Gods, not this shit again

A few hours later I woke again to Curry shivering so violently it vibrated the bed. He was too cold to answer me when I inquired what was the worst of it, so I repeated everything I’d done the night before—building up the fire, hot-water flasks, heaping on the blankets, cough remedy—and added to that repertoire another tea, this time of willow and chamomile. Once he wasn’t shaking quite so vigorously anymore I broke to him the hard news that if he didn’t think he could manage a walk to the privy and back, then I thought the only alternative was to have a pee in a jar I had procured for such an eventuality. My patient didn’t like this very much, but quickly reconciled himself to it, whereupon I left the room to give him some privacy.

He slept again after that, and in the interval I went downstairs and fixed a scrambled egg for myself, for I was near-starved by now. I hard-cooked two eggs for him, even though he reported consistently that he wasn’t hungry, since I expected he might be later and if the timing weren’t convenient it would be good to have something at hand.

From here we fell into a routine in which I stayed mostly curled in the chair next to him, reading quietly, keeping the fire up, and listening with half my attention to his cough and his breathing for any change to the worse. Whenever I observed such a shift, or every two hours if there was no change, I roused him for another dose of the cough syrup and a cup of tea and a pee if he needed one.

Sometime mid-afternoon, I decided Curry was too weak to leave him on his own tomorrow, so while he slept I went back to the kiosk to check in. The officer on shift was Dalton-Reneaux, who had relieved Amini at four in the morning and got the whole story from him. “Like as not he’ll take a week or longer before he’s properly ready to get around. The grippe really takes it out of a person. I’ll let the captain know you checked in and probably it’ll be another two days at least. That’ll save you having to come round tomorrow at least.”

On my way home I stopped at the corner grocery and bought one bottle of aurochs bone broth and one of chicken—since I had decided perhaps Curry might better manage with something closer to tea but more sustaining—as well as some more goose eggs, and a bit of soft cheese, and a scoop of dried soup noodles. Then I tidied up the kitchen, set all the perishable items in the window box to keep cool, and began heating a cupful of aurochs broth in another kettle, salting it well, and sprinkling in some of the dried noodles. This went into a heavy ceramic mug, which I took upstairs to him.

He still wasn’t hungry, but was doing his best to be agreeable, so he drank down over half the broth and noodles before accepting another dose of the cough remedy and sinking back under the covers to sleep again. I was almost out of wood in here, since usually Curry was the one who made sure everyone’s room had enough firewood and carried it upstairs when needed, but since Nan wasn’t here I went and got the wood from her room to save myself the trouble.

Things were quiet enough through the remaining afternoon, and into the evening, with him sleeping nearly round the clock and meekly accepting whatever ministrations I needed him to endure, that it surprised me when around ten Curry began muttering unhappily to himself. “Are you all right?” I asked, setting the lamp on the bed stand and pulling the covers back to have a look at him.

“How can you even ask me that?” he demanded with an air of wounded resentment that seemed uncalled-for to me, then went into a coughing fit so violent it almost set him gagging.

I got the spoon for the cough remedy, hoping that would help him bring up some of the phlegm, but this time he didn’t want to take any medicine from me.

“Stop it,” he said, harshly. “I don’t need your pity.” He turned on his side, refusing to look at me.

“What do you mean?” I said in bewilderment. “I just wanted to help with your cough.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not your place anymore, is it?” he said, his tone so bitterly dejected it left me even more confused.

“Mag, I don’t understand what’s the matter,” I said helplessly. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

He turned his head enough to cast me a miserable look of such mingled grief and loathing that it took me aback, then turned away again, hunching his shoulders. After a moment I realized his shoulders were shaking, not because he was shivering again, but because he was crying.

“Oh, no, Mag—” I had no idea what was wrong, nor what I should do about it. “Please don’t be upset,” I soothed, **** to suppress my own tears, rubbing my hands over his back in an effort to be comforting. “Can you explain it to me?”

“How can I, when I don’t understand it myself?” he wheezed wretchedly, without looking at me. “This split was your idea. You’re the one should be explaining it to me.”

I stared at him in shock. “What do you mean? What split?”

He gave a great sniff, and shrank away from me. “I don’t even know what I’m meant to tell the children. They ask about you, all the time, and want to know when you’ll be home again. And all I do is lie to them. Even Linnie knows something’s really wrong, she’s too clever by half even if she’s the littlest,” he said unhappily, then began to shake with quiet sobs. “She’s so like you it about kills me to look at her,” he managed, in between the coughing and ****.

So it seemed Curry was gripped in another delirious fit in which he thought I was one of his pretty elves, and we had children together, and for some reason I had callously abandoned them, evidently in some extremely traumatic fashion, so now our whole fictional family was overwrought, and nothing would ever be all right ever again ever. Great.

“You broke my heart, Fauzia,” he accused me tearfully.

Or… not one his pretty elves. Ugh.