It was, Sybil had to admit, a good question. He had told her he was sick with plague, and still she'd come to tend to him, and the reason for that – it wasn't rational. She knew that it wasn't and perhaps he wouldn't understand it, and could she blame him? She barely understood it all herself.
'When you told me of your sickness,' she began, 'I thought that I was dreaming. I thought that none of it was real, and a dream-sickness couldn't possibly harm me. And then-' she spoke more quickly now, words spilling over each other, 'by the time I accepted the fact that I'm quite awake, I was here. I couldn't possibly walk out and leave you to suffer, not when there's something I might do to help. What kind of person would that make me, if you died because I did nothing?' A terrible nurse, for one. Sybil shrugged. 'I know there's a risk, but I find that I'm not afraid. Or rather that there's something more than fear, that makes me stay.'
Fear only went so deep, and the worry that she too might fall ill wasn't an immediate one for Sybil. It clamored but distantly, behind her concern for his fever, for a way out of this town, for the war back home. She'd deal with it, if she had to, when it came.
He'd asked about the other case, though, and Sybil bit her lip. 'This boy. You didn't telephone him? He needs to stay where he is. If he's wandering about and spreading the sickness, he can't be dying, but if he's not, if he's too sick to leave his bed, then I ought to go to him. These illnesses – they can be worse for the young.' She couldn't possibly hazard a guess about his present condition. 'How was he when you last saw him?' she asked, a note of urgency in her voice.