Cough.

Hack.

Pant. Pant. Pant.

I hate being sick.

Why am I sick? I never got sick when I was little. To me, being ill happened to other people. People who lived outside of my little world comprised of me and my family.

But then Nojiko got sick that one time, confined to bed for a week straight--Bellemere was so scared---and that theory failed. I felt lucky, never having a stuffed nose or coughing spasm or...or..

Or a fever. A burning fever that sends it's fire coursing down your body, eagerly consuming your energy until you're exhausted.

You sleep, hoping to find solace in your dreams.

But the fever reaches you in your dreams too.

It turns a sweet dream of taking a walk through the park on a fresh spring day into a blazing nightmare; the ground beneath you melts away and you fall into a pit of burning coals that wants to keep you forever. Keeping you prisoner to feed on your energy and grow hotter and hotter, trapping you in the eternal rythmn of your rapidly beating heart.

I know.

I've visited this nightmare many times during the course of my fever.
But the fever is not really mine, not anymore.

It had a mind of it's own.

I could banish it for awhile, by a show of will, but it always came back.
Whenever the cool washcloth on my forehead was no longer helping, it came back. It would be worse than before.

Sometimes I heard it laughing.

Sometimes soothing words kept it away, words spoken by someone beside me. I never sensed them leave during the whole time I was ill. I barely had the energy to speak, let alone open my eyes. Moving wasted what little energy that the fever had not stolen. So I didn't know that angel who kept the nightmares at bay. I'm not sure if it was the words that did it anymore.

I believe now it was the tone of voice.

I remember that it was soft, gentle, slightly worried. It had a very clear undercurrent of love.

I fell in love with that voice.

It was like a temporary cure, a brief release from the hell I had been cast into.

It was vaguely familar. Some name, some exotic sweet name, lingered just beyond my grasp. I felt as though it was the voice in my pre-fever dreams. The one that promised support, friendship, and so much more. I trusted that voice.

It was what had kept me sane during the time that vicous disease ruled.

The voice was not alone. A hand grasping my own often followed the genial tone. Sometimes I could sense the presence of the mysterious angel beside me, desperatly worried and trying not to show it, still whispering the same comforting voice.

Once, at the peak of that fever, when nothing was heard from me but soft, muted whimpers and the sound of my labored breathing (drawing breath became more and more difficult as time passed) I was struck by a sudden bolt of fear.

What if I was going to die? Here, on this ship, in this cabin, dying slowly because of a greedy monster that blazed in a fire of sadistic heat?

I began to cry.

When the sobs came, they came disguised as quick gasps that seemed to hitch in my throat, and the tears were disguised as sweat from the fever. Damn that fever.

That angel knew I was crying. It grasped one of my hands with both of it's own (what smooth, cool skin it had) and began to speak in a gentle croon. It was loud enough to be audible to me, even with the fever filling my head and making my thoughts slow and heavy, muffling the outside world. The world that existed outside of my personal hell.

"Please hold on Nami. I know you're scared, but we're going to get a doctor for you. He'll get rid of the fever, I know he will. Please have hope Nami, please. Don't leave me, Nami. I love you. My heart hurts just to watch you suffer like this. If you die I don't know what I'm going to do. So please hold on Nami. Please...please....I love you..."

And then, so soft I almost couldn't hear...

"God, if you're there, please hear me. Don't take her from me so soon after I met her. If you must, take me instead. But please, let her live."



How wonderful those words sounded to me right then. Beautiful. Even more so now that I could idenitfy the angel who chased away the nightmares, and who had never left my side. The loving voice in my dreams.

It was my own Nefertari Vivi.

"I love you too, Vivi," I remember whispering, and I felt my hands being given a small, joyous squeeze.

I wasn't sure if she heard me, deep as I was in the fever, but I think she did. She said a doctor is coming. That he can kill this god awful fever for good.

I'm happy for that. I look forward to the day when I can open my eyes, and move as energetically as I once did.

But most of all, I can't wait to celebrate my recovery with Vivi.