Ashfall

“Roll up on your left side, so I can get at that wound. What happened, anyway?” Darla said.

“Hand-ax,” I replied.

“Christ, that was clumsy.”

I decided not to try to explain it right then. I was too tired. It took all my strength to watch Darla and her mom. They set out a bowl of water, a pile of mostly ash-free rags, a pocketknife, a sewing needle, and some heavy black thread on the end table by my head.

“This is going to hurt,” Darla said. “Try not to move.”

“Uh, do you know what you’re doing?”

She shrugged. “I got a prize in the 4-H junior veterinary program.”

“Isn’t that for animals?”

“Yeah, so? We’re all animals.”

“You’ll be fine, hon,” Mrs. Edmunds said. “Darla has better hands than mine for fine work. Uncle Arthur came to visit me early.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

Darla leaned close and hissed in my ear, “Arthritis, dumbass. Now lie still.”

It was fine while she washed the outside of the wound with water. It hurt, but I could cope. When she started washing it with bourbon, I clenched my teeth and felt tears leak from my eyes. When she pried the flap of flesh open with her pocketknife, I screamed and passed out.

Chapter 18

When I awoke, I was desperate for both water and a place to pee. Odd that my body both craved water and needed to void it at the same time.

I lifted my head to look around. A mistake, because it triggered a jackhammer headache that was worse, if possible, than the one I’d had before I passed out. I closed my eyes and rested my head, waiting for the pain to subside.

After the headache had died down some, I reopened my eyes. There was still a small fire going—either I hadn’t been unconscious long or someone had been feeding it. I pushed the blanket off my torso and looked down. I was still naked. The clean area around my wound formed a big oval of pink skin on my otherwise gray, ash-stained body. An Ace bandage was wrapped tightly a few times around my chest, holding a folded white cloth against my side.

Gingerly I slid my fingers under the cloth. I wanted to get a look at the wound. I pulled it up as gently as I could, but it was stuck. It hurt like crazy to pull the cloth free. The Ace bandage stretched just enough for me to take a look underneath.

There was a huge cut on my side, about the same size and shape as a horseshoe. Darla had closed it with a row of neat stitches, at least thirty of them—I didn’t have the strength to count.

I badly needed to pee. I had no idea where I was, where the bathroom was, or whether the toilet worked. I thought about peeing out the front door, but I didn’t know where that was either.

I swung my bare feet off the couch and sat up. A bad idea. I must have still been short on blood, because what little I had rushed out of my head. The world started spi

Darla swept into the room a few seconds later. I was curled up on the floor in front of the couch, trying to summon enough strength to get up. She wore a T-shirt that came almost to her knees.

“What the hell—are you trying to wake up everyone in the house?” she said.

“No. Just looking for the bathroom. If you could point it out?”

“Christ. Let me find something we can use for a bedpan.”

Okay. I didn’t like that idea one bit. It was getting a bit embarrassing, exposing myself to this girl every time I saw her, especially since she found my “equipment” so unimpressive and didn’t mind telling me so. I certainly didn’t want to pee in front of her. Nonetheless, she had already left. I heard the clank of metal pans coming from an adjoining room. If I hadn’t already woken her mother, that racket was sure to.

She returned holding a bread pan.

“Really,” I said, “if you could show me where the bathroom—”

“Can you even stand up?”

I pushed my head and shoulders up off the floor, preparing to try.

“Never mind! I don’t want you ripping all the stitches out of your side. I worked damn hard on those.” She grabbed me by my left arm and hoisted me onto the couch.

I lay back, grateful to rest my pounding head. “Thanks for sewing me up. The stitches look good.”

“Why were you poking at them, anyway? I put the bandage on you for a reason, dumbass.”

“I just wanted to see them.” The insults she was dishing out were a

“Hmm. Well, they turned out okay. I’ve never actually done that before, but I’ve watched doctors stitch me up twice. Wish I had curved needles like they used on me-would have made it a lot easier.”

“You should be a doctor.”

“Maybe. Don’t tell Mom we used her second-best bread pan for this, okay?” She put the bread pan on the couch next to me and stared expectantly. “So you need to pee or what?”

“Yeah. Could you, like, turn your back or something?”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, sure.” She stepped to the hearth and added a log to the fire.

I pulled the pan to my groin, lined up my soldier and . . . nothing. It’s hard to pee when a girl’s in the room—even if her back was turned. And on top of that, I was worried about whether I could get it in the pan without splashing. I knew “performance anxiety” wasn’t exactly the right term, but something like that was going on. Or not going at all, rather.

Darla had finished feeding the fire. “Are you ever going to do it?”

“Yeah, I need to, but I can’t. Not with you standing there.”

She let out an exaggerated sigh and strolled toward the kitchen. “Yell when you’re done.”

It took a minute, but I finally got it done. Sweet relief. I didn’t splash, either. Well, not enough that anyone would notice. “Finished!” I called out.

Darla returned and took the bedpan from me. I pulled up the blanket. Despite the fire, I was cold. “Any chance I could get some water?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I should have thought of that. You need to drink a ton. Blood loss—your right boot was completely full when I pulled it off you. You lost some more while I was stitching you up. I’ll be right back.”

When she returned, she was carrying two thirty-two-ounce plastic cups, like the ones I used to get at fast food restaurants. She handed me one. “Drink this. I’ll put the other one beside the couch.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t yell again unless it’s something important. Mom needs her sleep,” Darla said. Then she disappeared.

Chapter 19

I woke to a smell: something delicious wafting out of the kitchen. I retrieved the cup of water from the floor and drank it all. I lay back down, thinking about calling out and asking for food. Before I could act on the thought, I fell asleep again.

The next time I woke, it wasn’t a sound or smell calling me from sleep. It was the imminent explosion of my bladder. My back hurt, too; I’d obviously been on that couch a long time.

I heard someone moving in the kitchen, so I called out, “Hello?”

Mrs. Edmunds came through the doorway. “My, I thought you were going to sleep through another day and night. You must be hungry.”

“Yeah. But, um, where’s the bathroom?” I sat up, holding the blanket to my chest. “I think my eyeballs are yellow.” I must have wobbled a bit, because she rushed over and grabbed my left arm.

“Sure you’re up for a walk?” She peered at my face.

I nodded.

“Okay, I guess there is something sloshing around in there.” Holding my left arm, she helped me stand. My head felt as if it might blow off my shoulders at the slightest breeze, but no way did I want to undergo the humiliating bedpan procedure again. I wrapped my left arm over her shoulder and held the blanket around myself with my right hand. Together we hobbled to the kitchen and from there into a bathroom.