Freeze

10

Later, after Warren had fallen into a deep, postcoital sleep, Tess slipped out of bed and hurried over to the fireplace. She was naked, and the fire had died down to almost nothing. She walked with her arms wrapped around herself, rubbing at her biceps.

She used the poker to stir the coals. The fist-sized chunk of wood left on the grate caught fire again, but it wouldn’t last long; she’d need to grab more logs from the pile Warren had brought in. She looked at the heap of clothes on her side of the bed, considered getting dressed, and decided not to mess with it. Better just to hurry up and get the fire going again so she could crawl back beneath the covers and against Warren before the cold had a chance to work its way into her.

She rushed through the kitchen, which was cold, and down the back hallway, which was colder still, barely tolerable. Her breath floated in front of her face like smoke, her nipples were stone-hard, and her toes and fingers had started to go numb. She didn’t bother picking through the logs but grabbed the first three she could wrap her fingers around. She tucked one of the chunks under her arm, and cradled the other two against her belly like a baby. The bark dug into her skin, scraped her, but she hardly noticed; compared to an exploding window to the face, a few scrapes were nothing.

As she brought the firewood into the living room, her breasts swayed (much closer to her belly, she was sorry to admit, than they’d been thirty years earlier) and her nipples still jutted. She hopped from foot to foot, trying to stay warm, aware that she probably looked ridiculous but not worried about it because there was no one around to see but Bub and Warren, who were both sleeping and snoring almost in unison.

She dropped two of the sections of wood on the coals and used the poker to scoot them together. Fresh flames curled up the sides of the logs, orange and almost unnaturally bright in the otherwise unlit room. The blizzard continued, blowing snow and ice against the house, shrieking and moaning, sounding like a tea kettle one second and a ghost the next.

When the logs looked like they would stay lit, Tess turned around and snuck past Bub.

Something vibrated in her chest, like the beginnings of a deep cough. She stopped, placed a cold hand between her breasts, and held her breath, willing herself not to cough and wake everyone up.

For a second, she thought the sensation had passed, but then the vibration came again, a tickle deep in her lungs. She coughed once—a tiny, almost polite cough—and then again, more loudly this time. Warren sniffed and shifted on the mattress but didn’t wake up. Bub never moved at all. Tess felt another cough coming on and hurried out of the room before it could escape her.

Halfway between the living room and the bathroom, in the narrow hall where she’d hung their portraits and shelved the cheap knickknacks they’d picked up over the years, she stopped, doubled over, and let loose a series of loud, hacking coughs that left her gasping and teary eyed. A string of spittle dripped from her bottom lip and fell to the floor. She listened to see if she’d woken Warren.

No sounds from the living room.

Her chest vibrated again, and she hurried into the bathroom at the end of the hall. With the door closed, she couldn’t see anything at all. Their only flashlight was on the mantle in the living room. They’d brought a box of candles and matches into each room when the lights went out, but before she could fumble around for them, another long cough rumbled its way out of her chest and throat. Thick, warm liquid flowed past her teeth, over her lips, and down her chin, and she felt her way to the toilet. The next cough brought another stream of liquid, but this time she managed to spew most of it into the commode. When her coughing finally let up, she reached blindly for the toilet paper, found it, and used a handful to wipe the gunk from her face.

What the hell was that?

It had felt almost like throwing up. She knew she should light a candle and see what exactly had happened, but she was afraid. What if the candlelight revealed a toilet bowl full of blood and hacked-up innards?

It’s probably just barf. You can’t cough that hard and not vomit a little bit, too.

Maybe. But what had caused her to cough like that in the first place?

She stood up and ran her hands over the vanity. She thought she remembered putting the candles beside their toothbrushes, but when she felt around the area, she found nothing but the toothpaste.

Warren was in here, remember? Looking for tweezers. Who knows where he put the damn things.

