Sara Reinke - Backwoods

She was back, slapping urgently at his door, in less than ten.

“I need your help,” she told him, grabbing him by the arm, yanking him into the hallway. “It’s Thomas. He wasn’t at supper again tonight. I just thought he wasn’t feeling well again, but just now, he came to my room.”

“Is he alright?” Andrew asked, a stupid question considering he knew O’Malley wasn’t alright based on that frightened, frantic look in Dani’s eyes, the worry and fear that were both stark and apparent in her face.

“He’s burning up with fever. I need to get him to the infirmary. Will you help me? He won’t walk by himself, says it hurts too bad.” Her voice had grown strained, choked with tears. “I had to leave him on the floor in my bathroom. He fell down and he’s too heavy. I can’t lift him by myself.”

“Of course,” Andrew said. Closing the door behind him as quietly as possible so he wouldn’t disturb Alice, he hurried with Dani downstairs to the first floor.

Her bedroom was smaller than Andrew’s by at least half the diameter, furnished in equally Spartan fashion, but she’d brightened it as best she’d been able with photographs of her children and a variety of colorful drawings and paintings, rendered in marker, crayon and acrylic on sheets of construction paper she’d taped to the walls. She’d been in the process of packing when O’Malley had come to her door. He saw a large duffel bag open on her bed, a loose assortment of clothes surrounding it.

“He’s in here.” Dani rushed to the bathroom door, but when she reached for the light switch, a low voice groaned from the shadow-draped interior.

“Leave the light off.”

“Thomas, it’s me,” Dani said. “I’ve got Andrew Braddock with me. We’re going to get you over to the infirmary. It’s going to be okay.”

“Light… hurts my eyes,” O’Malley mumbled from inside, and past Dani, Andrew caught sight of him sprawled on the floor, half-upright, half-slumped against the wall, his legs splayed out in front of him. The smell of vomit struck him even before he got near the threshold.

“What’s wrong with him?” he whispered, shying back reflexively.

“I don’t know.” Seeming oblivious to the pungent odor, Dani went into the bathroom and knelt beside her friend.

“I got sick,” O’Malley croaked, sounding feeble and miserable.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“There’s puke on your floor.”

“It’s okay,” she said again.

“I’m sorry,” he moaned.

“Shut up, Thomas,” she said, then looked back at Andrew. “He can’t stand. He told me his legs hurt, his knees and ankles are all swollen. Can you help me?”

Andrew nodded, stepping into the narrow confines of the bathroom, blinking owlishly for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He saw a thin puddle of vomit on the tiles near Dani’s feet. As he squatted on the other side, he drew back in reflexive surprise. Even in the dark, he could see O’Malley’s face shining with febrile sweat. His breathing sounded heavy and labored.

“Hey, Just-Andrew,” the Corporal croaked, managing a feeble smile. “Dani told me…you went out in the woods…looking for me today. Thanks. That…that was alright of you.”

“Well, hey, you know, I’m a nice guy.” Andrew tried to force a smile, a nonchalant tone to his voice.

“Yeah.” O’Malley nodded once. “She…told me that, too.”

“Let’s get you out of here,” Andrew said, slipping his arm around O’Malley’s back. “Lean on me. You think you can stand up?”

“I don’t know.” O’Malley grunted as Andrew pulled him into a more upright, seated position, allowing Dani to get her arm around him from the other side. “My legs…feel like they’re on fire.”

Dani cut a frightened look at Andrew. “On three?” he asked and she nodded. Andrew counted off, then they both gritted their teeth, struggling with O’Malley’s considerable and mostly dead-weight. They managed to get him on his feet, although it took them several tries. The effort to stand likewise exhausted O’Malley, and he leaned heavily against Andrew, his eyes rolling back into his skull, uttering a soft, breathless moan as his consciousness waned.

“Thomas?” Dani first tapped, then more vigorously slapped his cheek, trying to rouse him. “Thomas, wake up.”

“Help me get him to the bed,” Andrew said, struggling to keep his own feet underneath him while supporting O’Malley. Together, he and Dani wrestled the young man to her bed, and she shoved aside the duffel bag and clothes to clear space for him.

“Oh, my God,” Dani whispered, once they’d let O’Malley collapse against the bed spread. Now, beneath the fluorescent glow of her overhead lights, they could see the left side of his face and neck were covered in some kind of rash. Bright red welts, raised like poison ivy or hives and all but covered his cheek and forehead, encircling his left eye, swelling his eyelid shut.

She leaned over, pulling open his shirt, revealing more of the weal-like rash cutting thick splotches down his neck and chest. Golf-ball sized nodules had risen beneath his skin in places, following the contours of his ribcage, his abdomen and the back of his neck. The warning signs Andrew had seen plastered throughout the house of pain came immediately to mind:

“That’s not Rocky Mountain spotted fever,” Andrew said. Drawing back from the bed, he wiped his hands fervently on his pant legs. “I don’t know what the hell he’s got, but it’s not that.”

“Will you stay with him?” she asked. “Just for a few minutes, until I can find Suzette?”

“Suzette?” Andrew blinked in bewildered surprise.

“She’s a doctor,” Dani said. “Look at Thomas. He needs medical attention.”

“Alright,” Andrew said, not because he particularly wanted to—because the only thing that might have made him more anxious than the prospect of exposure to anthrax, ebola or other weapons-grade germs was that of another confrontation with Suzette—but because Dani had asked it of him, pleaded for it.

“I’ll hurry, I promise.” Dani leaned over and stroked O’Malley’s close-cropped hair, speaking as much to him as to Andrew, even though the young corporal was pretty much incoherent now, oblivious to her.

Dani rushed from the room, leaving Andrew standing beside the bed, uncertain. Semi-lucid, O’Malley moaned weakly. Not only did his breathing sound strained, but Andrew realized it sounded moist , sodden somehow, like maybe when he’d vomited, he’d aspirated some of his own bile and now it churned and frothed with every labored inhalation.

“It’s going to be okay,” Andrew told him, feeling obliged to say something at least remotely comforting, if only for his own benefit.

O’Malley turned his head weakly to one side. As he did, a thin stream of frothy, pale foam dribbled out of his mouth, down his cheek and onto the bedspread.

“Oh, hey,” Andrew said, eyes widening in abrupt panic. He darted to the bathroom and grabbed the first towel he found. Rushing back into the bedroom, he crammed it against O’Malley’s mouth, trying to tuck it beneath his head without getting any of the vomit on his hand.

O’Malley groaned. This turned into a low, warbling croak, a nasty, visceral sort of belch, then he convulsed sharply on the bed, spitting out a sudden, thick spray of bile all over Andrew.

“Shit!” Andrew recoiled in disgust, holding his arms out impotently in the air, watching as more of that mucous-like emesis dripped from his now soaked sleeves. The front of his shirt clung to his chest, sopping and stinking. “Shit.”