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stefanie_beanChapter 15: What Happened to Claire
Pairings: Hurley/Claire, Kate/Sawyer
Characters: Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, Benjamin Linus, Desmond Hume, Claire Littleton, Kate Austen, James "Sawyer" Ford, Rose Nadler, Bernard Nadler, Carole Littleton, Aaron Littleton, Background & Cameo Characters, Original Non-Human Characters
Rating: M
Length: 3290 words
Status: Complete
Notes: Fantasy and supernatural elements. Think American Gods on the Island.
Summary: Hurley is now Protector of the Island, while Claire, Kate, and Sawyer head back to our world. But when it comes to love, the Island has a way of getting you where you need to be.
Chapter 15: What Happened to Claire
As Kate and Sawyer followed Mr. Maleaua back to the motel, Kate clung to Sawyer's hand the whole way. Together they stumbled over the sand, dodging the ever-present trash and debris strewn across the beach.
Kate hated how helpless she felt when someone got sick or injured. That was one reason why Jack had made her feel so safe, reassuring her that if someone fell ill, or had a horrible gaping wound, Jack could fix it. He thought he could fix everything, even when he couldn't. While some might call that a flaw, Kate had appreciated that about him, because it held the terror at bay.
Holding on to Sawyer was different. She was under no illusion that he could fix a single solitary thing, especially not some tropical disease. But it was good to have a hand to hold amid the fear. By the time Kate reached her and Claire's room, some of the panic had receded.
Mrs. Maleaua was by the bedside, laying cloths soaked in ice-water across Claire's forehead and wrists. Claire called out in a tired, slurred voice, “Tell her she's making a fuss, Kate.”
“Claire, honey—”
“Maybe Nei Claire gets lucky,” Mrs. Maleaua said. “Little rest, keep her temperature down, no more party-fun for a few nights. I've seen people throw it off.”
“Throw it off? Throw what off? Should we call a doctor?” Claire's forehead and wrists were cold from the icy compresses, so Kate laid her hand across Claire's chest. It felt warm, but everything around them was. Even Mrs. Maleaua's flushed face was beaded with perspiration.
“I don't suppose you all would have a thermometer." Even though Sawyer's voice was relaxed, his shoulders were tense.
Mrs. Maleaua shook her head. “Sorry. It broke last year, and we never got a new one.”
Kate let out a long, exasperated sigh.
On the bed, Claire stirred, pushing the wet cloth off her forehead. As she rolled over, the rest slipped to the floor. She pulled the thin pillow over her head, while her legs kicked a few times, as if she were having spasms.
“Just let her sleep it off,” Mrs. Maleaua said. “Maybe she'll be better in the morning.”
After Mrs. Maleaua left, Kate slumped to the floor, head in her hands.
“Come on, Kate,” Sawyer said, low and urgent. “You got to pull it together.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Look, Claire's asleep. You want me to, um—”
“Yes,” she said. Kate couldn't explain it, but it was as if something hovered over Claire, something unpredictable and frightening. All at once, Kate very much wanted Sawyer to stay. “Just for a while, okay?”
“You got it, Freckles.” He leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, light shaggy hair falling over his eyes.
Kate went to the bed and gently took one of the pillows from under Claire's arm, when Claire started to mumble. “No, Samael, stop it... I won't do it again, really.”
“Sawyer,” Kate said, low and urgent.
At the panic in Kate's voice, Sawyer rushed to Claire's bed-side. Claire repeated “Samael” a few times, gave one more toss, then seemed to fall into a deep sleep.
“Samuel?” Kate said. “Who's that?”
Sawyer shook his head. “Who the hell knows. Maybe one of those kool-aid drinkers from the Temple who were always chasing her around. Come on, Kate, try to get some sleep. If I'm goin' fishing tomorrow, I sure got to.”
Side by side they bedded down on the pandamus mat. When Kate searched out his hand with her own, he gave it a firm squeeze, then didn't let go until she fell asleep.
* * * * * * * *
The next morning, Claire awoke to a pounding headache. Kate must have already gotten up, because she wasn't anywhere in the room.
Claire couldn't see the swelling on the back of her neck, but she could feel it, like a small insect walking across her skin. Fighting the urge to scratch only made the crawly, itchy sensation worse. The skin around the small, central wheal was puffed up, tight and hot.
