[March 28, 10 NE]

Thomas walks over to the couch where Sweetheart sits, not coughing much, and not racked with fever, but looking very tired. He sets his blue first aid kit, which he carries like a black doctor's bag, down on the coffee table and snaps open the latches. "Open your mouth, Sweetie."

Sweetheart, used to this routine by now, opens wide, and Thomas slides the thermometer into her mouth. She closes her lips around it. Thomas holds it while looking at his watch. "So far, everyone who's gotten it has started showing symptoms within 48 hours of being in contact with someone who is actively coughing," he tells Daryl.

"Yeah. 'S 'bout when Carol started coughin'. Two days after comin' home." Daryl stands nervously before the fireplace, picking at some dirt under his thumbnail.

"I've been in contact with the sick for seven days now. If I haven't gotten it, I don't think I'm going to. Neither are you."

Carol's dry hacking penetrates the thick fabric of the drapes that surround their marriage bed. "Carol feels real hot," Daryl murmurs. "Even after Raul's potion."

"Raul's bringing more of the fever medicine in an hour or two. I'll increase the dose slightly. No severe coughing last night for Sweetheart? Not enough to wake her?"

"Nah. 'N just a little this mornin'. On and off." He turns toward the drapes in the direction of the sound of Carol's renewed cough. "But ya can hear her."

"Yeah." Thomas slides the thermometer from Sweetheart's mouth. "Temperature's normal." He sanitizes the tip with Jamestown shine. "When did the fever first break? Do you know?"

"She ain't felt warm since yesterday evening," Daryl answers. "Since 'bout…five."

Thomas drops his thermometer in his blue first aid kit. "Well, the good news is, I think Sweetheart's out of the woods."

Daryl sighs in relief. "Yeah? Yer sure?"

"Gary and Van Daryl haven't had fever in twenty-four hours, and they probably got it after her. The coughing has trailed off for both boys, and Shannon seems almost fully recovered, though she had a milder case to begin with."

"Garland?"

"He's fine. I think he must have natural immunity, especially now that he's been in that cabin with them and hasn't come down with it. Enid says the orphans in quarantine are starting to cough less. Half of their fevers have broken."

"'S that quick?" Daryl thought this thing would last weeks, like that one time he got walking pneumonia as a kid, and he thought his cough would never go away. His father just kept telling him to rub dirt in it and quit your whining. Like you could rub dirt in a cough.

"The medical professionals, we've started calling this the Seven-Day Flu. Within seven days of your first severe cough, you're either well on your way to recovery or you're - " He stops abruptly.

Carol coughs loudly behind the drapes.

"Yer dead," Daryl finishes for him through gritted teeth.

Thomas swallows.

"Who else's died?" Daryl asks. "Since we been stuck in here?" It's a question he hasn't asked Thomas yet, a question he didn't want the answer to, but now he can't stop himself.

"Old Mrs. Conway."

"Fuck." Daryl feels bad about pilfering her strawberries now, even if he did repay them, even if he did fix her fan with hardly a thanks.

"Mary. Bob maybe would have, too, but Mary transformed and…uh…ate him."

"Shit." Mary's a bit younger than Carol. If it can kill Mary, it's not just killing the old and the little ones.

"Joe."

"Fuck. 'N Linda?"

"She's still hanging on. But she's lost two boyfriends now. Ernesto from heart attack, and Joe from this. Gunther's afraid that alone might kill her."

Carol coughs again. "Help her," Daryl pleads.

"I'll do what I can." Thomas disappears behind the drapes.

"Mama," Sweetheart says quietly. Daryl scoops her up from the couch into his arms.

"Doc's checkin' on Mama." Daryl's started calling Thomas doc. The man may be only a filed paramedic, but he's earned the title after this outbreak. He's been busy, and he's been learning on his feet.

Thomas pulls the drapes when he's done and returns to the living room, where Daryl stands bouncing Sweetheart on his hip.

"Her fever's still 101. When Raul's medicine gets here, increase the dose, half again. In the meantime, keep using the cold compresses. And keep her hydrated. Force her to drink if you have to."

Daryl nods.

"Make her some more of that tea to soothe the throat and chest. Raul's recipe. And add half of this to each of the first two cups you make." He pulls a test tube of white liquid from his front short pocket.

"Hell's that?"

"Just white whiskey. Jamestown shine. The council is allotting three ounces per sick adult per day. But if you've got more of your own? Put an ounce and a half in every single cup of tea you give her."

"A'ight."

"It'll help her sleep if nothing else."

Daryl reaches for the test tube. Sweetheart tries to take it from his hand. "Not for babies," he tells her.

"Sweetie's!"

