The Pulse (23 page)

Mason stood by the doorway, clearly uncomfortable.

Emily stepped to the side of the bed. “Melissa?” she said. “I’m Emily, a friend of Luke’s. I’m a nurse. Do you have any pain?” Emily could tell she had pain, of course, but she wanted to see Melissa’s ability to respond. She was grateful Luke gave them some privacy, because often helpful family members impeded her assessment.

The woman looked up at her. “It’s awful. I can’t pee. For days, I think. It started soon after Percy was born. Terrible, terrible pain.”

Emily looked at the woman’s grossly distended abdomen. “Mason, give us a minute,” she said. He turned and stepped outside quickly, seemingly grateful to be dismissed.

Pressing her hand lightly on the woman’s bladder, she could feel it was overly full. “Has this ever happened to you before?” Emily asked.

“No. Never.” She gasped as Emily pressed on her bladder to see if she could help her pass urine. No luck.

“I need to catheterize you, and then you’ll be good as new,” she said. “I’m going to talk to Luke and see what I can get in terms of medical supplies.”

“The nursing home,” the woman said weakly. “Tell him to let you into the supply room at the nursing home.”

Just then, Luke called from the kitchen, “Stew’s ready!”

“Do you want some food?” Emily asked Melissa. The woman shook her head. “I can’t eat now. Haven’t eaten in two days.”

Picking up the baby, Emily quickly looked him over. He seemed fine, thank goodness. She swaddled him tightly, calming him, and set him back next to his mother.

Emily went out to the kitchen and said to Luke, “Can you put mine in a mug? We need to walk to the nursing home and pick up some urinary catheters.”

“So you can help her?” Luke asked, pouring generous helpings of the stew into two mugs. He looked visibly relieved when Emily nodded, all of her attention now on the mug filled with steaming beef stew.

“You have to come with us,” he said to Mason. “No offense. I don’t know you, and I can’t have you alone in my house with my wife and baby.”

Mason nodded. “I understand your concern. That’s fine.” He took the mug and sipped carefully. “Thank you. We’re—very grateful.”

Emily took a long gulp, relishing the taste of real beef. Not rat. Not rotten who-the-hell-knew-what. “Let’s walk and talk.”

They set out, walking to the edge of town. The stew revived her, and her footsteps were lighter. “How do you have beef, Luke?” she asked.

“Can’t tell you that.”

Mason looked at her and she shrugged. “Okay.” Maybe they had a secret cattle farm somewhere nearby.

“I will tell you, though, that the reason we have enough food to feed our residents now is because so many died over the winter,” Luke said quietly. “Fewer mouths to feed.”

“You should start planning now for next winter. Start storing food. Stockpiling,” Mason said. “I could help.”

“We have plenty of young, strong men,” Luke said. “Because that’s mainly who survived. Emily though—Emily is a rarity. A nurse, and a young woman.”

“She’s my wife,” Mason said tightly, through gritted teeth.

Emily fought the urge to laugh at his territoriality. Why did he keep up the act? She didn’t think of Luke as any sort of threat. He seemed just grateful that she was helping his wife.

Luke nodded thoughtfully. “I know. Just saying.” He turned to the large brick building. “This is the—well,
was
the nursing home. We don’t use it now. Too many bad memories. Ghosts too, some people say.”

Mason scoffed and Emily swatted his arm discreetly. “I see.”

They went up the ramp to the front door. The place had a stale odor to it.

“It used to be a million times worse. Finally we cleaned it out because some people were really worried we’d start, like, growing the plague in here. Or something. It was that bad.”

Emily could only imagine. If it smelled anything like that psychiatric hospital… She shuddered. “Where’s the supply room?” she asked, getting back to the task at hand.

Luke let them down the hall, and down a stairwell to the basement. “In here,” he said.

Emily looked around in wonder. The place was packed with various supplies. There were plenty of trach and vent supplies, she supposed because those patients had died off so quickly they never had use for them again. Same thing with urinary supplies and Foley catheters. She went to the shelf with the catheters and grabbed a whole bunch.
This should do.

“These are sterile,” she said, “but I’ll teach you how you can clean them to be reused if it comes to that.”

Luke looked at the thin rubber tubes in her hands skeptically. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You can watch me.”

She looked around for anything else she might be able to use. All the dressings, wound gels, and saline were gone. Used up. The containers of liquid nutrition meant for patients with gastric tubes were, of course, gone.

“We had to raid the supplies,” he said sadly. “We really did try to keep those folks going. We really did. But…” He trailed off. Emily nodded sympathetically.

Mason looked ready to get out of there. “Anything you need me to carry?” he asked. Emily looked around, her gaze landing on a pink plastic bedpan.

“Can you reach that bedpan for me? I don’t think I’ll be able to get Melissa to a toilet.” Then she stopped. “Not like we have working toilets.”

Luke laughed and Mason grabbed the bedpan. “Maybe I should get another for us to use, like a chamber pot.”

“Probably a good idea,” Luke said. “I doubt Emily here will want to walk outside to the outhouse by herself in the middle of the night.”

Emily looked at Mason, she could see his jawline clench. She could tell he didn’t like how easily Luke talked to her. Or about her.

“I’m ready, then,” she said, and they started walking back up the stairs.

The sunlight hit them, making them squint after the dark of the nursing home interior. They walked back to Luke’s house silently. Emily was planning in her head how she’d take care of Melissa. She hoped it was a temporary problem which would get better. If not, Melissa would almost surely end up with a bladder infection, if she didn’t have one already. And then she’d be in a whole shitload of trouble, since without antibiotics the infection could travel to her kidneys and do major damage. She’d probably end up dead.

They hurried the rest of the way back to Luke’s house as Emily picked up her pace, needing to see her patient.