She didn't want to tell anyone, because she didn't need a repeat of Kate's panic from the night before. So after breakfast, she sat with Kate and Richard on the shadiest part of the patio, while Richard and Kate batted volleys of American legalese back and forth like tennis balls over the net. It made her head hurt, or maybe that was the tropical heat, which seemed to bother her more than ever, no matter how much tea she drank.
Worse yet, the conversations made her afraid in a way that her friend never did. This fear made Richard's sharp black brows draw into a worried line, and put Kate into a kind of perpetual frown. Her friend could be cajoled, distracted, even humored, but these tricks wouldn't work on the faceless American bureaucracy. Most of their band were Americans without passports, stuck on the outside looking in, and on the other side of that glass was Aaron.
To distract herself, Claire helped Mrs. Maleaua scrub the hard crusty remains which clung to the bottom of the rice pot, trying to ignore the swimming sensation in her head. She traded some hand lotion with the neighbors for a few chicken eggs, and helped filet some of the sleek yellow-fin tuna.
The card parties seemed to have broken some invisible barrier, because no one cared if they left the property now. Frank, Miles, and Sawyer had gotten up at the crack of dawn to join Mr. Maleaua and his brother on their fishing boat. Mr. Maleaua's own sons had been working for months on the big Japanese fishing trawlers, so he had jumped at the prospect of three extra sets of hands to help with the daily catch.
Claire, limber from her long Island years in the jungle, squatted on the concrete as easily as Mrs. Maleaua did. Together they scraped the scales off bluish-gray fish which Claire didn't recognize.
“I'm gonna miss you when you go back to Australia,” Mrs. Maleaua remarked. “You get a lot done around the place.”
“I just feel like I should earn my keep.”
“Oh, no worries about that. The government's paying. I didn't mean just 'cause you work.” Mrs. Maleaua looked down, embarrassed. “I guess you got a lot of experience with fish cleaning, living out in the bush and all.”
Claire didn't want to admit that she was a complete novice. “I didn't fish much.” That was an understatement. Her friend had strictly forbidden her to go to the coast, any coast. Only once had he laid a hand on her before taking John's form, when he had caught her headed down to the old beach camp. She was too distracted to hear him rustling in the trees above her, so that before she even got within twenty meters of the place, he had caught her in his grip, lifted her five meters in the air, and shook her until her teeth rattled.
In that voice which bypassed her ears and went straight to her mind like a poisoned arrow, he had said, “Do that again, and the next time I'll bring you up here and then drop you. If you're lucky, it'll kill you. Or it could take you days to die.”
Then he had set her down, surprisingly gentle and light, and left a small, smokey caress on her cheek before disappearing into the upper canopy.
She had learned her lesson well, and never went to the old beach camp again. At that point, she didn't care if he killed her, but the thought of lingering for days was a strong discouragement. It didn't stop her from going to the coast, but only the ones where there was no tree cover for him to hide in.
Mrs. Maleaua was giving Claire the same skeptical look that her own mother used to, when Mum didn't believe a word coming out of Claire's mouth. Mum never said anything right away, because she knew that sooner or later Claire would fall right into a pit of her own making. All Claire said was, “I didn't fish much. Just mostly trapped.”
Another wave of heat and sickness hit Claire, and she lowered her filet knife.
“You don't look so good,” said Mrs. Maleaua. “Maybe you better go have a lie-down, let me finish.”
“I'll be fine,” Claire said, but she wasn't fine, not at all. This was getting old, in fact. She felt way worse than the night before.
Kate and Richard left their conversation and came over to see what was going on. Kate took Claire by one arm, while Richard supported the other.
“So she has fever after all?” Kate asked.
“Maybe,” Mrs. Maleaua answered. “Nei Claire, you didn't eat any of those big blue shrimp I warned you about, did you? The ones all full of algae?”
Claire didn't answer. The palm trees which shaded the patio danced above her head, and all voices were drowned out by the low, throbbing buzz which beat exactly in time with her heart.
Far away, as if on the other side of the lagoon, Claire heard Mrs. Maleaua say, “Kate, you go get Auntie Merey, just to look her over.”
By the time Richard carried Claire to her room, she had blacked out.
