I couldn’t tell at first if the tapping against my arm was part of the weird dream I was having about the squirrel monkey trying to get my attention at the animal sanctuary in Puerto Viejo, or if it was in real life. But when the strength and frequency of it increased, only to be then accompanied by a “Piper! Piper!” I struggled to open my eyes and was met with darkness and a moaning from the floor.

Crap, I was still kind of drunk. I pushed myself up to sit and flicked on the lamp on the side table. Derrick was lying on the floor.

“What the hell happened?” I asked, scrambling out of bed to kneel next to him. He was curled up in the fetal position and clutching his stomach and chest, a thick bead of sweat across his forehead. I put my hand on his cheeks; he was on fire.

“I…I can’t breathe.” He made a face like he’d just been stuck through with a rusty pitchfork.

“Is it the booze? Alcohol poisoning?” He shook his head. “The altitude? Do you have altitude sickness? Do you want me to make you some tea?”

He nodded. “Yeah…maybe.”

“Okay.” I stood up and put on the kettle and rummaged around in his backpack for the pills and some Advil. “Here.” I placed them in his hands and then passed him a bottle of water. He popped them in his mouth but struggled to swallow any water.

“My chest feels like it’s in a vice,” he wheezed. “And my…my stomach.”

“Do… do you want me to go and have the front desk call a doctor?” I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t lose him, too. I couldn’t do this alone. I couldn’t start over again.

“Maybe.”

But I couldn’t handle maybe. I needed confirmation that he wasn’t going to die on me.

I tossed on some yoga pants and a hoodie, slipped my feet into my shower flip flops and then headed out to the front desk.

It was about twenty minutes later before a soft rap at the door had me getting up and tucking a pillow under Derrick’s head, where my lap had been. I opened the door and a small but friendly-appearing woman, in green scrubs and a no-nonsense bun, smiled and nodded.

“Hello, I am Dr. Garcia.”

“Hello. He’s over here.” I led her to the man who, in just four short days, suddenly meant more to me than I was prepared to admit.

She knelt down next to him and opened up her black medical bag, putting the stethoscope into her ears. She started listening to his chest. He was shirtless, and his chest heaved and rattled with each strangled breath.

“Deep breath for me,” she said softly, her English impeccable, though not without that hypnotic Spanish lilt.

He did as he was told, but winced and then coughed. She moved it down to his stomach and then told him to breathe in and out again. He winced and coughed again, but did as the good doctor instructed.

She turned to me. “I believe we need to take your husband to the hospital for tests. I believe it is his stomach.”

I didn’t bother correcting her, that Derrick wasn’t my husband. Now was not the time. “His stomach? But he’s complaining of chest pain.”

She nodded. “We will check that, too. But we must go.”

I bobbed my head and then started scurrying around the room, changing my clothes to something a little more suitable and helping Derrick get dressed as well. He grimaced and moaned with every move. Even just putting on socks appeared to be painful.

Within ten minutes we were in the back of an unmarked, unassuming SUV and driving through the quiet, early-morning streets of ancient Cusco, Derrick’s head in my lap. I was mindlessly stroking his hair while murmuring incoherent reassurances, though I wasn’t sure who they were for, him or me.

It didn’t take long before we pulled up to a building with a giant red cross on it and some Spanish words that I couldn’t quite understand. The only one I was able to decipher was médico, but that was good enough for me. We were at the hospital; Derrick was going to be okay.

Another tiny woman, this time in peach scrubs, met us at the door with a wheelchair. Dr. Garcia and I helped Derrick into it, and then we were whisked forward to an elevator, where we rode three stories up to the top. More peach-scrubbed cuties stared at us, wide-eyed and eager, when the double doors parted, each one appearing to have an important job, because they flocked forward and fawned and fussed over Derrick as if he were a crown prince or Channing Tatum without any clothes on.

They rolled him into a brightly lit hospital room and helped him into bed. All the while, the patient did as he was told. A manly moan or wince was the only sign that he was in any discomfort, besides the grayish pallor of his skin and the deep purple bags under his eyes.

I felt unnecessary and in the way, as half a dozen tiny Peruvian honeybees in peach scrubs scurried around. Each with a purpose. I had no purpose. Except to panic and pray that he didn’t die.

His gaze snagged mine as he writhed in pain on the bed. “Piper?”

“Yeah?” I tried to maneuver around the nurses so I could be by his side, but there were so many of them, and they wouldn’t let me get close enough.

“Piper… you have to tell them that I’m… that I’m recovering from brain surgery. I just had radiation and a craniotomy a few months ago. You have to tell them.”

What the hell? Brain surgery? Radiation? Why was I just hearing about this now?