“Melissa?” she called
as they entered the house. Emily could hear her groaning in the back room. “Luke, come with me. You should learn how to do this.”

They all went in to the back bedroom and Emily grabbed the plastic bedpan from Mason along with one of the long yellow urinary catheters, still wrapped in its sterile covering. “Can you take off your pants, hon?” she asked Melissa. Luke looked uncomfortable at her request.

Luke turned to Mason. “Get out.” Mason left without a word, but Emily knew he’d stay close in case she needed him.

“Um, it’s going to get much worse than that, just to give you a heads-up,” Emily whispered to him. “But you should still be here. She’s in too much pain to mind at this point.”

Luke nodded. Melissa was on the bed, not being much help with removing her pants. Emily stepped in and helped her, lowering her pants and dirty underwear until they were completely off.

“Have you ever been catheterized before, Melissa?” she asked.

Luke answered for her. “Nope.”

“Okay, then, open your legs wide.” Within moments a stream of urine flowed from the tube into the bedpan.

“Oh my heavens,” Melissa said as her bladder emptied. “Finally!”

When she finished, Emily carefully withdrew the catheter and handed it to Luke. “Wash this, and keep it very clean. If this happens again, use a sterile catheter, but again wash it and keep it. If it becomes something she needs all the time you’ll be glad you have a collection of them.”

Luke nodded, looking queasy. “Thank you so much, Emily. For helping her.”

“Don’t you guys have any nurses? Or doctors?”

Melissa answered, sitting up in bed, the pain that had previously creased her face gone now. “They all died months ago from taking care of everyone who got sick.”

Emily gasped. “What was going around?”

“We’re not sure. Maybe a virus. It was… really bad. Really, really bad. We basically holed up here and wouldn’t leave the house for fear of catching it. But the nurses, they all stepped up.”

Mason apparently had been listening from the doorway. “And now they’re dead.”

Emily turned and frowned at him. “Mason,” she said quietly.

“Emily, I need to talk with you,” Mason said, pulling her arm.

She furrowed her brow and followed him into the hall. What was going on with him? “What, Mason?”

“That could be you. If you take care of every sick person we come across, what’s to keep you from getting sick too?”

Emily laughed. “You can’t catch urinary retention.”

Mason shook his head. “You know what I mean. Come on, you did your part.”

She sighed. “Okay, but I like helping people, you know. I like using my skills. It’s better than selling myself,” she said pointedly.

“Don’t even go there.”

“I worry about the girls back at Grand Central,” she said softly. “I wish they all could get out of there.”

“I told Jenna, and there’s not much else I can do,” Mason said.

“Part of me wishes you had made her leave with you.”

“I can’t take care of another person, Emily,” he said. Emily looked back through the doorway at Melissa, finally holding her baby again. The baby sucked her full breast hungrily, and Melissa looked so happy, even in these crazy times.

What if Emily were to get pregnant? She wondered if Mason would be angry. He probably would be, since he always talked about how he couldn’t take care of anyone but himself, and now her. But she didn’t need him to take care of her—they could take care of each other.

“Mason,” she said, suddenly needing to have him close, pulling him in to her for a hug. He wrapped his arms around her, a surprised look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hate the idea of you getting sick because you’re trying to help all these other people.”

“I know.”

Mason peered back into the bedroom. “Luke?”

Luke looked up from his wife and child and raised an eyebrow.

“Can you show us where we can sleep tonight? We’ve been walking all day and I think Emily needs to lie down,” Mason said.

Luke nodded. “She can’t talk for herself?” he asked under his breath.

Emily stiffened at his words. Of course she could talk for herself, but she didn’t usually think of her own needs first. Mason, it seemed, did.

Maybe she needed to ask Mason to stop talking for her so she’d remember to speak up for herself. But she had to admit she loved having him watch out for her. It made her feel safe.

Mason didn’t respond to Luke’s muttered comment. She could tell by Mason’s silence he was annoyed, but he wasn’t about to start a fight with someone who gave them beef stew and a place to sleep.

Luke led them to a guest bedroom with a queen-sized bed. “You folks can fit on there, even though it’s a bit small for two.”

“No,” Emily said, “it’s perfect. Thank you so much. I haven’t slept in a bed in a while.” She smiled at him and he laughed.

“Good,” Luke said. “I’m glad. Thanks again for helping Melissa. I was really worried about her.”

“I’ll go in and check on her again later,” Emily said.

“Hey,” Mason said. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“It’s not about the deal,” she whispered. “I want to make sure she’s okay. And you need to let me make some of my own decisions.”

Mason bristled at this. “Fine.”

The bed looked inviting, and she really was exhausted. But she felt better than she had in ages with her full belly and the endorphin rush from successfully treating Melissa—and, if she was honest with herself, from holding the baby. She shook her head. How could she bring up a baby in this world? It was a terrible idea, and not something she needed to think about anytime soon.

“You did a really good job in there,” Mason said, coming up behind her, his large hands on her tight shoulders. He rubbed her back and shoulders, his thumbs moving his circles over her shoulder blades, releasing the tension she’d been carrying all day. “Lie down,” he said, and she crawled onto the bed, lying on her stomach so he had more access to her back.

Mason
carefully closed the door to the guest room behind him, locking the little eye-hook to prevent any unwanted intrusions. The sight of Emily lying prone on the bed gave him a rush of desire. He wanted to rip her pants off and ravish her from behind right then and there, but he’d take his time instead.

Sidling up next to her on the bed, he slowly pulled her shirt up over her head, removing it carefully. Running his fingers over her naked back, he climbed on top of her, straddling her thighs, holding himself up on his knees.

A moan escaped her lips as he massaged her, running his palms over the muscles next to her spine. She was so thin all of her ribs showed, and he wished he had enough food to fatten her up a bit.