Nathan Jones - First Winter

“Even with a broken rib?” Eva asked worriedly.

“Even then,” Langstrom replied. “As much as the pain allows.” He applied one last strip of tape, carefully smoothed them all to make sure they’d stuck, then backed away. “You mentioned when you hurt the other two ribs that lying flat is difficult. Let’s prop you fully upright and find a way to support your head on either side for when you sleep.”

Lucas nodded and started to speak, then abruptly began the unbroken series of soft, wheezing coughs that were a prelude to the more intense coughing fits. The expression of fear and resignation on his face as he finally sucked in a breath after almost ten seconds, then began violently coughing hard enough to hunch over, was one of the most terrible Lewis had ever seen.

Although he could barely see through his tears he still looked away, gut wrenching, as his dad once again gave strangled cries of pain through his coughing. The tape didn’t seem to have helped at all.

The cries abruptly stopped, and he turned to see his dad twitching violently, then slumping bonelessly against his wife as he blacked out, eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. A couple seconds later he came to, jerked upright, and sucked in a sobbing breath as he screamed in pain again.

His screams cut off into panting, desperate breaths, broken by wrenching moans. “I can’t,” he begged. “Dear God, I can’t do this. Please make it stop.”

Lewis looked at Terry and Langstrom, and from the frustrated and hopeless expressions on their faces knew there was nothing they could do.

“If there were any painkillers I’d give them to you in a heartbeat, Lucas,” Terry said quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Lewis flinched at that and felt a new surge of guilt.

Lucas barely seemed to hear. “Months of this,” he mumbled. “I’m not sure I can last a day. I’d rather be dead.”

“Don’t say that!” his wife said fiercely, gripping his hand so tight her knuckles were white. “We’ll get through this.”

Lewis looked away as his dad started crying again. “I’ll go ask around for medicine again,” he mumbled, backing out of the room. Nobody spoke as he fled out the door.

It was the middle of the night, he’d already canvassed the whole town searching for anyone who had anything that could help, and in the cold and dark the best he was going to accomplish was to make himself sick too. He’d go back inside soon, although he wasn’t sure how he’d bear it, but for now he’d just needed to escape.

He huddled down against the wall of the house, the snow soft beneath him, and stared at nothing. A few minutes later Langstrom and Terry emerged, splitting off to return to their homes. Either they didn’t see him in the dark or they were giving him some space, but either way he was left alone to try to come to terms with what was coming.

His dad wasn’t going to die. He couldn’t.

It seemed like a miracle when Lucas went the whole day without coughing. He even managed to sleep, waking frequently to take great gulps of water before sinking down into unconsciousness again.

Lewis didn’t know if some protective instinct was keeping his dad’s body from coughing, to prevent doing further injury to the rib and causing more unbearable agony. Or maybe it was just luck. Either way he was fervently thankful all the same.

He spent the reprieve scouring the town again, desperate to find someone, anyone, who had medicine. Anything that could help with pain, or ease coughing, or even an inhaler or something that might help clear his dad’s airways to make breathing easier and reduce the frequency of coughing fits.

There was nothing. What little the town had had been “donated” to the military, or used up by this point with no chance to replace any of it. If any individuals had private stores they weren’t saying, and although Lewis had numerous debts he could call in if he wanted, nobody seemed willing or able to help him like he’d helped them.

That wasn’t how he wanted to think, but in his despair and frustration it was hard not to. As night fell he trudged back home, hoping and praying that his dad was still enjoying this reprieve, able to rest and hopefully benefit from some miraculous recovery.

But there was no miracle, and the reprieve had been short-lived. Lewis returned to the sound of coughing, his dad’s obvious agony throughout the fit, and it hit him like a bullet to the heart. Even knowing it was irrational he’d tried to fool himself into believing that the coughs would suddenly and permanently stop.

His mom rushed out of the sickroom when she heard the door open as Lewis came in. Her face was lined and haggard, her shoulders hunched. She looked as if she’d aged a decade, and he was suddenly worried that the stress she was under would cause her to fall ill, too. If not with whooping cough then with something else.

“You have something,” she said, more a plea than a question. “Please, tell me you have something.”

He shook his head woodenly, unable to speak his failure. His mom’s shoulders slumped even more, and she dropped onto the end of his and Jane’s bed and collapsed into exhausted, despairing weeping.

His dad had refused to eat after the new broken rib, since even soup was bringing on coughing fits. And their hopes that a day of rest and healing might’ve done some good were quickly dashed as those fits came on more frequent and severe than they ever had before. That night was the worst yet.

The next morning the Smiths came over to be with them during this most difficult of times. Eva, Mary, Aunt Clair, and Linda huddled into a weeping ball, while George and Trev came to rest a hand on Lewis’s shoulder, then stand with him silently.

After a short time of mutual comfort Lucas, speaking in a weak, whispery voice, called from the next room that he’d like to speak to each of them in turn. He obviously intended it as his final farewell and last bit of fatherly, brotherly, and unclely advice.

No one wanted to acknowledge that that’s what he was doing, but when he called for his sister to come in she went, shutting the door behind her at his request.

To Lewis it already felt like a funeral as they waited, his loved ones crying going in and crying coming out. His aunt, his mom, Mary, Trev, Linda, Jim, George, even Jane. It seemed like his dad meant for him to wait til last.

When Lewis was finally called in he came to sit on the bed beside his dad, resting a hand on his leg. Neither of them said anything, sitting like that for a while, and then his dad sucked in a slight breath. “Out with it,” he said, barely audible.

Lewis blinked. “What?”

“You’re carrying weight around you shouldn’t be. Out with it.”

He blinked again, but this time it was from sudden tears burning in his eyes. “I had the medicine to help you,” he whispered. “I gave it all away when we were fighting the blockheads, and now you have to go through this. It’s not fair. After everything you’ve done for us, for the town, you should be able to catch a break.”

“Mercy is a human trait,” his dad whispered, face pale from the effort of talking and not coughing. “Nature doesn’t have mercy. It doesn’t matter what’s fair, it matters what is.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have mercy, either,” Lewis said bitterly. “I could’ve eased your suffering, made you better.”

His dad sucked in a shallow, tentative breath. “Don’t ever regret mercy. Nature might punish you for it rather than reward you, but that doesn’t change your choice. You live each day as best you can, learning from the past, preparing for the future. But don’t ever let regret of the past or fear of the future poison your actions.” A weak hand drifted over to grip his shoulder. “You saved lives with that medicine, you know you did.”