This poor blanket.
But the rattle clears.
Third scout.
Then fourth. Maren's brother. Worst of them. Gray down past his collarbones. Breathing shallow and wet and slowing.
I dump more paste into his pot. Stronger ratio—I'm inventing the ratio right now—I don't know if his lungs can take this concentration but I know what they can't take is the poison still sitting in them.
"Hold him. Tighter than that. He's going to fight."
He fights. Coughs so hard I think we've lost him. His body folds under the blanket. Axan and Maren both holding now. Maren is holding her brother through the seizing and I cannot think about that.
"Keep breathing. You will breathe. You will keep—"
His chest jerks. Once. The cough doesn't catch this time. The whole body goes for it and nothing comes back.
More paste. I scrape the bowl out. Push the steam pot closer. Press the cloth tighter over his nose.
"Come on. Come on—"
The rattle deepens. Goes wet. Goes wrong.
"Sit him up. Sit him UP."
Axan pulls him forward. I get my hand under his ribs, palm flat to his chest. His heart is going too fast. Then slower.Then—
"No. Stay with me. Stay—"
I don't know his name.
His name. I'm shouting at him to stay and I don't have a name. Maren is sobbing his name into his hair and I can't hear it, my ears are too loud, my hands are too loud—
His chest rises.
Falls.
Doesn't rise.
I push paste into the pot like volume will fix it. I push and push and Dara's hand closes on my wrist.
"Mel."
"He's—I just—just need to—"
"Mel. He's gone."
My hand stops.
The sound she makes isn't a sound.
I'm still holding the bowl.
My fingers won't unfold from it. Dara has to take it. She takes it and sets it on the ground beside me and I watch her hands do this because mine cannot.
He was breathing thirty seconds ago. I count it backward. The cough. The seizing. My hand on his chest. Heart slowing. Heart stopping. Thirty seconds. That's all it is. That's the gap. I had thirty seconds to fix it and I didn't fix it.
I have set bones and drawn fevers and stitched scalp wounds and packed shrapnel out of a thigh. Every patient I have actually treated has walked away from me. Every one of them. I was eleven the first time and I am twenty-two now and every single one of them—
