A cool summer evening hugged the college like a blanket. Stone bricks took to the gentle temperature like meek servants, the gentle crackling of fire in hearths pushed against the cooling effect, but didn’t quite make the air uncomfortably warm or stuffy. In a detached way, I enjoyed it.

Really, I was in hell.

Anybody who’s been bed-bound for more than a couple of days will know the feeling well. Sick. Constricted by well-meaning people, and even if I wasn’t, constricted by my own failing body. Beset by nausea, itching, pain. Perhaps if it was a different sort of malady, one which forced me to use a cane or wheelchair, I could learn to appreciate the tools I had to navigate the world, and not resent them. As it was, no, I didn’t bear it well at all. I was bed-bound, plain and simple, and it was miserable.

Pain, oh stars, the pain. It didn’t sting, or sear, so much as prod at the edge of consciousness. In the worst moments, it occupies your entire self, your experience folding inwards. You face the limits of your own body and mind.

Of course, overwhelming pain isn’t the only kind, there’s also the insidious passive pain. The kind you don’t notice amid all the other benign stimuli until you’re faced with curfew, bedtime. It takes quieting all voluntary perception in preparation for sleep to notice the involuntary stinging all over.

Then, the doubts begin.

“Was it really always that bad, or did I make it worse by thinking about it?”

“Am I just stubborn? Why can’t I sleep?”

“What did I do to deserve this?”

No answer comes – how could it? It’s a conversation between the patient and the walls. Maybe a deity, if they’ve a devout inclination.

Thankfully, sleep would eventually take me. When I awoke, I would behold dreary boredom: The walls, austere but for a portrait of Augustus the Healer, (a tongue-in-cheek gift from one of my classmates,) the east-facing window, eternally open, the door through which came news good and bad. The bed, my prison and partner. The nightstand, where a servant (or professor, I never saw,) would leave a selection of books for me to read.

So feverish was I on most days, that I couldn’t read my usual, excessive, allotment of dusty tomes. The words would simply slide off the page, and miss my brain by just a hair. Reading, difficult; comprehension, impossible. This, of course, wasn’t helped by the subject matter nor the writing style. It was hard to find anything in the college library that was interesting and comprehensible to a person deeply in illness.

Some days, my one friend would have the time to visit. He came, always in the morning, always wearing a sunny smile and always with a gift in hand. He never bothered wrapping them, and I thanked him for my joints had all but given out. Usually, the gift was some curiosity from one of our lecturers that he’d managed to cajole them into handing over. Ever the socialite, he’d drink with our professors and charm them with anecdotes from a storied life, or jokes of the most uncouth variety.

When he didn’t have loot to brag about from his latest sucking-up session, he’d just bring me a pretty rock.

Today Grant, ever the gentleman, made sure to knock on my door before entering to give me a moment to cover up. It was, after all, summer and my fevers ran hot to excess. I’d often lay bare and uncovered on the mattress, hoping a stray draught would come through the window and take away some of the horrible heat.

Unfortunately, he’d only started doing that after an embarrassing incident early on in the course of the illness. I think I was unconscious when he came in early one morning. I only woke up when Grant put a blanket over me and I realised that he had just covered up my nudity. I might have turned a deep shade of red, except of course I was already made about as red as I could get.

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I would come back to this memory often in my ill daze, fixating a little. Did he see the growths? Was he disgusted? Did he pity me – is that why he kept coming back? Perhaps I’d have to ask later, but it wouldn’t be an easy conversation.

I worried mostly about how the disease made me look. In short: Crystal papules. Growths going a half-inch into the flesh and jutting out from the skin, crystalline, itchy, painful. They spared my face and didn’t go much below the belt. Bearing them was awful, thankless work. I looked like a nightmare. I would probably have scars for life, unless I ponied up some serious money for a fleshmender to look at the wounds.

I’d come to the college bright-eyed and young. I expected to learn magic. And, well, I did learn magic, at least at first I did. Then, the world fell out from under me. One punch after another landed until I fell into an endless high fever, confined to my dormitory near the roof of one of the beautiful spired towers of the university. (I felt rather like the long-haired princesses of legend, imprisoned in a high tower and awaiting a saviour. Except princesses would have had better bathing habits.)

The worst part… Well, there are lots of worst parts, but this is the one that hurts the most: The worst part is that the entire time, I loved what I was doing. I loved my lessons, I loved my professors, I loved my classmates and I loved my work. I loved the practicums and the theory, I loved the fast days and the slow days.

Love for the subject wasn’t enough. Love for the subject just got me to burn brighter, faster, and eventually to burn out and glow dim in a room that seemed to get smaller every day with how much I knew about its every corner.

The love never faded, but my mind didn’t know that. I started to retreat from my studies and turn ever inward. Everyone knew my name – I was a bit of a keener, and it always paid to know the keeners – but I hadn’t made any friends except Grant. And really, the correct phrasing there would be that Grant had made me his friend. Except for Grant, I was alone. And Grant wasn’t enough.

Then, paranoia. Fear. Terror.

Now, hell.

Grant knocked on the door again. I replied with a groan, and hiked up the sheets a bit higher over my body. He swung the door open with gusto and announced, “Good bloody morning!”

I groaned again. Straining my eyes and squinting to see without my eyeglasses, I beheld my friend. He was well-covered by bright blue robes and an unbecoming lime-green pointy hat, a bizarre variation on the college’s mandated dress. The robes were so loose they hung off him, and the point of the hat seemed to droop sadly, pointing to his back. A black shawl descended from the hat to covered his face, and rendered his eyes as glowing red orbs – clearly, it was enchanted. Strange style, to be sure, but then I suppose that was Grant.

“Is it a good morning? News to me. What are you all dressed up for?”

“Ah, some third-years pulled a prank. Don’t mind me, it’ll wash out.”

“These… These aren’t your robes, Grant.” Indeed, they weren’t – Grant stood a hair over four feet tall, and looked even smaller for all the blue fabric hanging off him. 

I asked, “Are you alright? And what’s with the uh, you know?” I feebly lifted an arm and gestured at my eyes.

“Fine! Fine, really, and don’t go on about it. I’ve got news for you! Madame Frankes is nearly done with the draught now. She’s to bring you a sample in the evening, and says you should walk about some, before then.”

I rolled my eyes at that. “Can’t walk about, I’ve got a horrible fever.”

“Frightening! Well, then I’ll tell her. In the meanwhile, do try, please.”

“Hrr. Fine. I’ll take a single step and faint.”

“Then faint! Anyway, no gift today. Sorry, May.”

“No gift? Well, I forgive you.” Strange. Something was up with Grant – if he’d not brought a gift, that meant he didn’t even amble over to the river on his morning walk. And even stranger – he was turning to leave.

“Right, I’m busy-busy today. Classes to meet, people to attend. Toodles!”

“Er, bye, Grant. Have a nice day.”

He was already skipping along through the halls, and nearly forgot to shut the door. Then, shut it he did, with a loud “thump!” that spread dust around the room. Odd, that.