Innate Blue

chapter 2: Dying with my medicine.

                      
It was one of the driest season the town had experienced. The oaks and straws on top of every house was completely deprived of their purposes of protection from the rainy season. The fire had quickly spread due to this excessive dryness and was already seeping through the roof when Halmbert opened the door to his mother's room.
"Mother, Mother we must leave, the house is aflame, the fire is spreading...come…come…quickly come" he urged.
"Fire, what fire...?' she replied dumbfoundedly. 
"Hurry...no time to idle the causes…that can be done later."
His mother could barely walk. They stumbled, at slow pace, through all the destruction. The sound of the chipping away of wood was ever so present, and it became louder and louder. Debris fell from the roof; scraps of wood completely engulfed in flames. They were only a few steps from the door. Smoke filled the air, bringing a cumbersome thickness to the atmosphere.  Halm began to cough and his mother followed with her sickening, wheezing cough, struggling to breathe. They finally were outside and it was a though their lungs has been lost among the wreckage but was suddenly retrieved from exposure to fresh air. 
"Mother we are out." he shook his mother who had suddenly fell into a mysterious doze. She laid still and seemed lifeless among all the things aflame, that the chipping away of wood was a tune to her impeding funeral. 
"Father, father” he called out. His father came rushing over to the sight of his motionless wife. He bent down and held her risk. She had a pulse. He took her up with the help of Halm and they rushed to the village hospital.
"Please, please help us...my wife." he said as he went through the opening of the oak wooded hospital building.
"Help us," Halm urged. Two nurse ran over to accompany them. They instructed Halm and his father to take the ailing woman into a small room and rest her onto a bed.
"She has a faint pulse. What happened?’ a nurse questioned.
"Our home was set aflame…smoke, she inhaled smoke.”
"We shall care for her. Do you presently have 50 golds for the cost of care? If not it must be retrieved momentarily.”
The nurse turned and went about her tasks. She left Halm and his father confounded and struck. How would they get 90 gold pieces, at most they had 20, where would they get the rest of it.
“Father we don’t have that amount of money, we are not wealthy, surely they will understand…they must.”
Halm saw the nurse once more and beckoned her in hope of explaining their situation.
“My dear nurse…we do not have 90 pieces of gold. We are but working class family, who barely can make it through a week… and this…this which you ask for it most nearly impossible. At most all we have is twenty pieces”
The nurse looked at him blankly, somewhat impenitent by his emotional words.
“Twenty pieces. Well sir…we are truly sorry but we with such little money, we provide little care. We will provide her with what we can but then we must discharge her. We care according to payment…,” she said, turning to leave Halm and his father in the dimness of the falling sun, haunted by her subtle indifference.