Chapter Twenty: Southern Cross — Part 2

Aside: Healing Wounds

It’s been three days, and while Lips experienced a dip in health followed by a near full recovery, Cody is still sick. He refuses to be bed ridden, but at the same time, the man is sweating with fever, and his movements are labored. His priorities and focus are on tending to the needs of the horses. Specifically, he’s bent on taking the tall grown rye grass and getting it cut with a sickle and taking it to the horses. Their enclosure is so massive so overgrown with grass, and the number of actual horses is so small that there is little need for the work, but Cody seems to be worried about the horses, if only because he has no idea how much they need to eat.

It’s noon and Cody has taken to carrying a cane he’s cut from the branch of a tree, struggling a bit more with each step as he heads back to the house. Nita gives him a scalding stare. It’s the kind of worrisome stare only mothers can give, and Cody winces in response to it. She sees his shoulder as he passes, his shirt stained with telltale signs of puss and blood, and wonders if he even knows what kind of trouble he is in. She starts shouting immediately, and there is no mistaking what she is saying for the unpleasant nagging that one might accuse women of making. Hers is the voice of a drill sergeant or commander. In short, she is pissed.

“You leave this house one more time before I tell you to and I swear to you I’ll strap you to the bed.” Nita shouts. “Now get your room and get your clothes off. Your health is important.”

“But the horses . . . ” Cody starts to complain.

“Fuck the horses. Lips knows horses. He’ll take care of the stubborn, stinky monsters.” Cody pauses, staring at her just a moment too long, looking about to bolt, so Nita snaps his cane from his hand causing him to topple to one knee. “If you cannot walk without this cane, then you will not tend to the horses.”

Cody forces himself upright, stumbles to the hallway wall, and leans against it. Nita pushes Cody to the bedroom, forcing off his shirt and pants, even as Cody is arguing about being able to do it himself. Nita is too angry to have any of that.

“Lips!” She shouts, and Lips pops his head in the door, not wanting to be next on her list of aggravation. “Go to the kitchen, set some water to boil in the big pot. Put fresh dishtowels in it; bring the whole pot and some tongs after it is boiled hard for five minutes. Don’t stand there gawking like that, move!”

Cody is still being a little resistant, and Nita’s just about put Cody in a head lock as she urges him to lay down, belly first, on the master bed. Cody snaps at her, but it’s all he can do to try to sound threatening.

“Woman, I don’t like being treated this way.” Cody says, careful to surrender lest she get even more agitated.

“You’ll not argue with me again.” Nita snaps. “Chan!”

“Yes mama.” Chan shouts.

Nita shouts something that sounds incredibly rude in Cantonese, and Chan goes running, his face suddenly pale. He comes running back in with large, nearly full bottle of povidone iodine from one of the bathrooms, looking almost about to cry. She’s slipped completely into Cantonese now, and Chan’s standing there as the curses and worry flies. Cody can feel pressure and pain at various places along his back, can’t imagine what all the bother is until Nita starts working. She’s using what she gained from so many years at sea on a ship with no doctors and limited medical supplies.

“You are very sick.” She says quickly and quietly to Cody, her nose very close to his. “What is in you can kill you.” She pauses. “I’m going to tend to this, and you are going to live. You aren’t going to move from this house until I tell you to. If you do try to leave before you’re healed again, being close to death will be the least of your worries.”

Cody freezes, his arms wrapped around his head, his feet dangling off the bed. His head isn’t feeling right, like he can’t keep a thought in one place. Things aren’t synching up in the gray matter between his ears, where his thoughts normally rattle around. He hasn’t been thinking straight since the night of the Storm, his mind rattling between feeling rushed and lacking focus. He thinks maybe he’s crazy, or losing it. He looks desperately at Nita’s hips as she works over his back with the iodine Chan has brought. In moments her own hands are stained with iodine as well, the darker, redder tone seeming oddly out of place, and Cody has to chase the vision of her as a butcher from his racing mind.

“My head — It’s not right is it?” Cody asks quietly.

“Your head needs to settle. Do what I say and don’t move. What I do will hurt you. It will hurt you a lot.”

“You know what I love about you,” Cody says quietly, “Is how you sugar coat things.”

“What, you want me to lie to you and say this is going to be easy? Stubborn man.” Nita slips of into Cantonese again, and Cody chuckles.

The time for boiling water and towels has come, and Nita starts snapping at Lips in Cantonese when it is obvious to her that he didn’t listen and forgot the tongs. Lips doesn’t know Cantonese, and stares at her, confused.

“Tongs! Go to the kitchen and get me some fucking tongs! Stupid fucking waif of a boy.” Nita tries to calm herself, but the lack of discipline among her new family has pushed her to an edge she simply can’t accept, given the situation.

Lips is up with the tongs in moments, and Nita wipes them down with iodine before she looks at Lips, her voice suddenly calmer than a moment before. “Take my son out of the house, keep him safe. Cody will want to be alone for this.”

Lips nods, taking Chan’s hand and leading him out of the house, out to the barn, where bails of hay wait to be transferred to the horse fields. He’s there before he realizes that Chan is crying. Nita’s behavior has him very upset.

“Is Cody going to die?” Chan asks.

“Nita seems to know what she’s doing.” Lips says.

“Mama doesn’t yell like that.” Chan says.

“Cody’s not right, is all. She knows it.”

Lips starts thinking about ways he can work with the horses a little better. He’s thinking that there are plenty of places around fenced in where the horses can eat, and nobody to contest the move. He’s trying not to hear Cody scream as Nita starts working on him, can’t imagine what she’s doing, merely hopes that Cody will live. Next to him, Chan is starting to cry, and Lips doesn’t know what to do but hold his hand and stare back toward the house. He can only hope that Nita knows what she’s doing.

“You think they’re playing doctor?” Chan asks suddenly.

“That’s not the kind of screaming you’d hear if they were just playing doctor.” Lips says.

It makes Chan laugh, sort of, though he only gets part of the joke. But it’s a strong laugh, a sort of starting place from where the crying can end. Lips squeezes his hand, and Chan squeezes back. Lips lets a tiny breath escape his nose, the sound of it something akin to a whistle. He wishes it were as easy for him.

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