Devils Unto Dust(78)

62.


The weakness of recovery frustrates me most. I can’t walk. At least not well, and not far. The first time I try to stand, I’m embarrassed to realize that someone took my pants off to put me in bed. I hope it was Sam, who only sees me as a patient or a sister. After the miles in the desert, I thought I’d never want to walk again, but days spent lying flat have me itching for the freedom of movement.

Sam lets me hobble around the tent, but my legs are stiff and creaky and I get short of breath quickly. It’s just as well I can’t go far, since no one here knows I’m recovering from the sickness; the story, thought up by Sam, is that my sunstroke was brought on by a nasty case of pneumonia. I get a tent to myself and the other hunters steer well clear of me, but I’m desperate for distraction. Sam says I need to rest, that I need to get my strength back before I can move, but I’m sick of being in bed. At least I can feed myself now, which saves embarrassment on both sides.

I try not to think about Micah. When I’m awake I school my thoughts away from him, but I can’t stop him from invading my dreams. They’re sticky and suffocating, fueled by the drugs Sam gives me for the aches in my bones. Sometimes I see Micah the way he always looked, disheveled and thoughtful, and then sometimes his face is pale and blood-covered and I’m the cause. Those times are the worst, because the medicine keeps me sleeping, trapped in foggy nightmares.

My own face is hardly recognizable now. I look at my reflection in a spoon and a stranger stares back: rawboned and pale, with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes and brittle clumps of dark hair. My lips are chapped and peeling, and if I smile they crack and bleed. Not that I feel like smiling much. I was never a great beauty, but the fever burned off the last bits of flesh I had, leaving nothing but dry skin on bone. Sam says I have to get some meat back on me, and he brings me bowl after bowl of clear salty soup that tastes of fat. I still look half dead, though. I still look like a shake. I go through the motions, lift the spoon to my lips, say please and thank you, but inside I can feel the anger building, a raw wound of resentment and rage.

“You have to give it time, Will,” Sam tells me. I ask how much time but he can’t or won’t answer. I’ve missed my week deadline with McAllister, missed it by days. He’s not one to forgive, or forget.

I worry for the twins; they must know by now something went very wrong. I didn’t even tell them about the peppermint drops I hid. It seems terribly important that they know about the candy.

After four days Sam weans me off the drugs, and only then do I realize how much I need them. I take to the cot again, unable to stand without shaking. My neck and back throb when I move them, and my infected arm burns with heat as it heals. That night when my dreams turn dark and stained I wake up screaming, pouring sweat and chattering. Between my dreams and the noise of gunshots from the fence, I wake up more tired than I went to sleep. I beg Sam to give me something, threaten and cajole him, but he remains unmoved. I plead for Ben and Curtis to force him to listen to me, but those two defer to Sam in all things medical. When I call Ben a coward, he says I must be feeling better.

I’m being awful, I know. Maybe some part of me is changed, maybe I’ve become something dreadful. Not a shake, exactly, but not myself, either. There’s a rottenness in me, something left over from the sickness. It’s a darkness only my fevered mind could see, damp and vile smelling underneath my skin. Why else am I so furious, so pathetically weak and brimming with bitterness? I could scream until my voice wears out and never empty myself of the anger inside.

After five days of liquid meals and one day with no drugs, I finally throw a spoon at Sam’s head.

“If you don’t bring me some solid food, I will gut you.” I breathe hard through my nostrils, my chapped lips pursed.

Sam bends down and picks up the spoon. It didn’t even come close to hitting its target. He sighs as he rights himself, a sigh full of weary righteousness that sets my teeth grinding. “You are the worst patient I’ve ever had.”

“You’re not even a real doctor yet!”

Sam shakes his head and walks away, leaving me alone with a bowl of soup and no spoon. I lie back in my cot and curse at myself. I can’t stand being stuck here, and I’m driving away the people who want to help. My mouth has always gotten me into trouble, but now I can’t seem to control it at all. Compared to this, I was downright restrained before.

I sip my soup straight from the bowl, burning the roof of my mouth. My sore jaw craves something to chew, anything that puts up the slightest resistance. The soup slips down my throat, oily and hot. I can feel it sloshing around my insides, simply moving from one bowl to another. I’m not even hungry, I haven’t been hungry since I woke up. I can’t eat without remembering the taste of bloody meat in my mouth. I eat because people tell me to, because I can feel my body creak when I move and see my finger bones through the skin on my hands.

“Knock, knock,” comes a voice from the opening of the tent, and Curtis peeks his head around. “Can I come in?”

Curtis likes to pretend he’s just dropping by my house to say hello. “You don’t have to keep doing that, Curtis. No one else does.”

“Girls like their privacy,” he tells me, like it’s some great piece of wisdom. He sits down across from me on the stool I’m growing to hate, I stare at it so much. I know every knot and chip in the wood, just like I know every scuff on the wooden beams and each stain on the canvas of the tent.