I said, “How can you help?”
“I won’t know till I see the patient, will I?” she said, crisp and no nonsense. That made sense, at least. I led her, me, to Annie’s apartment on Jay Street.
Annie opened the door. I could hear Lizzie coughing, her, a sound that pretty near tore my own guts out. Annie pushed her big body out into the hall and pulled the door closed behind her.
“Who’s this? What are you bringing her here for, Billy Washington? You, get lost! We already seen, us, how much help you donkeys are when everything’s going wrong!”
I never saw Annie so mad. Her lips pressed together like they’d been mortared, and her ringers curled into claws like she was going to rake this Victoria Turner across her genemod donkey face. Victoria Turner looked at Annie coolly, her, and didn’t step back an inch.
“He brought me because I may be able to help the sick child. Are you her mother? Please step back so I can try.”
I stepped back, but then forward again because it hurt me, Annie’s face. It was furious and scared and exhausted. Annie hadn’t left Lizzie, her, to sleep or wash, not in two days. But Annie was used to letting donkeys solve her problems, and that was on her face. too. Along with iust the start of hone. Annie wanted something to hit and something to trust, her, and I thought I was both of those things, but here was this Victoria Turner and she was better, her, for both.
Annie reached behind herself and opened the door. Lizzie lay on the couch where I usually sleep. She was burning up, her, but Annie tried to keep a blanket on her. Lizzie kept kicking it off. There was water and food from the cafe, but Lizzie hadn’t taken any, her. She tossed and cried out, and sometimes her cries didn’t make no sense. She threw up just once, but she coughed all the time, great racking coughs that tore my heart.
Victoria Turner put her hand on Lizzie’s forehead, and her violet eyes widened. Lizzie didn’t seem to know, her, that anybody was there. She gave another cough, a small one, arid started moaning. I felt despair start in my bowels, the kind you feel when there’s no hope and you don’t see how you can bear it. I hadn’t felt that kind of despair, me, since my wife Rosie died, twelve years ago. I never thought I’d have to feel it again.
Victoria Turner took a scarf out of her pocket and knelt by Lizzie. She didn’t seem at all afraid, her. One of the thoughts I’d had in the night, God forgive me, was: Is this sickness catching? Could Annie get it, her, and die too? Annie…
“Cough for me, sweetheart,” Victoria Turner said. “Come on, cough into the scarf.”
In a few minutes, Lizzie did, her, though not because she was asked. Big slimy gobs of stuff from her tortured lungs, greenish gray. Victoria Turner caught it, her, in the scarf and looked at it closely. Me, I had to look away. That was Lizzie’s lungs coming up, Lizzie’s lungs rotting themselves away.
“Excellent,” Victoria Turner said, “green. It’s bacterial. Now we know. You’re in luck, Lizzie.”
Luck! I saw Annie curve her claws again, her, and I even saw what for: This donkey was enjoying this, her. It was some kind of exciting. Like a holovid story.
“Bacterial is good,” Victoria Turner said, looking up at me, “because the medication can be far less specific. You have to tailor antivirals, at least grossly. But wide-spectrum antibiotics are easy.”
Annie said roughly, “What’s Lizzie got, her?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. But this will almost surely take care of it.” From another pocket she drew a flat piece of plastic, tore it open, and slapped a round blue patch on Lizzie’s neck.
“But you should force more water down her. You don’t want to risk dehydration.”
Annie stared, her, at the blue patch on Lizzie’s neck. It looked like the ones the medunit put on, but how did we really know, us, what was in it? We didn’t really know nothing.
Lizzie sighed and quieted. Nobody said nothing. After a few minutes, Lizzie was asleep.
“Best thing for her,” Victoria Turner said crisply. I saw again, me, that she liked this. “Not even Miranda Sharifi herself could equal the benefits of sleep.”
I remembered, me, hearing that name, but I couldn’t think where.
Annie was a different woman, her. She gazed at Lizzie, sleeping peacefully, and at the patch, and Annie seemed to shrink and calm down, both, like a sail collapsing. She looked at the floor, her. “Thank you, doctor. I didn’t realize, me.”
Dr. Turner looked surprised, her, then she smiled. Like something was funny. “You’re welcome. And maybe in return you can do something for me.”
Annie looked wary, her. Donkeys don’t ask Livers to do favors, them. Donkeys pay taxes to us; we give votes to them. But we don’t tell each other, us, more than we got to, and we don’t ask things of each other. That ain’t the way it’s done.
But, then, donkey doctors don’t go wandering around East Oleanta dressed in torn yellow jacks neither. We ain’t even seen a doctor in East Oleanta, us, since a new plague broke out four years ago and a doctor came from Albany to vaccinate everybody with some new stuff the medunit didn’t have.
“I’m looking for someone,” Dr. Turner said. “Someone I was supposed to meet here, but we apparently got our data confused. A woman, a girl really, about this tall, dark hair, a slightly large head.”
I thought, me, of the girl in the woods, and quick tried to look like I wasn’t thinking of nothing at all. That girl came from Eden, I was sure of it, me — and Eden don’t got nothing to do with donkeys. It’s about Livers. Dr. Turner was watching close, her. Annie shook her head, cool as ice, even though I knew she probably remembered that other girl, the big-headed one she said she saw at the town meeting when Jack Sawicki called the district supervisor about them rabid racoons. Or maybe it was the same big-headed girl — I hadn’t thought, me, about that before, me. How many big-headed maybe-donkey girls did we have running around the woods near East Oleanta? Why did we have any?
Annie said, polite but not very, “How’d you miss your friend? Don’t she know, her, where you are?”
“I fell asleep,” Dr. Turner said, which explained nothing. She said it funny, too. “I fell asleep on the gravrail. But I think she might be around here someplace.”
“I never saw nobody like that, me,” Annie said firmly.
“How about you, Billy?” Dr. Turner said. She probably knew my name, her, even before Annie said it. She’d been in East Oleanta for a week, her, eating at the cafe, talking to whoever would talk to her, which wasn’t many.
“I never saw nobody like that, me,” I said. She stared at me hard. She didn’t believe me, her.
“Then let me just ask something else. Does the name ‘Eden’ mean anything to you?”
A gust of wind could of blown me over.
But Annie said cool as January, “It’s in the Bible. Where Adam and Eve lived, them.”
“Right,” Dr. Turner said. “Before the Fall.” She stood up and stretched. Her body under the jacks was too skinny, at least by me. A woman should have some softness on her bones.
“I’ll come back to look in on Lizzie tomorrow,” Dr. Turner said, and I saw, me, that Annie didn’t want her to come back, and then that Annie did. This was a doctor. Lizzie slept peaceful, her. Even from by the door, she looked cooler to me.
When the doctor left, Annie and I looked at each other, us. Then Annie’s face broke up. Just went from solid flesh creased with worry to a mess of lines that didn’t have nothing to do with one another, and she started to cry, her. Before I even thought about it I put my arms around her. Annie clung back, hard, and at the feel of her soft breasts against my chest, I went a little crazy. I didn’t think, me. I just raised her face to mine and kissed her.