Tag Line: When you play with fever...you might get burned.From the Back of the Book: Feed a cold...kill a fever? A mysterious fever rages through Duffy's body, robbing her of her strength and leaving her helpless in her hospital bed. In the middle of the night, she is awakened by terrifying sounds and a voice that cries out, "No! Please, don't!" Is it a delirious dream? Or is she the only witness to a vicious crime? As the days pass, Duffy tries desperately to figure out what really happened that night. Her temperature climbs higher and higher, and she fears she is losing her mind. And someone wants to make sure that she does. After all, fever can be deadly.
This book was published in 1992. I had not read it prior to this and I'm rather thankful for that.
We being with a prologue...in
italics...written in jilted stream-of-consciousness style. Oh, goody
gumdrops. This is going to be a FUN book. I guess our protagonist
Duffy Quinn has a fever or something and she's hallucinating
about weird sounds and someone in her room. She hears someone say
“What? What are you....?” and “No, please don't.”
Duffy sits up and asks what's going on, but the person(s) in her
room ignores her.
Chapter one opens up with her in the
hospital. She was admitted two nights ago because of a sudden,
unexplained fever that caused her to be delirious. They can't figure
out what's wrong with her despite running all kinds of tests. Duffy
is burning up and miserable and just wants to feel better.
Amy Severn comes in to bring
Duffy breakfast. She's a classmate of Duffy's and a volunteer at the
hospital. Duffy asks Amy if
anyone was in her room the night before and Amy replies that she's
sure nurses were in and out all night long.
An intern named Smith Lewis
comes in next. His first name is a last name and his last name is a
first name. Creative, Hoh. All the girls in town are madly in love
with him and his sexy walk. Duffy grumpily thinks his walk is proud
and arrogant and she hates it. Duffy doesn't understand Smith's
appeal because he's a total Kanye (LOVES himself). At first I
thought she was just being an awful patient, but then he told her she
looked like something that washed up on a beach and advised her to
eat something sweet because “a sour female is a sad sight to
behold”. What an ass.
There's a whole lot of pointless
conversation where the only thing we really learn is that Smith likes
to play practical jokes but he's a hard worker and that Duffy's best
friends are Jane Sabatini and Christopher “Kit”
Rappaport.
Kit's cute but Duffy has never had any
romantic feelings for him because he's too “caught up” in the
misery of his home life. What the eff does that mean, Hoh? Duffy
can't love him because he has problems? Duffy sounds like a massive bitch. Kit was orphaned at the age of nine and taken in by his aunt
and uncle who didn't really want him. They put him to work in his
uncle's shoe store immediately. Kit's so brilliant that he skipped
an entire grade and he earned several scholarships to college but he
had to turn them down because his uncle said he had to work in the
shoe store until he repaid every penny they had spent on him over the
years. I guess because he graduated a year early, he must not be 18
yet. Because if he is, he should shove a shoe down his uncle's
throat and go to college.
Dylan Rourke comes in next. He's another
classmate and a janitor at the hospital. He's a jock and not very
good at school but he hopes to be a doctor someday. Dylan used to date Amy but they've broken up and he seems pretty interested in Duffy. Duffy tells him about her “dream” and he thinks that
maybe it was just a fever hallucination. I can't really blame him
for that since she's been having fever hallucinations since she was
brought in and they're all very aware of it. While he's there, Duffy
identifies two of the sounds she heard during the night as the slap
of rubber soled shoes on the tile (no clue here – almost everyone
there wears them) and the clang of the privacy curtain moving along
the tracks. Dylan talks to her for awhile, all very gentle and sweet
and then he leaves and she sleeps.
Another volunteer, Cynthia Boon,
comes in after lunch. Seriously. We can stop with the characters
now. Duffy tries to comb her hair but it's in tangles and she throws
the comb across the room like a spoiled brat. Cynthia admonishes her
and tells her about the poor kids in pediatrics who have far more
severe illnesses than Dufy but still somehow manage to not act like a raging bitch.
Jane arrives and we're told she's short
and chunky, wearing clothes that are too tight but she's described as
breathtakingly beautiful which is a nice change. Later, though, it's
taken away when she's described as needy and desperate and clingy
around boys. Because fatties can't be confident with the opposite
sex, amirite?? There's a subplot here of Jane being hot for Dylan
but Dylan being hot for Duffy because PH loves to pit best friends against each other over the same guy. It's formula for them.
