Katerina's Wish (17 page)

I crossed the few steps to his bedside and leaned over him, trying to see his face. His hair was plastered to his neck with sweat. Dread filled me. I reached out and put a hand on his forehead. Even before I touched him, I could feel the heat of fever.

He stirred at my touch and turned his head. The flush in his cheeks and, his hair, curling with sweat, made him look so young. His eyes fluttered open and swept past my face before closing again. He mumbled something about dancing.

I bit my lip hard to hold back the sob of fear that lurched up from my gut. I didn't know what to do. Should I wake him? Feed him? Let him sleep? I did nothing—only stood staring at his burning face, thinking how young he was. Thinking he was too young to die.

I DON'T KNOW
how long I stood there before my mother called my name from the front porch.

“Trina? When you didn't come back, I—” She stopped talking when she stepped through the bedroom door and saw me there.

“He's burning up with fever!” My voice cracked with desperation.

She whisked past me and pushed the curtain aside, flooding the room with light. Karel groaned and turned over, his face to the wall. Momma bent over Mark and felt his forehead.

“Get cool water and a cloth to bathe his face,” she said, her voice calm but serious. I hurried to do as she said—of course it was what you did for fever. I felt foolish for not thinking of it myself. When I returned from the kitchen with the water, Momma had peeled back the damp sheet and was cutting away the bandages on Mark's chest. I began to bathe his face with the cool damp cloth, but stopped dead when my mother removed
the bandages and I saw the gash in his chest. The wound was still mostly closed, but the skin around the scab was red and puffy. Near his shoulder, the stitches had torn loose, and the gash had split open. My mother pressed her fingers along it, and thick, bloody pus oozed out, giving off a foul smell.

Momma sucked in air through clenched teeth. Her expression was as grim and pinched as it had been during those nights and days of waiting at the mine.

“Momma—”

“Go fetch Old Jan,” she said.

I ran, tears blinding me along the way.

“It's Mark,” I told him when I reached the garden plot. “He's— Fever.”

Old Jan dropped the hoe he had been using and grabbed his crutches. Together we headed up the road as fast as the old man could go. Back inside his house we met up with Momma in the kitchen, where she was heating water at the stove. Old Jan looked at her inquiringly.

“Infection,” my mother said through tight lips. Old Jan paled and clomped past her into the bedroom.

I stood tentatively in the doorway, watching as he bent over his son, feeling his forehead and examining the gash on his chest. My mother nudged my arm, her hands full with a washbasin of warm water and clean rags.

“We must open the wound again to clean out the infection. It will be very painful for Mark. Perhaps you should go home.”

I straightened my shoulders. “I want to help,” I said. “Maybe I could be a comfort to him.”

Momma nodded. “Then bring those towels,” she said, indicating a stack on the kitchen table. “And that new block of lye soap.”

While I hurried to get those things, Momma woke Karel
and sent him to our house to sleep. She knew there would be no sleeping with us tending to Mark.

In the bedroom, Old Jan was holding his son's hand and calling his name. Mark woke and looked at his father, his eyes glassy.

“Time to go to work already?” he said, and tried to sit up. Old Jan pushed him back down and gently shushed him.

“No work for you today, son. You have to rest, get your strength back.”

Mark sighed, and I could see he remembered now, all that had happened and why he wasn't working. A hard shiver racked though him.

“Your wound's infected, Mark; we're going to have to clean it out,” Momma said in her matter-of-fact way. “It's going to hurt, I'm afraid, but it can't be helped.”

Mark's eyes traveled from my mother to his father to me. He reached for my hand.

Lancing and cleaning the infected gash was horrible, and the worst of it was Mark's pain. Where the wound had torn open, cleaning it was easiest. Along the rest of the gash Momma cut away all the stitches Mark had suffered through a few days before, and lanced the tender scab that had formed. Then she squeezed the stinking puss and blood from the wound, wiping it away with towels before using rags and the harsh soap to wash it again.

At first Mark gritted his teeth and squeezed my hand to resist making a sound, but before long he gave in to the misery, crying out as my mother cut and squeezed and wiped. I held his hand, though my own was soon bruised and aching from his grip, and mopped his burning face with the cool rag I'd brought in earlier.

When my mother at last finished, she laid a clean towel gently over his chest and examined his ankle. The cut there looked angry and red as well, though not oozing pus like the wound on his chest. She left it alone, though she looked worried.

“Stay with him until he's resting again, Trina,” she said. She motioned Old Jan toward the kitchen with her.

I stayed where I was, holding Mark's hand. Gradually his grip loosened and his jaw unclenched.

“It's bad, isn't it?” he said after a time.

I cupped his hand between my own. “Just rest now,” I said. “Am I going to die?”

I swallowed hard. “Shh. Just rest,” I said.

“Will you stay with me, Trina?”

“I'll stay as long as you like.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Forever?”

“As long as you like,” I repeated. “Now get some sleep, if you can.”

“I'd like forever,” he murmured.

I said nothing, just held his hand and watched him drift toward sleep. My mother and Old Jan were talking in low tones in the kitchen. I strained to hear them over Mark's shallow, panting breath.

“I don't know where the money will come from,” Old Jan was saying.

“Wait until tomorrow and we will see, but if he doesn't improve quickly, we will have to find the money,” my mother said. “Trina made a little selling eggs. It may not all be gone.”

