Standing up, he found that his head was swimming and his legs felt like lead. He stumbled into the small bedroom and threw himself down on top of the covers, too exhausted and nauseous to try and get undressed. He knew he probably ought to make himself a hot drink and have a couple of pills for the headache that was now beating a tattoo in his brain, but it was beyond him. Curling into a ball, he shut his eyes and fell into a troubled, restless doze.

Time ceased to have any meaning over the next days. He knew he was ill, more ill than he had ever been before, but the pains racking his body and the torment in his mind made rational thought impossible. Bouts of delirium made him sure at times that he was back in the apartment he had had in London before he had sold up and come to America. Sometimes Ruby was there, looking down at him with pity and sadness as she reiterated why they could never be together; once or twice Verity had stood over him, laughing as she had told him he was weak and useless and an excuse for a man and that everyone despised him. Of the two manifestations he preferred it when Verity was with him; the thought of Ruby knowing how far he had fallen made him sick to his stomach.

He had managed to stagger to the kitchen a few times and get himself a glass of water but he had eaten nothing – just the thought of food made him retch – and mostly he existed in nightmares of sweating and harrowing half-dreams, only to come briefly to himself and realize that reality was far worse than anything his subconscious could drag up. Verity had called him a dead weight and she was right; it would be better for everyone if he died, here and now, and if this influenza took him and saved him the job of killing himself then that was all to the good.

It was over a week or more when he became aware that the aches and pains that had been in every muscle and bone were now all centred in his chest. Every breath was painful like a fire burning inside him and the coughing that racked him constantly was agony. He had stopped drinking, his throat was too sore to swallow, and now he lay in damp, sweat-soaked sheets too exhausted to move.