CHICKS BEFORE DICKS, girls.
Duffy tells Jane about her “dream”.
Jane's theory is that a couple of hospital employees came in to make
use of the spare bed in Duffy's room since she was too out of it to
know. Duffy thinks this could be a possibility. It explains why she
heard the privacy curtain being drawn and why no one answered her
when she cried out for help. She and Jane visit for the afternoon
until a nurse shoos Jane away so Duffy can rest. Duffy is relieved
to have an explanation, finally, for the previous night, but then she
remembers the words she heard and isn't so sure anymore.
So, throughout the first four chapters,
Duffy has said several times that it's Saturday and she wishes she
was home doing normal Saturday things like going to the mall and to
movies. During visiting hours that evening, Jane, Amy, Dylan, Smith
and Cynthia show up and Cynthia says she can't stay long because she
has a chem test tomorrow. Tomorrow is SUNDAY, Hoh. Sunday comes
after Saturday. All the time. Always. On every calendar in the United States where this book is definitely set. Maine to be specific. Maine has Sundays. I'm almost certain. Cynthia doesn't have school
on a Sunday. Why do all the PH authors just throw their hands up in
the air and say “Fuck continuity.”? IT'S NOT THAT HARD, PEOPLE.
Read what you're writing for pity's sake and make sure it makes
sense.
Grrr.
Duffy asks Jane why Kit isn't with her
and Jane says she can't find him. Dylan casually replies that Kit
has left town. He saw Kit the night before and Kit said he was
taking off because he couldn't stand his uncle anymore. Duffy is
stunned and upset. She can't figure out how Kit left without saying
goodbye. Cynthia gently tells her that he probably DID come by to
say goodbye but they weren't letting Duffy have visitors the night
before since she was actively hallucinating. Everyone leaves soon
after.
Duffy has a plan to get out of her room
after visiting hours are over and ride the elevator down to the gift
shop to buy some shampoo. She's not allowed out of bed, so she has
to do it on the sly. When she first gets up, she's really dizzy but
it soon passes and she makes it out of her room. Guys, this is hella
selfish of her. Honestly. She doesn't even know what she has and
she's running a high fever which means she's probably contagious and she's willing to expose everyone in the halls and the
elevator and the gift shop to whatever it is that's making her so
sick just so she can get out of the room. I really don't like her
at all.
The first time out, she encounters Smith who
insists that he needs to go with her if she's going to attempt this.
She doesn't want him to go, though, so she just asks him to walk her
back to her room. She waits a bit and then makes a second attempt.
She heads for the elevators and impatiently waits for one to open.
She hears someone call her name just as one does and she hurriedly steps forward to avoid whoever it is. Suddenly someone tackles her to the
ground of the hallway. It's Smith and Duffy can't figure out why he
knocked her away from the elevator until she looks into the black
hole that she almost stepped through. There is no elevator. Just a
dark, empty shaft.
Smith says that Dylan clearly marked
the wrong elevator door as out of order.....which makes NO SENSE,
HOH. Omg. Okay, here's the deal....I can't even believe I have to
fucking explain this to you, Hoh. There are two elevators side by
side. There is an out of order sign on one of the sets of doors.
Are you with me, Hoh? Duffy presses the button. The elevator that
is out of order will not run. The elevator that works, will run.
The doors with the out of order sign will open and an elevator will
be there because that elevator runs. That is the elevator
that Duffy would have stepped into. The doors without the out of
order sign will NOT open despite having no sign because that
elevator does NOT run. Duffy could not have stepped into that
elevator because it was not working and the doors would not have
opened. Don't even tell me that maybe the doors malfunctioned
and opened as part of being out of order because if they had been
doing this all damn day (the length of time it was out of order)
people would have been DYING and something would have been done to correct the problem. At the very least, the sign would have been corrected but more likely either the power would have been cut to the elevator entirely or it would have been roped off. Don't even tell me that maybe no one used the
elevators until now because this is a busy HOSPITAL. We're told over
and over that it's filled to the brim with flu patients. People are
USING the elevators and NOT dying so the stupid doors are NOT
malfunctioning and opening each time the button is pushed. Don't
even tell me that they did THIS ONE TIME out of the entire day
because I will NOT suspend my disbelief enough to fucking buy that.
