The Starving Little Girl Who Saved Her Tribe novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Old Man

The old man lay on his furs at the back of the cave, and every breath he took rattled.

Lois knelt beside him.

She laid the back of her hand against his forehead, and it was hot as a stove.

"Oh, you poor thing," she said. "Oh, honey. You've got a fever."

His eyes opened, glassy and unfocused, and slid past her.

His lips moved around a word.

Ilu knelt at his other side.

"He says, cold," she whispered. "He says, so cold."

"He's burning up. That's the fever making him feel it." Lois sat back on her heels and thought hard.

She was a cafeteria cook, not a nurse.

But she had nursed a husband through three winters of lung trouble.

She knew what a cough that sounded like gravel meant.

"His chest is full," she said, mostly to herself. "He needs a doctor. A real one. He needs..."

She looked at the narrow dark hollow behind them.

Then at the old man, who weighed less than Ilu would at ten.

"Can he crawl?" she asked.

Ilu shook her head.

"Can we carry him?"

Kesh knelt down and tried to lift him by the shoulders, and the old man cried out, a thin, awful sound.

"No," said Lois. "No. All right. Not like that. It would kill him."

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