Burning Up

Marlot was sick.
She had a fever of 103 degrees Fahrenheit at lunch and was shaking through most of her post-lunch meeting. Taking three ibuprofen dropped her fever to 101 for about two hours, when, while she was trying to type a report for the Kimmelman Systems analysis report, she noticed that her fingers were beginning to bend more like snakes than fingers. She checked her temperature and found that she had graduated to 105 F in the space of only a few hours.
Straining for several minutes at the fine print of the pill bottle, she discovered to her relief, that it would be at least four hours until her symptoms abated. So she staggeringly fixed herself a cup of herbal tea and settled into the new sofa she had purchased for office last week.
When Donovan Kent came by at seven o’clock to check on her, she had been mid-snore and extremely disheveled on top of the tea that had spilled coldly on her slacks. Flopping her hair into a semi-workplace shape, she answered her office door in a staggering montage of drunkenness masquerading as ‘Just really sick, Boss, sorry’.
Kent, who had spent some time in India making a go of their offices there, knew a True Sickness when he saw one. He pulled out his smartphone immediately and began to dial his physician.
“Doctor Vetrov is the best in the business,” he said.
What Margot heard was, “The ventricle artery is blocked from sickness.”
She sank into panic and shock at the same time. She then passed out.
By the time Kent got her to the hospital, she had begun to turn very red. The paramedic team that responded to ‘victims of burns brought to hospital in lieu of the ambulances’ took Marlot into the the Chemical Burns Unit, fearing the worst from exposure to mixtures which had already caused severe caustic damage. Upon further diagnosis, the attending physician noted that Margot’s physical temperature had risen to 212 degrees Fahrenheit since her admittance to the hospital. When, in the pure oxygen environment, her skin burst into flame, the rest of the Chemical Burns Unit team had no chance.

Margot’s body was nothing but a pile of black dust when Edgar Farrow, Chief Medical Specialist of Cadaver Remains Diagnosis investigated what was left of her. The source of her sickness seemed to be nothing more than spontaneous combustion.
But she had been sick, before.
Or so her friend had said.
The man with the very high fever.