* * * * * * * *
On the main road, Kate broke into a fast jog, dodging chunks of asphalt and potholes, ignoring the stares of people walking alongside. By the time she got to Auntie Merey's small, squat house, Kate was dripping sweat and about to keel over herself. Out back, under the shade of the steep-thatched maneaba, Auntie Merey and a few older women were gathered for a chat. Some instinct told Kate to wait quietly until Auntie Merey saw her.
“Claire's sick, really sick,” Kate said. “You've got to come.”
Back at the hotel, the bedroom seemed suddenly very small, filled as it was with Kate, Richard, and three large I-Kiribati women. Besides Mrs. Maleaua, Auntie Merey had brought reinforcements: a serene, white-haired woman with a gentle smile and big capable hands called Auntie Lilona. Everyone crowded around Claire's limp form stretched out on the bed.
“Auntie Lilona is the oldest woman in South Tarawa,” Auntie Merey said as she introduced her to Kate.
“We need to get these off,” Auntie Lilona said, unbuttoning Claire's shirt.
Mrs. Maleaua took Richard in hand. “Come and help me boil water for the aunties, Richard. You don't fish with the men, I can put you to work in the kitchen, right?”
With Richard gone, Auntie Lilona undressed Claire all the way. Meanwhile, Auntie Merey pulled out a baggie full of little strips of dried seafood, which Kate didn't recognize.
Auntie Lilona motioned for Kate to help turn Claire over, and the older woman started searching over Claire's skin carefully.
“What are we looking for?” Kate wanted to know, but Auntie Lilona didn't answer. She just kept running her patient, searching fingers over Claire, muttering to herself as if loosening her tongue also loosened her thoughts.
“Ah, I knew it,” said Auntie Lilona after a time. “Look here.” She lifted the hair on the back of Claire's neck to reveal a swollen lump, its raised yellow center like a deformed nipple.
It made Kate sick to look at it. “Look, no offense, but isn't there a doctor? I mean, we drove past a hospital on the way here.”
“Believe me, you don't want Nei Claire to go there,” Auntie Merey said as she broke pieces of the dried seafood into a metal bowl. “And a couple weeks before you got here, one of the doctors had a stroke and got airlifted to Brisbane. I don't think she's coming back anytime soon. Then there's the other doctor, but he's probably down at the pub in down in Betio, the one where the Aussie tourists go for the fun they can't get up here. You don't want him around Nei Claire this late in the day, I can tell you that.”
The immense isolation hit Kate, even worse than on the Island. There, at least, sick people got better. Juliet had laid Jack's guts wide open and snipped out his swollen, reddened appendix, casually dropping it onto a plate. The next day Jack was up and walking around. Not here, though. This was the real world. When people got sick on Tarawa Atoll, they died more often than not. And Australia was an eight, ten hour flight away. “My God,” Kate muttered.
“That's a good idea,” said Auntie Lilona in the same gentle voice. “Auntie Merey and I will handle this. You pray.”
“I don't know how to pray,” Kate said in a strangled voice.
“Oh, honey, you not baptized?” asked Auntie Merey.
“Yeah, actually I was. First United Methodist of Ames, Iowa.”
“Well, that's real good.” Auntie Lilona rummaged in her bag and handed Kate a bright blue plastic rosary. “Here you go.”
Kate stared at the rosary beads as if they might bite her. “I'm not Catholic. I don't know how to use one of these.”
Auntie Merey smiled. “Just hold it, ask Mother Mary to help. All she wants is for us to ask.”
So Kate's sweating hands warmed the plastic as the aunties worked. Auntie Lilona lanced the infected boil on Claire's neck, while Auntie Merey sopped up the mess. As Auntie Lilona squeezed again and again (omigod would that stuff never stop coming out how much is in there?), she said casually to Auntie Merey, “Nei Claire, she's really out of it, isn't she? Usually they start hollering by now.”
Over to Kate, Auntie Merey said, “Hope you're working hard getting Mother Mary's attention, 'cause we could sure use it.”
It was then that Kate began to be afraid, really afraid, with the fear that starts as an icy spear in the gut, works its way through the small of the back to the legs, then pours like ice water onto the ground. No more tricks of counting to five for her. She grabbed the rosary even tighter and started to think, hard. While it didn't feel to Kate like prayer, it was.
I don't know if you're even out there. This is probably stupid, and we're just living on a giant rock getting burned by a big nuclear bomb in the sky, and if Claire's body can fight off whatever's making her sick she'll live, and if she can't, oh God, no, not even going to think about that. But maybe you really are out there, and maybe you do just want to be asked.
