Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 32 of 63

Vex lowered Bram onto the bench along the depot wall. His head rolled against the plank. The clerk stared at the mark on the ledger, then at Bram, then shouted for the depot medic. Omondi knelt and pressed two fingers to Bram's throat. His pulse ran too fast. The medic came with a lamp and a satchel. He was an older man with ink on his cuffs. He peeled the wrap off Bram's hand and sniffed the wound. He shook his head. "This has gone past me," the medic said. "The hand is septic. The fever will kill him tonight. I have willow bark and spirits. Nothing that touches this." Vex grabbed the medic's collar. "Then find someone who can." "There is no one at this depot who can." Omondi stood. "Sigrun." Vex let the medic go. "The waystation is four hours by tender." "Then we send for her," Omondi said. "The hawk flies faster than we do. She has the drugs. She treated the pilot on the mountain." Vex was already writing on the back of a route slip. She wrote small and fast. She rolled the slip, tied it to the hawk's leg, and carried the bird out to the mooring rail. She threw it up into the dark. The hawk climbed and turned west toward the waystation and the doctor with the pale hair who had kept Wendell's partner alive. Bram shivered under the borrowed coat. Omondi took the cracked leather flight jacket off the hook by the door and laid it over Bram's chest. The leather was cold. Bram gripped the collar with his good hand and held it there. "Stay awake," Omondi said. "Count with me." Bram counted. He lost the number at forty and started again at one. Vex kept a wet cloth on his neck. She changed it every few minutes from a bowl the clerk brought. Time went strange. The lamp hissed. An hour passed. Then another. The door banged open and cold air came in with a woman in a wool coat carrying a black case. Her hair was pinned back under a cap. She smelled of the tender's burner. "How long septic?" Sigrun said. "Two days," Vex said. "Maybe three." Sigrun opened her case on the bench. She cut the old bandage off with scissors. She flushed the wound with something that stung and made Bram cry out. She pushed a needle into the meat of his arm and pressed the plunger slow. "He'll live to the morning," she said. "After that I need him in a bed for a week. Not two days. A week." Vex looked at Omondi. Omondi looked at the floor. Bram opened his eyes. The depot ceiling swam. He tried to speak and Sigrun put her hand on his mouth. "The run is signed," she said. "You did it. Now you sleep." He slept.