Mud Vein(56)

And yet he loved me.



And yet I couldn’t love him back.





When I wake Isaac isn’t there. I weigh my panic against the pain. I can only focus on one at a time. I choose my pain because it won’t loosen its grip on my brain. I am familiar with heart pain—intense, excruciating heart pain, but I’ve never experienced a physical pain quite this exquisite. Heart pain and physical pain are only comparable in that neither relinquish their hold on you once they get rolling. The heart releases a dull ache when it is broken; the pain in my leg so acute and sharp it’s hard to breathe.

I wrestle with the pain for a minute … two, before I discard it. I broke my body and there is no way to fix it. I don’t care. I need to find Isaac. And that’s when I think it: Oh God. What if the zookeeper came while I was passed out and did something to him? I roll slightly onto my side until I have some leverage, and try to drag myself up using my good leg. That’s when I see my leg. The lower half of my pants has been cut away. The place where the bone was sticking out has been wrapped in thin gauze. I feel liquid running down to my foot as I move. I hold my hand over my mouth and breathe through my nose. Who was here? Who did this? The fire is burning. The fire I built would have given up the ghost by now. Someone had built it back up, fed it new logs.

I wobble where I’m standing. I need light. I need to—

“Sit down.”

I start, jarred by the voice. I twist my neck around as far as it can go.

“Isaac,” I cry out. I start to teeter, but he darts over and catches me. Darts is a strong word, I think. For a minute it looks like he is going to fall with me. I lift my hand up, touch his face. He looks terrible. But he’s alive and walking. He lowers me gently to the ground.

“Are you okay?”

He shakes his head. “Alive’s not enough for you?”

“You shouldn’t be,” I hiss. “I thought you were going to die.” He doesn’t acknowledge me. Instead he walks over to a pile of something I can’t see in the dark.

“Look who’s talking,” he says, softly.

“Isaac,” I say again. “The table…” All of a sudden I’m feeling hot … weak. The adrenaline, which carried me up the well, up the stairs, up the ladder, has run out.

He walks over to me, his arms full. “I know,” he says, dryly. “I saw.”

He’s looking at my leg as he sets things down next to me. He’s lining them up, double-checking everything. But every few seconds he looks at my leg again like he doesn’t know how to fix it.

“Is that how this happened?”

“I jumped down the table,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking. The asthma—”

The corners of his mouth pull tight. “You had an asthma attack? While this happened?” I nod. I can only see his face with the dim light of the fire, but it looks as if it’s paled.

“Your tibia is fractured. Your leg must have bent at just the right angle when you fell to cause the break.”

“When I jumped,” I said.

“When you fell.”

He’s working with his hands, opening packages. I hear little rips, the clatter of metal. I lean my head back and close my eyes. I hear little bursts of air, I think it’s Isaac, but then I realize that I’m panting.

He looks straight at me. “You must have gotten my body temperature back up. You did everything right.”

“What?” I’m dizzy. I want to hurl again.

“You saved me life,” he says. He glances up at me at the same time I crack open an eye.

“I need to move you.”

“No!” I grab his arm. “No, please. Just let me stay here.” I’m panting. The thought of moving makes me sick. “There is nowhere to move me, Isaac. Just do it here.”

Do what here? Was he really planning to operate on the floor of the attic room?

“There’s not enough light,” I say. The pain is intensifying. I’m hoping he’ll forget this whole thing and let me die. He reaches round his back and brings out the flashlight from downstairs. When I was a little girl, my mother would have chided me for reading under that light, now Isaac is planning on operating with it.

“What are you going to do?” I do a quick survey of what he’s brought with him. There are six rolls of what look like bandages, alcohol, a bucket of water, a needle and thread, a bottle of tequila. There are some other things but he’s placed them on a baking sheet and covered them with what looks like a bandage.

“Fix your leg.”

“Where’s the morphine?” I joke. Isaac props my upper body under pillows he gets from the bed so that I’m in a half sitting position. Then he unscrews the lid from the tequila and holds it to my mouth.

“Get drunk,” he says without looking at me. I chug it.

“Where did you find all of this?” I take a couple of deep breaths letting what I’ve already swallowed settle, and then I lift the bottle back to my mouth. I want to hear how he found my discovery. He speaks while the cactusy taste of tequila burns its way to my stomach in small gulps.

“Where do you think?”

I bite my lip. My mind is numb from the alcohol. I wipe away what’s running down my chin.

“We were starving, and all along…”