It was too much. I crouched there and sobbed, the aching tightness
blocking my throat as I shakily poured water over him.
* * * * *
The light kept bobbing about in the strangest way. It couldn't be a
firefly, too big. It was up high on the slope at first but soon it
dropped down, wavering back and forth. I knew then it was a shaded
flashlight and I heard the sliding of boots on the rocky path.
"That's close enough." The voice was strange at first and then I
remembered that was how Anders sounded.
Until the darkness and rising fever stopped me I had kept pouring the
water over Makstutis where he lay, unconscious and unmoving on the
ground. Kang floated low and lifeless in the water like a beached log.
I checked him once. His pulse was still there but slow and almost
imperceptible. As the fearful heat rose within me I lay down in the
stream beside him and shivered there as long as I could endure. Then I
would get out again and return to my work. Finally, too sick and dizzy
to do any more, I crawled to the bank and lay down on my back with my
legs in the water to cool off the blood steaming inside me. Then I
passed out.
The light flickered closer and waved about over my companions. It came
to me and I squinted up feebly, trying to avoid the glare.
"How are they, Dr. Anders?" The voice came from the slope.
"One of them is dead ... a corporal. The Russian and the Sergeant are
very bad, unconscious. Dr. Macdonald is awake," Anders said and then,
to me, "Do you understand me?"
"Yes, I do," I whispered.
"I am going to inject some serum." He was busy tying a tourniquet of
rubber tubing above my elbow to bring out the veins. I felt the needle
probing for the collapsed tissues and later the pressure as he pulled
it out and stopped the bleeding. He jabbed me again in the biceps.
"You have had your anti-serum and a sedative," he said, leaning close
to be sure I heard. "Now you must relax and concentrate on getting
well."
With that thought in my mind I went to sleep.
* * * * *
Three days later I was over the worst of it. I had bled again from the
kidneys but fortunately the disease had not been severe enough to cause
a massive internal hemorrhage that would have choked their filtering
mechanism and killed me.
"How do I look?" I said to Anders that morning as he examined me where
I lay, in the dappled shade of the clearing.
"Your eyes are very red, of course," he smiled, "and you have purpuric
spots ... what your laymen call bruising, isn't it ... in the creases
of your elbows and thighs, but I think you have been fortunate."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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