A light shone in her eyes, and at first she thought it must be the hand of God. She blinked, and the golden glow revealed Todd’s face instead. Gilly felt instant relief and disappointment at the same time.
“Don’t die, Gilly.” Todd’s fingers bit into her wrists as he hauled her upright. “Don’t die, please, don’t die….”
He didn’t put her back on the bed. He lifted her, and Gilly had time to think she must’ve lost weight, because he didn’t stagger beneath her this time. Despite everything, she smiled. Would she be skinny, now?
He must have seen her smile and taken it for something else. “Jesus, Gilly. Don’t you fucking die on me!”
“…easier for you…” she wheezed.
They were in the stairway now, her feet and head thumping on the narrow walls with every step.
“Shut up.” He grunted with the effort of carrying her. So she wasn’t skinny, after all.
“…what you want…”
“It’s not what I want, goddamn it!” At Todd’s shout pain flared again behind her eyes, but Gilly welcomed that pain as a good sign. She wasn’t slipping away any more.
He plopped her down on the ugly plaid couch; her head banged on the arm. He left her to light the propane lantern on the table. Gilly managed to stay upright, though without the support of his arms she barely had the strength. All at once it seemed like someone had taken a huge vacuum cleaner and sucked the garbage right out of her lungs and nose. She could breathe again, albeit with a wheezing, grumbling snort, but she could.
If she could breathe, that also meant that she could cough. The first bout brought up a bunch of gunk that she spit into the palm of her hand, not caring how disgusting that was. Mothering had made her immune to bodily fluids. She’d had worse on her fingers. The second bout of coughing brought a fine spray of blood from her lips.
The green mucus disgusted her, but the blood scared her. With trembling hands she took the wad of paper towels Todd handed her and wiped her hand and mouth. She waited to see if more blood would come, perhaps a gout of it, but it didn’t. It looked even worse on the paper towel, small blots of crimson against the white paper. She crumpled it in her fingers so she wouldn’t have to see.
He hovered over her. “Are you going to be all right?”
“I need a doctor.”
He shook his head. “I can’t get you one.”
“I need medicine.”
He held up his hands helplessly. “I don’t have any. Just aspirin.”
Another cough swelled in the back of her throat, but she was afraid to let it out. She swallowed convulsively to get rid of the tickle. The feeling of thick snot draining down the back of her throat sickened her, but vomiting would be worse than the coughing.
Another round of chills racked her, clattering her teeth. More pain stabbed behind her eyes and in the hollows beneath them. In her cheeks, too, and her ears, which popped mercilessly with every swallow. Gilly rocked with the pain, body jerking. Todd paced the floor in front of her, each stride long enough to take him out of her area of view and then back into it again as he turned. With nearly every step his calf rubbed against the couch until not even the shaking and the pain in her head could stop her from yelling, even though her shout came out as no more than a hissing whisper.
“Stop that. You’re shaking me.”
He stopped and dropped to his knees beside her. “I don’t know what to do.”
She was sick, sicker than she’d ever been in her adult life, and yet she still had to be the one in charge. To take care of herself. Resentment burbled in her, but she didn’t have the strength to do anything about it.
“Blankets” was all she managed to get out before another round of coughs ripped through her. “Hot tea…”
Todd put his hand gently on her arm, timidly, as though afraid she would order him to take it off. She didn’t have the strength for it, and now it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Like so much else that had happened over the past few days, what difference did it make any longer?
When he saw she wasn’t going to yell, he bent forward to look at her. “You got to tell me what to do.”
Wasn’t that what she was doing? Gilly clenched her jaw to keep herself from biting her tongue. “Get me some blankets, some hot tea. Some more aspirin.”
“Okay.”
An idea struck her like a hammer between the eyes, so hard and strong she gasped and coughed. “The truck!”
“It’s wrecked,” Todd said. “I can’t drive it anywhere. Shit, it might be totally gone, I told you that.”
“Not drive,” Gilly managed. “In the truck. Medicine. It’s in the center console. You didn’t bring it.”
“I didn’t know,” he started, sounding defensive, but Gilly shushed him.
She’d stopped at the pharmacy just before going to the ATM. Her prescription, the decongestants and antibiotics, were in the truck. She gripped his arm, her fingers slipping and falling away without strength. “Just go. Try. I have pills in there. They’ll help.”
He left her, and was back in a moment with an afghan he tucked around her tightly. Todd tucked the edges around her, smoothing them. And after that, Todd didn’t come back for a long time.
Gilly closed her eyes. Sleep took her again almost instantly, but it was fretful. She twisted on the couch, coughing relentlessly every time it seemed she’d drift off. Her neck and back cramped from the force of it, and shudders still swept over her.
Had she ever felt this bad? If she had, she couldn’t remember it. There’d never been time to be sick when she was a kid, not when she had to be awake and alert to take care of her mother, who was hardly ever well. Even in later years, when Gilly came down with everything the kids did and often twice as hard, she didn’t get “sick days.”
“He’s not coming back,” her mother said, clear as sunlight, unmistakable.
Gilly’s eyes opened, and she screamed in a breathless whistle. She was alone. She fell back against the arm of the couch, unable even to weep.