Suddenly she thought of Hurley's gold, red and white edifice of a house, with an image of Mary in practically every room. Before Hurley went crazy again, Kate would sometimes bring Aaron over for a visit. Once, while waiting for Hurley to come downstairs, she stood before a painting of Mary with her robe open, her great bleeding heart dripping blood but encircled by flowers.
Of course Carmen had to make a bee-line over to Kate. “She's your mother too, you know.”
Carmen would have loved to have become Kate's mother as well, even though Hurley explained more than once that Kate had a boyfriend. “Some boyfriend,” Carmen scoffed. “One that doesn't spend any time with her. That's why she's always over here, right?”
Now, Kate gripped Auntie Lilona's rosary the way a little girl clutches her mother's hand while crossing a busy, dangerous street.
Mrs. Maleaua came in to pour boiling water over herbs. When the poultices had steeped and cooled, Auntie Lilona and Auntie Merey sponged Claire all over, filling the room with a pungent, bitter scent.
Auntie Lilona mashed up a bit of the dried, meaty stuff into boiling water.
“What's that?” Kate asked.
“Sea cucumber,” said Auntie Lilona. “Most of them are good eating. This one, though, if you eat it, you die. But with a little bit, well, sometimes you need poison to get out poison.”
They sat Claire up, her head lolling, and managed to get a small amount of the watery sea cucumber paste down her throat.
Kate unflexed her hands, where the rosary beads had left small red indentations in the palms. “What now?”
Auntie Lilona crawled up onto the bed and pulled Claire onto her lap. “Now we wait.” The woman was so large, and Claire so frail, that she looked like a small doll resting in the lap of a very big girl.
Kate had never known a night so long, so full of care. A messenger came for Auntie Merey: someone in Bairiki was almost ready to have her baby, could she come? “Go on,” Auntie Lilona said. “Nei Kate and I will stay here.”
Mrs. Maleaua brought them tea. The men had long since come back from fishing, and one by one they stuck their heads through the door to see Claire. Auntie Lilona covered her with a thin sheet, then rocked her like a child and sang softly over her.
Once Kate came over to the bed to get a closer look. Claire's eyes were shut, but her face was flushed bright red, her hair matted with sweat. Her chest barely moved, and with a pang of fright Kate thought that she might not even be breathing. “What's happening to her?”
You could drown in the warmth of Auntie Lilona's smile. “This fever, it's good. Just what we want.”
Kate couldn't take it any longer, so she stepped outside. Sawyer handed her a plate of sliced raw tuna on white rice as she joined Frank, Miles, and Richard.
“Maleaua says it's touch-and-go,” said Richard.
Hearing his name, Mr. Maleaua came over, and said in a voice full of cheerful optimism said, “This happened to my nephew in Buariki. We thought he was gone, but the aunties up there helped him with the fever cure. That was the good part.”
“So... what was the bad part?” Sawyer wanted to know.
Mr. Maleaua's face fell. “The fever left him blind.”
“Oh, my God,” said Kate, turning pale.
“Come on, Kate. We're gonna get some air.” Sawyer steered Kate out the front gate, onto the roadway. They walked a short distance up to the lagoon, whose warm waters met the cooler, rougher Pacific ones. The night was unusually clear for the rainy season, and together Kate and Sawyer gazed up at the vast white band spread across the ink-black sky. One glistening star flashed, then fell in a bright white streak to the horizon.
“Make a wish,” Sawyer said. “But don't tell.”
“I don't need to. You know what it is.”
He gave a long sigh. “Damn right I do. Let's go back, see how things are going.”
Kate crept back into the bedroom, where Auntie Lilona had gotten up to stretch. “I'm kind of stiff,” Auntie Lilona said. “Maybe you can take over.”
“Sure.”
Auntie Lilona positioned Kate on the bed and adjusted the half-conscious Claire onto her lap. “She'll get better faster if you hold her.”
Kate wanted to ask what the chances were of Claire going blind or worse, but she held her tongue. Instead, she cradled Claire the way she'd held Aaron when he was fussy from teething, or sick with an ear infection.
She must have dozed off, because at one point she thought she heard Auntie Merey come in to say that it was a boy, healthy as could be. Then the voices faded out as Kate drifted into sleep, and for Kate at least, that long frightful night came to an end.
