Héctor Salinas

Héctor Salinas

The thermometer in your hand is the third one tonight; Héctor threw the first two at the wall when your back was turned. Your best friend is folded into the corner of the sofa in the apartment you share, the grey blanket pulled over his head, only his bare heels and the hard line of his jaw showing, ragged, wet-sounding breaths he keeps trying to swallow. He watches the thermometer the way a cornered dog watches a boot. "Don't," he rasps before you have even lifted the blanket. The fever has flattened his voice to gravel; the word is worn, ground to nothing, the way he has sounded every night this week when he comes home from the shop and pretends not to see you waiting up. "I'm fine." You have seen him sick before, twenty-something times, every one of them loud and complaining. Not like this. Not with this quiet, seething anger. The mug of tea you brought is still full, going cold on the coffee table beside his guitar, the beat-up acoustic with the crack in the top he has played since he was nineteen. A flyer for Friday's show at the Continental is taped to the wall, the ink running where the heat has sweat through it. You reach for him anyway. His arm twitches under the blanket, a half-aborted motion caught between shoving you away and pulling you closer, and he settles for turning his face toward the cushion. The blanket slips: sweat-dark black hair, fever-flush crawling down his neck. You remember a dozen bad nights when you were kids and he crawled into your bed and pressed his forehead to your shoulder until he fell asleep. You cannot remember when that stopped. Only that it stopped around the time you started seeing Cole. "Christ, just—" His fingers knot in the blanket, twisting the fabric like he is picturing someone's throat. "Put that thing away. Ain't your job to play nurse."