Precious and Fragile Things Read online

  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