The Wall (23 page)

She turned and faced Greg, with her eyes very bright from unshed

tears and her cheeks flushed red from fever. Her hair felt like an iron

weight on her neck. 'You don't have to scream at me like that!' she

whispered fiercely, clutching at the sides of her aching head as it

pounded with the effort of speaking emphatically. 'And I'm not going

to get back in bed, I'm going to get dressed!'

Greg eyed her warily, and with some amusement. 'You know better

than that, Sara. You have a temperature of a hundred and four, and

you aren't going anywhere except back in that bed if I have to tie you

down to keep you there!'

The room was distorted slightly, seeming much bigger than she

remembered. It looked like quite a long trip to get anywhere, and she

felt like sinking down right where she was. It was too much effort to

try for anything else. Greg seemed distorted too. He was bigger,

somehow menacing, and he loomed over her, frighteningly close.

Sara made a pushing movement with her hands, a futile gesture, and

whimpered, 'Don't—don't come any closer! Please, I don't have any

money with me .. . oh, God, please . . .' Strong arms caught her as she

wavered and started to fall, and she shrank away fearfully from the

support. Where was Greg? He had promised her she would be safe,

and here was the intruder again. He was going to kill her!

She fought weakly, tears streaming down her face, and two hands

held her carefully. Why was he being careful with her? Was he going

to try and take her somewhere else before killing her? She couldn't

seem to understand.

And then, strangely enough, her father was there. He didn't really

look like she remembered. him, but she knew it was he because he

treated her with the same tender care that he always had in the past

when she had been ill. He held her in his arms and coaxed her into

taking soup little by little. She didn't want it, and she told him so, but

he insisted, and she had always done what her daddy wanted her to.

She asked him forlornly why he had to go away when she was only

five years old. Didn't he know that she needed him? At that, he held

her close, hugging her to him as if he would never let go, but

eventually he did, and stood to leave her. Sara cried bitter, weak tears

when he went away. He wasn't ever coming back. She knew he

wasn't. She was afraid, and she wanted to get her mother's car and go

to look for her daddy like she had before, because she just knew he

was out there somewhere. But the effort to raise her head was too

much, so she closed her eyes with the promise of trying later.

Someone else was there suddenly, and she started when cool hands

touched her forehead with an impersonal kindness. A dark man

lounged against the doorpost, his dark face intent and his eyes on her.

The man touching her, examining her, pulled back the covers to see

her body for some strange reason, and she shivered from cold at their

removal. It didn't last long, and he was soon tucking her back up

again, but all her hoarded body heat was gone now, and she shook

from severe chills. Two warm bundles were tucked in with her

presently and she huddled to their warmth. The two masculine voices

that were, as before, abnormally loud. She wished they would go

away. It hurt her ears to listen to them.

'Well, doctor? What do you think? I started to worry when I realised

she was delirious, and thought you should have a look.'

A strange voice answered, 'She's pretty sick, of course, but I don't

really think hospital is necessary just yet. It's that bad virus that's

going around. It's a pretty typical case: extremely high fever, aching

joints, some delirium, dehydration. Try to get her to take these, and

keep forcing as much liquid as you can down her. The danger is, of

course, if the fever doesn't break, in which case you can always call

me. Also, like I said, dehydration. She's burning up all the liquid in

her body. The cases that I've seen in the hospital have been the ones

suffering from dehydration. I don't think she'll get to be that bad,

though.'

'Thank you for coming, Doctor,' said Greg, shaking hands with him.

'I know you don't usually make house calls.'

'Well, I owed you one for the legal advice you gave me some time

back, so I'd say we're about even. Give me a call if you need

anything, or if she seems to worsen.'

At the end of her patience with the booming conversation going on

right over her head, Sara snapped petulantly, 'I wish you'd stop

yelling right by my ears! Don't you know that I'm a very sick

person?' She covered her aching head with a pillow to shut out the

mild chuckles that seemed to tear through her eardrums.

Barry woke her gently, and she rolled over to stare fuzzily at him.

'What the hell are you doing here, Barry? How did you know where I

was, anyway?'

'Never mind that, sweetheart,' he said patiently, not sounding like

himself at all. 'Here, I want you to take this pill for me—it'll make

you feel better. I have something for you to drink, too.'

She rubbed her eyes; she felt so odd. 'I don't want it, Barry. I don't

want to take drugs, dammit! I can make it without that kind of boost,

Greg said so. Go away!'

He sighed, a sound that was torn between affection and amusement.

'Sweetheart, this isn't just a drug, it's medicine. It will help you get

well again. Please, Sara, take it for me.'

She just looked at him owlishly, sombrely, set her jaw and shook her

head. He pleaded with her, argued with her, but to no avail. She

absolutely refused to take the pill. Finally she told him furiously, 'If

you don't get out of my bedroom, Barry, you're fired for good, and I

mean it! Oh,' and she suddenly crumpled into a little girl again, 'why

don't you leave me alone? I'm sleepy, Daddy, and I don't want it.'

'Pumpkin, you've got to take it. I know you don't like your medicine,

but Daddy has to go to work, and he can't sit around all day arguing

with you about it.'

'I'm not a pumpkin,' she protested like she always did, and he

answered in the same old way.

