'I can't say for sure,' she answered him honestly. 'It'll depend on how quickly you respond to the medicine.' It'd depend on whether or not there were other complications, she thought, but decided against trying to explain that. It would only confuse him, exhausted and sick as he was, and she was going to do her level best to make sure he didn't get any worse. She wouldn't talk about complications unless she had to.
'Perhaps a week from when you first fell ill,' Sybil went on, 'or a little longer, but you'll be past the worst by then.' It was her best estimate, under the circumstances. She stepped back from his bed then for a moment and, after telling him she'd return shortly, went in search of the kitchen. It wasn't difficult; the layout of his rooms was similar to her own, and before long she was back beside him with what she needed. Reaching down, she lay a cool, damp cloth across his brow. Stopping that fever from spiking any higher had to be her first priority.
Sybil had also brought in a glass of water, and she dropped a few of the aspirin tablets into it - the dosage she'd have used at home, a little higher than the label on the packaging recommended. As she waited for it to dissolve, she discreetly placed a bowl on Cesare's bedside table. If he couldn't keep even this down, she'd try to minimize his embarrassment. Sybil herself had been in nursing long enough that she wasn't fazed in the slightest by vomit; one had to have a strong stomach, in this vocation - but she was still mindful of her patient.
'I want you to drink as much of this as you're able,' she said. 'It's the aspirin to bring down your fever, and you can take it in small sips.' It would do until she could get him something stronger. 'Come, I'll help you sit up.' If not quite sitting, then propped up by enough pillows to make drinking easier. 'Tell me if it causes you pain,' she told him then. 'I'll fetch medicine to settle your stomach, when I go, and then we'll try water and clear broth, because you do need to keep your strength up, and those are easiest when a person has stomach trouble. Solid food might well make you worse, so we'll take it slowly.' She gave the glass of dissolved aspirin one last stir before handing it over to him, keeping the weight until she could be sure he wouldn't drop it.