(continued)
Pairings: Hurley/Claire, Kate/Sawyer
Characters: Hugo "Hurley" Reyes, Benjamin Linus, Desmond Hume, Claire Littleton, Kate Austen, James "Sawyer" Ford, Rose Nadler, Bernard Nadler, Carole Littleton, Aaron Littleton, Background & Cameo Characters, Original Non-Human Characters
Rating: M
Length: 3290 words
Status: Complete
Notes: Fantasy and supernatural elements. Think American Gods on the Island.
Summary: Hurley is now Protector of the Island, while Claire, Kate, and Sawyer head back to our world. But when it comes to love, the Island has a way of getting you where you need to be.
Chapter 15: What Happened to Claire
As Kate and Sawyer followed Mr. Maleaua back to the motel, Kate clung to Sawyer's hand the whole way. Together they stumbled over the sand, dodging the ever-present trash and debris strewn across the beach.
Kate hated how helpless she felt when someone got sick or injured. That was one reason why Jack had made her feel so safe, reassuring her that if someone fell ill, or had a horrible gaping wound, Jack could fix it. He thought he could fix everything, even when he couldn't. While some might call that a flaw, Kate had appreciated that about him, because it held the terror at bay.
Holding on to Sawyer was different. She was under no illusion that he could fix a single solitary thing, especially not some tropical disease. But it was good to have a hand to hold amid the fear. By the time Kate reached her and Claire's room, some of the panic had receded.
Mrs. Maleaua was by the bedside, laying cloths soaked in ice-water across Claire's forehead and wrists. Claire called out in a tired, slurred voice, “Tell her she's making a fuss, Kate.”
“Claire, honey—”
“Maybe Nei Claire gets lucky,” Mrs. Maleaua said. “Little rest, keep her temperature down, no more party-fun for a few nights. I've seen people throw it off.”
“Throw it off? Throw what off? Should we call a doctor?” Claire's forehead and wrists were cold from the icy compresses, so Kate laid her hand across Claire's chest. It felt warm, but everything around them was. Even Mrs. Maleaua's flushed face was beaded with perspiration.
“I don't suppose you all would have a thermometer." Even though Sawyer's voice was relaxed, his shoulders were tense.
Mrs. Maleaua shook her head. “Sorry. It broke last year, and we never got a new one.”
Kate let out a long, exasperated sigh.
On the bed, Claire stirred, pushing the wet cloth off her forehead. As she rolled over, the rest slipped to the floor. She pulled the thin pillow over her head, while her legs kicked a few times, as if she were having spasms.
“Just let her sleep it off,” Mrs. Maleaua said. “Maybe she'll be better in the morning.”
After Mrs. Maleaua left, Kate slumped to the floor, head in her hands.
“Come on, Kate,” Sawyer said, low and urgent. “You got to pull it together.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Look, Claire's asleep. You want me to, um—”
“Yes,” she said. Kate couldn't explain it, but it was as if something hovered over Claire, something unpredictable and frightening. All at once, Kate very much wanted Sawyer to stay. “Just for a while, okay?”
“You got it, Freckles.” He leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, light shaggy hair falling over his eyes.
Kate went to the bed and gently took one of the pillows from under Claire's arm, when Claire started to mumble. “No, Samael, stop it... I won't do it again, really.”
“Sawyer,” Kate said, low and urgent.
At the panic in Kate's voice, Sawyer rushed to Claire's bed-side. Claire repeated “Samael” a few times, gave one more toss, then seemed to fall into a deep sleep.
“Samuel?” Kate said. “Who's that?”
Sawyer shook his head. “Who the hell knows. Maybe one of those kool-aid drinkers from the Temple who were always chasing her around. Come on, Kate, try to get some sleep. If I'm goin' fishing tomorrow, I sure got to.”
Side by side they bedded down on the pandamus mat. When Kate searched out his hand with her own, he gave it a firm squeeze, then didn't let go until she fell asleep.
The next morning, Claire awoke to a pounding headache. Kate must have already gotten up, because she wasn't anywhere in the room.
Claire couldn't see the swelling on the back of her neck, but she could feel it, like a small insect walking across her skin. Fighting the urge to scratch only made the crawly, itchy sensation worse. The skin around the small, central wheal was puffed up, tight and hot.