And don't even tell me that the operating elevator has had an
out of order sign on it ALL FUCKING DAY and NO ONE CORRECTED IT.
I. Cannot. Even.
I just went and real-life yelled about
this elevator thing to my husband and then to my manager. This how
even I cannot.
A nurse happens by and tells Smith to
fix the sign because clearly just having a sign on the doors
causes the functioning elevator doors to stop functioning and the
non-functioning elevator doors to function. Powerful fucking thing that
sign is. The nurse takes Duffy back to her room and gives her some
kind of medicine to put her to sleep.
Duffy wakes up on Sunday and asks Smith
to come to her room. She must have heard me yelling, because she
points out that the sign couldn't have been on the wrong door all day
or people would have noticed. She thinks someone switched it on
purpose. I'll give you that one, Hoh, but the rest of my rant
stands. Duffy asks him to ask around and figure out who switched the
sign.
As Smith leaves the room, Duffy thinks
“she liked the way he moved, so easy and careless”. What the
absolute fuck? Do you even read what you write, Hoh?????????? Just
41 pages ago Duffy hated the way he walked and found it arrogant.
This book is making me blog rage so hard, y'all.
The next morning, Cynthia, Amy and Jane
visit. They're all horrified to hear of Duffy's brush with death.
Duffy tells them that for her next caper she's going to sneak in a
shower. They all try to talk her out of it but fail. The girls
leave and soon after Dylan comes in. He and Duffy talk about the
elevator incident and then she also tells him that she's going to
sneak in a shower. Gee, I wonder if something's going to happen to
Duffy in the shower???? Hoh is NOT subtle.
The nurse arrives to take out her IV.
She tells Duffy that she can go outside if she can find an orderly to
push her in a wheelchair. Duffy goes to the door and sees Smith.
She commands him to take her
outside. Seriously. That's the word Hoh uses. Duffy is such a warm ball of sunshine, y'all. She's pissed because Smith hasn't given her
any of the information she asked him to find out. She's acting like
he doesn't have a real job that he's busy with and that he was put on
this earth to do her bidding. He says he didn't tell her anything
because he doesn't know anything.
Smith wheels her
outside and parks her in the sun. He tells her that he has work to
do but he'll be back to take her inside in half an hour. Duffy is
pleased to be out in the sun even if it's in an uncomfortable ancient
wooden wheelchair. Wow, that hospital has some serious issues if
it's still using wooden wheelchairs. Duffy tries to find a comfortable position
to work on her tan but it's hard.
A small noise
behind her is all the warning she gets. Suddenly Duffy finds herself
racing down the slope in a runaway wheelchair that she doesn't have
the strength to stop. She nearly runs over several people who are
less than amused with her antics. She picks up speed as the slope of
the hill increases. People dive out of her way left and right. She
realizes with terror that the chair is headed straight for the lake.
She prepares herself to dive out of it as soon as it's over the water
but that never happens. As soon as the chair hits the sandy banks,
it stops. And because this book cares nothing for actual science or reason, she isn't thrown from the chair after her abrupt stop from such a high speed. She's jolted a little but fine.
Apparently Dylan
is the man who saved the day. He somehow pulled the chair to a dead stop
right before it went into the water. That's completely believable. What's wrong with you people doubting Hoh like that? She's a literary goddess. Smith arrives and yells at Duffy for moving when he told her to stay
put. Dylan angrily accuses Smith of not setting the brakes properly.
When Smith realizes what almost happened, he goes pale. Another
orderly comments that it wasn't Smith's fault because the brakes on
the wheelchairs fail constantly. This sounds like a bang up hospital
Duffy's parents have deposited her in. I'd call them out on it, but she's clearly so awful that I can understand why they may be trying to get rid of her.
The doctor checks
her over and she's fine. Amy and Cynthia volunteer to keep her
company in her room until her parents finally show up. Or hell
freezes over. Whichever happens first. Duffy tells them that she
needs to leave the hospital because someone is out to get her. She
remembers hearing a squeaking noise right before her wheelchair
started rolling and she's convinced that someone released the brake
and gave her a push. Amy and Cynthia think she's imagining things.
