“They’re sleeping,” said Gogo, her voice worn from singing.
Vern opened her eyes, pupils shriveling to tiny specks at the assault of sunlight. As the room came in focus, so, too, did the aliveness of her body, solid and heavy. “I aint dead,” she said.
“You’re not,” Gogo said from where she sat at the foot of the bed. She smelled like coffee and woodsmoke. “How are you feeling?”
Vern flexed, stretched, tensed, cracked, and squeezed, feeling out the possibilities of her body. Everything hurt, but she felt that if she stood up to walk, she’d not immediately topple. “A little better than last night,” Vern said, pointing her toes, then turning them in circles to stretch her ankles.
Gogo cleared her throat and scooted up the mattress so she was closer to Vern. “Last night was ten days ago. That’s how long you’ve been in this bed.” Gogo’s brow furrowed deeply, and Vern swallowed. She blinked away the tear threatening to loose itself from the corner of her eye.
“I guess all the praying worked,” she said. “Were you singing that whole time?”
“A lot of it. As much as I could. I fell asleep sometimes but only when Bridget was here to back me up,” said Gogo. She sounded tired and no wonder why.
“The only time I’ve had people pray over me like that was to save me from my sin,” said Vern, either self-pityingly or self-mockingly; she couldn’t decide.
Snorting, Gogo wiped the back of her hand over her lips, rubbing off dried saliva that had accumulated in the sides. “You’re the last woman in the world that needs saving, and I know a lot of women,” she said, and proceeded to examine Vern, first with her stethoscope. She pressed the cold metal drum against Vern’s chest through the sheet, which was all Vern had in the way of body covering.
“Almost everybody I’ve ever known would disagree with you,” said Vern.
“And are you the type?” Gogo asked.
Vern looked at her questioningly.
“To agree with what everybody’s got to say about you?”
Vern raised an eyebrow. No one had ever once accused her of being agreeable. “I’m not the type to agree with what anybody’s got to say about anything,” she said. She tried to sit up, but buckled under the weight of her body.
“Slowly!” said Gogo. The buzz of a mounting headache forced Vern’s eyes briefly shut again. She inhaled and exhaled through a nauseating dizzy spell, needing several moments to regain her bearings.
Gogo held a cup of water to Vern’s lips. Though she hated to be babied, Vern sipped greedily. “You don’t have to treat me like an invalid. I’m cured now anyway, aren’t I?” she asked after swallowing.
“I don’t know what you are,” said Gogo, as she dabbed away the wetness at the side of Vern’s lips with her thumb before offering her more water. “When the snow cleared a couple days ago, I was able to get samples to a friend of mine for testing.”
Vern pulled away from Gogo and wiped her own mouth with the back of her hand. “Samples?”
“Blood, urine, saliva, skin,” said Gogo, the list sounding like ingredients for a conjure bag. “I took the liberty. I’m sorry.” Gogo had reduced Vern to scrapings and fluids.
“What did the tests say?” asked Vern. After four years of not knowing, her desire for answers beat out her indignation at having had her bodily consent violated.
“Best we can conclude, you’re a miracle,” said Gogo. Despite the grandiosity of the words themselves, she spoke the statement matter-of-factly.
Vern still balked at the drama of it. “That’s not a answer at all, unless you’re seriously saying you put my blood up under a microscope and there was a divine light glowing through the lens.”
Gogo, ever so faintly, smirked as she tossed several strands of black tangled hair behind her ear. Her hair had been unwound from its braid sometime or several times in the last ten days and now hung over to one side, disguising the shaved underbelly. “None of the test results revealed your divinity as such, no,” Gogo said but frustratingly did not explain what they did reveal.
“So? What is it?” asked Vern, impatient.
Taking pity, Gogo finally answered. “It’s an infection, nothing more … and yet everything more. A fungus, one yet to be described by any of the scientific literature we could find. The miracle part is that from the outside looking in, it has ravaged your body, but here you are talking to me like you’ve got nothing more than a cold.”