I Will Love You Forever

Chapter 3, part 7: I Fix

There were only a few more cans of soup left, and they ate one for breakfast. It was the only food left in the house.

"I don't know about you," he said, "But I've about had enough cream of chicken soup." He smiled at Lu, and for the first time, she seemed to stretch her mouth a bit in response. "That's my beautiful smile," he said, and her smile got wider. He reached out and took her hand. "I love you," he said.

"I will love you forever," she said, but she said it in flat tones and with an expressionless face. Part of him wanted to dance for joy, and part of him wanted to weep.

He took a deep breath, taking firm hold on his emotions. "Listen, hon. We need to go into town today. I have to get glass and tools for the windows, and we have to get a bunch of food, and most of all, we have to get you to the doctor."

"What doctor?" said Lu.

"Eh? Well, I don't know, yet. We'll probably just go straight to the hospital."

"What doctor?" repeated Lu, and he realized she didn't mean which doctor, she meant, what is a doctor. The things she didn't know still staggered him.

He sighed. "A doctor will look at you, to see if anything can be done for your injury." When she didn't react, he gestured at her head. Odd, he thought, really looking at it for the first time since waking up clear-headed. He didn't remember it looking that intact. She was definitely missing part of her head, but she seemed to have bone and skin all the way to her eyebrow. That wasn't what he remembered, but he had been nearly blind and out of his head, after all.

He blinked and shook his head. He still wasn't right after all that fever, and just remembering what was real and what was hallucination was more than he could do, sometimes. Okay. That's where the injury is, right there. No more hallucinations. He was afraid he would have to be hospitalized, too.

"No doctor." The voice was still without inflection.

He sighed again. "Honey, we need to make sure—"

"No doctor. I fix." She sounded insistent, and her voice had risen.

Ken stared at her, thinking furiously. This was truly a dilemma. She was getting upset, and he was sure that could be very bad. She wasn't obviously infected, and she appeared to be doing okay, yet there was no way she wasn't going to the emergency room with a head wound like that. Then he thought about it some more. He was fairly sure no doctor was going to be able to help her with something like this. Maybe there would be some therapy they could do that would help her adjust and adapt, but you can't grow your skull back when it's been blown away by whatever that was. Had to be a meteor, I guess. There wouldn't be anything they could do for her, other than help her avoid infection.

Given that, he thought, while he was positive she was going to need medical help at some point, it probably wouldn't hurt to wait a bit, now, as long as she didn't run a fever or show other signs of infection. He didn't know what her mental state was, and it seemed to change from moment to moment, anyway. He really didn't want to upset her right now. He didn't know anything about an injury like this, but it could be that getting really upset would be as dangerous to her as an infection. If she were determined about it, the two-hour drive to the emergency room could actually kill her.

"Okay," he said, "You fix."

"I fix leg," she said.

What did she mean by that? He looked down at her legs, but they had not been hurt. She had one leg shorter than the other, but that had been from the accident when her parents had been killed. Otherwise, they seemed normal. She couldn't have meant his leg.

Or could she? He had thought his leg might have been broken, out in the woods, but it apparently hadn't been, as fast as he'd recovered. He'd also thought that infection was going to kill him. He'd recovered from that too, but he figured it had been either luck, or good genes. But why else would Lu say that, if her legs had not been hurt?

He frowned, and turned to look in the direction of the clearing, out the still-broken windows on the back of the house. Then he looked back at Lu. What if it hadn't been luck? What had hit her?

A shudder ran though him, and he felt gooseflesh on his neck. No. Stay in the real world, Ken. He took a deep breath. You can't help her if you start wondering about stupid possibilities.

Maybe she meant that she had learned to walk. She sure couldn't do it at first. He squashed a pang of grief for the smart, fun Lu she'd been, shook his head, and got ready to go out. She did not seem to realize what he was doing until he was opening the front door.

"Ken not go!" Her voice showed some urgency, and she held his arm tightly. It was the first real emotion she had shown since the accident.

He was delighted to hear something in her voice with emotion in it, but it presented a bit of a problem. Lu had always been uneasy when he left her alone for any length of time. He didn't want to give her any reason to be upset, and he hated to leave her when she was clinging to him, but he could not stay. "I have to get food," he said, "and we are all out of a whole bunch of things. I'm sorry, babe, but I have to go."

"I go too," she announced.

"You will go to the doctor?"

"No doctor." She sounded as determined as at the beginning.

He sighed. "Okay, then, you stay. I'm not about to drive you around with an open head wound, unless it is straight to the hospital. I'll be back, as quick as I can." He kissed her, which seemed to startle her, but she did not try to return it. Then he went out, as she was still trying to tell him to stay. He was afraid he would never leave if he kept listening to her, and they needed food.

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