Read Online Diary of a Wildflower by Ruth White - Free Book Online Page B

Roxie’s fever stays up there.  She
can’t keep anything in her stomach.  Her chest hurts.  She talks out
of her head.  She coughs deep rumbling coughs.
    I look after her as best I can.  
    In
the middle of a dark night she whispers to me, “I’m sorry, Lorie.”
    I
am in her bed with her, and I have kept the lantern burning low on my side so I
can see to tend her during the night.  Now I sit up and look at her
flushed face.
    “Sorry
for what, Roxie?”
    “I’m
going to die and leave you alone.”
    “No,
Roxie!  You don’t die of measles.  You just feel like you’re
going to.”
    She
starts to cough so hard and so deep that Jewel wakes up in the other bed and
says something, but I can’t hear her above the noise.  I try to help Roxie
sit up to cough, but she is too weak, and I can’t lift her.
    When
Roxie’s coughing lets up, she closes her eyes and seems to rest, but her chest
rattles, and her breathing is not regular.  In fact, she is struggling for
air.  I am suddenly so awfully scared that my heart goes wild and begins
to pound in my ears.  I start to shake all over.  In my petticoat and
bloomers I creep out of bed.  I forget the lantern and have to feel my way
down the stairs to where Dad, Bea and Clint are in a deep sleep.
    I
find Dad’s shoulder in the dark and shake it.  “Dad!”  He does not
wake, so I shake it again.  “Dad!  Wake up!”
    He
grumbles and mumbles and rolls over.
    “Dad! 
It’s Roxie.  She needs a doctor.”
    “Hmmm?”
Dad says.
    “What’sa
matter?” Bea says and sits up.
    “Roxie
needs a doctor.  Dad has to send Luther for Dr. Wayne.”
    “It’s
just measles, Lorie,” Dad says in his grumpy voice.  “She’ll be fine.”
    I
start screaming.  I am so scared I can’t help it.  “NO! 
NO!  It’s not just measles.  It’s something lots worse.  And she
needs a doctor NOW!  She needs a doctor NOW!”
    Clint
wakes up and begins to cry.  Bea tries to shush him.  Dad swings his
feet to the floor.  Luther appears on the stairsteps with a lantern.
    “I’ll
fetch the doctor,” he says.
    Dr.
Wayne arrives just as daylight is creeping over the tops of the hills.
    “Pneumonia,”
he says when he examines Roxie.  “A complication of measles.”  He
lifts her up and tucks some pillows behind her.  “She is drowning in her
own fluids.”
    Bea
and Dad are standing beside the doctor holding a light for him.  I am on
the other side of Roxie’s bed.  She opens her bloodshot eyes and looks at
us, but I don’t think she actually sees anything.  Deep, awful rumblings
rack her small body again.  From her bed Jewel lets out a whimper.
    “Get
these kids out of here,” the doctor orders.
    Kids? 
Jewel is the only kid in the room.  Or does he think I’m a kid?
    “Take
a sheet and dip it in cold water,” he orders Bea.
    Bea
just stands there looking at him with her mouth hanging
open.                  
    “Do
it!” he says more sternly.  “We have to get her temperature down.”
    Bea
and Dad both spring into action.  I take Jewel down the stairs and we curl
up with Clint in Dad and Bea’s bed.  Jewel goes back to sleep, but I lie
there with my hands over my heart trying to keep it still.  I stare at the
beams in the ceiling and listen to the doctor moving around in the loft, giving
urgent orders to Dad and Bea.  I hear Roxie groaning like she’s in awful
pain, and that’s when I go into a strange kind of dream state.
    At
some point Luther comes back and goes up to the boys’ loft.  Clint wakes
up and cries, and Bea comes for him.  She changes him, then takes him into
the kitchen to feed him.  Dad comes downstairs, and when I peep out, I see
that he is kneeling in the middle of the room.  He prays out loud.
    “Lord,
why does it have to be her?  Why couldn’t you take Nell or Lorie or
Jewel?  Why don’t you take Trula?  Yes!  Take Trula, Lord, but
please, not Roxie!”
    Later
I hear Dad upstairs again,