“You’re in the valley,” I said. “You’ve been sick.”
I put the soup down beside him. I had thought I would have to feed it to him.
“The valley,” he said. “I remember now. All the green trees. But there was no one there.” He lay back on the pillow again.
“I was here,” I said. “I stayed in the woods.” (I thought it better not to mention the cave.) “Then I saw you were sick, and I thought you needed help.”
“Sick,” he said. “Yes, very sick.”
“I made you some soup,” I said. “Try to eat it.”
He did try, but his hand was so weak he spilled it from the spoon, so in the end I did feed it to him. He ate seven spoonfuls, and then said, “No more. Too sick.” He fell asleep again. However, I think even that bit of soup did him some good; he seemed to sleep more naturally, and was not breathing so fast. I had brought a thermometer from the house to take his temperature, but I decided it could wait until morning. I touched his forehead. It was hot all right. From close up, in the dimness of the tent, he looked extremely frail.
I went back up to the cave, got my alarm clock, a lamp, this note book and some other things, and came back to the house. I set the alarm for midnight; when it went off I reset it for two o’clock, then for four o’clock. Each time it rang I went out with a torch and looked into the tent to see how he was. Once he woke and asked again for water; I gave him a cupful. The rest of the time he slept steadily.
This morning I crumbled some of the remaining corn bread in some milk and took it to him for breakfast. (I had to use powdered milk because the cows are still out. I will have to catch them now and bring them back in. Also the chickens.)
This time he seemed very much better. His eyes had lost the dazed look they had had earlier. He thanked me for the bread and milk and was able to spoon it out himself. After he finished eating it he actually sat up for a moment; then he lay back again and said:
“I need to find out what made me sick.”
“I think it is because you swam in Burden Creek,” I said.
“Burden Creek?”
“The stream across the road.”
“You know about that?”
“I was watching—from a distance away.”
“You know about the water.”
“Nothing lives in it. I don’t know why.”
“I discovered that. But not until the day after I took a bath in it. So stupid to be careless, after all this time. I had not been in water for a year. I was too eager. Still I should have tested. But that other water, in the pond, was all right. So I thought…” He stopped and lay quietly for a time. Then he said:
“I might as well know. Could you—'
“Could I what?”
“Do you know what a Geiger counter is?”
“Those glass tubes you have.”
“Yes. Can you read one?”
“No. That is, I never have.”
I got the smaller of the tubes out of his wagon, and he showed me a gauge on one end of it, a small needle that wavered a bit when you moved it, like a compass. The dial was numbered from zero to two hundred. As he asked me, I took it across the road to Burden Creek. In the tent and crossing the road, the needle stayed at about five. But when I got near the water it began to go up. Standing back as far as I could, I held it a foot above the stream. The needle
When I told him what the needle showed he groaned and covered his eyes with his hand.
“A hundred and eighty,” he said. “And I was in the water at least ten minutes. My God. I must have got three hundred r’s. Maybe more.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“It means I have radiation poisoning. Very bad.”
“But you’re getting better.”
“It comes in stages.”
He knew a great deal about radiation sickness; apparently he had studied it even before the war. The first part, being sick, lasts only a day or so, then goes away. Then the radiation caused what he called intracellular ionization, and that was the real damage. It means that some of the molecules in your cells are destroyed, so that the cells no longer work normally and cannot grow and divide. It meant that in a short time—a day or two, maybe longer—he was going to get much sicker. He would get a very high fever, and since his blood cells were damaged and could not reproduce, he would also get anaemic. Worst of all he would have no resistance to germs and infection; he would be very susceptible to pneumonia or even the mildest impurities in his food and water.
“How bad will it get?” I asked. What I meant, but did not want to say, was, are you likely to die? He understood.
“Do you know what an “r” means? It’s a roentgen, a way of measuring radiation. If I absorbed three hundred r’s in that stream I may live through it. If I got four or five hundred, well, then it’s hopeless.”
He said all this in a very matter-of-fact way; he was calm about it. I think I would have been hysterical. However, I tried to stay calm, too, and be practical.
So I said, “While you are feeling better, you should tell me all you can about what I should do. Do you have medicine to take? What should you eat?”
He looked at the bottle of pills, still on the floor where I had put it. “Those won’t help, not now. No, there’s no medicine. In a hospital they give transfusions and intravenous nutrients.”
I can’t do that, of course, so what it amounts to is that there won’t be much I can do, not until I see how the sickness develops. The only thing he seems sure of at this point is that he will have a very high fever and anaemia. It is likely, but not certain, that he will develop some kind of infection like pneumonia or dysentery. One thing I can do will be to try to prevent that. I can boil and sterilize everything he eats and eats from—just like a baby. When I get the cows and chickens back in I can give him fresh milk and eggs to eat; they are nourishing and easy to digest.
And if he is strong enough to walk a little tomorrow I will try to help him into the house. He can sleep in Joseph and David’s room, on a bed. It will be dryer and warmer in the house and easier for me to take care of him.
I’ve just realized that after all this I still do not even know his name.
Chapter Six
His name is John R. Loomis; he is a chemist from Ithaca, New York, where Cornell University is, or used to be.
He was much better this morning—so much that I began to doubt whether he was really going to get sick again at all. But he said that is normal for radiation poisoning. And it turns out he is a real expert on the subject. In fact, that is, in a way, how he happens to be alive at all, and how he was able to make his way here.
I woke up early, feeling very cheerful, thinking that there was someone to talk to even if he was sick. I brought some more water, heated it over the fire and took a bath, something I haven’t been able to do for a while. (I do it by carrying the warm water into the tub in the bathroom. You can wash quite well with just two bucketfuls once you get used to it.) Then I put on my good slacks. After all, he is “company” in a way, and I thought I should dress up a bit. I felt a little embarrassed at first when I looked in the mirror; but it was just because I am so used to the men’s blue jeans.
