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.She's all skin and bones,” a familiar male voice rumbled.That troubled her long enough to try to look.She heard the doctor murmur something else, then walk across the floorboards until the door opened and closed.There was a slight chill, so she burrowed deeper into the covers.After a while the warmth lured her into sleep once more.Sometime later hunger woke her out of her stupor.Her sleepy mind came awake long enough for a thread of fear and revulsion to hit her.It took her a moment to realize why.She'd thought the other person had been Quincy, but then she realized it wasn't.The other voice.it was John.John's voice.She was furious when he came over with a tray of food, on top a steaming bowl of soup.“Better?” he asked.“You.I'm.I'll be gone in a minute,” she growled, then coughed.“No you won't,” he said.She looked up with a glare.“You can use the chamber pot to pee if you need it, but Doc said you stay put.Besides, you go outside and you're as good as dead,” he said.Her eyes flashed taking that as a challenge.Adrenaline tore through her system with her anger.He pointed to a window rattling.She looked outside and saw a blizzard beating against it.“I need to shut the shutters, but it's too bad out there to chance it,” John said.He shook his head.She glared at him, still angry, so he pointed to the door.She saw the cloth, old towels and such he had stuffed around it to keep the chill out.She went over, wrapped in a blanket like a shawl.She touched the door knob and then snatched her hand back; it was ice cold.She shut up, flopping down in a chair by the wood burning stove.He glanced her way and then went back to work.She did her business in the chamber pot bucket, embarrassed, but glad to relieve her body of that burden.He pointed to the stove after she came out.She could smell the stew on it; she went over and stirred it.She looked at him and found he had a bowl.He handed it to her and then went back to whatever he was doing.She ate quickly despite the hot stew.It felt like a lead weight though, weighing her down.After a while she got sleepy so she went back to the loft and the waiting bed.It was cooler, but after a while her body heat warmed it up.He didn't talk to her, just worked.She watched him warily from the loft.They only interacted when he silently handed her a bowl of food, usually stew.She petted the cat he had in the cabin; she was welcome company.The calico cat was six months old, one of the first litter.She wondered why he'd kept it in the house since he usually kept all of them out.But the cat proved itself when it hunted down an intruding hex rat and killed it.Boredom was annoying to her; the enforced inactivity chafed at her for a while.Her illness kept her weak, which also annoyed her; she didn't like being dependent on him or anyone.Doc came by once a day, weather permitting, to check on her.She took her temperature and took her other vitals, amusing the woman.They even got her on a small scale John had.She frowned; she'd lost a lot of weight and was under one hundred pounds.“You're all skin and bones.You need feeding up,” Doc said, then chuckled at herself.“Listen to me, sounding like an old country doctor,” she said, shaking her head.“Well, technically you are, Doc,” John observed from his chair by his small table.She looked over to him and stuck her tongue out at him.He snorted, then went back to whatever he was doing.“Who asked him,” Loni muttered darkly.Doc eyed her for a moment.“You two getting along okay?”“Yeah, I guess so,” Loni muttered, shrugging uncomfortably under that gaze.Doc nodded.“Good.I fetched you some of your clothes and stuff,” Doc said, indicating a pile of neatly folded laundry by the table.“Anything else you need, let me know.I'll have to get John here or someone else to dig it out though; your place is buried.”Eventually Loni recovered enough to do something about her boredom.She started doing little things around the cabin, more to keep busy than out of a sense of duty to him.She was testy when he tried to help so he backed off and left her to it.Occasionally she would sit by the window and look longingly outside to the compound.She realized her shelter was gone, buried.John kept his place mostly cleared of snow; he went out daily and did what he could after feeding the dogs.It was snowing she realized; she'd wool gathered enough to not even notice the first flakes.She shivered and pulled her borrowed shawl up over her bony shoulders.She realized she'd lost a lot of weight when she looked in the mirror in his bathroom corner; the scale really hadn't made it sink in to her.Her cheeks and eyes were sunken, her hair straggly.She was a mess, so she wasn't surprised that he hadn't hit on her.She wasn't sure what she'd do if he did.Fortunately it never came up.She finally figured out what he was doing.He was constantly busy, moving from one project to the next.He had a DVD and TV but apparently wasn't interested in them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]