Stealing Kathryn. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ on the paraphernalia there. There were bottles of medicine, a thermometer, and a large china basin with rags soaking in water and melting ice. The bottle labels were a confusion to her for a moment as she tried to get a grasp on her weary concentration. Then she found what she was looking for. She tumbled two small aspirin from one bottle into her palm, hoping to keep Jillian’s fever down. Then Kathryn grabbed a glass of cool water and turned back to Jillian, maneuvering herself behind the frail ten-year-old’s head and lifting it until she could manage to wrangle the medicine down the child’s throat.

      Jillian accepted the pills well enough for someone who had occasionally been too weak to swallow, and it gave Kathryn a glimmer of hope. What she wouldn’t give for the simplicity of children’s liquid medicine right then. But in the bush of Australia you had to make do with what was in your supplies, and the colorful syrup had run out a while back.

      “There now, what a good girl you are,” she praised Jillian softly, stubbornly believing that the child could somehow hear her. She spent a moment stroking her sister’s thin, pale red hair. Then she slid gingerly from the bed.

      Kathryn waited anxiously for several minutes until she was certain the child had quieted again and was resting as peacefully as she could. Then she straightened stiffly, her hands pressing into the aching curve of her lower back. She looked at her watch, trying to determine what day it was as well as the time. She had called for help almost twenty-four hours ago, but things took time out in the bush. But it should be soon. Hopefully very soon.

      Kathryn felt her exhaustion with sudden acuteness. Dizziness washed through her and she touched fingertips to her forehead in an attempt to steady herself and her swaying vision.

      “Father,” she prayed fiercely, “give me strength.” She gritted her teeth as a harsher wave of vertigo spilled over her.

      Kathryn…

      Kathryn gasped softly when the low, thick whisper reached her ears. She whirled around drunkenly, taking in the madly tilting room to see who had spoken her name.

      A macabre chill rushed her flesh.

      “Papa?” she asked breathlessly, widening her eyes in an attempt to focus.

      But no one was there but her and Jillian.

      Kathryn reached to grasp one of the spiraling bedposts, clinging to it as she searched herself for a store of strength she might not yet have tapped.

      There was none.

      Kathryn fought back tears.

      She must find the strength!

      Somehow.

      She was the only one left for her desperately ill family to depend on.

      She waited, breathing deeply, for the room to stop pitching and rolling around her. She dared not close her eyes. She would surely succumb to the persistent, lurking need to sleep that had harried her every step these last days. She simply did not have the time or the luxury for sleep. And anyway, whenever she did fall asleep, there was nothing there for her but terrible and disturbing dreams. Sometimes, like before, all-out nightmares.

      Slowly the room righted itself, becoming once again the firm, solidly built expanse of sturdy antique furnishings it had always been.

      Taking another deep breath, Kathryn took a moment to tuck a straggling tendril of hair back behind her ear. She slipped a palm against her slightly rounded stomach, wishing it would settle as the room had. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything, but it seemed very unimportant when the lives of her family were at risk.

      Then she took the firmest steps she could manage to the door. She was halfway along the hallway when her vision blurred again and the floor fell away with sickening speed. She collapsed to her knees and hands, jarring her joints as she realized the floor was still very much where it was supposed to be, it was merely her head and her vision leaving much to be desired.

      “Get up, Kathryn Louise Macdonough,” she commanded herself fiercely. “You’re the daughter of Connor Macdonough, the granddaughter of Fiona Macdonough. You shame the Macdonough name if you quit now!”

      Somehow, after this empowering speech, she managed to drag herself back up to her feet, using the wall as her main support. She slid herself along it so that she could tell right from left and up from down while using it for the stability her betraying eyes would not provide. She finally reached her father’s door.

      “Kathryn.”

      The whisper was louder this time. Nearer.

      She convinced herself that it had been her father after all, even though it sounded nothing like him. But the sickness could very easily have put that rough, mournful lilt into his words…couldn’t it?

      Kathryn shrugged off another foreboding chill. She had been living in a stranger’s body for well over a week now, exhaustion robbing her of all that had felt normal. A new, strange feeling seeping into her bones was not all that new or strange an occurrence to her anymore.

      She pushed herself into Connor Macdonough’s room and moved to the bed, steeling herself for the weakened image of her father. The preparation did not work. As she bent to change the cloth on his forehead, now heated through with his fever, her eyes misted with tears.

      Her father had been a large, robust man. He filled rooms with his very presence and had made stone walls vibrate with a mere laugh. But now her poor papa was but a shadow of himself. In just a week he’d lost a noticeable amount of weight from this wretched flu. His hands, which until now had still been able to toss her around despite her twenty-two years of age and full-grown womanhood, were now knobbed joints and thin, translucent skin. His merry cheeks had lost their natural color, only the occasional spike of fever making them blush.

      Kathryn cursed the pilot of the supply plane that had come out to them a little less than two weeks ago. He had brought this vile sickness with him, his simple sneezes and sniffles dooming her father and sister to suffer. The nearest medical help was much too far to drive to by conventional means, and all that rough country and dust while strapped in a car would do her family no good. No, the best thing was to wait for an airlift. Which should be soon. Hopefully very soon.

      Kathryn laid the fresh cloth on her father’s forehead, biting her lip brutally hard. She wouldn’t let herself think about the worst. Help was coming. She would go downstairs and call once again, pestering the authorities with all she had to make them come for her family.

      The only other option would be to give up…and to bury them next to her sweet, unfortunate mother. The hard life out in this wild country had claimed her mother’s life three years earlier.

      Pain of that too-recent loss flooded her, but again she fought back the despairing thoughts. Now was not the time for mourning. Right now, she had to keep her already foggy head as clear as she could if she was to complete her rounds and make her call to civilization.

      Then, maybe, she could rest.

      For a small while.

      “Kathryn!”

      “Yes, Papa, Kathryn’s here,” she murmured automatically. She looked down at her father’s face.

      He was as still as death. There was barely breath enough in him to sustain his life—never mind to speak her name in that strong, growling whisper.

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