Remi-niscent

Chapter 38:

Not to sound like I'm complaining, but I'll be the first to admit that the next few days that pass are tiring and stressful to say the least. The three of of us divvy up our time to take hourly shifts all around the clock just to make sure the girl who is now in our care, doesn't suddenly take a turn for the worse. So far, it feels as though nothing has changed in her appearance at all as she still looks as ghostly as ever. 

But at least on the plus side, from what I can tell with my meagre experience, the wound on her stomach seems to be healing nicely and while I know I've done all I can do, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that there is no internal damage that I may have potentially missed.

During the times when we're not busy watching attentively over our patient, we busy ourselves with trying to figure where we should go from here on out and what we should try to do next in our attempt to find the nearest civilisation.

Since we've arrived here, thankfully we have not been going hungry, because finally with a stroke of luck, we managed to find a good supply of fish in the small stream that is nearby. So with oodles and oodles of time to spare on our hands now, we have been catching at least a couple for each meal every day. While I'm not sure if it should surprise me as much as it does, it's still a pleasant revelation every time I stick a bite in my mouth, just how good real food tastes and how much flavour it has. In comparison to the last week, or weeks, I don't even know anymore, during which we'd just been living off some kind of wild fruit that we found, - It tasted kind of like strawberries - This proper sustenance has us feeling almost as if we're living like kings. Chicken soup for the soul? More like, self caught, perfectly smoked fish on a stick, thank you very much.

It's day five after finding the girl we finally get the answer to our question, I know it has been this long because I've been making small indentations into one of the roots every morning when the sun comes up. So, making my way over to the girl in time for my shift, I take a seat next to her and begin my daily habit over carving another notch into the tree. Turning back to watch the girl as she lies still and comatose, I can't help but thinking that for some reason her face seems familiar. 

It's bugging me to no end, but my mind can't seem connect the dots, because the thought that's running through my mind since we had found the girl was that it was someone we knew, but I still refuse to believe that it could be possible. I mean there was no way that we could have crossed paths again right? But for once I am happy to be proved wrong, as when the sun rises high above us in the sky and the light falls on her face in a new angle, I realise in shock that it has been who I originally thought all along.

"Jack. Em." I call and I can feel my hands trembling from the sheer stupefaction of it all, "Come here you're not going to believe this." 

Thankfully I don't have to repeat myself as I'm almost certain the words would have failed me, but the two of them immediately come running as they must have picked up on the urgency in my voice, "What's up man?  What happened? Is the girl okay? Why do you sound so panicked!" Asks Jack in concern, rapid firing question after question my way.

But all I can physically do is point my shaking hand in utter disbelief while whispering, "Look for yourselves."

"Remi?"

My mind can still barely comprehend what it's seeing, or maybe it's just refusing to as if not wanting the horrifying new reality to be true. While there's one part of me that's screaming hallelujah at the top of its lungs at the fact that Remi is still alive, unlike what we had thought since the time we had all been separated. It doesn't seem possible that the feisty girl I had met only a few weeks ago, has wasted already away so much, into not much more than a barely breathing skeleton. Worryingly, her ribs stick out prominently, her face gaunt and hollow, even with the persistent swelling around her eyes and jaw, that make her so hardly recognisable from the black and blue bruises tinged slightly with yellow around the edges. Tearing my eyes away from her for a second, I see that the others don't seem to be faring any better than I am with the new revelation, as has Em promptly started crying while Jack looks like he's about to be sick.