MARKS - Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three

The men lower him onto the blankets, their arms jostling his weight. Nolan, his face ashen, grits his teeth.

Blair rushes forward and drops to Nolan’s side. “What happened?” she asks, her words turning into a sob as they come out.

One of the men - Damon – kneels by Nolan’s leg. “Got pierced with a blade.” He rips Nolan’s pants open.

Great skies. His leg looks near split in two. Skin gapes around a hole in his thigh. Deep red blood oozes out of it. The room presses in on me, and I can’t breathe.

Damon pulls back the fabric of Nolan’s pants. “We should get a doctor.”

“No.” Nolan rises up on his elbows and grabs Damon’s collar. “You do not bring anyone here. Do you understand?”

A woman appears over Blair’s shoulder with clean rags and presses them into the wound. Nolan grips his leg and cries out. A man scurries across the room and returns with a bottle of whiskey. He uncaps it and hands it to Nolan, who takes a swig. Sweat beads off his forehead.

Blair’s head snaps up, her eyes meeting mine. “Liddy.”

I spin, searching the room for a small blonde head. But Liddy isn’t tucked under a table or hiding in her bed. Maybe she went down a tunnel. I take a step toward one when I spot her, standing behind a man, pressing her tiny body against the throng of people. I scoop her up and press her face to my chest as I move quickly from the room. She doesn’t need to hear this. And neither do I.

“Hold him,” I hear the man tell the others. I’m not watching but know the instant he pours the alcohol on Nolan’s leg. Nolan screams. The high-pitched sound, so unlike his deep tone, bounces off the walls and sends goosebumps down my arms.

I take Liddy to the tunnel, and look at the scattered bits and pieces of ingredients on my worktable. A few remnants of fabric are heaped into a pile on the end.

“Let’s make a dress for your doll.” I sit her down on the stool. “How about a dress of different colors, like a sunset?”

She stares at me, eyes wide and lips trembling. “What’s wrong with my papa?"

I bend down in front of her face, a half-truth rolling to my mind. “Papa is sick, but Mama is going to take care of him. Now, how about we start with purple?”

Chatter flows from me. The noise from the main room still echoes this far. But there’s nowhere I can take her except outside, and we can’t do that right now. So we make colors. Purple and green and pink. Little swatches of fabric, tiny peeks of color to brighten the darkness creeping into the tunnel. Liddy doesn’t speak. Just watches me and watches the tunnel.

I don’t know how much time has passed when footsteps fall on the tunnel floor.

Ward. He looks not at me, but at Liddy. She slips off her stool and peers up at him. Ward pulls her to him and picks her up. My breath catches in my throat. He walks out of the tunnel without another word. I drop the fabric back into the pot and race after him. Ward has passed Liddy to Blair, who snuggles the girl against her chest.

Ward walks to the blanket. Nolan’s eyes are closed, but his chest falls and then oh so slowly rises again.

“Is he alive?” I whisper.

“For now. He passed out in the middle of the stitches,” Ward says,

“You stitched him?” His own brother-in-law?

Ward shakes his head. “Blair did.”

Saints above. The woman is made of solid steel.

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Ward says.

Nolan’s face is grey. Grey like skies of relentless rain and gloom. And death.

A shiver overtakes me. The whole cavern buzzes with the hushed, anxious voices of the adults. I help Blair with dinner, her brows drawn tight together. Liddy clutches Blair’s skirts the whole evening. The boys have the wild look of fear on their faces.

Time passes in a blur. I go to bed but lay awake for what feels like hours before sleep finds me. When I open my eyes, the fires are low and people are asleep in their beds. The blanket beside me is empty, and I wonder if Ward has slept at all. Muffled voices echo behind me. I roll over. Ward and Blair are bustling over Nolan. Blair’s face is pinched tight.

I rise to my feet and cross over to them.

Ward looks up at me. “He has a fever.”

Fever. Some words hold little power on their own. This word makes my stomach roll. Fever means infection. Sweat beads off Nolan’s face, and he twitches and jerks in his sleep. Blair wrings out a cloth and places it on his forehead. Ward grabs one and jerks up Nolan’s shirt and puts the cloth on Nolan’s stomach. Then he lifts the bandages on Nolan’s leg. The skin is a swollen mound of red.

Blair settles beside Nolan and rests her head on his arm.

I grab Ward’s arm and drag him a few feet away. “How bad is it?”

His brown eyes are fathoms of pain. “It’s not good.”

“Can we get medicine?”

He runs his hands through his hair. “It’d cost a small fortune to get what we need. I don’t have that much.” His voice catches on that last line. And I know what he’s thinking. That he doesn’t have enough, therefore he isn’t enough. Which is a lie.

I take his hand and squeeze it. “What can I do?”

A ridiculous question. I can do everything. But my words will kill us all.

Ward looks at Nolan and at his sister bent over her husband’s struggling body. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispers.

He doesn't. But I do.