Beggars and Choosers

Victoria Turner put her hand on Lizzie’s forehead, and her violet eyes widened. Lizzie didn’t seem to know, her, that anybody was there. She gave another cough, a small one, arid started moaning. I felt despair start in my bowels, the kind you feel when there’s no hope and you don’t see how you can bear it. I hadn’t felt that kind of despair, me, since my wife Rosie died, twelve years ago. I never thought I’d have to feel it again.

Victoria Turner took a scarf out of her pocket and knelt by Lizzie. She didn’t seem at all afraid, her. One of the thoughts I’d had in the night, God forgive me, was: Is this sickness catching? Could A

“Cough for me, sweetheart,” Victoria Turner said. “Come on, cough into the scarf.”

In a few minutes, Lizzie did, her, though not because she was asked. Big slimy gobs of stuff from her tortured lungs, greenish gray. Victoria Turner caught it, her, in the scarf and looked at it closely. Me, I had to look away. That was Lizzie’s lungs coming up, Lizzie’s lungs rotting themselves away.

“Excellent,” Victoria Turner said, “green. It’s bacterial. Now we know. You’re in luck, Lizzie.”

Luck! I saw A

“Bacterial is good,” Victoria Turner said, looking up at me, “because the medication can be far less specific. You have to tailor antivirals, at least grossly. But wide-spectrum antibiotics are easy.”

A

“I haven’t the faintest idea. But this will almost surely take care of it.” From another pocket she drew a flat piece of plastic, tore it open, and slapped a round blue patch on Lizzie’s neck.

“But you should force more water down her. You don’t want to risk dehydration.”

A

Lizzie sighed and quieted. Nobody said nothing. After a few minutes, Lizzie was asleep.

“Best thing for her,” Victoria Turner said crisply. I saw again, me, that she liked this. “Not even Miranda Sharifi herself could equal the benefits of sleep.”

I remembered, me, hearing that name, but I couldn’t think where.

A

Dr. Turner looked surprised, her, then she smiled. Like something was fu

A

But, then, donkey doctors don’t go wandering around East Oleanta dressed in torn yellow jacks neither. We ain’t even seen a doctor in East Oleanta, us, since a new plague broke out four years ago and a doctor came from Albany to vaccinate everybody with some new stuff the medunit didn’t have.

“I’m looking for someone,” Dr. Turner said. “Someone I was supposed to meet here, but we apparently got our data confused. A woman, a girl really, about this tall, dark hair, a slightly large head.”

I thought, me, of the girl in the woods, and quick tried to look like I wasn’t thinking of nothing at all. That girl came from Eden, I was sure of it, me — and Eden don’t got nothing to do with donkeys. It’s about Livers. Dr. Turner was watching close, her. A

A

“I fell asleep,” Dr. Turner said, which explained nothing. She said it fu

“I never saw nobody like that, me,” A

“How about you, Billy?” Dr. Turner said. She probably knew my name, her, even before A

“I never saw nobody like that, me,” I said. She stared at me hard. She didn’t believe me, her.

“Then let me just ask something else. Does the name ‘Eden’ mean anything to you?”

A gust of wind could of blown me over.

But A

“Right,” Dr. Turner said. “Before the Fall.” She stood up and stretched. Her body under the jacks was too ski

“I’ll come back to look in on Lizzie tomorrow,” Dr. Turner said, and I saw, me, that A

When the doctor left, A

And A

None of your grateful-daughter crap, neither. She cried and pointed to Lizzie and kissed me with her soft berry lips and pushed her breasts against me. A

A

If that donkey doctor in yellow jacks had come back then and asked me again where Eden was — if she’d of done that, I could of told her, me. In this room. On this bed. With A

We slept till morning, us. I woke up before A

But A

“That’s a good sign, Lizzie. What you want to eat, you?”

“Something hot. I’m cold, me. Something hot from the cafe.” Her voice was whiny and she smelled awful but I didn’t care, me. I was too glad to her her cold, when just yesterday she’d been burning up, her, with fever. That donkey doctor really was as good as a medunit.