Chapter 20

 

 

 

Chapter 20

 

WHETHER it was his longer legs or the sheer difference in their physical stamina, Yuki utterly failed to keep up with Pasch. By the time she caught up to him, his hand was already turning the doorknob.

“Don’t!”

Did her shout come before he opened the door or too late? Either way, he flung the door open and dashed inside.

“Pasch!” Yuki ran in after him.

Vigo was in the middle of performing a cardiac massage on Chiruka as she lay limp in her bed.

“Don’t go! Come back to us!” he pleaded, not even noticing Yuki and Pasch.

All vestiges of the girl Yuki met on the first day were gone. Red pockmarks covered her entire body, dyeing her skin an oozy red. White pus seeped from under the hives of various sizes. Her unkempt hair stuck to the sweat trickling down her emaciated face. What Yuki had heard about the Ten Day Fever didn’t prepare her for what she saw.

“Chiruka!” Pasch knelt beside her bed and held her pock covered hand, careful not to pop the swollen pustules.

This can’t be happening… Yuki felt as if she were in the middle of a climatic TV soap opera. It all felt so surreal, like a fictional story encroaching on her reality.

“You can’t do this, Chiruka…” Yuki staggered over to her bedside. She carefully captured the hand that flung in the air reflexively with Vigo’s CPR, and brought it to her forehead in prayer. “You can’t die, Chiruka.”

Everyone is waiting for you to get better. They are waiting for you to come back to them.

Everyone around Yuki shouted and cried out Chiruka’s name. Their desperate pleas at her sickbed lacked any sense of reality. It was as if Yuki were stuck in one of her nightmares.

Chiruka, hurry back to us. Show us how healthy you can be. Yuki kept praying.

Before long, Chiruka’s arm stopped moving with Vigo’s CPR. Yuki opened her eyes and saw Vigo pressing his ear against Chiruka’s chest.

“All right!” Vigo bit out, the first signs of relief on his face for days—an instant sign Chiruka’s pulse came back.

“Chiruka! Chiruka!” Pasch called out over and over again, clenching the opposite hand from Yuki. Chiruka partially opened her crusted eyes. “Chiruka!”

Broadly grinning, Pasch pushed the hair back from her face and stroked the side of her cheek. “You did real great, Chiruka.”

“…sch…”

“Don’t talk. Take this time to rest up. Okay?” he affectionately spoke to her. She nodded slowly and fell into a peaceful sleep.

“Looks like she’s going to be okay,” Vigo assessed, letting out a long, relieved sigh with a look of utter exhaustion coloring his features.

“Good work, Vigo,” Yuki congratulated. Vigo’s brow and shirt were stained with sweat. Dark bags hung under his bloodshot eyes. “Will Chiruka get better now?”

“At this point it’s up to her system to handle the rest, but she’s past the worst of it.” The tension quickly left Yuki, leaving her smiling. “So? Why are you here?”

“Why?”

Chiruka made it through the most dangerous part. Still smiling, Yuki looked up at Vigo whose expression was stern.

“You remember I warned you not to come in this room because you might contract the same sickness, yeah?”

“…I do.”

“You aren’t the exception either, boy. Why did you come here?” Vigo clipped, turning his scolding onto Pasch.

“I came without thinking when I heard you shout for Chiruka.”

“And then what? You came to cheer us on?” Vigo asked, turning to Yuki. She nodded. “Are you a fool?! What are you going to do if you get infected because of this?!”

Selena moved from her fixed position at the wall in the back of the room to stop Vigo from losing it. “Now, now. All that ends well is well, right? You’re tired, Vigo. Don’t take out your pent-up frustration on Yuki.”

She placed her hands on his shoulders and began massaging. “Yuki is old enough to know her actions have consequences. But her worry got the best of her, as it does when people are around the sick. Look at it this way: there’s a chance Chiruka returned to us because they were here calling for her.”

Massaging Vigo’s shoulders, Selena turned to where Yuki stood. “You two need to drink the medicine later. It’ll help act as a preventive,” she said with a wink.

A heavy sigh escaped Vigo’s lips in resignation. “If you realize what you’ve done, hurry out of here. Same goes for you, boy.”

Pasch hadn’t stopped stroking Chiruka’s hair and stood regretfully at Vigo’s command. “You have my gratitude for saving her,” he thanked, bowing his head.

“I’ve done nothing deserving of your thanks, boy. I did my job.”

“Even so, thank you.”

Pasch earned a grin and ruffling of his hair for his persistence. “If you feel that way, continue to do good by this orphanage,” Vigo said knowingly.

“I will. I’ll do my best by it.”

“I’ll hold you to your words. All right, get out of my patient’s room unless you want to become one.” Vigo shooed them out the door.

Yuki and Pasch left the room, reflecting on the still lingering adrenaline and joy over what transpired.

***

CONFIRMING the door firmly shut behind the two teenagers, Vigo walked back to Chiruka’s bed. The tranquility on her face as she slept would make any doctor doubt only minutes earlier she had suffered cardiopulmonary arrest.

“…I can only call this one a miracle,” he muttered.

“Or it may have been the power of their loving shouts for her?” Selena joked, but he saw the shadow of seriousness lingering in her face.

He placed his hand on Chiruka’s cheek and measured the temperature of her throat. The discolored scabs left by the pocks peeled off at his touch.

“…?!” He pulled his hand back. New, healthy skin peeked out underneath where the scabs came off. “Impossible. I don’t believe it.” Carefully touching her cheeks in different places easily pulled off the scabs like dead skin. “How can the pocks be healed already?”

The pocks and hives generally took several days to discolor into scabs that took another few days to fall off. The scabs needed to be carefully removed and treated to not leave scars or cause further infection. Sometimes the healing process was as dangerous as the sickness. How could the pocks have already turned to scabs that came off without surgical tools and already have healthy skin underneath? The skin rarely returned to being as healthy as it was before the Ten Day Fever.

“What’s wrong?”

Vigo rubbed Chiruka’s cheek again to show Selena. The silky smooth skin under the scabs rendered her speechless. Even with his hand on her cheek, he didn’t feel the burning heat of her high temperature only minutes prior. Her body had returned to a healthy condition.

“Does the power of love have such an amazing effect normally? I wonder if it was the boy’s doing,” Selena mused, rubbing the scabs off Chiruka’s arm to reveal the same healthy skin.

“Who knows? If love could heal all illness, few humans would die.” Vigo walked away from the bed and looked out the window. The moon dyed the nearby clouds indigo. There was no sunlight, yet a bright light hit his eyes. Still facing the moon, he closed his eyes. “Selena…did you see it?”

“I saw you happy for the first time in a long time,” she offered.

“Not that. The girl.”

“Which girl?”

She didn’t see then.

The girl with white skin, black hair and eyes, with vestiges of innocent youth and ignorance. Out of the corner of his eyes, Vigo had witnessed it—the faint light emitting from Yuki’s body as she gripped Chiruka’s hand in prayer.