Duffy's parents
finally show up and she hopes that they'll take her home after they
hear what's been happening to her. No such luck. They think she's
overreacting to some unfortunate accidents and that she'd feel
differently about things if she wasn't so sick. One accident –
fine. But two that close together? I'd be suspicious and I'm not
running a fever.
Duffy begins to
feel more and more lousy as the day progresses. She's gets nauseous
and light headed and blames the hospital for making her worse. She's
mad at Kit. She doesn't understand why he couldn't put up with his
awful, abusive uncle for one more week so he could be there for her
when she needed him. Duffy is so selfish, y'all. I think Kit needed
to save himself from her as well as from his uncle. She wants to
take a shower but the nurses tell her that no one has time to
supervise her while she does and she can't go alone. Duffy argues
with them because clearly she's the MOST IMPORTANT PATIENT IN THAT
HOSPITAL, damn it and they should all just DROP EVERYTHING FOR HER.
Cynthia and Amy show up and she again
tells them that she's thinking of sneaking off to the shower room.
Same tune, different day. Or is it the same day......I've lost all
concept of the timing now.
Amy and Cynthia leave and Duffy decides
to go get her shower. Her head spins when she sits up and she sees
double but this doesn't dissuade her at all. She notices the lights
have a weird halo around them. The shower feels heavenly despite her
spinning head and rolling stomach. She decides to shave her legs
because it's completely reasonable to use a sharp blade on yourself
when you're seeing double. As she's shaving, the lights go
completely out.
She decides to get the hell out but
suddenly the shower stall opens and someone throws her down to the
shower floor. The drain is slow and she's facedown in soapy water.
A knee in her back prevents her from getting up, a hand on her neck
keeps her face in the water. This really seems like an inefficient
way to kill someone. Eventually the drain will clear and the water
will be gone.
Duffy lashes backwards with the pink
razor in her hand. Despite the impossibility of limbs bending in
this manner and the improbability of her being able to strike the
attacker in the exact angle she would need to do so in order for the
razor to be effective, she hits her mark. The hand on her neck
disappears and she is able to breathe. Cursing and bleeding, the
attacker leaves.
Duffy staggers out of the bathroom and
screams for help. Smith comes rushing up and manages to catch her as
she faints. Duffy comes to later in her bed. Two nurses, the
doctor, Smith and Amy are in her room. She tells them that someone
tried to kill her in the shower and not a single person believes her.
They all think she's delirious from getting out of bed and taking a
hot shower with a fever. One of the nurses keeps calling her
“Dorothy”. I seriously hope that's her real name and not an
editing error.
They sedate Duffy and she sleeps until
sometime in the night. She has a brief, hostile conversation with
Smith where he tries to placate her and she just gets pissed and
haughty because he still doesn't believe she was attacked. After he
leaves, she overhears a nurse and the doctor (is there seriously only
ONE in the entire hospital?) talking in the hall outside her room.
There's a medicine called Digoxin missing and it's dangerous if given
to a person who doesn't need it. Symptoms include nausea and a light
sensitivity that makes it look like they have halos. Duffy realizes
she has the symptoms.
Duffy wonders if she was mistakenly
given the Digoxin or if it was on purpose. She pushes the call
button to summon a nurse and is surprised when Amy comes in. Amy
explains that two nurses are out with the flu and none of the other
volunteers were willing to work overnight. There's no school the
next day so Amy volunteered.
Duffy asks her about the missing
medicine and Amy is upset that she knows about it. It's supposed to
be just staff knowledge. Duffy reports that she has the symptoms of
it but Amy doesn't believe her. She thinks Duffy heard the doctor
and nurse talking about it and is having a hypochondriac moment.
Duffy insists that Amy needs to check her medication to make sure
it's the right one and, when Amy doesn't rush to do it, Duffy starts
screaming about how her parents will sue and Amy will be at fault.
Amy loses her temper and starts screaming right back at Duffy for
being a lousy, demanding patient, for selfishly not thinking of
anyone but herself and for being a bitch in general. I heart Amy.
She huffs that she can't believe Dylan broke up with her to go for
Duffy and then stomps out of the room.
Duffy is up all night. She's afraid
she's dying. She's scared to death and no one believes her. This is
legitimately awful. I can't imagine thinking I'm being given a
medication that can kill me and having no one believe me when I tell
them. To be helpless and sick like that and not to have help is one
of the worst feelings. I feel bad for her even though I really hate
her.