They were speaking of the doctor. I knew my mother would not suggest it if it wasn't serious. I looked again at Mark's face and blinked back my tears. They were welcome to all the money I had left.

I stayed at Old Jan's house all the rest of that day, mopping Mark's brow with a cool cloth to try to ease the fever. In the evening my mother returned with a kettle of soup and tended Mark while Old Jan and I ate. I took my bowl to the porch, eager for some fresh air after the long hours in the still, stale air of the bedroom. When I finished my supper, I asked my mother if I might stay the night.

“I can tend to Mark if he needs anything, and that way Old Jan can get some rest too.”

Momma nodded. “I think that is a very good idea, Trina. If you need anything, we are just down the hill, and you can come get me.”

She went home and returned with blankets to make a bed for me on the kitchen floor. I slept poorly that night in that strange room. Mark moaned and mumbled as he sank deeper into the delirium of fever. He thrashed and tangled himself in his sheets. The next morning when he jerked awake, he did not know us.

The doctor wouldn't take the scrip the mine was issuing, so we had to scrape together every last bit of cash we had to get him to come. He restitched the wound, using a bit of whiskey to numb the skin as he did so, and he left a small bottle of opium syrup to help Mark rest. As for the infection and the fever, we would just have to wait and see. I stayed on, taking turns sitting with Mark so that Old Jan could rest himself, but the old man would not go far from his son's side.

On the fourth day the fever subsided gradually. I wasn't sure, at first, but by midday, Mark was resting peacefully for an hour at a time without the aid of the syrup. Toward evening, he opened his eyes and looked at me as I mopped his brow, and he was sensible of who I was. I smiled with relief and called
Old Jan to the bedside, but by the time he arrived, Mark had slipped back into sleep.

Old Jan and I stood together and watched him sleeping peacefully.

“He's been improving all day,” I said. “I'm sure the fever is down.”

Old Jan said nothing at first, only stood leaning on his crutches, looking down at his son. At last he gave a deep sigh. “He is so young,” he said. “Too young to be throwing his life away in that mine.”

A knot tangled up inside me and all I could do was nod.

“Do you know, in the Old Country, my wife and I had five children.”

“Five?” I didn't know. While Old Jan had told us many stories, this had never been among them.

He nodded, sighing again. “Five. Karel and Marek were my youngest. The first three are all dead now, just like my beloved Tereza.”

“What happened to them?”

“It was long ago, child; it doesn't matter now. I came to America for these last two—so they might have a better future. And they would have, too, if I hadn't lost my leg.”

I tried to push down the lump in my throat, but it was stuck fast. Old Jan brushed a gnarled hand across the top of my head, smoothing the hair that had pulled loose from my braids.

“If he recovers, Trina—”

“He will, Jan! I'm sure he's better tonight!” I knew not to interrupt my elders, but I could not bear the thought that Mark might die.

“He is better,” Jan agreed. “And I have you to thank for that, Trina. You have taken good care of him.”

I shrugged, embarrassed, but pleased, too.

“I think you are more fond of my Marek than you have admitted,” he continued.

“I am fond of him,” I said. “I'm fond of all of you.”

“But with Marek, I think there is something more. When he recovers, Trina, go to the dance with him. He likes you very much, and it would make us all happy, don't you think?”

I wasn't sure who he meant when he said “all,” but I knew it would make Momma happy, as well as Old Jan and Mark. I supposed it would make me happy too. I saw that more now than I had before. Now that I had come so close to losing him.

I nodded. “I've told him I will, if he's well enough,” I said.

Old Jan smiled at me and patted my cheek. “You are a good girl, Trina. You take such good care of my boy. You will keep taking care of him, won't you?”

“Of course! He isn't better yet. Of course I will tend him, as long as he needs me.”

“He will need you for a long time, my dear. A long, long time. You know what your mother wants, and I think Marek wants it too. You and Marek are a good match. With you, I think my dreams for him could grow again. I think he could build a good life here in America.”

I listened to him while I watched Mark sleep, his cheeks still flushed but his breathing deeper and quieter than it had been in days. I was suddenly aware of the ache at my heart. It had been there for days, but I realized that now it was different. Watching over Mark, fearing for him, being by his side every day, I realized how fond of him I had grown.

My plans to get the farm had been crushed, and with them, my hope. But I hadn't lost Mark. Before, I had felt like I had to choose, but that choice had been taken from me. All that was
left was Mark, and as I looked at him, my heart swelled within me. Slowly, I nodded.

“I will take care of him, Jan. For as long as he needs me. I promise,” I said.

Old Jan smiled and hugged me. Before the day was out, my mother knew of my promise and couldn't wait to tell my father of the match. The whole family was excited and spoke of nothing else that evening. Everyone except Aneshka. She glared at me, stomped her feet everywhere she went, and wouldn't speak a word to me. I simply ignored her and tried to enjoy the happiness the rest of my family shared.

Mark's fever broke at last the next day, and the wounds at his chest and foot began to heal in earnest. His strength had been sorely taxed, though, and he did not get out of bed for some time. I returned to my own house at night and to help with chores, but whenever I had free time, I was at Mark's bedside. Momma, delighted with my promise, released me from my chores as often as she could spare me, so that I could help Old Jan and Mark.