Arts
By the next morning, Sandra’s fever was gone, and she was feeling reasonably well—still a little shaky, but not in any need of help to go up and down stairs. Mark was another matter. He had slept fitfully: quite a lot, with the help of Lois’ concoctions, but always waking in pain and having to struggle just to get out of bed. When, at nine o’clock, he struggled out of bed once again, the day just got worse. He was trying to be grateful for his blessings, but reality kept intervening. First, predictably, every breath hurt, and every cough hurt a lot; sneezing was unbearable. Second, surprisingly, his house was full of strangers. Apparently, a number of neighboring families had availed themselves of his hospitality overnight. He first discovered this when he met old Mrs. Teep, who was coming out of his second-floor bathroom; she couldn’t get over having ridden on a snowmobile, at her time of life, and ominously she thanked him on behalf of “all of us.” When Mark got downstairs, he discovered that “all of us” included the Millers, the Coxes, Dan and Toni Lacerte, and a variety of other neighbors he could only vaguely identify, including a number of children who were watching “Frozen” on his TV. And, yes, he had invited them all to take shelter in his house at need; and, yes, he would, under other circumstances, be glad to know they had taken him at his word. But at the moment, it was a strain to appear cheerful and welcoming. He felt like hell, and he wished he could send them all to the devil. Then there was the hospital. The storm had blown itself out overnight, and his friends had cleared the driveway and the walks. As soon as they found that the roads were navigable as far as the hospital, they took him there. The visit took hours, and as far as he could tell it did him no good at all. The hospital had a generator, but in spite of that it was inexplicably cold. It was also noticeably understaffed. Eventually, they X-rayed his chest, and the ER physician pulled a very long face over his condition. “If you’d come twenty-four hours ago, I’d have ordered more imaging, and I might have admitted you for observation. Two broken ribs are clear on the X-rays, and you might have had more internal injuries. But since, by the grace of God, you’ve made it through twenty-four hours without any other symptoms, and your blood work is normal, we’ll let you recuperate at home.” The doctor told him he would probably have pain from the injury for at least six or eight weeks—six or eight weeks!—and gave him strict instructions to do nothing but rest, and to see his own doctor as soon as possible. He was most of the way home before he realized that the prescription the doctor had given him was useless until the pharmacy reopened—and who knew when that would be? He hoped Lois had more of whatever she had been giving him for the pain. And he hoped it wasn’t habit-forming. Back home, at least there was one piece of good news: the power had been restored, and the neighborhood guests had all departed—all except for Lois, Eunice, and Timi, who were actually welcome. Sandra set him up in the recliner in the living room, and they dosed him and fed him and pampered him until he slept again. The story Lois had told his neighbors was that he’d been out on an errand of mercy on foot, in the early hours of the storm, and had been hit by a car. Lynn Gertzig, the Moderator of the church, heard some version of the story and called the house that afternoon. Mark was zonked out in the recliner when she called, but Sandra handled it for him; she told Lynn about Mark’s broken ribs, made him sound very pitiful, said he didn’t remember much about the hit-and-run accident, and relayed some entirely fictitious doctor’s orders for two weeks of strict bed rest. Lynn said she’d take care of it. Mark protested when Sandra told him what she’d done. “Damn it, I don’t need to use sick days for this! I can still write; I can still talk.