Along cantered chaunceyhorse

A long, terrible moment passed, during which nothing at all happened other than my eyes began to water from the sharp, biting stink of fumes, and then Curry’s eyelids fluttered and he made a faint, groggy sound of displeasure. I almost began to bawl again, just from sheer relief, except that I couldn’t afford to do that, when there were still important instructions to be carried out. I was supposed to get him on his side, to make it easier to cough up the stuff drowning his lungs. “Mag,” I cried, and I had to say his name three times in all to get his eyes to move to me, which sent unhelpful, paralyzing fear sparking all through me, so I **** myself to set that feeling aside on my growing pile of terrible things which had to be saved for evaluation at some much later interval. “You have to turn on your side,” I told him, unsure if he even understood me. “I can’t move you all by myself. I need your help.”

After I’d repeated myself again he nodded weakly, and somehow I got him turned onto one side. I needed to keep him that way, so I snatched all the pillows from the head of the bed and wedged them behind his back. “Don’t fall back asleep, Mag,” I ordered him shrilly as I poured hot water from the kettle to the point on the cup where his mother indicated, then counted out the twenty drops she’d said to use, “you can’t go back to sleep—if you pass out again, I might not be able to wake you up again—I’m hurrying, I’m really hurrying, almost done now, I promise,” I babbled inanely, fearful my voice was the only thing keeping him tethered. “Done!” I said, quickly stirring the cup and taking it over to him.

“This one is going to taste awful, just absolutely shitty I think,” I apologized, perching on the edge of the bed and holding his head up with my lap, “but you have to drink it all down. I’ll hold the cup for you and keep you up—but you have to pay attention so you don’t breathe it in instead of swallowing it—that’ll make things even worse. Ready?”

He closed his eyes briefly, and my heart gave a terrible lurch, but he was only bracing himself. He nodded, the movement so feeble and faint that this too had to be thrown on my scared-stack to be dealt with later. I held the cup for him, tipping it only just enough to give him a little to swallow down. I read in his face that he still had enough presence of mind not to like how it tasted, but he kept that to himself and did as I’d asked, concentrating to make sure he got the liquid down the right way.

It took an excruciating ten minutes just to feed him this scant little cupful, and all the while I tossed still more things on my pile of monstrous details that had to be deferred because right now they could only get in the way of what had to be done—his purple fingernails and darkened lips, and the now even more distinctly blue cast to his skin, and his heavy-lidded drowsiness from lack of air—the fact that his fucking shade had woken me up because it couldn’t bear to be in his almost-dead mortal husk anymore!—I stuffed them all down and made encouraging sounds at him, instead of throwing myself on the floor and surrendering to panic.

Now that I’d gotten all the medicine down him, I ran to the bath with the sponge bath pail, which I poured out, and fetched back the empty pail and one of the big bath towels, so I wouldn’t burn either of us when I brought the heavy cast-iron kettle over to the bed. The water was steaming hot, and I added the peppermint oil to it and positioned it right next to him. “Mag,” I said, then repeated his name again to jolt him out of the stupor he’d sunk into during my brief trip out of the room. “I’m going to help you up a bit and hold you there. You have to take in this steam. It’s supposed to help you bring up the phlegm. Understand? I know you can’t breathe deep yet, but do your best. All right?”

His eyes met mine, briefly, and he gave a tiny, pained-looking nod that almost made me burst into fresh, terrified tears. A person ought to sing, when playing nursemaid, I thought crazily, so despite having no particular gift for song, I opened my mouth and sang to him the very first thing that entered my mind: Along cantered chaunceyhorse to grousemarch cross, to see what she could buy! I was off key, my voice shrilled with fear, and snuffling with tears, but on I plunged into the second verse: Penny white loaf, penny white cake, and a two-penny apple pie—

Just then Curry made a faint gasping sound and began to cough, and I broke off and grabbed a clean rag and held it to his mouth for him to cough into. It sounded like it hurt, a lot, but when he was through he dragged in something that actually passed for a breath, and I let out a little cry of relief and kissed him on the head. “Well done, Mag, good show—let’s see if we can bring up some more, all right?”

He nodded and took a slow, shallow, but genuine breath in, taking in more of the peppermint-laced steam. This triggered another coughing fit, and again I held the rag for him, encouraging him until he brought up another big, disgusting gob of stuff that had no business being inside a person. The rag was so foul-looking now that I tossed it in the basin and picked another off the pile.

Little by little, over two agonizing hours during which I had to reheat the kettle to steaming multiple times, we worked at it together until he had coughed up enough of the stuff that he could take a real, proper, breath in. He still hadn’t spoken, probably partly because every time he seemed about to try, I begged him to save his strength. This was partly genuine, partly selfish, because I was afraid if he said any actual words I would simply dissolve into an immobilized human puddle.

We were both done in, and almost out of clean rags, but our reward for this harrowing ordeal was that Curry was breathing, really breathing, again. “Do you have to pee?” I asked him, then laughed ridiculously when he shook his head, emphatically, and somehow communicating his dryly resolute refusal with no words at all. That look meant: fuck no, with a kind of are you nuts? tone to complement the first sentiment. “Will you take a little bit of water?” He nodded, faintly resigned to that, and let me give him a few swallows of water.

“I know you’re so tired. You can go to sleep in just a minute,” I promised, setting the cup aside and hugging him round the shoulders. “You did good. You did so good, Mag,” I told him, stroking his hair and planting several kisses on top of his head. “Can I do anything for you? Get you anything?”

He shook his head no. “Just sleep,” he croaked.

It seemed like a good sign, that the blue was starting to fade from his fingers and his lips, so I thought it was probably safe for him to sleep a while now. I looked around, to see if his mother had any opinion on this—I’d half forgotten her in the grueling last couple hours—but she was nowhere to be seen. “Let me get you settled,” I said, arranging the covers around him and giving his head another pat.

“You sleep too,” he whispered, but I shook my head.

“Not yet. Soon. I have things to do first. After that.”

Curry gave a small, disapproving shake of his head, but I had the advantage in that he was so physically spent himself that he couldn’t muster any substance for his protest. Even wanting to argue the point, he was asleep in seconds.

“Hildy?” I whispered, but there was no answer, and no one to tell me if there was anything else I should be doing on top of this. I wondered how it was that she had stuck around enough to know what things I’d looked up in Nan’s book, but now she was nowhere to be found. This was at least consistent with my past observations that in general dead people made no fucking sense at all.

Before I could lie down myself I needed to go to the hospital and fetch back a Rook priest, or perhaps go to the kiosk again or wake one of the neighbors to go for me—but it seemed I had never been so exhausted. The ten minute walk to the kiosk, or even going next door in the middle of the night and attempting to explain any of this felt impossible right now, let alone walking all the way across the ward to fetch a healer. Not really knowing what else to do, I drifted listlessly into the bathroom and washed my hands, even though I had no idea if washing away germs would do me any good at this point.

I was determined to go immediately, tired or not, but when I came back to his room to check on him one last time before going, the whole of everything I had frantically stuffed down over the last few hours came surging back to me and I began to **** so hard on my terrified sobs that breathing seemed impossible, let alone the forty minute walk I had before me. It was as useless as it was inexorable. I collapsed into the chair and spent an hour or more crying out all my hysterical, bottled-up terror until without meaning to I caved to the overpowering weariness flickering behind my eyes.