“Please, Bastian – please stay awake!”
I forced my eyes open again. The sun was too fucking bright, and it was making my head hurt. Why the fuck was I rocking back and forth? I realized Raine’s cold hands were on my shoulders, shaking me roughly. Why were her hands so cold?
“Bastian, I don’t know what to do.” Raine’s voice sounded so small and so far away. I tilted my head a little, trying to get a better look at her face, but everything was blurry. Even through my blurred vision, I could see her anxiety. Even without my vision, I could feel it in her. I didn’t want her to be upset about anything…I wanted to tell her it was all okay.
“Don’t…” I tried to make words, but they just didn’t want to come out. My throat was dry, and I coughed once. Raine’s hand was suddenly on the back of my neck, tilting my head up and pouring water into my mouth. I drank it greedily until she pulled back the container. I coughed again.
“Don’t be sad,” I finally got out.
“You’re so sick,” she said quietly. At first I tried to figure out if I had made some off-color joke, but I didn’t think I had. I narrowed my eyes, trying to understand. “Your leg was hurt – cut, I think. I stitched it up like I did your eye, but it’s really red and swollen, Bastian. I think it’s infected, but I don’t know what to do! You told me how dangerous…”
Her voice cracked, and I watched her hand move up to cover her mouth.
“Infected?” I heard myself mumble out loud as my brain tried to remember what the fuck that meant. I tried to raise my head, but it was so damn heavy. I was lying on my side, and I rolled onto my stomach with the intent of verifying her thoughts about my leg, but I couldn’t hold my head up enough to get a good look at it. My thigh fucking hurt, that was for sure. I felt Raine’s hands on my head again, and she raised me up so I could look down at the back of my leg. The skin around the slash was deep red – almost black – and oozing. Holy shit. “Yeah, that’s bad.”
“Please, Bastian…tell me what to do,” she begged. “I washed it off with the fresh water, and I’ve tried to keep it covered up some of the time, but then I thought maybe it would heal better if it was exposed to the air. You have a fever, and I can’t…I can’t…”
She took a deep, choking breath that ended up in a sob.
“I can’t remember if you’re supposed to feed a fever and starve a cold, or feed a cold and starve a fever!” she blurted out.
It fucking hurt, but I couldn’t help but laugh, which led to coughing, which really fucking hurt.
“It’s not funny!” Raine yelled at me.
“It’s okay, babe,” I said after she gave me some water to quiet the cough. My eyes went a little swimmy as she laid my head back on the palm leaves in the sand.
“What else can I do?” she said softly. “Please, Bastian…I have to do something.”
“Lobelia,” I mumbled and shook my head, trying to make myself focus. If I really did have a fever…well, that wasn’t a good thing. I remembered the little blue and yellow flowers from the jungle and figured they had to be better than nothing.
“What?”
“Need Lobelia,” I repeated. “And charcoal. Mix ‘em together with water and boil them over the fire.”
“Bastian, I don’t understand.”
“Fights infection,” I said, trying to be clearer. Some of what she was saying was starting to make sense – I remembered being cut. My leg was infected; I could feel the heat. If it was as bad as it felt, it could kill me. If it killed me, Raine wasn’t going to make it on her own. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to make her understand.
I reached out my hand and pulled back the palm frond on the ground until I could see the sand. I slowly drew the shape of a flower with two small, thin petals at the top and three larger petals at the bottom.
“Lobelia,” I said again. “Bright blue, yellow spots in the middle near the stamen. Big bulge under the flower, right before the stem. Long, skinny leaves, big stalks. They were everywhere back in the jungle – big bunches, you can find them.”
“What do I do with them?”
“Crush whole flowers in water with charcoal from the fire.” I had to stop and take a few breaths. I felt cool water over my forehead as Raine ran some wet cloth over my face. “Boil it if you can. Use a seashell if there’s one big enough. Just put it on top of the coals.”
“There are.” Raine nodded her head. There were still tears running down her face. “There are a bunch of shells that are big enough.”
“Use the poultice to cover up the cut,” I told her. I tried to reach up and wipe the tears away from her face, but I couldn’t make my arm move. Raine reached down and took my hand in both of hers. They were still wet from the cloth she had used to wipe me down. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
“Okay,” Raine said and nodded again. She looked down to my rough diagram of the flowers and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’ll find them.”
I was out again before my hand dropped back to the ground.
* * * * *
I jerked awake from another nightmare. My entire body ached but no more than it ever did after a weekend of too much booze and a couple of whores. I rolled a little to one side and then the other, trying to stretch out my back and get my bearings.
No booze, no whores, I thought to myself. I had Raine now, and I felt the corners of my mouth turn up a little. I shifted my leg and felt a twinge of pain run all the way up it. I raised my head, looked over my shoulder, and down to the offending thigh. I couldn’t see any wound because it was covered up with some dark fabric, which was also quite wet.
What the fuck were my boxer shorts doing wrapped around my leg?
I shifted, but they didn’t fall off. That’s when I saw some of the rope from the raft also wrapped around my leg, holding the boxers in place.
“Don’t move, damn it!”
