Red is for Courage (2017, Jerry eBooks) by Steve Fisher

Author:Steve Fisher [Fisher, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2017-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

CANDLES at his head, at his feet.

Darkness. A gust of wind came through the window and the candles fluttered inward, then went out. Father Andre turned up the oil lamp and yellow light licked the walls. Tony lay rigidly still on the cot. Kadi was on the floor, sitting on her legs, her head bowed. Her lips moved and I knew she was saying what I was thinking: Dear God, don’t let him die! Please, God, don’t let Tony die!

Suddenly, his arm twitched. His fingers fluttered. He was trying to wet his lips. His skin had been dry; now I saw sweat seep from his pores.

“Water, quickly!” I said. “He’s going to live! Father, he’s going to live!”

“It is a miracle,” Father Andre said. “I am a man of three and seventy years, and I have seen it happen before.”

He fetched the water. Kadi was unable to speak, peering at Tony, not moving, hardly breathing.

The crisis was over. I took the wet cloth Father Andre handed me, and I began working on him.

You do what you can, and nature does the rest. It was a quotation I’d learned in Bellevue.

Funny what you think of at a time like that. I remembered things that had happened when I was an interne.

The times when I’d worked over hopeless cases, and the thrill that would come when I’d sit in on a miracle, save a life that had already been given up as lost . . .

Slowly, light crept through the ancient archway on the hill. Then the sky was orange with sun, and Tony was breathing evenly. Gradually, day by day, now, hour by hour, he would get stronger. Tony, laughing the way he used to laugh, would be a wonderful sight to see . . .

Father Andre had not slept for days, but if he was tired he did not show it. I did—my face was mottled, my eyes red. But the priest was like a man of iron.

“I shall have a boy brew coffee and bring you some,” he said. “Then I must get to work . . . My son, do you remember saying that we needed a dispensary?”

“Yes,” I said. That had been on the first day of our arrival.

“I’ve considered it carefully,” he said. “It will greatly facilitate our work. I’m having the coolies start on it today.”

When he was gone I knelt at Tony’s cot, beside Kadi. Both of us watched Tony. He was sleeping naturally. Kadi turned to me. Her skin was like chalk, and her lips pale and unrouged, but for the first time in days the strain was gone from her face.

“Will you stay with him for a little while?” she asked.

“Of course. Where are you going?”

“To attend Mass when Father Andre gives it.”

“But the mission is filled with plague victims, Kadi! There’s no use exposing yourself to—”

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “Oh, Willie, I’ll never be afraid of anything again as long as I live!”

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