Marlin's Faith: The Virtues Book II Read Online Free Page A

was out of the woods. Not like I’d let him do much. Nothing either, for that matter. He’d been forced to put antibiotics through her IV a time or two when it was clear she couldn’t keep any of the pills he’d brought with him down. The anti-nausea medicine, for whatever reason, didn’t work for shit on her. The pediatric popsicles Doc had me give her to help keep her hydrated only stayed down some of the time. Of course, the red ones were her favorite, and of course, they stained like a motherfucker. Didn’t it figure? As soon as she could keep some broth and crackers in her, maybe some pudding, she’d have to start the antibiotic pills again.
    I sat with her while she soaked in her sorely needed bath, and counted the knobs of her spine and every rib, where they stood out prominently against her back. She was so thin … It’d killed me when the doc had said she was lucky, that the sexually transmitted infections she had were all fixable with a course of a couple of weeks’ worth of pills. She had three, apparently… Gonorrhea, Chlamydia and some shit I ain’t never heard of called Trichomoniasis.
    She would need regular bloodwork for a while to keep checking for HIV or any of the Hepatitis’, but he said the initial tests had come back clear, which was a real good sign. All I could keep thinking was there weren’t no good here. None at all.
    “You cool for a minute?” I asked her softly and she nodded without looking. I pulled myself up, pushing off the edge of the tub to get to my feet and felt like I was getting too old for sitting on the floor like that, which was a bitch seeing as I was only thirty-six. I went out into the main bedroom and stretched for a second before I changed the bedding. It needed it. She’d been sweating hard. That done I went back in to check on her and found her crying quietly. It broke my fucking heart that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do except for what I’d been doing all this time. I sat back down on the floor and just hung around near her. Just there, for whatever she might need.
    “I’m sorry,” she uttered and raised her hands from the bath, scrubbing her tears away with her damp fingers. She held her breath and splashed water onto her face and I turned my head away, staring at the glassed in shower, trying hard not to study her reflection and to give her both support and privacy in equal measure. I mean, what else could I fucking do?
    “Thank you, Marlin,” she said and I jumped slightly.
    “For what?”
    “Everything.”
    “I ain’t done nothin’ really.”
    She finished her bath in silence and I let her, standing and waiting out in the room for her to dry off and get dressed. She was unsteady on her feet when she slipped out into the room and blinked up at me owlishly when I turned around and looked down at her from where I stood sentinel.
    Wordlessly she held up that leather wrist band with the old fashioned key plate set into it and I smiled and nodded. She slipped it over her hand and held it in place, turning up the delicate underside of her wrist so that I could tug the laces tight and tie it off for her. Silently we stood while I carefully tied the thin leather cording off in a bow.
    “Someday you gonna tell me what it means? Why it’s so important?” I asked quietly.
    “Maybe.”
    “You ain’t gotta tell me anything you don’t want to, Darlin’, but I sure would like to get to know you.”
    She looked thoughtful at that and with a halting step, took one out into the room, but stopped.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I don’t want to sound rude, but I’m sick of it in here… can we go someplace else in the house?” I smiled.
    “Yeah, you’re not a prisoner, Baby Girl. You’re a guest, you can go wherever you want. You good to make it downstairs? Sit in the kitchen while I make you something to eat, see if you can keep something down?”
    “I think so,” she nodded but wouldn’t look at me. She hugged herself around the middle