’s ankle as if his leg was a club, a heavy reassurance, and then left the house.

That night, the doctor and his sister-in-law met in the decommissioned army tank in the middle of the city park. She rode Dr. Tellier to an orgasm that, somehow, gave her a nosebleed. The doctor left unsatisfied, she let the blood pool on the tips of her fingers and then painted his face with strange markings, an imaginary alphabet. The doctor struggled to reach his pants, balled up in the corner of the tank, in order to retrieve his handkerchief. “Don’t bother,” his sister-in-law said, drops of blood falling from her chin, “it will pass.”

The fever was waist-high and Dr. Tellier quickly removed the thermometer from the boy’s rectum before the glass shattered. “I’m at a loss,” he later told the boy’s mother. Her nose was packed with gauze, the flow of blood starting and stopping depending on her proximity to the doctor. “Is he sick?” she asked. “Should I be worried?” she asked. The doctor told her that, yes, he was sick and that she should only be worried in the sense that something unexplainable was happening to her son. “Jesus,” she told him, “you never say anything the way it should be said.”

The days grew longer. The fever got worse.

Dr. Tellier received a package in the mail. Inside, he found a handkerchief, stained a deep, burnt red. He drove to their house, waited for his brother to leave for the bar, and then knocked on the door. The boy, fevered up to his armpits, answered the door. Dr. Tellier shoved the handkerchief in his pocket and knelt down to address the boy at eye level. “You are going to be okay,” he said, and then hugged the boy. The boy, surprisingly, hugged Dr. Tellier and would not let go. “You are going to be okay,” Dr. Tellier continued, the boy’s face cool and welcoming against his cheek, “because I am going to save you.” He kissed the boy on his forehead and the boy smiled. “Now,” Dr. Tellier said, “I’m going upstairs to tell your mother the exact thing that I told you but it will take a lot longer to tell her and you should wait downstairs.”

After they had finished, had stripped the sheets and placed a clean set on the bed, Dr. Tellier showed her the handkerchief. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked her. “Where did you get that?” she asked him. “From you,” he said. “You sent it to me.” She shook her head. “I did not. I throw them away once I use them up.” The doctor felt a sudden sickness at the understanding that there were more of these handkerchiefs. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked again. “Run some tests,” she finally said, smoothing the wrinkles out of the bedsheets, “keep me alive.”

The boy’s fever reached the top of his head, his hair making sounds like it was burning. Dr. Tellier stayed in the laundry room of his brother’s house for a week, sleeping on a cot, watching over the boy who would, Dr. Tellier realized, probably die in his care. When he had finally fallen asleep, the dryer rumbling beside him, the doctor awoke ten minutes later to find his brother standing over him. “Do you want this?” his brother asked him. “What?” the doctor responded. “You can have this if you want it,” his brother said. “You have to tell me what this is,” the doctor answered. “No,” his brother said, “That’s what you have to tell me.”

The fever passed into the atmosphere, disappeared. Dr. Tellier learned of this fact when the boy crawled onto the cot and slipped inside the doctor’s arms. “What did I tell you?” the doctor said.