Alice Munros Best

manage for a while without having to think about getting a doctor. In the same hall closet was a pile of clean, though worn and faded, towels, and she wet one of these and wiped his arms and legs, to try to get his fever down. He came half awake at this and began to cough again. She held him up and made him spit into the toilet paper, examined it once more and threw it down the toilet and washed her hands. She had a towel now to dry them on. She went downstairs and found a glass in the kitchen, also an empty, large ginger-ale bottle, whichshe filled with water. This she attempted to make him drink. He took a little, protested, and she let him lie down. In five minutes or so she tried again. She kept doing this until she believed he had swallowed as much as he could hold without throwing up.
    Time and again he coughed and she lifted him up, held him with one arm while the other hand pounded on his back to help loosen the load in his chest. He opened his eyes several times and seemed to take in her presence without alarm or surprise – or gratitude, for that matter. She sponged him once more, being careful to cover immediately with the blanket the part that had just been cooled.
    She noticed that it had begun to get dark, and she went down into the kitchen, found the light switch. The lights and the old electric stove were working. She opened and heated a can of chicken-with-rice soup, carried it upstairs and roused him. He swallowed a little from the spoon. She took advantage of his momentary wakefulness to ask if he had a bottle of aspirin. He nodded yes, then became very confused when trying to tell her where. “In the wastebasket,” he said.
    “No, no,” she said. “You don’t mean wastebasket.”
    “In the – in the –”
    He tried to shape something with his hands. Tears came into his eyes.
    “Never mind,” Johanna said. “Never mind.”
    His fever went down anyway. He slept for an hour or more without coughing. Then he grew hot again. By that time she had found the aspirin – they were in a kitchen drawer with such things as a screwdriver and some lightbulbs and a ball of twine – and she got a couple into him. Soon he had a violent coughing fit, but she didn’t think he threw them up. When he lay down she put her ear to his chest and listened to the wheezing. She had already looked for mustard to make a plaster with, but apparently there wasn’t any. She went downstairs again and heated some water and brought it in a basin. She tried to make him lean over it, tenting him with towels, so that he could breathe the steam. He would cooperate only for a moment or so, but perhaps it helped – he hacked up quantities of phlegm.
    His fever went down again and he slept more calmly. She dragged in an armchair she had found in one of the other rooms and she slept too,in snatches, waking and wondering where she was, then remembering and getting up and touching him – his fever seemed to be staying down – and tucking in the blanket. For her own cover she used the everlasting old tweed coat that she had Mrs. Willets to thank for.
    He woke. It was full morning. “What are you doing here?” he said, in a hoarse, weak voice.
    “I came yesterday,” she said. “I brought your furniture. It isn’t here yet, but it’s on its way. You were sick when I got here and you were sick most of the night. How do you feel now?”
    He said, “Better,” and began to cough. She didn’t have to lift him, he sat up on his own, but she went to the bed and pounded his back. When he finished, he said, “Thank you.”
    His skin now felt as cool as her own. And smooth – no rough moles, no fat on him. She could feel his ribs. He was like a delicate, stricken boy. He smelled like corn.
    “You swallowed the phlegm,” she said. “Don’t do that, it’s not good for you. Here’s the toilet paper, you have to spit it out. You could get trouble with your kidneys, swallowing it.”
    “I never knew that,” he said. “Could you find the coffee?”
    The percolator was black on the inside. She washed it as well as she could and put the coffee on. Then she washed and tidied herself, wondering what kind of food she should give him. In the pantry there was a box of biscuit mix. At first she thought she would have to mix it with water, but she found a can of milk powder as well. When the coffee was ready she had a pan of biscuits in the oven.
    AS SOON AS HE heard her busy in the kitchen, he got up to go to the toilet. He was