The next day, Cynthia and Jane visit.
Duffy recounts the shower incident and Jane is appalled that no one
is taking Duffy seriously. Cynthia continues to insist that it's
just the result of having an abnormally high fever but Jane sticks up
for Duffy and says that Duffy is not the type to imagine things.
Later Dylan visits and he also believes Duffy's account of being
attacked in the shower. She asks him for a glass of water and when
he pours it, she sees a RED HERRING on his wrist. She makes a
suicide joke because those are always in good taste and hilarious and
then needles him until he gets annoyed and tells her that he
scratched it in the process of stopping her wheelchair from going
into the lake.
There's a minor drama with Amy walking
in and seeing the two of them together and walking out. Duffy feels
bad that she's the reason Amy got dumped so she snaps at Dylan to
leave and let her sleep. He's surprised she doesn't want to theorize
about who may be trying to kill her. He thinks it could be one of
the psych patients from the floor above because all crazy people are
super dangerous and should be caged, amirite?
Dylan leaves and Amy brings in Duffy's
lunch. As she's walking out, Duffy notices the RED HERRING on the
back of her leg and asks her where she got it. Amy looks embarrassed
and says she cut herself shaving.
Amy leaves a newspaper with Duffy and she
scans over it. A name catches her eye. A couple of days before she
was admitted, Victor Latham died at the hospital. He had been a
generous donor and the article mentioned a scholarship fund he had
bequeathed to help out a young person wanting to enter the medical
field. The article specifically mentioned him being fond of the
young people who cared for him while in the hospital. Duffy wonders
which of her friends might be the recipient of the scholarship: Amy,
Dylan or Cynthia. Maybe even Smith if he qualifies as a "young person".
The nurse comes in to give Duffy her
medicine. Duffy pretends to take it and then hides it under her
pillow.
Amy comes in later with the news that
Kit tried to call the night before. It was too late and the
switchboard operator had refused to put the call through to Duffy's
room. Duffy is disappointed that she missed the call. Amy warns her
that Dylan heard about the call and isn't happy. He's very jealous
of Kit. Ugh. Of course he is. Hoh is going to ruin this nice character she's created by following the PH formula and making him jealous and possessive.
Jane arrives after Amy leaves. Duffy
asks her to take the pills she's saved to some lab Jane's brother
works in to have them analyzed. Jane is reluctant but decides to
humor her best friend. She's only gone a couple of hours and then
she returns with the analysis. Doesn't it take longer than that?
Wow. That's some CSI-time-magic right there. Sure enough, the pills
they've been giving Duffy are the missing Digoxin.
After Jane leaves again, Duffy treats
us all to a nice recap because Hoh writes such complex and
difficult prose that our teeny brains can't follow the story
for 140 pages and we need to be reminded of every single thing that's
happened. She also runs down her suspect list for us because we're
clearly not sharp enough to have picked up on the people she thinks
might be trying to kill her. After that, she decides her only option
is to escape the hospital.
She waits until after midnight and then
makes her move. She's almost to the elevator when Dylan catches her.
He wants to take her back to her room but she pleads with him to
take her out of the hospital instead. She tells him everything,
including the fact she had the pills tested and they were Digoxin.
He asks to see the lab report and she realizes she left it back in
her hospital room. Dylan tells her to wait there and he'll run back
and look at it.
When Dylan returns, he isn't alone.
He's brought the nurse with him. He tells Duffy he searched her
entire room and there was no report. She's clearly sick and
hallucinating again and the nurse will help her. The nurse gives her
a shot of something and then she and Dylan drag Duffy back to her
bed. The whole time Duffy is telling Dylan she'll never forgive him
for this.
The shot knocks Duffy out. Some time
later, she awakens to someone pulling her pillow out from under her
head. The next thing she knows, it's on her face and she can't
breathe. She fumbles around for some kind of weapon and her hands
find the metal carafe that holds her water. Good thing she's in this
ancient, outdated hospital because if she was in a modern one, that thing would
be thin plastic and useless. She manages to club the attacker over
the head and then kick out with her legs to send him/her crashing to
the floor.
