Wormwood

the trigger.

The stress fractures were no doubt there, but they were still too small to be seen.

He found himself shivering despite the heat.

What was the point even considering it? Whatever he and the others were tonight would be reshaped tomorrow. Then again the next day, and the next…

Ultimately, their destiny was one and the same as the ashes in the fire. It was only a question of putting it off a little longer — a day, an hour; perhaps only another fleeting moment.

Long enough to find some sense or reason to make it worth the living.

Or worth the letting go.

28

Pam Dawley knocked softly on the bedroom door and then quietly entered. She didn’t want to disturb her husband if he was sleeping, but needed to check the stitches she’d sewn into the ends of his fingers to make sure they weren’t bleeding or infected. As soon as she cracked the door, however, she knew that she had worries about the latter, because there was really no mistaking the smell. Even working in a hospital, she’d never gotten used to it; that dank and swampy smell, as close as a body could get to rotting without actually dying. It hung like a dark green mist about the room, unable to escape with the plywood over the window and the air conditioning gone.

She closed the door behind her, not wanting it to seep into other parts of the house, and pointed her flashlight at the foot of the bed. Mike seemed to react unfavorably to its touch, moaning aloud and struggling against the damp press of the sheet.

She turned the beam away and the shadows lengthened, they moved to the far corner behind the hamper and trembled as if they too wanted out. Mike sat up in bed with a violent start, his eyes wide, straining against the light, and Pam let out a short, fluttering scream, her free hand flying to smother it back inside her mouth.

“Who is that?” he gasped, squinting across the room, his bandaged hand reaching for the loaded pistol he’d insisted she leave on the nightstand. Now it looked like he would shoot her with it. The gun, however, slid away and tumbled to the floor as he tried to pick it up, unaccustomed to the alterations that had been done to his hand; half his middle finger and three-quarters of the ring finger next to it now gone.

“It’s me!” she cried, turning the flashlight on herself, momentarily blinded by the beam. “It’s Pam, your wife!”

“Christ,” he sighed, letting the gun lie where it had fallen and rolling back against the pillow, his hair soaked with sweat. He raised his hands to cover his face, flinched when the stained dressings touched his skin, and closed his eyes against the grim reminder. Shaking his head and wishing it away.

For a long moment, Pam wondered if he’d forgotten she was there, and then his eyes opened slowly on the darkened room.

“I came to check your stitches,” she said, approaching the bed with a guarded step, as if he might have more guns secreted away. “How are you feeling?”

“Like something chewed me up and spat me back out,” he groaned, gazing at the empty air where his two fingers used to be. “I’m sorry,” he said, lowering his arm to the mattress, taking a long, rattling breath. “What time is it?”

“A little after nine,” she replied, leaving the flashlight atop the nightstand and turning toward the dresser. Half a dozen fat, scented candles sat atop it; candles she used to light before they made love. She struck a match and lit one. The delicate fragrance of sandalwood struggled briefly against the iron stench of infection, then turned sour and wilted.

She carried the candle back to the bed and set it on the nightstand. “You’ve been sleeping almost four hours.”

“Sleeping,” he echoed, a bitter smile touching his flushed face. “I’ve been dreaming… if that’s the word for it.”

“Nightmares?” She touched his brow and took her hand quickly away, as if burned. “You’ve got a fever.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said, then smiled again, his head sunk deeply into the pillow. “Don’t worry; I don’t think it’s contagious yet.”

She looked into his eyes and then looked away, opening the drawer in the nightstand and reaching for the thermometer she’d left there with the gauze and the medical tape. “You’ll need some antibiotics.”

His smile remained: a grim line carved against the pillow. “Hope we have some.”

She put the thermometer under his tongue and told him not to talk.

“Now,” she said, moving the candle closer, “let me see your hand.”

He gave her his good one, gripping her as if he might not let go.

“The other one,” she chided gently.

He watched her face as she unwrapped the bandages.

It told him everything he needed to know.

29

“What’s my temperature?” he asked as she shook it away, the old-fashioned glass and mercury tube going back into the drawer.

“102.4°,” she lied. It had been over 104°.

He gritted his teeth and swore at her as she daubed his stitches with disinfectant and carefully redressed them.

“Where’s Shane?” he asked when she’d finished.

“Out at the fire with Rudy and Larry,” she told him.

Mike let his head roll back and gazed at the ceiling. “He’s a good boy,” he sighed. “I was proud of him today.” He glanced at her. “You’ll tell him that, won’t you?”

“You can tell him yourself in the morning.”

He nodded, but weakly, as if far from convinced.

Pam rose from his side and looked down at him, the worry a calcified lump in her throat. “I’m going to get you some Erythromycin; and some Tylenol to knock that fever back.”

“Okay.”

She lingered by the bedside, as if she still had something to say. It was large, he saw, even through the fever; something that was going to hurt her coming out. Her mouth twisted slightly and there were suddenly tears in her eyes, a deep and regretful well of them.

She sat back down and took his hand; the good one this time. She closed her eyes and the bed started to tremble.

“What?” he whispered, all at once afraid.

“Oh Michael,” she sobbed, clutching his hand between her breasts, “I’m so sorry for the way I treated you! I never should have listened to that foolish woman! That bitch Sally Kellerman!” She opened her eyes. “But when she told me about that girl I thought, I thought I’d already lost you! I got so scared that something inside of me went a little crazy and I just wanted to hurt you! More than anything I wanted to take Shane away and make you feel as bad as I did!”

“Shhhh,” he told her, reaching up to touch her face, to brush away a long tear and a lock of hair that had fallen over her eye. “You don’t have to do this,” he said gently. “You know that nothing happened. Tabitha Kilbey had a lot of deep and serious problems in her life; that’s why she came to me. You also know that sometimes clients develop crushes and dependencies on their therapists. It happened before with Marjorie Kincade.”

She sniffed, a helpless laugh hiccoughing out of her. “Marjorie was forty-five years old and over two hundred pounds; she wasn’t anything like Tabitha Kilbey.”