Jensen Aberdeen faced a series of surprises after waking up one rainy morning in May. The first surprise was that his wife wasn’t in bed when he woke up. Sunlight came crashing in through the big French window overlooking their bedroom, but Elizabeth wasn’t under the covers. She wasn’t in the hall or the kitchen, either. Nowhere in the house at all. Jensen hardly noticed. He felt sick, sicker than he’d ever been in his life. His joints were like half-empty gravel pits. A fever ripped through him yet he was cold, freezing, and nothing he did could make him warm.

Luckily, Jensen was working from home that day. Wrapped in a blanket and with the heat on maximum, he still shivered, but he managed to function. When he was shaving, Jensen saw his pale and raccoon-eyed reflection, so he kept his camera off. After hearing his own voice, a whispery rasp, Jensen turned off his microphone, as well, sticking to the chat. Christ, he felt awful. Around lunchtime, he went out into the hallway to adjust the thermostat. It was set on seventy-five but that couldn’t be right. Jensen made a note to talk to Elizabeth when she got home. If they could stop arguing for a minute, he was sure they could sort it without needing to call a professional. Not like they had the money for that, anyways.

The rest of the day was a gray blur. Meetings ran together, assignments were dropped, and every minute, Jensen got colder. There was a bad spot on his neck, somewhere in the back, a patch that didn’t feel right. Every time he tried to touch it, Jensen’s hand dropped. Elizabeth could look when she got home. Even though they didn’t talk most nights, she’d at least look. She’d tell him if something was wrong.

Jensen shivered. He spent the afternoon going into the evening sitting at one of the big windows in the living room. The sun should have been warm. That pain above and between his shoulder blades was getting worse. It was more distant than a few hours before, however. Like a terrible thing that happened to someone Jensen knew, just not that well. His veins felt like streams filled with blocks of winter ice. He threw up again and again but there was nothing there, not more than red flecks.

Elizabeth came home an hour after sundown. Jensen swiveled his neck when she walked in the door and tried to smile. His wife screamed and ran back out the door. Jensen tried to follow but was too stiff.

“You’re dead,” Liz kept screaming. “You’re supposed to be dead. You could never do anything right.”