By the time she drags the flat, dirty mattress from the second floor down to the garage and settles Joel on top of it, Ellie is so tired she is convinced that she could fall asleep standing up. Scavenging around the house has offered her little in the way of supplies; all Ellie has found is a heavy, wool blanket that she has draped over a shivering Joel, and a couple dirty rolls of cloth medical tape. Besides that, all that remains in the abandoned home is broken furniture and a pile of tattered books with yellowed pages.
Ellie settles herself back in the garage once she finishes searching the house. Outside, it is snowing, and she can feel the temperature dropping steadily from the way the cold radiates off the metal garage door. Since her trek to the military supply helicopter in the mall a day earlier, the snow has piled up to her ankles, and the cold has become just strong enough to freeze her sweat to the material of her jacket. On the floor, across from Joel's mattress, Ellie shivers. All she wants in that moment, more than anything in the world, is to curl up under a blanket and sleep for as long as she can. But Joel is lying there, teeth chattering from a clear fever, and Ellie is more than terrified that he is going to go off and die on her. Instead of lying down and pulling her knees up to her chest, she crawls over to Joel on her hands and knees.
"Joel?"
He has no answer for her other than the incoherent mumbling of the very ill. Ellie places a hand on his shoulder softly, her muscles clenching sickly in her stomach. She recognizes the dull, hollow ache under her ribs as the fear of losing Joel, the fear of being alone again. His throat makes a sound something akin to a moan, and beads of sweat roll down the skin of his forehead. Ellie reaches for the hem of the blanket, heart seized with anxiety over what she might find when she checks on his wound. She pulls it down, lifts up the corner of Joel's shirt, and cringes and the way the sewn up skin has become puffy and inflamed. Ellie lets her hand hover over it. The wound is giving off more heat than she can bear.
There is a brief moment in which Ellie is frozen to the spot, unsure of what to do. Joel still shivers beside her, and the only thing she can think of to help him is to go through the first aid kit lying half open beside the mattress a second time. She rifles through the contents, but nothing has changed. She finds gauze, needles, bandages, and a bottle of what she can only figure are expired painkillers. Uneasily, she palms two of the pills, unsure of their effectiveness, and forces them into Joel's mouth. He swallows, almost painfully, with her help.
"Oh man, Joel," Ellie whispers, sliding the bottom of his shirt back down and covering him back up with the blanket, "Don't fuckin' die on me."
She leans back against the wall of the garage and stares at him, unknowing and unfeeling – lost. Ellie is no doctor, but she knows what Joel needs. Antibiotics. But holy shit, she thinks to herself, where the hell 'm I gonna find those? Ellie wrings her hands in her lap and turns her attention from the feverish man to the garage door and the night that lies beyond. Her resolution is firm, but her body is still wracked with fear; she will wait out the night, and as soon as the sun comes up, she will go for food and medicine. She wonders whether or not Joel can wait it out or not in the first place, but she finds herself oddly reassured by the idea that this is Joel, and if anyone is holding on for dear life, it is him.
Joel speaks, then, something that is less of a word and more of a sound, "E-el…"
Ellie's ears perk up, and she crawls on hands and knees back to his side, "Joel? Joel, can you hear me?"
"Ellie…" His voice is raw and broken; hardly a voice at all, but Ellie knows in that moment that he is there and he can hear her, if only in the back of his mind.
"Joel!" She exclaims, grabbing him by the shoulder, "Joel, it's me! It's Ellie. You're gonna be okay, all right? We just…we just gotta wait out the night, a-and then tomorrow 'm gonna go out and get you some medicine, okay? I swear, Joel, you're gonna make it out of this. I swear."
There is no answer from him. His teeth go back to chattering, and he speaks no more for the rest of the night. Ellie makes sure he is comfortable and warm before she goes back to leaning against the wall. Joel's fever is just starting to pick up speed when she spots it in the corner and gets the idea.
The book is on top of the pile of other yellowed volumes, and it is the only one with any color on the cover. She crawls towards it and takes it into her hand, flipping through the pages and scanning the words. It is not long, and if Ellie is being fair, it really does not look like a bad read. She clutches the book to her chest and makes her way back to the dirty mattress, clinging to the idea that she will read to him until he either stops shivering, or the sun comes up. Whatever comes first.
"It doesn't seem like it's gonna be too bad," she assures the feverish Joel, "If anything, it'll be nice to listen to until I can go out, yeah? Hang in there, Joel. It's story time."
Ellie settles into her little nook and pulls her jacket sleeves down over her wrists and palms. She opens the book to the first page, and though her eyelids feel heavy with sleep, she is determined to stay awake. She takes a deep breath and starts to read, pushing the fear of losing Joel to the back of her mind.
"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit…"