LONESOME TREE WAS A ghost town.
Tony pushed the wheelbarrow down Main Street, past the boarded- up storefronts. The once-thriving feed store had been taken over by the Red Cross and converted into a hospital.
The plains cottonwood was gone. Someone must have cut it up for firewood after it died of thirst.
At the makeshift hospital, Tony picked up Ant, who groaned and coughed.
Inside, the narrow building was shadowy and dark. The windows had been boarded up to keep out the dust and wind. Red Cross nurses wore uniforms that had once been starched white and were now a wrinkled gray. A doctor hurried from bed to bed, stopping just long enough at each to make an assessment and bark orders to the nurses following along behind him.
Tony carried Ant into the room. “I have a child here who needs help.”
A nurse approached them. She looked as haggard and drawn as everyone else. “How bad is he?”
“Bad.”
The nurse sighed heavily. “A bed came open this morning.”
They all knew that meant someone had died from the dust.
The nurse gave Elsa a sad look. “It’s been bad. Come.”
Elsa followed Tony into the room full of wheezing and coughing patients.
They settled Ant on a cot in back, beneath a ten-foot window covered by wooden boards. Even so, the sill was stuffed with rags. To the left, a cot held an old man who fought for every breath. A mask covered his eyes.
Elsa knelt beside her son.
Heat radiated off of him. She touched his hot forehead. “I’m here, Ant. We all are.”
Loreda sat at the end of the cot. “We’re gonna play checkers. I’ll let you win.”
Ant coughed harder.
Moments later, Rose came back with the doctor. She was holding on to his sleeve in a death grip. No doubt Rose had grabbed the poor man and dragged him over here. Somehow, Rose still had a fire in her. Elsa couldn’t imagine how she kept it lit in all this falling dirt. The doctor leaned down to take Ant’s temperature.
The doctor read the thermometer, then examined Ant and sighed. “Your son is seriously ill, which I’m sure you know. He has a high fever and is suffering from severe silicosis. Dust pneumonia. Prairie dust is full of silica. It builds up in the lungs and tears away the air sacs.”
“Which means?”
“He’s breathing in dirt and swallowing it. Filling up with it. There’s no other way to put it, but you’ve done the right thing to bring him here. This is the best place in town to be in a dust storm. We will take good care of him, I promise.” The doctor glanced down at beds full of wheezing, coughing, sweating, dying patients. “Try not to worry.”
“Is he dying?” Elsa asked quietly.
“Not yet.” The doctor touched her shoulder, gave her a gentle squeeze. “You need to go home now, let me help him.”
Elsa knelt beside Ant’s cot. She buried her face in the hot crook of his neck, nuzzled him. “I’m here, baby boy.” Her voice broke. “I love you.”
Rose gently pulled Elsa to her feet. It took all of Elsa’s self-discipline not to wail or scream or fall apart. She had no idea how she found the strength to turn around and meet her mother-in-law’s sad gaze.
“We have some butter,” Rose said in a tight voice. “We could make him a cookie or two, bring them back tomorrow, along with some toys and his clothes.”
“I can’t leave him.”
The doctor stepped closer. “Everyone here is either an infant, a child, or an old person. Each one has someone who wants to sit with them. There’s no room for visitors. Go home. Sleep. Let us take care of him. For a week at least. Maybe two.”
“We can visit, can’t we?”
Loreda said.