She put another piece of driftwood on the fire. The chill of evening had already set in. She was wearing Rachel’s jacket, grateful for its warmth over the wool blouse that had seemed too hot only hours ago. But her head was bare. She had taken off the scarf as soon as they left Canaan Valley. Now she looked west toward the sun poised blinding orange a few degrees above the horizon. This was one reason she’d brought Rachel here: the sea, seemingly infinite, shining with a filigree of reflected gold. The quiet surf braided ephemeral strands of foam to cast upon the sand. I am here… I am always here….
This was the campground where she and Luke had spent their last night before they reached the Ark. The wind in the black lace of the spruce trees that canopied this site whispered with ghosts of memories.
But she had brought Rachel here for practical reasons. There was no place along the road inland to the Ark with enough open space to camp, and no place where she could find water. The creek south of this site bubbled noisily, cold and fresh. Mary could hear Epona stolidly cropping the grass on the bank.
She squinted into the sun. “Rachel, there might be a green flash.” And as soon as the words were out, she almost wept.
She had to discipline her thoughts to keep them out of certain byways of memory. She had to hold on to the mantle of numbness that had enveloped her since they left the Ark, that enabled her to resist the rage and grief and guilt that would paralyze her if she recognized it.
Rachel was oblivious to the possibility of a green flash. She seemed asleep, although her breathing was labored. At the foot of one of the spruces, Mary had prepared a bed of sword fern to cushion the sleeping bag, and over that laid the bearskin. But Rachel’s bandaged leg was uncovered, pillowed by a fold of the bearskin. She couldn’t tolerate any weight on it. Yorick lay motionless and awake beside her.
Mary didn’t wait for the green flash. She went to the picnic table where she had opened Rachel’s packs. Rachel had brought only the essentials for camping, including a few matches wrapped in foil and some jerky and smoked fish. And the first-aid box. In it Mary found scissors, tape and tape sutures, an antiseptic spray that had no doubt lost its efficacy long ago, a bar of soap, strips of sheeting for bandages, and an aloe leaf. A braided cloth cord was coiled in one corner between a twenty-cc vial of morphine and a single twenty-cc disposable syringe.
Why had Rachel brought only one syringe, and why such a large one? They had plenty of these disposables, of all sizes, at Amarna.
Mary knew the answer, but she channeled her thoughts away from it. She looked around at Rachel, felt the numbness shiver, ready to fall away. No. Hold on. Hold on to that. She hadn’t looked at the leg yet, and only now did she face the real reason for her reluctance.
She had given up hope.
Mary silently castigated herself for that lapse. She could kill Rachel with pessimism.
Maybe the wound wasn’t as bad as she feared. Maybe with care and nursing, it might heal. It was possible. She had to believe it was possible.
There was no alternative but to try.
She took the first-aid box and the pot of hot water to Rachel’s erstwhile sickbed. Yorick raised his head, watching her. She knelt beside Rachel, saw her lips tremble in a grimace of pain. Even in sleep she still felt the pain. Mary pressed her palm to Rachel’s forehead. The skin was hot. Her pulse, when Mary found it, was weak and erratic.
“Rachel?”
Her breath caught, sighed out when she opened her eyes. And Mary saw in her eyes, sunk deep in bruised sockets, something that lashed her with fear. The last time she spoke to her father before he died in that ticking cubicle in the hospital, she saw in his eyes the same indefinable shadow she saw now in Rachel’s.
No. You have to try. You have to try.
Rachel said, “A fire going and supper cooking… all the comforts of home.”
“I’ll have supper—such as it is—ready in about half an hour.”
“I’m… not really hungry.”
“Well, you’ll have to eat something. Rachel, you have to keep up your strength—or build it up again.”
Rachel studied her for a moment, absently stroking Yorick’s head. “I know, Mary. You have to try.”
Mary was startled at that. She had almost forgotten the nearly telepathic communication that had developed between them over the years; they knew each other’s minds so well.
“Yes, Rachel. I have to try.”
“It’s hopeless, you know, without amputation.”
“No!” Mary shook her head. “No, it’s not hopeless.”
Rachel’s gaze fell on the first-aid kit. “Help me sit up so I can see what you’re doing.” Then when Mary had assisted her into a sitting position, she said levelly, “You’ll have to cut the old bandage away. I haven’t… been up to changing it for a couple of days. You have hot water? That’s the only thing I know to clean it with. I’ve been putting aloe on it and that antiseptic spray—not that either one of them does a damn bit of good. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
Mary didn’t know, either, but she started by easing off the ankle-high hiking boot, then the wool stocking. She tried not to show her dismay when she saw Rachel’s swollen, discolored foot. In the yellow light of the fire and the sunset sky, the skin had the look of dark, age-patinaed bronze. Mary began cutting the bandages, staying to the inside of the leg, away from the brownish patches. And as she cut through tape, cloth, and gauze, the foully sweet odor made her light-headed. She glanced up at Rachel’s face, saw her lips compressed against pain, eyes haunted with dread. Yet she managed a smile. “Malodorous little beastie, clostridia.”
Mary stopped cutting. “What?”
“Clostridia,” Rachel repeated with grim nonchalance. “It’s the little beastie that causes gangrene. Of course, it’s a camp follower, so to speak. The real soldiers are staphylococcus and streptococcus. Blood poisoning, septicemia, cellulitis. It all comes to the same thing in the end. The microcosm constantly breaks down the macrocosm.”
Mary’s throat was too dry for her to speak. Trust Rachel to research her killer thoroughly.
No! Not her killer. Not this time. The microscopic legions would not be triumphant this time.
Mary finished the cut to the top of the bandage. The brownish exudate was too liquid to form scabs that would glue the gauze to the wound, but viscous enough so that she had to ease the gauze off, constantly aware of Rachel’s hands locked on her knee to combat the compelling reflex to withdraw from pain. The wound was thus revealed slowly, inch by inch.
The machete had cut into the leg just above the ankle, baring the shinbone, then curved upward around the calf, ending at a point a handsbreadth below the angle of the knee. Rachel had tried to close the wound with tape sutures, but the swelling had pulled the edges apart, and the tapes hung like broken bridges across a riven canyon. The skin was dusky, and surrounding the wound, mottled, purplish blisters gleamed moistly. Shadowy tentacles of red reached toward the knee.
Mary got her trembling under control, ordered the muscles of her face into an expression of calm. “Rachel, you did a hell of a job on this.”
Rachel laughed, although her forehead and upper lip were beaded with sweat. “Like they say, if you’re going to do something, do it right.”
Mary cut off a piece of the cloth bandage, dipped it in the water—still hot, but not scalding—and began gingerly cleaning the wound. The smell was dizzying, but she closed her mind to it and to Rachel’s clenched hands, her muffled gasps of pain.