The First 30 Days (PUBLISHED)

Thirty-Three - Day 18

"You should probably stay off of this leg for another day." I leg and gave the teen a serious look. "It hasn't healed at all from the first time I saw it. If you aren't careful, it's going to get infected."

"Ok. Thanks Bri." He pulled the leg of his jeans back down but to my satisfaction, didn't move to get off of the couch. Fallon had been finished taping the clean piece of gauze over the wound on Devon's hovering nearby, and she dropped onto the other end of the couch to keep him company. Tossing the rest of our makeshift first aid kit back into Maya's bag, I stood up to return it to the spot by the front door where we had piled all of the things we would want to take with us if we needed to make a run for it again.

Days spent wading through the damp and filth in the woods hadn't been good for the teen's leg. I hadn't been completely honest when I told him that his leg wasn't healing. It was worse than that. The skin around the wound had taken on a slightly puffy, red color. I was more than a little worried.

"His leg is worse," I dropped into a kitchen chair between Shawn and Carrie.

"I was afraid of that," Carrie looked through the doorway with concern. "Poor kid's really starting to limp."

"What can we do for him?" Shawn turned to me. I don't know how, but I had somehow become the group's unofficial doctor. They all seemed to rely on my advice way more than I was comfortable with.

I sighed. "He needs to rest. If we can keep the wound clean, maybe his body will fight off the infection. Some antibiotics wouldn't hurt."

"I didn't see anything like that when I was raiding the nurse's closet back at the camp." Maya walked into the room and joined our quiet conversation.

"There wasn't any. I doubt a summer camp nurse would have been allowed to give anything stronger than Aspirin and Tums." I hesitated. "There has to be something we could use in some of these houses." I turned toward Carrie. As far as I knew, she was the one who had searched the upstairs bathroom.

She shook her head. "Nothing like that here. Just band aids and Neosporin."

"Should we try another house?"

I looked back to Shawn, "Maybe."

"I don't know. There's something about this place that makes me uneasy." Maya glanced over to where we could see Bill watching out a window. "I'd really rather just get out of here. There's a car in the garage that we could all fit in. I say we take it and go."

"We need to stay. Devon needs the rest." I looked around. "We all do."

Even in clean clothes, our group looked like we weren't doing so well. Everyone was losing weight at an alarming rate, cheeks were beginning to sink in to an unhealthy degree. None of us had bathed or combed our hair. Dark circles had taken up permanent residence under all of our eyes. What we really needed was to stay, eat as much as we could, and sleep a lot. Maybe then we would start to look human again.

"I'll go look for some meds for him."

Somehow, it didn't surprise me at all that Shawn was the one to offer help. He was good like that. "I'm going with you." I wouldn't let him out there alone.

"I'll come too."

I glanced over at Carrie with surprise. She looked back at me with some expression that was hard to decipher in her eyes.

"I'm not going to just sit back and let the kid suffer if there's something that I could do." She pushed her chair back from the table and left the room.