Read In the Wet for Free Online Page B

and although I had been taking my pills, I fell ill with an attack of malaria. It was nothing like so bad as the first bout that I had had in Salamaua, and I knew what to do about it now. I lay in bed sweating and a little delirious for a day, dosing myself; Mrs. Roberts was very kind and brought some things up to my vicarage and either she or Coty looked in every two hours to make me a cup of tea. On the second day Sister Finlay heard that I was ill and came to see what was the matter, and gave me a good dressing down, and wrapped me up in blankets and took me to the hospital in Art Duncan’s utility, which got bogged a hundred yards from the hospital, so that I had to get out and walk the rest of the way. Finlay and Templeton put me to bed in more comfortable surroundings than I had been in for some time, and I stayed in hospital for the next week.
    The fever spent its force after the first few days, as I had known it would, and they let me get up for dinner and sit in a dressing gown to write my parish magazine, going to bed again before tea. My temperature was generally normal at that time though it rose a point or so each evening, but that was nothing to worry about. I was sitting writing in their sitting room on the afternoon of January the 8th; I remember the date particularly because it was two days after Epiphany. I had not been able to preach in church the previous day, the first Sunday after Epiphany, and so I was writing what I wanted to tell my parishioners in the magazine. January the 8th it was, and I was sitting writing in the middle of the afternoon when I heard the sound of a horse and wheels. I got up and went to the verandah, and I saw Liang Shih draw up before the hospital in the vegetable cart.
    I was surprised to see him, because we had had no fresh vegetables since Christmas and we all thought that we should see no more until the rains were over and the roads improved. Sister Finlay and Templeton were lying down; I went and called them, and then went back to the verandah. It was raining a little; Liang was getting down from his two wheeled vehicle and tying the reins to the fence. He had an old Army waterproof sheet tied with a bit of string around his shoulders to serve as a cape; under that he was in his working shirt and dirty, soaked trousers; he wore a battered old felt hat upon his head to shed the rain.
    I said, “Come in out of the wet, Liang. Nice to see you.”
    He came on to the verandah. “Sister, she here?” he asked.
    “She’s just coming,” I replied. “We didn’t expect to see you for a bit. What have you got for us?”
    “I no got vegetables,” he said. “Garden all under the water. I come see Sister. Stevie, he got sick in stomach.”
    “Sick in the stomach, is he?” I asked. “What sort of sickness, Liang?”
    He put his hand upon his lower abdomen. “He got pain here, big pain. He been sick three days.”
    “Is he very bad, Liang?”
    He nodded. “Very bad now. I want Sister come see him, or perhaps he die.”

Two
    S ISTER FINLAY came out on to the verandah behind me. I turned, and told her that Stevie was sick. She nodded briefly, and I knew that she had been expecting this. “Where is he sick, Liang?” she asked. “Show me just where the place is.”
    He put his hand upon his abdomen and rubbed it over a fairly wide area. “He sick here.”
    “Does that mean anything to you?” I asked her.
    She shook her head. “It might be almost anything.” She turned to Liang. “Has he been taking anything for it?”
    Perhaps there was a tiny hesitation. “Hot cloths,” he said. “I put hot cloths on belly. Very hot water, Sister.”
    “And that didn’t do any good?”
    “No, Sister.”
    “Why didn’t you bring him in here with you?”
    Liang said, “He no understand me—him mind away. I no can lift him, put in jinker. I no know what to do, and then I think better come for help.”
    She stood biting her lip for a minute. “We’ll have to get him in here,