"Nah, Mama's." He sets Sweetheart on her feet and walks Thomas to the door. When he's shut the door and turned around, Sweetheart is right there in front of him.

She puts a hand on her hip. "Sweetie's dwink!"

It soars his heart to see her defiance. It means she has the energy for it. His little girl just had the strength to walk all the way over here and demand a shot of whiskey. He smiles. "Gonna make ya a drink, baby girl. A better one." He jerks his head toward the kitchen. "C'mon."

[*]

Dog helps babysit Sweetheart while Daryl tends to Carol. They sit sideways on the couch now, Daryl leaned back against its arm, Carol between his legs, leaned back against his chest, sipping from the teacup he holds for her, because she can't. If she holds it, every time she coughs, hot liquid splashes up and out.

The toddler is still a bit too wiped out from the sickness to get into too much trouble, though one time Dog does have to grab her by the shirttail and drag her, laughing, away from the wood stove when Daryl commands, "Get 'er, Dog!" Mostly she stays on the bear skin rug with Dog, however, before the unlit fire. The late March afternoon is warm.

Carol is much warmer. Raul's potion has brought her fever down, but Daryl's sure it's still not normal. 99 point something, if he had to guess. "What's in this?" Carol manages after a small sip, between coughs. "It tastes different."

"Jamestown shine. Help ya sleep."

"Hope I'm not a lush after all this." She laughs, then coughs, then groans lightly.

"Don't try n' talk," he tells her.

Sweetheart is on her stomach now on the rug, with one arm slung over Dog. That means she'll fall asleep soon. Daryl hopes she does. It'll make things easier. He lifts the cup to Carol's lips again. She winces when she swallows. "No more," she murmurs.

"Gotta drink it all. Help ya sleep."

Carol obeys the order, little by little, and by the time Daryl sets the empty cup on wicker coffee table, Sweetheart is asleep. He wraps his arms around his wife, feels the heavy rise and fall of her chest through her labored breathing, and then the wracking of her body through her cough. "Love ya, Carol," he murmurs when the coughing subsides. "Love ya so goddamn much."

"I love you, t – " Another cough cuts off her words, and Daryl closes his eyes through the hacking bout, as if her coughs were blows to his own face.

[March 29, 10 NE]

Carol is fitfully sleeping. She still has a slight fever, and the coughing doesn't seem any better. It might even be worse. It's worse than it ever was with Sweetheart. She sleeps, awakens herself with coughing, and sleeps again. It's been like that for hours. Daryl would lie down with her, but she seems to sleep better when he's not adding to the warmth.

Sweetheart's gotten used to the sound behind the curtain. She knows her mother is sick, but she was sick and got better. Daryl doubts it occurs to the little girl that her mother may not. She sits on the bearskin rug now, calmly sorting stars and triangles and circles into her wooden shape sorter, only occasionally glancing in the direction of the sound behind the curtain.

Daryl stands beside the unlit fireplace and sweeps the rosary off the mantle, the one he gave Carol for their first Valentine's Day in Jamestown, to replace the one she'd lost. Her cough grows louder behind the curtain as he examines the worn beads, some dark brown, some light brown.

He hasn't prayed since he was a child, when his mother taught him, "Now I lay me down to sleep…" It was always a weird prayer, he thought, that part about "If I die before I wake," like you could be expected to die any night, any minute. And his mother did. She passed out with a lit cigarette in her hand, on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, and burned herself to ash. He was eight years old.

He runs his thumb over the rough, silver Jesus that lays crucified on the surface of the wooden cross. Jesus saw his own death coming. Saw it from miles away. Like Daryl can see Carol's coming now. Jesus didn't choose to stop his. Daryl is powerless to stop hers. They don't have inhalers or ventilators or nebulizer treatments or albuterol or steroids to help her breathe. All they have is hot water and peppermint oil. He's got a bowl of that steaming by her bedside now. It's not helping much.

"How's this thing work?" he asks Sweetheart. He tries to hide the crack in his voice when he does. He lets the rosary dangle from the palm of his hand. "Ya ever seen yer mama use it? Huh, Sweetie?" The little girl looks up at him. "Ya know how this thing works?"

Sweetheart stands up from her shape sorter, toddles forward three steps, and reaches up for the rosary. She drags it from Daryl's hand. "Pwetty!" she says. "Mama's pwetty ting." She yanks the beads with two hands until the rosary opens wide, and then she drapes it over her own neck. She looks up at her father, a huge smile on her innocent little face, deaf to the coughing behind the curtain, renewed to life. "Sweetie pwetty!"

"Yeah," Daryl says, the ah a suppressed sob. "M'bay girl's real pretty."