Krisis (After the Cure Book 3) Read Free Page B

understand how much Charlie is suffering. But you’ve been distracted by your work and the hope you had of curing him. Your tests are done. Take some time. Spend some time with him. You’ll see he isn’t the little boy you remember. Eventually you’ll see that the alternative is kinder. I’ll wait.” He didn’t wait for her to answer, just climbed the stairs to the kitchen.
     

Chapter 2
    In February, Charlie and Bill got sick from something they’d eaten. Before it would have meant a day home from school and work. A few slices of toast, flat gingerale and a marathon of cartoons. Ruth’s mind listed all the things it could be now: cholera, dysentery, killer flu. Her thoughts rolled over and over, jagged stones that banged in her head. She went out, looking for something, anything to help them. Toward evening she panicked, slogging through the snow to each store she could remember, but they were all ransacked and even the generic, over-the-counter drugs were gone. She’d been looking all day, trudging from broken glass door to broken glass door in freezing rain and fresh snow.
    Exhausted and wet, she thought of going home. But Bill had begged her to find Charlie a sedative instead of stomach medicine. Enough to stop his misery. Ruth didn’t tell him she’d already set it aside. It was locked in the cabinet in her lab, where Bill never went. Charlie’s screams had died into whimpers and toneless sobbing after two days of near constant vomit. She hadn’t thought any of them could be more exhausted than they already were, but she’d been wrong.
    Charlie’s weak cries had fooled her into believing he was the boy she’d known a year ago. He had barely even fought when she cleaned him up, she wasn’t even sure he needed the restraints. He’d lain on the floor where she put him when she was finished, dozing and starting, his dark hair sticking to his forehead with sweat, his cheeks bright with fever. She wanted to curl up next to him, to rake her hand through his hair to get it off his skin, to fan cool breezes onto his face and kiss him. She knew that she couldn’t, but it didn’t stop her aching for it. The pain they were all in almost made her agree to do it, right then. But she’d escaped instead, with a made up mission to find medicine that wouldn’t do much anyway. If she went back now, she might give in. Then there would be no Charlie, not even the mindless version that had replaced her funny, handsome little boy. Ruth couldn’t go much farther without risking getting lost in the blizzard, though, and she would freeze if she didn’t get back to the house soon. A bookstore was all that was left, but she went in anyway, to delay going home for a few more minutes.
    She was surprised to see that the store was almost as badly ransacked as all the others. She realized that most of the books were being burnt to stay warm, because a few of the wooden shelves were broken into splintered slabs and piled in a corner near the door. She looked around at the few remaining books and eventually found one on natural cures. In other days, it might have made her roll her eyes in private. There was nothing, in Ruth’s mind, better than modern medicine. Sure, people had used natural remedies for thousands of years, but the life expectancy of those people was decades shorter before medicine and technology made giant leaps forward. But now— now it wasn’t just a way to stall for time. Now it was an entire book full of things Ruth might have overlooked. A handbook for a city girl after the city was gone. It was armor against Bill and his despair. It was a way to find a cure, maybe. Or for now, at least to ease an upset stomach. But where was she going to get these plants in the middle of winter? Even in the spring she could go weeks without getting a glimpse of grass between the pavement. She shrugged off her doubt. For now, the book was enough.
    She returned home, ready to face the misery that waited for her.
    By the