C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

“Uh huh. And I’ll be sitting here until you are.” It wasn’t a bad bedside chair, plenty comfortable for a young guy to sack out in for a couple nights. Annie settled in and went ta sleep quicker than her light-hearted words accounted for. I watched her sleep for a long time, counting her breaths and assuring myself she was still alive, before finally falling asleep myself.

Her whimpering woke me up before dawn. Didn’t have to be a doctor to tell she was worse, not better. Her skin was just about blue from paleness, all except for hot spots on her cheeks and the rash standing out like flares in every crease and crook of her body. I hollered for help and three doctors came running, along with more nurses than I could count. They loved my Annie, maybe just about as much as I did. One of the doctors went through her chart, scowling so hard his eyes disappeared. “There’s nothing in here about a penicillin allergy. Do you know of anything else she might be allergic to, Mr. Muldoon?”

“Long haired cats is about it.”

The doctor’s eyes reappeared, sympathetic. “Probably not the cause here, but we’ll keep it in mind. Nurse, can you get her an IV? She’s…” He touched her forehead an’ the frown came back. “Much too warm. Take her temperature every five minutes. If it’s not dropping in twenty, prepare a cool bath. We want that fever to break before there’s permanent damage.”

I caught his arm as he tried heading out. “Whaddaya mean, permanent?”

“Very high fevers are dangerous in adults, Mr. Muldoon.” He took my hand off his arm without making a fuss about it. “If they go on long enough there can be brain damage, or other physically detrimental effects. We won’t worry about it just yet, all right? Anne is young and strong, and I’m sure we’ll bring her fever down with some liquids.”

Half an hour later she was shivering in a bathtub, her nightgown stuck to her body an’ making the rash look paler than it was. The nurses tried ta keep me out, but Annie whispered, “No, please, let him stay,” and they let me through to kneel beside the tub and hold her hand. It went like that all day, in and outta the cool water, until she was looking like a drowned kitten but still flushed and hot. Somewhere ‘round midnight she fell asleep, except it wasn’t sleep, not properly. I stayed there, holding her hand and keeping my head down, praying and trying not to hear the nurses whispering about comas and fevers.

I figured I’d been awake about twenty-six hours when I finally figured it out, an’ lifted my head to whisper, “It’s the scratches. It ain’t scarlet fever, Annie. It’s that thing that scratched you in the ward. That wasn’t…” It wasn’t an accident, my back-of-head voice finished, even if I didn’t wanna say it out loud. That was an attack, buddy. Wish like hell I’d known that then.

I said, “I do know it now,” aloud, an’ for a second I hoped Annie was gonna give me a look like I’d gone crazy, but her short quick breaths didn’t even change. I leaned in anyway and kissed her hair, murmurin’, “Nothin’, sweetheart. I’m just worrying about you,” like she was sayin’ her part. Like she had ta say her part, because I couldn’t picture my life without her. She was gonna get better, ‘cause I couldn’t live with anything else. What do I do? Whaddo I do ? I asked the voice in my head, but the damned thing didn’t answer. I got up an’ went to the window, staring out at the night and tryin’ ta think. I wished Danny was there, even if he only knew about Korean demons. It’d be something, anyway. Something more than doctors and nurses would understand.

Every damned person in that hospital ward had gone into a coma like the one Annie was in. Nobody’d said anything about ‘em having a fever first, but I hadn’t thought to ask about their medical history while I was trying not to get stuck by a monster. It probably didn’t matter, except all of them had been on IVs an’ cooling baths too. If cold didn’t break the fever, then how was I s’posed to help Annie?

I didn’t know if it was me or the voice saying you sweat it out , but the idea came through loud an’ clear.

It was about the dumbest damned thing I could think of. Fevers were already hot, an’ it didn’t seem like raising her body temperature even more could help. But cooling her down sure wasn’t, an’ I remembered all of a sudden how hot the thing in the hospital ward had been. Maybe the cooler it stayed, the longer it lived in somebody, an’ the longer it stayed alive the weaker the body got.

Nothin’ else was working. It was worth a shot. I took Annie off the IV an’ scooped her up. She didn’t weigh nothing, all the water burned outta her by the fever. I bundled her up in my coat an’ all the blankets I could steal from the hospital, an’ drove her home to build a fire in the hearth. I dragged the kitchen table as close as I could get it an’ threw blankets over the table until I’d built us a little cave in the living room, an’ then I crawled inside with Annie. I lay down behind her an’ tucked her against my chest to keep her warm from both sides, and started praying again.

The rash came up bright an’ awful all over as she started warming up. She started shivering harder than she’d done at the hospital, bad enough I wondered right away if I was killing her instead of helping, but I had to do something, an’ the doctors weren’t gonna understand my crazy reasons why. I tried to close my ears to her whimpers, whispering, “It’s okay, darlin’, it’s gonna be fine,” over an’ over again.

Took a long time for her to start sweating, but when she did it came on fast. Her hair went wet under my chin, an’ the shivering turned to shakes and then to thrashing. I put my leg over hers an’ held her tighter, still whisperin’ reassurances and praying I wasn’t killing my wife. I was damned near as tired as she was from holding her down when the thing finally came loose from her, an’ rattled outta her chest in a coughing wheeze.

I’d seen it before at the hospital, but somehow I wasn’t thinking it’d be a living moving thing again. There was a lot less to it than there’d been in the ward, but then it only had Annie, not a ward fulla folks to feed on, an’ it looked weak from the heat. I reached past Annie, slow as I could, an’ picked up the fire iron.

It died from the iron a lot faster than it’d done with the IV pole, an’ what was left drifted up the chimney as smoke. Annie gasped in a deep breath an’ rolled away from the fire with a cry, the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. I knocked the table over, bringing cooler air in, an’ dropped down beside her to haul her into my arms. She was cold an’ clammy and shivering again, but it wasn’t a sick kinda shivering anymore.

After the longest time I picked her up again an’ brought her to the bathroom, filled the tub with warm water an’ got in it with her. There wasn’t hardly enough room for one of us in it, never mind two, but I wasn’t gonna let her go. ‘sides, at least it being small meant I could reach for a cup and fill it from the sink without movin’ much. Annie drank it, still without sayin’ anything, and I got her another, an’ another, until she finally just held it, half full, an’ fell asleep against my chest. Healthy sleep, not the stillness from before. She barely even woke up with me getting us outta the tub and dried off, an’ she was a warm little lump of softness at my side when I crawled into bed with her. We didn’t wake up, either, not til early the next morning, when she whispered, “I’m hungry.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while, doll.” I held on another minute, then kissed her hair. “All right. Bacon an’ eggs or you wanna start small?”