9. Silent Past #2
He then doubled over and hacked up a mouthful of dark red.
"Oh God... Mark." Josie rushed to him, her training warring with her terror. She knelt beside him and pressed a palm to his forehead.
He burned beneath her hand. Not merely feverish—scalding, heat radiating through the skin like something inside him had caught fire.
"J-Josie..." he rasped, but another wave of coughing stole the word and replaced it with more blood.
"Don't talk," she ordered, her voice steady even as her vision blurred with panic. "I've got you."
She dragged him to the bed, muscles screaming under his heavy, unresponsive frame, refusing to let go of him even to catch her breath.
Once she got him onto the mattress, her hands moved on autopilot—pulse rapid and thready, breathing shallow, skin ashen around the mouth with fingertips already tinged blue.
She'd seen sepsis, meningitis, and Ebola during her trauma rotations.
This resembled none of them.
This looked worse.
"Mark, listen to me." She brushed his hair back, a gesture repeated a thousand times over fifteen years of marriage, her gloves slick with sweat and blood. "I need to get your fever down. I need Tylenol, fluids, something to—"
She had Tylenol. She had a few bags of IV fluids in the basement emergency kit, leftovers from a sick dog years ago. But nothing—absolutely nothing—to treat whatever ravaged him now.
She thought of the hospital: the chaos.
Going there meant suicide.
She stood frozen for one horrible moment, thoughts racing, chest aching, tears fighting their way to the surface. She could handle battlefield emergencies, mass casualties, gunshot wounds, crash victims torn open on her table.
But this?
This was her husband. She could still feel the warmth of his hand in hers, hear his off-key singing in the kitchen—the man who'd promised her forty more years, now dying on their bed from something she couldn't diagnose and couldn't fix.
Her breath hitched.
"Please," she whispered, gripping his hand through her glove, willing her warmth into him. "Don't leave me. Don't leave Layla."
His eyes fluttered, unfocused, already drifting somewhere she couldn't follow.
No hospital. No meds. No help.
Just time.
And not much of it.
By the next morning, Mark was gone.
Josie knew before she opened her eyes. She knew by the silence. No ragged breathing. No delirious muttering. No tearing cough ripping his lungs apart.
Just stillness.
Her stomach dropped. She forced her eyes open and found him lying exactly where she'd left him, but changed—horribly changed. His eyes remained open, glassy and unfocused, staring through the ceiling towards a world he no longer belonged to.
For a full minute she couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
Only one word throbbed through her mind: No.
She finally forced her legs to move, shaky and numb. She crossed the room, knelt beside him, and touched his cheek with trembling fingers. Cold skin. Already stiffening. She pressed her forehead to his, choking on a sob she tried—and failed—to swallow.
"Mark... baby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry—"
But nothing answered her. Not even the echo of him remained in the room.
She saw it all vanishing—every plan they'd made, every ordinary morning, the future they were supposed to have.
Then, a different image surfaced: Layla's face, waiting downstairs.
That was the only future that mattered now.
Josie wiped her face on her sleeve, forced her breath steady, and got to work.
She stripped the sheet from the bed and wrapped Mark gently, folding it around him as she used to swaddle Layla—tenderly, carefully, as if it still mattered. Her hands shook, fumbling every knot, but she refused to fall apart again. Not yet. She couldn't afford it.
It took everything she had to move him to the balcony. His body was heavy now, unresponsive, a weight of finality she wasn't ready to accept. But she forced herself through it, step by agonizing step, until he lay outside, covered and still beneath the pale morning light.
She shut the balcony door, turned the lock, and pulled the curtains closed.
That nearly destroyed her.
She leaned her forehead against the glass, shoulders shaking silently. Closing him out felt like a betrayal; leaving him inside was impossible. She whispered a final, hoarse apology to the man she loved, then turned away before her knees could give out.
There would be no time to mourn. Not properly.
Her phone had died sometime in the night—dead screen, no signal. The Wi-Fi was out. The emergency broadcast loop had vanished. The neighborhood sat eerily quiet outside every window.
She was completely, terrifyingly alone.
And Layla still waited.
Josie wiped the last tears with her sleeve and moved through the house with mechanical precision, letting survival instinct override grief.
She filled every bathtub, every pot, every bowl, every vase she could find—anything that might hold water.
Jugs, pitchers, leftover milk cartons. Water sloshed across counters and tile, and she didn't stop.
