Her voice cracked, and I watched her hand move up to cover her mouth.
“Infected?” I heard myself mumble out loud as my brain tried to remember what the fuck that meant. I tried to raise my head, but it was so damn heavy. I was lying on my side, and I rolled onto my stomach with the intent of verifying her thoughts about my leg, but I couldn’t hold my head up enough to get a good look at it. My thigh fucking hurt, that was for sure. I felt Raine’s hands on my head again, and she raised me up so I could look down at the back of my leg. The skin around the slash was deep red – almost black – and oozing. Holy shit. “Yeah, that’s bad.”
“Please, Bastian…tell me what to do,” she begged. “I washed it off with the fresh water, and I’ve tried to keep it covered up some of the time, but then I thought maybe it would heal better if it was exposed to the air. You have a fever, and I can’t…I can’t…”
She took a deep, choking breath that ended up in a sob.
“I can’t remember if you’re supposed to feed a fever and starve a cold, or feed a cold and starve a fever!” she blurted out.
It fucking hurt, but I couldn’t help but laugh, which led to coughing, which really fucking hurt.
“It’s not funny!” Raine yelled at me.
“It’s okay, babe,” I said after she gave me some water to quiet the cough. My eyes went a little swimmy as she laid my head back on the palm leaves in the sand.
“What else can I do?” she said softly. “Please, Bastian…I have to do something.”
“Lobelia,” I mumbled and shook my head, trying to make myself focus. If I really did have a fever…well, that wasn’t a good thing. I remembered the little blue and yellow flowers from the jungle and figured they had to be better than nothing.
“What?”
“Need Lobelia,” I repeated. “And charcoal. Mix ‘em together with water and boil them over the fire.”
“Bastian, I don’t understand.”
“Fights infection,” I said, trying to be clearer. Some of what she was saying was starting to make sense – I remembered being cut. My leg was infected; I could feel the heat. If it was as bad as it felt, it could kill me. If it killed me, Raine wasn’t going to make it on her own. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to make her understand.
I reached out my hand and pulled back the palm frond on the ground until I could see the sand. I slowly drew the shape of a flower with two small, thin petals at the top and three larger petals at the bottom.
“Lobelia,” I said again. “Bright blue, yellow spots in the middle near the stamen. Big bulge under the flower, right before the stem. Long, skinny leaves, big stalks. They were everywhere back in the jungle – big bunches, you can find them.”
“What do I do with them?”
“Crush whole flowers in water with charcoal from the fire.” I had to stop and take a few breaths. I felt cool water over my forehead as Raine ran some wet cloth over my face. “Boil it if you can. Use a seashell if there’s one big enough. Just put it on top of the coals.”
“There are.” Raine nodded her head. There were still tears running down her face. “There are a bunch of shells that are big enough.”
“Use the poultice to cover up the cut,” I told her. I tried to reach up and wipe the tears away from her face, but I couldn’t make my arm move. Raine reached down and took my hand in both of hers. They were still wet from the cloth she had used to wipe me down. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
“Okay,” Raine said and nodded again. She looked down to my rough diagram of the flowers and gave my hand a squeeze. “I’ll find them.”
I was out again before my hand dropped back to the ground.
*
I jerked awake from another nightmare. My entire body ached but no more than it ever did after a weekend of too much booze and a couple of whores. I rolled a little to one side and then the other, trying to stretch out my back and get my bearings.
No booze, no whores, I thought to myself. I had Raine now, and I felt the corners of my mouth turn up a little. I shifted my leg and felt a twinge of pain run all the way up it. I raised my head, looked over my shoulder, and down to the offending thigh. I couldn’t see any wound because it was covered up with some dark fabric, which was also quite wet.
What the fuck were my boxer shorts doing wrapped around my leg?
I shifted, but they didn’t fall off. That’s when I saw some of the rope from the raft also wrapped around my leg, holding the boxers in place.
“Don’t move, damn it!”
I felt soft hands against my shoulders, pushing me back onto my stomach. I looked up to a completely bare Raine – all bare skin and tan lines – crouched over me and adjusting the wrap around my leg.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, confused and agitated.
Raine’s eyes darted to mine, and I watched her eyes go from intense worry and frustration to instant relief.
“Bastian! Did you just swear at me?”