She didn’t know how much time passed before cold air caressed her. She heard the clomp of boots. The next whistle came not from her throat but the teakettle. Todd brought her a mug of tea and held it to her mouth. It burned her mouth and she winced, and the tea itself was bitter, but she sipped anyway. He slipped a couple of pills into her mouth and she washed them down.
“What else can I do?”
The warmth of the tea and blankets eased her chill; or perhaps the aspirin was helping with her fever, she didn’t know. His fingers were chilly on her forehead, and that felt just fine. Gilly let her eyes close again.
“I need to sleep. Give the medicine time to work.”
She sensed him leaving, but sleep wouldn’t take her. The couch was old and lumpy, and her head rested at an awkward angle. The blankets that had given her such welcome warmth now lay on her like stones. Briars had bloomed in her throat, dry and scratching.
She coughed again and he was there, helping her to sit and holding out another wad of paper towels to catch what came out of her mouth. She ought to have been embarrassed, but couldn’t seem to manage.
The soft fringes of his hair brushed her cheek as he slipped a pillow behind her head to ease the awkward position. Gilly turned her face away, accepting the comfort he offered but even in her delirium unwilling to accept the man who gave it. Todd tucked the blankets tighter around her and then sat on the couch facing hers.
“You shouldn’t have run out in the snow,” he said. “And the truck…I got the stuff out, but it’s really gone, now. The tree broke when I closed the door. It’s at the bottom of the mountain.”
Hot tears leaked from beneath Gilly’s closed eyelids and slipped down her cheeks. She didn’t speak. Todd sighed. She heard the smack of his lighter and smelled the smoke.
It made her start to cough again. The few moments of clarity she’d had began to fade again. Gilly slipped back into the twilight world.
15
She thought several days
passed, but she wasn’t sure. Gilly left the couch only when Todd dragged her into the bathroom to use the toilet. He didn’t leave her, even there. He brought her soup and tea and medicine, and he changed the cool cloths on her forehead when the fever dried them. The more he offered her, the more she took until she had given herself up to him entirely.
This was what she’d wanted, but not the way she wanted it. After having her children there’d been nurses in the hospital who’d brought her food and helped her to pee. One kind nurse had even lifted Gilly’s breast with steady efficiency to help her learn to nurse Arwen, an intimacy that Todd hadn’t had reason to employ. As for the rest of it, it wasn’t much different than allowing him to drive away with her. Her reasons for letting him were the same. Lying on the couch, Gilly didn’t have to think. She didn’t have to remember that she was missing her children, that her husband must be sick with grief at losing her. Her illness gave her detachment a legitimacy she would not otherwise have allowed herself. She’d finally been granted her wish, an illness so deep she was unable to care for herself.
The days passed, one blurring into the other, while she slept and dreamed. There were times when she truly did not know where she was, or who Todd was, times when his comforting hand on her brow became Seth’s, or even her mother’s.
Gilly wept in the throes of these fever dreams, because her mother had died more than twelve years ago, before she and Seth had married, before Gilly had become a mother herself and could talk about the joys and sorrows of motherhood with her.
Gilly didn’t want to die. In fact, she refused. Not like this, not from a stupid, simple bout of flu. Not in a cabin with a man she couldn’t trust and wouldn’t like. Not away from her family.
The power of her will had been a driving force in her since childhood and the secrets she’d had to keep about her mother’s illnesses. It had seen her through high school, when good grades and snack cakes had substituted for slumber parties and prom dates. And in college, when success had frightened her more than failure.
It would save her now, too.
February
16
There came a day when her head no longer threatened to explode every time she moved, and her throat didn’t constantly scratch with the urge to cough. She was far from well, but she recognized with vivid relief that she felt better. She no longer needed him, and as he put an arm beneath her to help her up, she spoke in a dull, flat voice.
“Please don’t touch me.”
Todd’s fingers twitched briefly on her shoulder, and then he withdrew. “I was just…”
She spoke stiffly, not looking at him, her chin lifted to keep her voice from trembling. “I’m better now. You don’t have to do that.”
His breath hissed from between his lips, and he sat back. “Thanks, Todd.”
“What?”
He hadn’t smoked around her during the worst of her illness since it made her erupt into violent coughing, but now he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “Thanks, Todd. For helping me while I puked my guts out. Thanks, Todd, for taking me to the can so I didn’t have to piss myself. I could’ve left you to choke on your own snot.”
The spot on the inside of her cheek was still sore, but she bit it anyway. “But you didn’t. So…thank you.”
Todd grunted and cocked his head to peer at her. “Jee-sus. Women are all the same. Ungrateful bitches.”
Gilly set her jaw. “I said thank you.”
“Yeah, I could really tell you meant it. You know what your problem is, Gilly? You’re too fucking prideful,” Todd snapped, and stalked away. He went to the kitchen and slammed some cupboard doors but didn’t take anything out. He went out through the pantry and the lean-to, slamming the door behind him.