“And Piper?” He grimaced when one of the nurses pressed fairly hard on his abdomen. “I’m allergic to penicillin. You have to tell them that, too, okay?”

Oh, for fuck’s sake! When it rains, it goddamned pours!

I nodded but realized he probably couldn’t see me. “O-okay. Brain surgery, radiation, and penicillin. Got it.”

A round-faced nurse, who only came up to my chin, pushed me out of the way. “Out, Miss. Out!”

I took a couple of steps back, my hamstrings hitting the edge of the other bed, but I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t leave him. He couldn’t leave me. I started to climb up onto the spare bed behind me, thinking that would put me out of the way, but I’d be able to stay. But then the little nurses started poking him. Two were on one side, trying to collect blood. I couldn’t really see what they were doing except grabbing vials from a tray and then replacing them full of blood. Another two were using a sharp needle on the other arm, attempting to insert an IV, but from what I could tell, by the way his arm resembled a pin cushion, they couldn’t find a vein. They made another attempt, and he hissed in pain. So seeing that the other two had finished taking blood samples, I ran around to his other side, hoping to hold his hand and be some small presence of comfort.

Only when I made my way around to the far side of the bed, my feet came out from under me and I slipped, grappling on to the bed sheet and his arm, his covered-in-blood arm, for support. I looked down to see what I’d slipped in, and the floor, along with his arm, that side of the bed, and all his bed clothes and the sheets were drenched in blood. Derrick’s blood! What the fuck had they done?

One look at the bloodshed, and I ran back around to the other side, leaped up onto the free bed, hugged my knees, buried my eyes and started rocking back and forth, humming. If whatever bug or virus that was slowly attacking his system didn’t kill him, the five-foot-nothing vampires in scrubs, who’d apparently just tapped the vein on his wrist bone as if he was a freaking maple tree, certainly would. What kind of barbarian hospital had we just we just walked into?

He was breathing heavy and groaning, his whole body trying to curl up into a ball as the agony ripped through him, but more little nurses — it seemed as though they just kept multiplying — appeared from the door and held him down. Eventually one of the twitchy-palmed harpies managed to get the IV line in, and then another one helped me down off the bed and ushered me out, prattling away in Spanish. I fought to stay. I didn’t want to leave him. But she thrust a telephone into my hand and started saying “insurance” with a thick accent.

Finally, the doctor, who spoke English, came and sat beside me on the bench just outside of Derrick’s room. “We need you to call your insurance company and verify your husband’s coverage. We cannot do anymore without knowing you are covered.” So much for the Hippocratic oath.

I’d managed to grab Derrick’s insurance information from his backpack just as we were leaving, having asked him where it was and deciphering his mumbled directions. I may have been in full-on freak-out panic mode, but I wasn’t without with my legal eagle wits. I’d grabbed his personal information envelope out of the top pouch of his bag and tossed it in with everything else I’d brought with us, like a change of clothes for him, toothbrush, razor, contacts, glasses, etc.

I nodded at the doctor but asked to be alone for a moment. I needed to tell the person at the insurance company the situation but also confess that I wasn’t Derrick’s wife. I didn’t want that revelation to come out at the hospital, though. Hospitals have weird policies about only letting family in the room. And right now, even though we’d only known one another for four days, we were the closest thing to family the other person had, and I wasn’t about to leave him.

She gave me a small smile and then rested her hand on mine with a nod before getting up and heading back to go and tend to Derrick. It made me feel better to know she was overseeing his care and he wasn’t left in the clutches of the bloodsuckers masquerading as nurses.

“Hello, Pacifica Medical Insurance.” I skipped all the “press one for blah, blah, press two for blah, blah” and just hit zero so I could speak to a living, breathing human. “This is Felix, how can I help you?”

“Hi, Felix. Listen.” And I explained. I can’t tell you how good it felt to talk to someone from home. Even though I didn’t know Felix, didn’t even know what part of the country he was currently in, he was in Canada and helping me, and at the moment I found that very comforting.

“All right, Ms. Valentine. I can help you. Do you have Mr. King’s insurance information with you?”

“I do.” I rattled it all off. The doctor returned, and I encouraged her to sit down. Felix would soon be asking to speak with her, to verify a few things.

Once Felix and Dr. Garcia confirmed that Pacifica Medical Insurance would indeed cover anything that Derrick required, she handed the phone back to me.

“So how are you doing?” Felix asked. I felt my throat tighten; tears threatened and burned the back of my eyes. “You okay?”

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I couldn’t break down, not right now. Not until I knew that he was going to be okay. I nodded but then realized he couldn’t see me. “I’ll be okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep.”

“It’s okay to be scared, you know.”

