S. Bodeen - The Compound

Our only hope was Dad. Maybe he would relent and tell me what I needed to know.

BACK IN THE INFIRMARY, MOM SAT ON THE BED AND LEXIE stood beside her, an arm around her shoulder. Dad’s bruised face was clean, and he lay under several layers of blankets, shivering. His eyes were open, but they seemed to be vacant, unfocused. If he noticed me come in, he gave no sign.

Mom looked up at me, her eyebrows raised hopefully. “Any luck?”

I shook my head. “How is he?”

“We took his temperature. It’s low.”

“That’s good, right?” I asked, as I took in what I’d done to his face. Some son.

She shook her head. “No, it’s not a good thing. His temperature is low.”

“What do you mean by low?”

“Below normal. Below 98.6.”

Lexie pulled a blue blanket out of the warmer and we both spread it over Dad. His eyes widened, seemed to focus for a moment. “Oh God.” Leaning over the side of the bed, he retched.

Ugh. Turning away, I said, “Got it.” I found the mop and bucket in the closet and cleaned up the mess.

Before long Dad had diarrhea, too. He was no more coherent, but we managed to get him to the bathroom. Mom went in with him and shut the door.

Lexie waited for a minute. “I’m gonna go help Terese with the Supp—” She paused. “I mean with the little kids.” She left.

I sat down on the edge of the bed, wondering what kind of bug Dad had. How bad he had it. Whether we would all end up with it.

“Eli, are you out there?”

“Yeah, Mom. Right here.”

She opened the bathroom door. “He needs to lie down again. Can you help?”

Dad leaned totally on me as we started back to the bed. Suddenly he went limp.

I couldn’t hold him.

He dropped to the floor. His head thrashed from side to side. “No!” he screamed. He began to babble, many of the words incoherent.

Mom knelt by him. “Rex? What’s wrong?”

Dad seized me by the collar. His breath was hot and stinking in my face. His hands were ice against my skin. “I won’t let you do it. I won’t.” He was agitated, angry, and then he stopped. He fell back on the floor, and then looked up at my mom, pleading. “Clea, don’t let them do it.”

“Do what, Rex?” She looked as confused as I felt.

“Mom, he’s delirious.”

Mom sighed. “We’ve got to find out what’s wrong. Maybe we’ve got medicine for it.”

Suddenly Dad seemed to be calm again. Grunting at the effort, I slid him across the floor and lifted him into the bed. I said, “I’ll go see what I can find out. You stay here but be careful. If he starts to get violent or seems like he might hurt you, just leave, okay?”

Mom nodded.

In the library, I grabbed several thick medical books. It would have been so much easier to just go on the Internet, find out what I needed. But then I could have gotten us out. I wouldn’t have had to play a half-assed doctor.

Back in the room with Dad, Mom and I paged through the reference books. “Mom, what are his symptoms?”

“For weeks now he’s been drinking antacid like it’s water.”

“So… heartburn?”

She shook her head. “And the vomiting and diarrhea. Although today may be the first time that’s happened.”

I frowned. “Those are symptoms for a million things. Let’s focus on the unique things.”

Mom nodded. “Like his low body temperature.”

“Yeah. And being delirious.” I kept flipping pages. Then my eyes caught a paragraph about low body temperature. “This couldn’t be it.”

Mom looked up from the book she held. “What?”

“Well, it lists all those symptoms. Plus seizures, headaches…” I caught my breath. “And itching.” I met Mom’s stare.

“He’s been scratching like crazy.”

Reading further, I jammed my finger into the page. “And pins and needles. He said that the other day, that his hands felt like pins and needles.”

“Eli, what’s the condition?”

I hadn’t even looked at that yet. I’d been too busy matching up the symptoms. “Ergotism.”

“What is it?”

I kept reading. My heart sunk when I found out what it was. I didn’t want to tell my mom. But she was waiting for me.

I read the definition aloud. “Poisoning by ingesting ergot-infected grains.”

Her face registered confusion. She paled as she understood. “The flour.”

I scanned a bit more, trying to find out what I could. “There must have been some rye in it that was already infected with the ergot when it came into the Compound.”

Her eyes widened. “I… I did this.”

I started to shake my head, but she grabbed my arm. “I did. But I didn’t mean to… I just thought… I thought it would make him sick, make him weak, so that we all wouldn’t have to worry so much about…”

“About him doing something crazy?”

She nodded.

We both looked at Dad. He seemed to be asleep. “But it made him crazier.”

She looked at me. “Do you think his workers planted the flour?”

I didn’t know. “He wouldn’t have wanted us to get sick. I really believe that.” Too ironic, that he went to the trouble to have someone sabotage the food supply and he was sabotaged himself by the flour.

Mom stood up and walked to the bed. She tucked the blankets in around Dad. “Is there a cure?”

“Yeah. According to this, a derivative of ergot gets used to treat migraines. Once in a while a patient overdoses and they have to treat them for ergotism. Intravenous sodium nitroprusside.” Further reading revealed that medicine’s own dangers.

“Do we have it?” Mom looked like she was holding her breath.

“Yes.” Dad’s voice was raspy and weak.

I scratched my head. It was such an obscure medication. “Dad, why would we have that?” Maybe he had planned the ergot poisoning. Why else would he have the antidote?

He swallowed. One of his hands reached up to scratch his face. “I had to have that, of all things. Because of what it becomes if… if you take too much.”

Mom and I both leaned in, waiting.

“Just in case. In case it came to that for some reason.” Dad’s eyes had been clear, but then they seemed to glaze over. He recited part of a poem.

The poem was one I knew all too well. I joined him for the next part.

T. S. Eliot’s poem from the beginning of On the Beach .

Dad leaned back, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t have to tell me more. I understood why he had sodium nitroprusside. I explained to Mom. “Too much of it gives you cyanide poisoning.”

Mom gasped. “But that’s deadly.”

I nodded. “That’s the point.”

Dad’s voice was weak. “Can’t survive a nuclear war without cyanide.”

Among everything else, my dad turned out to be a walking cliché.

I sighed. “Mom, do you know how to put in an IV?”

“No.”

Pity they didn’t cover that at the commune.

I leaned in. “Dad. You’ve got to give me the code for the door. Let me go out and get you help. You have to or you’re going to die.”

He nodded. “Yes. Yes. The code. Of course. We must have the code.” His eyes were strange again, not clear.

I could tell there wasn’t much behind them. “Dad, if you just hold on. Please, just hold on, stay with me. Can you tell me the code?”