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Wisp knelt on the floor next to his brother applying pressure to the gash on his forehead. He’d gotten a flash of pain from Kyle and had come to check on him. His brother must have fainted, hitting his head on his desk. Wisp had found him unconscious and bloody on the floor of his office. He’d whistled in a Watchman who’d been doing the rounds of the lower floors at the school and asked him to find James. He hadn’t come back yet.
Wisp wasn’t sure what to do next. It felt like it had been a long time since the Watchman had rushed off. Kyle was still unconscious, and the wound was still bleeding. His brother looked thinner than the last time he’d seen him and it hadn’t been that long ago. There was a pervasive exhaustion that he felt in most of the men at the school. They were trying to care for the sleeping women, waking them, one after the other, to spoon broth into them, then turning them to avoid bed sores. And then a little while later, starting all over again. There didn’t seem to be a specific team, or people taking shifts, just volunteers working until they were past exhaustion.
Despite the newspaper going out to tell men to keep their women at home, panicky husbands and fathers and uncles kept showing up with sleeping wives and daughters and nieces. They seemed to think that it was safer for them to be here, closer to medical help. Both gyms and a couple classrooms had been filled with cots from the storm shelter. Volunteers brought up more cots all day as men arrived with their women. By nightfall, they would be pushed to capacity. But more women would arrive and their men would stay to help or hurry back to their essential jobs working on farms or trains or as Sentinels, Rovers and Watch.
It was the helplessness that weighed on Wisp the most. There was nothing for him to fight. There was no neat solution that he could seek out or hard work to be done. It was something that had to be waited out. He suspected that needing a solution was why Kyle was lying limp and pale on the floor. He’d probably gone too long without sleep or food, relentlessly searching for a remedy to the flu.
Wisp got that overwhelming urge to run again. To leave all this messy emotion behind him. It was too painful. Not just his own concerns for Bridget and the baby, but for all the connections that had somehow snared into his heart. James’s Helen was asleep and Ted’s Nixie and Kyle’s Ruth, and he could go on naming all the people that he cared about. It was an ever expanding web of relationships that he didn’t want to be part of. He wasn’t made for this. He was made to be disposable. And long term relationships had never been considered when he had been designed. It hurt. Physically, emotionally, he ached with longing and frustration. And yet the thought of walking away hurt even more. Too many people depended on him. Thinking about the look of disappointment on Tillie’s face made his eyes burn, and his throat tighten up.
He put those thoughts aside and simply concentrated on what was before him. Kyle was bleeding. He kept applying pressure to the wound, trying to ignore how blood-soaked the cloth had become. He couldn’t think about losing any of his brothers. That would leave a hole in his mind where they all lived. He needed help. With all the people in the school, he couldn’t open himself up to search for James. There were just too many people and too much emotion close by.
Running footsteps warned him before Nick and Martin burst through the door.
“What happened?” Nick asked.
For a moment, Wisp couldn’t speak. There were too many thoughts that he had to wade through to get to a coherent response. “Fainted.”
“I’ll get a stretcher,” Martin said. “We’ll take him upstairs.” Martin started towards the door, but hesitated.
“Are you all right?” Nick asked.
“I don’t know.”
Martin fumbled out a paper packet from his pocket and offered it to Wisp. “Have you eaten?”
Wisp nodded towards his bloody hands. “Not now.”
“I’ll be right back,” Martin said as he headed out the door.
“You look like hell,” Nick said. “Are you going to faint?”
“No. I’m just tired. Some of it is all the men here. Everyone is so tired.”
“I know. It’s going to get better. Tillie’s awake now, so other women should start waking up soon.”
Wisp wanted to hold on to that hope. It wasn’t until Nick offered that sliver of light that he realized how dark his world had gotten.
Then Martin was back with the stretcher, and things were almost normal again.