I felt soft hands against my shoulders, pushing me back onto my stomach. I looked up to a completely bare Raine – all bare skin and tan lines – crouched over me and adjusting the wrap around my leg.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, confused and agitated.
Raine’s eyes darted to mine, and I watched her eyes go from intense worry and frustration to instant relief.
“Bastian! Did you just swear at me?”
“Fuck, Raine,” I growled. “Don’t I always?”
She sat back on her heels and graced me with an incredible smile.
“I can’t believe I would ever consider an f-bomb to be the most beautiful word in the world.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“No, but you have been,” Raine said with another smile. “You had a fever – a really high one, I’m pretty sure. Do you remember any of it? You told me what plants to find.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” I said. I brought my arm up and bent it at the elbow so I could lay my head on it. I closed my eyes and sighed.
“How do you feel?”
“Like shit,” I answered.
Raine’s eyes closed for a moment, and I watched her take a deep breath. When her eyes opened again, all the pain and stress were evident in her irises even amongst the obvious relief. I reached out with my hand and touched her knee.
“It’s okay, baby,” I said softly. I didn’t know if it was or not, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that. If I had such a bad infection I was out of it with fever, I was lucky to have my eyes open. My eyes being open made me think I’d be all right. If I was going to die, I would have already. “I’m a tough motherfucker. No infection will get me.”
Raine let out a sharp laugh, which quickly turned into sobs. I rolled onto my side and held my arms out. Raine immediately came to me, her head against my chest and her arms wrapped around my neck, just like the very first night in the raft. I held her as tight as I could even though my arms were really fucking sore.
“I was so scared,” she cried against my skin. I just held her and kissed the top of her head, trying not to
pass out while she was still crying, though my body and mind were begging me to do just that. After a few minutes, I felt her relax a little and take a few deep, sniffling breaths.
“How long?” I asked.
“Three days,” Raine said, immediately understanding my question. “I didn’t realize it at first – you were really hot and sweating, but I thought it was because…well, because it’s hot here. I figured you were exhausted after…after…the day before, so I didn’t even think to try and wake you for a while. But then you wouldn’t wake up, and I saw the back of your leg…Oh, Bastian, it looked just awful.”
“Shh,” I whispered to the top of her head, “I got you.”
I felt her relax into me almost instantly. I dropped down to my back, somewhat painfully, and took her with me. I tried to move my hand up and down her back since I thought that was supposed to be soothing or something, but I was still really, really tired.
“I thought you were going to die,” Raine said through the tears collecting on my chest. “I didn’t know what I would do…without you…”
“You’d be okay,” I tried to reassure her. “You’ve learned how to find water and how to fish…you’d do just fine, baby…”
Raine stopped crying for a minute and sniffed, then looked up to my face, her eyes showing her confusion.
“No, I wouldn’t be,” Raine shook her head slowly. I watched her hands come up and slide across my jaw, scratching over the several days’ worth of growth with the tips of her fingers. She held my face in her hands and leaned closer to me, her voice earnest. “I’d die without you, Bastian. Even if I lived, I’d die inside.”
My chest clenched at her words, and I tried to find some way to respond to her, but my brain offered me nothing comprehensible. I just stared into her eyes for a while until the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly, and then she laid her head back on my chest. With my head resting on the sand beneath me, I let unconsciousness overtake me.
* * * * *
The same dream woke me up for the third time in a row. Details were sometimes different, but the main events were the same – they’re always holding her down, laughing as she’s screaming, forcing themselves on her over and over again, and I can never get there fast enough to stop it from happening. The last couple of times I had managed to keep myself from throwing up, but that revelation pissed me off. It had been like that with other dreams – they would disturb me so much I would get physically sick, but once I got used to the dream it wouldn’t happen anymore. If I got used to it, it would never go away. The idea of seeing those images for the rest of forever was almost enough to make me puke anyway, but I managed to hold it in.
The second time I woke up, Raine opened her eyes as well and made me roll onto my stomach so she could change the dressing on my leg. I got a bit of a look at it since the moon was nearly full and bright in the clear sky. It looked pretty gross, but it also looked like it was starting to heal. She did a neat job of covering the poultice she made by pulling my folded-over boxer shorts up my leg, then wrapping a piece of rope around it so it was just tight enough to keep it from slipping while I slept.
Of course, that also meant Raine was going around completely bare. I wasn’t sure what had happened to my shirt, but she hadn’t bothered to put anything on since I came to my senses. Not that I was complaining, though I wasn’t so sure most of my body was ready for that sort of activity.
The last time I woke up from the same nightmare, the sky was starting to brighten and a cool breeze rustled the palms all around us. I looked around our little shelter and growled at myself. I hadn’t made it structurally sound enough, and it was starting to fall apart already. I needed to get working on the new one. I’d apparently lost three whole days where I could have probably gotten at least half of the new one done. Now I was going to have to get my leg in better shape before I could make much progress. Or…I could push myself until I dropped. That was probably the better option.
“You have to be hungry.” Raine’s soft voice came from under me. I had pinned her down in my sleep again. It felt better that way – knowing she was safely under me. I rolled to my side and let her up.
“Yeah,” I said. “Got any pancakes?”
