Nathan Jones - First Winter

Until then he had a less than pleasant job to do, and procrastinating wouldn’t get it done any faster. “I should get to work. You’re welcome to stick around if you want.”

Deb made a face. “Thanks, but I think Linda had the right idea.” She delicately leaned up to peck him on the lips. “I’ll see you at home.”

At home. He liked that she was starting to think of his room that way, although it also slammed him with the reality that their relationship was getting serious quick. Which was great, but it was also a first for him and more than a little intimidating. He was treading new territory here, and like it or not that territory might have more than its share of landmines.

Which made him all the more determined to tread carefully.

This was going to be a messy job, so Trev and the others converted plastic sheets into aprons and taped plastic bags over their gloves. Once they were ready they worked quickly, prepping the handful of animals and each handling their task.

The job didn’t exactly go like clockwork since some tasks took longer than others, and they especially had bottlenecks with the skinning and quartering. The cold also complicated everything, and they had to be extra careful to avoid fumbling knives held in chilled, slippery plastic covered and gloved fingers. Nobody wanted to accidentally cut themselves.

Still, they managed to finish the task well before noon, got the meat locked away in the ice shed and the hides hung to freeze as they were until they could be cured, and the extra bits of bone and gristle and the remainder of the carcasses gathered up and stored away so the town could make soup broth out of them, in large pots to be shared with the less well off and to feed the defenders and others doing work for the town. As for the offal, there were a few townspeople who owned dogs that would likely enjoy a treat.

After that the only thing left to do was clean up the area, wash up as best they could, and shake hands all around before going their separate ways. Trev couldn’t help but notice that Hailey and Robert kept their distance a bit, wary of whooping cough. Rick and Scott had come in contact with Lucas recently enough that it wasn’t quite as big an issue with them, although even they were a bit cautious.

Trev trudged home beside Matt, once more faced with grim thoughts of his uncle’s sickness. He didn’t want to think of what might happen, and not just because he loved the man and didn’t want to lose him. Lucas was the effective leader of the shelter group, a reassuring voice of reason and direction during difficult times. With him bedridden they’d struggle, and he didn’t even want to consider how they’d manage without him if worse came to worst.

When he popped into his family’s cabin his mom told him she’d already brought soup over for the Halssons, but he wanted to visit and report on how the butchering had gone so he made his way over anyway. Lewis had felt a bit bad about fobbing his share of the work off on Robert this morning, but Trev had insisted. Aside from wanting to ease his cousin’s burdens, Trev had also been worried that Lewis was so exhausted and emotionally distraught that working around sharp implements would be a risk.

If he hoped his visit would help lift the pall over the house he was discouraged. Everyone was exhausted and drawn with worry, and from his quarantine room Lucas’s coughing came far too frequently. They left the door between rooms open so he could still talk to everyone in the main room, and hear what was said, but that also meant his suffering was impossible to ignore.

Trev excused himself quickly, feeling a bit bad about it. The only highlight of the morning was that Deb was there in his room when he got home, once again comfortably curled on his bed reading a book.

When his girlfriend saw how chilled and dispirited he was she immediately went to get him some hot food and started water heating for him to wash up, then did her best to distract him from his worries with conversation.

He was definitely going to marry her.

From the looks of it the whooping cough was contained to just a few cases, all of which Terry and Dr. Langstrom were able to identify and quarantine in time to halt the spread. That was a relief, but for Lewis hardly a comfort.

He didn’t get sick, and neither did anyone else in the shelter group, but the next thirteen days were still hell for him. It was horrible knowing that nothing he went through even came close to matching what his dad was going through, but what made it worst of all was that he had to bear the burden of having given away the medicine that would’ve solved the problem.

A very small mercy in all this was that Lucas was spared from the increasingly intense coughing fits leading to vomiting, although he occasionally gagged when spitting up phlegm. But that seemed to be the only thing he was spared. As the days passed he cracked a lower right and upper left rib, both of which made even the slightest movements incredibly painful, so simply laying in bed became a chore. He also averaged only an hour or two of sleep a day at best, the coughing forcing him awake and then keeping him up no matter how exhausted he became. He also ate less and less until even a mouthful was a struggle, and he suffered for it with intense bouts of prolonged coughing.

At least he was able to drink as much water as he wanted without suffering for it, but it didn’t seem to ease his suffering either. Or more correctly, when he didn’t drink enough and his mouth and throat got dry he suffered painfully, but drinking more offered no benefit.

Terry and Dr. Langstrom had already regretfully informed him that no matter how hard they searched, there was no medicine available for treatment or even to relieve his symptoms. That didn’t stop Lewis from scouring the town looking. All he got in return was a lot of guilty apologies from neighbors, with the assurances that if they did have something they’d share it. There were two more storms during that time, and more days with infrequent snowfall. The temperature stayed low enough that all the new snow stuck around, so traveling to the nearby refugee camp or any other town or military location for help was impossible, as was calling in aid over the radio.

So they resorted to any home treatments they could think of, on top of continuing to have Lucas breathe steam even though it didn’t seem to help much. They tried passing him hot cloths to put over his chest and neck, herbal tea concoctions with honey, hot baths beside the stove with a borrowed tub, and anything else that had a hope of alleviating his suffering.

Seven days after he was diagnosed, while delivering him a meal Lewis’s mom caught him in a coughing fit and noticed another alarming symptom. During the tail end of it her husband began twitching, legs kicking slightly beneath the blankets as his eyes rolled back in his head. He confessed that for a few days now he’d been experiencing grayouts which had now progressed to brief blackouts. He’d kept them secret, as much because the lack of control over his body and losing moments of time terrified him as because he didn’t want his loved ones to worry.

The blackouts were intense, occasionally even entering a dreamlike state. And although everyone who saw them happen insisted none lasted more than a couple seconds, his dad was certain they lasted minutes.

Lewis knew Doctor Langstrom had a bag valve mask, and asked to borrow it to try to assist with his dad’s breathing to try to prevent the blackouts. But the surgeon explained that the symptom, cough syncope, didn’t come from lack of air. It came from the brain briefly not getting enough blood during extreme coughing fits. There wasn’t much to be done aside from making sure he recovered and got breathing as soon as possible once he was alert again.