Duffy gets out of bed and staggers out
of her room. No one is around. She gets in the elevator and takes
it to the basement because going underground where there will be no
people is the perfectly reasonable thing to do in this situation.
The attacker naturally tracks her down and begins to follow her.
Duffy is dizzy and dazed and slow. The attacker is spry and humming.
This is the showdown of the century, y'all. I'm on the edge of my
seat.
Duffy ends up in the morgue because of
course she does. She panics and heads back for the door but the
doorknob is turning. Cynthia appears in the doorway and Duffy is so
incredibly stupid that she thinks Cynthia is there to save the day.
For fuck's sake, Duffy.
She asks Cynthia to take her home and
Cynthia throws her hands up in the air and says fine. Duffy clearly
isn't going to listen to a damn thing the hospital staff says, so she
might as well go home. Then Duffy spots the cut on Cynthia's wrist
and it finally occurs to her that the only reason Cynthia has
appeared in the morgue is because she followed Duffy down there to
kill her.
Duffy asks why and Cynthia says it's
because of Kit. Right now, Duffy is too addled to remember but
sooner or later she'll realize what she heard in her room that night
and what really happened to Kit.
Now we get the ubiquitous bad-guy monologue. Why
do they all do this? No one does this in real life. Apparently
Cynthia killed Kit because Kit knew it was her fault that old man
Latham died. She had been reading his chart (which volunteers are
forbidden to do) when Kit showed up to deliver some nursing shoes to
one of the nurses. He saw her with the chart and she hurriedly
dropped it but not before they both noticed the red sticker that said
Latham was allergic to penicillin.
Cynthia says the chart accidentally went into the spot for the patient in the next room.
A patient who was on penicillin. Later the nurse in penicillin's
room came out and dropped penicillin's chart in Latham's spot.
Eventually a nurse who wasn't paying proper attention to names on
charts gave Latham the penicillin for the patient in the other room and
he died. Cynthia was afraid Kit would tell and her dreams of going
to medical school would be destroyed.
Cyn, love, the person who is REALLY at fault
here is the nurse who didn't compare the name on the chart to the
patient she was giving medication to. They're 100% supposed to do
that and the nurse is at fault here.
Kit wanted Cynthia to confess to
putting the chart in the wrong place so the nurse would get off the
hook. Except, the nurse should stay ON the hook because she didn't
do the most important part of her fucking job. Whatever. Cynthia
killed him to keep him quiet so she could go on to medical school
where they first thing they probably fucking learn is to CHECK THE
NAME ON THE CHART.
While Cynthia is monologue-ing, Duffy
gets her hands on some bug spray. Because morgues are full of bugs I
guess and it's handy??? This alarms me. Cynthia lunges at Duffy
with a hypodermic needle. Duffy sprays Cynthia in the eyes with bug
spray and then opens a morgue cabinet sending the gurney thing
slamming into Cynthia. Cynthia somehow ends up on top of the gurney
thing and it slams back into the cabinet. Duffy closes the door and
locks her in there. That's about my worst nightmare come true. Then
she passes out on the floor.
When she wakes up, she's back in her
hospital bed. Amy, Jane, Smith and Dylan are all there staring at
her because that's not fucking creepy or anything. Apparently at
some point she told them the whole story although she doesn't
remember doing it. Cynthia has been taken “away”. Kit's body
has been recovered. Duffy can finally get well without someone
trying to kill her. Dylan's chances are ruined because he betrayed her but Duffy's willing to give Smith a chance.
The end.
Final Thoughts: I think my thoughts
can be summed up by the following.....
I
bought this book used. Written on the inside cover in several
different round-middle-school-girl-handwritings were the names
"Karissa, Kari, Shannon and Miah". I figured a bunch of
friends had shared the book and added their names when they read it.
On
the last page of the book written very small at the bottom was:
"Kari, I'm moving to Florida in 3 months. Your very best friend
forever, Karissa." It was so sad. I imagined poor Karissa
couldn't bring herself to tell her friend in person, so she wrote the
sad news in the book and then gave it to her to read. Then on the
inside back cover I found this: "Kari and Shannon very best
friends forever no matter what." I guess Kari moved on okay.
Sorry, Karissa.
The
best story...and the most drama... contained between the covers of
this book, weren't written by the author but by the people who read
it. Sad, maybe. But true.
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