She didn't want to tell anyone, because she didn't need a repeat of Kate's panic from the night before. So after breakfast, she sat with Kate and Richard on the shadiest part of the patio, while Richard and Kate batted volleys of American legalese back and forth like tennis balls over the net. It made her head hurt, or maybe that was the tropical heat, which seemed to bother her more than ever, no matter how much tea she drank.
Worse yet, the conversations made her afraid in a way that her friend never did. This fear made Richard's sharp black brows draw into a worried line, and put Kate into a kind of perpetual frown. Her friend could be cajoled, distracted, even humored, but these tricks wouldn't work on the faceless American bureaucracy. Most of their band were Americans without passports, stuck on the outside looking in, and on the other side of that glass was Aaron.
To distract herself, Claire helped Mrs. Maleaua scrub the hard crusty remains which clung to the bottom of the rice pot, trying to ignore the swimming sensation in her head. She traded some hand lotion with the neighbors for a few chicken eggs, and helped filet some of the sleek yellow-fin tuna.
The card parties seemed to have broken some invisible barrier, because no one cared if they left the property now. Frank, Miles, and Sawyer had gotten up at the crack of dawn to join Mr. Maleaua and his brother on their fishing boat. Mr. Maleaua's own sons had been working for months on the big Japanese fishing trawlers, so he had jumped at the prospect of three extra sets of hands to help with the daily catch.
Claire, limber from her long Island years in the jungle, squatted on the concrete as easily as Mrs. Maleaua did. Together they scraped the scales off bluish-gray fish which Claire didn't recognize.
“I'm gonna miss you when you go back to Australia,” Mrs. Maleaua remarked. “You get a lot done around the place.”
“I just feel like I should earn my keep.”
“Oh, no worries about that. The government's paying. I didn't mean just 'cause you work.” Mrs. Maleaua looked down, embarrassed. “I guess you got a lot of experience with fish cleaning, living out in the bush and all.”
Claire didn't want to admit that she was a complete novice. “I didn't fish much.” That was an understatement. Her friend had strictly forbidden her to go to the coast, any coast. Only once had he laid a hand on her before taking John's form, when he had caught her headed down to the old beach camp. She was too distracted to hear him rustling in the trees above her, so that before she even got within twenty meters of the place, he had caught her in his grip, lifted her five meters in the air, and shook her until her teeth rattled.
In that voice which bypassed her ears and went straight to her mind like a poisoned arrow, he had said, “Do that again, and the next time I'll bring you up here and then drop you. If you're lucky, it'll kill you. Or it could take you days to die.”
Then he had set her down, surprisingly gentle and light, and left a small, smokey caress on her cheek before disappearing into the upper canopy.
She had learned her lesson well, and never went to the old beach camp again. At that point, she didn't care if he killed her, but the thought of lingering for days was a strong discouragement. It didn't stop her from going to the coast, but only the ones where there was no tree cover for him to hide in.
Mrs. Maleaua was giving Claire the same skeptical look that her own mother used to, when Mum didn't believe a word coming out of Claire's mouth. Mum never said anything right away, because she knew that sooner or later Claire would fall right into a pit of her own making. All Claire said was, “I didn't fish much. Just mostly trapped.”
Another wave of heat and sickness hit Claire, and she lowered her filet knife.
“You don't look so good,” said Mrs. Maleaua. “Maybe you better go have a lie-down, let me finish.”
“I'll be fine,” Claire said, but she wasn't fine, not at all. This was getting old, in fact. She felt way worse than the night before.
Kate and Richard left their conversation and came over to see what was going on. Kate took Claire by one arm, while Richard supported the other.
“So she has fever after all?” Kate asked.
“Maybe,” Mrs. Maleaua answered. “Nei Claire, you didn't eat any of those big blue shrimp I warned you about, did you? The ones all full of algae?”
Claire didn't answer. The palm trees which shaded the patio danced above her head, and all voices were drowned out by the low, throbbing buzz which beat exactly in time with her heart.
Far away, as if on the other side of the lagoon, Claire heard Mrs. Maleaua say, “Kate, you go get Auntie Merey, just to look her over.”
By the time Richard carried Claire to her room, she had blacked out.