Gilly sat rigidly on the couch, her hands clenched together in her lap. He’d called her ungrateful, and he was right. He had helped her during the worst illness she could ever remember having. Just as he hadn’t left her in the snow to freeze, just as he hadn’t stabbed her through the heart. She might’ve died without him. Not wanting that to be fact didn’t make it any less true. Pride kept her from gratitude. Still, wasn’t that all she had left?
17
After that, he left her alone. Gilly had spent so many days lying on the sofa she itched for a change. She managed to set herself up in one of the armchairs with the pile of blankets and a pillow for her head, but once seated she had no more strength to do anything else. She spent the day there, and the closest Todd came to her was when he bent to put more logs on the fire.
He ate in the kitchen, alone, without offering to bring her anything. When she hobbled to the kitchen table and had to put her head down to keep herself from fainting, he ignored her and left the room. That night she managed only a glass of water and a handful of stale saltine crackers.
Facing the steep stairs by herself was a more daunting task. She almost broke down then, but stopped herself from asking for his help. She felt his eyes on her as she put her foot on the first step, and it was only his gaze that allowed her to straighten her back and take the next step. Another step had her head reeling. She put both hands on the railing. One more step and she had to sit to catch her breath.
Gilly nearly cried, wanting only to slip into bed and sleep. She slapped at the tears, forcing them away, and then she took another step. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, she was on her hands and knees. Crawling, she crossed the attic room and made it only halfway before she collapsed in exhaustion.
Just a little bit farther. You can do it. You can get yourself into that bed, and then you can sleep again. But you can’t sleep here.
She pushed herself on her arms with a low groan, her head spinning. She’d left the pills downstairs, and at the realization let out a low groan. Her forehead again touched the dirty wooden planks. Dust made her sneeze until harsh, barking coughs replaced it. The world grayed, but she forced herself to stay conscious.
She hadn’t realized Todd had followed her until he spoke. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she managed to say.
“You’re dumber than I am.” Todd crouched next to her and put a gentle hand between her shoulder blades. “C’mon. Let me help you.”
She assumed he’d simply pull her upright, but Todd waited. Gilly looked at him through swollen eyes and the fringe of her hair, greasy and unkempt. She licked cracked lips. “Why?”
Why should I? Why would you want to? Gilly wasn’t sure what she meant.
Todd sat back on his heels and cocked his head at her again as though looking at her from an angle would help him understand her better. “Wouldn’t you do the same for me?”
Gilly managed a hoarse noise that sounded as dusty as the floor beneath her. Todd smiled a little. He pushed his hair out of his eyes with a quick flick of his fingers.
“Maybe not. Okay, so you’d let me choke to death on my own snot. I get it.” He shrugged.
Gilly, still on hands and knees, blinked slowly. The truth pricked her. A thorn.
“I know you think I’m some sort of monster,” Todd said after a moment when she didn’t say anything.
He didn’t look at her. He shifted his weight, his boots sliding on the wood. She could count the threads hanging from the hem of his jeans. The cracks in the leather of his boots.
“Well…maybe you’re right,” he continued. “Maybe I am. But I ain’t going to let you just…die. You can’t lay here on the floor like this. If you want to get into bed, I’ll help you. But you got to tell me you want it.”
Screw you.
The words formed in her brain but not on her tongue. She’d always hated being told what to do. Gilly blinked again, knowing to fight this was useless and ridiculous and petty. She felt his touch between her shoulder blades again.
She nodded.
He put his hands under her armpits and lifted. Not gently. The room spun as he hoisted her upright and walked her to the bed where he let her fall ungracefully. Todd stood back, watching as Gilly squirmed into the
blankets.
“You need anything?”
She managed a croaking reply. “No.”
He flicked his hair from his eyes again. “I’m going downstairs. If you need something, holler.”
She closed her eyes. “Okay.”
She listened to the sound of his boots, heavy on the floor, and the thud of him going down the stairs. The softness of the bed cradled her, and there was no denying it was better than the couch had been. Better than the floor, where she’d still be if Todd hadn’t come to check on her.
She wanted to think of him as a monster, but she knew the real monster here wasn’t Todd.
18
The next day was better. Her vision was clearer, her head not so heavy. She woke feeling refreshed, and though her legs still wobbled when she got out of bed, Gilly could walk.
In a cabin as small as this, she couldn’t avoid him forever. It seemed trivial and childish not to speak to him when they were no more than a few inches apart at the breakfast table. Especially when he pushed the sugar across to her as she stirred her tea.
“Thank you.” Gilly cleared her throat and tried again. “Thank you, Todd.”
He grunted, shoveling oatmeal into his mouth. “Whatever.”
She reached out hesitantly, hating herself for it but unable to stop herself from being decent. “I mean, thank you for…everything. You didn’t have to.”
He stared at her. “Lots of things I didn’t have to do.”
She nodded. “But you did.”
“Ain’t life funny that way?” Todd asked her, then shot her one of his wolflike grins. He gave his next words an exaggerated Pennsylvania Dutch accent. “One great big fuckup, ain’t?”
His comment almost made her laugh but, in the end, did not. “Yeah. It sure is.”
Todd shrugged, looking down. His face had started healing. The wounds she’d inflicted might not leave any scars, but Gilly would never look at him without remembering how she’d made him bleed.