Tempest Rising - Diane Mckinney-whetstone [106]
She shifted on the couch, trying to sit up straighter without moving her leg too abruptly. She stood so she could straighten out her knee, ask to use the bathroom, but the sudden weight on her hurt leg felt like a burst of thunder had exploded in her leg and fizzled into red-hot filings that radiated up and down from her knee and now settled into a stream of pain that was beyond red; she couldn’t even give this pain a color, it was so hot and searing moving up and down her leg. She cried out and fell back deeper into the couch, and then she just cried and begged for relief from the colorless pain.
Shern and Bliss both woke, clutching their chests, hollering, “What is it? What is it?”
“Oh, my God, are you okay, Tore?” First Bliss asked it.
Then Shern: “Oh no, it’s not your leg again, is it? Darn! No! Don’t tell me it’s gotten that bad all over again.”
Then Mister: “Shs, let’s take a look. Is it still an open wound?”
They made a circle around Victoria as she writhed in pain on the couch.
“It is my knee.” Victoria panted the words out and then started to cry. “I hope you remembered my medicine, Shern, I just hope you did. The infection can’t heal without the medicine. The doctor said it specifically. You did bring it, didn’t you, Shern? Please tell me that you brought it.”
“Now, now, now,” Mister cut in with that slow, steady tone. “What kind of medicine you talking about?”
“Her penicillin,” Shern said. “I can’t believe I forgot it. How could I have forgotten it? I knew how important it was too. I’m sorry, Victoria, I was so careful and organized too. Oh, God, oh, God.”
“You forgot it? What do you mean, you forgot it?” Victoria sat forward on the couch, her lean face pointed like a knife at Shern. “We have to go back, we have to. Come on, let’s go back so I can take my medicine.” She tried to stand again, but the thunderbolt pain crackled through her leg and forced her down, and she leaned back against the arm of the couch and cried.
“Take it easy, now, middle one,” Mister said slowly. “Let me go out back and get some ice in case if it’s swelling.” He was out of the room, and Shern sat down on the couch, deflated.
“Looks like we have to go back, Shern.” Bliss tried to sound sober, but the excitement about going back to Mae’s crept through her words. “I mean, I know I promised I would leave with you, and I really did keep my promise, we did leave, but Tore has to have her medicine. Don’t you agree? You have to agree that’s the most important thing right now?”
Shern put her hands on her head and jumped up from the couch and then jumped up and down. “Oh, God, I do have to go back there. I don’t want to, I don’t. We’re so close to getting to the aunts and uncles too. We’re just a bus ride away. Oh, God! What else can I do? I’ll have to go back there and get the penicillin for Victoria.” Shern spoke in fast circles, her voice getting higher in degrees. “I’ll have to sneak in, oh, no, how can I sneak in? Everybody’s probably up by now.”
“They probably already called the police by now too,” Bliss said, a smugness to her tone.
“Shut up, Bliss, just shut up and let me think!” Shern shouted and waved her hands around.
“There’s nothing to think about; we just shouldn’t have left.” Bliss jumped up at Shern.
“Stop it!” Victoria covered her ears and screamed. “Stop it! Stop it! Please, just stop it.” Then she startled the gray air in the room and startled herself even more when she began to call for her father.
“Daddy, Daddy, I want my daddy,” she cried.
Then Bliss sobbed too. “I just want to feel his thumb on my forehead the way he used to do when I was sick.”
And Shern joined in. “He would know what to do about Victoria’s penicillin; he would even know where to get more.”
They wrapped their arms around one another in a circle, Bliss and Shern holding their hurt sister up.
“Wait, little gals, I know where to get penicillin,” Mister blurted