Do-Gooder by j. leigh bailey Read Free Book Online Page A

that.
    “Besides,” he added, voice serene. “Movement is a bad thing. The more I move, the faster my heart beats, the faster the venom moves through my veins.”
    Henry’s weird tranquility was starting to seriously freak me out. And I was already pretty freaked because, as a word, venom was way scarier than poisonous . Poisonous made me think of itching and welts, maybe vomiting. Venom—well, venom just screamed deadly.
    I unzipped the top of the kit and searched the contents for a snake bite kit. I grabbed the white plastic box labeled, conveniently enough, Snakebite Kit. I flipped open the top and saw alcohol swabs, cleansing solution, syringes, and vials. “What do I do? Am I supposed to suck out the venom?” I had a vague memory of someone saying to do that, and of someone else saying absolutely not to.
    “No.” It seemed to take more effort to keep his voice and breathing even, like he had to concentrate over each breath. “We need to wait a little bit, to make sure it actually injected any venom.”
    “What?”
    “Just because it bit me, doesn’t mean it actually got any venom into me.”
    “But… but….” It seemed like there should be something we could do. It didn’t feel right to just sit there and wait. I took a breath and tried to slow my pounding heart. “What are we looking for? How will we know if there is any venom in the bite?”
    “Swelling. Discoloration.”
    I swallowed back nausea. Swelling and discoloration. Lovely. “How long?”
    “Depends. The more venom, the faster the reaction. If there’s no reaction….” He shrugged.
    I didn’t take my eyes off his hand. Blood trickled from the puncture wounds down the side of his hand. It might have been five minutes or five hours later before Henry slumped. He lined up his left hand with his injured right. Side-by-side, the difference was obvious. His right hand was definitely swelling and definitely discolored. A dark rose color, not quite purple but not quite magenta, spread across the back of his hand.
    “Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Okay. We have venom. Now what?”
    “Normally, the best thing to do is clean it well and get to a hospital.”
    There was a hysterical edge to my laughter. “In case you didn’t notice, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
    “So we’ll clean it, and you’ll inject the antivenin.”
    I looked at the vials. There were two different kinds. “Which one? And how much?”
    “Echin,” Henry said. “And we’ve got to hurry.”
    I found the bottle marked Echin and looked for dosing information. Nothing. I pulled out a wrapped syringe. At least I had plenty of experience with those. Under the sealed syringe, I found a small booklet. Instructions. Thank God. I scanned the words. I had to start a couple of times to make my brain focus and comprehend. It seemed like every other line of text contained a warning about serum sickness and anaphylaxis and other horrifying possible consequences.
    “Come on, Isaiah. Hurry.” His voice was tight and his face ashen.
    “I don’t know how much to give you!”
    The little vial of antivenin mocked me. How much? How much did Henry need?
    “Just do it!” His serene calm was cracking, and his hand and wrist were swelling.
    “Fine!”
    I tore open the alcohol wipes. Henry didn’t react when I cleaned the wound, but I flinched every time I touched the punctures. Filling the syringe was easy, no different than what I did every time I filled my pump. When it came to actually injecting the serum, that’s when I had the problem. My hand started shaking, silver-edged black dots flashed across my vision, and bile churned in my gut.
    “What’s the matter?” Henry asked. “Just do it already. If you don’t hurry, I could lose my hand.”
    “Not helping,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. Before I got the insulin pump, Mom had to give me insulin shots. When I was old enough, we assumed I would give the shots to myself, to save everyone the time and effort.