On the main road, Kate broke into a fast jog, dodging chunks of asphalt and potholes, ignoring the stares of people walking alongside. By the time she got to Auntie Merey's small, squat house, Kate was dripping sweat and about to keel over herself. Out back, under the shade of the steep-thatched maneaba, Auntie Merey and a few older women were gathered for a chat. Some instinct told Kate to wait quietly until Auntie Merey saw her.
“Claire's sick, really sick,” Kate said. “You've got to come.”
Back at the hotel, the bedroom seemed suddenly very small, filled as it was with Kate, Richard, and three large I-Kiribati women. Besides Mrs. Maleaua, Auntie Merey had brought reinforcements: a serene, white-haired woman with a gentle smile and big capable hands called Auntie Lilona. Everyone crowded around Claire's limp form stretched out on the bed.
“Auntie Lilona is the oldest woman in South Tarawa,” Auntie Merey said as she introduced her to Kate.
“We need to get these off,” Auntie Lilona said, unbuttoning Claire's shirt.
Mrs. Maleaua took Richard in hand. “Come and help me boil water for the aunties, Richard. You don't fish with the men, I can put you to work in the kitchen, right?”
With Richard gone, Auntie Lilona undressed Claire all the way. Meanwhile, Auntie Merey pulled out a baggie full of little strips of dried seafood, which Kate didn't recognize.
Auntie Lilona motioned for Kate to help turn Claire over, and the older woman started searching over Claire's skin carefully.
“What are we looking for?” Kate wanted to know, but Auntie Lilona didn't answer. She just kept running her patient, searching fingers over Claire, muttering to herself as if loosening her tongue also loosened her thoughts.
“Ah, I knew it,” said Auntie Lilona after a time. “Look here.” She lifted the hair on the back of Claire's neck to reveal a swollen lump, its raised yellow center like a deformed nipple.
It made Kate sick to look at it. “Look, no offense, but isn't there a doctor? I mean, we drove past a hospital on the way here.”
“Believe me, you don't want Nei Claire to go there,” Auntie Merey said as she broke pieces of the dried seafood into a metal bowl. “And a couple weeks before you got here, one of the doctors had a stroke and got airlifted to Brisbane. I don't think she's coming back anytime soon. Then there's the other doctor, but he's probably down at the pub in down in Betio, the one where the Aussie tourists go for the fun they can't get up here. You don't want him around Nei Claire this late in the day, I can tell you that.”
The immense isolation hit Kate, even worse than on the Island. There, at least, sick people got better. Juliet had laid Jack's guts wide open and snipped out his swollen, reddened appendix, casually dropping it onto a plate. The next day Jack was up and walking around. Not here, though. This was the real world. When people got sick on Tarawa Atoll, they died more often than not. And Australia was an eight, ten hour flight away. “My God,” Kate muttered.
“That's a good idea,” said Auntie Lilona in the same gentle voice. “Auntie Merey and I will handle this. You pray.”
“I don't know how to pray,” Kate said in a strangled voice.
“Oh, honey, you not baptized?” asked Auntie Merey.
“Yeah, actually I was. First United Methodist of Ames, Iowa.”
“Well, that's real good.” Auntie Lilona rummaged in her bag and handed Kate a bright blue plastic rosary. “Here you go.”
Kate stared at the rosary beads as if they might bite her. “I'm not Catholic. I don't know how to use one of these.”
Auntie Merey smiled. “Just hold it, ask Mother Mary to help. All she wants is for us to ask.”
So Kate's sweating hands warmed the plastic as the aunties worked. Auntie Lilona lanced the infected boil on Claire's neck, while Auntie Merey sopped up the mess. As Auntie Lilona squeezed again and again (omigod would that stuff never stop coming out how much is in there?), she said casually to Auntie Merey, “Nei Claire, she's really out of it, isn't she? Usually they start hollering by now.”
Over to Kate, Auntie Merey said, “Hope you're working hard getting Mother Mary's attention, 'cause we could sure use it.”
It was then that Kate began to be afraid, really afraid, with the fear that starts as an icy spear in the gut, works its way through the small of the back to the legs, then pours like ice water onto the ground. No more tricks of counting to five for her. She grabbed the rosary even tighter and started to think, hard. While it didn't feel to Kate like prayer, it was.
I don't know if you're even out there. This is probably stupid, and we're just living on a giant rock getting burned by a big nuclear bomb in the sky, and if Claire's body can fight off whatever's making her sick she'll live, and if she can't, oh God, no, not even going to think about that. But maybe you really are out there, and maybe you do just want to be asked.
