Seed by Lisa Heathfield Page B

have stood by while her breath dripped out of her and vanished like the wind?
    Would I have done that? Would I?
    The door opens and Elizabeth comes in. She has a steaming bowl and a flannel, but when she sees Kate sleeping, she puts them on the floor next to her bed. She leans over, her belly bulging in the moonlight, and she kisses Kate quietly on the forehead. She smoothes her hair back gently, without waking her.
    “Kindred John didn’t help her,” I whisper. “Or Kindred Smith.” But it’s like I haven’t said a word.
    The door opens again. It’s Heather.
    “Jack is asking for you,” she says to me. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
    I get up from my bed quickly. In all of this, my thoughts have not been with Jack. I should have been with him, not sitting next to Ellis. I step over the books left scattered on the floor and follow Heather from the room.
    Jack is sitting in the Eagle Room. He has material clenched in his mouth, his teeth biting down hard, trapping the roar in his throat. His eyes look like a wild horse’s. It fills me with fearbecause he looks nothing like my Jack. But I go to him and take his hand, which is locked into a fist of iron.
    Linda is here. She is sewing his skin. The cotton pulls through him as though through material, but it’s soaked in blood.
    “He’d be better in a hospital,” she says quietly.
    “It is best for him here,” Kindred Smith replies. “He is in good hands.”
    “I’m not a doctor,” Linda says abruptly. Kindred Smith smiles calmly and rests his hand on her shoulder. Maybe she doesn’t realize what doctors really do.
    Rachel rushes in with a glass of brown liquid. She stands by Jack’s side, takes the material from his mouth, and holds the glass to his lips.
    “Have some more of this,” she says. “It will help.” Jack drinks, coughing and grinding his teeth. Rachel puts the material into his mouth and he bites down hard.
    “Trust us,” Kindred Smith says to Linda. “He wouldn’t want to go to the hospital, would you, Jack?” Jack shakes his head violently. Linda looks confused and she’s making me have doubt. I know deep down that they are bad places, but a part of me would try anything to help take Jack’s pain away.
    I hold his clenched fist and make him look into my eyes. I talk to him of the hills and the lake and the sunshine at dawn, as Linda drags the needle through his skin again and again.
    The pain reaches into Jack and the material in his mouth drops to the floor as he jerks his head forward to push into my shoulder. I hold him there. Put my hand to the softness of his cropped hair. I am sure he is weeping but doesn’t want to show it.
    Linda cuts the end of the cotton. She reaches for a cloth soaking in water and wipes gently at Jack’s jagged wound. Then she takes a bandage from Heather and begins to wrap it tightly around his chest. She splits the end of the bandage and ties it in a knot.
    “I’ll have to change it every day at first. There’s always the chance of infection,” she says, but she seems less angry now, less scared.
    “I’m proud of you,” Kindred Smith says, and Linda smiles.
    “I think I surprised myself,” she says. She looks so different from when she arrived here. It’s as though Seed has burned away the gray clouds that were settled on her.
    Heather goes over and puts her arms around her. “Thank goodness for you, Linda,” she says. Then they’re picking up the pieces of Jack’s sweater.
    I can feel that he has stopped shaking. He moves his head back from my shoulder and I lean down, put my hands on his knees.
    “Are you OK?” I ask. He nods. But the pain still shudders in his eyes.
    Have we done wrong, Jack? By not getting you help?
    I watch as Kindred Smith helps him out of the room. Jack, with his quiet ways and love growing out of him like wings.
    “Thank you, Nature,” I whisper. “Thank you for not taking them.” But my words hang lifeless in the air and I don’t think anyone has heard