I wiped away the tear that had suddenly started to sprint down the crease of my nose. “I know. But right now, I can’t be. I have to be strong for him.”

“How long have you known one another?”

I snorted. Here I was, having a therapy session in a Peruvian hospital with a Canadian insurance broker over the phone, at, God, what time was it? I looked at the clock on my phone and nearly had a heart attack. It was four o’clock in the morning.

Another tear threatened, and I hastily wiped it away, sniffing before I answered. “Four days. But we’ve already been through a lot together, so it feels like longer.”

“Hmm.”

Oh, come on now, Felix, do you want me to find a couch to lie down on, too?

Dr. Garcia poked her head around the corner and nodded at me. “Thank you for your help, Felix, but the doctor has said I could go and see Derrick again. It was nice to hear a friendly voice, thank you.”

“My pleasure, Ms. Valentine. And I hope the rest of your trip goes more smoothly. My best to Mr. King. And please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Pacifica Medical Insurance again if you should have any questions.”

I said goodbye and followed Dr. Garcia into Derrick’s room. The lights had been brought down low, and he was no longer in his pajamas (probably because they were covered in blood). He was in a brown hospital gown, had an IV in his right arm and what appeared to be a giant bandage on his left hand. No shit, they’d hacked him open to get at the O-negative. Of course, he’d be bandaged up.

“He has a gastrointestinal bug,” the doctor started. “We will keep him overnight, and then issue him a prescription tomorrow.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to leave him. What if they wanted more blood? Did he have any left? It’d looked like all twelve pints had been spilled on the floor.

“You can stay here tonight if you’d like, Mrs. King. In the other bed. It is okay.”

I hadn’t even realized it, but I’d been stroking Derrick’s forehead. He already felt cooler, and there was no longer an unhealthy gray tint to his face. I thanked Dr. Garcia and slid into the adjacent bed, watching as his chest rose and fell, his breathing deep and even. He wasn’t in pain anymore, and that was a good thing.

* * *

I hardly slept at all. The smell of the hospital room alone was enough to keep me up, but thoughts of the past week and the pure and utter chaos of it all kept my eyes wide and my breathing ragged. How had this happened? What were they after? We’d gutted my bags twice now and found nothing. Why was I a target? I had all these plans to head to Mancora or Iquitos, see more of the country, but at this point, now all I wanted to do was fulfill my promise to Ray and then go home.

I heard him moan next to me and shot straight up in my bed. “Derrick?”

“Piper?”

I slipped out from between the sheets and went to him. “I’m here, I’m here. What do you need? What can I do?”

“Are you okay?” Oh, my God. Here he was lying in a foreign hospital, bloodless and with a South American bug eating him from the inside out, and he was worried about me?

I brushed his hair off his forehead. “I’m okay. How do you feel?”

His eyes opened slowly. They were bloodshot. “Like I was hit by a bus full of alpacas.”

I snorted. “You have a gastrointestinal bug.”

He nodded, but then winced. “Yeah?”

“Do you need anything?”

“You.”

“Me?”

He shifted on the bed until there was enough room for me to lie next to him, and he patted the empty space. “I need you.”

My chest tightened, but I clambered on and tucked in tight next to him, rearranging his IV line up and over our heads. He pulled me close with his other hand. I took in the giant bandage and a surge of rage coursed through me; they’d stuck a spigot in his vein and had collected his blood like he was some goddamned tree. Where on God’s green earth were we? What time were we in? Because they certainly didn’t do this in the twenty-first century I lived in.

“It’s going to be okay.” His voice already sounded like he was halfway back in dreamland. “It’s going to be okay. We’re together. We have to stay together.”

He linked his fingers through mine.

“I can’t lose you,” I whispered. “I can’t lose you, too.”

He hummed behind me and tugged me harder against him, but he didn’t say anything. A few moments later I heard him snoring behind me, while his breath was warm on my neck. I closed my eyes and eventually found sleep.

* * *

“You’ve got to get me out of here,” Derrick said later that morning after the nurses had come in and woke us up at the crack of dawn, for no real reason. We’d had a hard night of partying, followed by an even harder night of Derrick practically dying in the hostel and then being blood-let within an inch of his life, like we were in some eighteenth-century witch doctor's shanty. Only to be roused by a bright light and brutishly opened door at seven in the morning.

All the nurses were in pale blue today, as if the days of the week were color-coded, and the way they pushed me out of his bed and told me to go had both of us wondering what the heck was up. We asked for Dr. Garcia again, as she seemed to be the only person who spoke any English, but apparently, she was out for the morning and wouldn’t be back until later in the afternoon.

I shook my head. “They won’t tell me anything.”

