The chaplain, after a long moment, waved back.
That’s really nice actually, said Hamish.
That you’d do that for a stranger.
Tell him thanks, but I reckon he can put it away for now.
The fever came on properly that evening as Hamish had said it would.
His temperature climbed steadily through the afternoon until it reached a level that Sepha’s medical references described for humans as serious.
He He to shiver violently even under three blankets.
He sweated through the bed sheets twice.
His arm swelled to nearly twice its normal size, the skin tight and shiny and dark red, and the pain must have been tremendous because now and then, in the middle of a sentence, he would stop talking, close his eyes and breathe slowly through his nose for a while before carrying on.
But he did carry on.
That was the thing Sepha could not get over.
He never stopped talking.
She stayed with him through the night.
She told herself it was because the case was unique and needed constant observation, and that was true.
But it was also because somewhere around the sixth hour she had realized that she did not want him to be alone.
You do this a lot, he asked her sometime after midnight, sit up with patients when they need it.
Good on you.
He shifted under the blankets, wincing.
My mom was a nurse, night shifts at the hospital in Townsville for 30 years.
She used to say the night was when people got scared, so the night was when they needed somebody most.
Your mother sounds very wise.
She was, tough as old boots, too.
She’d have liked you.
He was quiet for a moment, breathing.
Ask me something, doc, keep my mind off it.
So Sepha asked him the question that had been circling in her head all day.
Mr. Doyle, how did you know what to do when you were bitten?
You wrapped the arm, you kept it still, you asked for a stretcher instead of walking.
Those are exactly the right measures to slow the spread of a venom.
Most beings when they are bitten panic, they run, they tear at the wound.
You did everything correctly within seconds.
Hamish laughed weakly.
Doc, I’m from Queensland.
Everybody from Queensland knows what to do with a bite.
They teach it in school right after reading and before long division.
Why?
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her with an expression of mild disbelief.