She slid her hands around the sink and found the box of tapers pushed into a corner of the countertop. She grabbed a candles, found the smaller box of matches, and lit one. Even before she touched the flame to the candle’s wick, she saw the streaks of red on the floor and down the sides of the toilet. She gasped and almost dropped the candle. It looked like someone had died in here. Swirls of thick, dark blood floated in the toilet bowl, and a mess of red footprints and knee prints surrounded the toilet.

She turned to the mirror, and a bloodied, zombified version of herself looked back at her. The red stains running down her face and chest made the rest of her body look pale, ghostly, lifeless. Her drooping boobs swayed as she sucked in one long breath after another. The sight of all this blood made her want to puke, but she didn’t dare if she could help it. She was afraid she’d hack out another pool of blood.

You swallowed some glass. Or breathed it in. That’s the only explanation.

Okay, fine, but what was she supposed to do about it?

Wake up Warren. Tell him.

But what could he do about it? The truck wasn’t going anywhere; he’d said so himself. And they had no way to call for help. Not that help would have had a chance of making it up here anyway. And it wasn’t like he was a doctor or anything, not like he could cut her open and do some exploratory surgery.

You’re bleeding. Badly. You have to wake him up and tell him. Right now. Don’t be an idiot. Maybe he can’t do anything, but two minds think better than one.

She felt that tickle in her throat again and leaned over the sink, ready to puke out another helping of gore, but the tickle never worsened, and after a few seconds, it went away altogether.

A drop of wax dripped off the taper and onto Tess’s hand. She hissed and dropped the candle into the sink. It sputtered but didn’t go out immediately. Before it did, Tess turned away from her reflection and walked to the living room, holding her hand between her breasts again, trying to be careful, not wanting to dislodge any bits of glass that might be floating around her lungs or throat.

Warren lay spread-eagle on the mattress, his head buried between their two pillows and one of his feet sticking out of the covers. Tess hurried to him, grabbed his shoulder, and shook him.

He grumbled, turned away from her, and curled into a ball on his side of the bed. She rolled her eyes and shook him again.

“Warren.” She whispered it but realized there was no reason to be quiet and said his name again, louder this time. Between the chairs, Bub lifted his head from the doggy bed and looked over at her, but Warren still didn’t open his eyes.

“Warren!”

He turned, blinked his eyes, and rubbed his face. “Huh? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I’m bleeding.”

He pushed himself up on his elbow. “What? Your cuts?”

She shook her head. She’d done her best to wipe the blood off herself, but she hadn’t gotten it all. At first, she didn’t know how he’d missed it, but then she realized she was kneeling between him and the fire, which meant she was backlit, and he’d just woken up. She was probably nothing more than a blur to him right then.

“No, not my cuts. Or at least not just my cuts. I coughed up some blood.”

Now he sat up all the way. She saw the fire reflected in his eyes. The blanket dropped around his waist and revealed his lean, not-quite-bony torso.

She said, “Not just some blood—a lot of blood.”

He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Are you okay now?” he finally asked.

She started to say something, maybe I don’t know or I’m not sure or some other worthless non-answer, but before she got out a word, that tickle came again. The cough came quickly this time; before she could turn her head, a streamer of blood came shooting out of her mouth and hit Warren right in the center of his chest. It splattered there, ran down his belly and splashed up against his chin. It rebounded off of him and onto the sheets, bedspread, and pillows. By the time she turned away, Warren looked like something out of a horror movie, like Carrie at the prom. She spat the last mouthful of blood on the floor between her legs, but Warren had gotten the bulk of it. The blood dripped down his belly and into his lap.

Bub whined, got to his feet, and inched over to them. Tess reached out to comfort him, to tell him it was all right, but before he got within reach, he bowed his head and shied away from her. She realized her hand was covered in blood. Bub looked from her to Warren and whined again.

Warren ran his hand across his chest and stared at his bloody fingers. “My god,” he said. “We…I have to get you some help.” He pulled her to him, either forgetting about the mess or ignoring it, and hugged her tight. “It’s going to be okay.”

Tess wasn’t sure how it could possibly be okay—she’d already lost a disturbing, surely dangerous amount of blood—but in his arms, with him whispering reassurances in her ear, she couldn’t help but believe his lies.