I’d been given the third degree by the nurses when I requested to see him after he’d been moved to another room. They’d sent me back to the hostel, telling me that Derrick needed proper sleep and more blood tests and that I was no longer welcome to sleep in the free bed. They’d been so persistent and eager to get rid of me that the head nurse, who I learned was named Sylvia, had called me a cab and accompanied me in the elevator to the street.

But I didn’t spend much time at the hostel. I showered, changed, ate, and was hailing a cab back outside within a couple of hours. I no longer felt safe without Derrick. I didn’t want to travel Peru without him, and even though it seemed we had left our problems back in Lima and were by all accounts safe in Cusco, I still didn’t want to wander around the city by myself.

I’d arrived back at the hospital just before lunch, and at first, the nurses just shook their heads at me and told me that a man by the name of Derrick King wasn’t there, telling me they didn’t understand and that I had to go. But, finally, Sylvia came back from lunch, eyeing me up like some piece of street garbage, and with palpable reluctance escorted me to Derrick’s room.

“They’re keeping me here longer than I need to be,” Derrick went on, diving into the chicken sandwich they’d brought him for lunch. I was happy to see that he had an appetite at least, and his color seemed to be better as well. “I heard them chatting about how much my insurance was going to pay for this stay. I don’t need to be here. Dr. Garcia needs to come and give me my prescription and discharge me. This is ridiculous.”

I nodded. “I know. But I don’t know what to do.”

He gave me a small smile, his cheek puffy with sandwich. “You’ve already done so much, don’t sweat it.”

“I know, but we leave for Machu Picchu tomorrow. What if they want to keep you for another night?”

He shook his head. “I can legally leave whenever I want. They can’t handcuff me to the bed and make me stay. I’m a patient, not a prisoner.”

I heard a cackle from outside. Derrick was two doors down from the nurse’s station, and they all made it a habit of coming in every ten minutes to “check” on him, all of them shooting me daggers from their eyes as they fluffed his pillow or refilled his water.

“Okay, why do they all hate me?” I asked, pulling up a chair so I could sit right next to his bed. But he tugged on my hand and shook his head, scooting over in his bed like he had the night before and encouraging me to slide in next to him. I did.

He chuckled and took the final bite of his sandwich. “They found out you’re not my wife. And they’re pissed because you lied, but also mad because…” His mouth turned up into a mischievous smirk. “Now my Spanish isn’t great, but I think they’re upset because you’re with me.”

My head jerked, and I looked at up at him. “They all have a crush on you and are jealous that I’m…”

He lifted one shoulder, the smile still there. “My girlfriend? Yeah, I think so.”

Girlfriend. Hmm. But I just rolled my eyes. “They need to behave more professionally.”

His mouth twitched. “I agree.”

And then I had an idea, and I sprang up from the bed and headed out into the hallway and down to the nurse’s station. “Excuse me?”

Three of them stood there talking, and not one of them looked up, they didn’t even flinch. It was as though I didn’t even exist.

“Excuse me?” I said again. “Perdon?”

Nothing.

I made a rude noise in my throat. The nurse facing me lifted one eyebrow half a millimeter but didn’t look my way.

“HEY!”

Finally, three sets of dark brunette ponytailed heads spun to face me, cacao brown eyes glaring at me.

I smiled sweetly. “Great! Hi. I’m Mr. King’s girlfriend.” And then, I cupped my belly with both hands. “And we’re uh…” I watched as all six eyes followed my hands. “And we’re…bebé…you know? We have to go home. Por favor… Please? Our…” Crap. What was the word for airplane? Aeroplano? Sure, let’s go with that. “Our aeroplano leaves mañana, por…mi casa.” I cringed at how I must have sounded with my garbled Spanglish. They were probably struggling not to laugh in my face.

But they didn’t. Instead, their eyes lit up, and they were suddenly all smiles. All three of them rushed over and put their hands on my stomach. And one rushed off into another room, only to return with a bottle of water and a package of crackers.

“The doctor will be here within the hour,” I said, walking back into Derrick’s room, munching on my crackers.

He gave me a puzzled look, but his eyes flitted back up to the television that was precariously perched on a platform sticking out of the wall. He’d turned the television on and was watching some soap opera or something, with retro-looking actors in bellbottoms and floral shirts, and the men all had big bushy Tom Selleck mustaches.

“How’d you get them to talk to you?” he asked, making space for me on the bed again.

I took a sip of my water and grinned at him, thoroughly pleased with myself and my successful deception. “If they ask, we’re engaged, and I’m having your baby.”

His mouth hung open, so I did what any good pretend “girlfriend,” “fiancé,” “baby-mama” would do. I leaned over, and I kissed him.