Chapter 30: The Health Tonic
OLIVIA caught a cold, which didn’t happen often.
Her grandmother would always say, “The secret to health is a stomach seventy percent full and sleep aplenty,” warning against overeating and not sleeping enough. Olivia was careful to stick to that advice, which meant she was rarely laid up in bed with an illness. Until now.
“Olivia, how are you doing?” asked Arthur.
“My throat hurts. It should go away with some rest, though.”
“It’s ’cause you did all that traveling in the snow.”
“I had no choice. Bobby at the poultry farm is getting on in years. A simple cold could be the end for him.”
Olivia’s face was flushed red from the fever, only her face poking out from beneath the heavy, winter blanket. Arthur wanted to stay with her, but she refused to let him stay since it wouldn’t be good if both of them caught this bug.
“You need to go to work,” she said.
“I know. Well, I’m off then. I’ll come home as early as possible. You just stay there and rest.”
“I will. Have a nice day, Arthur.” She brought just her hand out from under the blanket to wave, then closed her eyes again. She’d been pretending she felt better than she did, but groaned in pain from her headache the moment she was alone.
Every joint in her body ached. She tried having some of the bitter potatoes that’d worked so well on the illness going around before, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on this cold.
“Grandma said being sick can be a chance for learning, so long as it doesn’t kill you. She was right. It’s this bad for someone as young as me. I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been for Bobby.”
Bobby, the poultry farmer, had helped his son with work even after he caught the cold. They only called Olivia in once he developed a wet cough.
He had a high fever, and his cough was quite bad. When she was checking up on him, she remembered feeling uneasy about whether or not she would be as filled with vitality at his age as he was.
A few days after her house call with him, she started having the same wet cough. She immediately realized she’d caught his cold. They sent word to her that Bobby had recovered, but she was only getting worse and worse.
Lara was handling the restaurant, and all the regular customers said things like, “It’s not often Olivia ends up ill in bed,” or “I hope it doesn’t take a turn for the worse.”
Olivia had absolutely no appetite but was constantly drinking the broth Lara regularly brought up for her and forcing herself to eat wheat porridge. She couldn’t even get herself to finish one child-sized bowl. Her stomach ached, and breathing was painful.
Arthur came home that night, but Olivia’s fever had only gotten worse by then, leaving her doing nothing but huffing as she struggled to breathe. She couldn’t even really respond to his questions.
I have to reply, Arthur’s trying to talk to me, but her body felt like she was sinking in mud. She couldn’t sleep, but she was so tired.
Arthur was looking at her with such concern that she reached out to touch his cheek. “You’re…cold,” she said.
“I’m not cold. You just have a really bad fever.”
Arthur’s heart was wide open. Olivia could feel the sorrow and concern flowing from him. He held her hot hand in both of his and pressed it against his cheek as he said something.
Olivia had told him to sleep in the room next to this one until her cold went away, but she remembered vaguely wondering why he was with her late into the night when she was sick.
Breathing was painful, and inside her chest there was a gurgling sound, so Olivia tried to roll on her side. Arthur immediately seemed to guess what she wanted and gently moved her onto her side before rubbing her back. And he was saying something again.
What is he saying? she wondered.
Just as she was falling into sleep, her ears picked up what it was: “Mum, Dad, Liddie, please help her. I don’t even care if you need to take time off my life, just save her.”
Finally understanding what Arthur kept saying, Olivia’s heart ached. She caught snippets of Arthur’s memories, flashing in and out, from when he was a boy and watched over his entire family when they were sick, all by himself.
He’d cared for them, feeling hopeless. He didn’t even know how to cook anything decent, so he simply boiled vegetables until they were soft, seasoned them with a bit of salt, and fed that to his family.
“I’ll… I’ll be…fine,” said Olivia.
“Olivia! You’re awake? Are you thirsty? Do you need me to massage anywhere?”
“I’ll…be fine.”
She felt bad for Arthur who was so concerned for her he couldn’t even sleep, worried she might leave him like his family had before. Olivia reached out with both hands and cupped his face.
“What is it? You want me to do something?” he asked.
She just loved him so much. She gave a small shake of her head and closed her eyes. Her fever wasn’t showing any signs of going away, and she had odd dreams.
She dreamed of herself listening to a cat telling her everything it’d seen, or listening to the sparrows tell her how they found delicious grass seed, or listening to the horses telling each other how they wanted to run more.
The animals were always kind to Olivia, if sometimes curt.
For the first time in a long time, she dreamed about her childhood, how she couldn’t make friends with humans, but how she couldn’t join ranks with the animals either, and it made her think she didn’t belong anywhere.
Night came, and Arthur returned from work. He kissed Olivia’s brow over and over, saying, “Get better. Get better. You will get better,” almost like it was a spell he could cast.
“I’ll…be…fine,” she replied in a quiet voice, but Arthur’s sorrow was so great it overwhelmed everything.
Three days later, Olivia’s body finally started to fight off the cold.
Her fever started going down on the fourth day, and the pain in her joints receded. She could finally taste food again and even sit up.
By the end of the fifth day, she tottered downstairs and called Lara, who was reading one of Olivia’s grandmother’s books. “Lara,” she said.
“Olivia! Should you be out of bed?”
“It’s all right. I’m over the worst of it. Lara, could I borrow that book for a moment?” She took the book, moved a chair in front of the stove in the kitchen, and flipped through the pages.
“What are you looking for?”
“A recipe for a health tonic. My grandmother said it’s a good idea to start drinking it once you’re in your forties, but… Hm, I know it’s in here somewhere…”
“Health tonic? I want to know about this, too.”
“Oh, here it is. This is it for sure. Lara, could you try making this for me?”
“Leave it to me!”
Lara took the recipe upstairs to what used to be Olivia’s room, found the dried medicinal herbs needed from the cabinet packed full of them, then came back down to the kitchen.