as unsinkable as i can be // the wilds

chapter twenty-five.

I have never vomited more in my life than I did that day.

I never want to vomit more in my life than I did that day.

Day twelve, I think? I knew that Nora had been keeping track, but at that point, we all were pretty much just putting one foot in front of the other. We were clueless.

Everyone but Shelby threw up. Ironic, wasn't it? That the one girl who I would've killed to see puke her guts out was sitting on the ledge, her skin a perfectly normal color, no sweat pouring from her pores.

Dot couldn't even move herself once she started vomiting. I hadn't eaten quite that many, not compared to Martha and Toni, so I feebly helped her up so she wouldn't be sitting in a pool of her own vomit.

I would've been concerned that she wasn't keeping the mussels down, but every single one of us was heaving up everything that we had eaten in the past few days. At that point, I guessed that it was just a really bad batch of clams.

It was obvious that Rachel blamed herself. When she wasn't doubled over, she was searching for the medicine bag, Nora weakly trying to help her as well.

"Damn it! Where is it?" She tossed everything we had to the side, going through every little place that we had ever harbored. Leah lifted her head slowly, trying her hardest to walk towards the others to help, but tripping a bit and landing in the waves.

I assessed the others, trying to figure out who could help find the med bags and who needed to get out of the sun and into some shade.

Rachel was okay, and surprisingly, so was Dot, despite her injury. Nora seemed okay, as did Fatin. As much as vomiting so much wasn't pleasant, even I felt okay. It almost felt better to have everything out of me than when it was sitting inside me.

Martha and Toni got the worst of it, by far. I began to notice the way her eyes rolled back in her eyes, immediately running towards her and falling beside her. She vomited again, and I held loose strands of her hair back and called out to Rachel.

"Where is the med bag?!" I shouted, and when Martha crawled to Toni's side, she nearly collapsed in on herself.

"I-I can't find it!" Rachel called back, frantically starting to go through the bushes that lined the shore, Nora quietly beside her doing the same thing.

"Woods," I heard someone moan quietly behind me. I whipped my head around to find Dot trying to lift her head up, sweat streaming into her eyes and soaking her eyebrows.

"Woods?" I repeated, scooting close to where she was laying in the shade. I lifted her head into my lap and used a nearby shirt to whip around her eyes and forehead. Her skin was extremely pale, so sickly it was hard to look at, but all I could think about was how I knew for a fact that Toni was much worse off.

"Look. In. Woods," Dot managed to get out, stuttering through clenched teeth, gasping for air. I noticed a new strand of blood seeping from her knee, and as much as I hated her grunt of pain, I pressed down on the bandage.

"The med bag is in the woods, back by the water hole!" I called back to Rachel and Nora and whoever else was listening. A few tears leaked from Dot's eyes as I checked to see if she was okay, and I quickly wiped them away and shook my head.

"I know, Dot, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry-" My head whirled back and forth, my lips dry and cracked as I tried my hardest to keep Dot's knee from getting any worse than it was.

"I'll get the med bag!" I heard Leah call behind me, running into the woods as best as she could without tripping over herself or vomiting up whatever she had left in her.

"Hey, I got it," Fatin whispered beside me, coming to move my hands away from the bandage. "You need rest and fluids." She had red rings around her eyes as if she had been crying, but she didn't look extremely sick. If I remember correctly, she didn't like the mussels and hadn't eaten that many at all.

"Are you sure?" I asked, but my body was screaming at me to take this moment and sleep, drink, anything other than keep moving. I knew I needed to replenish all that my body had lost.

"Yes, I promise," Fatin smiled, already turning her back to me to take care of Dot. I nodded, closing my eyes for a moment and breathing extremely deep inward.

Everything my instincts were telling me to do didn't make any sense to me. Something in the back of my head was screaming at me to go find Leah, to check on her, to find the med bag on my own.

Something else was telling me to check on Shelby, that something was up with her. I picked that mind up and threw it out because as much as I couldn't even stand to think about her, she wasn't the type of person to go behind other people's backs.

Where is Shelby?

Suddenly, my body jolted, and I vomited up more bile onto the sand beside me. Where was Shelby? Five seconds before that, she had been sitting with Martha, cleaning her up. Suddenly, she was gone, as was Leah.

My head pounded.

"Fatin, where did Shelby go?" I asked softly, wiping my mouth and pulling my sticky hair up off my neck.

"Uh, I think I saw her go into the woods or something. She went up before Leah went up, so maybe she was looking for the med bag too?"

I nodded, coughing a little and spitting into the sand. I couldn't shake that feeling, that something was up. But at that point, I didn't want to go after Shelby. I was still so angry at her for everything, that I couldn't even bring myself to care about what she was doing in the woods.

Was that healthy? No, it really wasn't, especially since she genuinely could've been doing terrible things, and I was too caught up in my own drama to think about what possibly she could be doing to Leah, or even to herself, or our med bag...

My brain just started spiraling at that point, to which I told myself that I needed to be okay, that I had no one here to save me.

At which point, everything started to go black, and I fell into the deepest sleep I had had in an extremely long time.