Griffin’s hand hovered over her forehead, then gently pressed down. Her expression didn’t change. She seemed hot – but how hot, exactly? If your fever got too high, couldn’t it damage your brain?
Griffin put his free hand on his own forehead. That felt hot, too. He tried moving his right hand from Cheyenne’s forehead to his own, but he couldn’t really feel any difference, except that hers was clammy and his wasn’t. Obviously his palm was useless as a thermometer. Then he had an idea. If he touched his forehead to hers, he would be able to tell for sure how much warmer she was.
Griffin leaned forward and tentatively pressed his forehead against Cheyenne’s. Definitely warmer. Was her brain cooking inside her skull? While he was still wondering if he should just try to sneak her out of the house and dump her outside a hospital, Cheyenne sat up with a jerk. Their heads cracked together.
She yelped and pushed him away.
“Shh!” He didn’t want her to wake Roy. “It’s just me. Griffin.”
Cheyenne dropped her own voice to a whisper. “What are you doing?” She sounded clearer than he thought he would in similar circumstances. “Are you trying to kiss me or something?”
“No!” To his embarrassment, his voice broke. “I was just trying to figure out if you had a fever.”
“And?”
“And I think you do.”
“I know that.” She sat up, scooted back until her shoulders were against the wall, folded her arms, and rested them on top of her knees. She still wore her striped scarf and the puffy silver coat.
Griffin persisted. “But I think you’re sicker than you were.” He thought of what her father had said on the radio. Cheyenne couldn’t really die from pneumonia, could she? Although didn’t people used to die from pneumonia, back in the old days, before there were antibiotics?
They must have been thinking along the same lines, because Cheyenne said, “The doctor said that pneumonia used to be called the old man’s friend. Because that’s what a lot of people died from when they were old and frail.”
“Some friend,” Griffin said, then added, “Wait a second. I have an idea.”
He tiptoed down the hall and into the bathroom. The shower curtain still lay in the bottom of the tub. Crap. He had forgotten about that. Cheyenne’s escape attempt seemed like it had happened in another lifetime. He tried to hang the curtain back up, wincing as it rattled, but it had ripped away from the rings. When Roy asked, Griffin was going to have to say that he had tripped and fallen – or maybe, Griffin realized, that Cheyenne had. That was more believable.
He let the curtain fall back into the tub, then knelt and opened up the cupboard beneath the sink. Under the silver curve of pipe, a blue plastic basket held witch hazel, Anadin, a broken comb, and stray plasters. No thermometer. But mixed in were all kinds of medicines that, for one reason or another, had never been used or used up. Griffin pawed through muscle relaxants, rash creams, and cough suppressants. He scooped up the Advil and cough medicine. Then after holding up amber bottle after amber bottle to the light, he finally saw, with a surge of triumph, the word Cipro. He knew that Cipro was an antibiotic. The printed label read “Janie Sawyer.”
It was kind of a surprise to see his mom’s name. He had a sudden flash of memory – her dark eyes, her high cheekbones, the long reddish-brown hair that fell to her waist. She had hidden behind that hair when she was angry or sad or any of a dozen emotions that Roy didn’t want to hear about. Sometimes she had stood up to Roy, but not very often. And Roy had only gotten worse after she left.
According to the label on the bottle, the prescription had expired six and a half years ago; one year to the day after his mom had filled it. But what were the chances that a medicine suddenly gave up the ghost exactly 365 days later? They probably had to put that date on for legal reasons. Or to give them an excuse to sell you some more. Griffin opened the bottle. The white capsules looked okay. He sniffed. They didn’t smell like anything in particular.
The directions said you were supposed to take one pill three times a day for seven days. There weren’t that many pills left – maybe eight or nine – but it would be enough to give Cheyenne a start.
In the kitchen, he filled one of the glasses he had washed earlier. Back in his bedroom, he softly closed the door behind him and then said in a half whisper, “Since you can’t go pick up your prescription, I thought the prescription should come to you.”
Cheyenne looked confused. “What?”
“Cipro.” Griffin rattled the bottle. When she still looked blank, he added, “It’s an antibiotic.”