LIT 20. Bed Rest and Sleepless Nights

Lost in Translation Chapter 20

Previously: Marie and Valentina went to the small island in the middle of the lake to fetch medicine for Bahr’s injury. While there, Valentina told Marie about her father, and Marie gave her his notes that she’d been hanging on to.

I woke up on the couch in my mother's study. The room seemed to swell and shift, as if it were a balloon and I was in the center of it. I must be sick — that was the only explanation for why I was asleep here and why everything kept moving. My mother was sitting in her armchair with a book on her lap. I wanted to say something, but my mouth wouldn't open. It was as though I'd forgotten how to speak. I tried to sit up and had the same problem. I stared at my own mother, oblivious to my illness and lost in her novel. She must know I was here. I wouldn't have fallen asleep here if I wasn't sick. Why hadn't she noticed I was awake? I kept my eyes on her face even as the details started to swim away from me. My vision blurred. Was I crying? I didn’t think I was, but felt as though I should have been. The situation seemed to demand it.

I head something like static. Then from the static a voice began to materialize. I recognized the words and not the voice. It wasn't my mother's. "Stop, Marie," it said, over and over again. The words I'd heard before falling into the transport. The fact that I remembered I'd fallen into the transport, and yet was lying in my mother's study — it did not occur to me that these were contradictions. The voice seemed like a woman's voice, almost. I knew it was feminine; I wasn't quite convinced it was human.

I jumped awake in a cold sweat, an oversized reaction compared to the mild sadness I'd felt during the dream. The images got fuzzier the longer I sat there, wide awake. I concluded that I must be forgetting the nightmarish part of the dream, the part that actually woke me up. A blessing, probably. I glanced around at the small house that had been my home for weeks. There was a calendar in one corner. A rocking chair in the other. Bahr was still in the hospital. It had been three days since he'd been bitten.

Bahr had taken to the medicine quickly and had been up on his feet again the next day - but for only a short period. Frankly, the medicine probably would work faster if he'd just stay in bed.

Valentina didn't speak to me again as we waited for him to heal. Instead she chose to stare at me from across the village from time to time, as if waiting for my signal that I was ready to go. No one in the village noticed her sudden interest in me except Bahr, who looked from her to me every time but had asked no questions.

I went to see Bahr as soon as I got up. He insisted that he was better now, as he had done everyday for the past three days. I still had not brought up the marriage situation. It seemed wrong to do so from beside his hospital bed.

Hospital was a generous term, by the standards I'd lived in earlier that year. The building was one large room with beds separated by curtains made of something like burlap. The bedding was only slightly softer than that. The most technically advanced machine there was a wheelchair. The medicine we'd gathered had been used on Bahr's arm and the bed frame, where it released its scent into the makeshift room. I was suspicious of the effectiveness of such treatments, but they seemed to work - the other beds were consistently empty. We waited alone for the village's nurse, the same woman who had opened her home to us, to re-do the bandage on his arm and tell us if his treatment was complete. She’d still been eating breakfast when I’d left.

"What are you doing with Valentina?" Bahr asked me as soon as I'd sat down on the stool by his bed.

"What do you mean?" He just looked at me.

"What are you doing with Valentina?" he repeated, in English this time. We'd spent too much time together.

"We're going to find someone who knew her father. Someone in the forest."

"I'll go with you."

I looked down at his arm. "Are you well enough?"

He nodded, then jumped as the door creaked. The nurse had arrived.

"How are you today, Bahr?" She asked.

"I'm better. I'm healed." She frowned.

"You said that yesterday morning." Bahr held out his arm and she begun taking off the bandage. It still didn't look great. Purple marks covered his wrist where the impact had bruised it. There would be scars where the thing's fangs had punctured skin. There was nothing oozing this time, however, so we were seeing improvements.

"It looks like you are correct today. This looks much better. I'll ----- ---- and ---- ---- ----. And you can leave." Bahr nodded and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the sheets and get up that second. He sat still long enough for the nurse to wrap his arm again, and not a moment longer.

As he stood up my excuse for not bringing up the marriage situation vanished. He held out his hand to me, and for a moment I thought he was asking me to take it. "I was surprised it healed quickly," he admitted. "I was worried about the medicine here, after seeing the ship."

"The ship?"

"Yes, the ship seemed... ----? -------?" He struggled to come up with a word we both knew. "It seemed not good." He shrugged, then flexed his bandaged arm. "It doesn't matter now. See, all better!"

"Mostly better," I corrected him, wondering how many spaceships he'd seen and how he was able to judge what a good one looked liked. Then I added, in a whisper as the nurse left, "You don't have to go with me and Valentina."

"I want to help. Also, it's strange - the fact that all these people are here, isn't it? Them and then you."

I nodded, wondering how I would have reacted if two alien ships had landed in my city over within two decades. "I'll tell Valentina we are leaving tonight."

He frowned. "Is it a secret?"

"Valentina wants to keep it a secret."

We waited until about an hour after sundown. Bahr and I got up and picked up the bags we'd packed earlier that afternoon as quietly as possible. The house was dark and the wooden slats creaked beneath our feet no matter how gently we stepped. We paused when something creaked at a different pitch.

A small flame lit up, attached to a lamp, attached to a hand. Our hostess was sitting in a rocking chair that seemed to protest its function, making a noise with each movement. "I know what it looks like when someone is sneaking out. My son used to try it all the time." She sighed, staring off into the darkness of the small house. "He's not a ----- now, of course. He's thirty-nine. I may have grandchildren, back home." I glanced over at the corner where I knew a calendar hung, though I couldn't see it in the shadows, then back to her. The small flame reflected in her eyes, giving light to her face and not much else. "I'm not stopping you, of course. I just couldn't sleep. Old habits. When will you be back?"

"I don't know," I admitted. She nodded, as if that was the answer she'd expected.

"Did you pack bandages?"

"Yes," Bahr replied. I hadn't known he'd done that. She nodded again, sighed, and blew out her lamp. It would take a moment for my eyes to readjust, but it didn't matter. The house was small enough that we could find the door in the darkness.