I believe that the first answer, recovering from love, is correct. Because he could not recover his love, which is sometimes referred to as a fire, he is sad or in emotional pain.
He seems like a decent person. Ive never read the book
Is that you?
The sentence <em>Sickly people cost the company a whole boatload of dough </em>is not acceptable because the sentence contains a loaded word as well as slang.
You cannot use slang words such as <em>boatload </em>or <em>dough </em>in formal English.
