Holding Wonder

"There's always Suspension," said Thiela, smiling faintly. "Until jack-o'-lantern time again."
"Well, let's start by measuring what we do have and subtracting one spoonful for the lab to get started on," said Dr. McGady. "Then at least we'll know how much we have to go on."
"There's not enough!" cried Ruth the next morning, "There's not enough for everyone. How can we decide?" Her fingers scraped distractedly back through her front hair.
Dr. McGady reached over the bed table and crossed two more names off the list that Ruth had crumpled and smoothed again. "It's closer by two more," he said, "than it was last night. How far is it off now?"
"So close-so very close!" Thiela flexed the bottom edge of the paper. "It would be so much easier if there were twice too many people for Aunt Sophronia. Then we could just draw a line across the paper and say, `Thus far it'll go and no farther!" But it's so close!"
"Just delay another day or so, then the problem will solve itself," suggested Dr. McGady.
"Just-wait-to let some more die?" Thiela pushed the list from her and gathered up the bottle and spoon. "No. I'm going now."
"How will you choose?" asked Ruth, rocking her head in her hands.
"I won't," said Thiela from the doorway. "You and Dr. McGady are going to be praying in here and I'll be praying in there and the choice will be made."
The two, left behind, exchanged startled looks. Then Ruth dropped her face into her hands, her fingers spread across her scalp under her hair, and Dr. McGady, looking most uncomfortable, sank back in his chair and contemplated the upper corner of the room with considerable intensity.
All of the stricken were in wards, segregated men, women and children. Thiela hesitated at the door of the children's ward, memory loosening her still fluid knees and making the weight of the green bottle burdensome. Her own three children had died in just such sobbing, burning suffering. Her own had cried out for cooling that didn't come short of death. The ghosty fingers of her own clung, hot and bony thin, to her wrists. She shuddered and stepped into the ward.
She took the wrist of the first child, a silent, large-eyed girl whose face seemed sunken in the mass of her disordered hair. Thiela smiled at her, folded her hand back against the scarcely lifting chest and went on to the next.
Again she lifted a wrist, but this time she dropped it and poured a carefully huge spoonful of Aunt Sophronia and, lifting the furnace-hot child, she carefully poured the concoction into her mouth. The indignant, sputtering gurgle of the child as the awful taste penetrated, sprayed Thiela's face thoroughly. She mopped off the worst of it and, releasing the child, moved on to the next one.
Minutes later, she stood at the door of the ward and looked at the children. Every one that had fought and gurgled against Aunt Sophronia was sleeping, deeply, quietly. Every one she had passed by after lifting a hot wrist, lay moaning and crying, all but the first one. They had taken Thiela went back to her room, her face coagulating where the medicine had sprayed. "You can relax a minute now," she said as she closed the door behind her and carefully deposited the big green bottle on the dresser. "I've got to wash Aunt Sophronia off me. If there should be a difference between adult and child dosage, there is," she caller back from the bathroom. "Every child spewed like a fountain when it tasted the horrible stuff."
"You know," said Dr. McGady, eyes shining as he limbered his stiff neck. "It's been rather amazing! I never tried this aspect of prayer before and I experienced the most –"
"How did you choose?" interrupted Ruth, leaning back on her pillows. "How could you possibly-"
"I touched them," said Thiela, coming back into the room, drying her hands as she came. "I took each one's wrist like this," she lifted Ruth's arm. "The ones I-skipped-I could tell just by the touch. It was like holding a limp plastic hose that had hours of hot water poured through. All limp and lax and spent. The others felt as though there was a steel spring inside that was still twanging against the fever. Once-" she swallowed with an effort, her eyes closing, "once I felt the spring go out, right while I was holding: a wrist. Just-go-out. Just like that! Poor child!" She dropped Ruth's arm and blinked to clear her eyes. She gathered up the bottle and spoon again. "To
stations, me!, Forward!" And she marched out, robe swishing her ankle as the two in the room resumed their prayerful positions.
Thiela closed the door carefully behind her and leaned against it, her head drooping, her shoulders sagging. "Just like that!" she whispered. "Oh, Ruth, the spring went out, just like that!" Then she backhanded the tears from her eyes, almost stabbing herself with the spoon, and started briskly down the hall the other way.
By now the word had spread and there were people by the door of the men's ward.
"The general's in there," said someone.
"The whole staff of our department," insisted another.
"The most brilliant mathematician," urged another.
"Don't tell me anything," said Thiela, shaking her hear:. "I don't want to know. I'm not equipped to decide who's important and who's not. They're all. sick. I'll get to all I can."
"But such a brilliant career to be cut short-" insisted someone.
"Maybe the brilliance is spent," said Thiela. "Maybe someone else is to shine now. I don't decide. Please-" She pulled the door open and went in.
The bottle poured almost empty. Two more curtained cubicles to visit. Thiela shook the scanty remnants in the bottle. If these next two lives were already spent, there would be enough for-maybe, maybe-
She slipped between the next-to-the-last curtains, and, catching the flailing wrist, held it gently for a moment. She put it aside and left, the dose unpoured. Only one to go. One more dose. If only-if only-
Under the groping of her fingers, she felt the resilience of life twanging away at death, stubbornly fighting back against the fever.
"Amen," sighed Thiela. "So be it. The last dose, here, then. The last one." She poured it out.
She fled back along the hall past the huddled group, not listening to the half-formed questions and quick, soft inquiries. She stopped in front of her door and composed herself. Quickly, quietly, she went in.
Ruth was lying flat in bed, her body hardly making a mound under the sheet. Her face was turned to the wall. Dr. McGady stood at the foot of the bed, rubbing his neck and looking bewildered.
"Just all at once," he said. "She just went limp all over."
"I know," said Thiela, rounding the bed to take Ruth's hand. "Probably even before you were born, I know." She moved into the focus of Ruth's eyes. "There isn't a drop left," she said. "Not one single bit of Aunt Sophronia left for you." She let the tears flow as she relinquished the bottle to Dr. McGady.
"Did it work?" Ruth's lips formed the words around the soft whisper of her breath.
"I think so," said Thiela. "I almost know so. But for how long, we can't tell.
We thought that we-"
"No," breathed Ruth. "Maybe you. Remember, my dreams went bad. Yours didn't-"
" But if only we had another dose-"
"No, thanks." Ruth smiled faintly. "This is dying time for me. There'll be Les and the kids. And I'll tell Aunt Sophronia-" Her eyes closed deeper and deeper-
Ruth wasn't there any more. Thiela turned away Dr. McGady walked her over to the window. "Will Aunt Sophronia be pleased?" he asked.
"Unless you refine her down to a shot or a pill." Her mouth trembled, then turned upward a little. "How can you tell you've had medicine unless it tastes bad?"
She leaned on the window sill. "We were going to go shopping," she said, "Or whatever the local equivalent is now. We had a bet on which of us would look best in the current fashions!" She turned, her hands behind her, and sagged against the wall. "You don't understand yet!" she cried. "We were going to prop each other up until we learned how to live again after dying for so many, cold, lost years! But now-but now-!"