The inside of the Methodist church looked different in the daylight. Less spooky but more depressing. Its wood-planked floors, high windows, arched ceilings, and stonework walls was the only place big enough and secure enough to set up lines of beds dragged in from surrounding houses.
The church-turned-hospital was small, but had plenty of room for us Feebs injured or sick by regular diseases like the flu. It was where we cared for moms and new babies, those born infected—seeing ghosts and dealing with memory-rushes even before they could speak. The hospital was also for the town Faints who could be triggered into eating and drinking and using the old outhouse. The Faints who were so comatose that they refused to eat or drink—there wasn’t much we could do except make them comfortable and make their end as painless as possible.
Most of us took shifts in the hospital at some point, as if we could somehow get rid of the guilt of surviving when our families and friends hadn’t.
The church smelled like old wood varnish, decades worth of dust, and a vinegar disinfectant. Lines of baby food jars, some empty, some filled, were set out on two tables near Corrina’s experiments. Not more than half the beds were filled. We’d lost five Faints to dehydration in the last heat wave and to a general sense of giving-up-ness that had taken over, as if the bacteria in their bodies had surrendered.
Gabbi marched across the creaking wood boards, passing by all the Faints in beds covered in bright colored sheets—striped, solid, animal print. She stopped at a bed near the back. Ricker and Jimmy trailed after me. Ano lay in the bed, his sheets sweat-soaked and tangled, his hands and feet bound to the bedposts by rope. Corrina sat alongside him in a stiff wooden chair, applying a damp cloth to Ano’s forehead. His brown eyes were closed, his lips pressed together, his forehead wrinkled and his thick brows pinched as if in deep concentration, or pain.
“How is he?” Gabbi asked.
Corrina shook her head. “He’s been in the fevers all night.” There was a hunch to her shoulders and dark circles under her eyes as if she’d been awake most of the night.
The first fevers after infection sometimes stayed for weeks, but after that, the fevers hadn’t ever lasted for more than half a day.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“Sit with him,” Corrina said. “I can tend to a few others if you sit with him for awhile.”
“You need help,” I said. “I’ll stay, I’ll put in more shifts. I’ll—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dylan said, coming up behind Corrina. He rested his hands on her shoulders. She leaned back into him.
“They won’t eat or drink without the medicine,” Corrina said. “We’re losing people everyday. I thought things could get better. I really did.” She stood up and wandered off as if in a daze, shuffling her feet like a zombie. Dylan followed her.
I took Corrina’s chair and grabbed Ano’s hand. He strained against the ropes, eyes wide and wild and unseeing, looking out past the beds and the church walls. He began talking in Spanish. A fast, guttural Spanish that dropped vowels and cut off words. He gripped my hand, squeezing the bones until my fingers twisted and I yelled out in pain.
Gabbi tried to push down his chest. “Ano, Ano, be calm, be calm…shshshsh.”
Dylan and Corrina rushed back. Between us all we managed to get Ano back down, but he wouldn’t stop talking. I didn’t understand most of what he said, but he sounded like a child again. Someone was hurting him and someone else he loved. My heart constricted. This was a sentence worse than death for someone who had not once in these past three years given up on doing what he thought was right.
“He keeps remembering this…this moment with his stepdad.” Dylan drew his hand across his face. I realized he must be able to understand Ano. Every word of it.
“Don’t say anything,” Gabbi said fiercely. “He wouldn’t want anyone to know. He—”
“I know,” Dylan said. “I know it. I will never say anything.”
“It won’t last for much longer though.” I hoped by saying it out loud it would come true right then. Guilt cut me deep and I began to babble. “He’ll come out of it. It’ll stop any second now.”
Gabbi stared at Corrina until she looked away.
“I’m sorry,” Corrina said. “I just knew things were so hard for you, I didn’t want to make it harder. It’s not like we can do anything about it so what’s the point?”
That look passed between Dylan and Corrina again—the one they’d shared the night I hurt Jen. When we had worked by candlelight and I swore Corrina wanted to tell me something else.
“Tell her,” Dylan said, looking at Ricker.
“You knew about this?” I stared at Ricker in disbelief.
“Corrina didn’t want you to know,” Ricker said. “She knew you were taking things so rough, she didn’t think this would help. I promised her—”
“What’s going on?” I almost screamed the question.
“We were hoping for the new drugs,” Corrina whispered. “Then there would have been nothing to tell.”
“The fevers aren’t lifting anymore,” Gabbi said. “If you get bit by a V you don’t come back out anymore.”