When that was finished, she pulled the medical-grade disinfectant from the basement emergency kit and scrubbed herself raw—arms, neck, face, under her nails—until her skin burned and her eyes stung.
She whispered a frantic prayer that it would prove enough to keep Layla safe from whatever horror had taken Mark so fast.
Only when the sting of disinfectant faded did the next crushing fear settle in:
What if it wasn't enough?
But she couldn't break now. So she took one last steadying breath, arranged her face into something calm—something resembling a mother with everything under control—and stepped toward the stairs.
She would protect Layla.
She would survive this.
She would not fail her daughter the way the world had failed everyone else.
With her heart splintered and her hands still trembling, Josie descended into the basement to face her new reality.
Josie woke with a strangled scream.
"Mark—MARK!"
Her body jolted upright, hands clawing at the air, searching for someone who wasn't there and hadn't been for a long time.
Seth reacted instantly, catching her forearm—not hard, but firm enough to anchor her back to the present.
"Josie, hey, hey …you're safe," he said, his voice low and steady. "It's just a dream. You're here. You're okay."
Her chest rose and fell in ragged gasps as she pressed her palms hard against her eyes, willing herself not to fall apart in front of him.
The SUV was dim and warm from their shared body heat. Behind her, Layla slept in her car seat, her small chest rising and falling softly beneath her blanket. The sheer innocence of the sight made Josie's throat close even tighter.
Seth softened his grip but didn't pull away.
"Who's Mark?" he asked. "Your husband?"
Josie's lips trembled, but before she could answer, a small, sleepy voice cut through the tension.
"Mark's my daddy."
Layla rubbed her eyes, blinking at them both from her car seat, Mr. Ranger dangling from one hand by a worn ear.
Seth froze, caught off-guard by the bright, matter-of-fact tone of a child.
Josie drew in a shaky breath and turned toward her daughter, brushing Layla's hair back with an unsteady hand.
"Yes, baby," she whispered. "Daddy."
Layla, oblivious to the ache in her mother's voice, smiled softly and curled back into her blankets, asleep again within moments.
She didn't remember the sickness, the panic, or the night everything ended.
Josie would have given anything to forget that, easily.
Seth watched her with quiet understanding—not pushing, not prying, just present. His gaze carried a haunted look she recognized, the quiet weight of a grief she knew all too well.
Josie wiped her eyes and managed a tight, grateful smile.
"Thanks," she said. "For pulling me out."
Seth nodded once, steady as ever.
"Anytime."
"We need to find a pull-off," Seth said into the radio.
His voice was level, but Jay caught the edge beneath it. The days ran longer now, but nowhere near long enough.
Jay clicked his radio. "Yeah. Keep a lookout. It's getting dark fast."
Cara leaned forward against her seatbelt as if the extra inches might help her see farther, but the road had already turned a dusky purple, the forest pressing close on either side.
Behind them in Beast, Seth checked his rearview mirror again. Layla sat buckled securely in the back seat, her head tipped sideways against her bear, while Josie kept her eyes fixed on the passing wilderness, fingers tapping an anxious rhythm against her knee.
Jay slowed as they rounded a bend, scanning for anything usable—an old driveway, a rest stop, any patch of ground wide enough to hide two SUVs and two trailers from the road.
Cara pointed suddenly. "There—up on the right. Looks like an old logging pull-off."
Jay spotted it: a break in the trees, barely noticeable unless you were searching for it, overgrown and uneven but deep enough to conceal them. He flicked on the blinker—pure habit, pointless now—and pulled the SUV off the pavement.
Static crackled, then Seth's voice: "That'll do. I'll park beside you."
Jay maneuvered to the back of the clearing and tucked their vehicle behind a fallen pine. Seth pulled Beast in beside him, angling it so both windshields faced the narrow entrance—a defensive setup that had become automatic somewhere along the way, so ingrained neither man needed to mention it.
When the engines shut off, an absolute silence swept in.
Jay opened his door but stayed seated a moment longer, listening. Only wind. A distant bird call. The slow tick of cooling engines.
Cara unbuckled and pulled her coat on. "We should keep lights low.," she murmured.
Jay nodded. "No lanterns. Flashlights pointed down only. Let's get set up."
Seth climbed out of Beast with stiff shoulders while Josie lingered inside, watching Layla before easing the door open with careful hands.
Seth met Jay halfway between the vehicles.
"Bad spot for sound," he said in a low voice. "Anything comes down that road, we'll hear it.”