'No, you're a princess, aren't you? A princess in disguise, and

someday the whole world is going to know how special you really

are. But for right now, you're just a sick little girl, and you have to

take your pill.'

'Will you stay longer, Daddy, if I take it? You won't go away, will

you?' She was having the hardest time focussing her eyes. His face

kept blurring and becoming somebody else's.

'I'll stay, sweet—I'll stay.' And he did, slipping into the bed with her

after she had taken the pill and drunk the water. He settled back and

drew her into his arms, and she snuggled as close as she could get.

'Momma died,' she whispered, and his cheek came down on top of

her head. 'She never stopped missing you, Daddy.'

'I know, love. She's happy now, though. Forget it for now. Go to

sleep now, Sara.' She did just that, content to be held. She wasn't

alone any more. He would take care of her. Just who
he
was became

confused in her mind and the father ghost faded away into darkness.

She dozed, woke up occasionally to peer un- interestedly around her,

and dozed again. Someone was always there, giving her pills to take

and liquids to drink, and he was someone different each time and yet

the same person deep down inside. He took her temperature, and

wiped her forehead with a cool cloth. He held her hand when she

cried from the aching in her limbs, and stroked her restless hot hands

until she slept again. It seemed to go on this way for ever.

Then it started to rain inside, and that was the oddest thing of all,

because Sara had never seen it rain in a house before. She lay very

still and let the wetness soak into her heated body, sighing as it

cooled her and soothed away the burning. She fell into the first deep

sleep she'd had in what seemed like a thousand years.

Greg came in and found her drenched with sweat. Her hair was limp

and damp and her nightgown was literally soaked. The sheets were

wet also, and he went about the motions of changing both the bed and

her. He had to wake her up to get her nightgown off, and at this she

protested volubly, but she was soon deep asleep in comparative

comfort, curled up into a ball and tucked under clean sheets. Greg

breathed a sigh of relief at the breaking of her fever, and dropped his

clothes by the bed tiredly, crawling in beside her and drawing her

close to his side.

She murmured once and rolled over to tuck her chin under his and

reach for his hand. They slept.

SARA awoke slowly, stretching luxuriously. It felt incredibly good to

stretch without that terrible aching in her joints, as if she were rotting

away from the inside out. She turned her head lazily and surveyed

Greg's room with interest. It was tastefully furnished, with rich, dark

wood coloured in the furniture, and light blue carpeting. Come to

think of it, she thought, everything in Greg's house was plush and of

the first quality. She liked that. It was nice how her taste and his

seemed to coincide so often.

Greg came through the doorway right then, his eyes smiling down at

her when he saw the sanity in her clear eyes. 'Hello, madam. Are you

feeling any better today?'

'Lord, much,' she said calmly, sending him a sweet smile in return. 'I

have this horrible feeling, though, that when I try to stand up I'll be as

weak as a kitten.'

'You were a very sick little girl,' he told her, sitting down on the bed

and offering her a glass of juice. She saw that it was orange juice, and

she couldn't stand orange juice, so she put it on the bedside table.

'I seem to recall very strange dreams,' she mused, rubbing at her eyes

with the heel of her hands. 'Did— do I remember a doctor coming

here, or was that an hallucination?'

'No, that was reality. You were very rude,' he told her sternly, picking

up the juice and handing it to her. She put it down again. 'You told us

to shut up.'

She laughed. 'I remember now. You were practically shouting right

in my ear, and the sound literally reverberated through my poor

aching head. Was that the fever, or were you insanely yelling back

and forth for the sadistic pleasure of seeing my pain?'

'It was the fever. You seemed sensitive to light too, and I had to keep

the curtains closed so you wouldn't cry all over my pillows . . . Sara,

will you drink this juice?' That last was said impatiently as he tried to

thrust the glass into her hand, but she refused it with a shudder.

'No amount of torture will get me to drink that juice, so you might as

well take it back downstairs,' she informed him firmly. 'I was sick on

orange juice as a child, and I can't abide the stuff. Do you have

anything else? I'm parched as dry as a desert, starving too. Got any

steaks?'

Greg drained off the juice with a shrug. 'You get soup and toast for

right now, until your stomach has had a chance to get used to food

again. You haven't eaten for at least three days.'

She ogled him. 'Three days! You've got to be joking! No? I was sick

for three days? Lord, what a shock . . . I'd just assumed that it had

been about twenty-four hours or so .. . I've misplaced three whole

days!'

He retorted whimsically, 'Seems like three years to me. I've never had

the misfortune to encounter a patient as terrible as you before.'

Sara was feeling a little weak, so she slid down the pillow gingerly,

and gurgled, 'So sorry about that. I've always been just horrible when

I was sick. I remember my father very well; he was the only one

when I was very young who could get me to take my medicine. My

mom used to get just furious at the way I would meekly take my

medicine from him after only a little bit of coaxing when she would

spend hours trying to get me to swallow the stuff.'

Greg was looking at her with an oddly tender expression, as if he was

reliving some memory of his own, and she stared at him in

puzzlement. 'When did your father die, Sara?'

She shrugged. 'Oh, I think I was around six years old.

He did a lot of travelling in his kind of work, and was gone a lot. One

day my mother got a call long-distance. He'd been on a trip across in