Suddenly she thought of Hurley's gold, red and white edifice of a house, with an image of Mary in practically every room. Before Hurley went crazy again, Kate would sometimes bring Aaron over for a visit. Once, while waiting for Hurley to come downstairs, she stood before a painting of Mary with her robe open, her great bleeding heart dripping blood but encircled by flowers.
Of course Carmen had to make a bee-line over to Kate. “She's your mother too, you know.”
Carmen would have loved to have become Kate's mother as well, even though Hurley explained more than once that Kate had a boyfriend. “Some boyfriend,” Carmen scoffed. “One that doesn't spend any time with her. That's why she's always over here, right?”
Now, Kate gripped Auntie Lilona's rosary the way a little girl clutches her mother's hand while crossing a busy, dangerous street.
Mrs. Maleaua came in to pour boiling water over herbs. When the poultices had steeped and cooled, Auntie Lilona and Auntie Merey sponged Claire all over, filling the room with a pungent, bitter scent.
Auntie Lilona mashed up a bit of the dried, meaty stuff into boiling water.
“What's that?” Kate asked.
“Sea cucumber,” said Auntie Lilona. “Most of them are good eating. This one, though, if you eat it, you die. But with a little bit, well, sometimes you need poison to get out poison.”
They sat Claire up, her head lolling, and managed to get a small amount of the watery sea cucumber paste down her throat.
Kate unflexed her hands, where the rosary beads had left small red indentations in the palms. “What now?”
Auntie Lilona crawled up onto the bed and pulled Claire onto her lap. “Now we wait.” The woman was so large, and Claire so frail, that she looked like a small doll resting in the lap of a very big girl.
Kate had never known a night so long, so full of care. A messenger came for Auntie Merey: someone in Bairiki was almost ready to have her baby, could she come? “Go on,” Auntie Lilona said. “Nei Kate and I will stay here.”
Mrs. Maleaua brought them tea. The men had long since come back from fishing, and one by one they stuck their heads through the door to see Claire. Auntie Lilona covered her with a thin sheet, then rocked her like a child and sang softly over her.
Once Kate came over to the bed to get a closer look. Claire's eyes were shut, but her face was flushed bright red, her hair matted with sweat. Her chest barely moved, and with a pang of fright Kate thought that she might not even be breathing. “What's happening to her?”
You could drown in the warmth of Auntie Lilona's smile. “This fever, it's good. Just what we want.”
Kate couldn't take it any longer, so she stepped outside. Sawyer handed her a plate of sliced raw tuna on white rice as she joined Frank, Miles, and Richard.
“Maleaua says it's touch-and-go,” said Richard.
Hearing his name, Mr. Maleaua came over, and said in a voice full of cheerful optimism said, “This happened to my nephew in Buariki. We thought he was gone, but the aunties up there helped him with the fever cure. That was the good part.”
“So... what was the bad part?” Sawyer wanted to know.
Mr. Maleaua's face fell. “The fever left him blind.”
“Oh, my God,” said Kate, turning pale.
“Come on, Kate. We're gonna get some air.” Sawyer steered Kate out the front gate, onto the roadway. They walked a short distance up to the lagoon, whose warm waters met the cooler, rougher Pacific ones. The night was unusually clear for the rainy season, and together Kate and Sawyer gazed up at the vast white band spread across the ink-black sky. One glistening star flashed, then fell in a bright white streak to the horizon.
“Make a wish,” Sawyer said. “But don't tell.”
“I don't need to. You know what it is.”
He gave a long sigh. “Damn right I do. Let's go back, see how things are going.”
Kate crept back into the bedroom, where Auntie Lilona had gotten up to stretch. “I'm kind of stiff,” Auntie Lilona said. “Maybe you can take over.”
“Sure.”
Auntie Lilona positioned Kate on the bed and adjusted the half-conscious Claire onto her lap. “She'll get better faster if you hold her.”
Kate wanted to ask what the chances were of Claire going blind or worse, but she held her tongue. Instead, she cradled Claire the way she'd held Aaron when he was fussy from teething, or sick with an ear infection.
She must have dozed off, because at one point she thought she heard Auntie Merey come in to say that it was a boy, healthy as could be. Then the voices faded out as Kate drifted into sleep, and for Kate at least, that long frightful night came to an end.
(continued)