Raine laughed and shook her head.
“I’ve got fish and a couple of the roots I found in a pile in the sand. They taste like sweet potatoes. I figured you found them, and since we’ve both been eating them the past few days, they must be safe. Oh – and there are some almonds left – they are almonds, right?”
“Yeah, they are.” I smiled. I didn’t even think about what she would have been eating the last few days. Apparently she was a lot better at taking care of herself than I thought she would be – and me too, apparently. “And the roots taste like sweet potatoes because they are sweet potatoes. There’s more not too far off – maybe a fifteen-minute walk from here. I’ll show you.”
“Why don’t you give yourself a few days, hmm?” Raine smiled at me. She walked to the other side of the shelter, and I watched her hands reach behind the palm-frond wall. When she brought them back, my shirt and her other pair of shorts, the ones made out of that stretchy material that had chaffed her before, were in her hands. She slipped them on, so I couldn’t watch her walk around naked anymore.
“No fucking way.” I scowled. Fuck, if I couldn’t watch her naked, I sure as hell wasn’t just going to sit around all day. “I’ve had worse than this, and I’m not going to sit around and wait for it to be all better. It’ll feel better when I get moving on it, anyway.”
“You’ll just make it worse,” Raine said. I started to hoist myself up, and she actually came closer to me to put her hand on my shoulder and try to hold me down. As if. I stood up anyway, even with her hand pushing all of her weight down on me and wobbled a little. It hurt, no doubt about that, but like I had already told her, I’ve had worse.
“See?” I said when I managed to steady myself a bit.
“I see you barely standing on a leg that really shouldn’t be holding your weight yet,” Raine argued back.
“Bullshit,” I responded. I took an unsteady step forward, and my leg buckled, but I didn’t fall. Raine’s arm went around my waist, but I pushed it away. “I don’t need any fucking help!”
“Oh, for goodness sake, Bastian!” Raine yelled. “You most certainly do!”
“I do not,” I growled back. “I don’t need it, and I certainly don’t fucking want it!”
We argued for another ten minutes before she finally gave up on my stubborn ass and went over to the fire, muttering to herself about unreasonable idiots. I hobbled around the area right outside the shelter, making sure there was something at least somewhat sturdy near me at all times so I didn’t fall over. I was fucking pissed, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. There were too many things in my head for me to sort out. There were the dreams, being out of it and useless for three days, and my failure to completely protect her. I should never have left her alone. I should have been back to the beach faster. I should have…
My mind continued to list all the points where I had fucked up.
As I walked…well…limped around on my leg, Raine shot looks of death over at me every couple of minutes, but I pretended not to notice. It really, really, fucking hurt to walk, but damn if I wasn’t going to do it anyway.
“Get up, you son-of-a-bitch! You aren’t hurt that bad! Fucking GET UP!”
I shook my head to free it of Landon’s echoing words and settled myself down on the opposite side of the fire, smiling up at Raine with a self-satisfied grin. She rolled her eyes and used two blackened sticks to pull cooked sweet potatoes from their resting places on top of hot rocks.
“Are you just going to smirk at me now?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I answered with a shrug. I received another eye roll from Raine as she placed the hot vegetables and some dried fish on a couple of large clamshell plates and came around to sit next to me. We ate in relative silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortabl
e or anything. I’d smirk when she looked over to me and then she’d roll her eyes and eventually laugh.
After we ate, I relented and let her check out the cut on my leg. I decided it was probably doing well enough to go without the Lobelia poultice, which wasn’t a popular decision. Raine argued briefly, but I managed to talk her out of putting it back on for now by saying she could put it back on at night. I honestly didn’t know if it was healed up enough or not, but it didn’t look too bad, and trying to walk around was hard enough without that shit on me. I’d let her slather me up again before we went to sleep if she was going to insist on it. Besides, I didn’t want her wearing those stretchy shorts. I wanted her back in my boxers.
When I tried to stand back up from sitting down for so long, I didn’t do so well. I didn’t actually fall, but I didn’t get up on the first try, either. Raine came to my side and tried to help me again, but I didn’t want it. I wasn’t used to help like that and honestly, having her argue about putting the poultice shit on me was pushing it. If I could have reached it myself, I wouldn’t have let her do it at all.
“Cut that shit out!” I snarled at her as she tried to wrap her arm around my waist and help me balance.
“I’m just trying to help!”
“I know – cut that shit out! I don’t want any fucking help!”
She sighed and backed off. After another hour of stumbling in the sand, I stripped a sturdy limb off one of the trees and made myself a walking stick. I didn’t admit that I needed one or anything; I just said I liked having it.
Another eye roll.
I used the stick to lower myself down to the floor of the shelter and tried not to grimace as I put more pressure on my leg. Raine brought me some water to drink and then started weaving a bunch of fronds together. I looked over to the far side of the shelter and saw several things she had made, including four rectangular, flat mats, which you could probably sit on or place your food on to keep the sand away from it. There was a misshapen, short-sided, roundish basket on top of the mats, and it looked like Raine was trying to make another basket now. She had the bottom woven and was trying to curve a piece of coconut palm frond around to the side of the flat part to start the sides of the basket.